PINspiration...Brought to you by Pinterest

It's no secret that I love Pinterest.  I pin so many great tips, recipes, and beautiful spaces. I've not only tried many of the recipes, I also incorporated a couple of my inspirational pins when redecorating Emma's room.

This is my inspiration.

Source: decorno.blogspot.com via Shellee on Pinterest

I love the chest of drawers and the basket, but I am most smitten by the art. I have no idea who the original artist is, but I recreated this picture to hang above Emma's bed:

I combined the following two photos, to create a gallery wall in Emma's room as well. I'm quite the fan of the gallery wall. I love the mirrors and empty frames. 

Source: moredesignplease.com via Shellee on Pinterest

Since Emma loves to hang pictures all over her walls, I created a place for snapshots (inspired by the following).

Source: moredesignplease.com via Shellee on Pinterest

Here is my interpretation!

                                                                                                           
I really want to add more mirrors and empty frames. Also, now that I see my inspiration photo again, I think I need to tighten the jute I used to create the photo frame or maybe just use wire instead.  (Don't you love it when I think out loud?)  

I also still need to refinish the furniture in her room. It was given to her by my mom, and was originally my grandmothers.  I'm still contemplating the best color.  All opinions are welcome!

My PINspiration list is LOOOONG.  Hopefully, I will stay off of Pinterest long enough to actually accomplish some of it!  

Paprika...It's the New Orange!

The other day, I started thinking I was finally ready to paint my barstools. Here's how it went down...

Here's the thing though.  I have been wanting to repaint my bar stools for awhile.  We have two really stupid precious dogs that both cut their teeth on my bar stools.

It's just that I've been a little indecisive on color. Until, that is, I saw this picture on pinterest...

Source: flickr.com via Shellee on Pinterest

And, then this one...

Source: vi.sualize.us via Shellee on Pinterest

Hence, the red vs. orange dilemma.

I landed on "Paprika." It's a deep reddish orange. However, I must state for the record that I'm now thinking I like the lighter orange better. I have a little bit of an orange phobia though, because the last time I leaned in the direction of orange, my living room ended up looking like Don Pablos and all I wanted to eat was chips and queso. Not that that is different from any other day as far as the cravings go!

The point is, I now have orange-ish red-ish barstools.

This is a phone picture I sent to Leigh. It shows the before/after side by side.

I'm determined to live with them awhile because there are a few other dining area changes I'm considering, so for now, they stay paprika!

Unless, of course, I start getting strange urges to eat deviled eggs.

Garage Sale Dresser Makeover

Back in the fall, I was searching Craigslist for a dresser that I could use for a media stand in the living room.  I wanted it to be long and somewhat short (as opposed to a chest of drawers), but I could never quite find what I wanted.

While driving JP to class one morning, I saw this guy sitting in a yard sale.  I stopped in on the way home, and did a quick check. Drawers work? check. Can I make it cute? check.  Priced right? CHECK!

So I hauled this bad boy home in the back of my mini-van and immediately got to work making it gorgeous!

Check it out now!

I stripped the top of the dresser, and stained it (Minwax English Chestnut). I then spray painted the bottom (Rustoleum Heirloom White). I thought I would want to find new hardware, but once it was painted, I kind of liked it.

Before:

 After:

Just for fun, here is a photo of the this area before paint and with the old entertainment armoire:

And, here is how it looks now (after I've cleared off all the video games and controllers, of course!)

Ahhhh... it's nice to see improvement.

My Cool Stenciled Bedroom Wall

I was looking back through my pictures trying to see if I had a photo of my bedroom wall color before I painted it earlier this year. This is the only one I could find! It was taken New Year's Eve three years ago!

Much has changed since then besides, of course, the wall color of my bedroom (ok. the wall color of almost every room in my house!).

Paint colors aside.  In 2009, NONE of the girls in this photo were teenagers. Wes still had blonde hair.  I still looked relatively young.  And, Max was a cute little puppy that I actually liked!

Now, TWO of those girls are teenagers.  Wes is mostly gray.  I have crows feet and forehead lines and Max is no longer cute. Also, I no longer like him.  And it's not just because he isn't cute.

But, none of those facts have anything to do with this post.

This post is about a wall.  A really cool wall that started out the color in the above photo.  Then, was painted to look like this...

 And, now looks like this...

I first saw this design on Jones Design Company blog and loved it, so I convinced a couple of my favorite peeps to come over and help me stencil this trellis pattern onto the wall.  With one person tracing and two people painting, we worked and worked and WORKED.

It took two days of relatively steady work and cost me a couple of friends, but it is now the absolute coolest wall in the house! (I'm just kidding about the friends part.  I think.)

Hopefully, three years from now when ALL THREE GIRLS will be teenagers, I will still be enjoying this trellis wall.

That's what I keep telling myself anyway.

But let's face it, given my painting history, that's about as likely as me changing my mind about Max.