Living Room Makeover!

Okay. I realized that I have never shown how this whole room came together. It is a room that is very exciting for me. It was the first room we ever completed when we first got married. 

Okay this was the before picture. Its a little crazy and messy. I took this after we finally were back from our honeymoon and our house was a dump. We had tons of gifts to open and then with me moving in and all that it was nuts.

You are probably wondering what that green table thing is... yes its a ping pong table and yes its in the front room. You have to remember that this house was a Bachelor Pad meaning that a house full of boys lived there for a few years before Kelly & I got married. So the logical thing to do when you are in your 20's and your house is this massive party house with a house full of single men is to have a ping pong table in your front room...

I still laugh that they did that. In fact I kind of miss it being there we had some good times when we were dating with that ping pong table. 

But onto the formal like matter of this room.

The white leather loveseat was from KSL. I had wanted it from Overstock but Kelly hated it. I would say this was the first piece of furniture that Kelly bought me even though he hated it. He hated how it looked and after struggling to put it together before we were married was a pain. It was my 20th birthday gift from him. Although I got it before we were married since everything happens in our house within 8 days. (anniversary & both our birthdays) 

That zebra chair started EVERYTHING!

Zebra was the cool print of 2010-2012. Okay I still like it but lets say I was a little obsessive over anything I saw that was black & white. 

Well my mother in law knowing that I loved zebra bought me this chair for an early wedding gift. Of course it couldn't just be in a family room it had to go in the front room. So there it started the whole thing.

We then started looking around for different things that we liked.

We walked around Ashley Furniture trying to find a couch that we would like for the front room. Well turns out that we ended up walking out with this rug. Kelly totally had the eye on this one. He found it and liked it. I was pretty shocked.

2 months before we were married we got a puppy boxer (Nala). Well the night we got this rug home I remember Kelly was in the shower and I was putting things away and later walked downstairs to find that Nala had pooped on the rug. It had only been laid down for about a half hour before that happened. I remember running upstairs and saying to Kelly 'You won't believe what just happened'.. He knew right then what I meant. 

Well a couple months went by and I found a couch on KSL that I liked a lot. It was in SLC & luckily Kelly still was working there. He said it was a pain in the butt since the lady we bought it from lived on the 4th floor of her apartment building. It also was a big pain getting it into our own house for how oversized it is. But it worked and I love it!

The whole house was that brown pukey nasty tan color. AHH... my eyeballs hurt looking at these old pictures. I couldn't stand how it just felt like a cardboard box. Well we started into the biggest project.. okay I will get rid of the royal 'we' and say that Kelly started the biggest project.

He completely painted the entire front room, kitchen and hallway. He also took off all the old base and replaced it with taller base so it would make the house modern and be up to date with the current style. We used two different colors of gray. We did some accenting in some areas with the lighter tone being more dominate. At the time we had such a big space that we were painting that it was hard to figure out where to do the accent tones. But after having it done for over 2 years I am pleased at where we decided to do them.

Okay you may be wondering about that red light. Its cool right?! (You better shake your head yes.) Well, this wasn't something that I found and bought. It was the fir

That picture of the Oquirrh Mountain Temple was given to us by Kelly's sisters for our wedding. Kelly got mad when I moved it from the front room and put it by the front door. Mainly because I stuck a Zebra picture in its place. He got over it fast once he agreed.

Our front door use to be a tan color. Well a small can of red paint and a afternoon later and we had a red front door. I have had it painted for over a year and I love how it turned out. It adds character and I feel like it gives a warning to anyone who enters that this house is not a normal house.

Now tell me what you think about the thing hanging from the ceiling? Its ugly right. Well for three years I had a certain light that I wanted in that room. Kelly hated it. I finally just bought it this year and thought hey now he will have to hang it up right?! 

Look at the difference that lighting can make? Kelly spent the whole afternoon on a Saturday while I was gone at a dance competition taking the fan down and installing my new light. Once I walked in and saw it I was so happy! The room was finally complete!

Kelly calls it a snowball. But the idea behind IKEA was that it represents a dandelion. I love how it projects smaller ones on top and bigger ones on the sides of the room. 

After I bought the light and told Kelly that I did. He said 'Lets go to Lowes and get a different fan. You can get whatever one you want. ..Well after going to Lowes and the fan that I liked was triple the cost of this light he decided it wouldn't be too bad to just hang it up. 

It is a little dull compared to the fan but it adds a mood to the room. I love how it looks especially at night when the windows are open. It gives some good competition to Charli's chandelier. 

Here is an closer look to the light itself! ...eeek it makes me happy!

Links to Decor:

White Leather Loveseat: Overstock

Tall Daisy Flowers: Hobby Lobby

Monogram Letters & Hello Sign: Wood Connection

Coffee Table: Ikea

Lighting: Ikea (this is the smaller version)

Zebra Canvas Picture: Ikea

Saturdays.

Well I got quite a bit done today between laundry, mopping, vacuuming, scrubbing down bathrooms & changing out decor it feels good to have a clean home again. Sometimes I really despise doing it though. Probably because I let it get so behind and I would rather spend the day holding Charli or being with my mom and sister.

Charli has been a sweet little girl she has been in her swing for most of the day either talking & playing or sleeping. After she finished eating lunch I decided it was probably time for me to eat as well as I started eating I decided I really should try out the Jamberry nail wraps I got a couple weeks ago. I have been unsure about the whole thing mainly because its something new, was it going to be a fast application, would I really like the final results and a million other things.

I watched the tutorial from Jamberry as I started to put them on and I thought it wasn't really that bad until I had to get my left hand to put on my right hand.. eek. I am not ambidextrous at all. Well I loved the final results. It took be about an hour from start to finish. I had to replace my right pinky because I don't think I should have got up and washed my face right after. So far I love the fun patterns. I love that I don't have to worry about bumping them and ruining my whole hand. It was a simple process and I am sure over time I will get better at becoming faster with them. I think I will continue doing these if I can get it down to a science. I like to have things done quickly.. I also really hope that they will last for the 2 weeks.

Kelly has been gone most the day snowmobiling and so leaving Charli & me at home. Which sometimes I hate but this season there hasn't been much snow so I can't be too mad when he goes all day.

I realized that I am starting to have this fetish with chandeliers. I found one today online that I am hoping to pick up later tonight. I can't wait to start on this next project. It is one that we have wanted to do for a long time and it is one that will take A LOT of time to do but I am so ready to do it. Okay, but I really have to have Kelly's help with it so I have to wait till I can convince him it's time to start it. After all he is the worker bee and I am the queen bee & designer!

Once I found this one I got up and did this happy dance for about 3 minutes. Charli was staring at me like 'okay mom you can stop doing that any minute now'.  She will become a pro at that face by the time she is 15 I am sure. But she also will have a pretty cool house so she can't really complain.

I have to laugh at myself for coming up with all these ideas because I was never like this 3 years ago. But I love turning something that is okay into something even better.

Here's to Saturdays & future projects.

Marquee Love by Heidi Swapp

Okay, I have fell in love with the most simple craft project. I didn't time myself but I would say that it was under 15 minutes! Which makes making a marquee so simple, fast and the possibilities are endless!

I first heard about this on Studio 5. After I watched the segment I headed to Michaels and bought two of them! One for Charli's room & the other for our family room. Seriously you will find a reason to have these in your house.

Here is what the box looks like. It was right by the front doors when I walked in. It has such cute packaging!

It comes with a stencil, your plastic bulbs, a strand of lights connected to a battery pack.

I used scrapbook paper for both of my letters. Use your stencil and trace the entire letter and the holes.

Cut the letter out and fit it into the letter. Trim edges if needed.

Now find your holes and using the end of a pen stab inside the holes.

Don't worry the light bulbs will easily fit in with this method

You can see all the holes are punched 

 Now inserting your bulbs. It is pretty simple to do, some will take a little more pressure to snap in. Make sure that they are down in all the way.

Turn it over after you have all the bulbs in and time to thread the lights.

Start with the first light and work your way down to the battery pack.

The battery pack is made so it can easily slide into the back of the letter and be hidden. That is why you want to start with the first light.

Throw in 2 AAA batteries and turn it over.

TA-DA. You are welcome! Cutest Marquee light. Seriously if I haven't convinced you of needing one of these then you are a prude! :)

Here is the C in Little Miss Nelson's Room. 

It puts off a great amount of light but not too much. I will be using it as a night light for her room. 

Little Miss Nelson's Nursery Part 1

Before I start telling you all about Little Miss Nelson's Nursery project I need to let you know that it would not have been even close to what it is if it wasn't for Kelly. He spent so much time working on it, drawing up different plans and going back to the drawing board when things wouldn't work out. He sometimes questioned if what he was really painting was for a girl and if I was still going to like it when it was finished. I am so grateful for a handy man in my life who can do anything and everything.

This room use to be my craft room aka the messiest room in the house. Well after we spent half a day getting everything moved down to the new craft room we were ready to finally start envisioning what we wanted this room to look like.

Before photos of the bedroom.

Slowly our house is changing colors in every room. Our whole house use to be this tan/beige color and well since we have been married we have painted over half of the house something new. Its crazy how much paint can change a home.

I am a Lowes Lover. We shop there for almost any project that involves our home improvement.

I love the Valspar paint line it always goes on great and the colors are always rich! I tend to pick colors that are vibrant and risky so having a paint that makes it look just like the card is awesome!

Indigo Cloth

and 

Bella Grove Sorbet 

are the two colors we used in this project both are from the Lowe's Valspar paint line.

Semi-Gloss Valspar Ultra Paint + Primer 

this has very low odor and zero voc.

We painted the blue wall first and ran out of paint had to get more for touch up and a third coat. 

Nala loves being anywhere close to Kelly but every time we paint she ends up wearing it. Same thing happened this go around, she rubbed up against the wall while it was wet and had a mint bum for over a week. 

The base coats are done. Accent wall is Indigo Cloth and the other
three walls are the Belle Grove Sorbet

This is when things got rough real fast.

I had always envisioned a spanish Moroccan tile stencil on her wall.

After attempting to get the stencil we had borrowed from a nice friend it just wasn't going to work.

As you can tell..

So cover that back up and go back to the drawing board...

(This is why I mention that Kelly is an amazing husband)

I had showed Kelly a million different ideas on Pinterest. Stripes, argyle, stencils, different shapes. We went back and started looking again. I came across some metallic polka dots. I thought for sure if I showed it to Kelly he would just straight up laugh and say 'Yeah right, I am not painting that'... well, the total opposite happened. He was in for it.. Although once he had come up with several different grids and layouts we weren't sure how we were going to get the PERFECT CIRCLE on to the wall. 

Luckily for us we have our resources and Kelly has an amazing sister who helps us with projects. We asked Krystal if we could cut 3" circles of contact paper on her Silhouette machine that we would then use as a stencil after sticking them to the wall. She has used contact paper for many stencils and said yes that would totally work. Well we got to cutting them out and after a roll of contact paper we were ready to get to work.

Kelly stayed up past midnight coming up with a better grid formation and then spacing them out and drawing the grid onto the wall with a sharpie highlighter and paint marker.

As you can tell not all of our circles that we cut even filled the whole wall and we did reuse some of them. But thats the glorious thing about contact paper its sticky enough to be used twice.

You may be thinking why didn't you go to Lowe's or Hobby Lobby to find your own polka dot stencil. Well I will let you know one thing yes there are some out on the market but they are all tiny little guys and to be honest they won't sit flush against your wall even with adhesive glue spray.

Next step. Test Kelly's painting skills once again and see if this polka dot thing is going to work.

Well after doing one coat on all of them and then going back and doing a quick second coat we were ready to see if we pulled the contact paper off what it would do?

Sadly the latex had just made a barrier with the contact paper so it was as if the paint wasn't sticking to the wall at all. Well, of course it was going to be a little harder for us to get what we wanted.

Kelly spent about 5 minutes on every circle after that with a x-acto knife going around the whole edge of the contact paper to get the paint to separate from the stencil.

AND IT WORKED!!! YAY!!

After 75 dots later we had a finished product... we had the cutest mint polka dots on the block.

Probably the only polka dots on the block because I don't think our neighbors are as crazy to paint polka dots or have the need to paint a bedroom like this.

The night we finished painting our room we also got to pick up our crib. We thought for sure we were going to have a couple of weeks before it would arrive to the store. Well it took 3 days... I am not complaining.

I didn't mention to Kelly that I had read it takes 5 hours with 3 men to set up.. 

#badwifestatus but I knew it would probably make him change his mind on the crib.

Well the next day he spent about 3 hours putting the crib together all by himself. 

So whoever took 5 hours with 3 men obviously couldn't read or had some other issues.. hehe..

(Don't look at 'chicken'! Nala has moved all of her toys into this room thinking this where she gets to hang out now.. she definitely knows something is going on because we have spent so much time in this room for the last 2 months!)

I love love love love love love love love love love LOVE how this room turned out. We still have some other little secrets going on that I will post in Part 2 but until then don't you just love how symmetrical those polka dots are!!!

Another Project... Little Miss Nelson Nursery!

Today I have officially conquered something that has took way too long..

After moving everything around I have finally made Little Miss Nelson a room of her own!

I am so excited to finally start putting it together. Sadly, we have agreed on what we are going to do with her room more than we have on what her name will be.

Maybe once its finished we will know her name?! fingers crossed.

I have already got a few things for her room; fabric, spray paint, artwork.. oops.

Can't wait to finally start prepping to paint her room & put it together.

Isn't she a cutie.. 

This was at our 24 week appointment with the Ultrasound Tech.

She gave us so many pictures of her, on top of a super long ultrasound on our dvd.

We are two weeks away from doing the gestational diabetes test. Not so sure how I feel about that but it will be worth it once we get another ultrasound.

We are officially 26 weeks! Wow, almost to the final trimester!

Baby It's Cold Outside

Juan-uary or January...

I have to tell you a funny thing! I have not been able to watch this season of the Bachelor. But, Kelly sure has! On Monday night I was trying to get Kelly to go shopping. He kept saying "We can tomorrow!", I finally got him convinced to go & he said as long as we are home by 7pm! I then caught on that he didn't want to miss Juan!

We got home in time & we finally had our freezer restocked for the next few weeks. (Yes, I said freezer. You may think I am such a horrible wife but, there are only a few nights in the week that I am home before 8pm so we don't eat together! I wish I had the time to cook, its not that I can't. In fact I use to cook in college! But, I much rather spend hours with some amazing dance girls & my darling young woman in our ward than worry about cooking! I just feel so blessed to be able to be around such amazing girls!) As we started to watch the episode Kelly gave me all the low-down on what girls he likes, their occupations, the girls he hated & the DRAMATIC ones! Man oh man, I had to giggle that he has watched this since I am not home on Monday nights!


A little about this weekend, we went up to our friends cabin in the Uinta's. It's always a good time! We spent all day Saturday snowmobiling around different places. I know Kelly hates having to take me but I do at least get one "wife ride" a year. It consists of Meadows & staying on the road, I can't stand going off the road and dodging trees! He does however let me drive around the meadows by myself, I do enjoy that unless there is too much powder. I promised Kelly that he can get a new sled next year there was some stipulations that he had to get some warmer gear & a new Avalanche pack.
For those of you who probably don't know this but Kelly's famous saying to me is; "Summer is We time and Winter is me time!" ... and boy does he mean that!

I spent Monday & Tuesday with my mom, we went different places & got some projects done. We even created ourselves some new ones sadly.. but I can't wait to now have those done and started! Its going to take some new habits like sewing & patience.. (something I always need more of.. patience)


I have to admit I actually came through on my 'Pinky Promise'! I finished some projects this week! Sadly, some are still in shambles.. I think my expectations were too high. But, I can actually post some pictures of January things!

 I have to start off with this darling snowman hat! Every time I see it I want to start singing "Do you wanna build a snowman!".. I can't wait to own Frozen!

My darling Sister in law Krystal gave me this, she is so crafty! I can't wait to have some time to go over and work with her on things!

I was so happy happy, happy, HAPPY when she gave me this hat! Thanks Krystal!








(Its all about snowflakes & snowmen as you can tell! I love the bright turquoise and glitter!)

The only thing I don't have a picture of is a sign I did. It says "If Snowflakes were kisses I would send you a BLIZZARD!"

So dang cute for how stinking cold it is outside! If only we could get some more snow, even though I despise driving in it but we do need some!

I am so excited for Valentines Day. It has so many things to do for décor & I love celebrating the day. It's like a mini-anniversary. Can't wait to decorate in fact, I have been tempted to already change things in my house but I know Kelly would think I am totally odd!