If you have been following my Instagram stories you saw I, on a whim, painted our guest bath cabinet. I have been struggling with anxiety with all of this crazy weather, social distancing, and this is a busy time for us with the rentals. So I needed to do something to get myself off the couch. So this was the project!
It honestly might one of my favorite projects. 1. Because it looks SOOOO much better! 2. because I did it all myself!!! There are very few projects involving that many steps that I do 100% without Alex’s help! So I am proud of myself! 🙂
I didn’t spend a single dime. I only used things I already had. The paint was left over from a previous project and I shopped my house for the wall decor! I do want to get a new rug, but I’m overall so pleased!!!
BEFORE AND AFTER COMING AT YOU!
I had this wood box and just tacked both the lid and the bottom part on the wall. I found the hymn in one of the hundred of old books I have and it is about how you are never alone because God is always there. Just thought that was sweet since this will be Charlotte’s bathroom.
TADA! Hope you liked it!!!
xoxo
It is really hard for me to spend money on artwork for our home because I am cheap and it usually isn’t. Lately I have been adding small touches to our home with my own art! I have had many failed attempts but then I just try something else. Art, in general has always been a passion of mine so I enjoy getting to do it! Especially during nap time.
TIPS FOR YOU
- Find a picture of your inspiration piece that you want for your space.
- Don’t put pressure on yourself to make it exactly like your inspiration.
- You don’t need expensive supplies to make it look expensive.
- Keep it simple, especially if art is not your thing.
Something else, frames are expensive too, I always look for cheap frames at thrift stores. The key for me is for the frame to have a matte, because I think that enhances the look.
I just use white cardstock paper and usually acrylic paint that I have had for years. The first picture I used a art marker. Using things I already have is also important. Basically the less money it requires the better.
These are in our sunroom.
These are on our bedroom mantel.
These were in the nursery; however, are now in the guest bedroom because the wood frame did not go with the rest of the room.
This is the most recent one I did for her nursery.
As you can see everything I have done is super simple! I hope this helps you feel like you could do it as well!
I would love to be able to create or give ideas so don’t be scared to reach out!
Changing most elements in the dining room, really changed the entire look! Here is a sneak peak (more pictures below).
I had to dig a little to find the original pictures of the dining room. When we bought the house, the previous owners were using it as an office; hence the carpet. I couldn’t find a picture of the peel and stick flooring they put on the wall around the window…. Take a good look at the classic trim and popcorn ceiling….
Oh how could I forget that mural……. I can’t say I felt bad painting over that; more like satisfied!
It may seem like I have all of these pieces of furniture and then just put them in a room and bam, but reality is we have lived here for almost three years and it’s still not 100%. I am pretty picky with the furniture I choose for our house, one because it has to be what I want and two is has to be reasonably priced! So it has taken a while to find all of the right pieces! Being patient is key!
Quick run down on where I got everything:
Buffet: Gravy Homegoods
Table: Broadstreet Market
Chairs: Facebook Marketplace
Loveseat bench: our sweet friends gifted it to Charlotte
Piece above the buffet is from: Rescued Junk
If you don’t remember from a previous post the crib spring is from the crib Alex (my husband) slept in as a baby.
Everything came as is, painted and everything except I reupholstered the chairs. I can’t find the before pictures but the fabric was original.. It honestly was one of my favorite projects. I would totally reupholster again! I planed to do a post about the chair because it was so easy! I used drop cloth material on them! Which is eventually what I want to use for curtains in there too!
Sorry got on a tangent! It’s crazy what just paint and trim alone can do to a space! Here are the afters!
Planning to put curtains on this window because when we have the dining room light on everyone and their mother can see in!
Hope you enjoyed!! It is one of my favorite rooms because of all of the natural light coming in! Of course Frankie had to make an appearance!
I started this blog post about our bedroom almost a year ago… Having a baby changed priorities and interests. My favorite piece in the house is in our bedroom so I wanted to make sure to finish this post! I decided these photos of our bedroom are perfect examples of how my design ideas change over time and apparently my photo editing too. 😛
I bought this dresser at Goodwill for $40. I have always dreamed of painting it, but 1. it weighs a million pounds so it would be a lot of work to move it and 2. it is very detailed and that scares me. If anyone has suggestions on what color or how to paint it I would greatly appreciate them!
I am so sad this quilt has seen better days and is no longer on our bed. I bought it at Homegoods. Thanks to our dog Frankie, who enjoys scratching before laying down, there are a couple small holes in it. Here is our update bed view now!
Naturally Frankie had to jump in! The screen above our bed was $7 at a yard sale!!! I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it! The bedside tables are matching, despite the lighting difference. I want to paint them, white or navy but I would have to leave the front part exposed. Also would love to DIY a new headboard or at least a cover for ours!
This is one our sweet wedding photos from Madelin Mack Photography. Alex and I have a tradition that when we travel to new countries we buy a picture frame. This is the picture frame from our honeymoon to Punta Cana, it now has a photo from our trip there.
This mirror is my FAVORITE PIECE in the whole house. Our bedroom is rediculously large and when we moved in we only had our bed, night stands, and dresser so it was super empty! As usually I was pinning on Pinterest and told Alex I wanted to get a giant mirror for our room. When we moved in there were “gym” mirrors on the wall in the basement and when we were removing them the idea to build a frame jumped in both of our minds at the same time. So we removed them and Alex built this frame for one of them, and I stained it. Its huge, we had to assemble it in our bedroom! It is so perfect!… I miss this bedspread! Mission find a similar one starts now, don’t tell Alex! 🙂
A faux fire place was a long time goal. We found this fireplace at an antique shop, not expecting it to be big, but the size is actually perfect (it is over five feet wide and probably 4 tall). I still want to fill the inside with something but I haven’t gotten to it. I have toyed with doing book pages or fake logs. I don’t want it to be too busy so I am not sure what I should do! I love fireplace mantels because you can easily change the decor on them you can do no wrong.
You can see when I switched it out I kept some of the items! I needed less wood tones and more neutral! I grabbed this wood art from our stairway entry to add height because we have vaulted ceilings and this wall is actually huge. In the picture frames, thrifted of course, are some flowers I painted. Cheap home decor is so rewarding to showcase!
Here are a couple more for fun! 
Eventually we want to do something with the ceilings in our bedroom because they currently are the only ones that still have popcorn texture. I have dreams on white wood with beams, but we have other projects that take priority, like filling nine million nail wholes on the main floor. 😛
Let me know what you think! Hopefully this post isn’t to shabby for writing my first post in almost a year, yikes!
Old bedroom post here!
SHE has arrived (9 weeks ago :P)! Charlotte Ramona Fortsch is here! Still can’t believe baby Fortsch is a GIRL! I was 100% convinced she was going to be a boy. Surprise! She is so precious!! After much procrastinating and spending time with Charlotte I’m finally sharing the nursery with you!
I bought a few decorations pretty early on in my pregnancy, but knew I wasn’t going to be able to decorate the nursery for quite some time as we were planning to scrape the popcorn ceilings upstairs before we could start! Over Christmas time, my ever so amazing husband Alex, scraped the ceilings upstairs, resprayed and painted them. We started painting the trim white (never again) and the nursery walls shortly after and it slowly came together! Check it out!
The goal was to make a super neutral nursery and not spend a ton of money! Thankfully we didn’t know we were having a girl, otherwise it could have been dangerous. I tried to shop our home for some of the items! I already had the curtains, the small basket, the X and O, and the little chairs. The crib was gifted to us from our friend’s parents. It was originally black and Alex spent countless hours painting it white (13 bottles of spray paint)! 😊 The dresser we have had for years. I bought it at Goodwill for $40, knowing I would refinish it someday! Here is what it looked like before. The bottom drawers we had to put knobs on because they looked funny with the pulls on it.
Right when I started brainstorming the nursery decor, I had animal prints from Homegoods in mind, but they didn’t end up fitting in my design. The animal prints above the bed are from Hobby Lobby and the Hush Little Baby sign is from At Home. The X and O that are sitting on the dresser I painted with thrifted frames.
Alex built book shelves for all of the sweet books that were gifted to us. We have one more to add and I think I might have him build more for under the Hush Little Baby sign because we have so many books and I want Charlotte to have access to them when she gets older.
We love spending time in her nursery, especially rocking in the glider, which we got at Buy Buy Baby. We are very thankful for the changing table to save other spaces from the messes :p.
I am thankful for this space we have created for her and can’t wait to see how she grows in this space!
Hoop wreaths and faux greenery are my newest obsessions. I got this embroidery hoop at Walmart once upon a time for $1.00. I grabbed six of them thinking I would eventually use them for something. After posting my inspiration pictures for our kitchen, I was trying to think how I could make something similar without spending any money!
I am pretty notorious for buying cheap craft items and then keeping them forever because you just never know when you will need them. So, I had all the materials I used for this!
Materials
- Embroidery Hoop
- Faux Greenery of Choice
- Scissors
- Jute/string/yarn
- Zip ties or hot glue
STEP ONE: Cut the greenery apart using the scissors. The greenery I bought was one solid piece so I cut all of the branches off. I originally planned to cut the metal wire too, but it was easier to cut around the plastic and then just pull the branch off the wire.
STEP TWO: I used two zip ties to attach all of the branches together because I did not have a hot glue gun. I would highly suggest using a hot glue gun because you would be able to strategically place each branch. Place an equal amount on each side with the stems facing each other. Glue each stem separately to be sure you get them exactly how you want them. If using a zip tie, like me, pull the zip tie, leaving enough room to fit all of your branches. Then place one side in and then the other. Then pull the zip tie tight and pray your branches don’t move! 🙂 You can also just wrap string around them to hold them together. However, I attempted to do this originally and I was extremely frustrated because they kept coming apart and the string kept catching in the greenery. I thought I was going to lose my marbles.
STEP THREE:Â Â After the branches are attached together use string to attach them to the hoop. Again, you could easily use hot glue to attach it. I placed mine lightly on the bottom left-hand side.
After this I attached it to my printer’s drawer. I used the same string I used to tie the greenery, to tie it to the drawer. And now I some cute decor in my kitchen!
Check out some inspiration pictures below! And as always let me know what you think!
A lot has happened since my previous kitchen update, if you haven’t had a chance to read that one. In the previous update I filled you in on our kitchen nightmare, maybe not complete nightmare because it could have been worse. Short version: our first set of cabinets had to be sent back and we end up going with another cabinet store!
That all happened the week before we left for our honeymoon and the original plan was to get counter tops installed when we got home. Needless to say, that didn’t happen. We quickly changed our plans and went shopping for other cabinet, worked out our plans and measurements and prayed this company would have better quality. The first time we ordered cabinets it took about two months for us to design and finalize everything. This time we only had four days!
Fast forward five or so weeks and we have our new cabinets and countertops installed!!!! We got our new cabinets from Showplace Kitchens and they are amazing!! I would recommend Showplace to anyone searching for new cabinets!
We also got our countertops in! Countertop shopping was a little stressful when we realized we wouldn’t be able to see a large sample to know exactly what it was going to look like. So I did ALL the research and we decided on Torquay by Cambria. We really only looked at a small sample once and decided it was the one. I was nervous choosing white countertops that they would show everything, but Torquay has a lot of “grain”, not sure if that is the right word for it, but they actually hide a lot! LOVE them so far and having countertops makes a big difference when it comes to cooking and cleaning. Not sure if you remember what the countertops looked like previously, but they had put in separate tiles for the countertops so the dirt would go into the grout lines. It was disgusting! One smooth surface is amazing!
We have a lot of work to do yet, but under cabinet lighting is checked off the list! If anyone has tips on how to attach the little bit of excess cord let me know! We hadn’t under cabinet lighting until we moved here and the previous owners had it! Now we felt it was necessary because we love being able to have those on while we are cooking or at night if we want to leave some light on downstairs.
The floor is laid for staging via Alex. He did this the day the countertops came in and sent me pictures. 🙂 We started putting our pulls on as you can see. Man that is harder than I thought! We got our pulls on Amazon. I will keep you guys updated at we keep adding to it! It is slow right now because we are focusing on getting our rental properties turned over for the new tenants.
Check out our cabinets! Also, the “back splash” you currently see is actually our tile backer. We are planning to put up white subway tile! We are getting closer!
I want to know thoughts on this rug! I know it has an acquired taste. Alex hasn’t seen it yet, so I am interested in his reaction. I got it super cheap at the thrift store and it has a boho feel like my basket tray. Hopefully you can see my inspiration from my last post spilling into our kitchen!
I have some posts planned for the near future showing you guys what has inspired me for each room, and some DIY projects now that I get to start styling! Comment things you want to see!
I put together a design board for our kitchen! I really needed to narrow down what my vision for our kitchen was. After deciding all of the final major design details I had no idea what color I wanted to add pops of! I began thinking what I already have for kitchen decor to use as my inspiration pieces.
The major design pieces were our dishes which we received for our wedding! Since our cabinets have glass and you can see them I know I need to incorporate navy. I also have antique copper canisters for flour, sugar, tea, and coffee (those might not be right). I LOVE those and want to definitely use those! I usually don’t put anything in them, I just use them for looks. I also want to use a vintage printer’s drawer for wall decor.
I started with those items and began pinning for more inspiration! Rugs is something I struggle with! I am still not sure how many rugs and what size rugs to buy. I love the idea of buying “capsule” items. Like a capsule wardrobe but with home decor. I never really realized I was doing this until I saw CottonStem chatting about it on Instagram stories!
TIPS
- Shop your house! I have been doing this for so long! Whenever I feel like changing things up in a room, I look in other rooms and see what pieces I could use. This has been happening quite a bit since we moved because I have no clear plans for any room! We have only recently started hanging things on the walls! Shopping your house also helps save money!
- By “capsule” items! When you buy something picture putting it in more than one room! It makes it easier to shop your house. And in the long run saves you money because you can shop your house and find items that work in other rooms.
Mood for the kitchen is navy, copper, wood tones, neutral colors, greenery, subway tile and farmhouse sink. Check out my Pinterest (click here).
Let’s all just hope it looks as good as this inspiration board! 🙂
Click on these to find the original source: Dishes, Printer’s Board, Farmhouse Sink, Cake Stand/CopperÂ
Can’t wait to finish this project!
We didn’t do Christmas cards this year, we joke it’s because we spent enough on postage this year! lol SO I thought I would share some more wedding pictures with you! Hope you all had an amazing day celebrating Jesus! If you are tired of it being cold or getting sick (like me) I hope this cheers you up!
I have been holding onto all of the amazing pictures Madi of Madelin Mack Photography took for us for far too long. I honestly don’t know why. I think it is because they are all my favorite and I have a hard time choosing which ones to post. I thought I would start with the first look ones because they bring back all of the emotions. (Insert crying face emoji).
Chip and Joanna’s line has officially launched at Target! Have you checked it out yet?
I went this morning before church, mainly because I was awake, thanks to the time change! It was like Black Friday shopping, everyone was so excited! I picked up quite a few things while I was there!
Here are a few of my favorites! I linked them all to the Target website for you!
Garland & Gold 