there's a new bird in town!

can you spot him?

look closely...

cockadoodledooooo!

you know i love my bird paraphernalia! 

i think i either need to 

a) paint the base so he sticks out more or 

b) relocate him to a place where he's more noticeable

i don't really love where i have him right now... but i do love him!

have a seat!

somehow, having a baby has not cured me of my need to clean and decorate my house.

today finn napped through the vacuum.

and here i thought i couldn't love him any more. :)

anywho, before mom destroyed her leg and her car, she managed to find this amazing chair while i was busy giving birth:

 

how perfect is it for my dressing room?!

the metal was a gray color when she found it, so she used my trusty can of spraypaint to finish it off!

isn't she lovely?  great find, mom!

spray paint- not just for vandalism anymore.

when you live in a big 'ole house and have a small little budget, sometimes you've gotta improvise.

one of my favorite things to do is flip through pottery barn catalogs, stroll through anthropologie, drool over other expensive home decor websites, and then try to mimic what i see.

in the dressing room i was able to make a lot of things work with the help of a $3 can of spray paint.

enter, rustoleum:

you have to show your i.d. to buy it at home depot. 

it makes me feel very dangerous.

who knowwwss what i could be doing with this spray paint?

i could be tagging my gang name on your grandma's ford taurus.

if you see "m rizzle" in hammered gold on a bridge somewhere just keep quiet, mmkay?

anyways, i chose this hammered finish because it dries really imperfect and it makes things look antique and a little bit more expensive than a flat shiny finish.

so instead of lusting over these little knobbies at anthro for $10 a pop, i went to home depot and found these for $3.99 instead.

i think i mentioned before that the bullets that fit in the center of the knobs were silver, so i busted out my trusty can of spray paint to give them the hammered gold finish:

also notice the previously mentioned "antiquing" we did on the edges of the vanity with the same spray paint applied on a brush.

next up, i had spotted these loverly switchplates.
there are similar looking ones at home depot but they were still pretty expensive and they looked cheap.
so i bought the cheapest white plastic switchplates i could find (i think they were like 70 cents) and busted out the rustoleum once more.

remember the switches before?

ewwie.

now pretty!

now for my next trick!

remember the blue and yellow jewelry racks from urban outfitters? 

(gifts from a couple christmases ago).

i think you can see the texture of the paint in this picture pretty good.  

you like it.  you know you like it.

and last but not least, i got a full length mirror from target for 15 bucks because i haven't had one since... sheesh like since we've moved to pennsylvania.  

and it was getting kinda hard to stand on the toilet to get a full body shot what with this preschooler i'm carrying and all.  

the only trouble was, the mirror was white, and my walls are antique white, so it looked.... bad.

so you know what i did! mmhmmm.

look at that sexy hammered finish.

  here's a shot of the wall with the mirror AND jewelry racks:

 

except don't mind the doorknob hole, 

dad just took it off last weekend to refinish.  

i'll post more on that when he replaces it, 

because his craftsmanship is pretty amazing.

so there you have it!  i made some new cheap stuff look a little more special, and i made some old unmatching stuff work for the room, with just a little can of spray paint.  

i even have some left over for your grandma's ford taurus. 

watchyoself.

you're so vain.

you probably think this blog is about you.

well, it is! it's all about you, dear vanity.  you are complete.

remember what the big yellow monster looked like before?

look how purty we made her.

 

first i painted her antique white.  it only took two coats.

the only problem was, when we went to sand the edges of the vanity to give it that "shabby chic" look, the yellow just rubbed through instead of the wood.  so we improvised.

mom sprayed some gold spray paint on a paint brush and brushed that on the edges a bit:

 

poifect.

i also found some little glass knobs at home depot for three dollars a pop.  

the vanity didn't have any knobs when i found it, and i think these fit it perfectly.

the bullets on the knobs were silver so i sprayed them gold to match the rest of the room.

billy put them on for me last night:

there is other progress being made in the dressing room but i'll save that for another day. 

here is another nifty picture of the vanity though:

 

we found the mirror at home goods yesterday. i had a gift certificate from lisa leftover from christmas (thanks lees!) idn't purty?

the cool clock the previous owners left in the house.  

i know.  it's perfect for the alice theme. love it.

 

i like this picture too because you can see the pretty blue ceiling.

now let me employ the help of tucker to finish up this blog post with what you're really thinking:

"seriously?  

that's it? 

a stinkin' vanity?  

your story bores me.  

have a baby already."

a couple of nursery additions...

i've been busy dying with a sinus infection that's slowly overtaking my entire torso,
but mom and dad came up this weekend so that means (inbetween mom giving my belly the stink eye... where are you baby?) that some things are still getting done around here!

so while mom's busy antiquing my vanity table (more on that later) and dad's foaming up mouse holes (i'll spare you those details) i'll sit here and moan a bit and blog about pretty things.

look what's new in the baby room!

i rearranged the front bedroom this week and rediscovered this little suitcase that billy found when we were antiquing a couple of summers ago.
i thought it would be perfect in the baby's room because it goes with the travel theme.
why didn't i think of that sooner?

 

yayy.
it's actually pretty spacious inside and will be great for storing toys and stuff down the line.

but onto my favorite thing...
my poppy (my mom's dad), who just passed away last month, made me a beautiful rocking horse when i was a baby.
like, made it.
hand carved it out of a tree made it.
old school newfoundlanders don't mess around with this "crafty" business.
they just straight up make stuff out of nothing.

mom and dad brought it up for me this weekend from home.
i love how poppy stained it and painted all the little details on it himself.
my favorite thing is how he painted the clydesdale style hair on the back hooves.
it's so accurate and detailed and it makes me smile to imagine poppy's big rough fingers creating something so detailed and beautiful.

i can't even tell you how many hours of my childhood i spent combing and braiding the yarn tail and mane.
i'm so excited that our little ones will grow up playing with such a beautiful handcrafted family heirloom and knowing that real toys aren't plastic and made in china.
and also knowing how talented their great grandfather was and how much he loved his family.

i feel a little bit like i'm decorating a room for an imaginary baby.
like one of those creepy middle aged women who dresses up baby dolls and takes them for walks in the park.
it's kind of hard to believe a real baby is going to hang out in this room soon.
weird.

time to take some more tylenol and moan a bit more. goawaysinusinfectionihateyou.

hope everyone's having a great weekend! :)

optimus prime.

i spent today transforming some pieces for my dressing room with primer.

see how i did that?  

get it?

cuz optimus prime is a transformer and i used primer to... nevermind.

anyways, i had these cool jewelry racks from urban outfitters 

just randomly hanging in the front bedroom...

and i want to move them into my new dressing room, but they're blue and yellow.

so i painted 'em.

well i spray painted them. with primer.  

who knows what color they'll end up! 

the suspense is KILLING YOU.  

then i set my sights on this poor soul:

the yellow monster.  

i found this dressing table in the barn years ago and hauled it into the apartment.  

i actually made good use of it in all of its urine colored glory.  

it's a pretty good piece, i think it was billy's moms.  

it's definitely old because it weighs a flippin' ton.

but alas, it's high time this poor fella had a makeover.

 

i know.  

tuck and i need makeovers too.  

give us some time, people.

i got new knobs for the drawers at home depot and they're really cool, i'm excited about them.

i am going to leave this piece just antique white like the room, 

but i'll probably rough up the edges a bit to give it a worn look.

that's all for today!

-megatron

the theme.

after spending most of my 38 week appointment today convincing the midwife that painting trim was just as relaxing as taking a nap, i proceeded to do just that.

unfortunately painting trim takes forever and now it's dark out and the lighting is terrible for an updated picture, so i'll take one in the morning.  

i'm really encouraged with how the dressing room is turning out, though!  

it is so bright and looks so much bigger with the white paint!  

i promised to unveil the theme for my little girlie lair, so without further ado, here is my inspiration collage:

i'm going for a vintage alice in wonderland meets shabby chic theme.

i'm even on the lookout for some old teacups to keep my jewelry in on my vanity!

i think it's going to be a lot of fun!  yay!

the dressing room "before"

this week i decided i'd like to finish the weird room off of our master bath and make it my dressing room. 

it's this little space that connects our bedroom, our bathroom, a closet, and the music room.  it's currently dark and creepy and purposeless, so i thought it would be great to freshen it up and put a vanity in it so i could have a little girly room to get ready in.

here it is in all of its "before" picture ickiness:

(this is the view from our bedroom.  the door on the back wall leads to the music room, and the door on the left is the closet.  the bathroom is on the right)

(this is the view from the back corner looking into the bathroom and bedroom.  

don't mind tuck.)

i haven't really done anything in this room since we moved in, except scrub the walls.  but when i was in here taking "before" pictures, i realized i missed a piece of wall.  missed walls are easy to spot around here, because of the 50 years of previous owner fingerprints:

gross.

when we first moved in, i set up billy's clothes in the closet off of this dressing room, and i put my things in a little closet that's in our bedroom.  the closet off of the dressing room has a lot more space, and i got to thinking, why didn't i take this closet in the first place?

so on saturday after work i took out all of billy's clothes from his closet, and the idea was to replace them with mine.

and then i remembered why i didn't take that closet in the first place.

it looks like this:

upon closer inspection, i also realized mice had been living in there, nice and cozy behind billy's clothes:

there was a lot of poop.

so of course, i did the super woman conqueror thing to do, and called billy.

(he's good at vacuuming icky stuff)

so last night we ended up getting the room and the closet all cleaned out and wiped up, and then today we put a layer of paint on everything.  this is a huge deal because 

1) it's the first time billy ever has let me paint any of the wooden walls in the house and 

2) i got billy to start a project on superbowl sunday.  

*curtsy* *curtsy*

this is just the first layer of paint in the creepiest closet of all time.  i'm going to paint the floor in there too.  it's already looking a little less scary now isn't it?  aww come on, just a little bit?

i decided to paint it antique white.  i didn't paint the trim yet because i ran out of time before the game, but i'm going to paint that too, don't worry.

i'm really excited about my theme for in here as well.  

but i'm not gonna tell ya what it is yet.  

you'll have to check back.  

i can't wait to get back to working on it tomorrow!  

i'll post lots of progress pictures as things move along. wish me luck!