Kitchen Mural

The blank wall in our kitchen has been asking for a mural for a while now. I was a bit hesitant because the kitchen is our most used room and I wanted to make sure I would love whatever design I decided to paint. Once I finished painting the living room and the back entryway, I was ready to jump in and paint the kitchen. My original thought process was to do something sunset-like because of the birds on the wall. I mulled about a half circle, full circle with a gradient, striped circle, etc. 

I saw a picture of Abbey's office on Instagram (@abbeymadethis) and it was the perfect inspiration.  She has since painted over it, but it was a red/pinkish circle with some lines overlapping it. I decided I wanted the lines on the opposite side of the circle and to make them a bit shorter.

I just decided to wing it one night. I drew a big circle (with a little string) then eyeballed where I wanted the lines (I did check the lines with a level). Personally I was trying to keep this low budget so I used what paint I had on hand.  For the pink, I had some leftover from an old patio table I painted in 2012. I mixed a little bit of white in to tone it down. For the stripes, I mixed a tiny bit of pink, yellow that was left in our house (I believe it was used for the garage) and a couple of drops of black acrylic paint.

This was such a quick/easy DIY that made a huge impact. Our kitchen is not the most appealing room, but this mural really brightened it up over the last year. I spent a lot of time working from the kitchen table and the pop of color made staring at these cracked kitchen walls so much more enjoyable. We've had the mural for about a year 

Dining Room : Slow Upgrades

There are a lot of changes since I updated our dining room progress a year and a half ago.

Now let me tell you about one of my favorite things about the town we live in. There is an exclusive-to-our-community Facebook group called Freebox where people list whatever items they want to give away for free. When you see something you want, you claim it and pick it up from the person's porch. It's a great way to declutter without leaving your house and an even greater way to get things you want/need without having to pay for it. I saw this chandelier (similar to what I'd been looking at) go up on Freebox, but it was already claimed by a friend of mine. I quickly commented I'd be second in line if she changed her mind. A couple days later, she messaged me to let me know that her husband wasn't feeling it and that I could have it. After switching out the lights, I listed our old chandelier and it was snagged within minutes. It made me happy to see our new lighting (that we got for free!) and know that our old one was going to a home that would appreciate it.

Another new addition to our dining room is our sideboard/buffet. I always call them sideboards, but after a quick google, it's called a sideboard if it's in your living room and a buffet if it's in your dining room. I was using large wire shelving from our old house for all craft and overflow storage. It was not the prettiest solution and was getting to be difficult as Ida was more mobile. I was looking for any and all buffet solutions, and we lucked out with our old friend Craigslist. Ben is our Craigslist guru and will always look up options for me, reach out to seller, negotiate prices, and generally do the pick up. He sent me about 10 options that I was able to quickly narrow down. My favorite piece was already sold so I landed on this one. There was actually an identical model that was painted also for sale for slightly more. This one is slightly damaged, but we were able to work out a great price with the seller. Ben picked it up and reported back to me that she had an amazing old house that she did a lot of work on herself. She had tons of pieces in her house that she purchased on Craigslist and was only selling this one because it was her mother's and she had no room. He told me it was a meet up that I probably would have loved.

We got the sideboard in our house and it fit so perfectly in it's spot. The finish matches the dining set that I already own and it has lots of storage. I love when things work out perfectly like that... especially when I fail to measure dimensions.

I had one project on my list during Winter Break and it was to paint this dining room. Golden beige is not my favorite color, so I was itching to get this space painted. We picked out paint one day then Ben had to go to work. The girls were begging for a lazy day so I put on some movies and spent the rest of the day priming and painting solo. Ben was able to come home for just enough time to cheer me on and tell me to keep up the good work then headed back to work.

When I finished, it was pretty late and I started to stress that we picked too dark of a paint color... until the following day and all the natural light came in and realized it was actually the perfect color for this room. I hung up our cuckoo clock and set up the girls' coloring area. 

Now that the walls are painted. I have turned my attention to the fireplace. It needs some work. It appears that it chipped a lot previously and the previous owners just painted a coat of white paint over it.  I have scraped and patched all over the place. We're still bouncing around ideas for colors, but haven't landed on anything yet.

MY TO-DO LIST:
+ Pick a new light fixture
+ Paint walls
+ Paint and recover dining room chairs
+ Patch, sand, and paint the fireplace
+ Declutter