$5 Wall Art!

I've been trying to decide what I want to put on the wall above my student desk.  Last week I was watching HGTV and could not stop looking at a painting in the room.  It was just like the top painting, except more orange.  I wanted it.. yesterday.

So I looked at my options from Lowes and found a board that was 24"x48".  It was only $5, so I had them cut it in half and took it home!

First I sanded the edges with my Dremel to smooth them down.

I used my free Valspar paint samples to paint the board.

It was gorgeous outside so I worked on the back porch!

First I painted all the edges, then worked my way in.

I put on two coats of blue, and three coats of yellow.  While that was drying I cut out my stencils.

I found images I liked on Google, then printed them on cardstock.  I used my exacto knife to cut them out.

***Do not cut on your carpet!! It WILL cut through it!  (Not that I've done this...)***

Here they are ready to be used.  I chose a bird and a frog!

For the white I used the leftover paint from my desk bookcase and my  student desk.  I used my foam brush and kind of smushed the white paint on.  Some of it leaked under, but I wasn't going for perfection.

After I impatiently calmly waited for the paint to dry, I ran over the entire piece with my Dremel again.  I made sure to really thin out the white because I didn't want it too brilliant.  I wanted more of an old, worn kind of white.  I probably could have even thinned it out more.

I was going to nail hanging brackets on the back, but the nail was too long.  Because the board is so light weight, I just hot glued the brackets.  Hopefully they won't fall and slam into my face one day.

And here they are in my office!

The entire process took about four hours, but that includes just sitting on the couch waiting for the paint to dry.

So total cost, $2.50 per picture!  I love it!

Cheers!

Linking Here!

Office Renovation Part 2...

Yes, part 2, not part finished!  I got my bookcase finished, which made the room look significantly better!  Now I have some finishing projects to do to make the room complete! Those will have to wait until Spring Break though!  I've put off studying all weekend to make a more comfortable studying space, so now I must study! You can see my bookcase midway, and the beginning of my office here. So, without further adieu, here it is!

Just to remind you how the desk looked before:

And here it is with the bookcase!  I need to paint that mirror frame and hang it! That will make the area look less cluttered.

Here's a side by side:

 

This is the view walking into the office.  I plan on building a tall and skinny bookcase to put next to that desk against the bare wall.  I also have a picture project I'm working on that will fill the empty space on the wall in front of the desk.

And here is the area across from my desk/bookshelf.. just my little blue chair and the closet doors:

When I am sitting at my desk, this is to my right.  Again, I'll be putting some picture projects on that blank wall.

And here is a very poor view of my corner desk.. I couldn't move back any further to get a full picture.  That chair will be painted over Spring Break, probably orange.

And a little close-up of my bookshelf and it's contents.. fortunately I only have one more didactic semester or I wouldn't have room for any more books!

Ok.. off to put this room to good use!  Lots of studying to do!  Hope everyone had a great weekend!

Cheers!

Linking Here!

Excitement Overflow!

I am so excited to have received the Stylish blogger award again!!  It really makes my day to be selected for these types of things!!  A big thank-you to Rosanna @ Bargain Corner Designs and Melanie @ Creative Art & Design!  Thank you ladies so much for thinking of me!  I hope you all have a chance to go check out all of their amazing work!

So here's the technical part:

1. Thank and link back to the person who awarded you this award.

2. Share 7 things about yourself.

3. Award 15 recently discovered great bloggers.

4. Contact these bloggers and tell them about the award!

A few Tidbits!

1.  I am a very aggressive driver! Can we say road rage?! ;)

2. I love Harry Potter and wish I could go to Hogwarts! Like seriously.

3. I adore t-shirts and don't need an excuse to buy new ones! They're busting out of my t-shirt drawer!

4. I have to have a cup of coffee EVERY morning! My day isn't complete without it!

5. My older sister moved to NYC a year ago to live out her dream of fashion!! I'm so proud of her!

6.  I'm a hardcore procrastinator.  That's when I do my best work!

7.  I want to get a bengal cat!

Now on to the good stuff!  Here are some blogs that I love!!

Christina's Adventures

Curbside Creations

Fab Rehab Creations

Lauren Lane Decor

Me N My Thrifty Ideas

Misadventures of A Furniture Fairy

Tattered to Flattered

The Mango Archives

Bees Knees Bungalow

Be sure to check out all these fabulous blogs!!

Have a great weekend!

Cheers!

Office Renovation Part 1...

Ok, I'm trying to condense what should be about two or three separate posts into one, so I hope I don't lose you!  Hang onto your hats, this is gonna get intense! =)

I have a bright office.  The colors pop, it makes me smile.  I purposefully put bright, happy colors in there so I would stay happy while I studied.  It sounded good in theory.

Do I study in there? No way!  This poor little room gets so neglected!  I decided it is because that desk in the above photo buts up against the wall.  I feel crammed in that spot.  I feel like a kid that is in trouble and has to put his nose against the wall.  So I never study in there.

My solution was to do a simple rearrangement.  First I tried turning the little desk sideways to see if that helped.

I liked it, but I wanted the mirror image.  I didn't like the idea of walking into the room and straight into my desk.  It didn't flow properly. 

So I had my hubby and brother-in-law help me rearrange one night.  Much to my dislike, I could not put my corner desk on the opposite wall because it would have been obstructing the air vent on the floor.  Believe me, I considered just blocking it.

After a stern NO from the hubby, I decided to just rotate the corner desk.  It went from this...

(My desk is usually NOT this messy.. I decided to rearrange the layout on a

whim, so I just started throwing stuff everywhere before

I remembered to take a picture!

To this...

I was liking it better already.  I just moved the student desk down a little.  Still with me?

Now I know you're thinking, "I thought you didn't like being smushed up against the wall?"

I don't, so I decided to just move the computer and printer from the big desk, to the student desk.  I claimed the big desk as my study desk!  Now I will have a lot more room to move around my books, and my legs!

I liked the new flow of the room already.  Later that night I made the hubby help me rotate the rug.  Moving the rug allowed the chairs to roll more easily on the carpet.

However, now I have a few dilemmas with the room.

This looks ugly.  The back of this desk was never really intended to be seen, and now you can see all the unsightly wires underneath.

In order to understand my solution to this dilemma, you need to see a problem I had with the prior layout.

This was my "library" in the old layout.  I have been planning on building a bookshelf for that wall, but have been hesitant because I thought that side of the room would look too heavy with all the big pieces of furniture.

So I decided to build a short, but long bookshelf to sit in front of my newly exposed corner desk.  Rather than build one long bookshelf, I built two small ones to push together.  This will make them easier to move around and more stable.

Here is my progress thus far.

Can't you just picture how lovely these are going to look in front of the corner desk?! AND they will hold all of my books!  I'm an organization fool, so that "library" on the floor just wan't working for me!
Let me just say one thing about building these.  I hated it.  I went to Lowes thinking "Ok, I'm building a box.  How hard can this be?" 

I had my measurements planned perfectly and had the guys at Lowes cut my wood for me.  Little did I know how completely inaccurate the advertised measurements were.

I thought I was buying wood that was 1 inch thick, and 12 inches deep.  It is more like 3/4 inch thick and only 11 inches deep.  That is a  pretty significant difference, so my bookshelves are not perfect like they should have been.  Secondly, my wood was kind of bowed, so that made it difficult to get an even frame. 

See what I mean? Totally not centered!

(ok.. so maybe there was SOME builder error involved)

I may or may not have kicked the bookshelf at one point! =)  Don't worry, I had put down the garage door by then so I don't think the neighbors saw me!

So now I need to make some readjustments for the backing on the bookshelves, fill some holes, and paint.

Random, I know.  But doesn't this look like a silly bird to you?

Remember this guy?

I'm going to paint that white and put some sort of fabric behind it to use as a memo/inspiration board.  That will have to wait for a week or two, so I'll make a post for that later!

And lastly (take a deep breath, we're almost done) I am very excited to show off what the hubby got me for Valentine's Day! We are not romantic AT ALL so we don't really care much about the holiday.  Rather than chocolates or flowers, I got this:

That makes me a happy girl! I used it today to sand my bookcase and I love it!!

Thanks for staying with me!  I hope to be done with my paiting and rearranging this weekend, so I should have more pictures of the full office in a few days!

Cheers!

She's Fiinished!

I finished my picture wall this weekend!  I spent Friday painting all the frames.  Saturday I had to glaze the colored frames and start picking out photos.  Today I had them printed at Wal-Mart and put them all in after I cleaned the glass!

It is really difficult to takes pictures of pictures!  So I'm just going to upload the original photo, then tell ya a little bit about it! Stay with me, there's alot!

This picture was taken at the Ripley Aquarium in Gatlinburg while Chris was home on leave from Iraq in May 2008.  I just think it looks cool and it adds a pop of color to the wall.

I love this picture!  It was taken at a friend's wedding a few summers ago and just captures the personalities of our friends so well!

I took this photo in 2006 while on a mission trip in Honduras.  I just thought it looked neat.

My bestest Loren took this picture during Fall in Upstate New York!  By coincidence she and I both got stationed at Fort Drum, NY together!!  She took this at one of the apple orchards up there, and this photo just reminds of the few years we lived up there! Besides that, it's a pretty awesome photo!

This frame was larger than an 8x10, and if I wanted to print the photo to the size of the frame it would have cost about $12.  So I just printed the 8x10 and put some burlap behind it.



This is from our belated honeymoon in Costa Rica.  We spent one of our days zip-lining... it was actually pretty fun and the view was nice!  The hubby loves this pic cause it makes his muscles look nice! =)

You can't get any cuter than this!  This is a photo of my neice and nephew... not the most recent photo of them but still insanely adorable!

In 2009 I got the bright idea to go on a mountain "hike" on Alogonquin Peak in the Adirondacks of NY.  This was more like mountain climbing and it kicked my butt.  It ended up being about 11 miles of climbing up and down this horrible mountin.  The view was gorgeous, but I will never do it again.  This photo is when we finally made it out of the mountain and were walking back to the car (yeah, at nighttime, after nine hours of "hiking").  We barely made it out before it got dark.

The hubby came back from a 15 month deployment on Halloween 2008.. this was the first time we had seen each other in about seven months!

Here are all the frames I painted..

I'm still uncertain how I feel about the wall.  Black usually is not my color of choice, so I'm having to get used to it.  And it looks kinda small now that it's up on the wall.  I might add some more pictures and frames later on just to even it out a little.  But that's it for now!

Cheers!

Linking Here!