the master is mellowed.

The tragedy that was our master bedroom is now a thing of the past, thank ya, Jesus.

Y'all saw a few weeks ago that we tackled the raised stripes that so lovingly adorned all four walls and ended up being exceedingly daring by painting our room a vibrant shade of....WHITE!

Bold, I know, but if Martha Stewart thought it was good enough to add to her paint line, it was good enough for me...and color-blind Mr. Spouse. Luckily, with this room, painting was the only un-fun part of the process. The rest was just decorating! Hoo-ah!

We snagged some bedding on sale from Pottery Barn (don't tell Phoebe Buffay), and since we finally decided to buy some big boy and girl furniture, we also purchased a new upholstered headboard from Wisteria (it took all I had not to outfit the entire room in Wisteria). I also grabbed a fabulously-trellised rug during one of Rugs USA's rockin' sales. All that put together gives us....

Sweet goodness, we finally have a big kid room! Who knew? Let's take a closer look, shall we?

I mean, it actually looks like real, live adults live here, y'all. The hardest things for us to find were definitely the nightstands. The Mr. really dug the idea of mirrored nightstands, but they were so stinking expensive that it took us a while to find a pair that fit our space and our budget. We ended up snagging a pair of nightstands for $150 on Craigslist. I could have kissed Craig and his list.

My other favorite find was this set of onyx cross-sections I found in Wisteria's "flea market". I am completely obsessed with the black matte and even more obsessed with the fact that it was originally $350 for the set and I got them for $120.

I am still absolutely loving our bedding as well. I was a wee bit nervous about having white bedding with navy piping knowing that I couldn't bleach it if needed, but really it's been easy to maintain and I haven't had any problems with keeping it clean. As for the shams, an unbelievably talented friend monogrammed the navy shams for us, and wanting a little pop of color, I made the two orange shams!

It's amazing what buying big-kid furniture can do for a room, amen?

Before:

After:

Happy Sunday, y'all!

mellowing out the master.

As you can tell from my post about our den, I kind of took a drink from a fire hydrant when it came to geometric prints and loud colors when we first moved.

Not really knowing my style or what I wanted for this house, I decided to go with what was hip and cool and now, followed the trends, and let those trends vomit all over my poor little house in the cheapest way possible. Welcome to life with a wannabe-style-diva-newlywed.

But as we continue to settle into this house, I'm finding that whites and greys are classically gorgeous "colors", I love pops of color in exceedingly restrained amounts, and it's okay to spend a little money on your house if you're spending it on the right pieces. Just like my momma taught me with clothes - spend the extra Ben Franklin on the black, patent pumps, not the extra plate for your crimping iron.

You saw a couple of weeks ago that I made a few changes to our den to help calm it down a smidge.

But now it's time to talk master bedroom. Back story: When we got engaged and starting planning life under the same roof, I completely blanked when it came to decorating our master bedroom. Why? Who stinking knows. For some reason, it just flustered me. What linens do boys AND girls like equally? Plaid? Stripes? Small florals? Solids? Navy? Green? I mean COME ON. I wanted the Mr. to enjoy this room just as much as I did, right? So again, not knowing what to do, I decided to go the cheapeast route possible. I snatched a headboard from my mom's garage, grabbed some shams and curtains from Target and a duvet cover off the sale rack at Pottery Barn. Winning combination?

I'm gonna go with no. Gender neutral colors? Sure. Stripes, florals and solids all represented? You betcha. Winner winner chicken dinner? Euh.

Let's break this down, shall we? Our master bedroom contained: a duvet cover that didn't even cover the sheets, wedding and candid pics adorning the walls...

{You can see I already got the itch to re-do this room with my paint swatches on the wall.}

...a tragically traditional, too-small rug that we got only because it was $75 (still overpaid if you ask me)...

...iron pieces on the other wall, because hey, we've already sunk this low.

I think it's safe to say that this room needed a complete overhaul. And I'm happy to say that I think we gave it that. We decided to spend a bit of money on this room to buy some high-quality, classic pieces that we can use for years, invested in some linens that actually covered our bed, and really took our time finding exactly what we wanted. 

But before all of the fairies and butterflies could come in and magically transform the room, it had to get ugly. And I mean really ugly. Because some previous owner in all of their infinite wisdom decided that two feet of one-inch stripes around the room would be the best design option for the space. See them?

Cute, right? We'll talk about the paint choice in a bit, but for now, we HAD  to get those stripes off the wall! It wasn't that the color was seeping through - the actual raised stripes were visible ALL THE WAY AROUND THE ROOM. Lovely. 

So that meant sanding. A lot of sanding.

I used a 150 grit sand paper on my electric sander and very lightly moved the sander in a circular motion in an attempt to remove the raised stripe without stripping the texture of the wall. I just didn't have it in me to re-texture the entire room. Who does?

I'm happy to say that after a few hours of light sanding, the wall had evidence of variously colored stripes, but no raised surfaces. Hallelujah, praise the Lord! Now all that was left to do was paint, paint paint! We decided to go with Martha Stewart's Picket Fence from Home Depot. After all that color from the bedding in the room, we really wanted a completely clean slate, and this paint color helped get us there. It's white (how daring) with more grey/blue undertones which we liked considering our plans for new bedding, etc. After a couple of coats, we were looking new, fresh, and ready for an overhaul!

More on this update soon, but for now, a lovely, SMOOTH, blank canvas. Glory be.

oh brother, where art thou?

Over a month and no new blog post? Disgust-oid. How did I let this happen? This is how I let it happen. This.

This has been my homepage for the past month. This is the reason why all posting exploits have ceased. However, after much jumping through flaming hoops and placing of heads inside large lions' mouths, we are back online, folks! Turns out my wireless card decided it would rather not live a long and healthy life. But with a new wireless card in tow, we're full steam ahead!

On the upside, it turns out that having absolutely no internet access on my computer makes me an exceedingly productive person! Go figure! Project checklist completion at its finest. Here's a sneak peek at what I've been up to for the past month:

An update to the brass plates on our campaign hutch:

A more neutral color scheme in the den thanks to new shams and new artwork:

{hashtag deuce photobomb}

And a complete re-design of the master bedroom! We're talking new paint color, new headboard, new linens, the works! As we're still in the middle of this projecto, here's a small photog to tickle your intrigue.

As for the teaching world, I've actually begun developing my first set of curriculum units! From farms and shapes to matching and threading, I am so excited to share these preschool units with you!

So stay tuned, patriots, you'll be getting full deets on the projects mentioned above and plenty of preschool updates over the next few weeks!

Happy Sunday Funday to you and yours!

you raise me up.

Over the summer, I created these strappingly striped, painted curtains for our formal living and dining room.

Ever since, I have been head-over-heels in lurve with them! Maybe I smirk every time I walk by them...maybe...

Well I still lurve them, but lately I have been seeing this image pop up all over Pinterest and I started feeling a bit lurve-less.

{via}

You might not be able to tell, but my fabulously striped curtains are totally guilty of the "don't" category. Do you see how they are hung just above the window and cut off about 2/3 of our incredible natural light?

If you can't tell from the picture, just take my word that they do. Designers everywhere should be ashamed. I was.

Not wanting to completely trash my striped curtains to bring them up to designer code, I decided that I could simply add one more foot-long stripe to the bottom of the curtains and they would be floor-to-ceiling magnificence. But rather than just adding on a stripe of white, I thought I could make the curtains even more fabulous by adding on a pop of color!

That's when I found this minty butte at Joann's for a whopping $2.99 per yard.

Combine that with my 50% off coupon and I almost felt guilty walking out of the store with my 4 yards of fabric...almost.

I began by ironing all of the fabric to get all of the kinks out. I then laid out the fabric and cut four, 2 and 1/2 foot strips:

I did 2 1/2 feet because I wanted to add on a 1 foot stripe at the bottom of each curtain. I planned to sew a "pocket" out of the mint fabric to give the bottom stripe a finished look without having to sew a hem. Therefore, a 1 foot stripe made by folding one piece of fabric in half = 2 feet with a 1/2 inch of wiggle room. Clear as mud? Good. Let's continue.

I folded my 2 1/2 foot strip of fabric in half:

Then ironed the crease to make sure the fold stayed while I sewed:

I then sewed both, one-foot sides of the fabric and the folded edge to create a "pocket":

I did not sew the top, "open" portion of the pocket because I knew I would be sewing that to the curtain directly. Why sew something twice when you could just sew it once, right?

I then turned the "pocket" right-side-out...

...and ironed the edges to create a nice, sharp corner:

I loved that I had a perfectly straight, sharp-cornered stripe and didn't have to hem a thing!

Now that my bottom stripe was sewn, I pinned it to the bottom of the existing curtain so that the mint stripe would be 1 foot in length, and trimmed off any excess fabric that was overlapping with the curtain.

All that was left to do was sew a straight line attaching the mint stripe to the curtain! Thank you, Lord, for sewing machines that make life easy!

I then repeated the exact same process on the remaining three curtains! The entire project took about two hours - can't complain there!

The results, you ask? Well, if I was in lurve before, I suppose you could call me tragically love sick over these things!

I am so smitten by the little pop of mint at the bottom of the curtains! What a lovely surprise!

From a designer's standpoint, let's have a reminder of how curtains should be hung...

...followed by a little before shot of my designer's don't:

I think it's safe to say that the after-shot can be safely placed in the "do" column now!

And the Lord said, "Let there be light"! Maybe those designers know what their talking about after all.

Not wanting any room to be left looking like the short, squat, step-sister, I raised the curtains in our master bedroom:

Then, for the den, I purchased some Waverly curtains from Lowe's that were 84 inches long. 

Wanting them to be floor-to-ceiling, however, I purchased an extra curtain, cut it into fourths (one strip for each of my four curtains), and sewed on an extra foot from the extra curtain to each curtain to make them all floor to ceiling!

{Deuce was clearly taxed by all that sewing...}

If it isn't obvious already, I think it's safe to say that my New Year's Resolution will be to sew anything that moves...or is too short. Happy New Year, y'all!