If you didn't notice, I kind of took a blog vacation this past week. A
blacation if you will.
And it's not because we didn't have anything fun to share, because we did. It's just that my parents asked if they could watch the girls for the week, and after twisting our arms (not), we said yes. Mark and I debated for weeks on how best to spend our time, and ultimately decided to take a
staycation and spend our time and money painting and updating our home a bit.
Here is part of our family room, before. A total hodgepode of old furniture and kids' toys. The mirror though -- that was my inspiration piece.
We painted two of the walls "
wheat penny" and two of the walls the same color as our foyer, which is basically the color of wheat. I think that's what drew me to wheat penny. You can't go wrong with a name like that! Coincidentally, it's a complimentary color to my friends Kristine and Josh's kitchen color, pennywise, which I had originally considered for the room. I didn't know this until we had our wheatpenny paint color picked out!
Did you notice that Mark is DUSTING!? We oughta home improve more often.
Here is the finished room, minus a few wall hangings. We are having our pictures taken tomorrow, and will hopefully have some cool shots to put in the room.
The Taylor plaque above the office doors was a gift from my brother and my sister-in-law when they lived in Spain. It was another inspiration piece.
Our kitty Jordan seems happy with the new layout, don't you think? He spent
alll day here.
This crazy quilt was made by hand by some sweet old ladies that I didn't know. I used to love to crawl under it on cold winter days. Now it rests proudly on this
torn down playhouse ladder antique ladder that came from our neighbor's trash.
We only had one very squatty lamp in the room before. So we bought two new lamps, and the old one has made a new home in my office. The new lamps are from IKEA, and have super cool embroidered designs on them.
I painted this bowl a while back. And the little Mexican pitcher is from the 2nd half of our honeymoon which was spent in Cancun. And the little blue and white tea light holders were personally imported from Holland by my mom!
I have to share this next picture. Did you know that you don't have to suffer from Rusty Grate-itis (
you know, where you can't open or close your vent grates because they're so gross and rusty)? OH MY GOSH! My neighbors came over and they all had to experience the ease of opening and closing this vent grate too. And it's pretty to boot!
We also updated our powder room. It was just AWFUL before. I didn't think to take a before picture, but it had cheap original everything, including this light fixture. If you need a bag full of giant globe light bulbs, let me know. I'll hook you up.
The bathroom color is Sea Salt. It's kind of a greyish greenish bluish color. And when it first went up I thought I was being enveloped by a giant hospital gown. But the fixtures went in (and not the broadway lights, thank you very much) and it warmed up into a beautiful color that we are very happy with. 
I still have one more painting to hang - it's the sibling to the one you see here, both of which were painted by my Aunt Denise in Quebec and given to me as a gift when I was younger. Her paintings are actually scattered throughout our house. She has such talent!
We are so happy with our new rooms! We're not quite sure how shows like Trading Spaces get it all done in 2 days - ours took 4! But we also did our share of sleeping in till 8:00 -- I know! Can you believe it? -- and eating late dinners out at all the places we wouldn't dream of bringing the girls, and even going to see a movie (The Hangover - It was good! Although we never go to the movie theater anymore unless it's to see an animated flick, so anything rated higher than G probably would have been good to us).
We were teased for staying home instead of leaving for a full-fledged vacation, but we're so glad we stayed home. This souvenir will last longer than a lousy t-shirt anyway. :)
