My Dad had told me for years that I just move into a place, be it a house, a situation, whatever, and make it fit to me. At the time, when he first mentioned it, it was not meant as a compliment, but I couldn't figure out why. Still can't. But as time moved on, I think he has found it to be a more admirable trait than he percieved it intially, especially since I am a military wife and home is where the Marine Corps sends you (at least that's what I have been told.)
The reason I bring this up is because I have now moved into a home and I have been running around trying to make it fit so I can sleep at night. Seriously, while being Type A allows me to get a lot done in a short period of time, and hopefully get it done well, my "mess" of a new house is really wreaking havoc on my creative abilities, which I will need to call upon soon to create projects for various events coming up, not to mention my own kids' albums. if my house is not in order, than I can't concentrate on being creative. Anyone else have this problem?
In my rush to get my house they way I want it so I can dig into "real" life scrap stuff, I have had to call upon my scrap stash a few times - thank God I have one! For starters, my kitchen island and counter tops had a peachy-pink, salmon-y stripe that went around every edge. Anyone who knows me knows this just would not do, as I can only handle pink in small doses, and certainly not in my kitchen where I would have to see it every day! So, enter Adirondack paint dabbers, Distress Ink and Mod Podge! After a few hours of work and some painter's tape, I have a teal-bluish stripe that matches my new home decor of sage green and slatey-teal blue. Viola! On to the next room!
Somewhere I read that the average American spends 16 years of their life in the bathroom. Interesting. So, knowing this, I wanted a bathroom that was relaxing, calming. Actually, I wanted my whole house to be in soothing Earthtones of beige (which the house's walls were already painted), sage green and slatey-teal, since I am 1) Type A and don't know how to sit down and do nothing, and 2) planning to be on the road a lot and want an inviting haven that I can come home to and attempt to sit down and do nothing in. Since it sounds like I will spending quite a bit of time in my bathroom, I wanted to really like it. We fund a great distressed sage-green hamper and I wanted a mirror to match. I figured finding one to buy outright would be next to impossible, so I found a pine mirror on clearance at the Navy Exchange here for $15 and used some of the Pastel Sage paint I used to paint my scrap room and Florida room, since I had a gallon or so left over.
Then I took my Adirondack paint dabber in Espresso and distressed it. DH Rodney hung it up and, while it is not a high-quality mirror, it was less than $20 and I love it! Next!
I love having a formal dining room. Our families plan to visit often and I want a place where we can have family dinners and accommodate everyone.
The mirror was another Navy Exchange clearance item, solid wood, for $20. Gotta love it! The curtain was a "piece of fabric" I found at an antique store for $7 that turned out to be a curtian in just my shade of slatey-teal. I grabbed a piece of trim from my ribbon scrap stash and tied the curtain to make it a "window dressing."
Oh, and JoAnn's has a bunch of their deco curtain rods on sale right now - that one with the leaves was $3.95 - how can you beat that??? Onward!
My boys now have a play room and I am using a My Minds' Eye metal sign I got at the Scrapbook USA Expo in April as inspiration.
The playroom will have a realistic dinosaur theme and the wall on the right will soon have a huge dinosaur mural painted by my sister-in-law, who is a very talented artist, but doesn't use her abilities as much as I think she should! i want a tree painted in the corner, streching across the window wall and I'll tack up vines across the ceiling.
For the curtain, I wanted it to look like stringy moss coming from the eventual tree, so I used two different green fiber skiens, cut them up and knotted them on to the curtain rod. The effect is exactly what I was looking for!
While I haven't ben using a whole lot of scrappy stuff in the other rooms, I have been working on the guest bedroom and living room quite a bit.
The guest bedroom used to belong to a pre-teen Hannah Montana fan and is a lovely shade of purple. Purple I can handle better than pink, but I would never paint an entire room that color.
But the paint job was fresh, in good shape and I really didn't want to repaint it, so I embraced the purpality and added greens - and the browns of my boxer dog collection.
The quilt is one my mom made for me, only flipped upside down so the green side shows. The violet coverlet is actually a curtain I got for about $8 at an antique store. Silk flowers on sale at Michaels (all of the craft stores have their "spring collections" on sale for 50 percent off or more), throw pillows from Wal-mart and a green curtain panel I've had for years finished it off. As for the Boxers, that is a collection I have had since I got Slade in 1997, and it just keeps getting bigger with gifts, eBay and the like. I have both contemporary and antique pieces.
This one here is dated 1958, so it is 50 years old this year. A lot of the antique Boxer pieces were made in Japan in the 1950's. The dogs had just been imported from Germany and the Japanese really liked them. Boxers came over to America just after World War II, also, after the American soldiers had seen the dogs and fell in love with them.
The living room has lit plant ledges on either side of it, just begging for treasures to be displayed. So far I have littered them with some stuff I have had for years, ceramic peices I have made and found, antique store finds and the like. Some of them have their own story. It will be a continious work in progress, focuassing around my "signature" colors and the themes of home, travel and Florida as a vacation destination.
My beloved canvas mural has also found a home, and I love the fact that I can see it, albeit backwards, from the kitchen via the mirror above the fireplace. While it doesn't completely match my current color scheme, there are enough Earthtones in it that I am willing to overlook that...
I only have boxes with framed photos left to unpack, so my Type A brain is starting to calm down a bit. Then I can focus on finishing up my scrap studio and get down to some creations!
