DIY Part Three - "Mud Room" and Window Cornices

Again, I don't know where my head was. I didn't do before and after pictures of this project! So for the 'Before' picture, just picture a blank wall and a big pile of shoes thrown all over the floor. :)

Anyway, I call this project the "mud room" but it's not really a room, it's just the small space right by our garage door. I have been wanting to turn it into a space for organizing shoes and coats for a long time.

First we started by adding board and batten to the walls and hooks.

Then my studly husband built a great bench for me.

I upholstered the bench with some outdoor fabric (again, I love this stuff- waterproof and dirt wipes right off!)

And TADA!

Here's a close up of the fabric, and cutie face Graham

We also built this little shelf out of the scraps we had leftover from the board and batten. I added some pretty little flowers, a bowl for all of Zach's change, and a box for his wallet. I bought a 3 dollar wooden box from Joanns and just covered it in scrapbook paper. We also added the hooks for keys---if you weren't sure what we used those hooks hanging from the big K-E-Y-S for ;)

I'm loving the organization and being able to keep coats right by the garage door instead of in the coat closet by the front door, which we never use unless people come over.

* * * * *

My next project were window treatments for my kitchen and dining area windows. Since I had such big bold curtains in the family room I wanted to do something more simple. I found a tutorial online for these window cornices. It was a super simple project. The whole base is literally made of foam board duct taped (yes, I said DUCT TAPED) together! Then you just upholster the whole thing, add some wire to the back, and hang it above your window! I found this fabric from Spoonflower.com that I love.

It is pricy, but the upholstery weight fabric is 58" wide so I only had to buy one yard and then I split it in two and used it for both of my window cornices.

Before I show you the pictures of my windows, I have to again say that I have a cheap camera that does not take very good pictures. (Add to that that I'm not a great photographer anyway!) And photographing windows is hard. I tried not to have the light blaring in but when I closed the blinds it just made the pictures dark. And taking the pictures at night just made them look orange. But, you'll get the idea... :)

Above is the window next to our dining table. You can see how close it is to the family room curtains in this shot and why I needed something more simple.

Here's a shot of both windows

I'm really happy with how they turned out. I really love the fabric and love how they give a nice finished touch to the windows. (I'm realizing after looking at these pictures that I need to start getting pictures of the whole room so you can see how they add to the look of the room. Next time.)

And don't you worry, I have more pictures of projects just waiting to be shared, I am in the middle of a BIG BIG project that I am so excited about, and I have a long list of projects to come! ;)

DIY Part Two- Tufted Ottoman and Nightstands

I've been doing lots of fun projects around the house lately. I have been wanting to try a couple of different tufting projects and this was my first one- a tufted ottoman.

No one loves a good 'Before and After' picture like me. So you would think I would remember to take 'before and afters' of all my projects. Nope. I'm so upset I didn't remember! Well, here is a 'sort of' before picture. The coffee table looked just like this side table, except longer.

I remembered to take pictures after I was in the middle of the project, so here are a couple of 'middle shots'.

And here is the finished product-

I must say, I really love how it turned out. I was worried the tufts wouldn't look right because I didn't use very thick foam underneath. (Have you seen how crazy expensive that stuff is??) But I just doubled up on my layers of batting and I think it turned out well. I used an outdoor fabric that was on clearance for $8 a yard at Joanns. The beauty of outdoor fabric is that it is waterproof and spills can wipe right off. Perfect. I was able to do most of this project by myself but when it came to stapling the buttons down on the other side I needed help. I couldn't hold the string taut enough and use the staple gun so Zach came to the rescue. There was a bit of a learning curve but once we got the hang of it, it went really smoothly. It was much easier than I thought. I think my next project will be a tufted headboard :)

My other DIY is one that I did a couple months ago. I saw this project on one of the design blogs I read and saw it again on Pinterest. It was very easy and pretty inexpensive. I wanted some new nightstands; something a little dressier than just plain black side tables and something with storage. So I bought these inexpensive drawers from IKEA...

And turned them into this...

A little stain, white paint, and new knobs and there you go! I love them and I love the storage. (I made two matching chests but my room wasn't clean so I didn't get a shot of both of them. Ha!)

I also bought new lamps (which we desperately needed) from Homegoods and added a couple of pretty accessories.

My camera is terrible and this is a horrible shot, but I wanted to show you that I lined each drawer with a different patterned paper for fun.

Stay tuned for part three!

HAWAII

Aloha! We had such an awesome time in Hawaii! Our camera hasn't been working so I was afraid we had lost all of our pictures, but today I got it working! YAY!

So Zach earned this trip as a sales incentive for his awesome amount of sales last year (Go Zach!!). Zach and I went to Oahu on our honeymoon and we were sooooo excited to have the opportunity to go back as a family (and FREE makes it even better :)). Unfortunately, Graham started getting sick a couple days before we left. It peaked the day we were traveling. He was miserable on the plane. It was probably one of the worst trips of my life. We were so glad to get off that hot, crowded, tiny airplane and arrive in beautiful Hawaii where it was 70-80 degrees the whole week! And this was the view we had from our hotel room...

The first day we went to the Sea Life park. Graham was still pretty sick so he only lasted about 2 hours before he was crying and begging to go home. So we headed back to our hotel room to let him sleep.

(Sea turtles at the Sea Life park. This is the only picture we took that day because Graham was so miserable.)

Tuesday Graham was feeling a little better and was content most of the day. We went to the Dole pineapple plantation and up to the North shore to watch a professional surfing competition.

Graham loves anything that is cars, truck, trains, planes, etc. so the train ride at Dole was his favorite.

And of course the pineapple ice cream is a highlight!

Not to mention the CA-RAZY fish there.

Wednesday we went to the new Alani Disney Resort for the character breakfast. First of all, let me just say that that place is amazing! We wished we could have stayed there.

The character breakfast was so so fun! We have never been to one before and didn't realize how fun they are.

Minnie really liked Graham and danced with him and held his hand during the parades and songs, it was so cute! Graham LOVES Minnie now.

We spent the rest of that day lounging at the beach.

I think that was my favorite day. :)

Thursday we went snorkeling at Haunauma Bay.

Zach and I had to take turns snorkeling while the other stayed on the beach with the kids.

I could have stayed and snorkeled all day but the babies weren't having that. They lasted a couple of hours and then we left to go look at a natural blow hole and this cool Byodo-in temple.

Friday we were out and about early for our whale watching cruise. THAT. WAS. COOL. It was a two our cruise and we were seeing whales every few minutes! There were usually dolphins swimming along side them too so it was really fun to see.

(With a very slow camera, getting a picture of the whales was difficult, but check out this shot I got... that's a whale's tail on the bottom left.)

Zach took some Dramamine on the cruise and had a bad reaction to it. He was acting like he was drunk and literally couldn't keep his eyes open! It was pretty funny. So after the cruise Graham and I went swimming while Zach and Campbell napped the rest of the afternoon. They also did fireworks on the beach that night that were right outside ofour window. We had the perfect view!

Saturday we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center. Zach and I had already been there and we knew our kids wouldn't last long so we met our friends there for just a couple of hours and for dinner.

Sunday we went to the Swap meet and bought lots of cheap junk! That is a great place to buy souvenirs. Then we met up with the rest of Zach's work people and went to a science museum and out to dinner. Our flight home didn't leave until 11pm Hawaii time and went all night. Campbell also got sick halfway through the trip and I ended up taking her to the ER early one morning to make sure it wasn't something serious like RSV. Nope. Just a nasty cold. So traveling with sick kids was pretty stressful at times but we still had a great time.