Stair Makeover Part 1

Our stairs and part of the wall next to the steps was covered in brown carpet....yuck!  I decided to pull it off with a little help on Monday.  I am not a fan of carpeted steps, although I am kind of nervous with the kids now hurting themselves on them. 

I hope for them to look like this when I get around to it:

These are over at Thrifty Decor Chick

These are my favorite, but with 3 kids, a dog, and a huge extended family (I love to entertain!).  I think they would be too much upkeep for me.  They are amazing though! Donna at Funky Junk Interiors

Mine looked like this before:

And now nekked :)

Not too bad, but it will be a while before I get to them!


-Make your life beautiful!
Kari

I HAVE BEEN FEATURED!!! Things that make me smile :)

If it seems as if I am yelling out of excitement you are right!!!  I am so excited :)  I was featured on Mary Berry Boutique! I am going to try to do this correctly, this is my first attempt at adding a link or adding a button!
http://maryberryboutique.blogspot.com/p/blog-page.html

Love it!!

Another project complete!
Our TV, DVD, and Wii wouldn't all fit on the entertainment center.  I could have put them in the entertainment center....but then the remote wouldn't work. So, I took an old school desk that was in the garage when we moved in (there are 3 hanging around here) turned it into my solution.

I cut it's legs off and the weird support piece with a hand saw...the saws-all was right below the hand saw.  Didn't notice it...oops!  Then I spray painted it black (only color I had) and drilled a hole for the cord to go through! Now it looks like this:

It's a little dusty, but it does the job and it was FREE!

Now a few things that make me smile:
This is one of the one billion many statues that was left for us by the previous owner.
I have named her Fran the sexy frog!

One more thing, I picked some laundry up off the floor and knocked over the space heater and this was peaking at me....oh, yes it's a smiley face in the carpet!

Make your life beautiful!
-Kari

Pair of Chairs Redo :)

I have to start out by saying I am in love with these chairs:

They are the cat's meow!!  I have longed for these for 4 years now and I can't commit to buying them because they are so highly priced!  I keep hoping someone stumbles upon them and hates them...sells them in their garage sale, and they come to live a long, well-loved life with me :)

Until then, you use what you have.  So, I took a pair of these chairs:

and turned them into this:

This will have to do until my dream chairs make their way to my home!


This weekend we were blessed with fantastic weather and a skid-steer!  Our huge garage is getting a much-needed concrete floor.  The workers asked if they could leave the skid-steer at our house over the weekend.  Mr. TSL said sure can you leave the keys.  (He knows how to drive one because he is a manly man, who knows how to work all things with a motor!!)  So our back yard area went from looking like this:

You can't tell, but the ground is completely uneven and had a drainage problem before and a strange row of dead trees and brush.  There were also 5 huge tractor tires filled with sand and random plants. I want to tell you all this, with love, TIRES ARE NOT A CLASSY PLANTER FOR ANY YARD!! I have big dreams for the sunporch, but for now this is the roof on it.  More to come on the sunporch ideas.
Now it looks like this:

Looks like mud and dirt, but I see what it will look like ;) 
 
Make your life beautiful
-Kari

An Ode to PB-Pottery Barn Knock-Off Belgium Train Signs

Oh Pottery Barn how I long for thee,
I want your items, but it can't be,
I can make them for a fraction of the price,
They're not exact, but still very nice!

Update

I added some rope to my signs 

from my original post! 

 

These signs were soooo cute!!  I saw the pics and love love loved them!!

This is what theirs looks like:

And here is mine:

Mine cost $4!!!  The silly twig wreath was made from an old 8x10 pic frame, hot glue, zip ties, and twigs from my yard :)

  The twig wreath took a dive while I was puttying the cracked drywall and putting the rope up! :(

Make your like beautiful!  :)
-Kari

Master Bedroom Headboard

With a huge room it's a hard task to come up with something that is my style, is affordable and also takes up enough real estate in the room so it looks correct, but I think I accomplished it with my screen door/window headboard.

The before pic of our master bedroom:

This is what it looks like now, a little Ralph Lauren paint in Neutral Brown and some creativity!

I love how it turned out!!  Total cost $40 :)

Make your life beautiful :)

-Kari

DIY Pottery Barn Bellora Chandelier Knock-Off .... when you can't afford something, make it!

When we bought our new house the lighting was straight from the 80's...not knocking the 80's they did have some rockin' hair and of course I was born in that decade, but lighting has come a long way baby!
  I will remind you of what I had originally in the dining room:

See the tiny globe light and the terrible 80's ceiling fan all on the vaulted ceiling!

After staring at the lights I decided I was stuck and was going to need to call an electrician to move the lights where I needed them to be.... :(  (this meant dollars I didn't want to spend!)  Until mom genius mom, said, "Why don't you just swag the chandelier from the spot it's at to where you want it to be?"  A-MAZ-ING idea!!  I had never thought of that....had I looked in my master bath, maybe I could have come up with this one. (The pendant lights in there are swagged.)  But all credit goes to my mom!   Then the race was on to figure out what I wanted there.  I say race, we moved in at the beginning of September and I wanted pretty chandeliers right away by Thanksgiving.

So I started looking in my favorite place:

 I come up with the beautiful Bellora Chandelier:

She is breath-taking and bubbly!!  I wanted her, problem was I needed two and the are $299 each!!  I refused to pay thought that was a little high for my budget of, we just had a baby and bought a new house!

So I looked around some more.  I found this one from lightinabox.com :

Also, bubbly, but way to gold...fixable though with a can of spray paint.  Still to pricey $236!  Come on people!

So I decided, I can do this myself!

I checked on craigslist and visited my local Habitat for Humanity Restore (love this place) and came up with these beauties:

small chandelier (don't mind my messy garage)

large chandelier

I paid $30 for the little one and $50 for the big one.  They got a few coats of flat black to start with and then a final spray of Rustoleum's hammered bronze :) Then she looked like this:

For some reason my complete lack of camera skills it looks more pewter, but it looks oil rubbed bronze in real-life :)

Then I had to come up with the tiny glass bubbles....called a local glass blower, he said it would be around $150, if he decided it was worth his time.  Called PB and asked to purchase replacement bubbles...they don't sell them.  I googled EVERYWHERE the only thing I could come up with were way to big or out of my price range. :(  On a trip to Hobby Lobby I perused the Christmas ornaments hoping that their was something similar and "Oh, what to my wondering eye would appear, but a tiny glass ball and eight tiny reindeer!"  I passed on the reindeer and grabbed 20, glass balls.  I could do $1.99 each, but it gets BETTER!  THEY WERE HALF PRICE!!!! So, I got them for $.99 each :)  I was so excited I called my mom at work to tell her....she's was excited for me, but had a tone of "my daughter-might-need-to-be-committed" in her voice.  She may be right, but that brought my total for BOTH chandeliers to: buh,buh,buh,buh,buh (that's a drumroll) $110 including paint and hardware for hanging!!!

They look like this now:

-Make your life beautiful!
Kari

Inspiration for the Front Bathroom!!

Oh the choices I have :)....unfortunately, I am in a constant state of crazy!!  But, I have decided on a design for our little front bathroom!

I have completed the following:
1. Primed and painted all the old trim and the back of the door.
2.  Decided midway through painting the trim to scrape the popcorn ceiling off.  (apparently, this is extremely dirty and dusty, but I'm glad I did it before I worked so hard to paint it!!  I did this without a mask.  Not cool, Kari, not cool!!  I had dust boogers and could smell drywall dust for 3 days!
3. Painted the ceiling
3 1/2 .  (Forgot I did this) puttied all the old holes and sanded them flat to the wall
4. Painted the walls white
5. Eagerly tediously measured and taped off the stripes
6.  Impatiently waited to pull of all the tape it took me 2 hours to do :)
7.  Ripped the tape off and admired my work!!
8. Installed (Okay, Colin did it and I handed him tools) installed a new curved shower curtain rod

Things left to do:  fingers crossed I think this will all get done during Spring Break
1. Tile the floor (already have the tile from a project that didn't get completed at our old house) Woohoo, no new costs!
2.  Install the new bathroom vanity I scored at Home Depot...was $450, got it for $150!  I had admired it for a while and heard they were having a paint sale (half price Ralph Lauren paint)  and they were getting in new vanities and this was marked down!
3. hang the new mirror-scored on Craigslist for $20
4.  Install the towel hooks Mr. TSL is making for the girls
5.  Install the new light and exhaust fan w/light  (Hayley told me when we moved in she didn't like showering in their because it was too dark!)
6. Accessorize.... I think I have almost everything.  I've got 2 small projects for a beach sign and a large wooden seahorse to hang above the toilet.


Here is my inspiration for the bathroom:
This is the reading room created by Layla and Kevin Palmer over at theletteredcottage.net  (Check them out, they are AMAZING!!)  Eventually I will learn how to make a button, so you can just click a word in my blog and it will lead you to their posts!   Until then, google them!

The next is something similar to that with the horizontal stripes.  It was designed by the Sherry and John over at younghouselove.com .  Again google them they are astounding at making something fabulous on a budget!

I am planning on making a seahorse like this one to hang above the toilet:

The bathroom vanity looks similar to this:  (I think this one is black, ours is espresso)

I will post pictures of my progress when I figure out the camera....the button is pissing me off stuck. :( A new camera would be amazing!!

Kari