The Queen's Castle

Obviously my room was been done for quite some time (minus a picture or two) but when the room is straightened up with all clothes put away..I never remember to take pictures.  I need to get another lamp for the other side of the bed but being that its only me and I tend to sleep on the right side of the bed...its not that necessary to run out and get right away.

Before:

During:

Painting Day



Standing in my closet, text this to Mom to show her how big my room was!

Painting day was the first full day that Dad was in town before moving.  On this same day, the carpet guy came to clean the carpets.  Sadly, my room was not finished being painted by the time he arrived.   

After:


View from door



Play & Work closets

 

One shoe can change your life

 

Iris Folding

Thinking of shelves on either side of this frame.  Color suggestion?

Paint Color: Desert Aloe

Smells Delicious!

Technically two rooms but hard to split the two.  So I have my lovely kitchen and eat in kitchen.  Also, please don't forget about my pantry!!!  I may just have to make a post just on my pantry alone.  We'll see if I get it fancy and organized enough to do so...at this point it's not (minus my little wall baskets).

Before pics:

Missing a fridge, not a whole lot of space above the cabinets to add a little flair like mom likes to do (which really is ok, because that means I'll prob have to clean up there).  It was a hard decision where to put what in the cabinets.  I have a set of Christmas dishes and Mom gave me some fancy dishes for fancy occasions (because I have those a lot).  The best part is that I can only reach the bottom two shelves in every cabinet.  I can barely reach the one above the sink (first shelf only) and forget about the ones above the fridge.

I had a fridge delivered the day Dad flew into town the first time.  I made sure to get felt pads for my bar stools, chairs, and table legs.  When Mom and Dad came down in September, Dad brought and installed the under the cabinet radio that Mom had. Not much else to say about the kitchen except that I've been looking forever to find a fancy hook to hang up my Family Birthday sign on the wall entering the kitchen (next to the stairs).

I'm not 100% sure what I'm looking for to put on the wall behind the table, but I know I haven't found it yet!  Hobby Lobby has a nice picture of a spoon with a red background, but both HL I've been to don't have a fork to go with it.  Not sure if they make a fork or not but it'll be stupid to have one and not the other.  When I finally find it, I'll be sure to post something.

After:

I store coffee filters in the red apple to the left of the coffee pot and splenda in the green apple.

This was taken just after moving in.  I don't have those set up anymore.

**All of the above was written in December 2012.  Fast forward three months.  FINALLY found the fancy hooks that I was looking for.  I had gone to Lowes, Home Depot, Michaels, Hobby Lobby, and then returned to Walmart like three times.  I found them at Walmart in the section that I originally figured that they would be in (hardware section)...I looked for at least 5 minutes.  Actually, I wasn't even in that section looking for the hooks, I was looking for something completely different and they jumped out at me.  So with that one purchase, I was able to hang up my family birthday sign in the kitchen and a picture in the guest bathroom!

And yes, you can't even see the hook!

In the cabinets, I use the bottom two shelves for my everyday things.  I think I have a pretty good flow in there.  I use the island for things that I don't use all that often (crock pot, blender, George Forman, etc).  I have a Pampered Chef stone cabinet, a baking cabinet, and tupperware cabinet.  A spice shelf, a baking shelf, and even a measuring shelf!

You thought I was kidding didn't you??

Don't mind the clean dishes drying

 I finally found something for the wall behind the kitchen table too!  I was wandering around Hobby Lobby as I normally do and saw a huge apple with a bite taken out of it.  I jokingly showed it to Dee and JP but then realized that it actually would look perfect!  Side note: On this particular trip, we were playing Marco Polo and hiding on one another....stupid apple leaf gave me away though! 

I entertained the girl checking me out by asking if I could get a discount because it was partially eaten :op

Cook books and radio.  Christmas dishes are stored in here

Two extra chairs in the corner...

Sign straight ahead as you walk in

Pretty sure this clock is wrong and maybe too small for the space.

I almost forgot to include a picture of my new fridge!  Sure is amazing having a fridge that does not give my food in the freezer major freezerburn!!



Guest Room Nightstand

I'd have to say that this project was the most expensive and the most annoying/time consuming/pain in the rear project that I've done to date on the house.

If you ever have thought of doing a mosaic table, I have one word for you.  DON'T!  Now, don't get me wrong.  It was fun.  The designing part.  The gluing part was entertaining as well.  The grout and cleaning part....not so much.

I've been wanting to do a mosaic table since 2010 maybe.  When William and I frequented home improvement stores together, I found a round wooden piece of something.  I really don't know what it's supposed to be used for but I saw it and wanted to create a side/mosaic table with it.  Fast forward at least two years and I've still be thinking of it.  Couldn't remember which store it was at so I went to both in search of it.  With the help of sales associates, I found it at Home Depot.  I think it was aisle 17 if you choose to venture into this project.  It measures 1 inch think and 17 3/4 inches across.

Picked out my colors of tiles at Michaels and got to work doing research to figure out if I wanted to have a design, have it a free for all, or something completely different.   I ended up with "silver sparkly" square tiles and three different shades of purple  tiles that are all differnt shapes.  The bottle in this picture is the adhesive needed.

I knew I wanted the fun silver tiles to be the border for whatever I ended up doing.  I started by making the border only to realize that some of the tiles in the bag are smaller.  I put them aside and then thought that they would be helpful in creating a center for a flower.  I used that roll of masking tape to get a decent circle and then free handed the flower petals.  Being that I had positive responses from friends, I never moved away from the flower design to a more abstract one.

Those bags I have shown above...clearly weren't enough to create this masterpiece.  Back to Michaels to get more.  Now there is a side story with this one.  The Michaels that I normally go to only had about three packages left.  At the time I was buying these there was a 50% coupon available.  I noticed though, that for the second time when I went there, a bag of tiles was in the wrong spot....covering the tiles that I needed.  So my fear was that someone else was doing a project like me and needed the purple tiles and were hiding them from everyone else so that they could come back every day and get them for 50% off.  I grew very worried about this because I found out that they were not only not on order to get more...but they were nowhere to be found in any Michael's warehouse!  This meant that I needed to buy them all....full price.  Yes, it hurt but my teacher discount helped a little.  Anyway, I went to three different Michaels (one 17 miles away) to get enough tiles for this stupid table.

While doing my shopping, I saw these tiles on clearance and started to ponder if I should get them for the middle of the flower. 

Purchased, heard back from my craft helper Kelly and decided that I should stick with what I had.  I think the word she used was sophisticated....yea that screams me :op

Finished flower and border

Now the issue of figuring out what color I wanted to do for the background.  I was thinking blue or green.  Blue for the sky or green for grass/petals.  Kelly suggested to go with blue.  Uh oh, which blue?

I went with neither of them!  I found small perfectly squared ones at the Michaels 17 miles away.  Purchased 4 bags and got to work.  Well, my other crafting buddies said that with the blue I was just adding in another color to the room which was basically only purple.

Took those back to the store and was going to look for a neutral color.  Think browns.  Think, BORING!  I had three choices but quickly got rid of the neutrals.  I was trying to decide between an opal and a pearly black (think oyster shell).  Everyone said to go with the pearly black on the left when they saw it in the picture.  My issue was that when it was in person....it was blending in with the flower and not letting the flower pop out at you.  Pictures on phones do not do anything justice, so I actually drove around with this is my car to show the family at dinner and then friends in the parking lot at work!

Once people saw it in person that agreed that the opal was the way to go.  One downfall for going with this type of tile instead of one of those two blues was these are thinner.  Everything else was all the same width which meant everything was perfectly even.  Now, the opal tiles were going to make it an uneven table.  Oh well.

Being that it was not a perfectly even table, I knew it wasn't going to be very easy to grout.  I purchased the craft grout at Michaels in white and started with the outside.  For some reason, I knew it shouldn't be as hard as it was...the grout seemed to be slightly dried out but I thought to myself well maybe this is how "craft grout" is. 

Looking crusty with the craft grout

I prob should have stopped right here, went to michaels and returned this crap and then went to Lowes to get the real stuff.  Nope, I kept on trucking, completed the border, the middle of the flower, and the petals.  Then I ran out.  At this point I decided to get grout at Lowes.  MUCH easier to spread this one.  Sad part is, now that I've wiped off the excess, you can see that the color is not an exact match.  Oh well, at this point I'm not going to stress it...just be grateful that its finished.

I let the grout dry for a full day and while hiding in the gbasement during a tornado warning I rubbed off the haze on the stones which took forever!  Sadly, I noticed that there are some cracks in the grout but again, not something I'm going to stress about.    Finished the project by attaching it to the bar stool.  I thought of using heavy duty Velcro in case I decided to fix the crack.  But then I realized that yea, no I won't be playing with this project again!  So I ended up just attaching it with E6000 glue.  I left the bar stool the original color because I didn't want to mess with sanding and painting.  Figured that it matched the bookcase in the room so not a big deal.

Now I just have to pick out a lamp (or move the lamp from my bedroom in there and get new lamps for my room) and have an overnight guest to test it out!