Getting there on Ava's Room!

Over the weekend, I bound, washed, and hung up the mini quilt that I made for Ava's room a couple of weeks ago...I LOVE it! :) Her room is so bright and cheerful...almost finished now...when I am finally done, I will post all of the pictures.

Mini Quilt Decoration

Okay, so yesterday I attached the 3" wide white borders to the edges of Ava's big quilt and then I started procrastinating, looking at the Flickr picture group "Fresh Modern Quilts." I did a search for "mini quilts" and THIS and THIS came up, so I decided to procrastinate further on the big quilt and whip up a mini to decorate Ava's room. :)

The little quilt on the clothesline came from scraps that I cut off of the edges of the big one in order to square it up...I just sewed four of those little scraps together into long rows, pressed it, and cut it to size. I cut the dress, heart, birds, and sun rays freehand and used my Sizzix for the sun's circle. The sun, heart, dress, and tiny quilt were all attached to the aqua dotted material BEFORE quilting...when the mini quilt is washed, the edges will curl and fray up a bit, as in THIS example. This technique is called "Raw Edge Applique."

I used Michael Miller's Ta Dot Aqua for the backgound, Jenean Morrison's California Dreamin' for the mini quilt and heart, Kona White for the birds, Legacy Fresh Fusion "Spring Plaid" for the dress, and Keepsake Calico "Gold QBQ11" fabric for the sun.

The quilting includes a straight stitch about a 1/2" in along all of the outer edges, the clothesline, and the birds (I decided I needed some quilting up in that right-hand corner, so I added the birds last--I think it adds a cute touch), so the back is kind of a mess, but you aren't going to see that anyway! LOL! :) Now, all I have to do is bind it and then I am finished!

Anyway, thanks so much for looking and for any comments..I am pretty pleased with it and am so grateful for the very talented people who created my inspiration pieces. :)

Quilt Top Mostly Complete

I just need to add white and/or aqua borders to round it out to twin-sized. :) Yay! We primed Ava's room today--it's going to be a light aqua color and I can't wait to see everything finished. I will post pictures, of course. :)

Bathroom Update

Just realized I never posted the "after" of our bathroom remodel. We gutted the entire thing down to the studs and changed the orientation so we had a bit more room. I am THRILLED with the way it turned out. :)

Zee--From Nick Jr! :)

Gracie and Ava love Nick Jr. (formerly Noggin) and I thought Zee would be pretty easy to paper piece. :) I made this little decoration to hang from a shelf with pegs on it that is in Gracie's room. I hand-cut the beak and legs, but everything else is punched. The body and wings are SU! punches as well as the flower and embellished corners (scallop circle, scallop oval, small oval, 1/2" circle, 1/4" circle, ticket corner, and Trio Flower). The stem and leaf is a Marvy Punch (I cut off some extra leaves in order to mimic Zee's flower), the blue rhinestone is by Darice. I used Ballet Blue, Pink Pirouette (retired), Pixie Pink, Basic Black, Whisper White, Kiwi Kiss, and So Saffron cardstock. The rick-rack is a mini spool I bought from Michaels a long time ago. I thought it turned out pretty cute! :)

Finished Kitchen Pictures

These are AWFUL pictures, but here's the finished kitchen. The only thing I have left to do is make a matching valance like the one I have hanging over the sink for the little side door by the table. We are VERY happy with it and the pain in dealing with our house being torn up for two months was really worth it. We love the finished product. :)

In LOVE with my new décor piece :)

We got it at Bed, Bath & Beyond while we were there looking for my BIL and soon-to-be SIL's registry items for their shower. If I had commissioned it for my kitchen, it could not be more perfect. I LOVE IT! :) I don't remember if I ever posted pictures of our finished kitchen on here. I will search and link it if so.

Look What I Made!

For Gracie's room--a mobile! :) I started on it last night and didn't have an embroidery hoop, which is what I was originally intending to use for the round apparatus to hang the fishing line from for the embellishments to dangle. I was walking around in the basement and came across this tiara and figured that would be PERFECT and it WAS! :) I used a bunch of different things for this mobile: Quickutz Revolution Monarch butterfly die for the butterflies (cut out of pink SU! patterned paper that is retired and Certainly Celery cardstock that I inked with some Technique Tuesday pigment ink for a brighter color), Sizzix die from SU! for the flowers (Pretty in Pink and Pink Pirhouette with Barely Banana centers stamped in So Saffron), Sizzix die for the hearts that I stamped with the big heart from the SU! Always set (cut out of Kiwi Kiss and inked in the same color), Prima tiny flowers and Darice rhinestones, and the SU! Small star punch (used Barely Banana for the cardstock). I love the way it turned out and Gracie does too, so that's all that matters. :)

Major Progress on the Kitchen Front...

The counter top came today! Woohoo!!! :) There are only a few things left to do (install crown on top of cabinets and the trim on the bottom of the cabinets, install toe kick at the very bottom of the cabinets, touch up a few paint areas, and put stuff away!) We started the demo on 02/18/2009, which obviously means it took a couple of days more than two months. :) I am so excited I can hardly stand it. I can't stop looking at the counters and cabinets.

Getting there....

Ignore everything messy. :) I LOVE the cabinets. We need to start looking for some hardware online to order. The people are coming on Monday to measure for the counter top. Exciting stuff around here! :)

Preview

Here's a little preview. I will change the lens on the camera tomorrow to get a full shot. By the end of the evening, one whole side of the upper cabinets will be installed. Yay! :)

CABINETS are coming today!

Wooooo! Hoooooo! That's all I have to say on the matter.

p.s. Will post pictures when they get here (probably in their boxes) :)

Kitchen progress

Sean, his uncle, and his cousin worked on the tile last night. Here's Sean, above, chipping old subfloor out from under the sliding glass door so they could slide the tile under there.

Here's a picture of the tile and the accent wall color.

Looking towards the basement door. Major progress this weekend and last night! Grouting Thursday, sealing Friday or Saturday, and we can move the table/chairs and appliances back in on Sunday. It's like I am finally getting my house back! At the end of the month, the cabinets are coming in and the new appliances as well. So exciting! :)

Purty, huh?

This is one of the layers that DH removed....I think the one under the subfloor that our tile rested on (when we moved in, we stripped the linoleum ourselves and laid 12 x 12 linoleum tiles on that subfloor rather than ripping everything up and starting over.) I know what you are thinking...why don't we just keep this layer?? LOL! :)

The BEFORE Kitchen Pictures

View from front door, looking into kitchen and great room.

View from other side of great room (the fireplace is to my left), looking into the "eat in" part of the eat in kitchen. :)

View from end of kitchen to "dining room" (placed in quotes because it's not really a dining room)

View from "dining room" to other half of kitchen. The cabinets we currently have are so AWFUL. They are seriously the cheapest cabinets you could buy and we are ready to burn them. I think we seriously are going to burn the lazy Susan, actually.

Anyway, I will definitely post "after" pictures when we get finished. At the moment, we basically have the kitchen all torn up with no progress made. We haven't even ordered the cabinets yet, so it is probably stupid that we already tore most of the cabinets out, but oh well. LOL! :)

Elaborating on previous post...

Andrea commented and said that I had to give more choices. Above are the two choices that we had for linoleum, but I posted the two options on 2Peas and a lot of people said they weren't doing much for them. When I said "slate like," I mean more texture than just glazed porcelain tile...not referring to the color. We like greenish tones...do you think a greenish slate-like tile would look good with our cabinet/hardwood/counter choices? :) I will also post some "before" pictures.

HELP! New kitchen flooring choice :)

We have decided to redo our kitchen (YAY!) These are the cabinets we chose.


This is the counter top (it's called Alpine Passage...it's a HD laminate counter top by Wilson Art and it's a dark grayish-greenish surface that looks natural and a lot like granite.


Here's a picture of the room that is adjacent to the kitchen. Just past those black pictures on the wall (which are moving, by the way), lies the doorway to the kitchen. I wanted to show you this picture so you could see what color flooring butts up against the kitchen floor.

So, here's my question: What color tile flooring would you get? We are going to be repainting the whole kitchen, living area, and hallway, probably a mossy green color like Brookside Moss by Benjamin Moore (click HERE and click on the little binoculars in the left hand corner of the box..it says "search for a color" under them. Type in Brookside Moss in the box that pops up.)

We have decided that a "slate like" ceramic tile floor is what we want to put in the kitchen versus a type of linoleum or wood-like laminate flooring (mainly no on the laminate because of the natural hardwood everywhere else and I think it would be weird to go from one room with natural hardwood into a room with laminate.) So, again, what color???? :)

Good Golly Moses...

Be still my heart...how is it possible to have kids this beautiful???


Gracie on Father's Day:

Ava in an old-fashioned looking outfit that my mother-in-law bought on consignment for Gracie when she was a baby. It is devastatingly cute on Ava with those blue eyes of hers. :)

In other, home improvement-related news, this is what my husband decided to do at about 5:00 p.m. this past Saturday night. He is a bit motivated when it comes to projects such as these. As it stands now (a couple of hours after this picture was taken), they only have one more row of shingles and have to put the deck rails back on and they are done. My husband, his brother, and our neighbor/friend are all working on it in this picture...we have great friends and family who are willing to help with the manly projects! :)

We did have a metal/canvas canopy thing that we bought three or so years ago to put over the table, which we liked a lot, but for one flaw: We have gone through three of the canvas canopies in the time that we have owned the thing. The first time it ripped, we called the company up and they sent us TWO canvas tops for the cost of shipping only, both of which ripped last year in only mild wind. This year, the warranty is expired and we researched replacing the canopy with our own money, but the canvas alone is close to $100.00. We think that is a bit much for something that we KNOW is not going to last (as evidenced by the THREE prior tops that ripped). We researched a retractable awning to go over the deck, which we discovered is close to $1000.00. Whoa, baby. Then my hubby decided to price out building this roof, which is going to be less than $1000.00 and permanent and oh-so-nice looking. Our neighbors actually built a roof over their deck a couple of years ago (the blue house in the picture there, but not the same neighbor who is helping us build this roof) and the guy said that he priced it out to have it built and they quoted him $5000.00 minimum if there were no problems!! I am SO glad my husband is a handy guy, or we wouldn't be able to afford to do anything! :)

Anyway, just wanted to brag on DH (for those not in the know with internet abbreviations, that stands for Dear/Darling Husband) and show the progress of the lightning-fast addition to the house.