see that there

Bathroom Update

2013-04-11T10:55:00.001-07:00

We finally got around to paining our guest bathroom white. It looks so much better and it's much brighter in there...I really don't know why I thought t yellow was a good idea.

Here is the bathroom before.

And here it is now. The white looks so much freshers and brighter. We still need to change the lights since they are in a yellow glass and give off a yellow glow. Oh and the tiles are yellowish and so the whole bathroom was looking way too yellow. The next big update will be changing out the vanity and lights. And then maybe the grey shower curtain, since I'm not sure I like the way it looks with the tan tiles.

iPhone template 14

2013-03-22T09:00:00.000-07:00

Here is the new free printable iPhone 5 and 4 template! This template was made to fit into the clear Incase Snap Case. Enjoy!

More Free Fonts!

2013-03-19T23:45:00.002-07:00

I found some really beautiful free fonts recently and wanted to share.

Allura: A casual script with an elegant feel.

Langdon: This well proportioned sans serif display typeface comes with drop shadow options.

Yeseva One: This serif display typeface one has great personality and details.

kitchen :: done (for now)

2013-03-15T09:00:00.000-07:00

Hi everyone! Just wanted to share the latest update to our kitchen. This will probably be the last update we'll make for while. The next big project we plan on is replacing the cabinets, but we have to save up for a while to get that done.

We finally swapped out those yellow lights that made everything yellow. We decided on these lights from Shades of Light. They're from the Young House Love collection and we love them. They are super bright, simple, and modern, which is exactly what we were looking for.

I realized that I've never shared a wide shot of the kitchen, so I'm sharing one now! What do you guys think?

Free shipping at Society6

2013-03-13T16:00:00.002-07:00

Hi guys,

Society6 is offering free worldwide shipping on our products now through March 17th. Just be sure to enter the site from this link.

office :: update

2013-03-08T09:09:00.000-08:00

When we first moved into our house the closet in the office didn't have any doors. I decided to leave it that way, because I liked the angles of the closet. I thought it gave the room some interest. But, I soon realized that I really needed a closet of some sort. The office was becoming way too cluttered because I had no where to hide my mess. I really didn't want to add traditional closet doors, because that would mean making the office a square again, so I decided to add Ikea panel curtains instead. I don't particularly like the flowy look of curtains but I didn't want doors, so the panel curtains were a good compromise.

I figure I'll have them halfway open most of the time. I like the way they look best when they cover the shelves and leave the corner with the bright pink clock exposed. (see above photo)

amazing chapstick

2013-03-04T09:56:00.002-08:00

I don't know about you, but this winter has completely leeched my body of all moisture and my skin and lips are the first to show it. I am always on the lookout for a new chapstick and have tried them all from the very expensive to the cheapest drugstore finds. I like my chapstick to feel like its moisturing instantly, not just some oily coat of flavor sitting on my lips until it gets rubbed off or evaporates. Well, yesterday I discovered something totally different and amazing!

I was CVS getting a few things because I did not want to deal with the stampede of Sunday afternoon shoppers at Target and decided to check out the lip care aisle. Normally I love my Strawberry Carmex and since CVS is the only place that I can ever find it at, I grabbed a couple. The I saw this new thing by Carmex. It's called a Lip Conditioner and comes in a little tube. For just $2.00 what do I have to lose?

I opened it up as soon as I got in the car and noticed the amazing creamsicle smell. that got it a point before I even tried it on. When i put some on, I was surprised and so excited that I kept telling my husband to try it, too. You know that feeling of putting on a great lotion on your hands? It's not greasy, it soaks right in and your hands feel smooth and refreshed? Well, that is EXACTLY what my lips felt like. Amazing!

kitchen :: progress!

2013-02-27T11:36:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago, I posted about our kitchen and all the stuff I wanted update. Well, we are finally at the point where we are happy with the kitchen. One day we want to reface the kitchen cabinets, but that's probably going to be a future project. We want white cabinets without so much detail.

We are also replacing the light fixtures in a few days. The yellow ones we have up right now are glass pendants that I spray painted a year ago. We put them up last week and we really liked them until we realized that they make the entire room look really yellow. So we are going to replace them with these, from Shades of Light. They should be coming in the mail any day now.

We also replaced all the cabinet fixtures to brushed nickel hardware from Target.

All in all I think the kitchen looks much better now. Unfortunately, we had to keep the threshold on the floor because the kitchen floor is tile and the rest is wood veneer so the heights are different. The clear glass backsplash is much bluer than we thought it would be be, but we are still happy with it.

toddler table

2013-02-25T10:57:00.001-08:00

A while ago we started shopping for a little table for Mini-man to be able to play and eat at.

Here are four that I looked at:

1. Safari Collection 2. Little Ones 3. LATT table - the winner! 4. SANSAD table

We ended up going with the cheapest at only $20 dollars and so far are really happy with it!

crown molding

2013-02-22T09:00:00.000-08:00

Along with our kitchen update, we got crown molding! We hadn't planned on getting it done, but my Dad kept insisting that it would make a big difference, so we decided to give it a try, and I'm glad we did! It makes a big difference. We only got it in the hallway and bedrooms because the living room is vaulted. I think it definitely gives the rooms and hallway a more finished feeling.

Poster generator

2013-02-20T12:59:00.003-08:00

Have you seen this awesome site? You just type in a quote and it generates a poster for you. Can you imagine the possibilities with all of those quotes you see on pinterest?

Here is one of my favorite quotes.

We are in Mollie Make Magazine!

2013-02-18T11:14:00.000-08:00

We wanted to share some exciting news! Our wooden necklaces were chosen for Mollie Makes Magazine! The magazine is available in both digital and print formats.

fresh find :: Citrus Zinger

2013-02-15T08:58:00.000-08:00

It's a new year, it's a new you, and it's time to get healthy. What better way to start on your journey to health than with drinking more water. That is definitely one of our goals here!

We are so excited to have found these new types of water bottles from Zing Anything. They makes drinking more fun by infusing your water with natural flavors (like real ones...from actual fruit!). We decided to test the Citrus Zinger.

All you do is take a citrus fruit and press it into the reamer. For an added surprise we added some strawberries.

Then you just add water and ice and swirl around to distribute the flavors.

The flavor is very light but can be increased depending on what fruits you use and how much you twist the fruit into the reamer. It's so much fun and definitely a conversation piece when you're out and about. We can't wait to try lots of unique combinations.

kitchen :: the floors

2013-02-13T09:31:00.000-08:00

A few weeks ago I talked about all the things I need to change in my kitchen, and Ten Coffee Day commented about extending the wood flooring into the kitchen. Well, I went looking for the flooring we used in the rest of the house, but I couldn't find it! I bought it at Costco 3 years ago and I guess they no longer have it, and I didn't have enough left over to finish off the kitchen. The upside to this is that since flooring is a laminate, it doesn't handle water that well, so I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to extend the laminate into the kitchen anyway. But, I loved the idea of having a cohesive look throughout the living room, dining room, and kitchen, so I decided to go with tile flooring that looks like wood! I'd heard of wood look tile before, but I wasn't convinced it looked realistic. Well....it looks REALLY good. I think it looks more realistic than the laminate flooring we have now. We decided on Montagna Saddle, because it most closely matched our current floors.

The kitchen is almost done, but I'm not ready to show the entire thing yet because we are still missing a a fridge and pendant lights, but we're almost there!

Hand lettering :: the beginning

2013-02-11T11:14:00.000-08:00

I have been really wanting to give hand lettering a try. I've been seeing some beautiful work lately and love that the act of hand lettering reminds me of being back in school and doodling in my notebooks.

With working full time and chasing after Mini-Man when I'm not working, I haven't had a lot of time to try it out. But, today we are home sick and while Mini-Man watches a movie, I decided to give it a try.

I only had a few minutes for each sketch since watching a movie still involves pausing every few minutes to jump on mommy, but here is what I was able to come up with. "Smile" was my first attempt. I think it came out better but looks unfinished because I was still unsure about which areas to thicken. "Hello" was my second attempt. It was done under the watchful eye of a toddler so I was nervous and rushing.

Fontastic Friday

2013-02-08T13:31:00.000-08:00

Here is a fun Friday font freebie. Yes, I am obsessed with illiteration.

Did you know that most font families usually offer something for free even when the main fonts have a price? Here is one great example, but there are literally hundreds if not thousands of freebies on myfonts.com. You just have to look! Download this font here.

kitchen:: counters

2013-02-06T09:26:00.000-08:00

We are finally getting some kitchen renovations done. We decided to update our ugly tile countertops with Glacier White Corian. We went with corian mostly because of the the price and durability, but also because I wanted a solid color. I don't like the variations in color in granite and although I love quartz, it was way to expensive for us.

Here are some photos of the progress and a sneak peak of the finished countertops. I'm giving a sneak peak of the countertops mostly because I haven't had a chance to take a good picture. My living room/dining room are a disaster area because we've moved everything out of the kitchen. My favorite part is that amazing undermounted sink. I freaking love it! Especially compared to chunky, round ceramic sink we had before. We got the sink and faucet from Ikea, since they seemed to have the best price for more modern kitchen fixtures.

modern fairy tales

2013-02-04T10:04:00.003-08:00

We just discovered Yudi Chen, an amazing artist who not only has a great illustration style, but also opens our eyes to a new perspective. Check out Yudi's take on a classic fairytale below. Can you guess which story this is? Go to her page on society6.com to see the whole collection.

She is currently still studying illustration at RISD, and we just can't wait to see what she comes up with after graduation!

wood and tile - bathroom inspiration

2013-02-01T10:15:00.000-08:00

via stadshem

I've had bathrooms on my mind for a while, because I want to update my guest bathroom, without spending a lot of money. This small bathroom doesn't seem to have any very expensive finishes, but I think it looks great. I love the unexpected wooden accents in this bathroom. With a few interesting accessories and some art on the walls, I think I can make me bathroom look a little less bland.

Now here is a picture of my bathroom. Blah! We have no natural light in there so I painted the walls yellow, but that didn't achieve the sunny look I was going for. Everything just looks yellow. I'm planning on painting the walls white. This will be our third bathroom paint job, by the way. I keep hoping that changing wall color will make me like the bathroom a little more.

And for the sake of comparison, here is a bathroom (from Beck Design Blog) with the exact same layout as ours! This look SO much better!

via Beck Design Blog

What's with all of these foxes?

2013-01-30T12:23:00.000-08:00

Forest creatures have been taking over the design world for a while now. But, the latest one to come out of the forest is the sneaky fox (who we love, BTW!). Here are some awesome things we are trying very hard to resist:

1. twilight fox print // 2. fox with hat // 3. just the fox sweater // 4. fox pillow

diy type art

2013-01-28T10:32:00.001-08:00

I was in a DIY mood this weekend and I wanted to make some art for my guest bathroom. There is a big blank wall in there so that is the perfect place for an art gallery. I posted a few weeks ago about this beautiful bathroom, and I wanted to try create something similar.

I don't have any word art and I've been meaning to make some, but I didn't have any printable adhesive vinyl on hand. So I decided to try and make a stencil out of regular printer paper.

The DIY portion of this is very straightforward.

All I did was print the word using Serifa
I then cut out the letters and used museum hold to hold the letters down. Double sided sticky tape also would have worked, but I wanted to be able to easily reposition the letters.
Then I (very) carefully painted over the letter just enough to have black paint all around the letter
afterwards I did quite a bit of cleaning up. Paint managed to sneak under my letters, so I just used a q-tip to clean up the excess paint and then filled in the letters with white paint.

I also really like the reverse, black letters on the white canvas, so might try another version of this at some point.

I think the word focus is kind of funny in the bathroom. Hopefully, I'll be able to show my bathroom gallery wall soon.

Its a free printable friday!

2013-01-25T12:08:00.000-08:00

We are currently working on a new project and thought we would share a a little piece as a free printable. Enjoy!

Qualy

2013-01-23T10:07:00.001-08:00

I had to share these unique spice shakers! There are a lot of cool spice shakers out there, but I love that this one makes it easy to see the spice and that the spice becomes a part of the motif! I haven't been able to find a place to buy them in the U.S. yet, unless I'm missing it. It's available on Amazon in the U.K., so hopefully it will be available in the U.S. soon. Check out more fun design by Qualy here.

Fontastic

2013-01-21T09:21:00.000-08:00

Fonts infuse designs with personality. Our favorite for this month is Trend and I think you will agree that it has a great one. There are a bunch of different styles of this font and they have some great ornaments, too!

iPhone template 13

2013-01-18T09:00:00.000-08:00

Here is the new free printable iPhone 5 and 4 template! This template was made to fit into the clear Incase Snap Case. Enjoy!