2011 In Review

2011 has been one of those years that I will remember for the rest of my life. I am so happy I decided to do this post because it made me look back at all the pictures, stories and memories I've created in the past year and how special each and every moment was. 

So take a look back with me....

+ Our after-Christmas/New Years vacation to Waikiki on Oahu, HI. I feel so blessed to be able to go to such a beautiful place with someone I love so much. 

 + I celebrated my 22nd birthday (the 4th one celebrated with J) and was spoiled rotten! 

 + Our poor Ollie got horrible blisters on his feet but did so well as they healed and

+ We spent far too long without furniture waiting for the new stuff to arrive

 + J's birthday was spent with friends from out of town, lots of margaritas and days spent relaxing by the pool. 

 + We graduated! It was a long four years with lots of stress, studying, and wondering when it was going to end but I finished my bachelors degree and J finished his masters. 

 + We spent lots of time taking our pup swimming in the ocean. He loves it so much it's hard to get him out. 

+ J and I celebrated our 4 year dating anniversary! I cannot believe how quickly the time has past and how many amazing memories we've created together. I love that man!

 + We got to spend some time back in CO this summer to celebrate the wedding of two of our great friends. While the drive from SD to CO is never fun we wouldn't miss trips like this for anything.

 + After a lot of stressful paperwork, specific deadlines and lots of finger crossing we finally bought and moved into our first house! We have loved being able to do whatever we wanted in the new house and there's nothing quite like home. 

 + We've done lots of work since we moved but it is all so worth it. A yard for our pup to play in and a guest room to host family and friends.

+ Now that we have this amazing new house we decided to host Thanksgiving for my mom and sister. Our turkey was a big success, I made homemade gravy for the first time ever and we spent some time at the beach. Noting says Thanksgiving like the sun and the sand!

+ The holidays are definitely my favorite time of the year and I was so excited to finally be able to decorate outside as well as inside wherever and however I wanted. I can't wait to make holiday traditions in our new home. 

+ And last but definitely far from least.... J and I got engaged on Christmas Day 2011. I promise that I will do a post soon specific to the details about this but lets just say I have never been happier in my whole entire life. I cannot wait to start planning this wedding and continue to grow our lives together!

Thanks 2011.... 

for an amazing, spectacular, whirlwind year that I'll never forget. 

Custom Art & Lessons Learned

In my Guest Room Make-Over post I showed you the newest artwork that I made for above the bed and I thought I would share with you how I made it. And more specifically how it's always good to look into things a little bit before attempting them to avoid a project being more involved than you wanted it to be. <--- This is called foreshadowing ;-)

Like I mentioned before, I used this as my inspiration for the project. Well that piece of art combined with the pattern on the sheet set for the bed. I loved the flowers on them and knew I wanted to use them in the room somewhere else.

I used the pillowcase as my visual and drew out one of the flowers as best as I could. I knew I wanted to use two canvases for the space so I re-drew it once more with a division down the center. I love how it isn't symmetrical, something that even J was surprised I would do.

I gathered my 16 x 20in canvases (that have been sitting blank for at least 6 months with no inspiration) and carefully drew a blown up version of the original on each half.

Lesson #1: do not, and I repeat, DO NOT assume that the person who originally wrote the caption for your pin on Pinterest was accurate. When I checked out my pin before starting the project it read "Elmer's glue on canvas. Then paint the whole thing one color". Easy-peasy I thought. So I took out my glue, carefully placed as smooth of lines as I could get and went to bed.

This is what I woke up to. Lesson #2, Elmer's glue is not like puff paint. It dries flat. This is not what I wanted. Thankfully I only did one canvas up to this step so I saved a little bit of wasted time.

Lesson #3, always check on the source of your pin yourself so that you get the results that you want. Turns out that the original was made with white puff paint on canvas, not Elmer's. I was frustrated by this point, only had red puff paint and knew I had a can of white spray paint so I continued on. Retraced all of my lines with the red, waited for them to dry and gave them a good coat of spray paint.

I ended up having to go back to the second canvas (aka the one I didn't originally mess up on) with some glue around the puff paint to make them look the same. See in the above photo how the glue (the shiny parts) sort of seeped out along the red puff paint? Turns out when I spray painted them you could sort of see those parts, granted I liked the look, but I had to then "mess up" the other canvas to get them same.

Eventually my project was finished, with many more steps that I was originally planning on, but lessons learned and custom art made so I say it was a success in the end. Don't you agree?

*Please go back to my original Guest Room Make-Over post and check out what I updated* 

Homeowners: Guest Room Make-Over

One of the first tasks we took on in the new house was the upstairs spare bedrooms. Not only did they need some serious painting but we wanted to turn them into spaces we would use and appreciate. Since we had some amazing help from J's family with our actual move (they flew in from CO just to help us!) we thought it was fitting to actually set up a guest bedroom for them. 

Check out the transformation!

Just incase you can't tell from the picture, yes, this room used to be Pepto bismol PINK and it needed to go! We wanted to paint a neutral color in the whole house that would be more than just "off-white" but that we could decorate with in all parts of the house to their unique styles. We decided on the color Wheat Bread from Behr and I absolutely love it!

Since we were coming from a one bedroom apartment, one of the first things we had to buy was a guest bed. We decided to hit up IKEA and bought this HEMNES bed frame in gray-brown. The duvet cover and pillow shams are also from IKEA from the "as-is" section and cost me a grand total of $10! Plus I love the little detail work that makes it that much more pretty. The sheets are from a previous bedding set that I used to have at home and I thought they were the perfect compliment to the duvet with a bit of color. 

I made some art work for above the bed of a blown up version of the flower in the sheets with this as my inspiration. I am very happy with how it turned out but it did take a bit more effort that I was imagining. I plan on doing a post about this specifically later on.

We still have a little bit of work to do in the room, like finding an actual bed-side table (not just two storage baskets stacked on top of each other) as well as some other aspects for the walls but those can come with time.

*updated* I was able to find the perfect start to the rest of the wall decor for the room the exact same day as I originally wrote this post. See that awesome shelf on the wall? Yeah, I found it at Goodwill for $4.99! Some struggling later and I was able to get it hung on the wall, given a fresh coat of ultra white paint and added a few items to it that were also either cheap or free. And who doesn't love that. 

I found this awesome frame (purchased because I loved that it was square and I loved the wood it was made of, and for $1.99 I had to get it) and was able to give it a little face-life. I used fabric from an old white sheet to make a bunch of rosettes and glued them to the front. I love the texture it adds.

The rest of the shelf contains votive candle holders I already owned, a cheap IKEA clock also previously owned, and a frame from Dollar Tree with a print out of one of my favorite sayings:

"What I love most about my home is who I share it with"

Overall I love the look of the room and am actually sort of jealous that our master bedroom isn't even this put together yet! I can't wait for more visitors to come and stay with us now that we have the perfect space for them. 

[Target Tuesday] Link-up

Today I'm joining in on the [Target Tuesday] fun over at Tara's blog Fabulous but Evil. If you don't already know her you definitely should! She is lots of fun, gorgeous and is, of course, the starter of Target Tuesdays.

My Target Tuesday is full of home decor/bedroom decor because that's what's been on my mind lately. I love that our bedroom is simple right now (black, white and grays) and it's not really worth it to change it up right now but I am getting a little sick of it. We will hopefully be moving out of this apartment at the end of the summer and I look forward to hopefully decorating a new bedroom for us then. Here is my current inspirations on what I wish our room looked like....

Floral Duvet in Blue

Floral Quilt in Blue & White

I've been in love with Blues and Whites in bedrooms lately. I don't think I could handle a completely white duvet cover/comforter though (even though I think they're stunning) because we all know Ollie joins us on the bed sometimes and white is just hard to keep up.

Texture Pillow in Blue

Flocked Dot Window Sheer

Thomas O'Brien Towels in White

Towels is something I could easily change even before we move and I just might. I read in a magazine recently (couldn't tell you which though) that white towels easily add the "Spa-envrionment" feel to your bathroom. White bath towels, white wash cloths, chunky white rug on the floor and a few blue accents would be my dream.

Van Gogh Poster

And of course I'd get a print of something gorgeous, or maybe hand paint something myself (eek!) to go above the bed. Finish it all off by keeping the furniture black and adding bright silver touches (like lamps and frames etc) ..... ahhh if only I could make the transformation now.

I hope you've enjoyed my [Target Tuesday] and you should all check out the other links for this post too. Happy Tuesday.