Misti’s End of Year in Review- 2010

Hey everybody! What a year this has been. I can’t believe the last time I blogged was in September! Now that I am working full time, I have found that I either have time to blog or I have time to spend with family. One or the other. Period.

I have also found that if I stay off the blogs, I actually have time to do the projects that I always want to blog about. Again, one or the other. Period.

So here is my end of year in review—2010.

I don’t have a picture of me working, but I am now a full-time medical transcriptionist as of August 2010. (No longer decorating for others, but enjoying decorating for myself.)

My BFF and I met up at the Country Living Fair at Stone Mountain Park in Georgia (luckily we live here). We had the BEST time.

So many awesome vendors and everything was so PRETTY!

 

The fair is coming back to Atlanta next year and we CAN’T WAIT!

I could go on for DAYS with pictures of the fair. Between the two of us, we took over 500 pictures in one day!

We made it through incredibly HOT summer afternoons of football and went on into incredibly cold early-morning games.

I TURNED THE BIG 4-0 THIS YEAR and all of my brothers got to laugh about it.

And then there was Halloween—Always an adventure with boys! Such gross things coming out of the mouth.

Rasta man!

Seriously CREEPY!

Spending time with the guys…

I conquered my dining room right before Thanksgiving!

Love my board and batten!

Then it was Thanksgiving with family:

My crazy cousin Kathy—MISS YOU MUCH!

And Christmas came and went way too quickly, but we did get a white Christmas!

I hope you have all had a great year, and I hope to visit you all soon! By the way, I practically LIVE on Facebook, so if you want to hang out there, email me and I’ll send you my full name. 

Happy New Year!!!

~Misti

A Few New Friends in Blogland

Recently, I have found a few new friends out in blogland that you have GOT to visit!

First up is Tracy—OMG is she hilarious! She seriously makes me LOL.

Her blog title is “It’s an Average Life,” and she chats about everything. I mean EVERYTHING!

Her Thursday Toots are hysterical! Just get some coffee and some chocolate, and plow through her archives and have a good laugh.

(Click on the picture to go straight to insanity—I mean Tracy’s blog.)

Next up is -- Cheap Chic Home.

Check out these oversized candy corn creations that she made out of Styrofoam cones and plaster. I will be making these!

(Click on the candy corn photo to go to Cheap Chic Home.)

Thanks, Kim for your awesomeness!

And finally…Meet Katy of Mom and Her Drill.

This woman uses power tools. I mean, like she builds decks and stuff!

Check out her kitchen re-do—LOVE HER!

(Click on the kitchen picture to go to Katy’s blog. She has some great projects going on.)

Awesome, right? Don’t you just love them all already? I do!

Let me know if you get a chance to visit and tell them Misti sent ya!

1990’s Kitchen Do-Over

Wow! Just WOW! My long-time friend, Sandra and her husband Scott recently had their 1990’s kitchen updated and it is gorgeous!  They picked out the former colors with a designer years ago, and are now moving on up to 2010 with a fabulous new color palette, granite countertops, gorgeous tile on the backsplash, new sink, new appliances, fixtures, flooring, and have changed their cabinets from a whitewashed to a beautifully updated creamy finish.

Check out this transform—Can you believe that this…

…is now looking like this?

I love how the refrigerator looks like it was custom made for that wall, and how they removed the microwave to make room for the new tilework and stovetop appliance.

Before: The Hoosier cabinets were being used for storage.

 After:  This wall is now loaded with cabinets,  some to the ceiling, adding much-needed storage space.  Adding the wall mounted microwave and oven were a stroke of genius! By moving things around, they were able to have more storage space AND a more functional stovetop cooking area.  They also love the new desk/computer area!

Before:

After:  New undermount sink, lighting and plumbing fixtures, and new tile, too! Oh, and check out the dishwasher…NICE.

Before:

After:  Adding the dark wood flooring is an amazing contrast to the creamy white cabinetry. Also, they made the bar area functional and kid-friendly, too.

Seriously—What an unbelievable transformation! Congrats to this family! The details are amazing—and that tile work is really a knockout job!

I will be linking this to Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch. Click on the link below to see other great transformations.

 

Come back and visit soon. If you have a great transformation I need to see, please send me photos. Everyone loves a re-do!

~Misti

Clean Out the Pantry Clutter

Since school started our pantry has been a mess with forty thousand boxes of snacks and bag after bag of chips. I had to come up with a solution!

So this: (forty thousand boxes and bags)

Went to this:

EASY PEASY! This big bucket has a handle, and I can take it to my ‘lunch making station’ (aka the kitchen island) with one hand!

Chips and snacks all in one spot. So easy, even the kids can grab it and help make their choices for the day! And THAT is a wonderful thing.

Hope you all have a great weekend!

~Misti

Visions of Burlap this Christmas

I know, I know—It’s really too early to be thinking of Christmas, but in my world if I don’t start thinking about it very early, the things that I really want to do, just will NOT happen.

Last year after the holidays, I found myself thinking of all the things that I SHOULD have decorated the tree with, but didn’t.

I remembered having a bag full of burlap fabric in the basement, and thinking how cool it would have been to have draped the burlap all through the tree! This wreath found in the Ballard Designs catalog (Nov. 2009)reminded me:

You see, several places now sell wired burlap ribbon, but I think I’m going for the real thing. Think it will work?

Don’t you think this tree is crying out for a burlap treatment?

Also, for my skinny tree, I’m thinking of making small 4 x 6-sized song lyric sheets tied to the tree or attached with clothes pins. Another thing that signifies our family and the things that are meaningful to us. Yes, burlap is very meaningful to me!

Do you have any visions dancing through your head for this year? I would love to hear your ideas!

~Misti

 

Inspiration for my To-Do List—Part 2

Did you think I was finished? Noooooooo way!

My last post spotlighted some of my projects I would like to get started on soon, and here are just a few more.

Project 4.

Painting the china hutch.

My furniture is all a bit too matchy-matchy, so I’m thinking this big guy could use some paint love, too. If I go ahead with the plan and paint the board and batten creamy white, and paint the top portion of the walls Grand Canyon Red (rusty red), this will need to be either black, aqua with a coat of stain, or possibly even an olive green with stain. Ohhhh, or maybe even a gold with stain?

I want to cover the mirrored backing, and possibly do something different with the glass on the doors, too.

You have an idea for me? Please send it over!

Okay, let’s move on to another fabulous idea that I found yesterday while vacationing in blog land.

Project 5.

The old baby crib that I can’t bear to part with.

Yesterday I found this BRILLIANT idea from Little Apartment on the Prairie, and I had little light bulbs going off in my head. Look what she made out of an old crib, and be wowed like I was…

Cool, right? I thought it was total brilliance!

This got me thinking… I don’t really have a place for a plate rack of that size, BUT, I could use one of these (another aha moment):

(Courtesy of Ballard Designs—LOVE THEM)

This is what immediately came to mind when I saw her plate rack, like SHAZAAAM! Light bulbs going off in my head!

I have the perfect wall in my little laundry room to add one of these, and I would be able to keep the baby bed and make something VERY useful out of it. Right now, anything that needs to be air dried gets hung over a dining room chair. NOT SO PRETTY.

I knew if I kept the crib long enough, that some kind of project would come to mind. It only took 7 years!

Project 6.

The mirror stand. (one more thing hiding in the basement)

There is no more space for this free-standing mirror in my bedroom. Actually, there never has been, so it has lived in the basement for the last 5 years. Again, very matchy-matchy.

So, my thought is this: I remove the mirror from the stand, attach some D rings on the back, paint it and hang it on a wall elsewhere in the house. There is a long dark hallway upstairs and this may be just the thing to lighten it up!

Now, I need an idea for the heavy duty sides of the mirror stand. There has GOT to be something I can make out of those, right?

******

I, of course could come up with a million more projects like:

• adding subway tile on the backsplash
• re-covering chairs
• slipcovering my old sofa
• painting the front door
• painting the fireplace wall brown suede
• painting the stairway wall the same brown suede
• beadboarding the garage (you should see the skateboard damage)
• changing out all of the plumbing fixtures
• framing the bathroom mirror
• finding old doors or shutters to mount on my palladium window

Really—The list goes on and on…

Over at Southern Inspiration, my good friend Suzanne is getting everyone motivated to GET IT DONE in the month of September. So head on over to Suzanne’s place and share your to-do list!

Hope you all have a great week!

~Misti

Inspiration for my To-Do List

So, I am finally done with school, have started my new job, my head is clear once again, and all I can think about is home projects!

I have started diving into blog land whenever I get a few spare minutes, and honestly, it’s a dangerous thing to hang out in the world of decorating blogs.

So many ideas—so little time!

A few of my projects have been dancing around in my head for quite some time, and some are very recent. Darn blogs!

PROJECT 1.

My first project is one that I have wanted to tackle for a few years, but our house was so new that the hubster had a hard time with ‘changing’ things, but it’s good, I promise.

This is my dining room:

It’s kind of bland with the khaki-colored walls, and I really want to liven it up and give it a wow factor from both the kitchen and family room. So, I found this color. It is Benjamin Moore’s Grand Canyon red.

It’s so me!

(Country Living—of course, and unbelievably fabulous)

And… I want to cover the bottom walls in board and batten, just like Julia  from Hooked on Houses did. So cool! She gives a great tutorial, check it out!

(Click on the image to see Julia’s how-to post.)

So, imagine my dining room with creamy board and batten and rustic red on the top. I can’t wait to get started! Thanks to Julia for THAT inspiration!

If I wasn’t in such a hurry, I would fire up my HGTV Design software and try to pull this together so I can really see the finished design, but really, no time today.

PROJECT 2.

I have a chair in the basement jungle that is in dire need of a slipcover. It has great bones, but fabric that is just not my style. The chair was given to me by a client, and it is in fabulous shape! I am thinking of going the canvas-drop-cloth route on this one.

There are so many great people out there that have sewn some great slipcovers, but one in particular, Victoria from Whimsy by Victoria, has great tutorials on her blog. Click on her name to take a visit to her blog.

PROJECT 3.

For years we have been going through bedding like Sponge Bob goes  through crabby patties! I have come to terms with the fact that I will never be able to have a fancy schmancy bedding set or pretty pillows either, because of this guy:

I have never shown pictures of my bedroom, because quite frankly, it’s awful. We are now using pieces from the last THREE bedding sets. This is the problem:

IT’S EMBARRASING—SERIOUSLY.

(The hubster is not the problem, the bedding is.)

Cynthia of Design Love gave me this inspiration:

(Click on photo to visit JolieMarche.etsy.com)

She found an Etsy designer that makes and sells this beauty. There are also some beautiful pillows on her Etsy site as well. Go check it out!

As much as I would love to have this fabulous woman to make this for me, I think I can pull it off with a few canvas drop cloths and maybe some of my mad painting skills. MAYBE. We will see…

I have a few more TO-DOs, but I will break for now and get back with you on the others. Right now, I’m hungry, and my growling belly waits for no one!

Over at Southern Inspiration, my good friend Suzanne is motivating us to GET IT DONE in the month of September, so head on over and share YOUR to-do list!

~Misti