White bean wreath amore.

Remember the white bean wreath?  It is now in it's full Valentine's Day regalia.  I think it will look even nicer once I move it to the outside and paint the door bright green this summer.  ;)

She's Done!

Final chair update.  (see the start of this project here)  The upholstery tacking strip that I ordered finally came in the mail and so on this past lovely Wednesday/blizzard/snow day, I set to work.  I just had to finish up the sides and the back.  It took some practice, I'll tell you...  but after the third piece of 'curve-ease', I started to get the hang of it.  Here she is in all of her finished glory (reeaaallly not sure that I want to give her up!)

Lighten Up A Little

Ever since redoing the back splash in my kitchen last year, I have been pondering painting my cabinets (see - these things are not ALWAYS spur of the moment decisions).  My kitchen, when we moved in, was an odd combo of log cabin and 80's sky blue laminate.  Little by little I have been changing it up.  I put in a new floor, but I chose it purely on durability and mud-hiding ability since I have two young boys and we use the kitchen as our main entrance.  So function won out over form on that one.  I put in a new neutral tile back splash and we forked over the big bucks for the new counter tops and appliances (refrigerator that doesn't tip backwards - score!)  I painted it.  Twice.  But it still felt dark and overwhelmingly caramel (no help from my choice of floor and the first color of paint).  So (probably because of my winter blues...) I finally decided to commit to painting the cabinets with the goal of lightening up the place.  I also painted a floor canvas to break up the caramel by the table area.  I fixed up the ugly bulb problem over a week ago, and I sewed some new valences from a table cloth.   Here is a photo history of my kitchen and it's many phases of redo.

Before we bought the house.

After we moved in - fix #1 - knobs (they didn't have ANY... weird, right?)

New boy-friendly floor (white just wasn't going to do it for my family!).  Also unfortunate caramel paint color that I chose and instantly hated.

New counter tops and appliances.  New paint color.  Redid the blue back splash..

A couple of days ago. (This is what a kitchen in use looks like....)

See how everything is was caramel? 

NOW - painted floor cloth

new valence

painted cabinets = less caramel  :)

much brighter! (hmmm... wish I had closed that drawer...  oh well!)