Spray paint is my best friend!

I recently changed the colors in my bedroom from brown tones to black. Black is my favorite base color to design around so after considering this for quite some time, I decided to go ahead and do it. The entire redo only cost me the price of 2 cans of spray paint. Since I had previously gone with the brown tones, most all of my accessories were bronze or brown in color, including the lamps which years ago were gold, changed to bronze and now, black! Yes, I think they'll be staying this way, maybe forever!
Here are my items laid out and ready for the paint.


In case you haven't done a lot of spray painting, I wanted to show you how very easy it is and give you some pointers on achieving the best results. First, I laid out my large painting sheet (I use this for everything messy). You'll want to make sure that all of the items are dusted well or else you'll have texture to your item that you won't really want! Tape off any areas that you don't want painted. Also, make sure that the spray paint you purchased works on the items that you want to paint. For instance, if an item is plastic, there are special spray paints just for that. You can basically get spray paint to cover ANYTHING! Make sure that it's not a windy day, and if you live in Troutdale like I do, that's not easy to find! Take the spray paint can and shake really well. Spray in strokes, not keeping the paint in one area to long. It most likely won't cover completely at first. Let it dry for a while and then come back and give it some more shots. It's better to have several coats of thin paint than one thick one and you'll also be less likely to have runs and drips.
After several coats and almost 2 cans of paint later, the finished products!

I now have a bedroom that I enjoy so much more because of these simple and quick changes!

~Embracing the past~

I've posted before about how I enjoy hanging up old photos and enjoying our heritage. This is a display that I did for our Master bedroom. On the shelf, I've placed some special things from when my husband and I were wee ones. My husbands cute little hat on the hat stand is so adorable.  You may not be able to see it well, but the photo hanging beside it is one of him wearing it. I also placed a pair of my baby shoes and my special "Ricky bear". The outfits that I hung are the clothes that we wore in the photos next to the shelf.
It's fun to have a little part of our past on display in our room.

Creating an entry

In an attempt to catch up on blogging, I'm going to do several today and just pretend that I've been better about keeping up all along!
One thing about the house that we live in that is one of my least favorite things is the lack of a formal entry way. It doesn't have to be much but I wanted a place to put an entry table that seemed to say, "Welcome" when you walked through the door. I also wanted to have a bit of a separation for a little more of a feeling of privacy. Before, as soon as the door opened, there was the front room in all it's glory! Here's a picture of it before where I placed a bench to say, "entry".

I bought a decorative screen from Real Deals (love that store!) and placed the entry table in front of it. I placed another little table on the back side to keep it steady. Even with my precious grandchildren running happily through the house, I haven't had any problems with it wanting to tumble down. I figured that I could always bolt it to the wall if needed.

I really love the way that it turned out and it definitely satisfies my need for an entry while I live in this house!

Antiquing it up!!!

I've looked at this frame on one of my favorite pictures for a long time knowing that something just wasn't right. It's gold and I really don't have any other gold in my house. Even so, I didn't hate it because I think it looked so good with this simple, warm picture. The day came where I had to do something so I tried painting it black. Yuck, not good! Then it came to me! I painted it with two coats of cream colored paint and then rubbed on a great product that I just found, Valspar antiquing glaze. After the base coat dried well (I gave it a couple of days) I brushed on the glaze and had a rag next to me. You have to start rubbing it off almost immediately. I rubbed more off in the smooth parts and left a little extra in the crevices. The greatest thing is that it isn't supposed to be perfect so you practically can't mess it up! I love this stuff so much and already have two more projects to do using it that I'll share soon! I totally LOVE how it turned out and I think it looks so much better in my space!