Time Flies and My Dresser Reveal

I finally have a few seconds to write on my blog and all my words escape me.  Sooooo....  

I saw this stick thing at a shop when I was shopping with Brooke.  I'm gonna make one.  

Because it probably isn't clear--this is a crumb cake "8".

One of my favorite things about Camp is his confidence  Here he is sporting mismatched socks, MY exercise pants, and a rag (that i use to clean the toilet) hanging from his pants.  You know.  Because all the professionals have toilet rags hanging from their pants.

At the last second, Brian Holmes made Janey a custom retainer with fangs.  Lucky girl.

Things are actually going pretty well right now (knock on wood).  Brian and I have had a few good weeks in the last month, and last week was especially good.  We enjoyed a mini-getaway to Driftwood Shores last Friday and then went out to dinner and a movie on Saturday.  (We saw the new James Bond movie.  I wouldn't recommend it...unless you're a guy--or a woman whose husband is having a birthday and wants to go see it.  Then go. )  But the biggest success of last week was that Brian and I had like TWO conversations --about business stuff--during which we did not argue or get mean or upset.   And we had another one this morning.  SQQUUEEAAALLL!  That is HUGE!  (Huge for the last six months, at the very least.)  So I'm hoping we are truly on the road to recovery.  Aaaannnd, I've been praying for the gift of Interpretation of Tongues.  Specifically, I would like the gift to be able to understand Brian and have him understand me.  That is what the gift of Interpretation of Tongues is, right?  I think so.  And I think Heavenly Father will answer my prayer.  He always does.  :)

If we're friends on Instagram, you may have already seen this, but I wanted to document it here, too--because it was a lot of work and I think it turned out awesome.  I picked up this dresser at my favorite little thrift store in town for like 30 bucks.

 It was originally much uglier than in the picture below because it had one of those yellowing, kinda shiny-type finishes that was on all mid-century furniture.  But the top is not solid wood.  It's a veneer.  So the finish wasn't pretty.  But anyway, I stripped the finish, did a lot of sanding, primed, sanded again, painted, and then added a non-yellowing clear coat.  (I forgot the name of the product, but I could find it if you were curious.  )  How do you like that for a tutorial??  

Oh, yeah.  And I found these awesome pulls on Ebay and then picked up some Brasso to resurrect them.  I used a little tube of gold leaf to fill in some of the grooves at the bottom of the dresser.  What do you think?

See that lovely valance thing over the window to the play room on the right?  Right.  How could you miss it?  Well, our landlady said we could take it down!  Yay!  That will settle at least some of the turmoil inside me.  :)  And is the fact that my USA thing is not centered over the couch totally bugging you?  Yeah, me, too.  But I had to hang it on studs.  Brian's gonna help me switch the location of the hangers on the back of it so that I can have it centered and still on the studs.

I scored this little bowl thing at a little antique-type shop when I was visiting Brooke.  It makes me feel like my stuff is a bit more "collected over time" and not just collected at Homegoods.  :)

I am so happy with the bedding I collected for the boys' room.  I got the striped flannel blankets and duvet covers at Pottery Barn and the velvet toss pillows at Joss & Main.  If you look really closely, you can see the little green pom-poms on the corners of them.  Perfect!

And this is the little table I traveled like 400 miles for.  Well worth it.  It's perfect!  I plan to get this chair to go with it:

And I think  maybe my shelf-decorating skills may be improving.  I've always been terrible at decorating shelves.  After staring at countless pictures, though, I feel like I'm learning that color, and proportion, and distribution, and scale all make a big difference.  Hopefully I'll continue to learn.  And check out the contact paper I lined the back of this book shelf with.  Isn't it great??  I got it at Target for $30.  I think the whole roll would have covered around 25 square feet.  So that's pretty good.  My little touches of fuchsia  will have to go come Christmas when the red stuff comes out, but I've quite liked it.  

I picked up some fun wrapping paper at Homegoods last week--possibly the only money I'll be spending on Christmas decor this year......  Hmmm.  I'm realizing that red stuff will not look good with most of these papers.  Maybe I won't use the red stuff this year.  Maybe it will be all neutrals and blues.  We"ll see.

So I'm writing on a different day now.   Brian and I had another fight.... Sigh.....  Marriage is hard.  So, so hard. 

This last six months has been the hardest of our marriage since the first year.  

 And even though we struggle often and I have to pray for the gift of Interpretation of Tongues,  every night I also thank Heavenly Father for the nearly perfect life he's given me.   I really do feel grateful.  I feel grateful to be married at all, let alone to a really, really good man.   And I'm sooooo grateful to be a mom.  What a blessing!  And I have a million extended family members whom I love and who love me.   And I am healthy and strong,  and I have money to buy bedding and go out to eat every so often and fly to Vegas for girls' reunions.  That is the life I've always wanted.  When I pray and verbalize my gratitude, I'm reminded that I need to LIVE my gratitude.  You know?  Be a doer of the word and not just a speaker of it, only.    So I'm trying.  I'm trying.

Couch Reveal

Well, I told you I'd be sharing the "after" of the couch I had reupholstered.  Here's a reminder of what it used to look like:

What do you think?  Hideous, right?   Yes, but this couch has great, strong, Ethan Allen bones and a flat back and flat seat just like I've wanted.  A flat back and flat seat means no cushions to break down and look tired and smashed.  Yay!  I also wasn't crazy about the camel back and the flared arms, so I decided to have Ray at Wheeler's Interiors rebuild the frame a bit while he was in the process of reupholstering it.  I chose this fabric from Joann's, which I got with a coupon, of course--and I love it.  It is quite light in color, but it is a heavy duty polyester that is easily washed.  Ray even made sure I had custom arm covers and a cover to go over the back for added protection and washability.  Awesome.  So here she is!  

  

Quite an improvement, right?  I think so.  It really kills me that I don't have a pretty room in which to display my pretty couch, but oh well.  You get the idea.  It's not that this house couldn't be beautiful.  ANY house can be beautiful.  It's just that since we don't know how long we're gonna be in it, I'm not sure it's worth our time and effort to make it beautiful.  You know what I mean?  Anyway...

And remember this dresser that I picked up at a thrift store for like 30 bucks?  Well, I did decide to paint it, and I'll be posting the finished pictures as soon as Brian helps me put on the new drawer pulls.

I stripped it down, primed it with an oil based Cover Stain primer and then sanded it down smooth.

I can't wait to show you what it looks like now!

Also, in case you're interested--this is the color I'd like to paint our next house.  I love it!  I think it is the perfect silvery-grey with blue undertones.  This picture is not ideal, but trust me.  It's awesome.  :)

 And this is the girls' bedding and boys' bedding, respectively, that i picked out for the new house (I thought I'd start collecting things early since I know I'll have zero dollars for decorating once the house is finished.  As it turns out, I was shopping a bit too early, so I decided to take advantage of it anyway.  Like I mentioned on IG, You don't have to have a pretty house to have a pretty bed.  I plan to pair the girls'  bedding with their black and white upholstered headboards from the last hough (do you remember them?) and accent in bright pink.  The green and white bedding is actually from the girls' section at Pottery Barn, but I figure I can boyify it if I accent in navy and maybe a few touches of brown or orange.  We'll see.  

I can't live without decorating.  I can't live without words, and I can't live without decorating....or my family.  Or water.  

And in case you've ever wondered what kind of quality IKEA furniture is made of, here is a little peek inside.  I let my kids go to town on this when we were moving, and they totally loved it.  Don't worry.  This won't keep me from continuing to shop at IKEA, either, but it is quite offensive to Brian.   He has no tolerance for poor quality. 

Anyway, if you're out there....stay tuned.  :)