Finished.

I'm loving my room. It is kinda a shock going from my plain gray (not decorated yet) family room to my bright blue bedroom, but once I'm in there I don't want to leave. It's relaxing, I am so glad I went with it! At first I couldn't decide if I liked it, but now I know I do. Dallas likes it too, He was out of town when I painted so I thought he might walk in and hate how bright it turned out... but he has been very happy with it.

So now I am finding ways to brighten up my living space with more pops of color AND ways to tone down my room with more neutrals :) I made an inspiration board for my room on Pinterest. Now I just need to make it happen. I've been going a little Pinterest crazy lately, so now I need to actually get decorating.

This picture below shows the color the best, though it's a touch brighter in person. 

The kids had fun helping me, Makiah got creative with her art work. It was a fun project! Now I just have Makiah's bedroom, the laundry room, my closet, and my bathroom to paint. It's crazy how much of our house we've painted. Nearly every bit of it. 

Lets talk paint.

I NEED a project. Something to get me out of this rut (also known as winter). I am dying of boredom and so I decided it's about time I paint my room.

Let me tell you something about me. I think I'm scared of color. I always go with neutrals when it comes to paint, frames, curtains, decor, furniture, clothes, accessories... Though, I have loved teal for the longest time. As I've started decorating my house I've gone with teal curtains in the kitchen, teal rugs in the halls, teal table in the entry... Makiah's room has some teals and two of our bathrooms are painted Palladian Blue by Benjamin Moore, which is a light pretty teal color. So I decided that my room could not be decorated in teal. I needed to go a different route. But it did need color... The rest of my house is painted in various shades of gray.

In case you are picturing my house all gray and teal... no worries. I haven't decorated a ton yet but here are some of the color schemes I am going for in the living space of my house. :)

Yesterday I decided on Benjamin Moore Jamestown Blue for my room. It seemed calm and comforting to me and it seemed to flow with the rest of my house. So I got a sample and let my girls go to town on one of my walls.

I loved it, and then I hated it. And then I loved it again. Then the sun went down for the night and I hated the color without the natural light. It looked too... teal/turquoise (Kinda like this). I was trying to stay away from teal! So last night I started over, but every paint swatch I was drawn to had the same teal tint to it.

So then I decided, if it's teal that I want then I'm going with teal! I stopped looking at the bold bright blues and remembered my Sister in law has the prettiest living room painted in Sherwin Williams Quietude. It reminds me of the Palladian color in my bathrooms, but bluer and calmer in a way. It's also similar to Benjamin Moore Wythe Blue (which might have a little more green than the Quietude), I had a sample of the Wythe Blue already, so I painted that on another wall this morning and I LOVE it. But now I look back at the Jamestown blue and I think I like it more for my room. Goodness people!! I've come full circle and here I am choosing the color I started with? Who knows, by tonight I may hate it again... And tomorrow I'll be painting my room gray... Because I'm afraid of color and that's all I know.

Help! Someone tell me just to go with the Jamestown... It's bright and fun and who knows, I might just like it.

I guess my worry is this- My room is big with vaulted ceilings and the color is pretty deep and bold. I'm worried that it might be too much for my room and it might overwhelm me (I'm needing something calm and comforting since I tend to get anxious... but at the same time I originally wanted something deep and bold-a change). I guess I won't know for sure until I get it up on all the walls. Gah.

(The picture with Daphne is not the true color... It looks lighter and just plain blue-the paint was still wet. The other picture seems to be better match to what the Jamestown looks like in my room, but really it looks different every time I go in there and when the lighting is different.)

Lights

Christmas decorations are slowly getting put up here at our home. I *finally* got my tree strung with lights. It seemed to take forever and a day. Last Saturday I bought lights from Hobby Lobby. That night I pulled them out and realized they were on white wire... not green. So on Wednesday I went to Walmart and bought 3 boxes of mini lights. Well, they filled up the bottom third of my tree, so I went back that night and bought 3 more boxes. I barely had enough... well not quite enough. If I wanted to take them off and start over I probably could have stretched them out and filled up the tree, but I wasn't about to start over (I had already done that several times). I went back to Walmart the next morning and bought one more box. It was broken. Of course I chose the box that was broken. So I went back to Walmart one more time and now our tree is complete.... 700 lights later. I got a *little* obsessed...

I think pre-lit trees are such a good idea...

Now we can finally decorate the tree, Evan and Kiah have been patiently waiting.

New toy

A few weeks ago Evan kicked my TV stand door and it broke clean off...

It was a sad day. Dallas and I... well, neither one of us do very well in the "fix it" area. Lucky for us Dallas' sister Sheri and her husband Harold came to visit this week.... Harold does very well in the "fix it" area. He knows his stuff :) While he was here he helped us fix the door... and a drawer in the kitchen (I was just too lazy to call maintenance). He probably would have done more if I would have let him. We sure have a great family!! Thanks to Harold... and Dallas' new toy we were able to fix our TV stand...

Helping hands...

Along with Sheri and Harold came two of my nephews, they are great kids! We had so much fun with them visiting for a few days... I'll have to update later on all the happenings. For now here is cute little James...

Daddy's little guy!

Look what we did!!!

We decided to fix up our very little backyard so our kids could have a fun place to play this summer. We had lots of fun cleaning the place up. We were lucky that there were not to many weeds to pull!

Before:

Don't be deceived by the pictures! It was actually a lot more work than it looks. We had to remove all the wood chips which Ann and I did. Dallas did most of the weeding and he got rid of all the over grown plants that were popping up wherever they pleased. I rearranged all those cement stones to where I wanted them and replanted my Irises that Dallas almost killed. I also kept some of the wood chips that I thought made the flower bed look really nice.
Whoever put down the wood chips didn't care to clean up first... I found some crazy things:
A bendy straw, bubble blower, lots of wrappers and plastic, an old yucky sock, duct tape, a toy shovel and lots of big rocks. I even dug up a big hunk of cement.

During:

We turned the dirt (or I should say yucky, muddy, clay) and racked it out and it looked so nice. Then it rained before we got the sod in. It rained hard. There were puddles everywhere and we ended up having to turn it again before we could do all this:

After:

(Anyone need some sod? We have 3 extra rolls that I think are still thriving. I can't bring myself to throw them out!)

Evan and Kiah love to be outside, and they both love water! We bought Evan a little watering can today and he can't get enough of it, our poor flowers are going to drown! He is such a hard worker and he loved helping us out!