Style Flashback: Color, Color, COLOR!!!

Like I said yesterday, this was the first place that we were allowed to paint at so we went a little crazy with the color. I kind of feel bad for the person who ends up painting over those walls! It was a lot of fun and we definitely learned some things along the way.

Living Room BEFORE:

Living Room AFTER:

Style Flashback: Retro Diner

I have been working on several projects the last few days but none of it is ready to show you yet. So I thought it might be fun to do a little flashback to a couple of our old apartments and show you how our style has evolved. We are currently going for a Dark Victorian look but we started out with a Retro 50's Diner style. You can find all sorts of things from this era at garage sales so it is a great way to decorate if you are short on cash and want something fun and unique.

These photos were never intended to be used in a blog so the quality isn't that great and there aren't really any close up shots but hopefully you will still be able to get the feel of what we were going for.

Candyland Cake

I saw this idea for a candyland cake in Taste of Home Magazine two and a half years ago and I have been looking for a good reason to make one ever since. We recently started hosting a game night and I decided this would be the perfect time to bring out this idea.

Kitchen Window Treatment

My painted kitchen cabinet test area over the sink is done so I was finally able to cover the window! I'm really excited because this is what I see when I look out that window:

Yeah, that's the door to my neighbor's house. Being only four feet apart is one of the joys of living in the city. It was a little awkward when I was filling up my water glass and some random guy walked out of that door at the exact same time! So for the window treatment I decided to go with faux frosted glass with a scroll design. This lets in all of the light while still giving us privacy.

Paper Quilled Valentine's Card

I'm amazed by all of the traffic my little blog has been getting the last few days! I have really enjoyed reading all of your sweet comments and I am so happy to have my first five "followers"! It really means a lot to me that you enjoy my blog enough to want to keep checking back in. I have a renewed motivation to keep up with this blog and to try and make it as fun as I can. There for awhile I was starting to feel like I was just talking to myself here. :-)

Now for my blogging question, what do you find to be the best way to respond to comments? The only thing I don't like about Blogger is that the comments aren't done in a thread form where I can just comment below the person and have them receive notification of it. I would love to respond to each individual commenter and at least thank them for stopping by, but trying to get to each person's blog in a timely manner seems a bit daunting and the more comments I receive, the more responding to each one will take time away from working on new projects to post on here. Besides, I feel a little weird taking about my blog in someone else's comment area. So how do you respond to comments? Do you respond to each one or only when they need an answer to a question? I'm still fairly new to Blogger so I'm not quite sure what the proper "blogging etiquette" is. Any opinions on this matter would be greatly appreciated!

On to my latest project...Today I made a Valentine's Day card for my husband using paper curlique art. It was my first time trying this so it didn't turn out quite as I envisioned but hopefully you will still enjoy it.

Craft Closet Take 2

As some of you may remember, my craft closet started out as a utility closet. Then I transformed it into my craft closet. Now it has been transformed into an even better craft closet! I'm so happy with how it turned out!

Conversation Heart Cake

Valentine's Day came a little early at our house this year. I had this cute idea for a cake and I wanted to share it with all of you while you still have time to make one for yourself. Well...that and we kept eating the conversation heart candies and I was afraid we would run out before I got to make the cake!

Valentine's Paper Heart Link

I got back to crafting for a bit today and decided to start on some Valentine's Day decorations!

I started out by tracing around two different sized heart cookie cutters, one inside the other, onto colored cardstock.

Painting Kitchen Cabinets & A Tip For Storing Paint Brushes

My house is in shambles as I have several home improvement projects going on at once. In every room something comes up that puts that project on hold for awhile. Two of the bedrooms are waiting for my husband to fix the wiring (I DO NOT do electrical! Besides, Shelby has a degree in electronics that needs to be put to use every now and then. :-) ), one has spackle drying because whoever put up the drywall decided not to tape the seams so we have big cracks in the walls that have to be fixed before painting, and the list goes on and on.

So while I am waiting on all of those things, I decided to tackle the project that I have been putting off for weeks: painting the kitchen cabinets. I wanted to change the hardware which also meant moving them from the odd center of door placement. To cover up the places where the old holes had been patched, it would require painting them which I kind of wanted to do anyway to brighten things up. The only problem is the ridiculous amount of coats it takes before the wood grain no longer shows through the paint.