I haven’t changed my inspiration board for a while, so today I spruced it up a bit.  Nice, bright and summery.

Here is a close-up view of the top half.  I accidentally erased the bottom-half picture and now it’s to late to take another picture. Anyway, I pinned up some art, made by me and made by on-line friends, trades from artfest and other little knick-knacks I found in my room.  I don’t know why I don’t change it more often.

Other stuff:

* Collecting summer dress/skirt ideas on Pinterest.  Trying really hard to only pin/re-pin things with a good link.  You have to have good linkage etiquette!

* Also collecting recipes for summer eating.   Grilled peaches, Quinoa salad and Shiitake Banh Mi Salad are totally going on the list.

* Love this freebie summer list.

* We ( Super-E & I) are anxiously awaiting the October opening of Pottermore, we’ve already signed up. Fortunately, Part 2 comes out in a couple of weeks to appease our Harry Potter addiction. We can’t wait!!

Is it bad to have a bathroom all to myself? I do live with three males after all.  Plus, white floor tiles & grout just don’t seem compatible with little boys with unpredictable aiming skills.  And, the hubby doesn’t seem to mind since this bathroom is pretty small for big manly maneuverability.  They have a much bigger and more masculine bathroom anyway.

I’m almost done with my little bathroom.  I just need to get some pretty towels, or find some fabric or ribbon to decorate some towels with.Oh, and an aqua colored pot for my orchid. And do you like my cool mermaid and fish bottle? They are from my grandparent’s old Avon bottle collection. I may have to get this mermaid too.

You can see what this bathroom looked like before HERE.

Now it’s very light, bright and airy.  Reminds me of the beach and ocean and that makes me very happy. Come to think of it, both bathrooms now have a beach theme.

Here is my window. It has an old metal window screen–perfect for my earring collection.

Now, I must go catch up on my “flying lessons“.  It’s a whole lot of reading, but so so worth it!

I wanted to fancy up the table a bit since my roses stopped blooming. I really do miss having them on my table for the last 4 weeks. Rocky is missing his rose petal salads too. So, I had to make some paper ones, at least for the color.  I made them from a Martha Stewart video. They were fun to make while watching play-it-now movies on Netflix.

After I made them, I needed vases to put them in so I spray painted some bottles from the recycle bin. I followed Blaire’s advice for the painting.

Well then, I couldn’t just place the bottles (now vases) on  a plain, bare table, now could I?   So, then I had to paint a table runner. I have a huge roll of primed canvas that I cut, hemmed and painted (copying my pillow design). Then I sealed it with a few coats of matte gel medium.

Now if we (I) could learn to keep the table cleared and clean.

I forget how easy it is to make pillows, even with zippers, and I wonder way it took me so long and why I dreaded it so much.

We bought our sofa in 2001. It came with the most awful accent pillows. They were dark brown, red, and gold with some kind of southwestern design.  I hated them and vowed to cover them immediately.  Well, I was pregnant at the time, and little did I know that these horrible pillows would have to take the back burner for 9 years. I am so relieved now to finally have them covered.  I even like my sofa a bit more than before now.  Nice!

I hand painted some creme colored denim because I couldn’t find any fabric I liked.  I sorta, kinda copied the design of a couples of pillows I couldn’t afford.  Wish I could remember the links of where I saw them.  Anyway, they are painted with Tulip Soft Fabric Paint. The two little pillows above were  made from some lovely Anna Maria Horner fabric.  Her designs are so pretty.

I also hung curtains in the living room as well. That wind is 12 feet across and I had been stumped at how to deal with it. I finally decided to ad panels to each side and it really does make the room more complete.  The yellow adds a beautiful warm glow which is so nice.

I still have to show you tons more, so stay tuned!

My hubby & I have been working on our house. I’ve been having friends over more and we thought it time to finish the main bathroom.

It was very pink when we moved in 3 years ago.  We pulled out the sink, cabinets and flooring almost immediately. We would have taken out the tub too, but that was too big of a project for us, especially since we needed it for the kiddos.

Sadly, we put up a make-shift bathroom soon after-functional but not pretty.  Almost 3 years later, we finally finished it up, thanks to IKEA.   We still have a pink tub, but are looking into glazing it so that we don’t have to remove it.

I decorated it with beach photographs from our vacation last year. They fit perfectly. There’s also the”keep calm” poster in blue on the other side.  It feels a little more masculine, but that’s okay because I have my own pretty little bathroom that I’ll show you on another day.

My city is heavily influenced by vibrant Mexican color. It is not unusual so see brightly colored trim and doors on houses or interesting metal sculptures, murals or tile work.

I love seeing splashes of color through out town, so we’ve been trying to add some flavor and color to our own home.  I found a plain metal sun at JoAnn’s for 50% off and knew I had to paint it.

I used acrylic paint and about 5 or 6 layers of protective spray.  I think it definitely adds a bit of character to my home.

When we moved in this house, almost 3 years ago, there was an old bird bath in the yard. Concrete, painted white with a squirrel, it’s not something I would have picked out, but we would clean it and put water in it frequently for the birds.

Over the weekend we bought some native flower and grass seed mix for Rocky and spent a good amount of time pulling weeds, trimming the roses and looking at this awful bird bath.  Then I got to thinking about changing it.  I didn’t like it already so what was the worst that could happen.

I cleaned it and got out my crafting acrylic paints, probably not the best paint for an outdoor piece, but it didn’t matter.  First I was just going to paint yellow petals on the bowl, but then I got out the green, the red, the blue and well, I just got a little carried away. Then, the hubby suggested that I make the squirrel into a lizard. I scoffed and said that it couldn’t be done.  Then he chipped away the squirrel’s ears, making it look a little more lizard like which gave me no other choice then to go with it.

I think it’s fun and colorful, the kids love it, the birds love it and our back yard is better for it.  It goes nicely with the rose blooms and hopefully soon, some native grass and flowers.

I decided to paint our pantry door with chalk board paint.  The hubby was skeptical, but he’s learned to trust my home decor ideas.

I used chalk board paint to cover our very old and shabby white door. I think it looks so much better now.

I have regular chalk and I bought some chalk ink markers that are WAY cool.  They wipe away only with water or cleaning wipes.  We are using the regular chalk to make daily changes to our board and the markers for the more permanent stuff.  So fun and a great idea for an organized family!!

Check out all of the great chalk board ideas on google..WOW!!

Have a great weekend~

Have I mentioned how I much I love Marissa’s In the Fishbowl e-course? Well, I really do love it.  She has brought up some really tough (for me)questions about why I do what I do, why do I love it, and most importantly how do I see myself in relation to my work. THe last one is the hard one for me. There is more. So much more that she has covered.  It’s been hard for me to really figure this all out. My thoughts and ideas seem so fragmented, but I feel progress in straightening all this out in my head.  Slowly, slowly, slowly.

During this last session, Marissa spoke a lot about blog presence and making your blog a place you love and want to be, like your favorite room in your home.  I do love my blog, and feel some freshening up needed in terms of a new banner (it’s been a while) .  Then she spoke about inspiration or vision boards. The whole thing got me thinking about my craft room and my boards. My craft room has been in a disastrous state for a while and it has not been a space of creativity. I’ve been camped out on the dining room table. I decided to put an end to that and cleaned everything! EVERYTHING. It was liberating. I threw a bag of stuff away and a box of stuff to donate to goodwill. I also tackled my inspiration wall.  It was wonderful, like I cleared out my head a bit.

<

I hung new art up, new images that I love from magazines and covered the drawers of my FIRA drawers.  I accomplished so much today and am ready to tackle the rest of the house.  The kid’s room and living room (which is covered with toys)is on at the top of the list.  I feel energized and excited to get this cleaning out of my system.

Now, I’m off to watch Glee!!! Yippeeeee!!

I made this to hang right by the door, just under the keys to help us remember our fabric grocery bags.  For a long time we were doing so well, but we’ve forgotten a few too many times in the last couple of weeks.

It’s made on a small 4 x 6 wooden plaque (I have tons of these from long ago) and used a small scrap of vintage fabric for the bag.

Another great way to remember is to give the job of remembering to your kids.  I know my guys LOVE to remind us when we are forgetting something.

If you are coming from watching my re-run show on Martha Stewart, welcome.  You can read more about my experience on the following posts…

Pinch me I’m dreaming
Big Day Giveaway
Q&A and Thank you

Looking back, I still can’t believe that I was on the show.  Seams very surreal.  When I see myself up on the screen with Martha, I think, “who is that girl?”  Just boggles my mind still.