A Pantry Face-Lift.

When we bought our house, over three years ago, we were super excited to have a full sized pantry. It is part of the addition the previous owners added, so it isn't exactly in the kitchen, but close enough. It also was never totally finished.
As embarrassing as it is to share these photos, this is basically how it has looked for the past 3.5 years.

Words that come to mind, anyone? I have a few: dirty, dingy, disorganized, gross, yuck, grab-my-cereal-and-get-outta-there!

This is one of those rooms where we have talked about painting, at least the trim, about a million times but have never done it, because, well, its a pantry. A couple of days ago I surprised, even myself, and just dove right in.

Because I started this project with a zero dollar budget, I looked to our garage and rustled up two old paint cans and decided to mix my own color and pray that I had enough.

I ended up with this dark and moody green. I emptied out both of those paint colors, so this was as much as I was going to get, and I knew it wouldn't cover all the walls, and honestly I didn't want the entire wall to be a solid cover. I wanted to get weird. Here is where it ended up....

My father-in-law took this photo and I think it is gorgeous in here

Words that come to mind now are...."I love my pantry, and I think I will just plop myself down right in this handy chair and eat my huge bowl of cereal here."

Steve doesn't really understand why I totally styled and decorated a, ahem, pantry. But my feelings on it are: why not? Why does a pantry have to be boring just because nobody but us sees it? Our home is for us, and I see this room all day long. And plus, I am way more likely to keep a room clean and organized if I don't want to hide said room's beauty under clutter and grime.

This project took about a day to complete, and a grand total of $2.29. The only thing I bought was some acrylic black paint to darken up the green. Like I said, I reused old paint, and actually already had the curtain that I originally bought for our bedroom from Urban Outfitters, but it didn't work quite right. It works perfectly right in this space.

We are a little low on food storage right now, so as we fill in that supply the yellow picture at the top of the shelf may have to find a new home, but for now it makes me happy when I see it up there.

Full disclosure: If you love Emily Henderson as much as I do, you are probably thinking my pantry looks strangely familiar to a room she did, and you are totally right. I was heavily inspired by this room of hers. Can you tell?


So there you have, the story of how our pantry became pretty much my favorite room in our house. Who knew?

IKEA Treasures

It is no secret that I have an IKEA addiction. So much of the furniture in our home is from IKEA - its hard to beat great style and affordable prices, but I am getting ahead of myself here.
About 6 months ago I bought these vintage teal dining chairs, from an antique store, without Steve approving them (a big no, no.)

 and he has barely tolerated them but allowed me to keep them because I thought they were so adorable. Then we discovered the wheels were denting up our extremely soft "hard" wood floors. That was a deal breaker, even for me. So I have been on the hunt for new captain chairs for a little while now.

The other night we took a family outing to IKEA and Steve and I both saw these chairs and they caused us to BOTH pause and say, "hmmm, those might works just wonderfully." (and they are no longer $129, they are $79 at IKEA these days by the way).


Steve was 100% ready to impulse it and buy the two chairs then and there, you know, just drop close to $200 bucks on chairs, no big deal. Aack. No way.
Still in love with the sleek and modern design, I decided to check craigslist and had a stroke of luck. I found two nearly brand new Tobias chairs (the ones pictured above) for less than half the cost. I bought them from the nicest pregnant lady, so that was doubly nice.

Just as a refresher, this is how I styled our dining room when we first bought our house over three years ago....

I love how our dining room (room? haha, more like an "area" but I can be delusional if I want!) has evolved from where I started. These chairs really modernize the room and make it feel so updated and fresh.

Although we didn't impulse buy the Tobias chairs at IKEA the other new, we did. however, impulse this cool circus tent.  It is so hard not to spoil your kids, because it is so dang fun to buy them things they love. And Avery and Heidi both love this tent. 

I made an A-Frame tent for the girls last summer, but Avery never really like it because it wasn't completely enclosed, and she couldn't stand up in it. Our entire family can squeeze in this thing together, even Steve's big lanky, handsome body :) No buyers remorse here!

Other News

March is definitely my favorite part of living in Mesa, especially since we have a beloved orange tree. Right now the orange blossoms are in full bloom and our backyard smells like total heaven. Add in warm days running through sprinklers and cool evening spent at the park, it just doesn't get better than that. The only thing bad about March is it is fleeting, I want to hang on to it forever, but much too soon the summer heat consumes me and makes me grouchy from May through October.

Add in warm days running through sprinklers and cool evening spent at the park and it just doesn't get better than that. The only thing bad about March is, it is fleeting, I want to hang on to it forever, but much too soon the summer heat consumes me and makes me grouchy from May through October.

In other news we bought a zoo membership on Saturday. It was insane, and mostly we were insane for braving it on a Saturday. So many people!

This is best photo I have gotten of Avery in MONTHS, getting her to look at the camera is no small feat.

When it was time to leave, Avery was not ready, of course. So Steve just scooped her up and did the "football" hold and we marched out of there with a screaming, kicking, red faced child. I actually even overheard someone talking about us, they muttered as we walked past, "Child abuse". Ha! Oh childless person, your day will come, just you wait.

While we were looking at the Zebra's, Avery kept saying, "Crab, I want to see a crab." And pretty much every other animal that wasn't a crab (which was all of them). She was not impressed with this crab-less zoo, which is probably why she decided to be so "crabby". I'm so funny.

We left there feeling pretty darn defeated by our crazy two year old, so on Monday I decided I would be a glutton for punishment and go back to the zoo...by myself. I was there for almost 4.5 hours, determined to not leave there with a screaming Avery again. I failed. I failed miserably. Good thing we bought a zoo pass! (note heavy sarcasm).

In other, other news Avery pooped in the toilet for the first time yesterday! She did go in her diaper later, but it was still really exciting. And today she went poop in the toilet every single time she had to go. I feel like a weight has been lifted off of me, but I am trying to not get too excited in case this is a weird phase. Those who follow this blog or know me, know that I have been dealing with "poop" issues, to say the least, for the past year, and it has about broke my spirit as a mother. Today was a definite win in that area.
Getting her to go pee in the toilet is a whole other story, I can not get that girl to just tinkle in the dang potty for anything. I always heard it is harder to get the poop part down, but like most things with Avery, we are doing it backwards apparently.

In other, other, other news, Steve is on Spring Break right now = amazing. He is busy studying for and taking his certification test for School Administration, and doing home projects and being the best dad and husband ever. Hopefully, later this week, we will get out to the lake so this man of mine can do some much needed fishing.

The End.

A Fun Before and After

I finished a really fun chair today. It was pretty darn tedious, but I learned a lot doing this chair, which feels good. And at any rate, it has a really dramatic before and after, which is always satisfying to me.

Obviously I painted that dingy frame, which was an undertaking for me because painting furniture is not in my comfort zone. Thank goodness for my spray gun!
I love breathing new life into old chairs that have such potential.
The end.

A Modern Couch

Are you sick of reading about my upholstery stuff yet? Because that is basically all the "news" I have to report these days. And also, I get pretty dang excited when I finish a project and basically want to show everyone (I'm like a four year old "look what I did! look what I did!" I know, but I can't help it!).
So without further ado....look what I did!

Before.....


After!

Its actually sort of a boring couch. But its got a modern feel to it and it is totally neutral which makes it much easier to sell. If I thought I would be keeping it, I would have done something a little more bold I think.

So there you have it. Not much to talk about with this couch. Pretty darn straight forward...come to think of it, this was probably the smoothest project I have ever done. I would like to think that means I am just getting better, but in reality I know this was just and easy couch. 

Crossing my fingers that it sells quickly! I listed it for $475, does that sound reasonable to you? I always have a hard time deciding on the appropriate price!