New piano and trim!

Things seem to have finally settled down here at the Phelan household. It seems like our house has been such an array of paint brushes, buckets, drop cloths, disorganization, etc. We put all the new trim on our doors and it looks so nice. I love it. We have new interior doors, that over the past few months, we've slowly been changing them out. So, we were able to paint the trim before putting it up, but not the doors. So the last week I've been slowly covering up the nail holes with putty and painting over them, as well as working on painting the doors. I've painted three doors and have two left to do. I realized with the first two doors I was using way too much paint. I'm worried now that I may not have enough for the last two. I have to paint the doorways on them too, so that's more paint as well. Hopefully, it will be okay. We still need to put new door knobs on also. I just love how the new doors and trim gives our home a nicer, more updated look.

Even though the last month has been full of painting, I'm glad I did it and it's done (well, almost done). It's been a lot of hard work, but if that's what it takes to make my home pretty, then so be it. After all of this is done, my next project is to paint our bedroom and bed. I might wait a while on the bedroom, but the bed shouldn't be too bad. Right now it's kind of a honey wood color, and I want it to be black. I'll just have to spray paint it with primer, then paint it black and that should work.

My other wonderful news is that I finally got a piano!!! I'm so happy. I've been looking on craigslist for a long time for one. The one we got had been listed for a while, but it was more than I wanted to pay. It finally was lowered in price and I was able to make a lower offer that they accepted! It's in really good shape and was well taken care of before. We looked at it yesterday, and Dan with some other people, went and picked it up today. I just love having a piano in our home! As soon as I sat down to play it, I almost felt tears coming. A piano brings such a nice feeling to a home. I'm really looking forward to getting my piano skills back in shape. I haven't really played consistently since I was 18 and went to college. I feel so blessed to be able to have it. When Anna gets older, I'll get to teach her how to play! :)

P.S. I was editing the html and for some reason it made my previous paragraphs a link to one of the pictures. I tried to fix it, but couldn't figure it out.

Walking the Walk

Our little Anna is now full out walking!!! It is the cutest little thing to watch, seeing her little legs just chuggin' along...so precious. She's been able to take steps for a month and a half now. She kept getting better and better at it, but it wasn't until last Sunday that she really started to walk a lot. I think it was seeing a lot of other kids at church walking and she just started to really go at it.

She has been so much fun lately. One of her funniest little things is to bend over and lean on her head. She's been doing it for a few weeks now, but just the last few days, we have had more fun with it. I started to peek at her in between her legs and she started to giggle, she thought it was so funny. Then, she started to reach her hand out between her legs to grab my hand. Then, we've started to tickle her legs. Oh, the fun never stops!

She looks so silly!

Another new fun activity has been this beach ball. I introduced this to her a few months ago, but since she could only crawl, it wasn't much fun. She discovered it a few days ago and now it's just about the funnest toy for her. I got it for free from work a year ago. So we get free fun. Plus, I have another one, should this one ever get destroyed. She loves to walk around with it. Then, I'll come and hit it out of her hands and play keep away. She LOVES it when I do that. Oh, endless entertainment. :)

Here, she is just being her usual curious self. This is a box of some wall hangings I took down when painting and have decided to put them up somewhere else, just don't know where yet. She likes to drop toys in there.
Here, Dan is reading the paper and Anna LOVES anything that we're paying attention to. If we're acting interested in something, guaranteed that she'll come trotting over and want it. She likes to just walk over and sit on the paper while Dan is reading. It is so funny.

Anna will be one year in only 12 days! Where did the time go? We love her so much and are so grateful she's our little baby.

Busy Busy Busy!!!

My life lately has revolved around painting and I'm really starting to get sick of it, yet I want things to get done, so I keep at it. I have painted Anna's room, the kitchen, the family room and hallway, all in a week in a half. I'm now in the process of painting the trim for our new doors, plus some decorative wood that will go with the trim. I will also need to paint the new doors we have up. However, I'm glad that things are finally getting done around here. I've been wanting to get our house painted ever since we moved in!

The family room looks nice. However, the color is much lighter than I wanted. In dim light, it's hard to tell it's really even painted. I was hoping for something like the kitchen. When you look at it, the color just kind of jumps out at you and you notice it right away. That doesn't happen so much with the family room. I wish it was darker, but oh well. I'm not about to go and repaint it. I think I would kill myself if I did. Lol. Here are some before and after pictures.

The new color...
We still need to paint this doorway, door and trim, but this is how all the new trim will look on our doors.

In this light, it's really hard to see a difference, but it's there.

Also, when Dan and I were painting, he tells me to look up and this is what I saw:

He's just such a sweetie.

So tomorrow we're going to start putting up the trim around the doors. I'll post pictures when that's done. I think it's going to look really nice.

Another project I worked on today is this metal stand and magazine rack. These are some finds I got an some garage sales last Saturday. Today I primed them and painted them with a spray can. My hand is now sore from holding down on the can for so long. Here are some before and after pictures.

Ta-da!!!
This isn't their true color. It's actually darker, more of a brick red. I didn't use the flash, because it looked really bad. But no flash, doesn't depict it's real color. I think they turned out nice.

I love getting stuff for cheap and making it look new. I also LOVE garage sales. I got so much stuff for so cheap. I got some toys, books, and clothes for Anna. Some cute picture frames that I will paint. I have some cute ideas in mind for them. Dan got some stuff for cheap too. LOVE IT!

Okay, well that's it and an update for a while. I feel like I will be painting for the next month until all of this is done. Let's just say we're helping to keep Lowes in business lately. :)

My New Italian Kitchen!

I painted the kitchen on Monday and I LOVE LOVE LOVE it!!! Ever since serving a mission in Italy, I decided I wanted an Italian theme kitchen. I finally got my wish. The day started with me going to Lowes at 7 am to pick up a ton of stuff for the house. Trim for all of the new doors, plus other decorative wood blocks for them, new vents, paint, etc. I was there forever. I got home, put Anna down for a nap and start painting. The kitchen was so easy compared to Anna's room. The big stuff didn't take too long. It was the trim on the top and bottom, and touchups that seriously took as long, if not longer, than the actual painting of the kitchen. I still need to do some touchups on the bottom, at the floor boards, but I'll get to that later. 

Then today, I went to Michaels to get the wall shelves I found there last week. They are perfect, exactly what I wanted. AND I had two 50% off coupons, so I got them both for half price. I also picked up two black frames, that were 40% off their original price, for some Italian-type prints that I have. We got them up and it looks so good! The pictures don't quite do it justice. It looks a lot better in person. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, I think it will look better. I keep looking in the kitchen and just smiling because it looks so much nicer than it did previously. I'm just so happy that we finally got it done. I've been waiting 8 months for this to happen. 

We're eventually going to put in a new chandelier, but we have to do some rewiring. The one there is really ugly. 




I'm going to put some stuff up between the window and cabinet, as well as above the stove. 

I've also decided I'm going to put up wine red curtains on the windows and sliding glass door. Plus, I'm going to recover our dining room chairs in a similar color. I think the red will really help to give some contrast. I'm also going to buy some black vinyl and put up different sayings. I think it will be really cute. It's not quite finished, but I'm just so happy with it. Now, on Thursday we're going to paint the living room and I'll post pictures of that. 

Anna's New Bedroom

After months of talking about painting Anna's room, I finally got it done! However, not without some stress and mishaps. I started with the pink and it was way too dark. It looked awful. So after two trips to Lowes to get it lightened and to buy white paint to mix in, I finally got it lightened to an acceptable color. I also had to buy  primer to cover up the first pink and paint over what I had done. That added a couple of hours to the whole project. Had the colors been right, I could have easily finished in less time. Oh well, live and learn. :) It's funny too because I look at the walls and it seems like such a simple paint job, but it took hours and hours to finally have it all finished. I mean, I didn't fix my hair for two days, the house became a disaster because Anna's stuff was all over, I didn't have time to clean much, etc. It was so nice on Wednesday to actually wear a cute outfit and not grubby paint clothes. :)

It's still not what I had in mind. I was hoping for something a little lighter pink. The pictures make it look a little lighter than it really is. Also, the brown is a little too warm, I should have chosen a darker color. So even though it's not quite what I had in mind, I still think it turned out pretty cute. We also put up trim around the middle. Dan has a saw that will cut angles, so the trim was actually pretty easy to do and it really helped to pull the look together. 

Excuse the mess on her dresser. I was just putting things back together when I took the picture. :)

I'm now working on painting some wooden shelves and picture frames for the walls. I also have some brown vinyl that I'm going to put up with her name and some other cute sayings. Luckily, my Cricut machine will cut vinyl, so it's a lot cheaper than buying pre-cut phrases. At Michaels those things cost between$15-20! Just for a little phrase. I got 2 sheets of 12"x24" for $6 (had a 40% off coupon) that will make about the same amount of words, if not more. I'm also contemplating buying some pink vinyl and cutting out circles to put on the brown. I haven't quite decided for sure if I will do that. 

I'm going to paint the shelves white. 

I'm going to glue the flowers on them and paint the frames in different patterns of pink, brown, and white.

 

I'm just happy I finally got it done. We're now starting to paint the kitchen and living room. Finding the right shade of paint is such a pain! You find a color on the paint swatches that looks nice, but once the whole wall is that color, you realize it's not quite what you wanted. I bought a little can of paint and did little patches all over the kitchen and family room. The color I have is nice in the kitchen, but too dark in the family room, I think. It's so hard to decide! Anyways, hopefully in the next week, we'll get it all done and I'll post some more pictures. :)