MMM Chili

I'm sitting here at work, super full! Why? Because today our office held the our very own Chili Taste Fest! I got to sample 5 delicious kinds of chili for lunch! It was a great way to reward ourselves for all of our hard work lately, plus enjoy the taste of the season and each other's company!

MMMM Chili!

Modern Living Room

This year I have volunteered to host the family Christmas festivities, for the first time entirely on my own. This endeavor has really inspired me to fast track my home renovations to be completed by the holidays.

I have already completed both bathrooms and the outdoors but biggest undertaking is the living room. My home is a tri-level and the living room was originally a basement. It has been a good 10-12 years since the living room was last painted, decorated or given new furniture.

The blue living room (yes, blue) had to go. Luckily I had a few elements working in my favor. The blue carpet had been replaced with beige carpet 2 years ago, and we have wood paneling and new brown lazy-boy recliner. I had also recently purchased those great dark brown lamps I mentioned in a previous post.


So really, while this room is large in area, it simply needed paint, furniture and a few new accessories. I had already been saving for new furniture so I simply needed to find a set I liked and the accessories to go along with it.

After 3 trips to the furniture store and handfuls of paint samples, the furniture was ordered and I now had a two week window to get the painting done and the old furniture out! The last time the living room was painted, we hired someone, and it took them an entire weekend. Making a time estimate based on the previous time, I was anticipating at least one whole weekend for painting, but it only took me 6 hours. I rock!

Once the furniture was in, I spent several lunch hours at Bed Bath & Beyond, Target and JC Penny's searching for the perfect throw pillows to accent my decor. I ended getting the 2 brown pillows at Pennys, the red ones at Target and the purple ones at Bed Bath & Beyond. The toss pillows that came with the furniture were infused with blue, so clearly they could not be used.

The other decor items consist of framed family photos in great new wrought iron frames displayed on a new bookshelf with other vacation souvenirs. The walls will be decorated with artwork I purchased in Paris on vacation several years ago. I need to purchase one additional piece of wall art and a new HDTV, and that is it!

Everything is complete, except of course hanging the art on the walls and installing that new TV!

A Bathroom On The Beach Part 2

As indicated in a previous post, I transformed my bathroom into a beachy retreat for just $48. Well the cost of my re-model has increased by $150, but well worth it. I decided to ditch the ugly black and white linoleum floor for a neutral, modern ceramic tile matching tile molding, instead of that wood.

The room was about 40 square feet, and the tile was inexpensive at only $0.88 a square foot, but the molding tile was almost $3 for each section! The $150 also included the grout, mortar and grout sealer.

I am very happy with the end result; this tile looks great, and also increased the value of my home! Plus the overall cost of the room still comes in at under $200!

A Tuscan Shed

In order to prolong the life of my shed, and improve the appearance of my backyard, I gave my shed an inexpensive face lift with some rust-olem.


I don't have a before photo, but just picture this shed with gray walls and a black rusted roof and doors.

When I went shopping for Rust-Olem, there were not many colors to choose from in the non-spray variety. I began with the professional rusty metal primer, because the roof of the shed was severely rusted. Then I choose the Gloss Almond color for the shed walls and Leather Brown for the roof and doors.

In just a couple hours my shed went from rusted to looking brand new and I won't have to invest in a new one for several more years. I got many compliments on it from our neighbors. Amazing what a new coat of paint can do! (The picture above is a monarch on the butterfly bush in front of the shed)

A Manicured Landscape

In front of my tuscan-colored home, we have a beautiful lawn and a bricked in garden area. For as many years as I can remember our garden area was occupied by ground-cover with a few shrubs for accent. It was overall to green, with not much color.

I learned earlier in the year when I was told to cut back the ground cover, as you must from time to time, I was allergic. I broke out in hives after touching it. All the more reason to rip it out and beautify the space with mulch and perennials.

This year, I got the first 2 steps complete. Over the course of a few hours here and there I had removed all the ground cover (wearing gloves to prevent the hives of course). I then raked the soil evenly and filled it in with mulch. Next year, I plan to accent the shrubs we have with pot of annuals, in a red/orange/yellow color scheme to compliment the butter color of our brick.


On the right side of the house (pictured above), I was able to get some perennials (mums) in the ground and a new red rhododendron planted. The rhododendron will have red flowers in the spring/summer, while the mums will remain green until late summer/fall. This will provide a great burst of color to this side of the house throughout the year and will compliment our existing japanese maple nicely. I had intended to plant an annual where the white alyssum is now this year, but the alyssum came back from the previous year even though it wasn't supposed to. Next year it will be an annual in red, orange or yellow.




This year, I will plant some tulip and daffodil bulbs on the left side (pictured above) of the house to provide spring color before the pots are completed for the year. 1-2 dark red mums may also still be planted on the left.

I am very excited about the clean look of my front yard and was even more thrilled when my aunt, a master gardener, complimented the "groomed, manicured" look of my yard!

A Bathroom In The Tropics

While the beach and the tropics may be related, when it comes to decor styles, they can be very different. When someone says beachy to me, I see blues, seashells, exc. As illustrated from my previous post, my half bath is the epitome of beachy.

This post, however is about my first home improvement project - the upstairs bathroom, which is done in a fun tropical style. Until recently, my upstairs bathroom was dark blue - my parents favorite color, practically everything we had was blue. (Now I only have one beachy bathroom. That is of my blue home decor, unless a guest room is done to match the beachy bathroom). So the bathroom had one wall that was dark blue, with white sponge painting. The other walls were white with blue sponge painting. Outdated brass fixtures, and a dingy white medicine cabinet completed the room.


I was tired of this blue bathroom, so my mother asked me what color I would like it to be. Anything but blue really. She suggested mauve. Ok this is not 1950. Mauve, that could be worse than blue. And seriously, the bathroom was pink before my parents re-did it blue.

I suggested green. She agreed. I brought home several paint samples and she kept insisting that it had to be this light green. Well number one, I don't want hospital green. And this blue paint is very dark, hence a darker color needed to be selected. Plus, only a select number of colors would coordinate with the gray counter top, which was not in the budget to be replaced. I choose Behr Herbal Green. She didn't like the color, but I went ahead and bought it anyway. The ceiling was painted Polar Bear White.

I also choose all brushed nickel fixtures, including a new faucet and light fixture. I also knew the decor would be palm trees, because hello - green. I found the perfect palm tree shower curtain and matching window curtains at Bed Bath and Beyond, on clearance! Then I got new towels and shagged bath rugs at Kohls, along with tropical bath accessories such as the waste basket and soap dispenser!

I completed the room by painting the medicine cabinet frame with a brown matching the palm tree bark on the shower curtain. I took the same green wall paint and went over the design with a q-tip. Now that cabinet looks brand new! I also hung a framed painting of a palm tree that we already had in the house.


So downstairs we have the beach, and upstairs the tropics!

A Bathroom On The Beach

Feeling motivated, I decided to take on Sunday morning's project late Saturday night. With only a gallon of paint and a bit of effort and creativity, I transformed my half bath from yellow ugliness (really, who paints a bathroom YELLOW) into a coastal paradise.


Wanting an inexpensive upgrade to my bathroom, I choose a beautiful blue paint to coordinate with my white and chrome fixtures, and the white closet doors. Plus I already had many beach inspired wall plaques that I had collected here and there on clearance, knowing one day I would use them. All I had to buy was the paint, new bath rugs and a new soap dispenser!


With the walls decorated, the shelf was the only place needing something. I put my creative ingenuity to good use to create a great centerpiece. Using shells that I had collected during many Florida vacations, plus a box of polished shells from my cousins in the Kwajalein Islands that was just sitting around and an old unused vase, my centerpiece was born. For the finishing touch, I got a piece of twine, and tied it around the vase, attaching 2 sand dollars to the twine ends. I accented the vase on the shelf using the 2 seahorse candle holders I scored at Kohl's for $3 on clearance!



Total Cost For This Project: $48

Paint: $22 Behr Horizon Haze - the photos don't do the color justice!
New Rug: $14
Soap Container: $12