Kitchen Inspiration

As the kitchen in the new house needs to be renovated here are a few images that I have been drooling over looking at. I am hoping to combine things I like from each of them into one beautiful kitchen.

White cabinets grey counters source unknown

This is love Source Alice Lane

Loving the white cabinets and dark floors source style at home

This is more the look I am going for source Decorpad

Source Unknown

Source Decorpad

I must apologise for not knowing all the sources for the images if anyone can help I will update.

Have a great day.

We Bought A House

"Ever dream of buying a house gutting it and rebuilding so its perfectly you, well I'm doing just that! I bought a house, I'm renovating room by room making the most of every dollar".

Ok for those of you out there who are Sarah Richardson fans you will know I have just stolen her opening lines from Sarah's house but I thought it fitting.

Yep we bought a house!!!!!

We are gutting it room by room,

and hopefully it will be the home we want.

The only difference between Sarah's house and our house........ is the budget. We don't have over $100,000 to do the renovating, we have a mere $21,000.

So stick with me and I will share with you our renovation.

The House:

Not exactly my dream home but I have a vision, I just hope I can pull it all together on budget.

Bedroom Reveal

Many, many months ago I posted a picture of my youngest daughters room in the before state and promised an after picture, well 8 months later here are the after shots.  It didn't take me that long to complete the room just to get the pictures and write about it.  What spurred me into action is the fact we are moving yet again and the room was being packed up, so it was now or never for the photos.

Just to refresh, the before pictures:

and here are the after pictures:

Pretty in White, Teal and  a Hit of Pink

Bed Frame a Craigslist Find For Only $30

Feather Boa Wreath

Refinished Desk

Garage Sale Frames Painted Teal, Artwork Paper Napkins

Refinished Night Stands and Lamps

Linking To:

Cricut

Hi all, I hope you are having a great weekend. Mine has been very busy as the girls have a four day break and we have been making the most of it. By this I mean we have been shopping, shopping and more shopping.... Friday was spent getting Taylor's graduation dress which looks absolutely gorgeous on her....Saturday was spent doing the rounds of Garage sales and thrift stores where I picked up some goodies that I will post about later, but as the title implies I'm now the proud owner of a Cricut Expression Machine.

I have been after one for ages and as a belated birthday and mothers day gift Mr ASL told me to go and buy one today. So I did and I can't wait to try her out.

Here she is:

Hopefully I will be posting some projects soon that's if I ever get through the instruction manual. Wish me luck and if anyone would like to recommend the best cartridges I would really appreciate it.

Finally Finished, Well Almost

In my previous post I showed you the pics of my daughters room which was an absolute nightmare, it took me nearly a month to get the room to a state that I could actually put some paint on the walls.  I ended up having to put a skim coat of plaster on every wall and then sand it all.  It took two coats of primer and then two coats of paint and all of this work in a house I don't even own.  I hope the owner will appreciate all the hard work.

I still have a few finishing touches to do but on the whole the room is finished.  It took some work over the weekend to get it all done but my youngest daughter worked liked a Trojan helping me paint and sand the furniture to go in the room.  You see Taylor went away for 4 days to visit her friend in Alberta and we thought it would be a nice surprise for her if the room was finished when she got home.  She is 18 now and has been sharing a room with Cailin for the last 5 months so it was time to give her a space of her own.  Our surprise worked wonderfully, when she saw the room she cried.....

Here are a few pictures so that you can see the transformation, I will be sharing the before and after projects over the next couple of days.  Let me know what you think.

Still Looking for Artwork for this side of the room

Night Stand

Gallery Wall

Taylor's Photography

This is what it looked like before.

Sorry about the terrible pictures but Mr ASL had the good camera so I had to make do with my old one. I have added a picture of what the room looked like before for those of you who are viewing from a link.

Linking to:

Wallpaper

I think my New Years resolution should have been to prioritize, I have a heap of projects on the go and not one of them is finished.  I seem to jump from one thing to another and accomplish nothing.  Ok to start you know that I have repainted my youngest daughters room and have been promising to show you the reveal but unfortunately it's still not finished.  This is due to the fact that the furniture is half way painted and she does not want it all put together until she is not sharing the room with her sister.  This meant I had to start on the other bedroom which I thought would be a bit of a challenge but not nearly as hard as it's been.

Two weeks I have been working on this room and it's a mess.  Here is the before I started photo,

That's right blue walls and green polka dots, whoever lived in this house had absolutely no style.  You may think this would be an easy fix but wait.... they painted this over wallpaper that was starting to peel, so I hired a wallpaper steamer thinking this would be a weekend job, the steamer didn't work at all because it could not penetrate the paint, so for the last two weeks I have been stripping a little section at a time with  good old fabric softener and water.  The room looks like a disaster and to make matters worse whoever applied the wallpaper did it to unsealed walls which means that the paper on the plasterboard is coming off with the wallpaper.  At this point with the mess the walls are in I'm thinking that I may have to wallpaper the walls again, this is the room half way through.

Any suggestions!

Say A Prayer

This is just a short post today to ask all of you out in blog land to say a prayer for the people in Queensland who have lost everything in devastating floods. I was talking to my Dad last night and he was telling how bad it is. I went here this morning and was shocked to see just how much damage they have sustained.

I think this photo sums up what Australians are all about

Image courtesy of The courier Mail

If you could also share a prayer for the people in Lake Clifton Western Australia as they are battling a bush fire that was started by an arsonist.  I believe from the news reports that four homes have already been destroyed.

I find myself sitting here being very thankful that I am only facing a day of snow.

A New Year

I know I have been missing in action since before Christmas but having the girls and Mr ASL home it was hard to get any time to myself. They respectively went back to school and work yesterday so having spent most of the day getting the house back into order I decided today was going to be for me.

So as I type this I'm still in my PJ's at 1.30pm, I have spent most of the morning figuring out my new sewing machine which was a Christmas present. I bought some cheap cotton last week so that I could practice as unfortunately I did not inherit my mum's gift of sewing. I have managed to complete my first cushion cover which will be going into Cailin's room once it is finished.

On that note, I know I promised "After" pics and will post them soon, I have collected most of the accessories but I just need to come up with something to cover up the ugly power panel. If anyone has suggestions please feel free to let me know. I was contemplating just putting up a big cork board but I'm not sure how it will look being that it's not centred to wall and very close to the window.

Maybe something like this one over at Made By Girl

Well I had better get my butt into gear as it's nearly 2pm and I have to get ready to pick the girls up from school.

Have a great day.