Branching Out

Last Saturday, my little sister, Mary hosted a bridal shower for her sister-in-law who is getting married in 2 weeks. She asked us to come and help decorate. As always, Jill was very much the creative/decorative genius behind this all.

The wedding colors are lime green and brown. We tried to keep with that pallet.

This was the meal table. The menu was chicken salad sandwich, green salad, pasta salad, and strawberries. Yum! Believe me... it looked (and smelled) wonderful!)

Jill decorated these little cans for holding the utensils. They are just regular vegetable cans with with scrapbook papers modge-podged over it and cute ribbon.

Just a close up of the part of the food station.
This was the Dessert/Drink table.

These were mint truffles I made in the shape of hearts with the green and brown. I mostly just love the tray. We borrowed it from a neighbor. It is actually 2 separate cake platters on top of each other. Isn't it lovely?
The punch bowls.

And here is the guest of honor! Congratulations, Rachel!
Hope you had a great time!
(and don't you just love how she dressed to match the decor :) )

Jilll's Kitchen and Family Room

Today it was brought to my attention that I never uploaded some pictures. These pictures were obviously taken a couple of months ago, but lets face it. Everything always looks it's best when presented this way!

Here is Jill's Family Room
(taken while standing next to the kitchen sink)

Here is the picture of the kitchen.

(taken while standing in front of the TV)

The kitchen table

Hmm... looking all these makes me excited for Christmas again!

Goodbye my beloved baby's room

Isn't it sad to say goodbye to so many happy memories? Goodbye my little baby...

Growing Pains

Sam has informed me that as a three-year-old he is too old to still be getting rocked to sleep with milk every night and then gingerly laid in his crib. I guess I am having some growing pains. Sadly, I decided it was time to upgrade him. The upside is that I got to spend time doing what I really enjoy... if only he would still sleep in the crib! I have a few more details to add to this room, but it may be awhile before I get this posted.

Before Beths...

I have officially updated Beth's house with what few before pictures we had. I did go through with a video camera so we technically have the whole house, but I only took a couple of actual pictures. Go check it out now.

Before!

I was going through more disks this morning and I found the before pictures from the basement makeover. So, please marvel at how far it came! Again, this makeover took place last fall--October to be exact. I started with making a new post to show the before pictures, but then decided it looks much more impressive side by side so here is the link to the now edited post with the before's and after's. Also, I was able to find a few before shots to Beth's house, but I can't find them now, so check back soon to see the amazing changes right here!

Cheryl's Hale (for all those hau'oli's out that there... that's Hawaiian for home and it is pronounced hah-lay)

Today, we will be touring Cheryl's house. We will start in the master bedroom because this is the room that got us started on this house. Jill and I have kicked ourselves so many thousands of times for not doing a before picture on this room because it is completely unrecognizable from what it was originally. At first, this door was never allowed to be opened because it was just too embarrassing to think of someone coming in and seeing it. Strangely, none of the furniture has changed. Just a new coat of paint and the accessories.

Theme here is island, but not tropical...

The master bath...

This is my kitchen. Here, I took the before's, but where are they? Unknown. This wasn't too drastic of a change. The changes were the countertops, backsplash and appliances. Still, I love it! I refinished the table a year or 2 ago. It was originally an all mahogany stain which we really liked, but the kids did a great job scratching it up so I sanded off the top and gave it a natural stain then painted the rest black. Hides a lot more with the kids!

The backsplash is a glass tile mosaic. I kept seeing this on HGTV and I fell in love with it. Dave wasn't totally sold (still isn't 100%), but he let me have my way. What a great guy!

This is the nursery: Hawaiian island theme

The office (if only it always looked this clean):

Here is the before of the downstairs bathroom:

...and the after...

This is our guestroom (jungle theme).
Any of you friends and family who are just itching to come and see us can stay here!
Next is the boys room. Cowboy theme, obviously.

One thing in this room I really love is the window treatment. I got horseshoes and my brother welded them together for me, then I got an old "roping" rope from some friends and looped it through the horseshoes and took clothespins that had been aged and used them to hang up the curtain.
Last fall, Dave and I decided we needed to be more physically fit and so we should get some exercise equipment. The most logical place to put it was the in the basement. Of course, if you are going to have exercise equipment, you need a TV to watch while you are on it. Well, one thing let do another and, here we are! We'll start with the before pictures:

This is how the craft room started out:

This is my fabulous craft room now. I just love it! Now if only I would use it more...

This is a pass through window that looks out into the family room.

At first, we didn't have a family room downstairs, we had a big open toy room. As you can see, there was absolutely nothing exciting about it, but it served the purpose for the kids.

This is what we started with...

...and what we finished with! Throughout these pictures, you can kind of tell that there is carpet in part and not in other. I had some carpet pulled out, then I cleaned and sealed the concrete so we could go with the natural concrete look and thus giving it the more modern/industrial look.

Here is a little big closer look at the cabinets. There were originally just a dark, base oak with the laminate center panel. I painted them black, then put the sheet metal over the center panels on the uppers. Those black and white dots are magnets. Eventually, this will be a computer station for the kids, so they will be able to put homework or whatever on there.

Behind the blue wall, is the stairs going up, that's why the wall behind this one is brown.
It is to blend with the upstairs.

Here, the lighting is bad, but at least you can see that we did get around to putting in the exercise equipment that inspired this whole project in the first place. (the wavy things behind the elliptical are actually mirrors, hard to tell). The window in the back is the pass through into the craft room.