"What a Wonderful Place to Pee."

One of my favorite transformations we've done in this house is turn the powder room into a cuter powder room. That room before was...bad. Real bad.

The first thing we had to do was gut it. Got rid of the toilet, which - trust me - has seen better days. And that 1982 vanity had to go as well. I don't know why someone would need a ridiculous amount of storage for a half-bath, but i'm sure there's a cuter way to do it.

But anyway, gutting it included the premium (sike) linoleum tile that lined that poor, poor floor, and laying down some backer board.

We chose to lay slate tile. The hardest most pain-in-the-ass tile we have in the house (it's "natural" and uneven thus making it both hard to lay and to clean), but also the best looking.

Then came time for us to paint. We chose a light blue, because we're rebels. That's me in the pic below...and you can tell this project was done way back in 2008 because i have the short hair. Write that down.

VOILA. We got that vase at a flea market in Orlando for some reason. But it's good at holding sticks, i guess. We also got thicker baseboards (we did that all throughout the house) which classes it up that much more.

And we solved our storage crisis (?) sans vanity. See that vase up on the shelf? That actually started out as a candy-holder for our "candy bar" wedding favors. Now it holds toilet paper. Upgrade for us, downgrade for the vase.

We ended up keeping the original mirror. I don't know why, but i really like it...the whole white/cream mix thing.

And this...THIS...is my favorite part. We put up some crown moulding and painted the ceiling taupe. The moulding gives the room character while the darker color brings the ceiling down a bit, making the room seem less tube-like.

Here are the befores&afters:

Before

After

Before

After

So here's a formal invitation: come pee in our house. Let us know what you think.

Belly Casting

During my first pregnancy, my friends thought it'd be a good idea to get me a belly casting kit for Christmas to document my baby-smuggling. So i did it:

And it sat alone in the basement for 11 months. It wasn't until my daughter's first birthday that i decided to do something with it, so i grabbed by vase of fabric scraps and fabri-tac'd them to the cast.

And then i put it on display at her first birthday party to make everyone uncomfortable. (It worked.)

The second time around, i made a belly cast only because i did it the first time and i didn't want the second kid to be like, "what the eff, mom?" And i "upholstered" that one, too.

So now i have two belly casts sitting in the basement - don't know what to name them. If anyone out there has any suggestions with what to do with these casts (besides hanging them on the wall which i'll end up doing if i can't think of anything else, or turning them over and repurposing them as serving bowls), i'm all ears!

Fancy That.

I love silhouettes. I also love German chocolate. This post is about the former.

I've kind of taken to painting my own silhouettes ever since i made this one for my son's room:

It was totally free as i already had the gold and the black paint on hand, and i found the brand-new-still-in-the-packaging canvas on the curb for trash day. You heard me...i stole it from the trash. It was also free-hand, as you can probably tell because his antlers look totally different.

Moving on, i was looking for something to fill the enormous void on our bedroom wall since we'll never ever get around to mounting a TV on the wall. Enter my favorite wedding picture:

So i turned it into this:

(Yeah - it's propped up on the guest bed since i also do my crafting in that room as well. I don't have what people call a "studio." Or a "table.")

I started off by using Microsoft Paint (shut up) because i don't have any poster-making fancyware. I just cut and pasted parts of this pic into Paint and made them all the same size, then moved them over to Word and printed them out. LIke i said: no fancyware. Don't judge me.

Then i got at it with my coke nail/Xacto knife:

After i cut them all out, I taped them together and put 'em on the canvas:

I traced it with pencil first...

And then followed it up with paint:

Then i filled it in. This is how poor people do things.

And here it hangs!

And since i feel the need to defend myself...

Soon on the list of things to do: ceiling fan.