Art for the Laundry Room

I'm sure you all remember the newly painted laundry room that I showed you in this post. Well I decided that it really needed some art to spruce it up a bit. I got a 2-pack of canvases for $6 at AC Moore last week and figured it was time to put one to use! I took one of the canvases and spray painted it with white paint to cover the slightly tan tint to the cheaper canvas.

 I then found a chunky hanger that we have with a cute little swirl inside of it. I carefully measured to find the exact center of my canvas eyeballed to find the middle of the canvas. Then I simply traced the outline of the hanger very carefully.

Here is what it looked like once I finished tracing it. Then I took lime green paint and filled in the outline.

The first layer of paint was really splotchy, so I used two coats for a nice solid look. I really love the way that it turned out!

Check back in a few days and I will show you where this cute little baby ended up! I love it!

We Rock!

So, the last real post I did was to show you all the lovely mulch that we spread out in front of our house. Well after a lot of hard work...and a little miscalculation as far as how many scoops that we were going to need, I bring you the back yard! We decided after much deliberating that we wanted to go with white river rocks for the back yard in place of the mulch. Here is what we had before:

 It was a little on the rough side. The mulch was faded and old and I needed to pull weeds realllll bad. I pulled weeds for hours before we laid the rocks. It was lots of fun.....

Once we got all of the weeds done, we started to lay the rock. One. Shovel. at. a. time. It took forever. And since we didn't want to buy too much up front, we made three different trips to get the rocks. It also just happened to be a million degrees out and very sunny both days that we worked on this little project! But the after is so much better that it was totally worth it!

 This is the view when you walk out of our basement door.  I personally think it would be fun someday if we added a paver patio from the basement door that ran over to where the rocks are. But who knows if we will ever get around to that. Certainly no time soon. And I think the husband would need more convincing.

 We are thinking that the deck needs to be re-stained or painted. The previous owner must not have let the wood cure properly before he stained it, because the stain has all but worn off and it doesn't look quite right.

 This is the little area between the deck and the house. (where the water pours off of the roof and was making the mulch look terrible) We have had one storm since we put the rocks out and they still look good! And those little solar lights are amazing! They case little star shapes on the rocks and it looks really neat at night. Maybe I will try to get a picture for you guys!

 And this was such a pleasant little surprise! One of the fun things about your first year in a house is that you never know what plants are going to sprout up! I don't even remember seeing plants here last Summer when we bought the house, but these beautiful calla lilies came up! And they are my favorite flowers!

Needless to say, we really love the back yard now. However, I mowed the grass back there for the first time this week and it was not my favorite thing to do!

This is becoming a habit...

I am SO sorry that I have been royally failing at being a blogger lately. With not having internet at home and not wanting to spend my whole lunch break at work, my blogging time has been seriously diminished. Trust me, I have a TON of super amazing stuff to share with you guys! Just give me a couple of days and I will hit you with some major eye candy! LOVE you guys!

We Mulched!

We have been in debate for a while about what we wanted to do to replace the dingy, faded old mulch that the previous owners of our house left for us. The great debate has been white rocks, black mulch or red mulch. The other day my hubby just took the plunge and went to Home Depot to get black mulch (which had my vote!). I came home from work one day to freshly laid, lovely black mulch. This was my view when I pulled in!

 I love how fresh it makes our plants look. I am a lover of dark mulch. Always will be!

 It makes our whole front yard look so fresh and crisp. Everything looks so much better!

 Yeah our driveway feels like its getting more and more cracked. We are not sure if it was beforehand and we just didn't realize it or if the winter made it worse. May or may not have to fix that. hm...

Now as for the back yard, we have had a hard time deciding what to do. We have some funky drainage issue with the gutters on the back of our house. (This may have contributed to our leaky basement). Basically, any time that we have a hard rain the water pours over the edge of the gutter and splashes onto the mulch. This washes it away and makes a muddy mess. So we have been contemplating rocks so as to combat this issue. This, however, is its own blog post. I'll fill you in soon!

Sometimes I just wing it.

The other night Michael and I were invited to dinner at friends of ours from church's place. I was getting off work late the night before and only about 30 minutes before we were supposed to be there the day of, but I wanted to bring dessert. So I was trying to think of something really good, but easy and quick. After thinking for a while for a few minutes, I decided to just kinda make it up as I went. I wanted to make a fruit pizza with brownie crust. Now I know this isn't rocket science, but I wasn't feeling looking up a recipe so I just decided to make it up as I went. First, you start with a pizza stone:

 Then I cut out a circle of parchment paper to keep the batter from spreading. This was counter-productive but it was a nice thought.

 I used yummy chewy fudge brownie mix and baked it per the instructions on the box. Word to the wise, you may want to bake it slightly less time than the box calls for since its spread thinner.

 Once its all mixed up, you just pour it out onto your stone and bake it.

Then I pulled out my second love my KitchenAid and started to whip up the frosting.

I used one package of regular and one package of fat free cream cheese. You may opt to use just regular if you want it to taste as amazing as possible. Or both fat free for something a little healthier. I decided to get the best of both worlds.

I whipped the cream cheese, added some vanilla and sugar until it tasted right, and beat it well.

 It was super thick so I added just a little milk and whipped it more until it was creamy. This really was just me winging it until it tasted right. Fake it til you make it! :)

As you can see, my batter spread over the edge of the parchment anyway. So much for keeping it pretty.

 I spread the icing on and let it chill over night. When I got home the next day I sliced some strawberries and bananas and spread them on the pizza.

And then I drizzled it with chocolate syrup.

I have made one of these before, but topped it with M&Ms and it was delish! If you ever need an easy peasy dessert on the fly, this is the way to go! And it was really amazingly good. Have you ever made something similar? I know Pampered Chef has recipes for this. I also thought it would be good to top it with walnuts for a banana split type thing. I would love some ideas!

Laundry Room Makeover...Finally!

Well here is a little of what we have been up to this weekend. Since we refinished the basement, the laundry room was kind of an eyesore. It was the only room that we never fully redid and honestly it just took a backseat. Well Saturday I found myself in an unfamiliar situation where I realized that I was completely free all afternoon. No homework. No plans. And hubby was golfing. I had some items to return to WalMart and had a little $7 credit, so I decided to buy paint. This literally happened while I was in WalMart. No premeditation. No comparing paint chips....nada.

Here is just a hint of what the laundry room looked like pre-paint. Please notice those awful unpainted boards around the ceiling. I have no clue why they never painted them.

And no, our washer and dryer don't match. But they came with the house. and they work. So they are great with me!

Our waterproofing system also left this lovely little thing around the bottom of the walls that we can't cover. SUCH an eyesore.

I chose a really pretty icy blue color for the walls. Very subtle but not white or grey. And then I used some leftover trim paint to cover those ugly boards. MUCH better.

And because I did an Amazon textbook buyback, I had a nice little Amazon gift card so I ordered a set of baskets. At the time I just got them because I just wanted a set. But when I decided to do this little impromptu makeover, I knew where they were going!

Once the paint dried, I made hubby hang these leftover shelves that we took down from the way that the laundry room used to be, right over the washer and dryer. It just made sense to have the daily use items right within reach rather than having to walk to the stuff.

So here is the view from the door. I think it looks SO much better now! I have a few other plans for this room so stay tuned!

Well there you have it! A much brighter, happier laundry room. Stay tuned for other little tweaks! I have some awesome ideas for art/decor. And we may hang a few more shelves. They left us tons. Just not sure where we will hang them and it we even need to. Sorry for the lack of presence friends!

Dry Erase Message Plate

I saw these over at EAD Designs and HAD to have them! You can view them by CLICKING HERE. They are only $2 a piece and they are SO cute! And super easy to apply. I actually made this one for my cousin as a wedding gift. Her kitchen has burgundy in it. They come in a ton of colors! I Just went and picked out a pretty white plate and a black wrought iron plate stand.

I ordered a bunch of the decals figuring I would use a couple for our house and could save the rest for gifts. I love the look of the plate stand, but I am thinking that I may buy a plate hanger for ours and hang it on the wall. Then I may try to buy a pretty dry-erase marker if they make such a thing and hang it from a ribbon or some jute. I'll have to show you when I do it! (I really am just a procrastinator lately! It takes literally 5 minutes to make one!) Wouldn't this be so cute to keep on the counter by the phone for messages?! If we had a land line I would be all over that! So I figure near the door would work too for our current living situation. :)

Go browse their site! They seriously have some amazing products. I am hooked. They are excellent quality and the lowest prices I have seen for vinyl decals online! I have quite a long wish list!