Quick DIY Cork Coasters.

Here and there I've been working on our master bedroom refresh.  I promised myself and even declared to the blog-world that I would finish the space by the end of the year, but it just didn't happen.  I'm getting close.  As you can see here, it's all about the details now.  Once I check a few more things off my to-do list, I'll finally be D-O-N-E!!!

What's left, you ask?  Finding the right pillows (I've been on the pillow hunt for more time than I want to admit...I've fallen in love, but my budget never got the same warm and fuzzy feelings), DIY'ing some jewelry storage, pretty-ing up our exposed lamp cords (with paint or a DIY cord-cover project) and a DIY art canvas.

Since I've talked enough about what ISN'T done, let me prop myself back up on what I've actually finished: upped the cozy factor in our room with dark walls, installed our DIY lucite curtain rods, painted our DIY curtains, hung our TV gallery wall (sneak peek here), stenciled our gloss-on-matte accent wall (sneak peek here), hung our wall lamps, swapped out our focal point mirror, painted our old leaner mirror and DIY'ed some simple coasters for our nightstands.

You see, hubby and I drink a ton of water...and every night we each have a bottle or glass of water next to us in bed.  Normally I wouldn't be such a freak about putting a drink on a side table, but these "nightstands" are one of my favorite Craigslist makeovers I've ever completed.  

The thought of ruining one with a water ring makes me cringe.

So the easiest/cheapest/most-stylish solution I could come up with was painting a 4-pack of cork coasters from Michael's.

This project took all of 10 minutes, is embarrassingly easy and pretty much self-explanatory, so I feel silly even posting about it, but hey, I love how they turned out...so why not show them off?!

First, I gathered my supplies: 1) the coasters, 2) some left over paint samples and acrylic paints, 3) old paint brushes, 4) painters tape, 5) liquid gold leaf, 6) Krylon clear finish spray and 7) an old piece of cardboard to paint on.

Then I taped off different areas on the coasters and started painting!  I didn't have much of a plan for shapes or color placement.  I just crafted without thinking or measuring.

Once everything was painted, I used a Krylon clear spray to lightly coat each coaster 2 times to protect my award-winning paint job.

After the coasters dried, they were ready to go!  I love the colors and how pretty they look compared to the folded over paper towels we were using. ;)

High-five for super-simple, cheap projects!!!!  Happy Friday, friends! :)

More of Our Christmas Home...

Our great room wasn't the only place that got the holiday treatment this season.  I love to spread the Christmas cheer throughout our whole house...including our master bedroom.  I don't decorate much in there, but the few additions I make sure enhance the cozy feeling I get while snuggling in bed. Everything is better with some string lights...am I right?!

Do you guys decorate your bedrooms too?!  What is your favorite area of the house to decorate? Don't forget to check out our great room all decked out here! :)

Bedroom Puzzle.

Since we've lived in our fixer upper, I've been piecing together our master bedroom puzzle.  I thought I completed it, more than one time, but I was always wrong.  Pieces were missing or I was jamming the wrong shapes into the open gaps...

I'm not afraid to admit I struggle with this room.  I've painted and re-arranged it quite a few times in it's short life.  Yes, I've put a lot of effort into a room that still isn't done, but at least I can say I haven't settled for an "okay" space.  No ones end-of-the-day-retreat should be just "okay".

So I'm making a declaration for the whole world to hear...I will finish our master bedroom this year! I found the direction I want to go by stepping outside of my comfort zone (hello painting our room a dark color and then making it even darker by painting over my safety-color accent wall) and trusting my gut.  Plus, I have two big guns that are really helping my vision come to life.

One of those big guns is RugsUSA.  I've talked about them many times before (here, here and here) and have loved each and every rug I've purchase from them.  

Our master bedroom had been sporting a bold chevron rug for a while.  Here's a peek at it quite a long time ago.

The rug was the perfect punch in the room...untilllllll I decided to paint all the walls gray, and our bed frame is gray, and our bench is gray....and so, the gray print rug was just too. much. gray.  

Thankfully, I came across the perfect rug for our space while searching, where else but, RugsUSA! It's actually the the violet sister to our teal overdyed rug we have in our living room.  

At first I questioned whether I wanted two of the same rugs in our home, but that doubt quickly went out the window.  After all, we loooove our living room rug and the pop it makes in the space.  I was convinced this rug could do the same thing for our bedroom...as long as it was the right color.  Am I the only one who freaks until the rug arrives so you can see what the actual tone is in person?!

I held my breathe and ordered the rug.  When it arrived I was able to let out a huge sigh of relief because it was the perfect color!!

Once we were able to get it under our ridiculously heavy king bed (thanks neighbors!!), hubby and I gave it the stamp of approval.  

The rug makes us giddy when we step into our bedroom.  We couldn't be more pleased with the hue, and bonus, our cat doesn't scratch at it!!  Woohooooo!!

Hopefully it won't be too long before I share more of this space.  Like I said, I will be done with this puzzle this year!! ;)

****RugsUSA provided a rug for our makeover, but did not compensate me for this post.  All opinions are 100% mine!!****

Accent Wall Sneak Peek!

Alternate post titles....1) a bunch of pictures that are so far from being Pinterest-worthy or 2) real-time, real-life makeover....

A few posts back I mentioned I was in the middle of making over our bedroom for the millionth time.  I showed off our TV gallery wall that was (ahem, I mean is) 99.9% complete and I'm here to share another project for that room that isn't quite finished...but it's oh-so-close!

This was a project that both scared and excited me.  It's been floating around in my head for a very long time (for real...this makeover has been underway, mostly in my head, for almost a year), but I kept going back-and-forth on it.  Going forward would mean painting over my beloved Balmy Seas and tackling a stencil project on top of that.  {You would think I'd be sick of stenciling after this, this and this...but nope, I'm still smitten with the results.}

I realize I was hemming and hawing over something that was just paint, and if it didn't work out, I could just get more beautiful blue-green paint, sand down the stencil and repaint my wall, AGAIN...but to be honest, the thought of putting all that work into something I could totally hate didn't sound like fun.  Time is so precious, and I have about one million other DIY projects to tackle! ;)

So I put the project off for months, but it never disappeared from my thoughts.  I took that as a sign to stop being scared and lazy.  I needed to get the idea out of my head and onto the wall to see if I would actually like it.

Spoiler alert, I didn't like it, I loooved it!  And thankfully, hubby did too.

We started here.

(Those super cool wall decals are from the amazing Julia!  You should check out her shop...she's on vacation now, but will be returning soon!)

The decals, mirror and DIY lucite curtain rod came down, and it was time to paint.

I used the same dark gray that I painted the rest of our room (Martha Stewart's Zinc matched to Glidden paint).  It took two solid coats to cover.  

I liked it when it was done, but I'm not going to lie, I was a little skeptic.  I think I was used to having a pop of something...and now there was just a whole lot of gray going on.  Gray walls, gray lamps, gray bed frame, gray bench, gray rug.  I semi-freaked, but then reminded myself to keep moving forward because I will be swapping a few of those gray items out of the room and I have grand DIY-makeover plans to add in the much needed "pop" that was now lacking in the space.

After the wall was dry I assembled the tools to get my stenciling done.  I dug out an amazing stencil I purchased from the very talented Sarah (ummmm, last July!!!), a small container of Minwax's Polycrylic in Gloss, some Krylon spray adhesive, a drop cloth, small paint tray and small foam roller.

In my head, I envisioned this stencil to have a gloss-on-matte, wallpaper-ish effect.  The paint I used on my walls was a flat finish and instead of buying another can in a gloss finish, I headed to our basement and grabbed a small container of gloss polycrylic I had on hand.   Yay for being cheap thrifty!

After the first pass, I was nervous.  Since I was using polycrylic and not paint, the pattern looked AWFUL when it went on.  Instead of panicking, I pretended it looked fantastic and continued my second pass with the stencil. Thankfully, by the time I finished the first two passes, things were dry, and the light was bouncing off the glossy design, just as I had hoped.  It was a success!!

And here's a peak at the whole wall covered.  

I just have a few tiny things to touch up, and then I'll be able to officially cross this project off the "master bedroom refresh" to-do list!!

Anyone else have a mid-way project freak-out?!  Did it turn out okay in the end??

TV Gallery Wall. 99% Complete.

Even though my blog has been admittedly slow, my instagram feed never is.  It’s definitely my favorite form of social media.  It allows me to stay in contact with everyone and even acts as a mini-blog, documenting the things I’m working on and loving on.

If you follow along with me, you probably saw that I started making over our bedroom {for the millionth time} almost a year ago.  The reason for it?  Well there’s two reasons actually…

1) I l-o-v-e to rearrange and redecorate.  It’s a problem, but I’m confident I’m not the only blogger who suffers from this affliction. ;)  I remember, as a kid, I was constantly rearranging my bedroom furniture all. the. time.  I love to switch things up and gain new perspective on a space. 

And most importantly, 2) our bedroom has never felt “right” to me.  I’ve switched things up quite a few times, and afterwards I always feel a little better, but I’m never 100% about the space.  Having an unsettled master bedroom is not ideal.  It’s the space you are supposed to retreat to...a place to quiet your mind and relax.  Our bedroom does nothing of the sort for me because when I’m in there, I’m constantly brainstorming about a space that will finally feel finished.

I took a few leaps in the right direction quite some time ago when I swapped out our furniture, installed my DIY lucite curtain rods and went darker on the walls.

When I completed that painting project, hubby removed our mounted TV {which I hated due to it’s placement}, and I decided the TV would live on our long dresser.  Once that decision was made, I immediately knew I wanted to put together a mini-gallery wall to tone down the “hey, look at the big TV” vibe we had going.

I didn’t want to spend much on the gallery wall, and luckily I didn’t have to.  I was able to shop our home and garbage pick from our neighbors {yup, I was that girl picking through a junk pile at the curb} for everything I put up on the wall.

Once I collected a bunch of things, I traced their forms onto rosin paper left over from refinishing our floors. {Pardon the grainy instgram pictures....they are all I could find from when I started this project. #bloggerfail}

After that, I taped the shapes onto the wall and played around with the arrangement.  

Once I liked what I saw, I busted out my handy, dandy 3M command strips {I do not hang a thing without them} to secure everything onto the wall.

And thennn, in true-to-me form, I let about three months pass while we stared at empty and/or ugly frames each day.  Finally I had enough and prettied things up.  I painted the garbage picked frames and even some of the mats.  

I used some of my Spoonflower wallpaper samples to add a little pop to a few pieces.

I gave two frames extra special treatment by adding the Besos print from The Smitten Collection and the Zebra Love print from Parima Studio.  You should check both ladies out because their stuff is uh-mazinggg...as in, I want it all!!

And done!!

Okay, well, 99% done.  I have a bit more twerking, errrr I mean tweaking, to do. My DIY radiant orchid art is replacing the empty gold frame, and that shiny thing will be replacing the empty black frame.  I'm also planning to fill the oval mat up with something better than my two-second-hack-job of a "Z".

Slowly but surely, I'm piecing this room together.  I don't care how long it takes, I won't stop until the room truly feels like us. :)

The Dark Side.

This post isn't nearly as ominous as the title sounds.  I'm simply referring to the fact that I painted our master bedroom...again.  Third times the charm, right? ;)

The first time we painted the room, I chose a gray that read not-gray-at-all on our walls.  I loved the color, but it just wasn't what I wanted for our room.

After living with it for a while, I decided I needed to go more gray...and I did.

I liked that color a lot, and then I even rearranged and painted again.

After all that, I liked our room, but I didn't love it.  I wanted to love it.  And apparently, step #1 in loving our room was switching up our nightstands.  Our old ones were great, but looked too small next to our king-sized bed.  I fixed that situation by making over some Craigslist finds.

Step #2 was choosing a new gray for our walls.  I had a major itch to go dark in our bedroom.  I thought it'd really up the cozy factor and give the space that extra something it had been missing.  I headed to Home Depot and brought home a bunch of swatches.  Once the swatches were home and against the wall in our room, I easily narrowed things down to my top three.  Those colors were then taped to our bedroom wall for a few days.  It was obvious to me which color was my favorite {gut reaction based on undertones that showed up once the swatch went up on our wall}, but I was scared to pull the trigger. I never painted any wall that dark before.

Eventually I got sick of staring at the swatches and wanted to see results.  I headed to the store and bought a gallon of Martha Stewart's Zinc {made with Glidden Duo paint}.

I had hubby kindly remove our mounted TV, which I hated because of the positioning, thanks to some plumbing in the center of that wall.  I also patched up some holes with quick-dry spackle.

Then I cleared out furniture, pushed the remaining stuff to the middle of the room and started cutting in.

After all that fun, I got to rolling...and really saw things come to life.

The darker color took two coats to cover completely, but it was worth it.  I love how our white trim and light furniture pop against the bold walls.  I haven't even started to accessorize or put our room back together, but I couldn't wait to share our new wall color with you guys.  I didn't want to wait a few weeks until our room is "reveal" ready.  What can I say...lately, things have been taking me foreverrrr to finish. ;)

Anyone else get so excited to share something that you break all blogger rules and post un-styled photos taken at night?!  {Please tell me I'm not the only bad blogger!}

How do you guys feel about dark walls...yay or nay?