I Heart Art.

I really do.  I may not be the best at it, but I have a blast creating swap-able, inexpensive pieces to hang around our home.  I've dabbled in super amateur art before. Here, here, here, here, here and here.

Then last spring I created a few more pieces on some scrap wood I had stashed in our hall closet.

This past winter, I painted another scrap piece to help make a statement next to our Christmas tree.

After we took all of our Christmas decor down I was craving a bit of spring.  It's been very chilly, and once the holiday season ends, I am NOT a fan of the colder, darker months.  To combat the current season, I added pops of coral and citron to our great room.  An inexpensive way to get these colors into our living space was to update some of the art I previously painted above.  I can't wait to share it all soon!!

Anyone else ready for winter to end?!?!

Radiant Orchid Art.

Lately I've been on a bit of a painting kick.  Something about spring's arrival has compelled me to bust out my paint brushes and some fresh new colors to liven up our home.

I was inspired to create my latest abstract piece when a good blog friend challenged a few of us to tackle a DIY project using Pantone's Color of the Year, Radiant Orchid.  I have seen mixed reviews regarding this color, but I have to admit, I'm a fan.  I think it adds a nice pop when I pair it with my favorite tried and true blue hue.

I did a little research to see which colors were deemed orchid-y enough and came across several awesome options in this post. The winner for me, though, was Behr's Orchid Kiss.  After seeing it in Alex's home tour, I was sold.  

I headed to Home Depot to pick up a sample, and while I was there, I fell in love with a combo of three colors....Behr's Pale Orchid, Behr's Orchid Kiss and Behr's Balmy Seas {the same color as the accent wall in our master bedroom.}

Once I had my colors home, it was time to get to work.  

I found a scrap piece of birch wood laying around in my craft stash and I painted it white for a base. Then I pretended I had painting skills and started adding color to my "canvas".  I kept a separate brush for each color and just added a few lines of the first color, then the second color and then the third.  I repeated that process over and over until the coverage felt right.  After that, it was time for some shine.  Lord knows I can't finish a project without involving gold in some way, shape or form. ;) So I pulled out a fourth paint brush and layered in some metallic on top of a few already painted areas.

Now, clearly I am no artist...but for just a few bucks {seriously....the paint samples were about $3 a piece} and a small amount of time, I was able to hop on board with a major trend of the year.  Plus, it may have inspired a possible room refresh in the near future! ;) 

Now head over to check out the crazy talented ladies who took on the Radiant Orchid challenge with me!

From top left moving clockwise: 

1. Flower Pots from Dimples and Tangles  2. Secretary Desk from Cuckoo4Design  3. Abstract Art from Retro Ranch Renovation  4. Wallpapered Powder Room from The Chronicles of Home  5. Painted Tray from Dwellings by Devore  6. Cross Stitched Jewelry Organizer from Primitive and Proper

How do you guys feel about Radiant Orchid?  Do you give it the thumbs up or thumbs down?!

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?

Front Porch Painting & Quick Update...

In my last post I mentioned that things have been B-U-S-Y around here lately {life, merger at work, blah, blah, blah}.  Sadly, that means the blog has taken a backseat, but have no fear...we tried are darnedest to keep up with house-related projects.

One of those projects was a quick {well, only on my part...thanks Dad} update to our front porch.  When we purchased our home, we painted just about every square inch of it because it looked like this.  Ahhhh!

Don't worry...it looks more like this these days, so please don't let the nightmares of a big, overgrown, green blob keep you up at night. ;)

I know some people aren't the biggest fans of painting wood or brick, but in our case, the old red steps {refer to the creepy picture above} just weren't doing anything for our house.  They needed to be painted, and we were super happy we did it.

It's been about a year and a half since we painted them, and after tons of use and abuse, the red brick was showing through in some places.

So during my parent's last visit a few weeks ago, my dad asked what he could do to help us around the house.  I kindly told him nothing, and then proceeded to fan him and feed him bon bons jumped at the chance for him to re-paint the steps.

I've said it a million times, but I will say it again...it's crazy what a difference some paint can make!  The steps look so good after getting a fresh coat of grey.

And during a recent trip to Tar-jay, I came across the cutest gradient door mat {reminiscent of the pink Clara rug that YHL decorated with} that perfectly matched our teal front door.  Obviously, I didn't resist and threw it in my cart.  It helped that it was on sale. ;)

Add a few dahlia plants in my new IKEA planters...and our front porch is ready for spring! :)

Winter Mantel.

Hubby and I want to start a new trend.  We are determined to make it totally acceptable to keep Christmas lights up throughout the winter.  And no, I’m not talking about our icicle lights hanging from the gutters. ;)  I am referring to the lovely glow that indoor Christmas lights create in a space.  We had so many lights up during the holidays that after we took everything down, it never felt quite right without that cozy factor during the dark winter nights.  We missed it like crazy.

My solution for our dilemma?  Decorate our mantel in a wintery theme, and buy a strand of white lights to give us our cozy back!  {I couldn’t use the strands of white lights I already had from Christmas...the cords on those were green, and they would have stuck out like a sore thumb.  I needed white to work with my winter theme.}

To begin the process, I wanted to transform the mirror we already had on our mantel.  The size and pattern of the frame was great, but the plastic-ish, black color just didn't do it for me.  I tried to remove the frame, keeping the mirror in tact.  I was going to use some 1 x 5's I had cut down at Home Depot to create a new frame, but for the life of me, I could NOT get the frame off of the mirror.  They used some major league, permanent adhesive on that sucker.  So it was on to plan B...spray paint.

You saw me priming the mirror here {when I transformed the quatrefoil mirror from Tar-jay}.  I'm not sure if it was the weather, or if I didn't clean the frame up enough, but the spray paint didn't seem to stick that well to the beaded part of the frame.  After one coat of spray primer, I decided to switch to my tried and true Behr Paint and Primer...in white semi-gloss.  It gives great coverage, and I already had an entire can of it leftover in the basement from when we painted our trim.  {Free = awesome.}

I painted several coats and after a few days of curing, I put the mirror back up on the mantel.  Hubby and I both agreed...we loved it 10 times more in white.  It was much more “us”.

With the mirror back in place, it was time to add some accessories from around the house, some snowy branches I found at the grocery store {Stop & Shop's floral department has some great things at even better prices} and the pièce de résistance...the white lights.

I am super happy with the mantel and we adore the light it casts at night.  Until we can get a gas fireplace installed, string lights will give us the ambiance we want at night, and for a WHOLE LOT LESS money. ;)

Anyone else want to jump on the “use Christmas lights allllllll throughout the winter months” bandwagon?!?  Come on.  You know you want to! ;)  Or do you think we are being totally tacky?  You can be honest. 

F.O.S. {Fear Of Stenciling}

My apologies for my long absence from the blog world.  My life has been quite hectic lately, so the blog had to take a backseat for a while.  :(  But I am so happy to be back, and even happier to share a project that I wrapped up a couple weeks ago.  It is by far one of my favorites, and definitely one that I was terrified to take on.  {For those of you who follow me on Instagram, retroranchreno, you've probably already guessed which project this is. :) }

For quite some time it was very apparent to me that I needed to spice up our hallway.  It was a whole lot of wall space, with not a thing going on...and since part of it can be viewed from pretty much every room in our house, I knew I needed to add some interest.

My first thought was to create a ginormous version of the very popular gallery wall.  Ultimately, I decided against it because of the small gallery wall I already hung above our buffet {which reminds me that I have not shared it with you guys...ohhh boy, am I behind in my sharing!!!}, and I didn't want to put something together that would make our open hallway feel heavy or crowded.

So on to my second thought...using paint to put a fun pattern onto the walls.  Thick, straightforward stripes?!?  Nah, I already did that in the main bathroom.  A cool Moroccan tile pattern?!?  Definitely.  But wait...that meant I'd have to tackle stenciling, and for whatever reason...stenciling intimidated the heck out of me!

Fear aside, I couldn't get the thought of fixing the hallway up out of my head.  I kept browsing Royal Design Studio's website for the perfect pattern and I always found myself checking out the Moroccan Stencils section.  I have quite a few favorites in there, and I was able to narrow it down to the Moorish Trellis.  My choice was perfect since I wanted to avoid anything too small and intricate.  A crazy, busy hallway is not the look we were going for.

And even though I am CLEARLY not a professional stencil artist, I took a risk and ordered a "pro" sized stencil.  I was willing to pay the extra cash {$98 vs. $44 for a standard size} for a larger stencil so I could minimize the amount of times I'd have to put the stencil up on the wall.

My stencil arrived quickly, and then just sat in the corner of our bedroom for a month or so.  I finally found the motivation {and mainly, courage} to start this project after my parent's came for their visit earlier this month.

Here is the best "before" picture I could come across.  Of course, I forgot to take a proper one...so this oldie, but goodie will make do.

I started out by spraying the back of my stencil with some Easy-Tack spray adhesive I purchased from Michaels.  I started the spraying process on our back porch and eventually moved it to our great room floor.  I just used a drop cloth underneath the stencil when I needed to reapply.

I was a little nervous about how well the spray adhesive would hold, but it worked well.  I didn't even need painters tape for the first half of the project.

I coated everything in paint.

Ta-da!  One section done....a million to go.

I decided to do the top half of all the walls first, and then go to the lower half.

The paint did bleed a bit under the stencil since I wasn't "truly" stenciling with a proper stencil brush...but I don't mind.  I used a small roller and it went much more quickly that way and still gave me the effect I desired.

 Onto the lower half....

And after 9 hours of work...I was done, and obsessed with the finished product!  It was just what me and the hubby wanted.  {Please forgive my blurry, awful iPhone pictures.  I could not find my camera for the life of me...not like that would have made a difference in the quality of my photography hehe.}

Love this view from the kitchen now...

It's a little hard to capture the pattern throughout the entire hallway in photos since it's a subtle color difference, but the appearance in real-life is perfect!

And I love how our mirror at the end of the hallway reflects the design beautifully.

What do you think?  Worth the full day of work?  I definitely think so! :)