"My steps have held to your paths; my feet have not slipped."

~Psalms 17:5

The kids and I just got back from our trip to San Diego.
We had a blast.

Especially here.

I got down on my stomach to take some of the pictures.

I think it was worth the sandy front-side I got.

And when I got back, I finally discovered Bloglines. Yes, I'm that slow. It's amazing I even know what a blog is. But Annie left a sweet comment that she was subscribing to my blog (thanks girlfriend). What? Subscribing? I had to Google that, and I found Bloglines. Seriously, I'm such a dork. You all have probably been using Bloglines since day one. But I'm with the program now. No more checking each blog one at a time to see if it is updated. Bloglines tells me what's new. What other wonderful things am I missing?

Mistreatment Club

This morning, the Nester is having a Window Mistreatment party for all of us who abuse windows. I wanted to have a brand new mistreatment to share with you, but since we just flew in from our California vacation, I didn't have any time. So I will share some oldies but goodies with you.

Here is my favorite. I covered the ugly white blinds in my laundry room to make a fake roman shade. If you want to see how I did it, here is the original post.

And this is what I did to the windows in my bedroom, after I painted the walls Tobacco Road.

Sooooo much better than before!!

Now I'm going to head on over to the party and see what everyone else has cooked up!

Greatest Inventions

Well maybe not greatest, but here are 2 fabulous things people created that I Love ...

Hair color (yes, I already have gray hair)

Spray paint

When I posted about my little desk that I decided to paint and painted within 30 minutes start to finish, Jeannine asked me what type of paint I use and do I prime.

Well, I have learned that any project that stands a chance of getting done in my house must be done quickly. So on this particular project, I just spray painted the top layer of paint and didn't prime it at all. I don't even really know what the actual purpose of primer is, other than you should use it when you have a piece of wood that has never been painted. (According to Mr. Jones, the primer raises the wood and allows you to sand it down smoother with some steel wool. He worked for his father who was a professional painter so I'm going with him on that one). So if a piece already has been painted, I just paint over the paint. If the piece has shellac or a glossy finish and I want the paint to stick, I do a light sanding. Ditto if the previous paint job has too many lines and needs to be smoothed down a bit. That probably doesn't clear up much. I'm probably making it more confusing. Basically, I avoid work at all costs.

By the way, they do make spray primer too, which I love because it gets in all kinds of weird spots, doesn't leave paint lines and is fast. And you can use grey primer if you are going to paint the piece black.

Anyway, my hands-down favorite paint is Krylon Indoor/Outdoor paint. Have you seen the commercial for the little 360 degree nozzle on their bottles? Well, yes, I had to check that out and it is awesome!! I cannot tell you how much I love this little feature. Yes, folks, this is a paint manufacturer who understands their customers (Apparently my local Home Depot doesn't because they don't even stock this stuff). When I went to their website to steal one of their spray paint pictures, I found all kinds of really neat projects, like ...

A baby bootie mobile. I may not make this one, but I did save all of my kids' booties but they are all scuffed and dirty and bronzing them costs too much money. Wouldn't a coat of robin's egg blue look great on them?!!

And glue those stars right on the dresser ... hmmmmm, I'm going to have to glue some shells or something on one of mine.

Oh, oh, this one is my favorite. Did it ever occur to me to spray paint a shirt? Get out!!

Here's a cute Halloween project made from Dryer Hose!

You can make chalk boards out of those lunch boxes.

And here's a technique I have tried before. Use petroleum jelly between layers of paint to distress it. Be careful though. It REALLY works.

They even show you how to do aged looks like this one. Loooovee the patina.

I'm on vacation now, but I'm think when I get back I'm going to have a little get-together with all my bloggy friends and we can all share our favorite spray paint project.

New Blog Background

I really loved the background I had before, but it was off center and I had no idea how to fix it. So I found The Cutest Blog on the Block this morning and got this FREE background. Yes, they have all kinds of cute backgrounds and they are free. And really easy to use. You have to use Blogger ... if you do, go to Edit Blog, change your blog format to Minima, add a page element (to HTML) and just plug in their HTML. I've probably missed something her, but it is basically that easy and they have instructions right on the blog.

Let my teaching fall like rain and my words descend like dew,

like showers on new grass, like abundant rain on tender plants.

-Deuteronomy 32:2

An Award and a Bedroom Re-do

This week, Sarah from Nesting in Pleasant View gave me these awards:

She and her sister, Christy, started their blogs because they moved away from each other and wanted to share their lives with each other through blogging. I started my blog for the same reason, when I moved from the West Coast to the East Coast. I, like them, was surprised when Internets started reading my blog, too, and they were actually nice, and shared my values, and they weren't freaky people from the internet, but really great people I call friends. That totally shocked me. They remind me about what's important, make me laugh, help me decorate my house, and inspire me. Honestly, I've never had one rude comment or had any obnoxious people cross my path. (Before blogging, I used to have a mom's group message board, and that group had people with no filters at all).

So Thank You for the nice awards Sarah, and I will bestow them on the following people:

Debbie at This is the Life, who is one funny mom, and we could all use a good laugh every day. It actually turns out that we are kinda' neighbors, and she spotted me at the store the other day! Wow, really small world.

Beautiful, amazing Sandy at For Reluctant Entertainers, who is the epitome of a generous hostess, and is teaching me what is important about entertaining and about being a mom and a homemaker.

Martha at Elizabeth Hill Cottage who is perhaps one of the funniest people I know, was my first blogging friend, she gives great house tours, and she picks out a mean dollhouse furniture ensemble.

One of my new favorite bloggers is Chris at Just a Girl. This will probably be a big surprise to her since I've just been blurking on her blog because I have been so busy this past week with vacation bible school. She has inspired me to get my picture frames on the wall, and I laughed hysterically when I saw her husband's contribution to decor because the EXACT same item has been added to my house. She's got great style and has done some really neat projects.

Melissa at The Inspired Room, not because she daily posts great photos of homes that I drool over and have no idea where she digs up all this stuff, but because she is an awesome chick. You'd think she'd be all snobby and everything because she has such a great blog, but nooooo, she is a really nice person!

And Kimba at A Soft Place to Land who shares my illness for painting furniture. My husband and my neighbors are always laughing at me because my hands and arms look like this:

But this is actually a picture of Kimba's hand, and when I saw it on her blog I knew we were soul sisters. I just love to see what this girlie is going to paint next.

And with that, I think I will just tag you all with these awards because you are all really cool, and I just wish I had an extra 24 hours in each day to read every blog and write to you all because you are all so nice, and your visits to my little blog are truly appreciated.

Your "official instructions" follow: Now go forth and share the love! To the recipients of the award... pick 5 blogs you consider deserving of this award, whether for creativity, design, interesting material, or contributions to the blogging community, no matter what language. Name each nominee and link to his/her blog. Show the award and include the name (and link to his/her blog) of whoever presented you with this award. Link to the Arte Y Pico blog so everyone knows the origin of this award. Post these rules

And now, some before and after pictures of my bedroom. I should be arrested for doing this to it:

And then, as evidenced by the paint splotches if you look closely, I tried to find the right neutral paint color to fix my mistake, with absolutely no success. Until one day, I read this post about Tobacco Road. And I actually printed the photo she took of the paint can and I marched down to Lowe's, and then I did this:

A little bit better? Oh, yeah. Then I took down those AWFUL curtains and mistreated the windows with some trusty toile. Toile is always good. And why do I have a love affair with fabric that has silly pictures of people on it? I have no clue. But I do.

I'm not finished, but I'm finished enough for the time being. I still need to paint the trim, as evidenced by the next photo:

I've also had piles of frames in my bedroom from when I moved 2 1/2 years ago. I couldn't quite bring myself to do anything with them, because the paint was dated and they had old studio photos of my kids. I wrestled with the guilt of not wanting to put dated pictures of my precious babies up. Then I realized ... I'm not throwing the kids away. I'm not even throwing the photos away. I'm just putting up different photos. So get over it. Out came the spray paint cans and a few photos downloaded to Target photo center later, we have some decorated walls in our house and one less pile.

I just love everyday photos of my kiddos. Some I did in black/white and others in sepia.

My next project in the room is to paint the furniture, but I just can't figure out what color to paint everything. This is cheap pine that we've had for a long time, and it is very scratched up. I love black, but I feel like I might have reached the legal limit of black furniture in my house. I just don't know. What do you think? Black, white, cream, some other color? I need your opinions.

I do love this color, and thanks to the Nester, my house is starting to shape up. So I think if anyone deserves those awards, she certainly does. Not only does she share all her fabulous ideas with us, but I'm so relieved that getting something done imperfectly is better than spending too much time making it perfect.