googiemomma learns direction(s)

i had a plan. a dream, if you will.

in all our additions and renovations to this house, we ended up with a kind of weird pass-through type un-room.

it connects the living room and family room, it looks into the kitchen and over the front porch. it's not big enough for major furniture, but not small enough to just ignore.

for lack of...well, anything better, we call it the "breakfast room".

wanna see?

here's my super official floorplan:

it's pretty accurately not to scale. which means i didn't use a ruler, but i'm pretty good at "eyeing" things.

and i had a plan.

i decided it needed a bistro set.

but not just any bistro set--an authentic one. one made from metal. with curls, and cuteness. looking like it just walked in from an old fashioned ice cream parlor. or a sidewalk french bistro.

i read all these other blogs, about these mommas that get super awesome amazingly cheap great buys on craigslist. i figured what i wanted--a curly, cute little bistro set--would be something i could find there.

so i searched. the thing is, i kept searching what i assumed was my closest craigslist--philly. and i realized the problem is it's philly. so yeah, i found bistro sets--for $200. 'cause even junk is gonna be more expensive if it's city junk.

i was frustrated and annoyed. was everyone lying about the great deals they were scoring? was i doing something wrong?

clearly, these options were both impossible.

but one day it hit me!

i don't have to go south! there's north! and east! and west!

each with their own craigslist!

and armed with my newfound knowledge of direction, i found this little beauty:

the curls! the swirls! gorgeous!

2 chairs and a table, rusty but sturdy, for $60, a mere 20 minutes to the east. (who says nothing good comes out of jersey?) 

i set them up outside and gave them a good cleaning with a wire brush. and then got out a blogger's BFF:

ahhh spraypaint, how i love thee. let me count the ways....

a good coat of primer on it all:

and two coats of shiny shiny red... oooohh ahhhh....

now, fabric is the hard part. because a couple of years back in a burst of creativity, googiedaddy and i had wallpapered 2 walls of our "breakfast room". 
with a rather ornate paper.

i didn't want another color introduced to the room. but i didn't just want a plain fabric. so we searched, and we found.
and googiedaddy again put his skills to good use making new seats & backs....

yeah, it's white. yeah i have 4.5 kids. wanna make something of it?
scotchguard, oh how i love thee...let me count the ways....

isn't she loverly?
and while i was taking these pictures, i got the bright idea to "stage" my bistro set...

i know, i know...it should be tea. but you'll have to deal with the last dreggs from the coffee pot. because, let's face it, i'm not that committed.

and yes, all you nit-pickers (knit-pickers? i guess it depends on if you knit, or have nits) the creamer and sugar bowl are in italian. right there next to my eiffel tower. but i lurve them. and my sister-in-law bought them for me after i drooled over them in italy. (and by italy, i mean at epcot. which is the closest i'll probably ever get to italy with my overactive uterus and all)

so there you have it. googiemomma learns new directions, gets a bistro set, and speaks italian.
who says i can't accomplish a lot in a day?

i'm linking up to some of these fun parties!

comtemplative pausing

work has begun on the room that will become girlfriend girl's BIG GIRL ROOM.

i emptied it (mostly) and moved baby bear's crib into the other room with her sisters. (an epic manuever that requires complete disassembly and reassembly of said crib since the stupid thing doesn't fit through the doorways)

Emptying the room like that made me pause and look around.

this room, this tiny room, has been the most neglected room in the house since we bought it 8 years ago.

when we moved in, 6 weeks before the Boy was born, it became the Box Room--repository of everything still homeless and unpacked after our move.

the house was a fixer upper (to put it mildly) and the paint colors...umm, a bit scary. and they still exist in the back of the closet.

a lovely mustard yellow, rolled over top of what i can only describe as a Pepto-Bismol pink. only the rolling was done, never cut in anywhere, so a ragged border of the pink encircled the entire room. it was truly stunning.

when PPD hit shortly after Little Man's birth, i would stay awake night after night while my family slept, emptying boxes, painting walls and a mural, fixated on making a nursery for my baby boy.

the empty room showed me the built in shelving that i painted to match that little guy's first bedroom.

when baby #3 was born, we were in the midst of an all out renovation/addition. tiny tim had health issues requiring weekly specialist appointments in the city. we were also running our own fledging business, which was our sole source of income. we were running running running running...

when the new window went into that tiny room, mr. googiedaddy framed in, insulated and slapped a piece of drywall over the hole of the old window. and that was as far as it went.

i also began another mural, in an attempt to turn it from a nursery into more of a big boy room, as Little Man was 3. that was never finished.

there were more important things to do. 

 those black lines are the lovely piece of drywall. what you can't really see in this photo are all the screws in the drywall that add to its...uh, 'je ne sais quoi'.

when the bulk of the addition was finished, and googiedaddy and i moved to our new room, the girls moved to their room, and Little Man moved into his BIG BOY ROOM, the tiny room was designated "play room".

money being tight, i decided that any color from the "oops" bin at Home Depot would be fine. it just needed to be bright and "playful"

i was wrong.

i managed to score what must be the most unappealing, unattractive, hideous color known to man. it does not exist in nature. the mustard and pepto pink combo would have been more pleasing.

when i emptied the room, i found a bit of it peeking through a chip in the wall.

this photo does not do the flourescent seafoam teal justice. i can only imagine what the actual paint chip was called. probably something like "ectoplasm on crack"

i also started another mural. never finished.

when monkey #4 was due to arrive, i determined once again to have a nursery. against googiedaddy's wishes, i mixed up some leftover gallons from the bigger girl's room, and random stuff hanging around, and came up with a pale pink~~more or less matching the pink of her $20 crib bedding that i found on walmart.com. i painted right over the unfinished sheetrock and screws.

with the determination that only a pregnant woman can fully muster, i told him that IF and WHEN he got around to finishing the spackle and trim in that room i would be HAPPY to paint it again.

and then i hung curtains.

and then i painted started a fourth mural in that room, my baby girl's name to match her bedding:

also, never finished.

and so, 8 years later, the room sits {mostly} empty, waiting for its nth reincarnation.

and i'm a little sad.

but i've also determined that it's going to be done {somewhat} correctly this time. the window area is finally going to be spackled and sanded. the trim will be...um, trimmed. the glow in the dark stars have been pulled from the ceiling, and the ceiling will be painted over for the first time since it was Little Man's nursery. 

the only problem? poor googiedaddy is currently working 12-15 hour days in 100+ degree heat. so the spackling and sanding and trimming and painting will be done by yours truly, the momma.  

have i mentioned that googiedaddy spent the better part of his life first as a sheetrocker/finisher and then contractor specializing in custom trims/wall frames/woodwork? i {lovingly} call him the "Wall Snob". but he's going to have to deal, because this room is getting done in my signature googiemomma style~~which is composed of equal parts:

{artistry}
{impatience}
{vision}
and
{self-doubt}
with just a dash of
{"i've seen that done once on HGTV, i can totally do it myself"-ism}

i can't wait to see what happens. :0)

witty "pillow"-related title here

Without a doubt one of the quickest, easiest and cheapest ways to get a new look in any room is with throw pillows.

So I wish I had the foresight to take pictures of the veritable time capsule that my living room pillows were. When I started recovering them this time I cut off the old covers.


Underneath were older covers.


Underneath that were older covers.


Underneath that were the original pillows that came with the sofa.


I think they were about 2 inches smaller than what I started with. :0)


Anyway, I decided to bring some blue and white into my brown walled living room.


The addition of white I posted about here and here.


The blue I brought in with my rooster lamp, and the new pillows!





Believe it or not this was really the only fabric I could find at Joanne's that had the blue color I was looking for. And honestly I wasn't really sure about it at first.


But I'm an "instant gratification" kinda gal, so I wasn't about to go ordering something online.


And it turned out fine~~because once I started doing the pillows, I really love the fabric.


I used the blue/white patterned fabric, some brown cotton duck, and the white fabric I used for my bedroom pillows.





I love this family pillow. I got the idea from SOMEWHERE and for the life of me I can NOT find the link!!! I'm so sorry if this is yours! I used iron on t-shirt transfers and played with the font, sizing and placement until I got what I liked, and ironed it onto the white fabric. Then I attached the white piece to the brown cotton with 2 rows of brown stitching and pulled threads to fray the edges.




It's right on the sofa that faces the front door, so it's one of the first things you see when you walk in the door. And I love that.


Then I did a simple white pillow, but put brown bias welt around the edges. I'm fortunate enough to have a commercial machine with a foot designed to make welt, so I can sew yards and yards of this nonsense fairly quickly. And it's soooo worth it. It makes a huge difference in the end result of your products and how professional (or not) they look! If you don't have a welt foot for your machine, you can do it with a zipper foot. It won't be as tight and not as easy, but it's worth a shot!


For the Eiffel Tower pillow I freehanded a simple graphic design, cut it out and traced it onto Wonder Under and the blue fabric, and zigzagged around the edges. I love this pillow. The only problem is it was one of the last I did and I was running out of the brown cotton. It could have been a little bigger. So now it pulls a bit, and sometimes looks a little like an "A".


But I still love it.





I did two of the big pillows~they're just the blue patterned fabric on one side, white on the other, and the brown welt.





The brown pillow I call my "pleats" pillow. I did a band of the white fabric down the center and just stitched rows until I thought it looked good.


The last pillow I did may be my favorite. I just made a simple white cover, and then sewed rows of ruffles across it and frayed the edges:





Now I play musical chairs with all my new pillows...moving them around...which ones together???




I still have more to do in the living room before I do a final reveal of the whole thing. The most glaring issue?

This:



It was this:



A $3 grocery store clearance picture of red flowers. It was pretty, but didn't go in the new blue scheme. So when I was painting the hallway I rolled over it with white primer. And now I'm stuck.

So there it hangs, waiting for inspiration.



I tried saying it was a commentary on the overuse and gluttony of the throwaway society in which we live...a symbolic representation of an attempt to declutter a life drowning in materialism and consumerism and recreate a symbiotic oneness with nature, purity, and a simple life.

I don't think anyone's buying.

Linking up here:


    





and I Heart Naptime's Sunday Scoop

elements of tables

Here's the thing.
I started talking about my mini living room redo quite a while ago.

And I actually have done quite a bit of it.

But I haven't taken or posted pictures of it for a very stupid reason.

We have three large windows that face the front of the house.
And when the sun shines through the windows the living room has such a warm glow...it's cozy and comfy and I love it.

But do you know when the sun shines through those three windows?
When it's rising.

As in: first thing in the morning.
As in: when googiemomma is still in bed.


Ahem.


Well, today I decided enough was enough. So I set my alarm and got up with the early birds to take stunning photos. Uh, no. I just took the pictures with the available light and put my mad photoshop skillz to work.
Actually, they didn't come out too bad...


So, without further ado, I present {part} of the mini living room makeover!


Here's where we started. And these photos? Well, you know those "loose 10 pounds in 2 days" ads you see where the "before" picture is someone deliberately making themself look as bad as they possibly can--pushing out their stomach, wearing a too-tight bikini, sad sack face?

Yeah, it's kind of like that.

Except with kids, toys, bad flash photography, general mayhem and foolishness.








I wanted to brighten and modernize, but without painting the walls. And the sofa, loveseat and chair are staying for now.
I was sick of the rugs. They went, courtesy of Craigslist, and added $40 to my budget :0). I want to get something simpler, maybe just a sisal rug...but I'm still searching. The layout of the room also needs help. It's a long narrow room and I've always had trouble with it. (Read: I move the furniture around on a regular basis)

But there are good things here: I do like the paint color, and I love my floors. The windows are big and bright, and the big thick trim is custom googiedaddy stuff. I also like the mirrors & picture over the sofa. I have fought with that area and probably tried 10 different things and combos of things without loving anything. This is the closest I've gotten to completely happy, and I'm not looking to change it right now.

Anyway, today I'm going to cover the three tables in the living room and the changes I made to them.

Remember this lamp? It's from part one: gathering stuff and spray painting it white.




I gave it a coat of white paint and recovered the shade in the same white fabric I've been using everywhere. It's sitting on the black end table next to the sofa.
And I LOVE it.





I added a white bowl I got at the thrift shop, an old book {that I got to try my hand at one of those "paper wreaths" that are everywhere, but decided I liked the book sitting on the table better} and the "LOVE" I got at a yard sale. (I actually grabbed that because I had some ideas for a photoshoot with it, but the kids sat it there and I think it looks cute!)





Googiedaddy loves lamps. (I know, weird, but we've discussed that before) So to make him happy I'm adding them wherever I can. And the soft glow of this one makes us quite happy.


And that bowl? An impulse buy on my mad quest for "white" stuff. But can I tell you how much I love this bowl? It was $1!!




For the other side of the room, I took some black and chrome nesting tables from Ikea and (surprise!) painted them white. I neglected to take a before picture, but trust me--they're much better now. They're home to the blue rooster lamp.



And apparently these tables also function wonderfully as a chair and desk combo for LittleBear. Who knew?

This table needs some help. I keep trying different combos of things on it, but have yet to strike paydirt. I think the rooster stands alone.

The final table in the room is actually an ottoman that is our coffee table. It's a soft leather tufted ottoman that googiedaddy made.







The wooden tray was $6 at Ross (LOVE that store). The milk glass bowl was a $1.99 snag at the thrift shop at the same time as the feather bowl on the other table. The candle holder/moss rock holder I redid and posted about here.

And the white obelisk thingy? Also a thrift shop purchase for $1.99. It started life like this:

 

Yuck! So much better in white!

Ooohhh...are you trying to get a look at those pillows in the background?

I knew it! Well, you'll have to come back tomorrow for the big pillow reveal!!

Linking up here:



















and
I Heart Naptime Sunday Scoop