Dining room previews and cat food

What?

Yep, that's what I named this post. Why you ask? They are the two things that have dominated my past week...

Seriously.

Wait - I'll explain.

Ok, so here are some preliminary pictures of the dining room - which is the first thing that was in the forefront of last week for me.

I stress again, preliminary.

The furniture is not moved back into place, there are no window treatments up yet and NOTHING has been hung up in there. Yet. I hope you can get a feel for the color. It really is a chameleon shade. Sometimes it is more green. Sometimes more yellow/gold. Sometimes much more gray. It is Burlap - Sherwin Williams.

Here we go...

This is the wall next to the built in China Cabinet. See - the radio is still sitting there from when we were painting. Must paint to Classic Rock. 

Next to one of the windows. AND some fake window treatments. It is a sheet. I was trying to get a feel for a White window treatment. I liked the feeling I got. A lot. 

Just another shot of the room - the corner between the two large windows. And part of the ceiling. And my $17.99 clearance lamp from Hobby Lobby. hee hee. Love me some clearance stuff - especially when it was originally marked $89.99. 

These are of the other corner of the room. Oh, I love this color so much more than the RED. It isn't YELLING at me anymore. It was angry before. Now it is much more calm. Peaceful. Serene even - even with all the mess. Ok, sorry, I went off on a tangent. I'm back. 

The second shot also has the other China Cabinet in it - the one I want to move to the kitchen and PAINT. I got no responses on that one...maybe the jury is still out. 

Looking out through the Dining room french doors into the living room. You can also see the door leading into the kitchen on the right. And Piper's sippy cup sitting on the table. 

Oh, speaking of Piper....

here she is....with the second thing that dominated my last week

See that? She's getting a handful of cat food. 

Yep.

I feed her ALL THE TIME real food, yummy food. And every.single.time. she is on the floor anywhere near the kitchen...she makes a BEELINE for the dang cat food. 

And does this

always before I can get to her. I am continually digging cat food out of her mouth. I know. 

 *shudder* 

I can't even talk about it. Which is why I'm blogging about it I guess. *shaking head*

All I can figure out is that it must be good because she will refuse Banana. But loves this stuff. 

At least she hasn't discovered the litter box. Yet.

It only took a snowstorm

to kill the pollen and give a day without terrible allergies. Although I am loving the fact that my nose isn't running and I'm not sneezing - I am missing the pretty weather. It's gray and cold and has been snowing on and off since 8 o'clock this morning. And today is the first day of Spring - how'd you like that? Ah well, it is supposed to be 70 again on Monday so I can suffer through these couple of days to get there.

*Warning* This post is all.over.the.place. Ok - proceed at your own risk. You've been formally warned.

We went camping at Beaver's Bend and had a good time. The kids really enjoyed it and Mark and I did too - for different reasons. He got to go fish every day,several times a day.

And when he went he almost always took the boys.

Because he took the boys, I got to hang out at the cabin with Piper. A good part of that time she was napping so I got some ME alone time - just to hang out, smell the pine trees, watch the birds, enjoy nature and read. It was really nice.










I've been doing quite a bit of re-doing and crafting and whatnot. I've tackled so many little projects I"m not sure what to talk about first. I'll probably put them in seperate posts just to organize them a bit better. So I'll just talk about the re-vamping of the house. I am on a white kick. I am loving white right now - everything about it - it's so clean and inviting, and to me, calming. I've been adding white into our living room over the past couple of weeks and I'm liking how it's coming. I covered some red pillows in khaki slip covers and covered a pillow in drop cloth. Then I hung some thrift store frames I spray painted white on the wall and added a little vingette of items that came from Goodwill. Have I mentioned I heart spray paint? Well, I do. I lurve it. It is my BFF. I've got a large mirror I found at a junk store for $5 down in the basement taped off and drying right now from a coat of rubbed oil bronze spray paint I put on it earlier. That is going above our sofa. When I get it all done I'll do a "reveal" post. ;)

I also spray painted some heavy, wood candle sticks white. This is the "before" shot.

"After" I like how the paint didn't cover them completely. I really like the bit of brown showing through in some places.

While I was at it I took the cover to our fireplace out and gave it a good coat of white spraypaint too. Our fireplace does not have a flue. I know - odd right? Well, it doesn't - so we have this HUGE board that has been made to fit the exact opening to the hearth and it stays in place to keep the cold air out. Anyway, I have been thinking I want to paint that fireplace for about 6 months now. The issue is that our living room faces East and South and because of lots of trees in our front yard, the room is very dark. The dark red fireplace combined with all the dark woodwork makes our living room feel like a cave. I was thinking that if I painted the fireplace it would give the living room a POP of color  rather than feel like it is a sucking, black hole of death   because that DARK fireplace is just sucking all the light out of the room. SO I painted the wood cover to the fireplace. I like it. It has already lightened that area up and given the little bit of light we have in there a place to bounce off. Reveal shot on this area to come as well. It's better but not done yet. I'm thinking of doing a lime-wash paint treatment on the brick of the fireplace - anyone ever heard of that?

Still trying to figure out a good color for the dining room. Now I'm even leaning toward doing something in a cream or creamy-green shade. The husband has talked me out of painting the trim in the dining room because it would just be too.much.work. So I have to work with what I've got....which is stained red-oak trim - it is almost a Cinnamon color stain. Very hard to get a good lot of colors to work against. Greens do look good, as do yellows - I have enough yellow in my house though. Possibly a green...maybe a green-gray or a creamy-green - something chameleon-like that will change as the light in the room changes. I'm also thinking of cream slipcovers for the dining room chairs. Am I insane wanting a variation of white when I have small children? Probably. But thats what I'm feeling right now.

Ok, so off to fold some laundry and check on the pulled pork I have in the crockpot. It smells wonderful and my tummy is growling. Happy first day of Spring everyone! 

Ok - so upcoming posts will be on chalkboards. I am a madwoman right now for chalkboard paint. I've got some serious projects in the works on that. If the weather really does turn nice next week maybe I'll be able to finish them!