exciting things are happening!

so do you remember this post where i basically spilled my guts to y'all about what God has been doing in our lives lately around here? well.. he is doing more. again. : ) some things are just silly decor things. other things are bigger. much bigger.

one blessing we've already received is that our sofa that i am sitting on as i type this is 100% completely ours. it's totally paid off. YAY! no more monthly payments on this lovely little... er... big piece of gorgeous furniture. it's all ours. yesss. : ) so if you read the post i spoke of above, you know that what's left is the car. we're praying like crazy that we can pay it off. and also trying to spend very little money. i think we're doing a little better at the praying thing ; )

also i have been thinking about our outdoor space for some time now. we live in a good-size-but-still-small-compared-to-a-house apartment. so it seemed a shame that the outdoor space was being wasted, but i just didn't have a prayer to do anything out there because there just isn't any money for it. i figured maybe when fall or next summer comes around. no no my friends. this space is getting done as we speak. and so far all i've spent for it is $19. i will show you some of the projects out there soon. it's so exciting! i thought i would have to wait forever to get that space done.

well of course another exciting piece of news is that our 3rd anniversary is coming up! the summer has a lot of exciting events. my sister celebrated her birthday the end of june, my brother celebrates his birthday this coming weekend (yikes! better get his present...) and then the 25th is our wedding anniversary (!!!) and the 28th is my birthday! of course we also celebrated the 4th in there somewhere, so summer just sails by for us. yay! bring on the fall! i love fall... : )

SPEAKING of fall, have you seen any fall decor out yet? pottery barn has a fall preview on their website and when i was at hobby lobby recently i saw pumpkins and leaves out. i even saw some christmas stuff at hobby lobby already. sheesh! i admit july is too early for christmas (and i am a christmas lover!!!) but i am so happy to see fall things! it means it's coming around the corner! i mean, it's too early to say it's "just around the corner" but it's walking down the street trying to get to that corner at least. i love it. come on, fall! apple picking, pumpkin picking, mantel redecorating, cooler weather, sweatshirts, jeans, cider, beautiful leaves changing... i LOVE it!! it's my very favorite time of year. i am so excited for it! aaaand it contains my favorite holiday, thanksgiving!!! man. what's not to love? i feel bad wishing for it though because my husband says, "noooooo. i love summer. fall means i'm back teaching at school and stressed out!" so i am trying to just enjoy summer instead of trying to wish it away. but it's hard when the weather channel says it's  88 degrees but feels like 98 degrees. at 10:30 in the morning??!! geesh, weather. come on fall!!! (maybe my husband won't see that one ; ))

so next post i will show you some of the latest happenings around here. for now i am just too lazy too busy to upload and edit my pictures. sorry, total honesty here. well, okay somewhat honesty. : ) it's true, i really just don't feel like the hassle of editing my photos and i know y'all would appreciate nice edited photos much more than the good-for-nothing pictures my camera likes to take. aaaaanywaaayyy, i will probably feel more inclined to do it later... or tomorrow... or something... if you really miss pictures you can go here and look through some beautiful pictures that other people took in my pinterest account. or you can be awesome and browse through my blog : ) there is a list of every post waaaay down at the very bottom. either option is good. it just really depends on what your little heart desires.

be back soon with projects. i promise!

my new shower curtain; a love story.

this is a story of love, loss, and eventually a happy ending. i promise.

recently i showed you my bathroom changes and my inspiration picture. originally i thought i wanted a grey and kinda peachy/coral-y color together with white. then i saw my inspiration picture and i wanted to add that lovely blue with it. i had wanted to find a white and peach/coral striped shower curtain, but i didn't find one anywhere. so i was going to make one. i figured people have painted fabric before and it would work. then when i saw my inspiration picture

(couldn't resist. it's gorgeous!)

i decided i wanted a white and blue curtain like they did. this is where it gets fun.

i had been to target about 4 times in the recent past. every time i had somehow made it to the bath aisle to look for shower curtains for other people. every time i saw this curtain and was drawn to it. i wasn't looking for a white and blue curtain, i was looking for a peachy one. so even though every time i saw it i loved it and thought it was so pretty, i just walked away thinking it wasn't what i was looking for. so now that i WAS looking for a blue curtain, i had forgotten about that one. well, not for long.

i was reading i heart organizing a little while after the search for the shower curtain was under way. she was the one who brought us this beautiful office nook

yah remember that? gorgeous. she took a closet and made an office that i completely envy. well anywayyy, she showed her guest bath and i fell in LOVE with her shower curtain. you can see here where i pinned it and said so.  i realized it was the one i had seen at target and was drawn to every. single. time. i knew then that i had to make this shower curtain mine. then sad news came. it was in my target store but guess how much it was. if you guessed $30 you were right. 30 bucks for a curtain? no, i knew my husband wouldn't go for it. i was right.

well, i was pretty much right. what he said was, "well i can tell you love it a lot. i think it's a lot for a curtain, but if you love it you can have it. you decide pretty girl." (yah he calls me pretty girl all the time. he's done it forever. i like it. : )) psh. so of COURSE i have to decide no because he's left me to make the rational decision here and i don't want to let him down. so i say, ohhhweeeelllll. i will find another curtain i love as much soooome daaayyyyy.... (you know that feeling, right? you know it probably isn't true and you know you'll look back on this moment and say, dang it i should have bought that thing i loved so much!)

well i couldn't let that be "it". i had to keep trying. i was in love and i needed this curtain to be mine. so i did a search online in an act of desperation. i know i am sounding completely dramatic here, but when i find something perfect for my space i'm working on, i feel dramatic and desperate to get it. i have this crazy thing about me where once my mind is set on something, nothing else is as good "that thing". i'm thinking of seeing a doctor. so anyway, guess what happened. go ahead guess.

my search paid off!!! somebody was selling this beauty on ebay for $15! yep, half price. i snatched it up immediately and paid $5 for shipping. so i paid $20 for a $30 curtain. sure in the big scheme of things, what's $10? but i think it was more the principle of the thing. it's somewhat reasonable to spend 20 bucks on a shower curtain that you love... but $30 for a piece of fabric to hang just seems like too much no matter how many times i've made eyes at that curtain. so needless to say, i did a jumping up and down excited dance : )

a few short days later my curtain arrived AHEAD of schedule! i promptly threw it in the dryer with a wet rag (a clean one) to get the wrinkles out and it was hanging in my bathroom before the hour was out. i love love love LOVE this curtain. i mean, just look for yourselves

seriously? i know. i LOVE this pattern and these colors. so. beautiful.

i had these hammered curtain hooks before on my old shower curtain, but i love them even more now that they are teamed with my new curtain. i fell in love with them all over again.

the curtain is light and beautiful and makes a big difference. i still love the old curtain, just not in this space anymore. in fact, i already finished a project with it that i will show soon. but look at the difference.

i love the dark blue curtain, but i wanted to bring more light into the space since i painted it grey in there. it's softer and prettier. i have a few other things to do in there, then i'll be able to call it done. i'm waiting until my birthday at the end of the month so i can spend my birthday money on new decor stuff. so excited! my birthday is july 28th for anybody who would like to send presents ; ) i also accept cash and gift cards.

i wish everyone could come see how pretty my curtain is in person! LOVE IT!!! : )



at it again.

hi again all! i realize i have been away for a little while and i keep doing that to you guys! well there are reasons, i promise! all last week i stayed at my parents' house because they were out of town. my husband and i stayed with my brother and sister for the week. we had a fun week of hanging out, shopping, celebrating my sister's birthday, playing mario, tanning at the pool and other generally fun summer stuff.

i hope everybody had a wonderful 4th! we had dinner with my parents then went to see fireworks... but they were rained out : ( sad! i hate when that happens, but people seem to think they might happen tonight instead, so maybe i'll get to see some after all : )

so if you've been reading my blog for any period of time, you know i like to use peel n stick laminate for things. it's such a great tool and i am happy we have found each other : ). well i used it to cover my cabinets in my master bath and kitchen and now i am at it again in my guest bath. the process is seriously easy. like, for real. so super easy. i have never really shown the process so i decided to this time. if you're not interested in the process of it then you can just skip to the pretty after picture : )

here is my bathroom after painting

i worked on taking out everything red and then painted in here. this is what it looked like at that point.

i still disliked the cabinets and wanted them to be different.

this is my inspiration for this bathroom

**i have seen this picture a couple places and i'm not sure where it belongs! here is the pinterest link you can follow.

i love everything about this bathroom. i love the colors so much. i love that they have a lovely grey and white background to show them off and i even love that little girl : ) it's an awesome bathroom. so since i wanted the bathroom to have these colors i set about covering the cabinets. here's how i do it.

i start by taking the doors off.

in case you're wondering, yes this is much easier with a drill. in case you are also wondering, no i do not have a drill of my own.

i take the doors somewhere with a lot of light and where i can lay them flat. sadly the bathroom is not the place for this. then i take the hinges off completely.

one should probably wipe down the doors. i don't know. i don't because i don't care that much so i just leave them as is. all that junk just gets covered right along with the door. but if you aren't lazy care more then this is the part where you could wipe the doors down.

then i roll out my peel n stick laminate with laminate face down. then i just lay my door on top.

i love this stuff because they make it so. easy. i line it up with all the little dots so i know i'll have straight lines when i cut. that's what i like to see people.

i make sure it's long enough to fold over the edges of the door

a couple inches extra is a good amount so you know for sure you have enough on each side to wrap around the edges of the door.

then you just cut away



what i like to do is then flip the whole thing over, peel the backing off and lay it sticky-side-down on top of the door. then i can take care of the bubbles that will inevitably pop up under the surface much easier, before i fold the edges over. it's much harder to get the bubbles out after the edges are folded over. i didn't take a picture of this part because well, i was holding a large sheet of stickiness. not easy to take a picture at that moment.

after that i turn it over and fold the edges over the sides



then before you fold the other edges over, you have to do some cutting to make everything lay flat and come together, like wrapping a present.



at this point all you do is trim off the extra paper that is hanging over the sides

then you are left with a flat corner. super easy. i think my cat could do this if he would just apply himself to something other than eating and taking naps....

after doing this with each corner, you are left with 2 covered doors

i forgot to take a picture of putting the hinges back on... all you do is just poke the screw through the paper and it goes right through. i screw the hinges on right over the paper, no need to cut out spaces for them.

okay, this is where the annoying part comes in. at least for me. i took one picture of it because well, it's an annoying process and i didn't want to make it longer. sorry.

to cover the rest of the cabinet, i cut out strips of the laminate to size, then stick them on. first i hold it up to the piece need to cover and make creases where i need to cut

this makes it easy to see how wide it needs to be without measuring and all that. i do that with each strip i need and put them all on the cabinet. (i hope you enjoyed my one picture of this process. i regret it's not even a very good picture.)

once you're done with this part you will be oh-so-happy and you will be left with something like this

annoying but easy. and such a better look for not very much effort.

so now i would generally put my cabinet doors back on and call it done, but i decided i didn't want my cabinets to be white. i decided to get some more color in here and paint my laminate i just put over the cabinet. it is hard to paint this stuff, and it scratches off kind of easily after it dries so i just put a coat of mod podge over the paint. i know i probably should have used some sort of finish, but i didn't want to buy anything and i had mod podge on hand. people may cringe at this, i do not care. it was free and is keeping my paint on : ) ** for those of you who are wondering, "why didn't she just paint the cabinet then, instead of this crazy process?" and the answer is that i rent, so these cabinets are not mine to paint. sadly. so to get around that, i cover it first, THEN paint! : )

the paint color was my own mixture of behr's harbor paint (which is what i have all over my apartment) and martha stewart's picket fence paint which i just used to paint the bookcase recently. it turned out a turquoise kind of color. darker than my inspiration picture above, but still just lovely. i started with the blue base and added white, but i think i should have done it the other way around to get it more like the color in the picture. i guess mistakes are how we figure these things out. but this turned out to be a great mistake.

since then i have added a few new things that i will show you all later. i know, such suspense! it is looking so pretty in there!!! just wait till i show you : )

here we go, before and after time

before

after

so for just a little bit of my time and very little effort, i have practically new cabinets in the bathroom. what did i say? that is why i love me some peel n stick laminate! come back soon to see the rest of the bathroom reveal!

what makes you mad?

i am wondering what makes people mad. i think sometimes i blow things out of proportion... ok i know i do. and often. i don't try to. it generally happens when i am either stressed or super hungry. apparently i am more irritable at those times. well today my poor husband caught me at both.

i am working on the guest bathroom today and a couple other little things around the house. i have been working since this morning on getting all my curtains wrinkle-free. i have also been painting and some other things i will blog about soon on here.

well last night i had to chop up all our chicken. we get a huge thing full of chicken breasts at the grocery store and before i freeze them, i cut all the fat off and if i know it'll go in something like a salad, i chop it in little pieces. if i know i'll need a whole breast i trim the fat and call it done. then i put each meal's chicken in it's own freezer bag. well last night we had chicken breasts and i spent extra time chopping up chicken for a chicken salad we were to have tonight. i decided i would just cook it real fast while the other chicken cooked, then i could save it in the fridge and make it today. easy...

about 30 minutes ago i went to make my chicken salad. now, let me explain. i HATE spending lots of time in the kitchen. i hate chopping things. i hate cooking them. i hate doing dishes after i do that. i hate it all. i don't know why. i blame my teeny tiny kitchen. also, i plan every meal in advance before we go shopping. i make sure i have just enough for each meal so we won't spend extra money and waste food. well, as i am sure you have guessed, my chicken was gone when i went to make the salad.

"where was it?", you ask. in my husband's lunch at school. so many things wrong with this. 1) he took plain chopped chicken in a container for lunch. 2) i now have no dinner for tonight. 3) i labored chopping that chicken and cooking it. okay, maybe i didn't work THAT hard, but i sure hated doing it. and i have nothing to show for it and no dinner. sheesh. 4) a whole dinner is gone out the window, so my budget is totally off now. dang it. 5) i can't think of a fifth reason, but there probably is one.

now, i don't blame my husband at all. it's not his fault. i should have told him what it was for. it's just situations like these that make me feel upset and mad. why? i don't know. it's just some chicken. who cares, right? well for some unknown reason i care. that is why i am wondering, what makes you guys mad? what's something you feel like is irrational but you don't care, it makes you upset just the same? please tell me and make me feel better about being angry over chicken here people. : )

the ol' to-do list.

awhile ago i posted a list of things to do around here. they were things i was hoping to get done pretty quickly.... yah... some of these things just didn't work out that way. but i figured i should do a little update. 1) so everyone is kept in the loop and 2) because maybe it'll help get my little tooshie in gear. i have lots of plans, but not a whole lot of action. one reason is because of the ol' money situation, but the other is because i just don't feel like doing some of these things. i wish i could just wish them done... hmm.. i don't think that's gonna work.

here we go, here's the update

**note: the fonts and sizes switch around in this post. i have NO idea why... i tried to fix it but it wanted to be this way. so i just let it. don't judge, it was being difficult. it's late. i don't know why i'm writing a blog at 10 o'clock at night because things like this happen... hopefully it won't make anybody cancel their "following" to my blog. my little heart would surely break. if it's really upsetting maybe i can try to edit and fix it at a time when my little eyeballs have had rest and aren't frustrated looking at crazy sizes and fonts that aren't supposed to be there.. : )

1. this month i am finally going to put the knobs on my dresser. i mean it. this is happening people. it must. it has been way too long waiting for this to be finished. it just drilling some holes and screwing knobs in jessica. get with it.

hahahaha this cracks me up. not because i am funny but because this is STILL not done. the knobs are, you guessed it, STILL sitting on TOP of the dresser waiting to have their little selves installed. i have to drill holes first. i have no drill. i have to borrow it from my stepdad. in order to do that, i have to remember to get it while i'm there. there is my dilemma. apparently i have no memory while i am there. sheesh.

2. i want to change the guest bathroom around... put new color in there. maybe paint. i don't know. i like everything to be painted even though i have to paint it aaaaall back when we move. but i can't help it! oops... this is a to-do list. not a place where i defend my paint-crazy. anyway, i have chosen colors i think but i don't want to say just yet. maybe it'll be a surprise once it's done. i just found a crazy awesome color combo that i am so in love with, but i am afraid it's getting popular and then everyone will have it. i know that is silly, but i don't want my home to look like every other person's home in the world!

this is kind of done!! i painted the walls and took all the red out (go a few posts back if you don't believe me!) but i feel like it is unfair to call it done. it doesn't really deserve a line through it because i have quite a few things to do in there yet. mainly my favorite thing, accesorizing! once again, the money (or lack of) prevents this from being accomplished but guess what july is. go ahead guess! it's MY BIRTHDAY!! yep, my birthday and anniversary at the end of july so guess what i am doing. making phil take me to the atlanta IKEA for the day and buying all KINDS of lovely things!! yay! bathroom things are already on the list : )

also i have chosen a color scheme for the bathroom and it isn't just grey and white. it's gonna be gor. geous. for real.

3. i am going to put lamp shades on these guys:

if you click the link at the top to see the list in all its glory when it was first posted you will see this is speaking about my track lights on my ceiling in my living/family/dining room. i don't like them and i would like drum shades on them. or some totally awesome giant huge drum shade big enough to go around the whole thing. how awesome. i would most likely have to find a way to make it though considering something like that would come with a hefty bill. needless to say, this isn't done yet. : /

4. i want to put some sort of scripture or something on this wall

yah. not done. BUT it's because i've been thinking of painting the builder beige walls a light grey. change it from yellowy-pink to a cool lovely grey. in order to do the scripture on the wall, i would have to paint everything first. which means my entire living space basically. you can see why i am putting this off, right?

5. create artwork for both bathrooms... i have an idea for this! i am excited!

one bathroom is done! now just to figure out what to do in the other one... tricky. all these projects kind of overwhelm me so i am thinking about just buying something from marshalls or something like that. i don't know. maybe i'll get with it and make it. i need to be inspired first... waiting inspiration! come hit me please!

6. finish/fix the horrendous job i did on our sad office chair. this is thankfully in process now. i ordered something (!!!!) for it to be fixed, and i sure hope it works.. if it does i will be so happy!!! and it'll be really cool.

this is totally done! remember emily my cute furry sassy little chair? yep, aaaall finished! finally one i can cross off the list! geesh!

7. finish the kitchen cabinets. sadly i must admit that i have not finished these yet... i am being a bum about it. there are only two little sections left! come on me! hmm... i just don't feel like it. tomorrow morning i am recruiting phil and we are finishing it. end of story.!

oh you KNOW this has been finished. yep, you can look here and see for yourself! : )

8. finish the headboard... there might be a light at the end of this tunnel! this might also get some work done on it tomorrow. we'll seeeeeeee : )

ummm. there is a reason this isn't done. it's called that the "headboard" has to be cut down about 6 inches because there is a window next to the bed. it was too long so it was overlapping with the window. if i could cut it myself it would be done. however i cannot cut it myself. so it is now in my parents' basement (sad!) and has been there since this original list post. yep. waiting for my extremely crazy busy stepdad to have a spare minute to cut it. hasn't happened yet : ( it will soon though, i am determined! i paid for the thing, i have the paint and everything. just the cutting needs to happen. i will have to bribe him with some cookies or something... hm..

9. buy and hang new curtains for bedroom and sunroom.. this consists of buying new rods to fit the large windows... which usually costs a good chunk of change so it might not be happening for awhile.

this will be done by the end of this month i think. don't quote me. i found cheap sheers and rods, i just have to get the money together to make the purchase. exactly. i would make them but well, i don't really want to. some nice people told me how to make my own rods and i have seen a few tutorials but in the end i would rather just buy rods with all the pieces. i found some super cheap ones at IKEA (of course) so i think they will do just fine. come on, money!

10. buy new and way more awesome throw pillows... just because i want to. : )

i have my little eye on some ; ) just waiting for you-know-what. i am sensing a terrible theme here....

11. make a side table and perhaps some sort of coffee table. i have some inspiration for both of these projects.. now just if i had some money..... hmm.. where can i get some of that?

i think i changed my mind about this. i liked my ideas but maybe at a time when i have more money to spend on craft-y things. right now i just want to get a cheap, nice-sized table for the living room. i am just afraid the ideas may not work out and i would have wasted that money and now is not a time when i have ANY kind of money to waste.

12. get cheap glass tops (somehow... how do i do that?) for our dining room table and our side tables next to the bed.

i still want to get a glass round for our dining table. i found some at pier 1. who wants to send me the money to get it? : ) i changed my mind about the tops for my bed-side tables though. i have a cool idea. super excited about it! best part? it's gonna be waaayyy cheaper than glass. yessss : )

13. paint dining room table.

i want to do this but i might wait until i've painted more pieces of furniture before i trust myself with something we use EVERY day. plus, i would like to have the glass top to protect the paint job before i put the work into painting.

14. do something about our little tv stand.... it needs assistance.

i just got a cool idea for this as i was typing. it seems like a fun project so it might actually get done sooner  than later. yay!

15. take backing off of the book shelf (it's some kind of poster-y paper-y substance that is torn) and replace with something cool.. maybe beadboard... then paint it a fabulous color perhaps. who knows.

i am calling this done for now. mostly because i wanted to be able to cross another thing off my list so i didn't feel so bad... but it is done for NOW anyway. when it gets important enough to get put on a new list then it'll be a totally different separate-from-this-one project... yah, i'm not fooling me either. but i DID do something about this. not as much as i wanted to, but it looks a jillion times better. you can see here that it may not be the project i would have liked but it's totally working for me.

so here it is.. my sad list i made like, 2 months ago. still not done... *sigh*. but i guess it's a good thing since i love doing these projects. i mean, what would i do with myself if everything was done? that would be a weird day... thankfully i don't think i'll get to that day any time soon : )

bandwagon.

i really hate doing things that a billion other people are doing. it's kind of annoying that i am like this because i am not the most creative or original person alive. i just can't help it though! if i see something i like but i know about a zillion other people have already done it, i feel the need to avoid it like the plague. okay for example, garden stools are the cutest little things under the sun. i love them! i think they are completely adorable and i would like about 7 of them. however, every woman blogger and her mother has one. so i think to myself, eh it's been done. i don't want to get one since every other person in the world has one.... lame, i know. but true. i just don't want my home to look like ever other person on the planet's home. i also don't want to be like every other person on the planet. i want to do different things. too bad i'm not awesome enough to actually come up with all those things. oh well.

so all that being said, when i saw people joining pinterest all over the place i said, i am so not doing that. (this is also the reason i don't have a twitter account. also because i don't think people need to know what i am doing every moment, but that's just me.) but then the other evening i was looking for inspiration for my guest bath and some artwork. then i was looking around for some baby nursery inspiration (not pregnant, i just like to look forward to when we are someday!) and i realized i really WOULD like a place where i can save all my inspiration easily without saving it to my actual computer (space gets used up quickly!). so i told myself to stop being a sassy little brat and i requested an invite. i heard it takes awhile, but about 20 minutes later i was pinning things to my account.

i am not writing this here to you "follow" me on pinterest. i just found some things that inspire me and i thought y'all might like them too. the LAST thing i need is another competition of whose "something" is better that somebody else's "something" and who has more people following "it" and who can be the absolute most inspiring. to me this website is not about that. it's about a place where i put my inspiration and things i really want in real life so i can remember it all! i see great ideas, then forget all about them. well not anymore! HA! so that's my schpiel. i so do not want to make this website into "hey she has more people following hers" or "oh man, her inspirations are so much better than mine!" or "oh i should be inspired by the things that inspire her because she is a better designer than me". no way. fun and inspiration only! this should never be a stressful competition because that makes it not fun. and what is the purpose of design and decorating for me? it's fun!! zero stress allowed. : )

can i just mention though, after one night of pinning things i like i have realized a major trend..

check it out and see if you can tell what the trend is : )

a bookcase makeover.

so i recently showed you guys my living room mini-makeover. basically consisting of taking everything i had that was the color red and quarantining it.

i realized in this picture actually there was something i still didn't "love". something was making me go "hmm... what's wrong here....?" i had decided to paint the back of the bookcase to just bring in a little more color. i got rid of the red, but i mean the room seemed a little flat without some sort of color (i don't think i'm the type who will ever have an all white room.. even though i love the look. i love color too much). so i moved the bookcase onto a sheet in the sunroom to paint the back. i guess i should have taken a picture, but when the thing was out of the corner that corner totally just brightened up. i realized i liked having a lighter color in that corner. then it was decided. the bookcase would get painted white and the back would still be painted the persimmon red color i chose. (i know the color has the word red in it, but i promise that is misleading. it is definitely NOT red.)

so here is my poor sad bookcase before his makeover:

yep that is a big fat rip in the backing. i meant to just rip the backing off and get posterboard (or some sort of thick paper-y type substance) and add the new backing but i got really lazy. i didn't feel like putting a new backing on, and once things are on the shelves you really never see it. so i said, eh whatever. mister crack will stay with us awhile longer. plus what i would like to do is replace the back with beadboard but i didn't have the money to buy any. maybe someday... eventually... there are much more important projects to get done before that, okay? : )

so it was time to pick another paint color. i know people spend all KINDS of time and energy choosing colors. i don't know, it's not that difficult for me. not because i am super-awesome-color-chooser-girl, but because i guess i just make a decision and stick with it. plus i don't look through EVERY single paint supplier's samples before i choose a color. honestly, martha has done me well so far so i think i will stick with her awhile longer. so i got out my trusty martha stewart paint chip book thing-y and this is how i chose the white paint color. now, i have seen people agonize over the right white. i'm serious. don't believe me? read around blogs for awhile and you'll see... i don't think it should be THAT difficult. to be fair to these people, i was just painting one little bookcase and many of them are painting whole rooms that they have to live in. so okay, it's a tiny bit understandable.. but here's how i did it. i took ONE paint supplier's paint sample booklet (i think you will go crazy otherwise) and held up the paint chips of the other colors in my room to each different white. martha stewart has at least 4 or 5 different whites (if not more) so i knew i would find one in there. i liked the way her "picket fence" looked with all my paint chips, so picket fence it was. tah dah!! done. i am not even looking back. check me out. : )

so i went to my nearest home depot and asked the nice people to color match my picket fence white into america's finest paint (much cheaper than martha... i wouldn't always recommend this for a piece of furniture but i figured for my old ripped bookcase that we practically got for free, it would be fine. i won't be heart broken if it doesn't last forever.) and i came home and painted the sucker. i never prime anything. i know i should. i probably create more work and frustration for myself by not doing it, but i'm lazy. and cheap. and i don't want to buy primer. no police have showed up to arrest me yet for not priming. of course i can never tell my stepdad because i think he really might have me arrested. he is serious about things like this. i guess i didn't learn enough from him yet. : ) so anyway, it took 3 coats of paint. it could stand a 4th but... whatever.

here it is after the white was applied

i decided a coat of white on the back would help the persimmon to look better. i guess it was kind of like a primer. look at me, priming stuff kinda : )

by the way, i realized i never mentioned i used semi-gloss for the white and persimmon. i wanted it kinda shiny. i think once again that may have made things a little more difficult (putting glossy paint on a slippery surface) but it was worth it. hey, i like shiny things!

there was one slight headache... i took the shelves out to paint and when i went to put them back in, i guess the 3 coats of paint made everything not fit as well because this happened

yah.... not really what you want. so i just painted over those parts with my brand new beautiful paint brush that i am somewhat in love with, and it was all fixed. it didn't make me any less aggravated when it happened though. darn too-fat-shelves...



then i very carefully painted the backing of the shelves (because it has a rip and also so i didn't get persimmon all over my white shelves) and after drying time (for about a day) i arranged my books in my new favorite organizational method; by color!

notice all red books were placed on the bottom shelf. it may be discrimination, but i don't want to see red anymore. too bad red. deal with it.

looks better in that corner, huh? yep. sure does. (i answer a lot of my own questions. it's a bad habit.)

you can see my painting is definitely not perfect, but these are close up shots. give me a break! nobody will ever notice it just walking by it. can you tell i am so NOT a perfectionist?

before (even thought it says after. i know, kinda tricky.)

after



i have said it before, and i will say it again; i LOVE paint! you should too. : )