From boring dining room to funky European dining area!

So when we moved in this house, the dining room was one of the colors we decided to just leave the way it was for a while. We knew that one day we'd want it orange, but didn't mess with it much...until now!

Here's the before..taken at Thanksgiving before we all sat to eat!

and here we all are eating.. Nov. 2009

Now for the after..a little background on the European theme. About a year & a half ago we moved from Germany! The hubs was in the Army and we lived there for 4.5 years on the economy near our Army post. EVERY building in Germany is a different color than the one before it! They are red, pink, blue, green, purple, EVERY color you can think of! It's soooo neat. We loved that part about it. So rich in color. We heard that the reason that was, was due to the fact that when Hitler reigned Germany, he MADE everyone paint their homes the same color, so dreary & drab. So when that ended, they all wanted their colors to show! I think it's pretty neat. :)

Anywho...without further adeu..

These are pics of us in Pisa, Venice, Rome, and Paris.

The sign says "The Will of God will never take you where the grace of God will not protect you"

LOVE it. :)

Here's the hutch, and the gorgeous painting by Darryl's grandmother.

See that orange skirt on the lady in the painting? It inspired this very color!

This wall has our little wall plaques from Grafenwoehr (where we lived),

Neuschwanstein(famous castle), and Italy.

There are pics on this wall from Berlin, Trier, our boat ride on the Rhine River,

the Linderhof Castle Austria, Switzerland, and the 3 guys looking over the Tyrrhenian Sea in Italy.

It also displays our gorgeous cuckoo clock! We love it :)

And that's that! :) We love this room! Reminds us of Germany, and is filled with awesome memories

from our adventures there!

Re-upholstering dining room chairs!

So my mom has had these chairs & dining room set as long as I can remember,

and I think as long as I've been alive!

They are solid, and have held up really well.

They've been through countless school/church kids,

as well as mine and my brothers kids. (5 grandchildren, 4 of which are boys)

So that's saying something! :)

Here's a before and after of the chairs..

And here's how it was done.

First Grandma took the screws off of the chair padding part..

And here's mom with the chair seat pad, taking all the old staples off..

And here's the chair, seat-less!

Grandma is so wise, I'm learning so much from her!

Here she is using the old covering from the seat to make her pattern with the new fabric..

such beautiful fabric, goes perfect with my Mom's kitchen!

Oh yeah, they even made me do a complete chair by myself! Wasn't too hard either!

Here's the last step, the staple gun! I had never used one before, {gasp!} but it

was soooo fun! I had a good time with it.

Anyway, all we had to do was grab our fabric that we cut out using the old

covering, and stretch it on the pad part, then staple all around it!

Voila! New chairs! SO beautiful and elegant. :)

Before & After: Boys bathroom edition!

So I was cleaning the boys bathroom the other day, and I got the sudden itch to finally paint it. It was still the same white ugly color it had been since we moved in and there were lots of fingerprints/dirty spots from the previous owners. I told Darryl my ideas for it, and the next day he was taping away. :)

These are the only before pics I have of it!

I decided to use this basket to put their bath toys in, but decided to spraypaint it to accent the bathroom..

I also painted an old frame white with some left over white paint we had..

perfect!

Now back to the bathroom! We had some gray paint leftover from painting the boy rooms, so I thought it would go well with the shower curtain & stuff we had for the bathroom. And there's the red basket! :)

And the white picture frame with a pic of the boys in the tub! :)

And there's the sink! What's even more awesome is that we used things we already had, so this bathroom renovation costed us nothing!

Before & After: Nan's hutch edition..

We went to spend some time at our hometown last week so the kids could spend some time with their grandparents, and me with my and Darryl's parents, and our friends there.. (and so I could get my hair done! haha). Anyway, my mom and I had been talking about painting the boring room (aka, the room with no tv in it LOL), but instead we decided to bring her white hutch back to life! We had planned on using a chocolately brown for the majority of the paint, but it turned out a different color than we had planned.. Seriously, pumpernickel should be brown, right?

And here's the after! I think it still looks amazing compared to the before! I love the contrast of the green on the back part of it! Yay for giving things new life! :)

Before & After: toy/schoolroom edition

We moved in the house in late September. This is how the toy room first looked as we were going through boxes. Scary!! Needless to say we got rid of some toys..

And then got the toy room set up!

There was fairly good order in there, but it didn't look like a boys toy room to me! And we had other things in mind..

We finished the toy room the same time frame as the boys room was in late October, I just never took pictures of it until now!

Here's the door and what you see looking in.

Yep, that's a chalkboard! :) We painted the bottom with chalkboard paint, and picked up a piece of chairrail at Lowes. Darryl installed it and there we have it! the boys love it.

Here's a close up of the train my mom made for Caleb to help with his blends in school, too cute!

Here's a closeup of their bulletin board filled with their crafts and papers.

Going left now, there's a window and then the bed.

And there's their diner and closet door.. Mimi & PaJ got those airplanes and clouds to put on the wall, and they are able to be written on with chalk too!

And here's the closet! I plan on getting hooks to hang the nets up. the top stores little toys like playdough & k'nex.

Here's the wall that our dry erase board is on. It is in between the closet door and door leading to the hallway.

Hope you enjoyed the before & after!

Before& After: kitchen & boys bedroom edition.

So as most of you know, we moved into our home at the end of September. It's a beautiful home, but we changed a few things to make it our own.

One of the first things we did, (and I say WE lightly because my hubby actually did this while I was out of town) was paint the kitchen. It was this horrid yellow green color that we just didn't like.

Before..

After!

The kitchen extends a ways for like a breakfast area, but we use it as a computer nook.

Before..

After!

Our second big project was the boys room and toy room. This is the only real picture I have of the boys room before we painted it and bought bunk beds.

It was a baby blue and light yellow, not quite the idea I had in mind for 2 little boys room.

So, Before..

After!

As you can we alternated the colors on the wall, blue and a grey. We love the colors.

I plan on redoing the hardware on this dresser, as you can see some of it's missing. Darryl's dad passed it down to him.

The door on the right leads to the hallway, and the doors on the left go to the closet!

Speaking of the closet, here it is. Toy storage woohoo! lol

Hope you enjoyed the before & afters!! The toy room is ready, but the boys messed up their train table, so we're waiting on Daddy to put it all back together before I take pictures. :)