Our Old Rental; Before and After

I have been meaning to post these pictures FOREVER! They got tossed to the side when we started packing and moving. We did a lot to fix up the house we were renting before we purchased our home and I thought I might as well share some pictures!

Kitchen:

The first thing that need to go was that hideous carpet!!!!

 

 We ripped the carpet up and started laying down the laminate flooring. Our landlord was buying it and wanted whatever was on sale and cheapest! :) But ANYTHING would be an improvement!

Ahhh....much better :)

The cabinets came next. We painted them "chocolate" brown using a cabinet painting kit from Home Depot, it was from Rustoleum. The kit was only $75 and it included paint color, glaze, and clear protective coat. For this small kitchen we ended up only using half of it! I really liked it and would use it again!

Before picture of cabinets: 

 

Last were the walls. We stripped off the wallpaper (easier than I though, it all came off in about 20 minutes!) and we also painted the family room that connects to the kitchen the same color to add a better sense of flow to the house. Here are some before pictures of the family room:

 Love those walls? ;) And The green carpet!?!

The family room was also SUPER crowded. Our landlord still had some of his furniture in the house which made fitting all of ours difficult. Thankfully we were able to put his stuff in a storage unit and rearrange our stuff!

And Afters of everything:

These were taken right before we moved, so there aren't any pictures up and I had already bought another couch for our new place...so it looks a little crowded :) But I LOVE the change it brought to the house! Paint color is "Gentle Rain" by Behr.

This cream couch is the extra...   :)

Painted Picture Frames; Trying out Gesso

I Love Pinterest :) And I am sure a lot of my ideas and decorating tips will be coming from there as I try to decorate our new house! I bought these beautiful picture frames from Hobby Lobby--I just happened to stop in one day when they were 50% off!! I put them on my wall and decided that they needed something different then the black high gloss paint. I had seen a few pins floating around about gesso....so I decided to try it!

Before Pictures:

Try to ignore the mess and boxes....

Naturally, the first thing I did was paint them grey; one of my favorite colors :) I did not feel like digging through the boxes in our garage and pulling out our spray gun and all of our paint, so I just ran to Walmart real quick and grabbed a few cans of their cheapest paint!

After spray painting them and letting them dry (several days if your like me and get sidetracked..) you are ready for the gesso! Ok, I had never heard of this before so if you are like me I will give you a few tips. I found it at Hobby Lobby in the art section. Its not cheap, the little 4 oz bottle was $6! But I was prepared for this and brought my 40% off coupon. It was labeled as a canvas paint primer....and I will just say right now that I am not even sure if I bought the right stuff! But I did get the results I wanted, so hey :)

I didn't take pictures as I did this but it is super easy, if you have glazed furniture before it is the same technique. 

Using a foam brush, I quickly spread the gesso over one side of my frame. The gesso is a lot like paint and dries fast so only do small areas at a time.

Next, use a damp rag ( I use old socks! They seem to work the best for me and don't leave lint!) to both take off and spread the gesso around evenly until you get the desired affect you want. Feel free to add more gesso if you want a heavier coat.

Repeat on the rest of the frame!

After:

My thoughts on Gesso after; It felt just like Latex paint to me! Did I get the right stuff? I dont know, I will have to research it more, let me know if you know! :) I think next time I want this effect I am going to just try paint and see if it works...it definetly would be a lot cheaper! If that doesn't work I know you can buy clear glaze and tint it to whatever color you want...I need to start trying that as well! But I am happy with the results, I LOVE how the frames turned out! :)

We Have a Yard!

We Have a Yard!

We have been working like crazy this last week and a half getting our yard ready for sod. Chad and I have never been so tired! :) Our bodies are no longer used to such labor; digging a hundred holes, building our patio which consisted of about 1000 pounds of gravel and over 2000 pounds of bricks, putting our trampoline in the ground..more digging, gravel, and bricks; and just getting our yard smoothed out and finishing sprinklers (more digging). But it is done!!! 

Here are just some quick pictures I took just now, I'll do some more detailed posting later. We still need to clean up our yard more so everything is just a mess, please forgive :)

Chad had fun digging the hole for our trampoline:

Starting on the Patio: This picture was taken right after the trailer tipped, dumping 2,000 pounds

of bricks where Chad was standing.....my heart gave out! I was so sure he was going to be at the bottom... Thankfully Chad was super fast and rolled out of the way without getting hurt!

 The sod is down! We are so grateful for our friends and family that came to help!

We need to finish racking the gravel on the side, but our trailer will park there.

We Love looking at something besides dirt :)

Here are just a few pictures of the inside, for those who don't follow me one Facebook or Instagram and haven't seen them. Sorry I don't have more yet, our house is a disaster :) I never thought that it would be so stressful.......The hardest thing were are dealing with is couches, we haven't seemed to find anything we like. We have literally bought and returned (or resold if from KSL) 3 couches just in the last week.....its getting frustrating. Ahhh.....I'm trying to take a break from it for a bit and focus on the rest of the house, we'll see if I can ;)

Chandelier we put in our dining room

Mirror I got 50% off at Hobby Lobby! To go on our staircase.

We did get a recliner, Lucy has already claimed it ;)

Large picture frames for the family room, I'm painting them now though :)

Pendant light above sink. This looks so cool at night! Like a glowing globe :)

I got if for $6 at Restore!

Our pot rack out of an iron wall art piece! Detailed posting on this soon!

Real Salt Lake

Yesterday we FINALLY went to a Real Salt Lake Soccer game!! It was so much fun! We brought Brittany and Devin with us and had a blast! To add to the excitement for Brittany and I we played against David Beckham! hahah! It was fun to try and get a picture of him :)

Its about 9:00pm here..she wasnt going to smile for me, hah!

David Beckham in the middle, number 23 :) "The closest you will EVER get 

to him" said Chad to Britt and me ;)

Chad with the Real Salt Lake Scarf I bought him! He was SO excited!

Can't you tell? haha! No, this picture was taken at the end..we lost...I was trying

to get him to smile so I could take a pic of him with his new scarf, it was a hard task

at the moment :)

We were glad we went and got out with our friends and did something!

Our House Exterior

They painted our house!!!!!!!!!!!! Wooohoo! It looks so good :) They have also finished putting all the stone up; the only thing left on our exterior are the garage doors (and the are really cute too!). It was SO nice to finally have some progress on our house after 2 weeks of nothing! They have also put all of the light fixtures up inside, the carpet is in the garage, and Friday the cabinets go in!!!!
Here are some pictures of the front!

Father's Day

I am so grateful for the wonderful Fathers in my life, especially Chad! He is the most amazing Dad to our little Lucy!

A Simple gift for Dad, Lucy's footprints!

Lucy wasn't very cooperative during the photo-shoot, kinda grumpy actually...

This year we spent the weekend in Idaho, all of my siblings but one brother were there! It was so much fun! We spent the time fishing, eating, talking, shooting, eating, talking, face painting, playing games.. haha! :) I Love spending time with family!

 All the kids lined up with Dad. This was a game he played when he was little and loved;

find the money in the hay! :)

 At David and Cheri's new house with  the Gibbons cousins :)

 Lucy SUPER excited to play soccer! hahaha!

 David and Cheri have this amazing door on their shop/garage, I could NOT 

resist taking a few photos by it ;)

Love my Family! So grateful for the wonderful men in my life! 

Happy Father's Day!