A new day

And a new week...

To start things off, I'll just go ahead and give y'all the Diva of the Day!

Today's Diva, Tina of http://cherryhillcottage.typepad.com/, has such an incredible beautiful home. I'll admit, if I didn't have five little people sharing the house with me, my home would look a lot more like hers, and a lot less like the "early homeschooling/broke NCO family chic" we have going on right now. I am, however, trying to do what I can where I can, and she is another great inspiration for me. For some reason, I keep forgetting that I have walls. I always think of horizontal surfaces--which are a big no-no if they are within arms reach of anyone shorter than five feet tall (and keep in mind, I'm only a little bit above that myself!). I'm working on that 'blind spot' in my brain, though, and I'm trying to remember it when I am out and about on my thrifting and yard saling junkets.

Right now, Tina is showing off the home of her (in her words) "bestbestbest friend", Monica. Those two appear to be two peas in a pod! Great minds think alike, maybe? Regardless of the reason why, I love the way Monica has done her kitchen. Not something I can do on such a scale, but I did enjoy looking at her kitchen windowsill, and decided I needed to do something similar with mine. It is perhaps the one horizontal surface that I can regularly enjoy looking at, and yet not have it within reach of the gruesome twosome, #4 & 5. So I "shopped the house", and rearranged things a bit, and prettied it up somewhat (you should have seen it a few weeks ago--eeeeek! A real horror story which I have no pictures for, thank goodness!).

The picture above is of my 'house shopped' windowsill. Those dark blobs are papier-mache apples. They actually look like real apples. One of my children tried to take a bite out of one of them :-). Fortunately, I only paid $.50/ea for them, so a little damage hasn't hurt the wallet too much.

The curtain is a red and white toile, with a checked border on the bottom. I took it from a used bed skirt. Yes, a bed skirt. Gathers already built in. I cut, did a bit of sewing on the edges, and added the curtain clips. The light is a newer one, we got it at Home Depot. It was a bit bigger than I thought it was going to be at the time, but I think it isn't too bad, now. The faucet is a new one, too. It was part of my birthday present from El Husbando. A delightful thing, that faucet! Nice high neck, the spray pull down nozzle (which makes filling my biggest canner a breeze!), and I especially love the oil-rubbed bronze finish. And the single lever handle is also a bonus. We have a sink, to replace this one, once we get the money together for countertops. But that'll be a while, because of the length of the countertop on the sink side. That stretch of countertop, as well as one elsewhere in the kitchen, has to be specially manufactured. And that costs more money. Unfortunately. But until then, the bland white will have to do. We've also considered replacing the backsplash with some of those faux-tin ceiling tiles, but the more I think on it, the more I like beadboard. I'd really like some nice subway tile, but El Husbando is not a big fan of it, having spent way too much time in military facilities (where subway tile has been used a lot). Oh well, we'll hash that out when we get there, I suppose. Countertops, then backsplash. Then floor. Actually, we might do the floor before we do the other two, simply because of the dining room flooring, but that saga is a story for another post...

Do you have any renovations going on? Big? Small? Somewhere in between? Are you diy? Or hiring it out? Are you 'shopping the house' to decorate, or are you 'shopping the sales'?

I am, as I mentioned, trying to grow out of my 'merely surviving' decorating life-season, and grow into something a bit more 'me', than my current 'well, it landed there, so it stays there'. It is slow going, but it is folks like Tina, and Monica, who are helping to drive my train out of the station. It'd be way too easy for me to just live with the status quo. After all, I've got a great 'excuse'--small children in the destructive years. But I am tired of living in 'blah land', so you'll be hearing a lot more about the changes hereabouts, as time passes...

Hopefully, you will go check out Tina's--and Monica's!--lovely homes, and get some ideas for feathering your own nest...