Mirror, mirror on the wall...

Oh I am so excited!! It has been decorating central over in the Walter pad! No major projects but just a few things I have been wanting to do to personalize our already awesome house! The project we started and finished today (oh, that's the best feeling, to get something completely DONE!) was framing the master bathroom mirror.

Here is the before- I love how HUGE the mirror is and we just needed to spruce it up a bit:

So, we headed on over to Home Depot and purchased three 8 foot pieces of dark cherry colored finished wood moulding and a saw thing-a-ma-jig that makes cutting at an angle easy. We prob should have just spent the extra money on an electric saw since they weren't too expsensive and I plan on framing the rest of the mirrors and putting up more chair rail, but it still did it's job!

Oh, how I love my hubby!! He's totally the best- he does not really care too much about doing these projects since we live in a brand new house, but he does them anyway since I want them done!

All the cutting of the edges was supper easy, but then we had to cut notches in the top of the wood to make room for the things that mount the mirror to the wall. I know there's a way to get back mounts for a mirror but we didn't want to deal with taking the mirror down and all that junk.
Once the pieces were cut to size we used some of this stuff on the backside to glue it to the wall and mirror:

Hard at work, with my little helper supervising

See how we had the liquid nails on the top and bottom? Well, once it put it on the mirror you could totally see glue reflecting back at you, so we had to take it down and wipe up this goopy mess

Here our little helper was photographer as we were cleaning the mirror:

So once we figured that out, we put the liquid nails on the rest of the pieces and stuck them to the mirror.

And now for the finished product!!!

Before:

After:

I think it turned out so good!! I totally love that it matches the cabinets perfectly and it just adds that extra something!!

Now, it's not totally perfect, but what DIY project is?? Especially since this is the first time we ever attempted something like this.

The bottom didn't go flush on the mirror because of the bottom of the mount for the mirror made it stick out a little, so the edges of the wood didn't match perfect, but a little wood marker over the glue once it dries should work.

And the notches we cut out at the top actually turned out great, just looking at the mirror looks like that's how it should be!

One more project down, a couple more in progess! Keep posted if you're interested in our pantry and laundry room spruce up!

House Stuff

*Warning: Blogger sucks and apparently I can't upload pictures in the correct order or move them around, so the befores and afters should be switched :)


Moving into a brand new house is a glorious thing, everything is perfect and ready to be lived in- except it totally squashes ANY motivation to do anything to your home. We have been in the house for about 8 months now and I'm finally getting tired of the white walls and am starting to do something about it. Before this, I have never painted in my entire life, unless you count glitter splatter paint in my childhood room, which I do not count that as actually painting. Anyways, at first I wanted to just add a couple accent walls, so we painted a yellow wall in Hannah's room and a sage green in ours:
After

Before

I'm happy with our room, but I do want to add curtains to the big window to get some more color in there. Now with Hannah's room, every time I walked in there I felt like it was not done so I set out on a little DIY project and it was so much fun! After I painted the rest of the room yellow and the bottom half pink (p.s. straight line chalk markers are AMAZING) my dad came over to help put a chair rail up, and it only took us about half the day, not too bad!! Below pictures are completely out of order...

The chair from Hannah's nursery, I LOVE this little reading chair for her but I want to get some bright pink fabric and cover it, since I am SOOOOOO not crafty I haven't attempted this yet but it is on my to do list!

The lamp from her nursery- dressed up with a little bright pink spray paint and I love that the lamp shade is white with light yellow stripes on it, it goes perfect with the yellow in her room.

Her wall of shelves- I was so not smart about these, I purchased dark wood shelves and went about spra painting them white. They look good now but I would have saved so much time and energy if I had just waited until I found cheaper white or even bright pink shelves- which I happened to stumble across at Target literally the next week after I painted these!! Grrrrrrrr Oh, well live and learn! Anyways, I love that there is a spot to put pictures, her letter H, and piggy bank- my favorite is the picture of her and Cinderella, which is the perfect place to display her princess autograph book from Disneyland! Oh how smart is that?!! Until I thought to put it there, that book had been sitting in a drawer all alone!

Part of her finished room- I still want to put a mirror there and Nick is trying to convince me the tv we have in the extra room would go perfect there...

Her finished room!! I just ordered 3 nylon butterflies that I plan to put on the wall above her bed.

The next project was the downstairs bathroom- nothing crazy here just a little light blue paint on the walls, I love how that color goes with the browns already in there!
Next on my agenda is to find soemthing to go on the wall above the toilet- either sconces with candles or maybe a picture of some sort... I'll know it when I see it!

Here's the bathroom when we moved in, so plain. Paint can really dress a room up!

I want to paint our bathroom and Hannah's bathroom next- since I've already got sage green towels and the green wall in our room I'm thinking tan walls, just to add something.

And the laundry room- I've got a lot of light blue paint leftover so I figured slap that on the walls in here! Nick thinks it's crazy to paint a laundry room, but I think it would be nice to have a pretty place to throw dirty clothes into the drum!

Our house is slowly coming together, I LOVE this place and just want to add some color to liven it up! I'm a little afraid of color because I never know if it's going to turn out how I see it in my head, but so far my projects have gone pretty well. Stay tuned to see what other changes we make...

I know it's been a long time...

Apparently time as seriously gotten away from me and the summer is almost over!! As I look back over the last couple of months I realize how busy we have actually been and I've been enjoying our hot summer days and haven't been updating our blog! Sorry to anyone that actually reads this! Without further ado, here is a glimpse at our summer time fun...

This summer we have enjoyed LOTS of yummy otterpops- any color will do for our little princess, she's not too picky when it comes to this summer time favorite!
A certain 3 year old learned how to pump on the swings a couple weeks ago, we were at the park when all of a sudden she runs over to the swings, hops on, and just starts going!! I've got no idea where this talent came from all of a sudden, but she sure is good at it.

Hannah had fun riding her "steerin bike" and enjoying the weather outside. Just relaxing in the warm sun...

This summer brought some visitors from Oregon. Great Grandpa and Grammy came to town and Hannah couldn't have been more thrilled. She enjoyed doing puzzles with Grammy and sitting on the couch Great Grandpa.

We went to Six Flags for the first time this year. Hannah loved seeing all the animals and she went on every ride she was tall enough for- she didn't even want us to go on the rides with her this time! I can't believe how big and independent she is getting.

Another first this summer- driving range with Daddy! Daddy bought her her own pink club that is just the right size and she went to town- for about 5 minutes until the geese distracted her! :)

4th of July was a blast! We spent it just the 3 of us and it was so nice! We BBQ'd, played outside, stayed up late, watched Daddy's fire work show, and did the sparklers for the first time.

As if we hadn't gone enough places and done enough things, we went to Funderland, too this summer. This is the BEST place for young ones, it's not too big and overwhelming, and Hannah is the perfect size to go on everything herself, except for the big Dragon roller coaster.

That was probably a fraction of the things we have done this summer, but if gives you all an idea of how busy we have been!! Another exciting thing that happened this summer was that I finished school!! Finally, hallelujah, amen! I know I'm not done forever... but I have finally graduated with a degree that I can use for an actual career! As many of you know, I've been working towards my nursing degree since graduating from High school, and with so much competition trying to get into nursing school there was just no way I was going to finish anytime soon and we were tired of our family being in a holding pattern. So, I decided to graduate in Medical Assisting and I finished my last class- an externship- at the end of July. (I plan to go back and get my RN degree once Hannah is in elementary school).

I did my externship through Sutter at a family practice in Auburn, and I LOVED the office so much!! I wished they could have just hired me there but unfortunately they didn't need anyone. So, I took my Sutter employment test and passed, passed my CMA test, and have applied for roughly 30 MA positions. I've had one interview, didn't get the job but got great feedback from the hiring manager, so that felt good. Since my externship I have kept in contact with one the MA's at the Auburn office and she actually e-mailed me today telling me she's leaving that office and a position should hopefully open up, she's already talked to the hiring manager about me coming back and will be talking with her Dr. about me replacing her!! Of course I have to apply and interview like everyone else, but I know they were all happy with me there externing so hopefully they will just want me back to work! Her last day is at the end of Septemeber so I'm sure they will hire someone by then, and let's just hope that person is me!

Wow- so I guess that concludes our summer!! This post is all over the place and probably doesn't flow well, but I've gotta get back in the groove somehow!! So, bare with me and I'll be posting more soon, I've gotta fill in the gaps I left in this post! :)