NEW Diningroom - more tales from the home improvement phase.

As promised - here are pics of my completed diningroom.  This was the last room completed prior to my husband returning from deployment, and by far, the WORST project.

Started with absolutely horrifying vomit green walls...the kind of color that can only be conquered by gallons and gallons and gallons of heavy covering primer.  Walls and ceiling.  The geniuses that lived in this house before liked to live in a drab, dark cave it seems. 

So about 5 gallons of primer and two coats of paint later (nevermind the drama of clinging like a spider monkey to the ceiling and ladder to paint around the ceiling fan, since the previous owners puttied the fan cover to the ceiling.) and a lot of new accessories, I finally had a diningroom I wanted to eat in.

I updated my antique mahoghany sideboard with a little copper

foiling and some new hardware, it absolutely glows in the late

afternoon sun!

The stenciling on the pushouts came out great and it was super

easy to do.  I used the darkest color of the three on the stencils to give it some contrast.

And found these amazing enameled wrought iron wall hangings at Gordmans, which I used to accented the casing wall, as well as over the inspiration piece; the Felix Mas seriagraph.  We picked the picture up on our honeymoon and the framing is very Art Deco.  Looks amazing with the new linens and rug.                        

I was able to extend my dining table to its full length (can seat 10), and couldn't believe how large the room really is.  I guess that vomit color threw off my spacial recognition.

Such a brighter, happier room.  Even if Thor thinks it looks "pinkish".  hahaha.

And in my looooooong absence....

Hi there!  I know....I know....where have I been?  What have I been doing?!!  Why haven't I been posting about anything.

Well, as with most things...life kinda snuck up on me, got extremely crazed for awhile, and then if by miracle...suddenly cleared.

Top news tidbits -

1.  My house is done.  Finished the diningroom up a couple weeks ago.  Look for a separate post on that coming in the next couple of days.

2.  Fall shows have started in full swing.  Am booked up solid until beginning of December.  Check out here for a list of my shows until the end of the year.  Am adding a couple more soon...who needs to sleep?

3.  Hubby is HOME!!!  After many months deployed in Afghanistan, he is home safely.  *happy wife dance*

4.  Mini- vacay planned to KC next weekend.  Will be sure to post pics, etc. from that.  Possible Ren-faire action too.

5.  2 weeks until my next show which is incidentally my LAST outdoor show of the season.  Pray for me for good weather.  And rejoice with me that my special helper (hubby) is back to help with the heavy lifting.

6.  New web design is coming SOON!!  I will post some mock ups if I can (in my limited computer brillance) figure out how.  May need to send up a "I'm stupid, HELP!" SOS to big bro to help out with that, dear readers.

And that's all I can think of right now.  Hopefully that will tide you over for a bit whilst I get the pics in order for the separate post on my diningroom re-design...which I promise will be up by tomorrow.

Thanks for hanging in with me during my absence...and feel free to pimp me out to all the cool people you know.  haha...

Toodles,
Leah :-)

I'm dreaming of a warm, sandy VACATION!

It's only a couple months now...until Thor comes home and life returns to blissful normalcy.  Well, until the Air Force decides to deploy him again...but we won't think about that now.

I am dreaming of a loooooong vacation with my husband, a second honeymoon if you will to celebrate him coming home.

Buuuuuuuut....as luck would have it, it looks as though he may be slightly delayed (fingers crossed that doesn't actually happen), and we will have to postpone our vacation for a couple months due to a training class already scheduled.

Photo by eggneckface33

Here's the itinerary I'm hoping the universe will line up to let us have.  I can almost feel the warm sand squishing between my toes.


Saturday,  NEW ORLEANS, LA 4:00pm

Sunday,  FUN DAY AT SEA

Monday,  FUN DAY AT SEA

Tuesday,  BELIZE 8:00am 5:00pm

Wednesday,  ISLA ROATAN 8:00am 6:00pm

Thursday,  COZUMEL, MEXICO 9:00am 5:00pm

Friday,  FUN DAY AT SEA

Saturday,  NEW ORLEANS, LA 8:00am

But hey, even if we have to postpone until November or December - it'll be fine.  We'll figure out something to do as a vacation closer to home.
 
But here's hoping....

The final painting project - The DREADED pea puke green diningroom

So, it's about 2.5 more months until Thor comes home and as you all know - I have been painting my way through our house.

We bought the place almost a year ago - it will be a year in September.  And I have been lamenting the drab color choices of the previous owners.  You have seen me turn mustard yellow into slate blue and also dark green, caca brown into warm peachy tan, and mud brown into a Frank Lloyd Wright-esque mural in a dark military blue.

And I saved the worst for last.  Puke pea green.  Walls and ceiling the color of vomit.  Our dining room is a green cave of despair.  It is so dark and awful in that room that I never ever go in there. 

And so I have armed myself with gallons of heavy hiding primer as well as gallons of 3 paint colors because multiple coats will be needed to cover up this travesty.  I picked a warm peachy beige for the ceiling and 3 of the 4 walls.  The accent wall will be a warm peach and I have picked out a gorgeous stencil to add a bit of Art Deco to the room in the darkest accent color which is a warm copper color.

And then the contemplation of my red oak diningroom table, which is gorgeous and was my first "grown-up" furniture purchase about 5 years ago, led me to ask my husband if he might want to get new chairs. 

A resounding YES met my question and he proceeded to describe in great detail how much he despised my "country-fied" dining chairs.  I don't like them much either...I got 2 from a friend when I first moved out on my own and then by the time I got the new table, I had 4 of those chairs already.  It seemed more practical to get 2 more chairs to match the ones I already had rather than spending the money to buy 6 new chairs.  So I have been scoping out new chairs and found some on Overstock.com that I like the look of.  I will have to change the fabric on the seats definitely...but that is no big deal. 

I am on the lookout for a brocade fabric that will coordinate with the stencil as well as the rug I have found - also on Overstock.com...I love that website.  Especially, their rugs.  The rug is currently out of stock - but should be back in shortly.  It's perfect and suits the color palette for the room. 

Of course, the rug I want is a regular rectangle, about 7.5x10ft.  The whole room is being designed around this painting which Thor and I got on our honeymoon. 

The painting is Lady in the Carmine Dress by Felix Mas.  We both love this picture and so went extravagant with the framing - black lacquer with copper foiling in a scroll pattern on the frame.

I have a gig coming up for the first couple weeks of July and so will not start this until I get back on the 16th.

Thor's new office - DONE!!

So I have been working on my husband's office while he's been gone.  It's been done for a couple days but was waiting on a rug to arrive to take pics to share.
But FINALLY - the rug arrived this afternoon and so here are the pics.

Thor wanted a dark green for the room but picked out a color that was a bit drab and closer to the puke pea green than I could live with so I made a slight change to a more deep grey green.  And as irony would have it - a color called Billiard Green.  Ironic because my husband is a bit of a pool shark when the mood descends.

Didn't have to buy any new furniture pieces - Thor has a beautiful cherry secretary desk and matching bookcases which look amazing with the wall color. 

The white trim in the room keeps the color from being too dark. 

Was able to repurpose an occasional chair which matched his furniture perfectly.  And just bought some accessories to accent the furniture and to bring the colors across the room.  The rug topped everything all off.   

Excuse me while I fall apart for a minute.

It's 92 days left, give or take - and some days I deal better with Thor being gone than others.  I really don't like whiners and so get especially mad at myself when I get maudlin like this...because I am a grown woman and I knew what I was signing on for when we got married.

But let me be the first to tell you - being a military wife sucks.  SUCKS.  Sucks bigtime.  For months at a stretch you have no idea if you will ever see your husband again.  You wait, trying not to hold your breath and hyperventilate between phone calls and emails.  You get bad feelings in the middle of the night and then wait to hear anything...hoping that it's just an email from your husband telling you not to worry.

Actively trying not to worry while you are slowly losing your mind with WORRY.  Personally, I try to cram every waking hour with projects and running around senselessly.  Since I've already spent 6 months working on projects in our new house...I am fast running out of them.  So, to fill the gaps, I've started working out 5 days a week instead of 3.  But, the oddest times I will just start crying.  Painting a wall in Thor's office - tears.  Carrying laundry downstairs - tears.  Sitting watching a silly movie on TV - tears.  Driving to work - tears.

Geez, when did I turn into such a pussy?! 

It's the little things that get to you at the oddest times.  When a big empty house seems to echo and there's no smile and kiss on the cheek when dinnertime rolls around.  No rushing to take a basket of clothes from me because he's sure I am going to pitch down the stairs because of my clumsiness.  No talking to the TV while that silly movie is playing.  No foraging for snack food in the middle of the night.

Ok. Now, I'm even more depressed.  And since I don't want depress my lovely readers, I am going to go back to my corner to stew.

It's June...Summer has officially arrived with a THUNDERSTORM!

It was a rough night...insomnia strikes again and a VERY early morning.  An appointment to take my care in for a recall servicing had me up and moving, albeit slowly, at 6:30am.

Ugh......

The maintenance was done by 830am - while I was waiting I poked around in the lot looking at a potential second car for me and Thor since sharing is a nightmare and a half.  I'm liking the look of the Versa personally, but I know Thor has his eye on a motorcycle instead.  But a motorcycle in the winter in Nebraska is not practical.

But look....it's June 1st.  Officially summer.  The kids are already out, the graduation parties have been partied and I have 100 days left of his deployment to get through.

You'd think June would arrive with a nice sunny day...but nope.  It's rapidly darkening out there and looking drearier by the minute.  Tornado warnings have been issued...I really miss California sometimes.

Tornados freak me out.  I will take earthquakes any day and twice on Sundays over a tornado.

I need a nap.