12 in 12 Review

Remember my 12 in 12?  Yeah, me neither...I kid!  I thought being the new year I thought I would check in on last year's 12 in 12 and see how I did.  So without further ado....

1) Try and new cut and color...done and sort of done.
I went darker in the fall and decided to commit to growing it out long.  I found a great stylist that gave my long hair some shape.

2) Learn how to wear lipstick.  Done and if I could revise this intention I would have said "learn to wear lipstick AND actually wear it."  I found a gloss based lipstick in a red that I love for my everyday look.

3) Decided on a paint color of the formal living/dining and paint it. DONE!  And I freaking LOVE it!  But truthfully I got this one barely under the wire.  We had swatches painted all over the walls for the better part of the year.  It was so bad that one of my sister's friends asked "are you going for an abstract look?" and my poor color bling hubby was like "um, can we pick something? This is driving me crazy." His request was in August and I decided on a paint in October....eek!  Then I did my normal thing where I trim in my spare time at night and then roller one Saturday.  My goal was to have it done before we decorated for the holidays and let's say I was rollering the last coat as the mister was dragging the boxes out of the attic.  I will post pictures soon, promise.

4) Run in a race. Check.  I did the Jingle Bell Run in Fort Worth with my sister and T.  Little A tagged along and it was fun.  I might try another one this year

5) Refinish the bed frame I bought at the flea market.  Fail.  Well, not really, it's taken me a while to decide on painting versus refinishing and then there are only so many hours in the day...and I did that little thing called going back to work.  I am not feeling too bad about this one.

6) Begin building our food garden in the back yard.  Nope, we didn't work on this one.  Instead we focused our time and money on fixing up the existing landscaping and put in a new bed.  It's a process.

7) Get the creative room pulled together.  I got that one done first thing this year and we have really enjoyed it.  We have a few more plans to tweak the room this year but we have a great base.

8) Visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum.  No, but this one is going straight to my list this year!

9) Take Adelaide to the place T and I got engaged. We accomplished this in a pretty special way.  You can read more about it here.

10) Visit two art museums that are not in my city.  I didn't get this done, but I am at peace.  We used the heck out of our DMA membership.  Adelaide and I spent much of the summer going in the morning to look at the collection, gabbing lunch at the cafe and heading home.  But I would like to continue to seek out opportunities to soak up art with my little family.

11) Finish a sewing project from a pattern.  That's another big, fat no.  I am starting to think that I have a real problem with patterns, because I have done several sewing projects but I have drafted the pattern myself or just free handed it (Adelaide's nap mat cover for school and a stole for worship).  Oops.

12) Attend at least one concert.  Ha!  This one is the biggest yes of the bunch.  I joked to someone that if you followed me on Instagram, you would think that my life was all food, cute baby raising and concerts.  This year I got to see the Old 97s, Florence and the Machine, Bob Dylan, A Fine Frenzy, and several DSO concerts.

All in all it was a great year.

Creative Room Makeover {After}

Hey, look!  I am actually following up on an after post on one of our home projects!  As I shared in my 12 in 12 post and in my "before" post we have a room right off our entry way that was made for a home office.  It has two closets, which make for perfect storage for all sorts of stuff, vaulted ceilings and a big window.  We needed the space to function in 4 different ways:

1) As a home office for T's day job.  You know we need some space for filing, tech gear, etc. and it also needed to be a space that was acceptable to be seen in the back ground of skype meetings.

2) As a quiet space away from sleeping babes to play music and hang out.  Since T is a musician he needs space where he can write and play anytime without waking the little bear, especially since most of our free time is after she goes to bed.  

3) As a reading nook and library.  We both own waaaay too many books and love to read.  Having a place to store our books and to curl up with one is a must in our house.  

4) Last but not least I needed a space to be able to sew, blog, scrapbook and edit pictures.  

In addition to these four functions, it also needed to be baby safe for days when either of us needed to wrap up a project while the little miss played.  

I think we were able to make it all happen, so without further ado here's our Creative Room:

We started with taking everything out of the room as I shared in my before post, so we could paint.  We chose Benjamin Moore's Divine White color matched to Behr Premium paint and primer in one.  I chose Divine White for a couple of reasons, first, the furniture is dark and the red accents bright so I wanted to go lighter and brighter.  Divine White is also what we painted the entry way so visually it would make that space seem continual and draw the eye in and make the art wall the focal point. Plus, I had a gallon left over from the entry way project, so bonus!  It took three coats to cover that yellow up.  Each time we tackle a project to cover the yellow I always under-estimate how dark it the yellow really is--ugh!  

Once we finished painting we brought the furniture back in.  And weeded through some of our books.  Some went to half price, some went to the attic and some went to other areas around the house.  But we slimmed it down so we could add some knick knacks and whatnot.  

This little snail vase is one of my favorite little details.  I found him at a florist around the corner from our house in Indy.  I am hoping in the spring when the selection is healthier at the local green house to pick up a little succulent to plant in there.  

I am too much of a nerd to not organize my shelves according to genre even though all the home decor sources say to organize according to color, but I did try a little color clustering on my shelves with in genre and only did it with colors that would compliment the other colors in the room like the red and cream.  My thought was the colors that didn't fit could blend into one another by not being placed by one another and the colors that did go together could pop.  

The wall the bookcases sit on is the tallest, largest expanse of space in the room with no doors or windows along it, so I had an art wall in mind that could capture some of our loves--music, memories, babies, letterpress art work.  

In the corner across from the chair on the other side of the big window I created a little nook for me to blog, craft and do my thing.  I saw the NORBERG desk at Ikea a few months back and thought it might do the trick and be a space saver.  Really there is plenty of room for another full sized desk, but I thought a desk that could fold down would be good at motivating me to tidy up my mess at the end of the day...so far...so good. Also, I wanted whatever desk we chose for this corner to be able to be used else where in the house because I have a little more in store for this room when we can afford certain pieces of furniture.  

The chair was free.  It was left behind at one of T's gigs a few years back and so we drug it home and it sat.  And sat.  It was originally a dusty, pinky, orange and covered in dirt from outdoor and music festival gigs.  I cleaned it off, sanded off the nasty old paint, primed and painted it with a white semi gloss.  The basket is to keep track of current projects and they stay on the chair (away from little hands) when I am not working on them.  

I organized some of my other items in mason jars on the desk.  Thread and ribbon and whatnot.  I wanted to hang three of the FORHOJA cubbies above my little area for more storage, but alas Ikea is sold out.  Which is probably good because it will force me to find something more creative or unique off Craig's list.  

I am pretty happy over all.  The room is cleaned up, organized and meets all our needs. It also is light and airy and feels more like "us" than the dark yellow.  I am hoping to tweak it here and there, add a few more prints to the art wall, and of course the cubbies about the sewing desk.  And the mister digs it and I know the little miss likes it now because she can actually hang out and play.  

So there it is!  Our little project.  

Creative Room Makeover {Before}

We started 2012 by tackling one of our house projects.  It's by far not our most difficult or daunting project, but we are really happy with how it turned out.  Plus, If we are ever going to get this house feeling like "ours" its going to be room by room one little project at a time.  

As I shared in my 12 in 12 post we have a home office just off our entry and formal living/dining that needs some help being pulled together.  Its actually a great sized room, has two closets and is the perfect space to turn into a space for playing music, crafting, reading and being creative.  

I snapped a few pictures the day we closed on the house to document the "before."  Again, you can see the yellow paint everywhere.  

The yellow paint extended into the creative room and made a room with vaulted ceilings, french doors and a big window seem much smaller and darker that it actually was.  

Since we've moved in we have had a desk and our books shelves in the room but it has mainly been the catch all where we have piled those last remaining boxes that didn't have a home yet.  

And I am horrible at true "before" pictures.  I guess its because when it comes to tackling a project I am SO sick of the before and SO ready for the after I dive in and forget to snap pictures.  But here is one before I snapped with the ol iPhone of the little miss helping with the demolition process.  

I am super excited to share how we transformed the room to meet our needs and create a beautiful space to read, write, play and create.  Stay tuned!

12 in 12

via 

I am not a big New Years Resolution kind of girl.  I have some core commitments and some things that are more like life goals that more or less have to do with what sort of person I want to be.  But this is stuff I work on year round and don't wait until the new year to tackle.  They, like life are more of a work in progress that something to be declared and started at a set point.

I love the idea of the 30 by 30 list that bloggers like Nicole have done and Jen is doing now, aiming to accomplish, do, see or try 30 things the year before turning 30 years old.   I really like the way their list have a nice balance of big kind of accomplishments and smaller little projects.  I had high hopes of doing my own 30 by 30 list last year, but thought twice about it once I realized I would be growing a sweet little babe, working full time and oh, moving across country, trying to get a new house settled and becoming a mother all at the same time.  So I made the wise decision to focus my year leading up to 30 on those big changes.  But I still like the idea creating a list of sorts to tackle some of those projects and whatnot that I need a little nudge to do, plus it would be such a fun way to get a sense of accomplishment.

So in the spirit of the 30 by 30 since I missed the chance to do a real 30 by 30 and since it is the new year I am going to be doing a 12 in 12.  Twelve things that are not really resolutions but more things I want to learn/do/accomplish this year.  Twelve things to do in a twelve months span.  I think it will be fun to check in from time to time and share how they are going.

So here they are:

1) Try a new hair cut and color.  I change my hair up by growing it out and cutting it off but the last couple of years I have noticed that I have the same go-to hair cuts in this cycle and I would like to change things up a bit.  As for the color I have wanted to try something new and have just been too scared--I have great natural hair color and to be honest time is a tickin away on how much longer I can enjoy color free hair so I want to enjoy it while I have it but I would like a change.  This year is the year to do it!

2) Learn how to wear lipstick.  I am really more of a lipgloss kind of girl.  In the last year I have tip-toed into the realm of lip stain lip glosses.  Lipstick makes me cringe and either think of middle school when we were all obsessed with wearing way too much in totally wrong shade all the time or my grandma who I am pretty sure has been wearing the same shade for decades.  I would like to get over the cringe and learn to work it in.

3) Decide on a paint color for the formal living/dining and then paint!  Pretty straight forward...if I could ever make up my mind!  

4) Run in a race.  Yep, I run 3 times a week and have never run in a race (more on this later).  I would like to give a whirl.

5) Refinish the bed frame I bought at the flea market.  This may seem a bit to-do listy but I really want to tackle this project because it is the starting piece for decorating the guest bedroom.

6) Begin building our food garden in the backyard.  This will be a multi-year, multi-phase project but woohoo I can't wait to start it!  I am pretty sure that in Texas I could garden 9 months a year if I planned it out carefully, but I have much to study, read, plan and plot this year!

7) Get the "creative room" pulled together.  We have a home office but we would like it to be part office, part music and part crafting space.  I would really like to see it pulled together to function in all those different ways so that our family has a little space to retreat and work on projects.  

8) Visit the Oklahoma City National Memorial and Museum.  I am from the Oklahoma City area and have very strong memories from that day.  I haven't had the chance to go to the museum but I would like to very much.  

9) Take Adelaide to the place where T and I got engaged.  I know she will love it!  I think we will make a special family holiday of it!

10) Visit at least two art museums NOT in my city.  We have a membership to the DMA.  I have big plans to not only beat the heat by taking little miss there in the summer, but taking full advantage of the exchange program that allows us free entrance into 500 other museum nationwide.  Yes.  I geek out just thinking about the possibility.

11)  Finish a sewing project from a pattern.  Ok, the tea towels I made don't really count as sewing.  I really need to put my machine to good use this year, but let's just start with finishing a project!

12)  Attend at least one concert.  Our late-night, rock show going days have definitely slowed since little miss arrived.  It would be nice to get to at least one this year, because watching music live in a room with other people is a spiritual experience that I miss.  

So there it is--part to-do, part resolution, part belated bucket list, 100% me.  Wish me luck?