~**Let's talk bathrooms Part 1**~

Shall we?  We have 4.5 of them....yep....4.5 for three people....it seems a little overkill for us, but to be honest, two of them are rarely used.  The full bath off of my craft room is rarely used and our upstairs guest bathroom is only used when we have company.  The young adult in the house has his own full bath off his bedroom, we have our master bath and there is a 1/2 bath on the main floor for guests.

Lately I've been busy re-painting and updating two of them and I'm getting ready to start to re-do our master bath.   Our upstairs guest bathroom has never been painted and was still the Sherwin Williams Dover White the contractor had chosen and it was time to give it a fresh coat of paint and the downstairs bathroom was in desperate need of updating......what was I thinking when I did it 11 years ago? 

Here the full bath off my craft room that I did 10 years ago, but it still makes me smile, it all still looks good, it pays homage to animals and I still love it all these years later, so I'm leaving it alone.

 

 

Hanging above the toilet is one of the cross stitch samplers that my mother made me years ago and I just treasure it.  Here's a close up.......isn't it precious?  and the perfect gift for this cat loving family.

 

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The first bathroom I painted and decorated was the main floor 1/2 bath.  It's the bathroom most used by us and our guests and it's the smallest, so I started there......well, let me tell you, my taste has definitely changed in the 11 years since I did it....

Here's a picture of the awful wallpaper we took down.  We also had a cheap over the toilet cabinet that came with us from our first house that we got rid of and mounted a wall cabinet.

I decided to leave the wood wainscoting but no more wallpaper!

I also had to do something with the awful brass fixtures that were in the room, so my handy dandy spouse switched out the faucet, towel holder and tissue paper holder to an updated oiled bronze finish and I spray painted the light fixture an oiled bronze because I didn't mind the style just the finish and I didn't really see one that grabbed me enough to spend the money on it....beside why buy, if you can repurpose?

Sherwin Williams "Beach House" is the paint I used for most of the wall color (I've also used that color in our den, foyer, hallway and staircase walls) and on the bottom part of the wainscoted wall I used Valspar's "Green Goddess".  I also applied a bronze rub-on detail to the front of the pedestal sink.

 



I found the following picture at Kirkland's and the green in the picture played well with the green that that I chose for the bottom part of the wall.

The green on the wall in this photo appears much brighter than it actually is......it looks downright hideous here.  :)

 

The metal sign above the toilet can mean many things.  :)

 

Lastly, we replaced the cheap hollow core door with a 6 panel sold wood door (which we are slowly doing throughout our house). 

 

Thanks for stopping by and letting me share one of the projects I've been working on.  As I said earlier, our upstairs guest bathroom has never been painting and I just recently finished that project and I'm gearing up to re-do our master bath that hasn't been painted in since 2005.  Both rooms are in desperate need of a fresh coat of paint.

Stay tuned and I'll share those project with you when I'm finished!

**Getting Crafty**

I usually get quite crafty in the months of January and February.  This time of the year is usually nasty outside, so I spend more time inside at home and it's the time of year I go to my annual scrapbook retreat and I get quite a bit of scrapbooking done there.

I usually put together a little goodie bag for my fellow retreat goers and this year, I made almond scented bath salts that I put in little glass bottles that I'd been saving when drinking the Starbucks Iced Coffees.  After using Goof-Off to get all of the labeling off the bottles,  I ran them through the dishwasher to get them good and clean.

Mixing up the bath salts is next and it's super easy....Epson salts, baking soda, fragrance and food coloring.  Since I decided I didn't want to paint the caps of the bottles, I went with blue food coloring so the salts would match.  After mixing the bath salts up and filling up the bottles, I got out the following from my craft stash:

• My stash of Prima flowers
• One of my round punches
• Bling
• Zig 2 way glue
• Glue Dots
• Ribbon or fiber (I chose some pretty blue fiber I've had for years)

After I punched out enough circles to cover the lids of the bottles, I used both glue dots and Zig 2 way glue to glue the Primas flowers on the circle and then top each on off with a touch of bling.

  

Using glue dots I covered the lids of the bottles with the flowers. 

 

I also hand lettered some tags to label the bottles "Almond Bath Salts" and tied the tags on the bottles with the blue fiber I had in my huge basket of fiber and ribbon. 

 

I think they looked very pretty!

 

  

I've also been kicking it with my scrapbook pages I'm completed.  I like to keep track.  I don't set a goal for myself because I don't want to put any pressure on working on things just to hit a page total goal, but I do like to know how many I do each year.   

 

Here's some statistics on my scrapbooking that I've keep track of for almost 10 years:

• 2005 - I completed 137 pages
• 2006 - I completed 144 pages
• 2007 - I completed 144 pages (strange that I did EXACTLY the same number as the year before)
• 2008 - I completed 147 pages
• 2009 - I completed 107 pages
• 2010 - I completed 112 pages
• 2011 - I completed 80 pages
• 2012 - I completed 74 pages
• 2013 - I completed 61 pages
• 2014 - I completed 43 pages

So it appears that starting in 2011, I slowed down my scrapbooking which makes sense because I don't think I was taking as many pictures as the kid was growing up and less opportunity. 

 

Here's a sampling of some of my favorite pages I've done over the last few months.   I'm a year behind with my scrapbooking, but being "behind" never bothered me because I never want to run out of things to scrapbook.

 

 



 

Have a great weekend!  It's been incredibly beautiful weather wise here and I've been trying to get outside after a very long two months of icky weather!

 

 

 

Just Sharing....

I've had to go out to one of our shopping malls a couple of times since the first of the year(something that I rarely do....I'd rather shop online) so because I was there, I do like to stop in to some of my favorite stores I don't get to very often.

I stopped in at LUSH while I was there and came out with a couple of bubble bars and a jar of this awesome lip scrub.....

I don't know about you, but Iowa winters take it's toll on my lips and they get chapped and flaky...this stuff is amazing and the best part.....if completely safe to ingest so after rubbing it all over your lips, you can lick off the excess....win/win!

I also had to stop in at the Brighton store.  I needed to exchange a pair of sunglasses I received from my wonderful husband as a gift and I had also had some gift money to spend so I bought myself a new key chain that I adored from the moment I saw it hanging there.  It's perfect.  :)

 

 

And no trip to the mall for me would be complete without a browsing session at Sephora and this time I only came out of there with this amazing beautyblender.  I've tried makeup wedges, rounds, a foundation brush but I love this foundation tool the best for me to use.

 

 



Back at home I've been enjoying a few things.......for the last couple of years, my favorite magazine and one I'm so excited about seeing in my mail is HGTV Magazine.  I've yet to throw a single issue away and I have the stack of them in my craft room to go through again and tear sheets for my project files.....if you haven't checked it out yet, you should.

Another fun thing I've been enjoying is my Bose Sound link Bluetooth Speaker that my husband bought me for Christmas.  I love the portability and it certainly changes up things when I'm having to clean bathrooms or paint rooms and best of all when I'm playing in my craft room.  I had to have the blue.

I've also been cooking more and I have to laugh a little because one of my favorite kitchen things to use (besides our Le Creuset and our 5 burner range) is an item that I found at a garage sale a few years ago I paid 50 cents for but because of it's size, it seems to cook in handy for many things.  It's vintage Corning ware Blue Cornflower and I'm sure there was a glass lid for it prior to me finding it, but it's works for us just the way it is.

Before I end this post I also wanted to share with you a new piece of cat art I bought myself with Christmas money.  I loved the 3-dimensional look of it, the textured mixed media and the whimsy.  I found it at an art fair, it was very reasonably priced and I had a perfect spot for it in my craft room.

Later.....and just remember....only 18 days til Spring!