Living Room Mantle

My living room is still in progress, things are always changing. However, for my mantle I think I found a keeper! My living room has very high ceilings, to accentuate that we found a really huge mirror. We plan to paint our walls a soft grey, I think it will really bring out the teal accent color around our house. For window treatment, we plan to start them from the top of the ceiling to again accentuated the height of the ceilings. We plan for the drapes to be a shade darker grey than the walls. Wow, we PLAN a lot! Lets just hope it gets done soon!

Back to the mantle.......

The fishes fit perfectly in our beach house. They belonged to my parents and I always had my eye on them. They did not really fit into my parents rustic style so they were gifted to me : ) 

Putting my DIY skills to the works, I gave the vintage book look a try. I took a trip to my local Library and purchased some used books. Each book was around 25 cents! I brought them home ripped off the cover, dipped them in coffee, let them dry, stacked them and wrapped them with twine! 

I stuck some sea shells and sea stars in the twine to give them an extra touch. 

I scattered the fish and the books on the mantle. The scattered look gave an interesting yet cohesive look.

There you have it, my Fall, Winter, Spring and Summer mantle. 

BAKE THIS!

My little brother is having a bake sale at school today. I wanted to bake something yummy yet fun. I thought these would be fun for a bunch of young ones.

Using a white cake batter I simply divided the batter up into four bowls. In each bowl, I added a different color. I found some super cool neon food coloring at Ralph's. Purple, Pink, Green and blue. The hard part or shall I say tiring part was spooning each layer into the cupcake foil (your hand gets tired after a while). 

They do not only look scrumptious but they taste so! I am sure these will be a hit tonight. The teacher suggests we sell these for $1 a pop. That maybe be pricey for young ones but I think they can manage since they all attend a private school! 

Powder Room

Our powder rooms was dead. It looked plain. It looked like a hospital bathroom. It needed to be resuscitated with LIFE! Here she is all pale:

Using a defibrillator we resuscitated her. Sticking to our beach house naturals I went with sea grass wallpaper. The powder room took 3 double rolls. 3 x 2=6 good job!

Here is the big reveal:

This is what you see from the little hallway.

Walking in you are greeted with the original pedestal sink and toilet.

I had this mirror in our home in Portland. The frame was gold so I decided to tone it down a bit with a soft white. I added a little mantle which provides room for fun decor.

I purchased these Anthropology spice jars and made a couple of sea arrangements out of them. I got the jars when they were on sale so the numbers were limited. They were sold out of #1. I could not resist, I needed my 1 2 3 4. So I bough two #4's, came home pulled out my number stamps and stamped #1 on the opposite site of the extra #4.  I love when I come up with brilliant ideas : )

                                                      Nightlight shine bright!

For extra dimension and texture I added six Ikea plates to help emphasize the corner on top of the toilet.  

Since we lack storage in this powder room, I grabbed a fabulous idea from the amazingly talented Sherry and John (Don't forget Clara and Burger) at http://www.younghouselove.com/. I found a wide mouth glass vase and stack the spare toilet paper. Brilliant!  

On the opposite wall is where the towels spend their life! We wanted to get a bit silly and added a vintage aluminum sign. To make the sign pop, I added an empty frame.

Lets Just hope the toilet doesn't get clogged.

Fresh flowers!

So whatchya think? 

The Do Not Touch Room

Or shall we call it the Living Room. This is the room you see when you first enter our house. It is the room that is rarely used, yet the most expensive. It is the room only special people are allowed to sit in. A room where children are allowed, however, they must be closely monitored. It is my show room and still a "work in progress"!

I will be back with details!