A Quickie

Here's a quick project that took little to no time. Remember the group of old lamps I was saving in the basement?

 I took the maroon one with the "genie in a bottle" shape and gave her a little face lift. First, I wiped her free of all dirt and dust. Then I taped the cord and other parts that I didn't want painted. I took a spray paint can of Kilz (primer) and began to prime. The key when using spray paint is layering. This way you don't get those dreadful drip marks.

After the base is dry it's time to apply your color. I found this amazing shiny brown from Rustoleum. It added some metallic without being over the top in the den. Then I pulled out my $14.99 linen shade and voila... lamp for less than $20!

PS I don't think I ever mentioned that I am lucky to have a working bench in our garage and a husband who lets me leave unfinished projects around.

Something new, something not blue

Remember this post? It was right after we bought our home and decided we weren't "yellow people." Actually, I like yellow. It was a lot when you consider how light and yellow our kitchen cabinets are, which makes for one YELLOW kitchen. So the hubs and I took many trips to the home improvement store to try and figure out what colors we should paint the kitchen.

We love green. I mean love love love green. The problem is it's everywhere in our home. So when Team Nelson decided to go for it and paint the kitchen an icy blue we didn't realize what would happen. What was originally cool and neutral ended up Smirf blue on our walls. I couldn't get anything to work. Fabric was totally out of the question because inothing worked in my Smirf world. After making excuses about the paint needing something else, I stopped kidding myself and admitted the paint was not working. It didn't work in the space for us or go with anything else in our home.

So I found a fabric I loved and decided to start over. Her name is Lulu Corn Yellow Kelp by Premier Prints and it caught my eye the moment I saw it. Apparently it caught other shopper's too because fabric.com sold out within two days of my discovery. Luckily for me Alabama has a great store on the coast that also has a website. My mother-in-law went by to check out my selection and graciously picked it up and offered to begin sewing for me!

So we have fabric and finally settled on Notre Dame grey from Valspar. It had the same affect we tried with the blue, but it was lighter, and definitely the new neutral. I cannot tell you how much I love it.

So cheers to the new kitchen! Thanks for making my mornings happy, my evenings calm, and being one more thing checked off my "mental list" for the house. (Below is a picture of the photo wall I did). I am really proud of this and it was a lot easier than I thought it would be!

Until next time,