Thriftin'

Thrift stores are awesome. Why? There are a number of reasons. One of my favorites being you can find epic old paintings that you can refinish into something shiny and new. Some of those old frames are beefy too, let me tell you. Behold! My find:

After attacking it with a bit lot of white primer/paint, and making a stencil out of this nifty ampersand I found:

...And once more after a bit of yellow paint:

Woohoo! Colors ahoy. I'm working on it. Slowly :)

Colors! (Is gray a color? I know teal is definitely a color...)

One of the silly things that came with our tiny 50's house was glossy white paint. A lot of glossy white paint. I'm talking "go ahead and have that spaghetti sauce fight because that stuff will come right off" type of industrial. And don't get me wrong, this is awesome-- but not so friendly looking. Half of our house is painted a nice warm gray, and the other half is still all sorts of glossy. I was lucky enough to have the day off last Monday, so I decided to attack the kitchen/dining room. Behold! Our messy, glossy white kitchen:

We were thinking anything other than white would work; after a few options we decided that a tone of what we had painted in the rest of the house would work best-- just to keep it consistent.

We ended up choosing the color on the left, which looks super noticeable in the swatch, but actually not too big of a difference once everything was said and done. Behold! After:

(Yes! Clean always makes things look better, too. Also note, about 2 minutes after this photo was taken, we attacked it with a delicious breakfast of avocado, tomato and grilled turkey egg sandwiches. Tasty!) This was just about one of the most subtle updates we've done so far. The only real way you can tell is by putting something glossy white over the top of it (like the new painting/framed prints I posted up in the dining room) and the fact that it's missing it's old 'glow'. I don't miss it!

(Teal painting is a knock-off of something I saw DIY over on one of my favorite blogs, YoungHouseLove.) I am slowly in the process of adding a bit of color back into our home- every bit helps I guess! Especially with my neutral tastes!

Brightening up the porch...

Summer has been slowly showing it's pretty face around here... and maybe by slowly, I mean unpredictable and muggy, but I'm alright with that! Thought it was about time to brighten up our tiny porch, so I added a few dahlias and tomatoes. (I know tomatoes aren't the most beautiful porch flowers, but the way Walter likes to eat all things edible I figured I wouldn't risk it...

I started a batch of kale in the long planter under the window... here's hoping my green thumb kicks in soon!