Jewelry Making & Painting

For my sister's birthday I decided to try my hand at jewelry making. The necklaces still haven't fallen apart, so I made two more necklaces.

This one was for Danielle (SIL). I call it, "Don't Quit Your Day Job."

About a year ago Dani tried to make herself a necklace. She wore it to work and when it broke halfway through the day one of her colleagues, who makes jewelry professionally, fixed it for her. When the colleague asked Dani who made the necklace she said, "My sister-in-law," because she was too embarrassed to admit she made it. The colleague said, "Tell her not to quit her day job."

Great. Thanks for the tip. I now take Lil Mootz to the daycare where Dani worked at the time and I'm still trying to figure out which teacher thinks I'm a failed jewelry maker.

My second necklace, "Love BEE-ing Cheesy" was inspired by the winner of Lil Mootz's Top Commenter of the Month Contest in Septemeber: Alicia at it ain't easy being cheesy.

Alicia loves herself an awesome 'stache (and really, who doesn't), so when I saw this pink one at Little Angels Jewelry on Etsy the creative juices started flowing. And I know the pic isn't the greatest, but the bottom charm is a chunk of cheese. (So go enter my current giveaway because I might just throw in a little extra som'in som'in if you win!)

I'm working on a necklace for my mom right now. It's a bit more complicated than the others, so it's taking me awhile.

Anyway...

All that jewelry making kind of tired me out, so when it came to finishing up the revamping of my downstairs that I started, I went to the professionals. Instead of boring white walls my life is finally full of color!

This is the Before kitchen. (I remembered to take "Before" pics this time!) I know its not a great shot of the walls, but you can see on the sides that they are beige and white.

And this is the After kitchen. The top walls look kind of pink in the photo, but they're more like a blushy beige and the bottom walls are a sage green.

Here we have the Before living room with it's boring white walls and blue paint tape outline.

The After living room in all it's Dockside Blue glory. We also mounted the TV above the fireplace.

And last, but not least the Before playroom. I LOVE this color and I had a hard time deciding if I wanted to change it. It just seems so kiddy and playroomy to me.

So I didn't really make much of a change. I know it's hard to tell, but the After is a lighter color. Same  base color, just a lighter version of it to help brighten up the room a bit.

After painting most of the rooms in our house ourselves, it sure was nice to have the pros take over. And they did a fabulous job! They also told us how to fix the baseboards and ceiling molding in our other rooms.

Now I just have about a hundred picture frames to hang on our newly painted walls.