remodeling this life

This time in my house though. I wasn’t feeling well for a few days last week. The fact that I couldn’t do much made my house a total dump come Sunday afternoon. Although I was still not feeling totally stellar, I couldn’t take it any longer. I cleaned up, moved around some furniture and decided to spruce up a wall in our dining area.

I bought a green shelf at goodwill a couple weeks ago for $2. We’d been to the beach earlier in the week where I collected seashells to put in a glass bowl from the dollar store. And I had a sea shell themed thingy that I got at a yard sale a few months ago during a final sale day “everything you can fit in this bag for $5″. I had hubby hang the shelf. He was so nice about it. I only had to glare, mumble, grumble and proclaim I’d do it myself before he finally jumped in to protect his beloved walls.

Since we’d been to the beach a few days earlier, I had fresh off my camera a bunch of family pics at the beach and decided that since it was beachy with the seashells theme I should print some of the photos and put them on the wall too. Off I went to CVS to print photos. Their buy 2 get 1 free special on printing 8x10s was over the week before. But some genius there didn’t take the sticker down off the printer. I printed 6 8x10s and some 4x6s and 5x7s and expected to pay about $20 for the who shebang. I got to checkout and was charged $57!!! Well, I made them give me the buy 2 get 1 free since the sticker was right there and all. And then we discovered that not only had I gotten charged for all of them, but I’d been charged $3 more per 8×10 than I should have. We got it all sorted out and I walked away a happy woman with my photos for the price they should’ve been. You know what is sad though? Not so long ago, I’d have just paid the $57 and assumed I was stupid and did something wrong. I was assertive and asked why the heck it costed so much and saved myself a bunch of cash. While it was all going on, my kids only terrorized the store a little bit.

Off we went to Marshalls for photo frames. I only needed a few since we had a handful at home already. Drew proceeded to terrorize Marshalls as well while I chose the frames.

Got home and did some more mumbling and grumbling to get the photos hung after I arranged them so nicely in their respective frames. And now I have a cute little personalized beachy wall in our dining area. So much better than before where we just had one big photograph of El Capitan in Yosemite. I mean, it’s really cool and all but a bit boring. You can see that in the sidebar to the left.

And now here is what I did to spiffy up our dining area.

Please try your hardest to ignore that there is stuff on my floor that I didn’t pick up before photographing. I am human afterall and have 2 small children who love to fling things around. And the dresser-as-buffet doesn’t have that stuff on it at the moment. I don’t even really bother to spend time arranging and decorating stuff in places the kids can reach because it never lasts. Right now there are a few bowls and golf balls up there. Every buffet needs golf balls!!

The lovely and talented Angela at Cottage Magpie is hosting a little giveaway in honor of valentine’s day this week. What you’re supposed to do is show your pink – in decor or garden style. Well, I like pink. I just don’t do any decorating with it. So I wasn’t sure I’d be able to participate. Now if she’d chosen red – well, that I could’ve gone wild with but I went looking and found some pink.

I did happen upon a cute pink flower (weed?) growing on a palm tree out front so there is that

Then I found this quilt buried away in a box. Hubby’s grandmother made it when I was pregnant with our first child. It’s very pretty. I just am storing it until the kids are older and less messy and destructive.

And my living room rug – well, it has some pink in it. This was kinda neat. We did the house with the terracotta floors and that yellow on the walls that I love to go with the furniture. And I had this rug but thought the pink and orange would be horrific together. But the rug has lots of navy and there is navy pattern in the flooring and we have a navy recliner that is ugly but so comfortable and hubby won’t let me get rid of it. Actually we have two but he only gets to use the one – the other is in our storage room. Long way of saying I threw this rug down on the floor thinking it’d look awful but I like it so it’s stayed. Wow, good thing I vacuumed that little section of rug for this picture

Oh and did I say that I don’t decorate with pink? I lied. I do have a 3 1/2 year old princess afterall…this isn’t exactly what her room currently looks like but I am far too lazy to take a new picture and upload it just so you can see a new dresser that isn’t even pink and no toy bins in there. You get the idea.

And these are the valentine’s we made today for hubby. Bug made the one on the left all by herself complete with a section cut out of the corner because she likes to use scissors. And I helped Monkey make the one on the right. Aren’t we so arty?

Happy Valentine’s Day and if you’d like to participate all you have to do is a post on your blog with a link back to Angela and let her know what your link is!

What is beautiful? Beauty comes in so many forms, but to me it’s what makes me feel calm, peaceful, comfortable when I see something, and inevitably brings a smile to my face. It’s the little things that we often miss if we’re moving too fast through this world. Like snowy woods

or waves crashing on a beach

Beautiful isn’t perfection. It’s embracing imperfection. It’s not about perfect hair or perfect skin or a perfect body. Who has any of that anyway without airbrushing? Freckles and a sweet smile go a long way toward beautiful.

And what’s a beautiful home? One decorated so elaborately and ornately that you don’t feel like you can move without breaking something worth the cost of your car? Nope. Not for me. A beautiful home to me is one full of rooms that you feel like you can sit for hours comfortably sipping coffee while chatting away with an old friend. One with heart and soul built with my husband’s bare hands. One full of unique imperfect furniture with history, dents, chipped paint, even crayon marks on it.

Yes, I have found a way to discover beauty in the little things in my life. An hour snuggling on the couch with my kids, a trip to the beach to end a long day, a smile from a stranger with a nod of understanding when I have my hands full with two kids, my daughter running inside after playing in the yard holding out a flower that she picked for me, a good laugh or cry with a dear friend. It’s important to see the beauty in these little things now. Because somehow when I look back someday, I know it’s really the little things that are going to seem so big.