4 space updates: befores and afters! (and a curtain rod made from a tree branch!)

Here are some space updates/redos that I've done in the past few months!

Most recently, I did a mini-makeover on my front porch.  I like sitting on the porch with my husband in the evening, so I wanted it more cozy.

Here's the BEFORE:

blah and boring

Here's the AFTER:

 Everything was re-purposed or thrifted except for the tall grassy plant (Ikea) and the rug (Target).

I made a little cushion for the bench, added a padded footstool, and a little brass stand for Dax to set his drink on.

Come visit and sit on the porch with me!

Someone with a pulse lives here! And now it shows.

Next are my friend Jo's girls' rooms. She hated this bedroom the most and I don't blame her. There was a conglomeration of decor and furniture that puts me on the verge of a panic attack.

BEFORE:

We decided to put Jo's daughter Paige in this room. Paige is a smart, fun, and sassy 11-year-old girl that lives in the country and raises sheep and pigs in the summer. The vibe we chose was Farm Girl Glam.
We used furniture they already had, plus a couple thrifted treasures, and gave it fresh paint. I think it looks completely different!

AFTER:

This is the same view, just before and after...

before

after

So different!

Jo and I dug through her crawl space and found this beautiful quilt her grandma made just stashed in a tote not being used. The antique desk was also her grandma's. We needed a chair for the desk so I called my neighbor who has a chair collecting problem (like me) and asked her if she had an extra metal chair lying around. She gave me this cute yellow one out of her back yard!

The curtains are one of my favorite things in here. I hopped my back fence and grabbed a tree limb out of my neighbor's burn pile and used it for the curtain rod. I used 2 random curtain brackets I had to hold up the branch, and the lace curtains are made from a buttload of lace fabric that I bought at a yard sale. The entire curtain set up was TWO dollars!

I scored some furry cow print fabric and this little side table at the same yard sale where I got the lace. The table was $5 and the cow fabric was a buck.

I made the pillows with the cow print fabric and the pink one I made out of a sweater that was in my donate box.

Jo splurged on the chandelier floor lamp. I found it at my local consignment store and called Jo over to look at it. It was marked at over $100 but we talked the owner lady down to $80. It became Paige's early birthday present. It adds such a fun glam vibe to the room!

I should have turned it on before I took pics!

The room was completely transformed very inexpensively. I love using what you have and making it work. Fun to see it all come together. Paige loves her new room and it shows by how clean she keeps it.

Next door, Paige's little sister Maelee wanted a new room, too!
Here is the before picture:

Jo picked out a pale pinky coral for the walls and we went from there. The room turned out great!

 Jo already had the brass head and footboard (which she took from Paige's room and painted), comforter and all the picture frames. The only things purchased for the room were paint, curtains, and a throw pillow. She got the nightstands and chair at yard sales. The swirly decor above the bed was donated by a friend.

 Maelee loves her pretty, new room!

Jo was on a roll and redid her son's room, too! That girl is a worker! She didn't get a single before pic, but trust me, it was not as cool as it is now.

The inspiration piece for the room was this rad 70s velvet ship painting we found at Deseret Industries for $3. 

 Jo's son Porter LOVES it and he loves his fresh clean room. It's perfect for an awesome jr high boy!

 I love this antique dresser from Porter's great grandma. The metal bed frame is from his other great grandma. The paint Jo used is a muted gray-blue. It looks awesome with the gold in the ship painting and the warm wood of the dresser.

 The thing I love about all these bedroom makeovers is that Jo didn't buy any new bedding, furniture, or decor. We shopped her house and the rest was thrifted.

Her kids all had things that were special to them and we incorporated them in their new rooms. If a teen boy wants to display his animal fur and bottle collection, he should! These aren't show rooms; they are rooms that kids really live in and the style reflects them and their family. Buying nice bedding for a kid is a waste of money. Use the cheapest bedding you can stand because it will get ruined our outdated quickly. We didn't add a lot to the rooms; we mostly took things out that didn't serve a purpose and arranged everything else to best fit the space.

What do you think? Which is your fave makeover?

My next project will be finishing my basement family room and bath, back patio and building a shed! It's gonna be major! CAN'T WAIT.

teenage dream, eclair cream, Christmas gleam

I have a teenage daughter! Preslie is 13.

 Chili, breadsticks, a birthday cake, and eclairs were made for the celebration.

At 13, Preslie

• is very responsible. She gets up and gets ready for school on her own and completes all her homework without being asked. 
• doesn't like to be late to things. 
• likes routine and things to go how she has them planned in her mind
• fears dogs and most other animals, men, talking to strangers (especially grown-ups), 
• likes to dance and sing
• is a great swimmer
• memorizes song lyrics freakishly fast
• doodles her name on everything
• is quickly catching up to me in height, and has surpassed me in shoe size
• is unstoppable when she puts her mind to something: knocking out her chores, getting straight A's, earning money for something she wants, etc
• laughs a lot and is fun and spunky to be around
• has a spaz attack when she feels any strong emotion such as fear, lovey-dovey-ness, or frustration.
• is a bit shy to people she doesn't know well but I always forget that about her because she has so much personality at home and with her family

We spent Christmas in southern Utah with Dax's family. 

Some of my favorite moments were:
Having a "snowball fight" in the top floor of the St. George Children's museum. It was all fun and games until my MIL went downstairs and Preslie was down there searching for us and had been for the past 30+minutes. She thought we left without her. Crappy Mom Award! How did I not notice one of my kids was missing?

Other highlights: 

• playing games after the kids were in bed
• good food. way too much food!
• amazing Christmas lights displays
• Everett Mangus
• playing Elf hide and seek with the kids
• having parties in the Cabana out back
• watching the kids perform talents they came up with on the spot
• holding baby Audrey
• Hunter's mentos and diet coke geyser. Also when Mack took the bottle with the remainder of coke in it and spun around dumping/flinging it everywhere.
• Quinn carrying around her coloring book she opened Christmas morning. A reminder that children really do love the simple things.

A cool thing went down after Christmas! The whole Mangus side of the fam got together for the first time in many years. SO fun to reunite and connect with those great people. 50-sh people, I think.

After 7 days of fun, we headed home. Great to get back in the swing of things.

The warm weather we enjoyed earlier in the month is O.V.E.R. The kids and I went sledding at the park by our house on New Years Eve. It was 7 degrees. 

The lighting was so cool from the bottom of the hill looking up.

Little kids in snow clothes are adorable.

That evening, we watched the movie "Romancing the Stone" from the 80s. Mack cut out of there before it was over and I found him upstairs looking on Amazon. He asked if he could order this toy:

"We could totally make that." I said. The next thing I know, he is hauling my sewing machine up the stairs. Mack and I rung in the new year sewing a stuffed Enderman thingy. 

 Happy New Year! Love, Tristie

project fever

I have the project bug SO bad. It is like a sickness that is consuming me! I wake up in the night and my mind starts spinning with ideas of what awesome things to do to my house. One time at 3am, I re-designed my boys' whole room, and it is awesome. I want to start on it so bad but I must get control of my project A.D.D. and finish Preslie's room first.

Looky what I made! I am so excited. If you don't know what it is, I'll tell you.

It is an upholstered cushion for the window seat in Preslie's room. Yay! As I was sewing the last 2 pieces together, my heart started to race. Ever wondered if sewing gives you a rush? It did for me tonight! How crazy! And while I was mid-project, I stepped on a sewing pin and it went into my foot diagonally at the back of my arch toward my heel. Only a quarter inch of the pin was sticking out of my foot! I had to just grab and pull hard and fast to get it out. Sewing is an exciting, dangerous experience.


Instead of using a 2-inch foam for this cushion, I used 2 1-inch foams because it's way cheaper. Smith's Marketplace has the best price by far on foam pads. I got the fabric from Home Fabrics in Midvale. I love that store for home dec fabric. The back of the store has an awesome clearance section and I scored this blue animal print for 3 bucks a yard. I bought the piping there, too. I didn't have to add the piping but it makes it look great. I believe with all my heart and soul that little details add a ton to the overall effect of a project, a home, an outfit, or whatever. Details take things from good to WOW.

 I even put a zipper in; my 2nd zipper ever. I've been sewing for almost 2 decades and I've avoided zippers like crazy. They are not hard! And now this cushion cover is washable.

Preslie has a comfy place to sit and read, and a perfect spot for all the fun pillows her Grandma made for her. How cool of a Grandma is that to make tons of darling pillows.

 Spoiled girl. She has the coolest room in the house.

Now do you think I'm done with this room? Think again! I still have one.. ok, two more details to add that are going to make this room super fun! I'm excited!

Oh, I totally need to shout out to my Mom who was my tech support for this cushion project. I called her 8-10 times throughout the making of this project. She is a sewing GENIUS and helped me a ton to know what steps to do first, then 2nd, etc. She gave me tips for sewing the piping around the corners and putting in the zipper. Thank you, Mom! What a great teacher over the phone!

Another huge thank you goes to my Father-in-law for building this awesome window seat that warranted a fun cushion. He has built a lot of things for me and this (aside from my house) might be the coolest one.

I'm crossing this off my project list and moving onto the next one! No one stop me!

Crib Re-do

I decided I needed to move my piano out of my front room but didn't know where. I finally chose to put it in my girls' bedroom and booted Preslie to the basement to make room for it. When I took her bed out of there, I thought, I might as well paint while I am in the middle of this so I moved EVERYTHING out of the room and painted. It took 2 weeks of chaotic house to complete but I got it freshly painted and the piano in there. THEN, I looked at that beautiful, shiny, classy looking piano and then at Quinn's old, beat-up crib and thought, one of these things is not like the other... So I decided the crib needed a fresh look.

Here is the crib in the bedroom before any of this madness started...

 

 Here is the room before new paint and after new paint...

 

 

I wanted to change the crib sheet to look more classy and less juvenile (although I love that crib sheet, but wanted something to go better with the piano). I walked into my local thrift store last week and found the perfect bed skirt for a full sized bed and refashioned it into a crib sized bed skirt. Does this not say "I belong in a room with a piano" ??

Once the crib skirt was done, I HAD to paint the crib black. And soon while the weather is still nice..
Here is the crib that was screaming for a paint job!...

 I primed and then painted the crib with Krylon Gloss Black spray paint. It was so beat up. I hardly noticed (or cared) until I decided to paint it. The crib isn't worth the money I spent on paint but it turned out nice.
Doesn't THIS...

 

 Go SOO much better with this?

One last before and after-

Total $ spent on this crib re-do.
primer/paint: $38
crib skirt: $6
sheet and pillowcase: free

Now for some curtains and wall decor. I have NO idea what to do!