Simple Photography Wall on a Budget

I have a confession.  I like to rearrange things... a lot.  Since we have been married, we hardly let a few months go by before we rearrange our furniture.

I like change.  It keeps me from feeling stagnant.  It keeps my mind creative.  It makes life feel fresh.

Since I have gotten sick, we haven't rearranged our furniture nearly as often, because I simply did not have the energy to do anything that was not necessary.  Three weeks into the new treatments, I am beginning to feel like my old self again.  I actually "want" to do things to get our life in order again.  That feels good.

Last night, Bryan and I rearranged the living room again, and I created a thrifty chic display on the wall for photos that were taken this past December in one of our favorite spots.  I like it.

Before: Our blank wall that has driven me crazy for about a year now.

After: We flipped our sectional around to open up the living and dining area more.  I really like the simplicity of hanging the photos with metal clips on a sheer ribbon.  We used eye hooks to mount the ribbon and keep it tight.

After:  Here's our display at a different angle.  I printed the photos online at Artsy Couture and chose a metallic finish.  Let me tell you... the print quality is unparalleled.

Walking into a room with beautiful photography makes me happy.  This little project didn't cost us a dime.

It feels good to see our home transform again into a beautiful, restful retreat from the world.

How do you make your house your home?  What do you like to decorate with?

The Mermaid Room!!!

Abby has been asking me to paint a mermaid on her walls for a while now, and I finally decided to do it.  As you well know, our kid is terrified of sharks and usually thinks they are coming to get her around bedtime.  We decided to paint her magical bubbles and a mermaid to keep the sharks away as she sleeps in her little boat at night.  

Abby is ecstatic about how it turned out!  It's hard to tell from the photos but there are jewels and glitter everywhere!  When she saw the finished room, she wrapped her little arm around mine and told me I was her friend.  The ultimate toddler compliment, huh?

The room before we took down the flowers and old curtain.

You can barely see the pencil sketch of the mermaid in the works.

1st Layer of Paint

Finished Room Complete With Pergo Floors- Yay!!!
(You can see she is out cold from all the day's activity.)

View 2 of Finished Room

Lastly the Finished Mermaid

You can kind of see how shimmery everything is here.  It's so girly- I love how it turned out!

Planting a Church Is Like Buying a New Couch

Well, as you know, our precious toddler tot was diagnosed with a dust mite allergy recently, and we are scrambling to make as many changes as we can in our home to keep her from getting sick as often.  We have carpet out of one room and have three more rooms to go.  We have the laminate flooring for one more room but then have to find more for the other two.  Since money is obviously tight as we transition full swing into church planting, I have been praying like crazy for God to provide the resources we need to knock out the dust mites in our home.  Like a good Calvinist, I haven't just been sitting by waiting for everything to drop in our laps. We have been building websites like there is no tomorrow.  I have been scouring craigslist like a vulture waiting for the perfect deals on flooring and furniture.

This past week, God graciously provided the deal of a lifetime on a fairly new leather couch and loveseat set.  A lady was downsizing and needed to get rid of her lightly used furniture quickly, so she sold us everything for $150.  Is it 100% leather?  I doubt it, but it is 100% dust mite unfriendly either way.  For a mom that is sick of seeing her sweet girly whiny with one sinus infection after another, I jumped on the bargain and sent Bryan to pick it up.   Yay!

We quickly realized after moving the new furniture into our tight cozy living room that this was going to be a big change.  After shifting item after item around for about 2 hours like puzzle pieces, we figured out the best combination and locked everything in to stay.  The end result- we have much more room but realize that not everything we have is going to work well with our new setup.

The list starts like this... The chandelier is going to have to leave the room... ok.  It was getting in the way every time we rearranged furniture for launch group anyhow.  We are going to have to downsize our big table. No problem.  Bryan has what we need to build a smaller pub table.  And the list goes on... a necessary change (a.k.a our new leather furniture) has caused a cascade of smaller changes that are inevitable to make the whole thing work.

Welcome to my life now as a church planter's wife!  As we welcomed church planting in as the next frontier of the Cirlot household, so many other things about us are changing and shifting. More than ever, I know how much I need Jesus.  But... I am not complaining.

Just like our new couch, church planting is exactly what we need right now.  Living day to day seeing God's provision is a beautiful, challenging thing. 

I am thankful to be on this journey.  I like being His.

From Carpet to Foam Tiles

Life has been moving really quickly for us in the Cirlot household in the past month.  We've been to Birmingham to visit Audrie and meet her gracious host family.  We've met with church planters to learn how to do what we are doing now most wisely.  We have built several websites and logos for companies local and beyond.  We are quickly nearing the end of Phase 1 of the Acts29 assessment.  Bryan has taught a Dnow,  has had a guys retreat with old friends, and I have taught a VBS class.  Abby has had another positive doctor's appointment from her allergy doctor who just affirmed that our carpet and upholstered furniture has to go soon, and that the changes we are making are making a big difference with her dust mite allergy.  Here's where we are.  

I have been praying that God would provide us with the flooring we need to get rid of our carpet.  This weekend, I found a lot of foam play mat tiles on Craigslist for $30.  We had already bought several packs before to keep over the center of her playroom floor.  The extra tiles I picked up yesterday were EXACTLY the same type we had already bought and EXACTLY the number we needed to rip up the carpet and completely cover the floors.  Isn't God good?

The old gross carpet we had to start with minus the baseboards.

No wonder Abby is sick all of the time.  It is gross when you pull up carpet!  It smelled funky too.

10 hours later... Flooring is complete! Abby saw it for the first time this morning and said, "WOW!"

Laundry Room Redo & Turning Our House Into a Library

Here are the photos of the latest Cirlot family projects.

We had a problem with our dryer last night that ended up being a laundry room remodel.  I thought you would enjoy seeing the progression of how our closet/laundry room has changed since we moved in a few years ago.

This is our master bedroom's closet before we moved in.  It was huge, but we needed a space for our washer and dryer.

With help from Bryan's dad and our friend JJ, Bryan made electrical and plumbing changes, tiled the floor, built a false wall, added closet doors, and built a wooden half-wall to enclose the utility cords, plumbing, and etc.

Here's our finished project after last night. Bryan had to redo the half-wall and redid it with beadboard.  We added shelving (love having scrap wood in our shop!), and we used leftover paint from another project to make the walls fun! 

Now, I am finally organized in here and all of our cleaning stuff is out of Abby's reach.

Here it is zoomed out, so you can see how our closet is now lined with bookcases for Bryan's library.  We used to have a double-sided closet, but about a month before Bryan resigned, the left side fell.  It turns out to be providence.  We both just got rid of half of our wardrobe and joined it together on the right side.  Who really wears that many outfits anyhow?

Abby and Aslan decided to model in this one.  You can see how all of the bookshelves are maxed out!

We moved a desk into the master bedroom, so it could be a quieter place to study.  We added a short bookshelf on this side too.  

More Bookshelves in the Living Room/Dining Room area.  I do like how colorful they are!

Abby's makeshift bookcase and reading area.  You can see her artwork displayed above with repurposed table mats.

So, that's it for now.  More projects are always being cooked up, so I'm sure you will see something new soon!

Here's to a New Year

Above: Nosy Mr. Peeperz wanting to be photographed.

I'm fairly tardy posting a New Year's post, but hey, when you get the flu... timeliness goes out the window. For example, Sam's Club just called and said I could pick up my Christmas photo announcements. Uh-hum... guess so. Ordering them before I got the flu just wasn't practical.

I have a lot to say about 2010. I learned a whole lot, especially about myself. I am much more comfortable in my own skin. For most of my life, I have been a sort of chameleon. I have shifted and changed to please those around me, and depending on what stage of life I was in, my skin looked different. This year, God has really impressed upon me the importance of loving myself and His handiwork. Not in the arrogant sort of way that this may sound but simply learning to love myself first so that I could love others well too.

These are some of the things I have learned. The biggest lesson of the year for me was that I am an artist. Through and through. I am always looking at the world creatively. You may see a serving rack, and I may see an incredible piece of artwork for displaying photos in my home. I'm unconventional, sometimes a little odd, and am always in the elusive pursuit of being more organized. My head is often so far in the clouds that I miss the obvious. My taste in clothing and decor is a little quirky at times, and I delight in change of almost any sort. I am happiest when I am creating something, and I can get lost in projects for hours if I am not careful. I do not fit any certain mold, but I do not wish to anymore. I am me. God created me this way. If for nothing else than to show everyone that He has a quirky side too. I may not be athletic though I try to be fit. I may not be logical though I see its value. I'm not a cook- but I like to dabble in baking. I'm a work in progress, and I am learning to enjoy this journey.
One of my main goals for 2011 is to figure out how to leverage who I am in all of the areas of influence the Lord has given me. If I'm creative and artsy to the core, how can I leverage that for Jesus? How can that make me a better wife, mom, friend, church member, and etc? I've been praying about it and asking God to help me to find practical ways to step out and celebrate who God has made me to be. When I follow in the path that God has already laid out for me, I celebrate who He is and who He has crafted me to be.
This week I started in my home. Our living room consists of mostly hand-me-downs, wedding gifts, or craigslist items. While it was comfortable and nice, I could summarize the whole look in one word... safe. It lacked the color and personality that I wanted it to have, but I decorated it the way I thought a pastor's wife should. Traditional. In the end, I just didn't like it. It wasn't me.
Having a little extra Christmas cash left over, I spent $30 on art supplies, rearranged furniture, and decor from other areas in the house and ta-dah! Whole new room. Brighter, cheerier, and overall, much more fun. I created the artwork to make sure I could display the newest family photos and showcase Abby's art projects. Stay tuned in 2011 for more projects to come! I have tons of ideas!
I pray in 2011 you will learn to just be you. God created you the way you are for a reason! Celebrate Him by being you!

Living Room & Dining Room Before:

Living Room & Dining Room After:

Master Bedroom Remodel

Here is a late post about our Master Bedroom that we remodeled last weekend. Here's what it looked like around Christmas time.

Master Bedroom Before:

Master Bedroom View #2 Before:

Here's the skinny on the Master Bedroom. We only bought paint, a few dollars worth of sheets at the thrift store that I turned into curtains, a few dollars worth of thrift store pillows and pillowcases, a $2 thrift store table runner, and a $20 clearance rug at Lowe's. Everything else we already had and just moved into this room for decor or furniture. It looks like a completely different room. I love how relaxing and tropical it is! I've wanted a blue bedroom since middle school, so I am so glad that Bryan agreed to let us do this. Yay! God is so good to give us not only what we need but often what we want as well. Bryan and I had so much fun working on this project together. I love my hubby!

Master Bedroom After:

Master Bedroom View #2 After:

Master Bedroom View #3 After:

Guest Bedroom Remodel

After owning our home for a little over 3 years, we finally tackled our guest bedroom. It had a terrible paint job and absolutely no character. This is the only photo I could find of it. I was so embarrassed of it before the redo that I haven't really taken photos of it, and I forgot to take pics before we started painting.

Guest Bedroom Before (This photo makes it look deceptively better than it actually was):

The painting begins with everything piled in the center of the room.

Our fantastic head painter.


Here's the scoop. We simply rearranged things throughout the house and used what we already had to decorate. We found the nice wooden headboard and footboard beside a trashcan in our neighborhood. We already had hand-me-down newlywed furniture that was really worn. We repainted everything, and it looks brand new. Everyone else's junk just became our treasure. We already had artwork that I had made throughout the years framed in a way that matched the freshly painted furniture perfectly. Ta-dah! Here is our cheap remodel. The only thing we paid for was paint. Isn't God good?

After: Guest Bedroom

Cheap but Chic Kitchen Update

So, I really have been repurposing. I've just been too busy building websites the past 2 weeks to post much. Here's a few kitchen projects that I have done.

I saw this project on a diy blog for remodeling cheap. You spray paint stick on vinyl floor tiles in silver to make a cute and easily cleanable back splash. I hate trying to scrub splashes off of paint. Yuck!

Long Kitchen View Before:

Our Kitchen Hutch Area Before:



After:
After:

The best part is this little update only cost $4. Thank you Lowe's!

Here's a tray table that I have posted above our fridge for Abby's latest artwork.

Here's a rusty piece of metal that Bryan brilliantly framed for my recipes and etc. Love it!

More repurposing projects to come!