Half Bathroom Feature - Remodelaholic!

Happy New Year!

Remember when we re-finished the bathroom counters?  And some purty new faucets?  And I wrote a gushy post about how much I loved them?  Well,the folks over at Remodelaholic thought they were pretty nice too and are featuring the half bathroom makeover today!!

I took some photos of the bathroom all fancied up for Christmas, which are included in the post.  I'd LOVE for you to head on over and check it out!  It's so exciting!!  

Foot stool re-do.

During the weeks before Christmas, Brian was working hard building shelves in the basement to organize our storage area.  While sorting through all of our stuff, it became painfully obvious that my "project" shelf was going to be, um. large.  So in an effort to clear it a bit, I grabbed this sweet little thing from the shelf.  

I snatched it up for $4.00 one day and bolted out of the store before anyone else could grab it.  I mean, $4??  A steal!  

The base was in really great condition, other than a few scratches on the metal.  I decided to just give the cushion a makeover for now.  I mean, I know that floral is pretty, but it wasn't screamin' my name.

My first thought was a faux sheepskin throw, but it wasn't quite wide enough to cover the whole cushion.  Instead, I grabbed some gray arrow fabric from my stash.  My Mom would say that I should iron it first, but ... I hate ironing.  So I just measured the fabric and rolled with it.  

First step, lay out your fabric, place the cushion on top, and be sure that you you have enough fabric to cover each side of the cushion.  

At this point, you could remove the old fabric and such, but I was going for a quick project, so I left the flowers live and just covered them up.  

So, now begins the stapling!  This project is really very, very basic.  Two things to remember: #1 Always staple into the wood edges of the cushion (too far into the center and the staples won't stick!) and #2 - Pull taught, but not too tight.  

Now, let's get stapling.  First things first, staple one side of the fabric with one single staple in the center of that side.

Then, pulling the fabric taught, put one staple into the middle of the opposite side.

Same deal for the other 2 sides.  Once all 4 sides have at least one staple in them, start the stapling process down one side, then continue to the opposite side, followed by each of the other sides.  Stop the staples about 2 inches from each end.  Don't forget to keep the fabric pulled taught the entire time!

 

Now it's time to tackle the corners.  Pull the corner piece toward you.  

Then, pull it straight up toward the center, and plant a staple into the corner.  

Next, pull one side to the side to make a nice, straight line of fabric on the corner.  Plant another staple to secure the fabric.

Last, pull the other side taught to make a pretty corner and plant another few staples in there to make them secure.

Repeat til you have 4 nice, pretty corners.  

It'll look pretty frumpy at this point, so trim the excess fabric to make her look nice and slim.

See?  Isn't she pretty?  Then I popped her back in the frame.  And BOOM - pretty little ottoman.

The whole process took 10 minutes at the very most.  And for such a cute little foot stool!

 I still love to throw a little faux fur over it, so I might explore that option some day.  But for now, I think she's really cute, fur or no fur!

Merry Christmas from our family to yours!

Happy Holidays, friends!  I hope that this season finds you well, whatever your family may celebrate. 

Our family is drowning in snot and holiday parties.  Only one of those is fun.  I'll let you decide which one.  

All kidding aside, the sweetness of this season is never lost on me.  And this year, the boys are the perfect ages for us to see that magic really come alive.  Of course Santa is fun, but teaching them the real meaning of Christmas wonderful too.  

I just want to say THANK YOU to those of you who visit my little corner of the internet.  I love having you here.  You.  Yes, YOU!  

Merry Christmas!

I'm Flying South Social Media

We have been busting arse on house projects lately.  So quickly, that I have a giant backlog of unfinished posts sitting in my drafts folder because I can't seem to finish a post before starting a new project.  So my goal for the next few weeks is to get writing!

I've also been thinking a lot lately about expanding the blog's social media presence.  Plenty of my IRL friends would love to see updates on the house, but I don't really want to get all spammy on my personal page.  So I decided to finally publish the I'm Flying South facebook page that I made a year or so ago!

And then of course while I was thinking about social media, I realized that I left out links to everything when I redesigned the blog earlier this year.  So while I get something up on the blog, here are links to all of the fun places that I post pictures of my kids and house projects and like!

• Facebook - facebook.com/imflyingsouth ... I'd love it if you'd pop on over and "Like" the page!
• Instagram - instagram.com/imflyingsouth/ ... I'll be honest, the majority of my IG posts involve my adorable offspring!
• Twitter - twitter.com/imflyingsouth ... I'm not a big "tweeter", but my FB and IG posts are usually auto-tweeted, so it's an easy place to find everything!
• Pinterest - pinterest.com/imflyingsouth/ ... Ah Pinterest.  We have a love/hate relationship!

So there's the list!  See ya 'round!  

Gray walls and a coconut monkey.

The living room/dining room walls are finished and I could not be happier with my color choice.

It is the perfect neutral gray.  I took my custom-mixed swatch to Sherwin-Williams to either see if I could find something that was close or to have them custom-mix some paint.  

It turned out that SW 7649 Silverplate was pretty much the same.  So I took home 2 gallons and got to work ... a week later.  Because, life.  

I just love love love it.

You can still see a bit of peachy-beige peeking out above the base-molding, The carpet is going to be ripped out and we'll do something with the floors, so because we'll have to remove the molding anyway, I just painted almost down to it.  

 

It's insanely refreshing to have one tiny corner of the house looking slightly put-together!   Curtains, furniture, and even a few fall decorations make it feel so much more like home.

Especially the coconut monkey.  He knocks it all outta the park.  

Finding the perfect shade of gray.

I'll start out by saying this:

I am a color person. 

I get it from my mother, who's dream job would be to name colors all day long.  Except that she has no vision when it comes to a color in a room.  Naming is pretty much where it ends for her.  I, on the other hand, could spend hours in Sherwin-Williams, touching all of the rainbow of swatches and deciding on the very perfect color for each and every room in my house.  

In the past, I have always spent the most of my time combing over swatches, choosing a sample or two to take home and paint onto the wall, and going from there.  Simple.  Easy.  

But my vision for a light gray for the living and dining room has proven ... difficult.  There are currently 12 shades of gray on the walls in that room.  Brian wanted me to keep adding to it as a nod to the book title.  But the overwhelming amount of options is already making me want to poke out my eyeballs.  

Admittedly, my biggest mistake was painting all of the samples over the peachy-beige on the walls instead of priming it first.  Lesson definitely learned.  Trying the shades on several walls was very helpful, as was studying all of the samples during various times of day.  Another helpful step?  Pouring over blog entries on choosing the perfect gray, like these from Ask Anna, Love, Pomegranate House, Stacy Risenmay,Pretty Handy Girl, Thistlewood Farms, and this one from Emily Henderson is helpful and hysterical.  

I tried a few shades from Sherwin-Williams and a few from Lowes.  All seemed like the perfect one on the paint chips, but once I got them onto the wall, while pretty, they just weren't what I was looking for.  When they seemed too light, too blue, too green, too beige, too purple ... I started mixing.  

To achieve shades that were darker/lighter/less blue/less green/etc, I used Valspar Summer Sparrow, Valspar Montpelier Ashlar Gray, and Valspar Java.  

I finally landed on Silverpointe or a slightly darker, less blue version of Silverpointe that I mixed myself.  While I LOVE Silverpointe, the final decision was for the custom mix.  Silverpointe will definitely end up somewhere else in our house, but I wanted something a tiny bit warmer for this room.  

I painted a little bit on the back of another paint swatch and will take it to Sherwin-Williams to see if I can find something similar or if they can work their color-matching magic.  

I have never in my life had such a hard time choosing a paint color!  But hopefully I'll be able to get some paint on the walls today!

Pumpkin Pound Cake.

I am a big fat sucker for essentially anything involving pumpkin.  Literally.  Anything.

With the arrival of Fall(!!) and therefore all of the pumpkin recipes flying around Pinterest, I felt like trying a simple little recipe myself.  Pumpkin bread sounded delish and simple, so that's where I landed.

I have a recipe that I've tweaked and adapted from a few different recipes over the years.  As I gathered all of my essentials, I realized that I was going to have to adapt a little more.  I was missing a pretty crucial ingredient - cinnamon.  Then I realized that instead of packed pumpkin, I had a can of pumpkin pie mix.

Eh, what did I have to lose?  I went with it.

And it paid off.  Sooooooo scrumptious.  A little different than your average pumpkin bread, but moist and flavorful.  Actually, it ended up being a little more like a pound cake.

Yeah, we'll go with that.

What you'll need:



3 cups flour (whole wheat or all-purpose)
4.5 tsp pumpkin pie spice
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup softened butter
3 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
1.5 cups canned pumpkin pie mix
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup milk

Preheat oven to 325 degrees.

Beat softened butter until creamy.

Add brown sugar and beat at medium speed until well mixed.  I usually let it mix while I sift together the dry ingredients...

Sift flour, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda, salt, and baking powder together in a bowl.  Set aside.

Add eggs to butter and sugar mixture, one at a time, and beat well in between.  This is why I love my stand mixer!

Then it's time for pumpkin!  Beat well.

Add the vanilla to the milk, then add to pumpkin mixture.

Next, add dry mixture.  Sometimes I alternate adding the two.  Sometimes I get lazy and just dump it all.

Grease two loaf pans (I use 8"x4") and pour batter into each pan.  Bake in 325 degree oven for about an hour.  I like to undercook them a tiny bit, because if there's anything I like better than pumpkin baked goods, it's undercooked pumpkin baked goods.

When they're done, cool them for half of an hour or so, then remove them from the pans and cool on the rack.

The tops edges are a tiny bit crunchy, almost caramelized.  The insides are dense and moist and absolutely delish.  And I sprinkled some powdered sugar on the tops for fun.  Love, love, love!

Pumpkin Pound Cake

3 cups flour (whole wheat or all-purpose)
4.5 tsp pumpkin pie spice
2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp baking powder
3/4 cup softened butter
3 cups brown sugar
4 eggs
1.5 cups canned pumpkin pie mix
1.5 tsp vanilla extract
2/3 cup milk

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Beat softened butter until creamy.  Add brown sugar and beat at medium speed until well mixed. Sift flour, pumpkin pie spice, baking soda, salt, and baking powder together in a bowl.  Set aside.  Add eggs to butter and sugar mixture, one at a time, and beat well in between.  This is why I love my stand mixer!  Then it's time for pumpkin!  Beat well.  Add the vanilla to the milk, then add to pumpkin mixture.  Next, add dry mixture.  Sometimes I alternate adding the two.  Sometimes I get lazy and just dump it all.  Grease two loaf pans (I use 8"x4") and pour batter into each pan.  Bake in 325 degree oven for about an hour.

Linked up with:

 The Friday Finds Link Party, Skip the Housework Saturdays, Craftaholics Anonymous Friday Finds, Creative Connection Link Party