kitchen backsplash

This is the post I've been waiting for!

I.am.in.love.

I'll let the pictures do the talking.....

This may not seem that exciting to you, but let's remember where I started people!

I still have the problem of my ugly island in the middle of my beautiful, new kitchen, but that will be addresed soon!

Remember my inspiration ideas? Supplies have been purchased and I've already started using power tools :)

I'm planning on spending the next few weeks on the island so be ready for that! Also, some of our appliances have been ordered, and hubbs is on duty to put those in too!

Here's a little Before Meets After update:

Have a great Friday....I'll be sleeping in my kitchen. seriously.

How To: Make no sew fake roman shades

  After switching out the guest rooms, our front room was looking a little bare.

I found some cute fabric from Joann's and with my 50% off coupon, I set off to purchase a few yards.

I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it, until I saw this!

source:House Beautiful

I wanted to have roman shades that went all the way up to the ceiling, but I couldn't REALLY have roman shades.

We have the 2in wood blinds and I didn't want to take those down. I really just wanted "fake" roman shades, and no sew. What...too much to ask for???

I began by measuring my windows. Like my inspiration, I wanted the curtains to be pretty much at the ceiling. So I measure from there to the point where I wanted to hang. I got 3 ft for the length, and 27 in. for the width. Make sure these cover the width of your window + the moulding.

Then I wanted to make my folds 4 inches each, so I laid out my fabric and pinned 3 folds, every 4 inches.

I ironed the heck outta them so I had a nice seam to work with. I also ironed my hems at the top, bottom and sides too.

I places my iron on tape under each fold so you can't see it.

I just followed the directions for the fusible tape.

Then, once I had my folds, I flipped over the back and used some black out fabric to line the curtains.

I lifted up the ironed hem to tuck the liner under it and then places the fusible tape on top so it had more of a finished look on the back.

Once I finished ironing down the lining, I flipped the curtains over and added the ribbon.

I measured in 6in, from each side and then used the iron on tape to fuse it on.

I decided I wanted to add cute little bows at the bottom instead of carrying the ribbon all the way around.

I tied a ribbon at the bottom of each one and just glue it with fabric glue.

Now that my curtains were finished, I had to figure out how to hang then. I just took a small piece of wood trim, used a staple gun to staple the backside of the curtains to the trip, and then screwed the trim piece into the wall. They weren't heavy at all, so anchors weren't needed.

Here they are in my guest room. Remember the one with no mattress??? Yeah curtains before a mattress...priorities people!

I am absolutely in love with them. They seriously took me less than an hour!

(sorry for the grainy cell phone pic...camera battery died! Apparently I need to iron my hems on the left side again too! )

Stay with me because I have some nightstands in the works for in here as well!

Do you ever have mixed up house priorities??

I have big plans for that area above the bed between the windows....of course AFTER we buy a new mattress so someone could actually sleep in the bed!

room switch-er-roo

I mentioned in my earlier post that a few things look differently upstairs. Thanks to the $100 bed makeover, we now have an extra bed, but no mattress.

We moved our sleigh bed into an empty smaller bedroom.

We still had our"Beach" room with the $5 headboard.

I decided I wanted to flip flop the rooms. The front room is a bigger room, but it had the smaller bed.

The back bedroom was a smaller room but had our bigger bed from our master.

Hubbs wasn't too sure about the idea, but as usual, he went along with it! (This is the theme of our current kitchen remodel too!)

I flipped the rooms and now I love them!

This is the empty larger guest room with the larger bed (and no mattress).

I have LOTS of plans for this room!

The other side of the room holds the dresser and an antique chair from my great grandmother.

You can also see I'm going to be using various shades of green in here too. I found some really cute fabric that I plan on using for the chair, curtains, and pillows.

This is what the smaller room looks like now.

It's hard to tell the difference between the 2 rooms, but the larger guest room has windows to the left of the bed, and now the windows are to the right of the bed....which reminds me that this room needs curtains too!

One day at a time...

Do you ever do crazy things like flip flop entire rooms....Or is that just me???

Bloggy Boot Camp

  This weekend I had the priviledge to meet the ladies from SITS at Bloggy Boot Camp.


I met so many amazing women and learned a lot of new things about the bloggy world.

I hope you'll stay with me as my blog (and kitchen) get renovated!

One of the biggest things I did was go home and buy my own doman (www.beforemeetsafterblog.com). I would HIGHLY recommend this if you are new to blogging. Even if you're not ready to switch over, you will be someday and you'll be glad you have it!

I'm working on converting my blogger blog over to my own domain, so if anyone has any helpful tips I would appreciate it!

Also, I'm BRAND NEW on Twitter. Yes, I am behind the times, but I would appreciate you following me on there too @BeforeMA

So all and all it was an amazing conference. I would REALLY recommend you going to one in your area to meet local bloggers as well as learn new things.

I've got a really exciting tutorial and kitchen update for you this week so stick around for that. Also, I'm guest posting for Ashley from Cherished Bliss so go and stop by her blog!

I hope you had a great weekend!

Kitchen update!

I am so excited to update you on our kitchen renovation!

 Because of the recent squirrel drama  in our attic,  our renovation got pushed back a bit. But what's life without a few set backs?? Luckily all the countertops and tile were already paid for, so at least that's going to change! 

 Here is our kitchen as of now.

I never thought I would be so happy with drywall! I told the hubbs I was overjoyed with just this...but I'll be even more excited when the tile I chose gets put in.

It looks just like little bricks and as soon as I walked in the tile store, I knew this was it! It comes in approximately 12 X 12 sheets so it should be fairly easy to install.

This is was the kitchen looked like just before the drywall went in.

We ended up paying someone to help with this because I wanted the outlets moved to a lower location on the backsplash and turned sideways to accommodate the look of the new tile.

I didn't really trust the hubbs not to zap himself when it comes to electrical! 

You can see my new sink and faucet that hubbs installed last night, along with our new garbage disposal. I finally have running water! Washing dishes in the bathtub got really old really fast!

I can't leave you with out a litte reminder of how it looked before...and now! I can't say Before Meets After because it's not finished, but I hope you'll stay with me throughout the entire process.

  I can't believe the difference so far! Stick around and you'll see more!