painting stuff. and keeping house.

That sums up what I've been doing lately.  The pros about selling a house you actually love and don't want to sell:
1.  You have to keep the house CLEAN.  So you actually ENJOY said house even MORE and want to leave said house even LESS.  Wait, is that a con?  I'm so confused lately.
2.  It is great motivation to get to all those projects you've been wanting to tackle, but haven't gotten to because, well, you've been busy having and raising babies and whatnot.
3.  Um, that's about all the pros I can think of, sorry.  Any that I'm forgetting?  Feel free to remind me, cause it's just a leeetle hard to keep on the sunny side all the time.

I do enjoy seeing my bed made every day.  I do enjoy not seeing clothes strewn about the bedrooms.  I do enjoy seeing my sparkly kitchen.  I do not enjoy making my bed every day.  I do not enjoy putting away clothes straight from the dryer, no stopping in baskets for a day or two.  I do not enjoy the effort in making my kitchen sparkly.  Cause, see, I have no time to do anything other than take care of the littles and clean.  And that's not fun.  What IS fun is painting stuff!  I love it.  I had a whole bunch of items that I've been wanting to paint, so in the couple weeks leading up to putting our house on the market, I disappeared into the basement for a few hours at a time and painted stuff! 

I unfortunately forgot to take before pictures, so it's harder to appreciate the changes, but I had our 2 bedside tables, 2 mirrors, and 1 little drawer set to paint.  Our bedside tables, or small dressers, really, were from Ikea, so I can show you this before picture from their website:

Just little plain jane pine chest of drawers.  They've been sitting by our bed, all naked and waiting to be painted for the past 4 years.  These are the RAST chests that only cost $34.99 each!  Did I ever mention I love Ikea?  I do.  So I got some primer and turquoise paint and slapped it on.  Well, I painted it on.  Then I sanded it down a little to give a slightly weathered look and so they didn't scream I'VE JUST BEEN PAINTED!!  And I changed the pulls to something just a little more exciting.

Much better.  They look cute next to our grey and yellow bedspread.

I painted a big mirror the same color to go with the dressers, but I just dry brushed the paint over the primer so it wasn't too matchy-matchy.

The mirror was formerly GOLD and was sitting in our basement.  I like gold okay, but we already have a huge antique gold mirror, so I wanted this one to be a different color.  Same story with a smaller mirror we have in Rowan's room.  It was GOLD, also.  This one I did a soft minty green to match her room better.

It's a sweet color with the pinks in her room.  And that Madonna and Child picture hung above my crib as a baby! 

The last thing I painted was a little bit of an afterthought, and it didn't turn out too awesome.  We have a little 2 drawer chest sitting on a built in shelf in our bathroom, but it was just boring brown.  I thought I'd use the same green as Rowan's mirror and then stencil a design over it on just the insets of the drawers. 

As you can see, I didn't tape it very well and the paint bled.  I was trying to get it done quickly and didn't take enough time on getting it all taped.  Oh well!  I matched the yellow in the design to the yellow in the bathroom.  It would have been cuter if I had taped better.  My mom made that ship quilt square in the frame.  Isn't it pretty? 

I've been looking at all our furniture with new eyes, thinking about what I color I could paint everything.  But Brian loves the look of natural wood.  My love of that shabby chic look can really butt up against his love of everything mission.  I also like mission style, but like to mix styles and eras.  We do not own one furniture "set" in our whole house because I think it's more interesting to mix.  It's probably because my parent's furniture never matched and was all bought at antique stores, auctions, or handed down through the family.  If it were up to Brian, our house would look like Frank Lloyd Wright lived there.  Heck, if we could afford it, I guess I wouldn't mind too much!

But for now I'll buy our cheap Ikea furniture and paint it whatever color my little heart desires.

*linking to shabby chic cottage