// DIY Geometric Paint + Glitter Wall

Okay! I'm so stoked on how excited y'all were about our geometric glitter wall! Seriously I've been dying to share this project since we did it and it's so easy! I think everyone should have a glitter wall in their house but I'm obviously super biased so whatever. Let's talk about a few things first, yeah?

Before you dive head first into adhering glitter to your walls, ask yourself these questions:

1. Are you the type of person who will go bonkers if you have glitter stuck to you after 3 days/showers?
2. Does the thought of finding more glitter in your bra than on the wall freak you out?
3. Does the room you want the glitter wall in have carpet?

If you answered yes to any of those questions, you might be best just sticking to the geometric flat paint or opting for a glitter paint (Martha Stewart has one!). You can get around #3 by laying down a slick dropcloth (don't do a canvas/fabric one!) but seriously, don't blame me if you're stuck with glitter in your carpet forever! That's my disclaimer! Real glitter ends up looking so much better than a glitter paint in my opinion.

But really, you will find glitter everywhere. In your bra. In your hair. On your eyelids. And quite possibly your underwear. I don't know how it got there either. Maybe wear a turtleneck if it gives you the heebie jeebies. Picking tiny pieces of glitter off of yourself for a week is so worth it! I promise.

Okay... now the part you've been waiting for! Let's get geometric!

I was totally serious when I said this wall cost us around $15. Granted we had the glitter and ModPodge already, but it doesn't take much at all. We painted an 8x11' wall and had plenty of paint leftover afterward. We picked a Valspar paint swatch with 3 colors on it and just had the lady at Lowes mix up a sample size ($3!) of each color. We knew these shades would work well together since they came from the same swatch card. (Our colors are: Baby Blush, Peach Whisper, and Peach Punch)

SUPPLIES:
Satin finish paint in the colors of your choosing (we used 3 colors + a metallic spray paint)
ModPodge (Gloss)
Glitter
Foam brush
Aluminum pie plate (or paper plate)
Frogtape (we used .94")

INSTRUCTIONS:

Get crazy with your Frogtape! Whatever shapes and lines you want, slap that sticky stuff on! We had no rhyme or reason to our design, but we started with larger diagonal lines and then just built off of them. To be honest it's sort of a blind project where you have no idea how it'll turn out until it's done. We were skeptical, too, but now we are believers!

Once you've laid your Frogtape down, decide what color will be your "median" color and paint those first. We painted our medium pink to start, then we painted the lighter and darker shade at the same time. We just eyeballed what we thought would look good and went for it. You can always fill "holes" with the median color, too. You'll start to see how it all works together once you get 2/3 of your wall painted.

Our photos are a little out of order considering we opted to do gold spray paint on a few shapes first. The metallic paint fell a little flat for us so that's where the glitter came in. If you want to do the spray paint, just be sure to cover up the shapes around it with paper first. The smell of spray paint in your home should be enough to make you not want to do it, but hey, it's a lesson learned! All ideas can't be good ideas, right?

Be sure to pull off the Frogtape about 10-15 minutes after you finish the last color. This way the paint is still a little pliable if you need to fix it a bit. The Frogtape did a good job for us but there were a few small spots we needed to touch up afterward.

Let your paint dry for several hours before attempting the glitter portion. It gets messy and you don't want the glitter falling into the other colors.

NOW! THE GLITTER! (Sweep your floor if you have hardwood! This way you can just sweep up the glitter and reuse it if needed) Grab some more Frogtape and tape around the shapes you want glittered. It worked out well for us because our base was also gold so it didn't matter if the coverage wasn't even. If you can, I recommend matching the base paint and glitter, but it's not the end of the world if you don't! Now, dip your foam brush in the ModPodge and give your wall shape a good coating of it. Not super thin, but also not so thick that it's runny. As soon as you do the ModPodge on one shape, dump some glitter in your pie plate and fold it up a little bit. (You don't have to fold it like I did, but I noticed it made a huge difference in the coverage on the wall!) Start at the bottom of your shape and blow the glitter onto the wall, moving side to side and upwards. You'll have to do it a couple of times for each shape, but don't worry, it's amazing how much it'll cover! Repeat as necessary on the amount of shapes you want and voila! Remove the Frogtape and you have you a fancy, sparkly, glittered wall!

Hopefully that was easy enough to follow! I know many of you expressed your excitement at making a geometric glitter wall of your own. I've read so many awesome color palette ideas! I think the mint ombre + silver might be my favorite! (Well, second to my own of course haha!) Mike and I said that if we ever have a little boy we're totally going to do this with a grey wall. (And if we have a girl then voila! We've already got part of the nursery done! Dreaming way ahead there...!) Let me know if you end up giving it a go. I'd love to see some shots of your own walls! Good luck! xo

// Adventures in Home Renovation v.3 (+ Life Lately)

[ Georgia and Saturday morning coffee in bed // Couch squisher // Mangosteen Green Tea + Honey for an all-of-a-sudden cold // Pretty new $9 flats // A round of custom signs going out the door // Toby fell asleep mid-pizza slice (tuckered out from the move... and yes, we were eating pizza in the car ha) // Kitchen renovations 1 + 2 -- our kitchen feels so big! // My office is coming along nicely... // Lack of furniture in the living room (we moved in our old couch until we buy a new one) // So many pink kitchen appliances // New shoes galore! (both of these are Jeffrey Campbell!) // Husband's cute booty while fixing a leaky pipe // Got Mike a guitar shaped house key "just because" // Hall view to the bathroom + my office // Couch cuddles with my little // Valentine donuts are the best donuts // A pretty wedding gift surprise from Emilie // Our dream diner booth kitchenette! Totally going to open up my own "at home" soda shoppe! ]

Renovations are going well. We're finally in the "cleaning" stage and we're trying to make our home livable. The cabinets still lack painted doors, not to mention all of the interior (and exterior!) doors need to be painted in the house. We have so much furniture we need to build and we've hung nothing on the walls... I hate that limbo you go through when you're "moved in but still not quite moved in". It's fun to find a new home for everything but it's also exhausting. 

Today I'm trying to battle off a cold that came out of nowhere yesterday. I'd love to say I was planning on being super productive in preparation for the work week, but NCIS and a blanket on the couch sure does sound appealing... I mean, it's good to take a break every now and then, right? ;)

Happy Sunday friends!

Adventures In Home Renovation - v.2

Well, we're making progress on the house! Mike, my stepdad, and a family friend laid the black and white tile to finally finish up the flooring yesterday. We chose that floor for both the kitchen and the bathroom. As for the pink in the bathroom... um, well... It was a beautiful shade on the swatch, and even dumped out into the pan. But once we rolled it onto the walls we were just kind of in awe. It was BRIGHT. We took some meatures to add in a little more white to the room, and then envisioned it with a white vanity, white toilet, white washer + dryer, and white shelving, etc. It still looks a bit bright here but I'm hoping it's much softer with the finishing touches. Cross your fingers for us?!

We had no clue what color we were going to do the bathroom and of course I cheekily suggested pink. Mike at first was like "Oh haleee naw!" and I was like "ha okay. Saw that one coming." Later that night Mike got all sweet and sentimental and said we could paint it pink. He said he thought it'd look good with the floor and at least it was a small room haha I know so many of you will side-eye that and scoff, but I think it's sweet that he'd agree to something so overtly feminine. We are going his route in the new bedroom so it's a nice compromise I think.

But the floor! Ahh, the floor! I am so excited about it. I love it so much. Now they just need to put down all of the molding, attach our new countertop to the cabinets, then paint the cabinet doors! We already moved our first (small) load of stuff into my office and I'm ready to get settled in!

It's an amazing feeling - seeing a house that was just kind of (mega) blah! and then transforming it into something that feels like home for our family. I am so excited!

Adventures In Home Renovation

For the past couple of weeks our new house has been torn completely apart. I'm talking stove in the middle of the kitchen, absolutely no flooring (it's all piled up on our back deck), and the better part of a wall in the bathroom was knocked out and rehung. There's more drywall dust in that house than snow in Aspen at this point. We've spent long, exhausting hours working on it and trying to get it ready for new flooring. We're finally almost there. Our bedroom needs one more coat of paint, the bathroom needs to be painted, and the cut in behind the cabinets needs to happen. Then we'll hopefully have flooring be laid tomorrow/this weekend.

It hasn't all been sunshine though. When removing the vanity in the bathroom, Mike accidentally busted one of the water pipes under the house. It was pitch black, 30-some-odd degrees, and this town is so small there was literally no one to call. Luckily between Mike, myself, my uncle, our floor guy, the past tenant, our soon to be neighbor, and one city employee (with the help of neighbor's handy dandy metal detector), we finally found our water main... an hour and a half later. In the middle of our driveway. (Who puts those in the middle of a driveway?!) Yes, you read that correctly... seven adults. It was completely covered over and it was like a wild goose chase. Guess that's part of the fun, right?! We'll look back on it and laugh, no doubt. 

BEFORE // DURING

Here are a couple of (crummy iPhone) photos to show you what we've been up to. I'll snap some better ones once it's all done, before we move in. Let me just say this: the kitchen and hallway was a horrible red (and so poorly painted), the living room was yellow + green smeared together (yes, really)... my new office was bright pink walls with purple carpet!!!, our bedroom was a yucky peach (painted over green?), toby's room was a dark brown and the bathroom was the brightest turquoise ever... with wet sand colored accents. AWFUL! We've pretty much painted everything grey, with Toby's room a light sage, and the bathroom will be pink (I know, I know.) I can't wait until I actually looks livable and we can start moving over some stuff. I'm seriously considering having an indoor yardsale at our Nashville house once we get out everything we're moving. If you're in/around town, stay tuned hopefully!

The flooring that we're laying is a darker wood in the entire house, then black and white vinyl tile in the kitchen and bathroom. A very 50's/retro theme if you can think of it. You can get a glimpse at our new dinette set in the second set of photos below, on the right... we seriously planned the entire kitchen around that set!

BEFORE // DURING

It's a lot of work but we are SO excited. It'll be exactly what we want and we can make it fit us rather than the weird rental limbo of fitting into a space. Mike has already expressed his love of renovating and said he'd like to try his hand at flipping houses at some point in the future. (Let's maybe just skip busting a water main under each house though...)

Have any of you tried renovating a house? Any tricks or tips you can send our way? Or better yet, funny stories?

PS; Because I know it'll be asked - no, we didn't buy this house. It's actually a rental that my parents own and lease out. We made the decision to move out of the city mainly for safety + educational reasons (for Toby), and we'll be taking over the mortgage. It's about $900/mo less than what we pay in East Nashville, and it's definitely bigger. It'll allow us to get Toby into preschool and sports, as well as see his family more often. It'll also allow for us to decide over the next few years exactly where we want to be planted. We feel so very fortunate to have the opportunity to take up an offer like this. We know not everyone has the opportunity to scoop up a house way under market value. We felt it necessary to get out of East Nashville for our own benefit, as living so expensively was foolish because we didn't have anything truly keeping us there. Plus I can live without all of that insane crime. We're doing all of the renovation work, but the house needed updating anyway. Who knows, we may stay here forever. This has and will continue to affect a lot of our business decisions but we're pretty stoked on it. :)