Hello! First of all, what a week last week. Christy completely surprised me with her sweet post on my birthday. I was at Terry’s enjoying the champagne breakfast she hosted for me when I saw a facebook comment about it on my phone. My husband and I read it together a bit later, I was definitely crying and he was, well, happy to be included in the love fest! What a birthday it was, I am the luckiest girl to have these friends 🙂 and your sweet comments made my day!
Well today I am going to get back to what we try to do best, talking about furniture and home stuff. Before I do that though I have a few quick things to mention. First, upon hearing that Google Reader was ending, I started using BlogLovin’ and I LOVE it. I just wanted to throw it out there, and I know that there are many ways to keep in touch with your favorite blogs but if you haven’t tried it, click HERE. You can search by blog name and add it to your feed, then when you visit the site you have a nice list of all recent posts. They also send you a nice neat email everyday with everything. It just makes my life easier (and more inspired!) so I wanted to share it with you all. Thoughts?
Second, we are CRAZY excited to be a part of BlogHer’s review team for Mary Kay Andrews new book–she just writes such fun ‘chick lit’–and this book is written about a DIY/Home Blogger! { you can pre-order it HERE if you are interested} Without giving anything away just yet, the book is called “Ladies Night” and so, of course, Terry and I decided we needed to host another Ladies Night in the book’s honor. Our fabulous friend Janet offered to have it at her lovely store The Empty Nest so we hope anyone in the area will come out and share in the fun. We’ll have lots of drinks, yummy eats and a super creative craft project, all essentials for a Ladies Night, right? Its scheduled soon at The Empty Nest in Warrenton. Stay tuned for more details via our facebook page or email us at 11magnolialane@gmail.com and we’ll put you on the VIP invitation list {just kidding, no list, all welcome!}.
OK, NOW back to our regularly scheduled programming! 🙂 I am slowing making some changes around my new house, because we are still “renters” here I am taking my time about making many changes to the house. So, in order to make my home feel more like me, I figured it was a good time to work on some of our current furniture.
The “Before”…
Even though the colors in our family room here are very different then our last very white, house, my furniture seems to still work OK with the darker walls in this house. Since this is a two-story room, so we won’t be painting it anytime soon even if we buy it. I had planned to refinish our TV entertainment center to a Restoration-like gray in our last home, but never did and once we got here the obvious color choice was cream. So, I picked up some Annie Sloan Old White from Janet last week and got to painting.
The internet doesn’t need another “I painted with chalk paint” so I will skip right to the “Afters”…I still haven’t waxed it, but it brightens up the whole room. Its amazing what a bit of paint and a few hours of time does, isn’t it?
Here is the real reason the room works better now, not to give you vertigo, but this is the shot from our open hallway above. The room is now balanced with the cream colored couch and directly across the cream colored console. I feel much better 🙂 and as with most projects, I wonder why I didn’t do it sooner?
Have you painted anything recently?
Thanks for stopping by!
This post is perfect timing for inspiration! Tomorrow I plan on purchasing my first can of Annie Sloan paint, and in Old White to boot! I have seen online where a lot of people like to distress their pieces, but I’m looking for a more clean look, like your project. Can you tell me, did you use a brush or foam roller to apply the paint? Thanks so much.