Long, Long Ago

When we bought this house, I knew the bathroom needed a little overhaul. Poor design mixed with white floor tile (not a good combination with long, dark hair) made for little enjoyment. Everyone should enjoy their master bath.

His and her vanities,large (too large for the space) soaking tub, small shower (decided to spare you the disgusting view of the inside)...this room was also the water closet. Who does that? Who puts the shower and toilet in a room together, yet separate from the other portion of the bathroom???? Also, please note that I did not paint the shower room. Tacky? Maybe, but I was holding out hope that our bathroom would not stay this way long enough to warrant painting a room only seen by my husband and I. I made the best of it for almost 7 years. Maybe I will have a post tomorrow with the new and improved. No promises...after all, it is summer and there is warm weather to enjoy.

There Goes the Neighborhood...

This is what our yard looked like for a couple of days!


Think the neighbors were happy?
Stay tuned for before and after pics of our latest project.

Our New Oasis

If you missed the last post, you can check out my before pictures of our bonus room here.
I have been very reluctant to show pictures of our unfinished project. By unfinished, I mean the walls are bare. I have some great ideas, I just need to put them into action. Actually, I can't do all of them alone, which means I have to get the hubby motivated. So without further ado, allow me to show you the "after". We love it and I hope you do to. You might want to brace yourself. It's a little funky.













This is the girls desk. I love that they have a space up here to color or draw and also play on the computer (the computer time is rare). I also love the fact that they have somewhere to hide all the paper, markers, crayons, etc. All three of them use this desk on a daily basis.





This back corner is MY SPACE!!!!! And I LOVE it! The cabinet that you see to the right of my sewing table hides (beautifully, I might add) all of my "junk" for sewing. I wish you could have seen the wire metal racks that used to store all of my stuff. It was completely exposed, which meant my junk was too! It is so nice to be able to leave my sewing machine out. I use it so much more. And the table is a drop leaf, which means I can lift up the part that's folded down to make a large flat surface. This is a great area for cutting out patterns. Beats cutting things out on the floor, right?




These threads are part of the whole "naked wall" solution. I want these hung, but they are pretty heavy and I don't exactly trust my ability when it comes to things like this. I'd also like to display my ribbons on some type of shelf with a dowel, but I haven't found exactly what I'm looking for.


I now have just the right amount of storage. It is everything I could've asked for and more. But the best part about this room is it's functionality. It is all that we need it to be without looking like a hodge podge of a room. The elliptical is in the corner behind the door...not so much of an eye sore now. The girls have a little kitchen and table and chairs on the wall to the left when you walk it. All of their toys are easily accessible, yet hidden. The cabinets hold games and things like magna doodles and Mr. Potato Head, not to mention those dreaded containers of Polly Pockets. I love being able to provide my children with all the things they need to enjoy playing without losing the ability to keep things hidden. It helps maintain my sanity.

I've got some easy and money saving projects in this room that I hope to share with you soon!

A Little Tease

I'm going to give you what they call in "TV" world, a little "tease". This is in hopes that you will return and read my blog again on Monday. You know one of my favorite things to do is sew...hence the blog title. My second favorite hobby is decorating or should I say "my attempt at" decorating my house. Therefore, I love to show before and after photos. It makes me feel like I've accomplished something and that my vested time was worth it. Today I am just going to show you the before pictures. Which, by the way, I cannot even believe I am posting for the world to see. Let's face it, the "world" will not see it. Only about 5 of you will view this post. :) When we moved into this house six years, we had a bonus room. What was I going to do with this room. It needed to serve so many purposes. It had to be a playroom, sewing room, media room, and work out room. Well, it eventually became the room I dreaded going into each day. The toys had no real home. It didn't matter how many storage units we purchased, nothing seemed to work. The toys never really had a home...except for the large abyss that we called a toy box. That seemed to be where everything eventually ended up because the girls forgot what went where and they didn't want to take the time to figure it out.

In the midst of cleaning out the bonus room for our improvement project, I realized I hadn't taken any before pictures of the room. So I stopped what I was doing and snapped a couple of pics. I cannot tell you how glad I am that I did that. So here are the before pictures (and I don't have to tell you to excuse the mess, do I?):Notice the sewing machine and massive printer on the ever so massive desk!!!!

Not to mention the eye sore of an elliptical machine!

Oh, and just for fun, I'm including what the rest of my house looked like during this time period. You see, we were also having crown molding installed in the entire house except for the rooms which my darling husbands had already put it in. Then we had the painters in to paint the trim and the work we had done.






The workers were literally in every room of our house except the guest bathroom and guest bedroom. This was the same time frame when we had the laundry room done as well. So enjoy my chaos.







I have a friend who laughs every time she hears me talk about this being chaos. Although, her and her husband are major re modelers. They say I'm a light weight!

Formal Transformation

We are not "formal" people. We don't believe that you should have a room if you aren't going to use it. We felt the need to change our formal living room into more of a sitting room. It houses our piano and our girls love dance to the music. Before I show you these pictures, I'd like to apologize for the quality. My printer is not connected to the computer at the moment, therefore I can't scan pictures. I had to get creative, so I decided to take a picture of the picture (with my camera phone) and email it to myself. The only thing I can promise is that the quality WILL be poor. Here is what the room looked like when we moved in almost 6 years ago:

It was one of the only rooms in the house that didn't have white walls. After seeing the paint color they chose for this room, I'm kinda glad they didn't paint any of the other rooms. This room was painted almost as soon as we moved. I couldn't stand to look in there when it was green. It stayed this color until about a month ago. I decided that I wanted to add some detail to the room, so we did a little wainscoting. When I say "we", I mean the trim guys. Another hidden agenda I had was to paint the room a deep rich brown. Well, remember those great friends we have that gave us the door and also did the candles? Guess what...they did us another favor. So that you don't think we are total moochers, you should know that I have made a few of the window treatments in her house. We do alot of talent trading! :) Ok, so back to the story. A few years ago, she took week long classes (8 hours a day) to learn alot of faux techniques. I hope I'm using the right terminology. I don't want to degrade or insult anything she does. Anyway, she did a technique in one of her rooms that I loved!!!! She offered to do it at my house and I gladly excepted. My room is a little small and doesn't have excessive natural light. I could've never done this technique if I hadn't done the wainscoting. All in all, I am very pleased with how this room turned out. As soon as I finished the window treatments, I took a picture. They put the icing on the cake. I am planning on getting a potrait done of the girls to hang above the sofa. Who knows how long that will take. For now, this will do.

A New View

This will be a short and quick post. There's not but so much you can say about a front door. This is what I used to look at every time I was home. I never realized how closed off I felt. We moved into this house almost six years ago. Shortly after we moved, a good friend of our gave us a door that was taken from a house that was doing some renovations. We loved the door, but never took the opportunity (or time) to hang it. Since we were having some trim work done, we decided to ask the guys if they could hang the door for us. They did and boy oh boy has my view changed. Now my home feels brighter and it is so refreshing. Here is what I see now: What a difference a door makes!

I'm Back...I Think!

It's finally time to show you what the Sassy Seamstress has been up to all these weeks. In addition to making Easter dresses and other dresses, we have been doing some home improvements. I am definitely going to save the best for last, but I'll start with the laundry room. None of the rooms are completely done...they all need stuff on the walls, but I knew you wouldn't want to wait 10 years for the updates. Here is the before picture:

I must admit that I had already cleaned out the back portion of the laundry room quite a bit before I took this picture.


We had a door that separated the front part of the laundry room from the back part. This door had no purpose other than to take of space. Let me rephrase that. Other than hiding the junk that was thrown behind the door, it was just taking up space. So, we removed the door. My wonderful husband decided to get me a brand new washer and dryer for Christmas. He knows that a general rule of thumb is "never get your wife anything that plugs in as a gift", but I was willing to make an exception in this case. This soon became a project where one thing leads to another. While we were going to be taking out the old washer and dryer, we decided to tile the floor in the laundry room. It was previously a very dingy looking (I feel like the lady in the ALL commercial..."dingy") linoleum. We've always wanted to replace it and now was as good a time as any. I knew that I wanted to paint while everything was out as well, so I decided to use some paint I already had. Well, that didn't look very good with the cabinets, so I decided to paint and glaze the cabinets. Then, my husband (who has learned a little about decorating in our 10 years of marriage) said he didn't think that paint color was going to match our new washer and dryer. I agreed and we headed to the store to pick out another paint sample. I asked my husband if he could build a new storage unit in there to help organize things a little better for me. I should also mention that I had a little help from a dear friend Pink Dreaming. I would link you to her, but she hasn't posted in almost a year!!!!!! No...I'm not bitter at all. :) She loves to organize and she gave me just the insight I needed in there. As you can tell, I needed a lot of insight when it came to organization. My husband decided to have someone else build the storage unit for me. We all know he really doesn't have the time to do it, so I was glad he passed this along to the professionals. And here is the end result (minus the knobs for the cabinets...I lost the screws...oops!)

I am loving the new space. I use it for all my "stock piling needs". It basically works as an overflow pantry now. It also has a table which I can throw my laundry on when I take it out of the dryer. If I can't fold it right away, then it is not on my sofa in my family room staring at me. If I have drop in visitors, they never know that there is a load of laundry waiting to be folded! Love it! Stay tuned for other exciting projects.

Garland Party

It's Nester time again. She's hosting a garland party. Have you ever been to a party and felt like you were way out of your league. Well, that's how I feel right now. I'm just not really pleased with the way my mantel looks. I should know better than to try new things. However, I'm not one to resist a party so here goes nothing. The mantel:
I'm not a huge fan of fake garland. If I could make it look like the Nester does, then maybe I would be. I use a lot of greenery from our yard. Obviously, I bought the pine garland. But the cypress, magnolia leaves, and other miscellaneous pine are from our yard. The berries are the only fake item up there.

While I'm not overly proud of the mantel, there is one thing that I am quite proud of and that is my mailbox. Just finished it a few hours ago and I love it. I wish I could take credit for this wonderful idea, but I can't. I never come up with these ideas on my own. I'll give the credit to an article from last year in Southern Living. It's super easy to do. Again, all the greenery is from my yard. The pomegranate, lemons, and limes I just picked up at the grocery store. There is no wrong way to do this, so go ahead. Give it a try and have fun with it! Regardless of how good or bad our mantles are, there is one thing that remains the same. Christmas is a time of year to celebrate the birth of Jesus with those we love. So enjoy your time together and focus on what's important...the reason, not the decorations. (Although, I do have fun with all the decorating. Any volunteers to help me take it down when the time comes? (; )

An Act of Love

Meet...the servants (and by servants, I mean those with a willing heart):



The project: My non-functional pantry. If it's one thing I can't stand in life, it's things that don't have a function. I believe I've said this before. I was recently at a cooking class and her kitchen was so organized that it inspired me. I asked her if I could look in her pantry and she said sure. It, too, was equally as organized. The little green monster in me came out and the next day I began the new project. I know that my poor husband will be so glad when my mind stops coming up with all these projects. Don't tell him, but I'm not sure that will ever happen. I took some pictures to show you all the waisted space in my pantry. I had three shelves that were all about 22 inches deep. While that depth was ok for the top shelf (still not practical, but ok), it was completely ridiculous for the bottom two shelves. The front of the top shelf is off so that you can see how much waisted space I had back there. I decided that if I was only using the front portion of the shelf, the I might as well remove it and slide the pantry items back. Then I came up with the idea (and here is where the dear husband comes in) to add shelves on the side of my pantry to add a little extra storage. Here is the completed project. Aahhhh! So much better. Clean and crisp. That's the way I like it! I was even able to clean out one of my cabinets in the kitchen that had baking items in it. Now my spices have a cabinet all to themselves. A HUGE thank you goes to my sweet husband for loving me enough to take the time to make me happy. What an act of love.

My Lil' Pretties

Finally, I have found everything I wanted for the antique server (used as a nightstand) in my bedroom. While in Target last month, I came across some apothecary jars ON CLEARANCE. I had been wanting some, but was waiting for just the right deal. Voila! They have sat empty and lonely on the server until just this past week. I went into an antique store in town, recommended by a friend, that has a lot of architectural salvage and found some really neat items. Now I am totally unashamed to tell you that I stole this idea from something on the Nester's site (who got it from Holly Mathis). Actually, one of them is almost completely duplicated. What can I say? I loved the way it looked. As I was saying, while in the antique store I ran across some items that I knew would feel right at home in my apothecary jars. Most of these items were only $2 each, so it was a pretty inexpensive project. I found a little tin, an old book, a key, an old "stamp" (I didn't even realize Holly had one of these in hers until I posted this), a finial looking thing, and an old piece of wood. The glasses use to be mine and the shell was found by my daughter at the beach this summer.

So that these apothecary jars wouldn't feel lonely, I found these old books for $2 a piece. I love to decorate with old books. I don't know what it is, but I feel like they complete the look. It's a no brainer. Find books that look good together, stack them, and you're done. It's just that simple!

Now I just have to figure out how to refurbish the old ceiling tin I bought. I'm very excited about it, so I hope it ends up being "post worthy".

A Bathroom for Three Girls

I wasn't quite sure what direction I was going to take with the girl's bathroom when we first moved in. I'm sure you will be surprised to learn that the walls were white. The tile was white.

I pretty much had a blank canvas. Are you tired of the pathetic before photos yet? Never fear, the rooms are coming to an end.
I had picked out what I thought would be a good paint color for our family room. I was leaning towards a mustard color and ended up with sunshine yellow. Two gallons of sunshine yellow. That was a learning experience needless to say. With two gallons of paint and a family room dying to be rescued from the brightness of butter, I decided to use it in the girls bathroom. With that as my starting point, I headed towards a red, black, and yellow theme of ladybugs and bumblebees. That seems easy enough, right? Well, I couldn't find a shower curtain anywhere. So I purchased a plain white tablecloth, took it to a local specialty sewing store and had them embroider it with lady buys and bumblebees. I am proud to say she only charged me $17 for the entire shower curtain. Although, I am a frequent customer there and they do get their fair share of our money. The pail on the back of the "potty" which holds an extra roll of toilet paper was purchased at a local holiday market. It has two of my three girls names on it. (It was purchased a while back.)
A good friend of mine and I like to swap "talents". She knows how to sew, but enjoys painting much more. So, I made two dresses for her and she painted this stool for me. She called me when she finished and said she hoped I liked it. She wasn't sure I would. When I saw it, I almost screamed because I thought it was so beautiful. I didn't have a picture of what I wanted, I just sorta described how I thought I wanted it to look. She went above and beyond anything I could've ever imagined. Again, two names are on the stool (I need to add the third) and I have smudged them out to protect their privacy, but if you can zoom in and take a look.
The rug was purchased at the Capel Rug outlet for three dollars. What a deal. Unfortunately, since this picture was taken, it has been soiled and had to be thrown away. It was a sad day in this household when that rug went in the trash. Some things are just difficult to throw away. I guess that's the price you pay when having young children. I'm just glad my family room was able to be rescued at the sacrifice of an upstairs bathroom.

A Hatred for Framing

Are you like me? Do you despise to get things framed because it seems so permanent? Well, I have things that have needed framing for several years and I haven't done anything about it because I'm scared. Take this for instance. This particular photo was taken 2 YEARS ago. I was pregnant with our third and wanted some pics of the whole family. I love this picture. I have been so afraid to get it framed. Well, I just decided to bite the bullet. So I headed to our local Hobby Lobby (custom framing was 50% that week) and just did it! Picked out everything and just left it. Done. Well, when I went to pick it back up, they had all of there frames 50% off. I knew I wanted to do something above my bed, and there was no time like the present so I purchased a hand FULL of frames (actually it was a cart FULL) and brought them home and here is what I ended up with.

Oh, and those nice decorative metal pieces were 50% off at Hobby Lobby as well. In addition to picture frames, I also purchased the letters of my youngest daughter's name. They had plain white letters 50% off. I brought them home and painted them like this, and hung them with cute ribbon abover her bed. I know that this is probably an overused decorating device, but I was once again desperate for something above the bed and this was a quick fix. Not to mention the low, low total cost of $7.50 for all the letters. That will work for me everytime. So this is what I was doing yesterday. Yes, I was a busy girl! Oh, and I also took our youngest to the doctor and had another one come home "sick" from school. She was faking it and that is another story in itself.