Our Kitchen in Print

I love writing this blog.  I love coming up with things and showing you how to achieve the same look/end product for less.  All of that requires lots of pictures tossed out into the interwebs of our nest.  While it’s great fun to get to see our house on a screen on the www, it’s EVEN MORE fun to see it on paper…magazine paper that is!!!!!! 

A few months ago I was contacted by This Old House magazine.  Katelin, the writer of their Budget Redo column, wanted to know if they could feature the kitchen in their October issue and golly gee, I said “of course”!  So, if you’re a subscriber (you can subscribe online too!), check out page 30!

I thought the kitchen’s debut in this month’s This Old House would be a great opportunity to check in on it and let you know how everything is holding up five months later (read the original reveal post here)!  How are things holding up to the test of time?  Well, most things look like they were done yesterday, a few not.

Interchangeable Framed Art–DIY

I probably should put some quotes around “framed” up there because I might be stretching the definition in this post but I’ll let you be the judge. 

I’ve had some VIPieces stored away that I’ve been wanting to hang over my desk area and so, when I finished the multi-purpose room, I finally got around to doing that.  Two of those things are matching wood frames that my friend Jesse gave me a couple of years ago.  When she gave them to me, they were a pretty turquoise and I think I had them hanging in Sebastian’s room that way for a little bit but then they got moved to our old master bathroom with a fresh coat of white paint and now they are above my desk and capable of quick switcheroos whenever the heart calls.  I know I have the cardboard backing they came with somewhere but they’ve never had glass in them so they really were begging to be something slightly different than the regular old frame.  As it turns out, a spotted wallpaper wall was just what they needed to shine. 

One is holding the Productivity Prayer from Lindsay Letters that she offered as a free download a couple of weeks ago.


Mine printed more gray than black and I’m not sure if it’s because she made it like that or if it’s because I’m running out of ink but I love it and it’s the perfect thing to have hanging over a work area. 
 
If you’ve read my post on loving allllll the people, you’ve already seen this one:

Wallpaper and a Box

Ahhh!  I’m so behind over here.  The thing is, I have been flying through projects in this little house in the past few weeks but, since I’ve been spending all of my free time painting and patching and hammering, there’s been no time leftover to fill you in in writing on the blog.  Bear with me.  I WILL get you all caught up.

(Pssst, the One Room Challenge starts in a little over a week and guess what?  Yep.  Yours truly signed up to do that whole, crazy six weeks again.  Needless to say, there will never be a lack of content on Bean In Love.)

Last post we left off with a multi-purpose room reveal.  You might’ve noticed the spots on the recessed wall.  1) They are all part of this great stuff I’ve come to know and love called removable wallpaper.  2) The entire accent wall only cost me about 20 beans!

Long story short, one day I walked into our local Target, which is going through a pretty major renovation, and saw an entire end cap full of clearance wallpaper!  I snagged two of these rolls of Devine wallpaper*…

The Multi-Purpose Room Reveal

It’s always awkward for me to take something from my heart, write it down, and hit publish…and then go on to post about something in a whole ‘nother arena, say superficial decorating, next time.  I feel like there needs to be a better transition but I don’t know how swing that so in we jump from heart to home again.  :)

I’ve actually spent almost every moment of free-time the last two days concocting a whole entire post on the multi-purpose room but last night, when I had reached 3000 words detailing only one half of the room, I made the intelligent decision to close my laptop and start anew this morning.  I’d lost myself just reading through what I’d written and I have no doubt I’d have lost you too in the absurd amount of details in that novel.  Sometimes I get carried away.  So, I’ll keep this short and come back later with more.

“Wait, back up.”

“What the heck is a multi-purpose room?”  Good question.  Did I make that kind of a room up?  Maybe.  I haven’t googled it to see if it’s a real thing yet.  I’ve talked about this before but this little house has two living rooms.  One, I suppose is more of a formal living room and one is more of a den.  Well, we don’t need two living rooms – we only have one television and one couch and they both fit great in one room.  But, we do need an office space, a sewing space, and a homeschool/kids’ coloring space.  So, we’ve spun the formal living room on it’s side to create, you’ve got it, a multi-purpose room.  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Here’s what that space looked like before we moved in:

From 1:00 pm on it’s the brightest room in the house and, therefore, had lots of potential to be something fun and happy.  Since we spend a good amount of time in this room on the daily, that fun and happy status was really important. 

Find the Good

A couple of weeks ago I was scrolling through Instagram while I waited for the kids to fall asleep.  I started following the news station near my sister’s place last year during hurricane season just to see the damage pictures they posted and haven’t unfollowed yet for no reason other than I haven’t thought about it.  Well, usually I’d just scroll right past a post like this on that news station’s feed but something made me stop.  And usually I’d remind myself not to read comments on things like this because there are bound to be some negative Nancy’s in the crowd, but I did.  And it was horrifying and eye-opening.