all things home thursdays: chevron anyone?

Are you as in love with chevron as I am?  (No, not the gasoline ... I had this conversation with my husband last night ... chevron as in the zig zag pattern.)  Yes, I love chevron.  I have been seeing chevron everywhere in home decor lately.  Rugs, pillows, ottomans.  You name it, it's probably been chevron-ed (yes, I just made up that word).  


Well I decided to chevron something in my house.  I bought a blank canvas for our bedroom many months ago.  Scratch that, actually it was well over a year ago.  I had a vision of painting lavender-colored flowers on it to take up a chunk of dark wall space we had (because we all know just how crazy expensive large pieces of artwork are!).  Well, the flowers were painted and it turned out nothing like I wanted.  It really did look homemade (and on a sidenote: I love doing crafty things for my home, but only if it doesn't look super crafty.  I mean, I want it to have a homemade touch, but like it was homemade by a professional ... if you get where I'm going.)  Well, this art piece of mine definitely looked homemade in the bad sense.  My sweet husband never said how much he probably hated it, but after a few weeks I had just had to do something about it.  I tried decoupaging white tissue paper over it to add some texture, thinking it would help.  It didn't.  So then I just painted that whole canvas over with white paint.  With the texture left under the white paint, it actually looked pretty cool (in that post-modern sense).  But after time, that white canvas was just too plain.  So I made a stencil based off of the pattern on our shower curtain and painted it in grey on the canvas.  I liked it.  And it stayed that way for the longest time of any of my homemade artwork attempts.  But still, I just wasn't satisfied with it.  And then ... ta-dah! ... the chevron idea popped in my head.  I was so excited at the thought, I couldn't wait to get started.  Take a peek!

It turned out better than I expected!  All I did was take 2" blue painters tape and a 45 degree triangle (I had it sitting around from an architecture class in college, but you can use a compass and a pencil too).  Set the first up (zig) and down (zag) pieces where you want them, and the rest flows from there.  Paint, remove the tape, and wallah!  Chevron!  At first it was a lot of color ... I was almost thinking of painting over one of purples with some white paint, but after one day, I realized I really do love it!  

I paired it with two white-matted silver frames I had around the house (ok, I had each of them in our bathrooms, but I'll just have to find something else to replace them now haha).  I also had a beautiful purple and silver-printed paper sitting at home from a previous project that I used to put inside and mounted them on each side of my new artwork. (I also think the silver frames and white mats help tone-down the really concentrated purple canvas.)

 

Then I accessorized the dresser with a silver vase from Ross with a white fake flower (yes, I have to dust it off ... but I sure beats having to buy fresh flowers each week!), a small silver frame with an adorable photo of my husband and myself, a purple glass dish from IKEA and a lucite lamp and white shade from Target.  

I can't tell you how much this new artwork has changed the look of the room.  Love it!  The only thing I want to still change is get lucite crystal knobs for my otherwise plain IKEA dresser.  Another day ...

going around the blog world

So I've become a major blogger failure.  I have simply forgot to blog, or been uninspired the past two months or so.  Sorry!  Hopefully to get me back in the swing of things, I found this random About Me, A-Z thing going around on a few of the other blogs I follow, so I decided to do it too!  Haha, it makes me kind of laugh because I used to make these every year when I was younger to see how my interests had changed throughout the years.  I kept them all and it truly is interesting to go back and read them.  (I believe the name Justin Timberlake popped up in a few!) So here we go ...

A. age - 26 (I keep thinking I'm 27, but I do the math and I'm still just 26)

B. bed size - Full 

C. chore you hate - Washing dishes.  Grossness.

D. dogs - NONE.  (And after dog sitting three dogs for the past two weeks, I have determined that, though they are sweet and cute, I am just not a dog person.)

E. essential start to your day - Stretching!

F. favorite color - I love color, many colors, but if I had to choose ... turquoise always gets my attention.

G. gold or silver - For the longest time, I would have chosen silver, but I think I'm changing into more of a gold person ... but not the nasty shiny gold, I love rose gold, matte gold, aged gold, etc.

H. height - 5'4 7/16" (I had my mom measure me when Jack and I first started dating to see if I was taller than him ... He's got me by 9/16"!)

I. instruments you play - Pianoforte 

J. job title - Homemaker (I love that title!)

K. kids - My joy, Seth Warren, 10 1/2 months.

L. live - Mountain View, California (Right in-between San Francisco and San Jose)

M. maiden name - Hull

N. nicknames - Sylbug, Silver, Sweetie, Bah

O. overnight hospital stays - Giving birth (And, weird to say, I actually liked it! ... The hospital stay I mean, not necessarily the giving birth part.)

P. pet peeve - Stupid drivers, nail biting, the sound of chewing, leaving doors/cabinets partly open (I'm working on them, okay ...)

Q. quote - "Since the time I saw You first, my soul was satisfied; And yet because I see in part, I'm searching more to find."

R. righty or lefty - Righty

S. siblings - 2 younger brothers, Joel & Max

T. time you wake up - Seth is my alarm clock ... usually 6 a.m. on the dot.

U. university attended - CSU, Sacramento and Calvary Chapel Bible College

V. vegetables you dislike - Not a huge fan of beans.  

W. what makes you run late - A poopy diaper.

X. x-rays you’ve had - Of my neck and spine ... I have scoliocis.

Y. yummy food - Red grapes and avacados (But not together).

Z. zoo animal favorite - Not a big animal person honestly, but I think giraffes are a pretty darn cool creation.

So there you go ... now you know a whole bunch more about me.  Now I want you to copy and paste the A-Z's and tell me about you!

romance?

My husband is teaching tonight at church.  Throughout the week he's been practicing his study on me, discussing things he's been going over and showing me new things he's learned.  I love it when he teaches.


This week he's teaching on John 1:1-18.  In the beginning was the Word.  He's talking all about Jesus: who He is and who He isn't.  As an analogy, Jack is sharing the story of how our dating relationship progressed.  For those of you who don't know, Jack and I met on MySpace (a long story, for another time).  At first we were just e-mailing once or twice a month, then we started talking on the phone and pretty soon we were communicating every day in some way, shape or form.  But then even that wasn't enough.  Our relationship got to a place where we had to see each other, so as soon as we could (we were living hundreds of miles away from each other at the time), we met up face-to-face.


Do you know that that's how our relationship with God is?


When we first meet Him, it might be slow at first ... a few prayers lifted up occasionally, a couple of chapters read of His Word ... but as we communicate with Him each day, our relationship grows.  We get to know His voice.  We get to know who He is, what His desires are.  We are in a spiritual romance with God.  He wants us to meet with Him each day, to be in His presence.  It's like our time here on earth is our "dating" time with Christ.  We're getting to know Him.  And then, one day, when He sees fit, He calls us to be with Him in His physical presence.  Oh, how great of a day that will be!  The Bible describes our coming to be with Him as a wedding - Christ is the groom and we, as the church, are His bride.  Can you imagine what kind of a celebration it will be?!  


It also made me think of the other side of the romance.  When you're dating someone, you talk to them each day.  You spend time with them.  You share your life with them, and them with you.  But, in this romance with God, do I spend time sharing my life with Him?  Do I sit and listen to Him, conversing with Him, seeking His face and studying Him?  How weird would it be to say that I am in a relationship with someone and yet, I haven't talked with him in a few days or even weeks.  I might have called to say hi once and awhile, but that's it.  "Oh nothing's wrong ... we're not mad at each other ... I just had other things I was doing.  Yes, we're still in a relationship.  I'm in love with him!  I'd give anything up for him ..."  I'm sorry, but that's no relationship at all!  And that's exactly what we do - well, I do - with our spiritual romance.  We don't spend time with God, and assume we're still in a relationship with Him.  Or when we do get together, I do all the talking.  That's not a healthy relationship either!


Man, I'm convicted.  I need to go seek His presence ...

basket case

Seth discovered this morning that he can eat an apple all by himself.  He's been working on the same apple for over 30 minutes now.  While I'm thrilled at his newest discovery, I still wanted to keep an eye on him with it just in case of biting off a chunk a little too big, but I also had to start some laundry ... so Seth and the apple came along.

home sweet home

Finally.  Our house painting project is complete!  I am overjoyed at how it turned out.  It looks so new and clean ... and makes everything else that isn't new and clean (such as our roof), look nastier than ever.  Haha ... but that's another project for another day.  Take a peek:

(Our house before)

(Our newly painted home)

(Our new house numbers [Orchard Supply] and mailbox [Amazon] ... I got these numbers on sale many, many months ago in faith that our house would be painted one day.  I loved them so much, and they actually served as my jumping-off point for the color scheme of the house and all the other details.)

(New light from Lowe's)

(Our existing doorbell ... I thought it was adorable!)

(Yes, I painted our front door purple!)

(We added this window trim to all of the windows around the house.  I think it was the one single biggest impact on the overall look of the house.)

(Entry before ... and after)

Believe it or not, we're not completely done yet.  We have shutters that we're going to be putting up on the front middle window and flower boxes that need to be installed on the two side windows.  That should really dress up the front of the house even more.

I'm so excited I just want to go sit outside and stare at my house!