Living life one incredible day at a time...

Living life one incredible day at a time...
DECORATE * RENOVATE * CREATE * APPRECIATE

About Me

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Greetings Friends, Family, Fellow Blogging Community!! I'm a 30-something year old music teacher and enthusiastic self-taught decorator, who loves to spend time with my tremendously talented and handsome one-of-a-kind husband, Jon, our two amazing children, Clara and Carson, and my wonderful loving family and friends!! I love all things creative and artsy, including design, music, dance, art, scrapbooking, you name it!! I decided to commence this blog in order to create a fun and creative on-line journal showcasing the exciting adventurous journey of the Botbyl family, and in order to keep in touch with and hopefully inspire other individuals, like myself who love to share a wonderful life's design consisting of love of family, friends, and creative living!! Please leave me a message/comment if you decide to visit my blog, or add yourself to my list of "followers" so that I can visit your awesome blog or Facebook!! Look extremely forward to hearing from you!! Have an incredibly amazing day!!

Monday, August 29, 2011

Horrific Huricanes, Terrific Turquoise, & Wet Wallpaper

Good Afternoon!! Hope everyone made it through the wonderful storm successfully, without out broken tree limbs...or body limbs, or ferocious floods (which I'm certain many people had to deal with), totaled cars, or days without electricity. Somehow, our electricity never went out, although half of our development actually did lose power yesterday, so we feel exceedingly lucky to have had light, food, & function throughout the entire time. Anyhow, we used this stuck-in-the-house opportunity to enthusiastically tackle a couple of projects both for school & home, which we are presently working on. These are a few highlights :
1st of all, I've been completely obsessed with the concept of infusiating turquoise into our home; It's such an amazing vibrant & fun color, & yesterday, I couldn't help but to see how creative I could be with a can of turquoise paint, a couple of frames, other items, & a blank canvas. All these are extremely inexpensive projects that take less than one day:
 This burgundy Cafe sign is from our last kitchen, & since there's no sign of red in our kitchen, I transformed it. This is such an easy project for anyone who has items that are perfect...but just not the right color for their home.
 These next few items were 20 cents at the Berlin Auction, & I've been waiting for the perfect opportunity to paint & modernize them, while still giving them a 50's feel, which fits perfectly in the guest bedroom I've been working on.
This project is so easy & inexpensive - I just bought a couple of blank canvases from Big Lots, then sketched & painted my letters!!

This next (big) project is something we've been planning to do for a while, & were debating as to whether it would be easier & safer to have a professional wallpaper-remover/painter...(is there such thing as a wall-paper remover...est??) come & remove all the wallpaper in our living room, prime, & paint the room, only because Jon & I tackled our wallpapered, bordered kitchen in our old house, which ended up being a little bit of a nightmare, although it was one our our very 1st projects so we weren't quite as savvy, I guess you could say. We didn't necessarily wish to relive that experience here, especially with the 1st room you see upon entering our current house. 

But, ya know what they say, curiosity killed the cat, & we're just a couple of cats, the three of us!! We became curious, starting pulling, & before we knew it, were equipped with a couple necessary items that allowed us to un-paper the entire living room, so that it's now ready for priming & painting, (Big smile...) then we're going to try & stick to this design plan that we came up with that will hopefully make the room feel like a modern, urban, city loftish music room, with a little bit of vintage...& a little bit of glam. Yikes!!!! Can I pull this off?? This is a whole new level of decorating for me...Doesn't hurt to try...& eventually maybe it'll get there...in a year or so.
Here's the wallpaper that just came down!! It's not a horrible pattern, but it's a bit outdated, & not exactly reflecting the potential of this awesome room!!
Cece was supposedly in charge of the curtains, which she made into a fun game!! Isn't she a goofball...a totally adorable goofball?
 Well...our home improvement saga continues!! Thanks for stopping by...

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Fresh Modern Cottage Family Room & Kitchen

Good Afternoon!! We've been working enthusiastically on our kitchen Family room combo, & are really happy with the results so far, so I've been excited about sharing these two rooms. My design plan is to create an atmosphere of serenity, whimsy, energy, comfort, and inspiration for family gatherings, meals, school work, hanging out, relaxing, what have you. Here is our work in progress, beginning with the kitchen, then followed by the family room.
The photo above is my newest addition to our kitchen. I absolutely love these beautiful turquoise antique jars!!
I'm really trying to add many fresh, modern, yet cottagy & whimsical elements to the room in order to give it a warm, inviting, but also vibrant and fresh feel!!


The following photos are from our Family room!!