Happy Monday All!  Sunday was a rough day, so today I am happy it is Monday, write this down because you will probably never hear me say it again!  I planned to clean the kitchen and get some things organized yesterday, but that got delayed when I opened my refridgerator to see all the shelves covered with water!  The freezer froze up and had nowhere to drain except the fridge.. ugh!  So everything had to be taken out and put in the "beer fridge" in the garage and deep freeze so this one could thaw.  Then Jack (our avid hunter of anything that runs) decided to come in contact with a skunk!  EWWW!  Needless to say I did not accomplish everything I wanted to yesterday!  But Saturday I was able to tackle one project!

So I showed you last time how I removed my Wall Words and wanted to be able to reuse them on another wall, well...... I combed my house to find a wall to put them on and since we painted, all the walls that I would want to put it on were painted the same color as the words!  Now what do I do?? Well being "crafty" as John calls it, I found an old poster frame in storage that had a bunch of pictures in it from college (sorry becca, the pics will have to go in a scrapbook now instead :) 

For being a poster frame, I was suprised to find that it had a white matting around it even.. hmm nice!  I had some Natural Cotton Fabric that I bought to recover some pillows in the living room and decided that it was the perfect color to put behind my quote.

I cut it big enough so that once in the frame I could pull and tug on it to make sure it was tight and there were no wrinkles, I then flipped it over and hot glued the edges to the back of the frame.  Sorry, no pictures of that, but I think you are all smart enough to figure that one out! haha.

I first laid out the letters on the frame to decide whether I liked the colors or not and I think its going to turn out pretty good!

I then eyeballed everything to make sure that it was even on each side (I HATE to measure, I know its a terrible habit, but it usually turns out pretty decent so until I epically fail at something this is how its going to be done! haha)  But here is the finished product!

I think it looks awesome in our newly painted brown hallway!

Since I put the words on a frame instead of another wall they stuck pretty good and I did not need to use a heat gun or torch to make them stick.  But here is a short how to anyway.  I will say that if you ever do have to use one, test a small area first.  I used a handheld blow torch to put up the trees in my office shown here:

I also used it on the white words in the first picture and it did not change the color of the vinyl or anything like that.  When I first put these up (with some extra help of course) they kept falling back down.  They each came in pieces and had to be put together yourself so it was a pain in the you know what!  So when they started to fall down someone gave me the tip to use a heat gun or blow torch.  Only use the tip of the flame and move quickly so that you do not completely melt the vinyl.  I went over each part a little at a time and as soon as the vinyl started to ripple (when you do it you will know exactly what I'm talking about) I removed the flame and used a gloved hand (or towel because the vinyl gets hot quickly) to push the decal down into the grooves in the textured wall.  Now I was told that you should not do this unless you plan to leave it on your wall because it may damage the pain and possibly even the wall.  I didn't plan on changing them so I went for it!   I get so many compliments from people who think that the trees are actually painted on the wall because you can see the texture through the vinyl!   (PS we first tried a blow dryer and it just didn't work very good at all).   I also had to remove some vinyl words from the wooden awning on my office and this was also done using a heat gun.  So obviously the heat works both ways!

Alright well I was pretty excited about my project so I had to show you that it worked!

The big "Cheers for Beers" party is this weekend for Johnny boy's 30th Birthday!  I will post some great recipes that I am planning to use as well as some fun pics from the event!  Busy week ahead!  And our new pub table and stools gets delivered tomorrow! So excited!  Have a great Monday!!!

Sailboats, Seals and Palm Trees... In Iowa :S

Finding time to blog is more difficult than I first thought!  But by gosh I WILL do this!  Life has been absolutely crazy for us the last few weeks!  We've done more painting and John has been changing out all of our outlets and switches in the living room, dining room and kitchen.  I even talked him into helping me paint!  He doesn't quite have as steady of a hand as me, but when it comes to needing a ladder on the stairs or letting him do the trimming along the ceiling I think his shaky hand sounds perfectly fine to me!!!  He also is replacing 3 light fixtures and 3 ceiling fans with new lights, hopefully in time for his 30th Birthday Party coming up! :D  

Ok ok as I promised I will take this post to show you what a little paint can do to change a tiny bathroom from a trip to Sea World to a more calming room! haha   Now mind you this is one of the rooms that we painted within a week of moving into our house... almost 3 years ago!  Some day the plaster walls in our upstairs will be gone and we will have a fully updated 2nd floor to go with the 1st.

Now when I said this bathroom is tiny, I meant TEANY TINY!  like maybe a 4x5 room if were lucky, plus it has the angled ceiling due to the eves of the house.   I first painted this room a mustardy green color, but that was almost worse than this! haha So I gave John full reign of choosing a different color in which he chose "Watering Hole" by Valspar.  Fitting I would say :D

I got the awesome Giraffe Rug at the Family Dollar for $5.00  and the towels also have giraffe print on
them and they were a graduation gift from high school!  So much better than before!

Since I am feeling like giving you all some more pictures I will show you the spare bedroom, which we did nothing to.  Love rooms that you can just move right into! 

That room will probably stay that way until we have children and hopefully by then we will be able to remodel anyway!  Next up is what I like to call "my bathroom".  I honestly LOVE the fact that we have 3 bathrooms in our house!  Sharing a bathroom with a male is probably one of my least favorite part of living with them! hehe!  This room we have not done anything to either, I am still deciding what color I want to use, but I think I would like a Grey and Yellow combo.. yes?!?  

There is a small linen closet (with no shelves... wierd) and a standard Tub Shower on the opposite wall with clear glass doors... yes I must emphasize CLEAR.  When we moved in, I thought that the doors were frosted, but nope!  They were just that covered in soap scum and hard water! ew right?!   After a whole lot of CLR and elbow grease I have clear doors agian! 
Ok... Thats all I have for the rooms that we did nothing to.

I did want to give you a little DIY tip!  So when I decided to paint the dining room and kitchen, I was pretty bummed about the fact that I had put up some Wall Words when we moved in and I really did not want to take them down, nor did I want to have to buy them again (I'm a little frugal...).  I thought about doing what my brother did to keep his, which was put a frame around them and then just paint the walls around that a color that somewhat matched.. hmm.. but that just was not going to work for me.  The wall needed to be touched up in spots under the words so I had no choice but to take them down. 
Here is the words before:

You can even see in the picture how there are spots on the wall :S
I remembered being told when I put up 8 foot vinyl trees in my office (yep pretty sweet!) that kept falling down that if you heat them up with a heat gun or torch when putting them on the wall they will stay (may not be able to remove without damage)... Perfect!  So here is how I removed them... Carefully!

I used Blue painters tape and let me just say, the words came off the wall way better than I ever thought they would!

Then I put them on wax paper and rolled them up to be put up somewhere else.  I have yet to find a place to put them.  I found a place, but them we painted the wall dark chocolate brown so that isn't going to work anymore!  But I did check them the other day and the tape still comes off of the letters clean so we should still be good to go!  Maybe this weekend I will find a place and then I will be sure to show you how to re-attach them!

Ok well I better get a move on!  Hope everyone has a fabulous afternoon and thanks for reading about my life :D