Things I Love Thursday 2.0

After a two day snow break, I'm up early this Thursday (it is 23 degrees outside!!) rushing around to get back to my kiddos. Lucky for me, I only have two days back at school before another long weekend! One of my Christmas gifts from Rob was a weekend in New Orleans surrounding our race on Sunday. We're staying at a fancy hotel and eating at all kinds of delicious places! I can't lie - I'm totally excited to indulge after 13.1 miles on Sunday. Please say a little prayer because the weather forecast is showing lots of rain for our race. I just don't think that I can run my best in freezing rain, and we've worked SO hard to prepare for the race that it will be devastating to have to miss it or end up with a bad time!

Anyway...here are some things that I love this week:

1.

Can you imagine eating marshmallows with your favorite Instagram pictures on them? I want to get some just because they make me giggle! Click here: InstaMarshmallows

2. Speaking of marshmallows, last week at school we had a teacher luncheon and one of the teachers made these:

Can we collectively say Mmmmmm???

3. I'm obsessed with the idea of seeing these castles. Anyone up for a trip?

4. In preparation for the Divergent movie, I decided to finish the series and read Allegiant. It has been while since I read the first two books, so I felt lost and disinterested the entire book. I pushed through and finished it, but I quickly went back to Divergent and reread that one. I'm almost through with Insurgent, and I honestly still feel bored by Allegiant.  I looked up reviews, and apparently everyone is feeling the same way about the book. Any thoughts?

5. I NEED THIS PRINT. Today. Actually, yesterday. Our built-ins are slowly coming together, but they still feel so empty. I just want to buy all the gold things in the world and fill them up. Overdramatic much? Never.

6. Speaking of gold things that I need, THIS is at the top of my Valentine's Day/Anniversary gift wish list. ROB, I AM TALKING TO YOU. Anyone who knows me knows that terrariums are among my favorite things in the universe. This geometric shape + gold + terrarium = HEAVEN. Seriously. 

7. In preparation for my race, I've been remembering how far I've come on this weight loss/get healthy journey. I want to do a big post all about it next week, but for now, go follow my friend on facebook here: This Mom is Losing It. She has an AMAZING journey that I know will inspire you! 

...And that's all, folks. :) It's time to face these temps like a champ because I have 22 Kinder babies who need lots of hugs to stay warm today! Have a lovely day! :)

We've survived..

...the Brrrrricane!

While the rest of the world is used to below 30 degree temperature, South Louisiana is NOT. When our parish found out that there would be ice on the road (unsafe conditions for those of us - EVERYONE - who don't have snow tires), they immediately cancelled school Tuesday and Wednesday.

And while this teacher LOOOOOVES her babies and LOOOOOVES spending the days with them, I sure didn't mind the idea of two days to wear my pajamas, finish up on Dexter, and RELAX. When I found out that Rob would also be off, it was the icing on the cake!

Anyone who truly knows me knows that I took the first opportunity I had to hit up Lowe's for some yellow paint and I have been working nonstop, but the idea of relaxing was nice. Right? Right!

I DID take a tiny break yesterday to enjoy the little bit of hail snow that we received. Here are some pictures:

This is the view of our back deck SO FULL of snow. ;)

Here we are enjoying all of the icy wonderfulness. This picture cracks me up because our heads are cut off, but we really didn't care. We ran inside and decided that would work! ;)

Rob made the world's tiniest hail balls and threw one at me. You can even see it flying in the third shot!

This was one of our projects for the snow day. We filled balloons with food dye and water and put them outside to freeze. It didn't QUITE work as well as we hoped, but they still turned out really pretty!!!

Before:

After:

I LOVE winter and cold months...but I took this picture for all of my friends dreaming of a warm Mardi Gras season! ;)

Did any of you try any of the Pinterest ideas floating around *balloon pun intended* to make your "sneaux" day more magical?

Stay warm, my friends! :) 

Bring on the Paint

I was hoping to have a weekend update that included a brand new view of our main living room wall or a look into our newly painted sunroom, but (as people who frequently do house projects know) both things took a LITTLE longer to finish than expected... as in...they're not even close to being done. Whoops.

So.. I thought we'd chat about exterior paint colors. I've been itching to paint the outside of our house for awhile now. When we bought it, it looked like this: 

It still basically looks like that, but it now has a yellow front door. :) I need to get a picture of that soon.

Anyway...we always thought that if we painted our house, we'd paint it a much darker gray, but lately, we've been playing with a few other options. Here are some of the colors we've been looking at:

Rob has always had a soft spot for white houses, so white is always in the running. I don't mind a white house if I can have a fun colored door. Check out that lime green door above! *Insert heart eyed emoji*

Here's that darker gray that we have been talking about. I love it. Mainly, I love it because I love that yellow just pops against it. As anyone who has visited my living room can tell, yellow and gray is my favorite color combination.

But lately, I have been REEEEEALLY leaning toward this blue color. I love that it is dark, but it isn't quite navy. I love that it pops. I love the idea of doing white trim and a YELLOW door. I just love it. This is definitely the color that we're I'm leaning toward lately.

I guess that when Spring rolls around, we will see! :)

Have you ever painted the exterior of your house? Were you bold in your choices or did you stick to something safe? Any tips for someone who has never painted the outside of a house before (besides "hire a painter")? :) 

Have a great Monday!

Thursday Things

**Every Thursday, I hope to be able to post a list of a few things that have caught my eye. Some of these might be Haney House life anecdotes, things from my classroom, or things that I've found around the internet. It will be a hodgepodge of sorts. :) Enjoy!

1. When I'm not acting house decorator connoisseur *wink wink*, I actually do have a real job. I'm a teacher...a KINDERGARTEN teacher (Insert the sigh of understanding that just came over you when you reached an understanding about why simple projects take me DAYS). This week, we are learning about famous Americans. After reading a book and watching a short video, my students and I came up with a "Can, Has, Is" chart about Rosa Parks. This was their chart:

Can we all just revel in the fact that when discussing things that Rosa Parks IS, my students came up with DEAD?? Because, ya know, Kindergarten.

2. Other than being a Kindergarten teacher and house decorator (and blogger), I also added HALF marathoner to my list of accomplishments about a year ago. Running is something that I never did until about 3 years ago, and now I can't imagine that I ever didn't do it! Rob and I enjoy running together weekly. It is such a stress reliever! Why am I telling you this? Well, because I'm about to complete my second half marathon (Rock 'N Roll New Orleans) on February 2nd! I've been training hard, and I'm so excited to (hopefully) improve my time!

3. I'm struggling with decorating our built-ins, so if you were expecting to see that post this week, well....ma'am, no. :/ 

4. Because, Beyonce'.

5. My childhood friend Celina started a new blog. It has quickly jumped to the top of my list of favorite blogs because Celina and her boyfriend's lives remind me so much of ours! :) Go to check it out for some healthy eating/work out inspiration AND some awesome DIY projects! http://mycajuntrinity.com/

6. I just NEED to tell y'all about one of my new favorite apps/websites. Here is the website: The Hunt . Do yourself a favor and download the app while you're at it, too! Here's the gist - Have you ever found something AWESOME on the internet *cough PINTEREST cough* but couldn't find the link to know where to buy it? You just enter the picture into the app and "start a hunt", and people can log in and send you a link of exactly where you can find that item or something similar! You can also follow other people's hunts if you see something that you like that they're looking for! It is a life changer. Their tagline is "The Cure for Outfit Envy" but I'm pretty sure that it is the cure for ANYTHING envy! I love it!

7. See that little button at the bottom of this screen that says COMMENT? Press it! You know you want to! ;)

8. Our ultimate dream for a light fixture over our dining room table is something like this: 

BUT we've been looking into making one ourselves with the old anchor lights that we found at the antique store a few weekends ago. So many projects...so little time!

9. We are dreaming of a tongue and groove plank ceiling in our new kitchen. Has anyone done it before? We're researching online, but it doesn't seem (too) hard.

10. I can't get enough of Dexter lately. And this is why:

11.

And....speaking of serial/ceral killers... I'm just going to leave you with this here. :)

Long time no see...

So, I guess that just a few weeks into this blogging thing, I already neglected it a bit. I'm going to blame it on house projects, starting school again, training, and getting sick. And then, you guys are going to forgive me and continue reading. Right? Right.

My vision for the blog is posting 3 or more times a week. I'm going to make a conscious effort to do that. The problem with that is that we don't always do 3 blog worthy updates a week... so here's what you can plan to see in the upcoming weeks- Two or more posts a week about house or personal things and at least one post about things I find around the internet that I love. I think that I'm going to focus on things inside and out of the Haney House. Sure, the house projects are fun..but we don't have the time or money to do three of them a week. The great thing is, our lives are just as fun and just as full. So expect to get a view into Haney House life as well from now on. :)

So, first things first... we are still LOVING our map wall. It just adds so much pizzazz to our living room. We can't get enough of it! We have had a few people over since it went up, and it is such a conversation piece! The continents are still holding up beautifully!

But....it got my brain working...and made me realize that we really needed something else in the living room to pull it together. In the last post, I talked about how we had some fun ideas for the built ins, but when it boiled down to it, we couldn't figure out how to execute those ideas because of the strange shape of them. Here's the picture of what they look like (now white). I mean, do we have the paint stop in the middle part? Or keep going and just have it stop on an open wall? We were so confused!

So, I did my research and found this post (on my favorite DIY blog ever) CLICK HERE

And I fell in love. I was still nervous, but I was in love. You see, this room is designed for a child. Would it be childish to do that in our living room? Would it stand out like a sore thumb? What color do we pull because our map wall is SO FULL OF SO MANY COLORS? I told Rob that when I get an idea in my head like this, I feel like a football player before a big game. I can't stop! I just NEED to execute my idea! So, I quickly typed "interior painted door" in the Pinterest search bar, saw that obviously it is a pretty crazy idea because there were so few... and said, "FORGET IT, I'm going to Lowe's."

I searched through all of the Pantone colors (because I never used Pantone before, but they are ALL OVER the crafting world right now) and decided on this: (Pantone Emerald AKA the 2013 Color of the Year - WHAT WHAT!!)

I bought a sample (not my most intelligent moment) because I thought that one little sample would cover the door that was previously white. Well, after one coat, it looked like this...which was obviously not what I had in mind:

So..back to Lowe's we went! We purchase a quart of this stuff. I came home, and I immediately covered it again. It still left a little to be desired, so I put one last coat on last night before bed time, and it did the trick! Our door is now bright and BOLD! It is EXACTLY what I envisioned! Hysterically enough, it isn't a color that you find on our map wall often, but I know that by painting a few things and placing them around our living room, it will bring it all together. So, without further ado...here's our new room in a few different views! (Please excuse the terribly executed built ins in the upcoming pictures. Come back on Wednesday to see what we've done to decorate those! :)

As always, thank you for coming by to visit and learn about our little home projects. We are BY NO MEANS experts. We do what makes us happy. After listening to an interview that Sherry of Young House Love did with Jonathan Adler, I decided to choose 3 words that I want people to think EVERY time they come into our house. Our three words are happy, quirky, and cozy. That is FINALLY becoming a reality in this living room. :) 

Which three words describe your home? Would you ever consider painting a door a fun color? Are you as in love with this color as I am? Now it is time for me to to go so that I can paint everything else in my entire house this color. ;) Happy MLK, Jr. day!!! :)

'Murica Christmas

**Warning...text AND picture heavy post**

Before we start, THIS is what our wall previously looked like. It DESPERATELY needed some help. There is no excuse for this wall. Since we moved in, we couldn't decide what we wanted. We had been throwing around a few ideas for awhile, but we couldn't commit to any of them.

Now we are going to back track a bit to a time a few months ago when Rob mentioned that he might want to cover our big, empty living room wall with a map. Now, I love a map as much as anyone, but I wasn't sure if I was a huge fan of covering our 16 foot wall with a huge map. When I saw that a friend pinned a picture of a map made out of girly wallpaper, I just KNEW that this was the perfect compromise.

So... I enlisted the help of my bestie, Emily (learn about Emily and her awesome husband by clicking the Main Characters tab on the right). See, she and I made a little deal that instead of exchanging Christmas gifts this last year, we would give up our time to assist each other in a project. She had NO IDEA what she was in for... *insert evil laughter*

I decided that I'd ATTEMPT to do this as a surprise for Rob. Our first step was buying the material. We decided to make America 'Murica a different color because OBVIOUSLY it is awesome: 

After we bought the material, we kicked Rob out of the house for an entire day to start our project. First, we measured bulletin board paper to the size that we needed. We measured 12 feet two times and taped them together so that they were the height of the entire wall. This is what it looked like:

Then, we attempted to use the projector to project the map onto the paper so that we could trace it. This is the map that we used:

This didn't work at all because we couldn't pull the projector far enough from the paper to make it the right size. 

This is the point where we decided to bring it to Emily's studio (Did I mention that she is ALSO the owner of the most amazing Fitness Studio in town?). Unfortunately, we didn't get a picture of this, but after a few mishaps, we FINALLY got the map up and traced.

We decided to use an X-Acto knife to cut out all of the continents so that we could later use the big piece of paper as a stencil. This is the point that poor Emily, who had been feeling under the weather, fell asleep while cutting Europe. I made the executive decision to stop the workflow for the day and send her home to get better. 

During the week of Em trying to get over her sickness, I was a busy bee pinning the continents to the material and cutting them out to prepare for finishing the project!

Let's fast forward to a week later when Em felt somewhat better. We got together again for one last 7 hour day. We put the stencil back up (and leaked this photo to the social media world) and got to work.

The next step was the tricky part. I had previously looked up TONS of tutorials and decided to try to use the starch and iron method. I had tested this when we first bought the material, and it worked really well. When doing the map, we fell into a rhythm where Em sprayed each material and held it up while I came behind her with the iron and ironed the pieces to the wall. Occasionally, we had to spray the pieces again while they were up on the wall. I'm pretty sure that there was more laughter and frustration than ironing for the most part because the stencil kept falling. The tiny islands were easy to put up, but we struggled a bit with the bigger pieces of the continents. I'm pretty sure that we fought the most with Europe. Incredibly, the bigger the continent, the easier it went on (and the better it held). 

Once all of the continents were up, we ripped off the stencil (YAY) and re-ironed the pieces that weren't holding strong. Then, we got to the fun part....!!!

Em used her fancy sorority girl handwriting and a gold paint pin to add the names of each continent. This part didn't photograph well (that doggone gray wall NEVER photographs true to color), but trust me - it's beautiful in person! I told her that if I could have a hidden talent, I'd choose to have her fancy handwriting! While she was doing this, I was putting a border around the continents. I used a white paint marker, but I may eventually go over it with a darker color. We will leave with it this way for awhile to see if we change our minds. I also printed some pictures of silhouettes of different objects to represent each continent. I attached each of these using glue dots. Today, I decided to print pictures of me and Rob to put on all of the places that we've visited. Obviously, we need to travel more!

So, here's the finished product! I just couldn't get a picture that truly showed the beauty of this wall. Y'all, I'm SO IN LOVE WITH IT.

Oh...AND...just for kicks and giggles, here is a picture of the living room RIGHT after we bought the house. The big wall is on the left of the picture. 

As far as Rob and how much he liked it...well, HE LOVED IT!!! He even came out of his Facebook hiatus to type, "Easily the coolest house project yet" on the first picture that I shared! I feel like it just adds so much color and fun to our living room. A few months ago, my grandma visited our house and told us that she was surprised that we didn't have more color in our living room. Since then, we ordered a yellow couch, a navy rug, and we created this SUPER colorful wall art. Hey granny, is it colorful enough now?? :) Our next plans for the living room include painting behind the built-ins (maybe turquoise or even something more fun like white polkadots), reupholstering the chair that we bought at the thrift store a few weekends ago, and putting up mantle that my dad just finished fixing for us! In the meantime, I will be upholding my end of #projectChristmas and helping Em with a project at the studio! 

Have any of you ever tried a project like this? Did you know that spraying material with starch and ironing it onto the walls would work? I hope that you all enjoyed your weekend and STAY WARM with this crazy, chilly weather!