Working with What You Have

Beautiful Bathrooms:

Images from HGTV.com

Some of us have them, and some of us (like me) don't


When we moved into our house we knew we wanted to redo either the kitchen or the bathroom. We decided to go with the kitchen since we'd get a lot more use out of it. Since we've only lived here 3 years we haven't been able to much with the bathroom.


I've mentioned it a few times on my blog but have never really shown it; mainly because it's kind of embrassing. I don't even show it to people who come over to the house. But, here it is in all it's 70's retro glory.

Fabulous Flowers!

So there it is. Now you know the truth- our "Master Bath" is not only incredibly small it's also pretty ugly.

Since we don't have the time or money for a full reno and with our house on the market it was time to make something out of nothing and make the space a little more liveable. I focused on this space behind the toilet- (affectionately known as the "Pit of Despair")

To make this space more functional I decided to create some shelves to hold towels and bathroom necessities. The space (or hole however you want to put it) already had these tracks and shelf mounts in it. What happened to the original shelves, I have no clue.

So I went to Home Depot and bought a piece of plexiglass for about $9. I measured the space and measured and cut the pieces to size with a plexiglass cutter.

Not a perfect cut but it works... with everything installed it looks pretty good.

So with little money and minimal effort I now have a functional space to keep towels, soap, ect. I don't know why I hadn't done this before!

Have you ever had a project you put off, but were so happy when you finally finished it? Do you have an element, room, area of your home you're not particularly keen on?

Getting Your House Ready for a Sale

With news of the big move I've gotten into Sell the House Mode. I may or may not have become a crazy give everything to Goodwill so we have less to move type person, and may or may not be driving my husband nuts. But things are tough right now and I want our house to look as good as it can against all the competion.

 I've watched those "Designed To Sell" shows on HGTV to know the basics when it comes to house selling:

-Clean the clutter
-Neutral Paint Colors
-Make any outstanding repairs

I also hopped on the internet and found this useful list. It's really thorough and I'll try to get to most of the big points.

Like cleaning out closets. Done!

Painting Rooms:

Newly Painted Sunroom

Good Bye LSU Themed Loft/ Office

Hello SW Liveable Green! The loft is an off shoot of the sunroom so I thought the colors should be the same.

Trying to declutter all the baby stuff!

Trying to make our bathroom look halfway presentable.


Touching up some old paint projects.

Cleaning our appliances, the list goes on and on.

And when someone is coming to view the house:

-Have all windows open so the home feels light and bright
-Make sure everything is clean and spotless!
-Take down family photos. People need to envision themselves in your home, it's hard to do with photos of family everywhere.
-Fresh Flowers don't hurt either. I also replaced my paint chip art project in the dining room with a mirror to help bounce light around the room and make it feel larger.

And hope and pray for the best!!!!!!!!!

This Weekend

We're spending the weekend getting the yard in order for our upcoming house sale.

I'd like to send a big shout out to Remodelaholic for featuring my lounge chair. Which in turn got me featured at Apartment Therapy ReNest!! Awesome! Thank you so much!

What are your plans for the weekend?

Some Big News

We got some news a while ago that we are moving! Since the Hubs is in the Air Force it was always a possibility that we could move. We were hoping to stay in San Antonio for a while longer but Uncle Sam decided that he needed us elsewhere.


So where are we moving to? Somewhere exotic and exciting? Not so much... we're moving to Altus, OK! What? You've never heard of it? Well that's not surprising because it's in the middle of Nowhere!

It is home to Altus Air Force Base, Western Oklahoma State College, Bar-S Foods, Altus Athletic Manufacturing, and soon to be us! Population is only 20,000 (smaller than the college I went to!) So life's going to change a little for us I think.

The city does have a lot of nice outdoor space and is central to a lot of other states, so I'm sure I'll find something to do.

I know the second thing you thought after you were wondering where the heck Altus was- Rachelle what's going to happen to your blog?! Your house you've done so much work in?!

Well, we're hoping all the updates we've done to the house, particularly the kitchen will help it sell.

And as for my blog I probably won't have a lot of time to do projects for a while but I'll still try and keep it interesting for you. Before we do leave I WILL finish the coffee tables I started. I'm not packing up 1.5 coffee tables in the moving truck. That and maybe a few other things. I have some ideas for sprucing up the house for the sale so I'll share that with you as those projects come.

And when we go house hunting I'll share our adventures with you. It will be like House Hunters Altus, OK style. And soon we'll have a whole new house to decorate! 

So I hope you'll stick with me through this unexpected change!

Glass Class!

A few weeks ago I had the opportunity to partake in a glass making class at Wired Designs. When I first heard about the class I thought we were going to be actually blowing glass! Butit was only decorating a piece and Wired Designs fired it for us. It was fun to hang out with friends, eat some good food, and drink some wine. We had the choice to make either a pendant light, bowl or vase. I went with a bowl, thinking I could eat sushi off it!

We all started with a blank slate of clear glass. Then could add colored glass crystals and sticks as we saw fit.

After deciding on colors and debating over what I wanted to do I finally got started. It was pretty easy and fun laying it all out.

Once we were finished we left our pieces behind to be fired and shaped. And tu-dah! The final result:

The blue turned out more black than I was expecting, and the green looks more yellow. I have no experience with glass firing so I didn't know the glass could change colors like that.

It was a fun experience and I'm so excited to have such a cool piece of art! Now all I need is some sushi...



DC Trip

This weekend I was doing a lot this; and didn't have time for much else.

So I'd thought I'd share some pictures from our DC trip we took last weekend. The Hubs had a Pediatric Conference to attend and I decided to tag along since I had never been before. I dropped the Con-Man off in Houston with my parents and headed to Washington DC!

Geaux Tigers at the Smithsonian!

I had no idea sloths used to be this big. Yikes!

Our early ancestors had some slammin hair do's.

Hope diamond bling!

Got to see democracy in action- Free Libya!

Ok, there are a ton more but I don't want to bore you. I wanted to head over to Georgetown Cupcakes but my trip was short and there wasn't time. Bummer! Maybe next time.

What did you do this weekend? Any fun trips lately?