ANYTHING GOES THURSDAY: Powder Room Redo

I want to thank everyone for all of the nice e-mails I've gotten wishing us happiness in our new home!  It really means a lot.  A few of you also asked to see some before and after pictures so over the next few weeks, I'll share some of my favorite projects from the remodel.  Let me make one thing clear from the get-go - we are so not do-it-yourselfers!  There are a few things here and there that we took on but for the most part, we used contractors to make our vision become a reality.  That being said, we did pick out all of the design elements ourselves so while we may not be handy, I like to think we have good taste ;).

Up first - the first floor powder room.  When you walk in our front door, you're greeted by a staircase and off to the left, our powder room.  I knew that the door to the bathroom would always end up being open, so I really wanted to make the space to make a statement.  When we bought the house, it said blah and boring.

It's hard to tell from the picture, but the walls were a greenish beige I think would be best described as watered down pea soup.  (I swear the previous owners of our house bought all of the paint on sale because the color palette was nauseating.)

The pedestal sink was fine (we actually ended up moving it into our guest bathroom) but didn't offer any storage (notice the spare roll of toilet paper on top of the toilet) and the light fixture?  Well, I'll just leave it as not being my style.

From the moment I saw the powered room, I knew I wanted to wallpaper it, and I used this as my inspiration.

{via}

You may remember I posted back in July asking for opinions on the patterns I was considering, and after a lot of debate, I finally went with this trellis design called Dolce Vita from the Grata collection by Antonia Vella for York (got all that?).

After choosing the paper, I struggled over which color to go with.  The pink was too girly so I thought the best bet was either the navy or the kelly green, but after seeing the swatches, my husband voted for the coral.

I was shocked but happy - it was exactly the pop of color I was hoping for!  And little did I know then that Pantone was going to name Tangerine Tango the color of 2012.

We were so ahead of the trend!  So up went the coral paper and in went the new fixtures, and when you walk into our house now, here's what you see.

I love love love it!  The new sink has just enough storage in the drawer and the new light fixture is a lot more elegant.  You may also notice that the floors are darker - we re-stained all of the wood floors in the house, which made a huge impact.

My one DIY project for the powder room was the navy lacquer bamboo mirror.  I bought it at Goodwill for $30 and it originally looked like this.

After $12 worth of primer and spray paint....

I think it's perfect for the space.  (Plus blue and orange are the colors of my alma mater.  Go 'Cuse!)

There are still a few things I want to do in there - I have a great idea for hand towels and some wall art I want to make for the blank wall facing the toilet - but in the meantime, I smile every time I use the power room.  When you're surrounded by this:

How could you not?

Next week - how some tile and a whole lot of paint turned our kitchen from drab to fab.

Do you have a space that you're hoping to spruce up?  Follow me on Pinterest for lots of great inspiration.  You can also find most of my powder room ideas on my Beautiful Bathrooms board HERE.

Linking up to:

ANYTHING GOES THURSDAY: Wondering About Wallpaper

It's ANYTHING GOES THURSDAY again and after 20 Ways To Make S'Mores and 20 More Ways to Make S'mores, I thought another s'mores round up might be a little much, but if you want to see some more great s'mores ideas, like these S'mores Rice Krispie Treats:

Be sure to visit my More S'mores Board on Pinterest.

I posted on Tuesday about the Island Ikat paper from Thibault that I'm considering for our powder room.

A bunch of you e-mailed me to say how much you liked it, but I'm not 100% sold yet so I thought I'd share the other options I'm considering to see which you all like best.  Here's the powder room now:

Ignore the light fixture and mirror - they're both being replaced.

Pretty standard stuff, right?

Here's the deal.  The powder room is the only bathroom on the main floor of our new house, so it's the one all of our guests will use and will also get a lot of use from us too.  The other thing about this space is that it's close to the front door so the wallpaper will be one of the first things people see when they walk in so I want it to pop.  A poppy bathroom.  Bet you don't hear that very often, huh?

So back to the Ikat wallpaper.  I think it's so purdy.

But while I love it now, I'm wondering if it will seem too trendy in a year or two.  Another option I'm considering is this gorgeous trellis design from York.

And as much as I like the pink, I'd probably go for this kelly green version instead.

It reminds me a lot of Kelly Wearstler's Imperial Trellis pattern, which looks so fab in this bathroom.

{via}

But again, I wonder if the trellis will seem too trendy down the line.

I'm also really drawn to this Thibault paper called English Crewel.

I think it's more classic and even though it's a little more feminine, pairing it with Graham & Brown's beadboard paper might lessen the girliness.

What is beadboard wallpaper you ask?  It's an easy to apply and totally economical version of beadboard that Rhoda from Southern Hospitality has me totally into!  I think it would look terrific on the bottom half of the powder room walls with one of the other papers above it.

If I go with the half beadboard, this graphic fauna print from Jane Churchill might be fun.

So if you were me, which would you choose?  And would you go with the beadboard too or just the patterned paper?  Too many decisions!

For more of my home decor inspirations, check out my boards on Pinterest.

Deck the Halls... and Bedrooms.... and Kitchen.... {GIVEAWAY}

The second I found out I was pregnant, I immediately started planning our nursery, and when we learned we were having two girls, there was one thing I just had to have in the room - a big ornate mirror.  So I tracked down an old picture frame, painted it in purple lacquer and hung it over the changing table.

Isn't it purdy?  Too bad what my blissfully ignorant novice mom self didn't know back then was that as soon as Gabrielle and Alaina were able to sit up, they would start grabbing and pulling at that coveted piece.  As you can probably guess, it was soon taken down, leaving a big, ugly empty space that's been taunting me for, oh, more than a year now.  I couldn't even bear to take a picture of that barren area to share with you because it shamed me so.  And then Mary from A Great Impression e-mailed me about her vinyl wall decals.  After browsing her site, I found the perfect replacement for my beloved mirror.

This scroll monogram design had the same ornate quality to it that I liked about the mirror but I wasn't sure it could fit two initials.  But after e-mailing with Mary, she created one with G&A just for me, and when it arrived, I couldn't wait to put it up!

I had never applied a vinyl decal like the one from A Great Impression before (all of the others in the girls' room are reusable so I didn't worry about screwing them application up) but I have to say, it was a pretty simple process.  Mary sends along very detailed instructions to follow that really help you out.  I'll admit, I'm, one of those people who scans the instructions and tries to skip ahead five steps to save time, but you really do have to do these in order.  All in all, it took me about 15 minutes - mostly by myself, hence the lack of photos - from unrolling the decal to having in place.  Not too shabby!  And look at how fabulous it looked once it was up!

I really love the detail in the decal. 

There are so many little pieces and scrolls and now that it's up, I don't miss the old mirror at all.

A Great Impression has an amazing variety of vinyl wall art to choose from.  There are designs for children:

Decorative elements for living or bedrooms:

And inspirational and other fun sayings to spread throughout the house.

And if you want to deck the halls in a different way this year, why not add some holiday vinyl to your walls?  You know I'm partial to this one:

But these two are festive as well.

A Great Impression can make their vinyl in 24 different colors and you an even use the Custom Wall Art Preview tool to create your own!  And you can always e-mail Mary to design something for you like she did for me at no additional fee.  Can't go wrong with that!

And best of all, the price is right.  The scroll monogram decal that Mary sent for Gabrielle and Alaina can be purchased for just $18.  Such a great deal for something that packs a big punch!  That's why the vinyl from A Great Impression is one of our HOLIDAY GIFT PICKS!

I'm sure you'll be able to find the perfect vinyl design for everyone on your list but be sure to get your orders in by December 15th to guarantee delivery by Christmas.  Hmmmm.... that makes me think.  Maybe Mary can design a cute fireplace decal for me since we don't have one.  How cute would stockings look hung from that?  Too bad I can't enter to win this.....

Mary has generously offered to give away a $30 store credit to one lucky AFOMFT reader!  To enter, visit A Great Impression and post a comment here telling me what design you'll put it toward if you win (this is mandatory).  For additional entries:

• Subscribe to A Great Impression's newsletter
• Subscribe to AFOMFT or let us know you are a subscriber.
• Publicly follow A Great Impression's blog
• "Like" A Great Impression on Facebook and leave a comment that A Few of My Favorite Things sent you.
• "Like" AFOMFT on Facebook 
• Ask your friends to "like" AFOMFT on Facebook by sending them this link - http://tinyurl.com/AFOMFTFBFAN - and post a comment here with the names of each one who does.  You'll earn one entry per new friend who "likes" our page and names will be cross-checked.  
• Follow AFOMFT on Twitter (@AFOMFT or click the birdie icon on the sidebar) and tweet this post by clicking the graphic above or this giveaway:  It's the Holiday Happening on @AFOMFT w/ a giveaway-a-day all month! #Win a $30 credit toward fab vinyl wall art - http://tinyurl.com/AFOMFT
• Click here to vote for AFOMFT on Top Baby Blogs and post a comment here that you did - .  You can vote once per day per computer so if you vote every day or on different computers, be sure to post one comment for each one.
• Grab our button and put it on your blog or website and post a link here showing us.
• Blog or post on Facebook about this giveaway with a link to this post (worth 2 entries so please post two comments) and make sure your comments include a link to your status or blog post.

Please leave a separate comment for each entry (two if you've blogged about the giveaway) and make sure to include a link to your tweet, blog post, etc. All entries must be posted on AFOMFT as a direct comment to this post.  Comments on Facebook will not count as entries.  This giveaway is open to residents of the U.S. and Canada and ends December 8th at 11:59 pm EST. The winner will be selected by random.org and announced on AFOMFT on December 9th. If the winner doesn't contact AFOMFT within 48 hours, a new drawing will be held so be sure to check back to see if you've won!

Images: AFOMFT & A Great Impression

GET ACQUAINTED WITH: High-Heeled Foot in the Door

I mentioned last week that I would be featuring some of the fantastic bloggers I had the pleasure of meeting at the Martha Stewart Bloggers' Night Out party and during the BlogHer Conference and I'm going to kick things off today.

I've been reading High-Heeled Foot in the Door for a while now so I was overjoyed when I met Camila, the lovely lady behind the blog, at Martha's bash.  She's starting her own interior design business and her site is filled with a mix of terrific posts all topped off with a big dose of Camila's humor and charm.  Some of my favorite features are Decorator's Handbook, which provides great tips on topics like how to determine how long your window treatments should be and how to pick paint, Open House, which takes you inside readers' homes (I adore this one on Julie W.), In Her Shoes, where you get to live a day-in-the-life of other bloggers, Blog Crush, which introduces you to amazing blogs you'll want to add to your reading list (I now have a huge crush on Mrs. Lilien, thanks to Camila!), and Before and Afters which as you can probably guess shows you how Camila and her handy hubby transform things from stale to stylish.  Check out this tired dining set before they got their hands on it:

And after:

Impressive, right?

When I introduced myself to Camila, I gushed about a post I'd just read on High-Heeled Foot in the Door and I'm so excited that she's letting me share it with all of you.

With Gabrielle and Alaina turning two in a little more than a month, their days of sleeping in cribs are probably numbered.  While I'm scared silly at the thought of the dynamic duo being able to roam freely around their room, I am looking forward to getting them beds along with adorable upholstered headboards.  I *love* upholstered headboards and have about 1,000 of them bookmarked as inspiration for the day we put together their "big girl" room.  So when I saw Camila's Tufted Headboard tutorial, it was right up my alley.  How fabulous is this?

Take a closer look - the combination of the pattern on the yellow fabric with the polka dots on the buttons is perfection.

And you'll never ever guess what this headboard was before Camila converted it!  Here's a little hint:

Look familiar?  That's right - it's a crib rail!  Camila and her husband picked it up off the curb in NYC and planned to use it as a trellis in their garden but when they needed something to re-purpose for the headboard, they grabbed it.  It's such a great idea and one I never would have thought of on my own.

And that's not the only great tip you'll get from this tutorial - instead of using foam batting as the "filling" for the headboard (it can be pricey and hard to work with), Camila used egg crate mattress pads.  Easy and inexpensive - so genius! 

You only need six things to complete this entire project and if you don't tuft the headboard, you'll just need four.  It doesn't get much simpler than that.

Now I know what I'll be doing with Gabrielle & Alaina's cribs when they outgrow them!

Get the full Baby Crib = Tufted Headboard How To HERE and be sure to check out the other fun features on High-Heeled Foot in the Door.  I can assure you that Camila is just as delightful in person as she seems on her blog!     

Images: High-Heeled Foot in the Door