A New Look

So you can probably tell, but I'm working on a new look for Mariah's Creations!  It is a work in progress, but hopefully in then next little bit, I will be able to figure out how to get the look I really want!  I L.O.V.E. turquoise, and want a light but still fun look. Pretty much I want it to be like a breath of fresh air!!!!  We will see if I can get there!

Question.....How do you add a picture or graphics to the blog title in the header?  Anyone know? 

Family Pictures

Hello!  I hope you all had a wonderful weekend!  Ours was great!  We decided that it was about time for an updated family picture, so on Saturday my fabulous sister, Heidi, came out and set up a little "photo shoot" in our dining area!  With three kiddos it can be "fun" to try and get a good picture, but after LOTS of attempts, some bribing, a little wrestling, and begging we finally did get one that was satifactory! 

Don't you just L.O.V.E. my daughter's cheesy grin!!

Is anyone else crazy enough to do family pictures on your own?  It definitely can be a bit stressful, but we always manage to get at least one good shot!  Plus, we save money on hiring a photographer!!  So its a win win!  What do you think?  I would love to hear any tips you might have!

More Bench Photos

As I was going through my pictures looking for the bathroom ones, I found my original "after" pics of the porch bench!  I couldn't find them when I wrote about it, so I just hurried and snapped one, but it didn't turn out very good!  So here are a few more for your viewing pleasure! :)

I had a cute little helper with the painting!

Love the little pop of red with the turquoise!

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Our Biggest Project of 2011

Other than bringing this little cutie into the world in October,

our biggest project of 2011 was our bathroom redo.  It just started out with us ripping out the wallpaper so that we could paint.  I decided to have my hubby take the mirror down so that I didn't have to paint around it.  What we found behind the mirror was a hole in the wall where a medicine cabinet had once been.  That wouldn't be too hard to fix, but inside the whole we could see that there was quite a bit of mold between the walls. :( YUCK.  So what was just going to be a new paint color, turned into a complete remodel of the bathroom.  This is the best before picture that I could find, it is from before we even put in the shower!

BUT, I do have some in the process pictures!

What a big mess!  We ended up tearing all of the drywall off of two walls, bleached and primed the studs and then put up new drywall.  We also took out the hall "closet" that took up a big chunk of the bathroom, and built new hall storage cabinets at the end of the hall in unused space!  A much better solution in my opinion!

Cosmetically we made a lot of changes as well.  We put in a new vanity, a new light fixture, a new mirror, new paint, (of course!) and new flooring.

Here are the first "after" photos:

I found this A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. fabric and knew that it would be perfect for a shower curtain.  And with it a new color scheme for the bathroom was born!  I love the contrast of the black and green.

And now we have a beautiful bathroom! 

Have a fabulous day!

I linked up to:

Discovering Picnik

Wow, I don't know if I've been in a cave or what, but I'm just barely discovering the amazing possibilities for my pictures with picnik.com!  I signed up for their free account, and played around with editing one of my pictures of the play kitchen.  I may have went a little overboard, but I was just messing around! Here is what I came up with!

I am so excited to start editing my pictures so that they look better!  I also need to learn a lot about my camera so that I can improve the quality of my photos!  But it will eventually come, little by little as I learn new tricks!

My Daughter's New Kitchen

Sometime in the months before Christmas I came upon an amazing little play kitchen made from a nightstand over at SAS Interiors.  Immediately I knew that I MUST make one for my little girl for Christmas.  It took me F.O.R.E.V.E.R. to find a nightstand from the thrift store that would work (isn't that how it always goes, you can find a bazillion of something until you start to look for it specifically) but finally I succeeded!  I found the perfect little black nightstand that had a shelf and one drawer! So I snatched it up and started on my own little kitchen. 

Let me backtrack for a moment, I have seen several DIY play kitchens around on different blogs, but our house is quite small, and so we don't have much room for "BIG" toys.  So when I saw this idea I knew that it was a perfect fit for our tiny little house, and our especially tiny little bedrooms! (unfortunately we don't have a playroom)

Unfortunately I was a slacker and didn't take any before or during photos, so all you get is the after...oops sorry!  But I will tell you how I made it.

First I measured a hole for the sink using the bowl that would be the sink(another DI find), and had my mom cut it out for me. (I am still very much a beginner with power tools, and prefer to stick with straight cuts!!)

Then I had to decide how tall I wanted the "wall" on the back to be.  I just used wood from a pallet that we tore apart last summer, cut them to size( I did those cuts on our radial arm saw!!) and spaced them as evenly as I could across the back. I had my dad help me screw them to the back, and then I painted them.  I used some of the leftover paint from my bench project and mixed it with some white paint to create that lovely teal color. 

I traced a small plate and a roll of duct tape for the burners, and then painted them with some silver craft paint.  Then I used a sharpie and free-handed the coils.  They are by no means perfect, but luckily my two-year-old doesn't care!  I used some wooden knobs that came off an old dresser, painted silver for the stove knobs and sink controls. 

The faucet was the find of the day!!  My mom and I were at the Home Depot searching for some kind of pvc connector thing that would work for a faucet.  I was in the plumbing isle just trying to put pieces together to make something work, and my mom decided to ask one of the workers if they had any ideas for a faucet for a play kitchen.  The worker took her back to the kitchen display area and gave her a faucet that must have came off of one of the displays or something....for FREE!!!  Yay!  It was perfect, I just put it on a dowel that we already had to make it the right height and it was good to go!!

I painted the edges of the drawer to make it look like an oven, and added a bigger handle to the top.  The backsplash was made from a leftover piece of baseboard from our kitchen with a piece of scrapbooking paper mod podged to the front.  The shelf was made from the same pallet wood, and attached with "L" brackets.  A cutie little curtain on a dowel made perfect storage on the shelf. I added a towel rack to the side, and added hooks underneath the shelf to hold accessories.

  

So, what do you think? I love, and so does my daughter and son!!

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2012 IS the Year!!!

This is going to be the year that I really focus on this blog. So many times I think about amazing blog posts, and get them all figured out in my head, but then don't ever take the time to actually sit down and write it. :( But this year will be different. I am determined to follow through with all of my ideas, and actually get them published to this blog. So that being said, I guess that a follow up picture is due for my lovely porch bench!! (Only 8 months late! Sorry if you've been waiting in anticipation!!!)

Ta Da!! What do you think? I absolutely LOVE the bright pop of color on my porch.

I think the porch needs a new coat of paint this summer!

Well have a great day! I will be back soon! (I promise!)