Tile, Knobs and America the Beautiful

We have been working on home improvement projects around here out the wazoo.  Justin tiled our kitchen and entryway, and painted the kitchen and master bathroom.  He is in the process of refinishing the concrete floors in the basement.  All of these have been long drawn out projects for various reasons...we have a lot going on around here with the two boys and our very hectic lives, not to mention some little hiccups we have run into along the way.  I re-read that paragraph and realized I used the term "we" way too loosely.  I was not really much of a participant in this particular "we" except for my shopping skills (for tiles and paint and whatnot).

One day, Justin got the following fortune in his fortune cookie...

A good time to finish up old tasks.

And I came home to this...

and this...

...that very day.  Don't you tell me those fortune cookies lie.  They tell the truth. Believe what they say to you.

Anyway...the tile in the kitchen and entry look AMAZING, right?! For the record, we decided (this time I really do mean "we") that the blue color in the entry way has got to go.  It looks a bit too patriotic against the red in the kitchen.

"America, America, God shed his grace on THEEEEEEEEEE..."

So, we will be replacing it with a more neutral color (not sure what I mean by "we" this time - that might actually be a real "we" but then again, maybe not)

This past weekend, I got some stuff to hang on my bathroom walls, so the master bathroom finally looks like I live here.  Before (oh man, why didn't I take a before picture?) it had super-ugly wallpaper, and several months ago, Justin stripped that paper off, but it has been blank wall since then.  So I have never hung anything on the walls in there.  I really wanted our bathroom to be a calm place with pretty things, so now I think it fits that description...

This photo is really bad (in fact all of these are because they were taken with my phone in the darkish bathroom.) I had to mess with the colors so you could see that the cross is red and says "Grace" but the walls are totally not yellow.  They are a nice creamy tan color.

My little photo montage over the bathtub - I had to doctor this photo too, but you get the idea.

Metal swirly-gig over the toilet. (OOPS, it still had the tag on in this picture!)

and a little comedy: Dad's Workshop - BACK OFF

Tonight I did a little tiny home improvement project that I have been meaning to do for years.  We have this hutch in our dining room/living room that we have had for a long time.  It used to belong to Justin's parents, and is a really nice piece of furniture.  However, it had these really hideous knobs and handles on it...maybe they werent hideous but they were definitely outdated and not my style.  SO...tonight, I replaced them!  It feels so good to accomplish a task and fix something that has been driving me crazy for so long.

Before...

After... 

Sometimes it is the little things in life...