Awkward and Awesome Friday

Fridays are now my goal for keeping up with this blog. My brother thinks blogs are stupid. And he makes fun of me every time we talk. After every sentence I speak, he'll say, "Did you talk about that in your blog today?" Hah! Well, my wonderful brother Ken, this blog tradition is for you. Awesome and awkward Friday. (Click here for my inspiration for this blog idea-I decided Thursdays are too awkward in and of themselves to have as my goal day)

My sweet little bro and I on June 28th, 2008! (I guess this pic could fit under the just a little awkward category...)

Awkward: (let's change it up a bit, esp since my awkwards are a little fewer and far between than my awesomes this week. *note- this is NOT usually the case)


We finally had our garage door installed and were enjoying it greatly, until said garage door was "slightly" damaged (completely destroyed) when it was accidentally closed on top of sawhorses that were left in the wrong place at the wrong time. Chris went to Lowe's, and they assured us it was covered under warrantee (OH YAY- we all know what that means)... So the garage door guy comes out yesterday and we tell him how UNACCEPTABLE it is that the garage door  wasn't tripped when it felt something was in the way. I added in the sure-fire fix-our-door-for-free-and-apologize-a-lot comment of "What if it had been my SON?"  He does his thing, then comes to the conclusion that it was our fault, since the garage door was already manufactured to trip when something gets in the way of it closing, but the sawhorses don't count since their legs were on either side of the laser sensor thing and didn't trip the door. DID HE JUST SAY THAT? (we still haven't heard back whether or not Lowe's will cover the cost of a new friggin' garage door). 




Awesome:

Lately I've had too many ideas. They keep me up at night. So annoying. I work from home, so my home is my office. I have to stare at the blank walls and plain white couches all day long, and it's driving me ca-razy!

So last night I went a little crazy with buying pillows from my favorite "store" ever!, the point being to add some color to my otherwise white on white family room (which happens to be right across from my office, so it stares me in the face like an albino that hasn't seen the sun in six years). Here are the 8 I finally decided on.......

THEN, I couldn't stop thinking about the ridiculously white walls (I've never been a fan of no color, but I'm scared of painting before I decide on overall design), so I decided on curtains. I've already been through 2 sets of curtains (both returned when I realized how little I actually liked them-much to my husband's chagrin).

I finally bit the bullet and bought MORE fabric from fabric.com. My first two orders came in really late, and the hand-sewn curtains for the living room took FORever, so I swore I'd never order any more fabric or attempt to make more curtains.

Well, after a quick looksie on Etsy and their custom curtains, I realized I was NOT willing to pay someone $300 to make curtains I could make for $76 (cost of my fabric. Sweat and tears are well worth it to save more than $200.  who would pay for this???

Here's the exact same fabric I got-  click here! which will make 4 beeauuutiful hand-sewn curtains by muah. Maybe I'll pay myself the difference and take Chris on a mini-vaca to Six Flags. :)

Everything I bought should go with the stenciled wall I'm working on in the entryway. Here's the blog with the tutorial: stencil tutorial!

So far, mine looks exActly like hers! I wasn't expecting it to look as good as it does. It's a great idea for adding some drama into a room without having to splurge on wallpaper or pick a solid color. So far about 1/3rd of my wall is painted. It took about 3 hours of straight stenciling, then a good 4 hours of painting and erasing pencil lines, and I'm 1/3rd done. Aghhh! My arm about fell off, and it hasn't told me it's ready to start again. We'll see what said arm decides today. I want to get it done- I have too many unfinished projects going on.

My next project will be this! Total anthropologie-inspired budget-friendly art for the fireplace mantle.

Most recent finished project:

Kitchen art. I bought 6 wood frames, painted them white, distressed them with some sandpaper, and filled them with cute Etsy artwork, including these adorable numbers:

                                                                       Get it here

and...

                                                                      get it here.

Tune in next time for a picture-filled update of casa de Layton! And if anyone has any lovely awesome or awkward moments they'd like to share, carry on the new A & A Friday tradition!