A little update on house project happenings.

So in the last couple of months Matt and I have been working on the first floor of our house. If you want to see what it all looked like before (Someday when it's all done, I will do official before and after shots) you can look here.

I was totally inspired by a few projects that my dear friend (and fellow blogger) Sarah had done in her house! Check out her blog An Inviting Home. It is full of sweet house projects (and other amazing stuff.) 

In her  hallway up stairs she did a birch tree stencil. She got it on-line here at Cutting Edge Stencils. And then she was sweet enough to lend it to me after I oooooh'ed and aaaaaah'ed over how great it looked.

Here is her wall! Isn't it flippin' sweet??

So Matt and I set up one night and plowed through the first phase. My friend Kristen helped me to choose the perfect grey for our living room. We chose a deep blue-based hue. We worked well as a team. Well, he worked well as a team while I just did touch ups, wiped up drips, sprayed the adhesive and texted back and forth with girlfriends about how awesome it looked.

This was a huge stencil, and was not SUPER  hard to use,
especially when there were two of us to work on it. 

The first phase consisted of this row. We didn't start phase two until a few weeks later.

We finally (pretty much) finished the day before mother's day. 

I was one happy mama when it was finished!

We still have some touching-up to do (which is why I haven't returned it to Sarah yet! I swear Sarah, SOON!) I think it will probably happen by the time Maximo's graduation happens. Not kindergarten graduation. High school graduation. Okay, hopefully before then. 

The other project we worked on was the art wall. I wanted a chalk board and a space to hang art work. Again, Sarah had done both of these projects beautifully, so I consulted with her for tips and suggestions.

Her projects turned out like this:

She created a coffee bar menu on her chalk board. Check out her full tutorial here.

Her children's art work hangs in their breakfast nook. Check out the full post here. 

Our art wall turned out great. We decided to use our chalk board as a legal area for kids to draw. (Although chalk still finds it's way to illegal walls.... grrr... It's better than sharpie markers though.) I saw a perfect execution of an art wall on pintrest. So we made our own version.

This is were we decided to put our art wall. We hung up curtain tension wires from Ikea.
You can find them here.

We painted with the chalk paint first.

Then Matt built a custom frame around it, complete with a chalk ledge at the top.

Gabriel's birthday sign I drew for him.

We also did a lot of other painting. We did the kitchen, entry way and  three walls in the dining room all the same color. It's a grey-toned off white. It's bright and cheery and is ready to be the back drop for a gallery wall in one place and hanging art work in other places. again, projects we will get to someday. We painted the cabinets white in the kitchen.

This was before we put the doors back on.

We painted our kitchen cabinets white. And we did an accent wall in the dining room in "moracan spice" so it's sort of a burnt orange. It's beautiful. I'm still trying to figure out what to hang on that gorgeous wall.

We had to paint while children kept on doin' their thang through out the day.
Gabe was in heaven having constant access to a ladder all day.

So, there ya have it. It's still a work in progress. 

I look at all of this and am completely amazed at God's beautiful provision over our family. Two years ago I remember crying during a conversation with my mom, so confused at how everything was just hard. We didn't know where we were going to move. I was pregnant with an unexpected baby, I was grief stricken about my dad still and worried that nothing was going to work out for us. My mom reminded me of a verse that shows just how much God cares.

Even the sparrow has found a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may have her young-- a place near your altar, LORD Almighty, my King and my God.

Psalm 84:3

This verse is what one of my tattoos is based on. It's a baby bird to remind me that God cares about mothers, that he cares about our concerns of providing for our babies, our families. Our great and almighty God cares enough to provide a mama bird a place to lay her babies' heads. So of course he was going to provide a place for me to lay my babies' heads down too. 

My nest is so sweet. I sure love my home.