Fri-Yay!!! the one where I painted a wall

Happy Friday Y'all!! This has been some sort of week, let me tell you.  The best part is that Thomas only had a two day work week so we got to have a mini vacation!!  Not to mention the weather here in the PNW has been all sorts of amazing with super nice weather in the 70's+ and just yesterday there was a little bit of rain in our area...which I am not complaining about!  Rain is so good for my garden and flowers.

I had all sorts of projects that I wanted to get done this week with the Hubster's home but it was just too darn hot to really get anything done...plus just being together is a blessing.  I did get one thing done though.

Let's get into the back story first:

When we first moved into our home 8 years ago all the walls were still painted that builders white from 1989. I wanted to take advantage of the emptiness of the house and get the walls painted without having to worry about furniture...so we painted the ceiling white and the walls this awful color from McClendon's: Arizona Tan...which turned out to be a fleshy pink color!! We took it back and had them tint it as dark as possible but it really didn't help much. About a year later I found a beautiful green color to paint on the fireplace wall as an "accent" wall.  I love the color and it changed with the lighting throughout the day.  Then about 6 years ago I painted the rest of the house this beautiful neutral color: Potter Slip from the Martha Stewart line when she was at Lowes, it's not available anymore since she is at Home Depot and that color didn't transfer over there, so I have to keep a can for color matching when I need a new one.  As my design style has changed over the years, I no longer wanted to have an accent wall, so I remedied that this weekend and now the fireplace wall is the same color as the rest!!

I had a super hard time finding a before picture (because I am a bad blogger and didn't plan ahead) so here are some choppy ones:

please try to look past my adorable little and see that wall in the back (also notice how cluttered that gallery wall was...) 

It took two coats to cover that green but I can't believe the difference it makes in this room!  I swear the room grew by 10x!! It seemed like it got about 3 feet wider and so much lighter and brighter in here.  We are lacking in overhead lights in the living room (which is so strange that so many houses don't have living room lighting...we also put in the chandy 7 years ago and there was no overhead lighting there before...) I don't know why it took me so long, I just love it!!!

Since I had to take everything off the walls to paint I decided to simplify a little bit and really reduce the number of pictures in the gallery wall area and the decor on the mantle.

What do you think?  So much "cleaner" looking, right? I am trying to decide if I should find something to go under our family canvas print (we will be replacing that soon with one that includes Finn)

and here is the mantle area, the little fishing pole is actually a lighter - so funny, and that bow was given to Ellie on our trip to Ireland in 2014, by a world class violinist we saw at a Pub.  He serenaded Ellie and let her play his violin and when he needed to replace his bow he gave this one to Ellie!! So cool.

I mentioned earlier this week that we went up North to this quaint town called Snohomish which has a ton of antique stores.  Finnley was a champ in the Ergo the whole time and Ellie found a fun little toy at one of the shops!  She was just a crack up...but wasn't as good of a shopper like she used to be when she was little like Finnley...I know that with more practice she will get better again!

I saw this tee at one of the shops up there and thought it was so funny:

and finally at one of my favorite shops they have a new line of chalkpaint (which I've been wanting to try out) and I might just have to get this brand because of the name "Little Billy Goat" my love for goats runs deep!!

As you know Ellie turned 3 a couple weeks ago and I wanted to get a picture of her with her Birthday Peony (I call it that because the first year it ever bloomed was on her birth birthday!!)  We had to take it a week early,  because of the unusually warm weather we've had that has made everything bloom early, before the flowers were spent...I mean can you even handle this cuteness??

and then we needed a selfie (see old wall color in the background) and I just can't even express to y'all how much I love this age!!

Ellie is still in diapers part time (naps, nighttime, long car rides) so she gets to use the changetable in Finnley's room.  She really likes to help put lotion on and always asks for it for her hands...but just look at that bellybutton!!!

I love snapchat (@alifeonthefarm) ...because besides the built in filters you just have to show your real life.  I remember when IG (@lifeonthefarm) used to be that way but with all the filter apps and changes they've made to it, it's not like it used to be and I feel like to get a good "following" your pictures have to be professionalesque and that's just not me.  Anyways the face swap filter on Snapchat is always a little disturbing...this one especially.  I wasn't going to share it but then I just can't help myself it's just the most horrific thing ever - me and Thomas!

I mentioned on IG and Snapchat that I was doing an IKEA hack on their dollhouse and here is the finished hack! I love how it turned out and it really doesn't even look like the original.  I plan on doing a full post about it but basically I painted all the walls, put up some wallpaper, and added shingles to the roof - I think that was the cherry on top! Oh and I also added some windows with magazine gardens for the view ;)  It's the perfect size for all of Ellie's MagicClip Disney Princesses

I'm hoping we will be able to complete another project this weekend...replacing and painting the baseboards!!  We already have all the baseboards in our garage, all we have to do is paint them and then measure/cut/install!!! We shall see if we have the energy to do it!!

And basically that is all I have for you right now!  Happy Weekend Y'all!!

♥ Ashley

linking up here

In case you missed it:

On Wednesday I posted Finnley's Weekly Update

On Thursday I shared our final recap of Day 4 in Disneyland