Pink Closet Doors for a Girl's Room (and some other painted doors)

OK, so I said I'd be back to blog about the girls' finished pink closet doors...and here they are!

Let's backtrack a bit...
The color of these doors is actually a mix of two colors. I decided to buy a sample of SW Coming Up Roses (after seeing it on another blog).

After once quick coat on one of the doors, I knew the color alone was a bit too harsh.  

So I decided to mix in another color, BM's Revere Pewter, that we had left over from another project. After some trial and error, I finally got the color I was hoping for!

Here's the girls' bedroom with both the pink doors and the charcoal doors. I really love how both colors look together. So pretty!

If  you also look carefully, you can tell that I still need to add another coat to the back of their door. It's splotchy right now. I actually forgot that it needed another coat until I closed the door to take this picture ;) 
Oh, the joys of starting a project and not finishing it...


I'm also in the process of (slowly) painting the rest of the doors in our home with a nice charcoal gray called Kendall Charcoal. It's a BM color, but I had it mixed at Sherwin Williams for a much lower price. I painted the interior doors in our last house a nice gray and loved it so much I wanted to do that in this house.

For now, only a handful of our doors have been painted this color, like some of our upstairs doors. 
Even though I started this project about a month ago, there are still quite a few doors left to paint. That's how I roll. ;)

At this point, my goal is to complete most of the doors in our home by the end of June. 
We'll see if that happens!
(Update: It's now almost mid-July and there are still a couple doors to paint plus some touch-up to do on a few...looks like my goal wasn't reached...lol.)

Back to the girls' room...
the green rug goes perfectly with the pink doors and the walls. It was an "on the whim" purchase from T.J.Maxx last year, but it works in their room! 

Ms. Cutie face!!

I will end on one last picture of our stairwell...where you can also see another painted interior door. This one was painted with BM's Dragon's Breath. Although different from the other gray painted doors in our house, it works well there so there's no repainting it.

Our wooden frames in the stairwell mesh well with the color scheme. I also had to include a photo of our new light fixture that the hubs carefully hung up. It was a pain for him to put up, but he did a great job!
(also, maybe I should've turned off the light so the fixture itself wasn't so hard to see? Eh!)  
If you are looking to change your interior doors, I'd say go for it! And if you are looking for a nice charcoal gray, check out BM's Kendall Charcoal and/or BM's Dragon's Breath. Both are beautiful colors that work well on doors!

The Sound of Gravel

I recently finished a memoir called, The Sound of Gravel.

                                             

Wow...

Now, I don't read on a regular basis and sometimes wish reading was something I enjoyed. However, this book had me at it's first page and I was able to finish it quickly.



Let me back track a bit.
I first heard about this book through another blogger, Emily A. Clark. Occasionally, Emily blogs about books she has read, gives a short synopsis about them, and will recommend them to her readers as she sees fit. Not too long ago she did this with 9 books she recently read. When I reached her description of, The Sound of Gravel, what she said about it stuck out to me. She says this about the book, "If you choose just one from my list to read, pick this one. This is the first book that ever prompted me to immediately email the author after finishing it."

Um, what? I had to know more of what this book was about!

Being that I respect this blogger and knowing that she has read lots and lots of books, I decided to head to the library to pick it up. 

I will give you a little bit of information about the book without giving away too much detail in case you are interested in it. Like mentioned before, this book is a memoir. It's about a girl named Ruth Wariner who grew up in a polygamist family in the 80's. From the get-go, it's easy to see that the character of this woman, who was a little girl at the time, is resilient and strong. She endures poverty, heartbreak, and tragedy. There were a few moments in the book that made me cry because of what she went through. It was all so hard to believe and very disheartening. A few times I even had to put the book down and walk away from it, even after just reading only a couple of pages. With all that she went through, I'm in awe of the strength and positive outlook she now has as an adult!!

It's seriously one to read...and if you are an avid reader, you could definitely finish this in a couple of days. But be warned, it does get a bit dark. It's very eye-opening, however, and very sad at the same time to know the things some kids endure.

Let me know if you have ever read this book before or are planning to read it now!

Special Visitors

Last week, my in-laws came up for a visit from Florida and the kids were thrilled! We Skype with them about once a week, so when we get to see them in person, it's a real treat. They stayed for a few days, so we were able to have some fun and visit some places.

One of the places they wanted to see was Busch Gardens. Hooray!
We decided to go on a Saturday- the weather was supposed to be clear and comfortable, but it did end up raining in the late afternoon. Anyways, we all had a good time and were able to stay a while despite the weather.

Our first stop at BG was Sesame Street Land- the kids really wanted to get their picture taken with Abby (which surprised us because they usually aren't fans of characters in costume), so we did!

Check!

The girls kept giving her high-fives afterwards, which was really cute. 

We rode a few rides in that area and then headed over to the bird sanctuary. 
The girls LOVED it. The birds were so colorful and bold as well. When Poppie first walked in, about 3-4 birds just flocked to him and began walking all over his shoulders/back. I wish I had taken pictures of that, but you'll just have to take my word for it. ;)
It probably helped that people were feeding them when we got there, so they had no problem landing on folks- thinking they would get more food.
That part did make the girls a little nervous at first, but they warmed up to the idea of getting close enough to feed the birds.

So fun!!

After playing with the birds, we decided to hit up some more rides, one of which was the carousel. 
We went around on the carousel a couple of times. That's always been a huge hit at BG.

Beautiful girl!

I wish I had more pictures to share of our BG visit, but we were all enjoying the day, so that's all I've got!

It's all about making those great memories, right?!


On one of the less cloudy days, we took a trip to the beach. It had been our first time since the weather has gotten warmer and clearer.  

I crack up at this picture below of our sweet Lydia watering the York River. She jumps at the chance to water things in our yard, so it makes sense to do it at the beach, right? :)

The kids had so much fun playing in the water and the sand, and even made a few new friends. 

  
Tess showing Poppie her water duckie.

Another fun thing we did with family was make home-made icecream. Mmmmm!!! 
We stuck to a simple vanilla recipe and mixed in lots of mini M&M's. We bought some cones for the icecream too and it was a hit, as you can see from this next picture. Our son devoured his while also making a pretty big mess, so I had to take a picture.
It's one to save for his photo album, for sure. Ha!

We always like taking family photos at the end of each visit. Our Lydia doesn't look to happy in this next picture, but she was...I couldn't get the lighting right so the picture didn't snap right away- I think she was just caught off guard. :)

Meanwhile, our oldest, Tess, had no problem posing for the camera no matter how long it took to take the picture. 
Hands on the hip while waving her wand around= fabulous!

So sweet! 
And our pup does have a rep for photo bombing our pictures, so seeing how he shows up in this last one is no surprise. Ha! After all, he is part of the family!

Thanks Mema and Poppie for visiting! Always great memories made!