Circle of Mom's Top 25 and Our Bathroom Tile Choices

My goodness has this week been busy, and were not finished yet.  So many activities with the boys.  Jazz band, play practice, baseball, fundraising, coffee house and talent show, bake sale, etc.   Driving, driving, driving.  I've been missing this blog.

It's always nice to receive a random email in your inbox - at least I like random emails.  Last night when I did a quick check this is what I found.

Hi Lynda,

Your blog Happenstance Home has been nominated to the Top 25 Home Design Moms - 2012 list on Circle of Moms!

Our Top 25 honors the great Mom Bloggers. It will be featured in our editorial section, the RoundUp, and promoted through our social media channels, a great opportunity to meet new readers through our audience of 6 million moms.

If you have a chance and would like to vote for me click here.   I would really appreciate it.  You are able to vote once a day until May 15th. There are so many wonderful and well known blogs in the mix - it is just very nice to be included.

  

The bathroom tiles.  I meant to post this Monday.  It's that kind of week!

After looking online and browsing Pinterest we got an idea of what we both liked and disliked.

Things I liked that he didn't - standard subway tiles, arabesque tiles (I so love).

After looking at lots and lots of images we hit the standard Lowes and Home Depot to see what they stocked.  I have to admit I really just liked the subway type tiles there.  I guess I'm difficult.

Our next stop was a shop called The Tile Shop.  Here we easily and quickly decided on the above.

The shower floor will be finished in 2" Hampton Carrara Polished Hex.

The shower walls will be 3X6" Hampton Carrara Polished subway tiles.

 

The bathroom floor will wear this tile.  It looks like a weathered wood floor, but is ceramic.  It is called Bayur Borneo.

  

This is a fabric I may use at the window.  I haven't really looked around yet, but I have some of this on hand.  We will see.

  

So overall we have some really classic materials along with a weathered wood look.    

I'm liking the mix.  So far there is a whole lot of plumbing going on.  The builder did so many things backwards - lots of surprises.  My husband said it is good that we decided to fix this room up because we would have had lots of problems soon.  They had the sink drain going up instead of down.  We were having problems with the drain - no wonder.  Then there was a problem with the sewer line ...  You have to wonder how this kind of work passes inspection ... hmmm ...

Well, I hope everyone has a great day.  Thank you for reading!  I have a big list of things to do and places to be for the next few days so I probably won't post again until next week.

Happy Weekend!

Bathroom Remodel Inspiration Photo's

There are so many baths to be inspired by.  Here are a few of our favorites.

 

This might be the closest photo as far as look and feel go.  Aiming high I think.  We are going to add horizontal planks to the walls, and are planning on making our own cement sink, and a vanity underneath that we will probably paint out.  Ours will be a single sink - the faucet we chose also comes out from the wall and is very lab inspired.  Right now we are planning on framing out the mirror that was in the bath before.

This photo reminds me of our wall as you come into the bath - where the closet was.  I also like the idea of this type of window treatment.

Another roman shade to admire, and I like this mirror too!

Lighting - Oh lighting.  this has been one of the hardest things in the bath to decide on.  I think we are in agreement on picture lighting for over the vanity.  We still haven't decided on the main light, and the finish.  I would like to mix in bronze with the shiny chrome fixtures.  We will see ...

Actually, kind of like this - shiny and bronze = love!

Second Bath - Demo

Funny to think that this was our bathroom!

Now it's a bath in a bag!  Using a Bagster was both economical and convenient.

Now, the cleared out bath.  The closet will become a cabinet.  Nice interior paint job all these years.  I didn't even realize it wasn't fully painted until now.

It is very nice to have the room emptied out.  A little scary too I guess.  I cannot wait until that wallpaper is covered.

The new plan is to install a shower where the bath used to be.  For our family this makes more sense.  The boys don't take baths, and if anyone ever wants to there is one in the master bath.

 

The ceiling in the shower was really low.  We made the header shorter, and brought the inside height of the shower up to the 8 foot ceiling height we have in the house.

All of the basics in the room will be in the same place.  There isn't any room to change the layout.  Yes, that light will go.

Oh, and a little progress in Noah's room.  Seasoning the chalkboard.  I ran out of chalk so I will grab more tomorrow.  Hopefully I will finish that this weekend, and get his desk built.  If you missed the plan for his room click here.

Hope everyone has a great weekend.  Any fun plans?  Baseball season starts over here :)

Bathroom Remodel - The Before

So, this is one of our awful looking bathrooms.  It's the second bath by our boys rooms, and we figured it would be the bath to start with as far as remodeling.

Right now, we go in - use it - get out - and shut the door!

It a twenty year old basic builders bathroom.

When I first looked at the photos I thought that it looked even uglier in pictures.  They magnify the ugly factor.

So, this bath is going out the door.  Also, no wonder the door doesn't close right - it's looking quite warped!

I can't wait to show you what we chose so far for the remodel.  I have lots of inspiration photo's too!  We waited a long time - are doing the work ourselves - and are very grateful we can fix it up!  Hopefully all of our choices will work nicely together!

More bathroom posts coming soon!

Easter Day (Lots of Pictures)

Happy Belated Easter from our family and Guinness!

I wanted to put popcorn on the kids table much to a few people asking me what I was doing.  That made me question myself, but then I received confirmation that my thought was a good one - there was not a kernel left.  The kids also drank lemonade with strawberry popping bobas in the bottom of the glass.  This went over very well!  You have to buy the wide straws, and as you sip the popping bobas or bubbles come up the straw.  When you bite them they burst with whatever flavor you used.  Pretty fun!

My husband cooked up a storm.  Everything was so-ooo good.  This is a photo of the Easter Pies that he made.  I didn't get a photo of his main dish, but Yum!

I really can't believe how pretty our eggs came out this year.  

They have never looked so good.

We tried out some of the food dying methods.

Green tea = the very light egg (upper right)

Coffee = the brown tone eggs

Blueberries = purple shade eggs

Grape Juice - purple eggs with funky random specks

We tried cabbage, but it didn't work for us.  We will have to try that again.

The blue eggs and the minty green eggs are the only eggs we used food coloring on.

We made up the turquoise formula from the box.

The bright blue were simply left in the turquoise.

Noah came up with the minty color in the middle.

He put his egg into the turquoise for a very short dip, and then he put it into the coffee.  It gave the egg depth, and I love that he created the best color.

 

My boys are older, but they still enjoy their Easter baskets.

 

The boys really like the Sheldon character from The Big Bang Theory.  They both had smiles ear to ear when they found their new t-shirts.  In the past the gift has always been for sharing, but this year the shirts seemed like a better way to go.

Oh the sweets!

After Easter this year I looked back at my posts from Easter's past.  It was a nice little trip back in time!  If you want to see a little more click here.

Have a good night and thank you so much for reading!  I think my very next post is going to be an ugly one so stay tuned :) 

Bunny Silhouettes and Tissue Poms - Chandelier Easter Style

If you have been reading for awhile you have probably noticed that I like to dress up our kitchen chandelier with the seasons.  This year I used supplies I already had on hand, and got creative!  I've been trying to use as many things in my decorating this year that I already have in the house.  I need to clean this place out!

I have been cutting out silhouette bunnies here and there since Monday.  I went through all my patterned papers, and gathered up what I thought would be nice Easter colors and prints.  I found this bunny silhouette online - its adorable with it's fluffy tail. 

I had a bunch of tissue poms on hand.  After grabbing a couple colors and fluffing them out they look pretty festive tucked into the chandelier.  I then stood some of the bunny silhouettes into the poms.  I like this photo because you can see Josh and Noah's creations in the background.  Josh made the floral at school, and Noah's paper bag art is back from his preschool days.  I bet his teachers would never have imagined any of those bags were still used and in one piece.

 A chevron bunny!

Here you can see the plates I'm going to use.  I did purchase the paper plates, napkins, and the little ombre bowl sets.  I will be able to use the bowls for so many things later.  I actually bought the plates first, and then everything else just kinda worked together.   I'm pretty picky, but I like to mix things up anyhow.  I guess it's just my kind of quirkiness.  Oh, I probably should mention that this is where the kids are sitting.

I will leave the rest of this post with just pictures.  Hope all your Easter plans are coming together!  Thank you so much for reading!

The last two photos are from later in the day.