Chalkboard wall!

So the builder painted our entire house in a cream colored FLAT paint. Flat paint shows every mark, scuff, rub, tiny handprint, etc.

It's obnoxious. We also dealt with it in PA in our townhouse in the rooms we didn't paint ourselves.

So when we added stools to the breakfast bar in the kitchen I knew we were going to have an issue with scuffs from feet and shoes rubbing on the wall.

It got really bad recently and we knew we had to do something when Ryan suggested painting it with chalkboard paint.

Cool idea!

Here is our before and after:

I also got Ryan to complete his entire "Honey-Do" list while he was home this past weekend. He's been so ridiculously busy at work, it's been hard for him to find time to do the things I needed done around the house. And trust me, if I could hang curtain rods myself I would. And to be honest we still have windows with absolutely no blinds or coverings on them, and our bedroom was the first and only room so far to get curtains hung. I can't even decide on a pair of curtains for the living room yet! Gah too many decisions!!!!

Oooh, now I have my new button knobs on my laundry room cabinets, and I think they look adorable!!

ps- what the hell am I supposed to hang on that rod under the shelf? Socks? Why put a rod there if you know the dryer has to go there (it's where the hookup was)?

I also decided to create my own roman shade for the glass window in our bathroom. however it is quite see-through, so since then I have gotten a blackout shade that I've cut to it's size to hang behind the fabric (I tried lining it with a fleece blanket first, but it was too heavy to be inside the fabric and kept slipping down).  Even with 4 tension rods (one for the blackout shade...you only need 3 to make the roman shade), 4 yards of fabric, liquid stitch and the blackout curtains from Target it was still way cheaper than buying a real roman shade!!

I got the idea from this blog, which also happened to be the blog I got the idea to "cartoonize" our house for our moving announcements. (It took many hours of using the shape tool and trying to remember which layer was which shape in photoshop, but I think I did a pretty good job for a first-timer):

We are slowly but surely putting this house together, and it's certainly an adventure! Now if I could keep the boys from throwing things off the upstairs balcony we'd be golden......