Kelly.

My cousin, Kelly is something else. She is the type of person that just never ceases to amaze me. I talked about her in this post. Not only is she a sharp shooter that can drop a deer and put meat on the table, she is a brilliant student with many academic awards under her belt. She is applying to attend the NC School of Science and Math in her junior and senior years and hopes to attend Duke University and become a doctor. She figures out how to do just about everything she sets her mind to, so let’s add a little modeling to the list. Kelly has had an agent wanting her to get a portfolio together so Doreen and I took her out to Waxhaw to see what she could do.  Seems like she figured it out, huh?

Hello, Saturday!

A little Inpiration.

I thought this speech was unbelievably inspiring. I've never seen it before today, but I wish I had. R.I.P. Steve Jobs.

Work it.

More of this pistol later...

Before & After.

We had originally planned to spend Ryan’s birthday weekend in GA. We we’re going to head to Athens on Friday for the Luke Bryan Farm Tour, visit his family and then head back to Carolina on Sunday, but that plan never materialized. Instead, we spent the long weekend on a home improvement/maintenance blitz.

Most importantly, we took a bite out of our long awaited Bedroom Renovation project. We’ve been talking about transforming our bedroom space for a while now but just haven’t had the motivation to execute.

Here are the project details.

• Change the wall color

• Get rid of bedroom furniture (armoire, headboard, and nightstands) & lamps

• Find used furniture to refinish (dresser, nightstands and headboard)

• Find new lamps

• Replace carpet with hardwood floors

This weekend we managed to replace the headboard and dresser, which is a huge relief because I actually despise our old bedroom furniture. It was a set that Ryan got from his old roommate. It was a repayment of sorts for running out on their lease early. It's perfectly nice, but not something that we would have picked for ourselves. It just wasn’t our style. I like to describe it as Contemporary Goth. Very dark, very bulky and a huge dust magnet.

Here are some pics of the before.



I loved that our old headboard had tons of storage, but I HATED dusting it.



Just in case you're thinkin' of creepin'......I'm totally armed.

My grandma Ryan's Shamrock Rosary. It's my most treasured piece of jewelry.

Our busted armoire that takes up an absurd amount of room just to hold a flat screen. Yes, that is the missing door on top of it.

We found this dresser on craigslist for $35.  Here is the before.

We bought a sander and some antique white paint.

AND THE AFTER:

We added some distressing.

So much more room!!!

Our new headboard. We bought this new in the box from Craigslist for $40.

So we're still pretty mismatched style wise right now, but are getting so much closer to my ideal farmhouse/cottage style bedroom.  Next up, we need to find and refinish nightstands and buy new lamps.