the girls

So...these are the girls. At least, that's what toby calls them. Finn stares at them and smiles every time. Could be the black and white that he loves so much, or maybe it's his beautiful auntie shannon in the middle that makes him grin. I painted this one right before Finn was born....both to help me relax, and to switch up my living room mantle. It's actually from a photo of my sister shannon and her two best friends. Three absolute beauties! It really does not do them justice.

This type of painting is quite easy to do, if you have a photo that you think would suit. You start with a photo like this: (This may not be the exact photo that I started with, but I can't seem to find that one!)

Then you open it in Photoshop and apply a "stamp" filter (found under "Filters" and "Sketch")


Then I just used black acrylic paint to "copy" it onto the canvas. It's hard to get the proportions right, and I definitely didn't do too well, but you could always print out the adjusted image and trace it onto the canvas instead of drawing it freehand.

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Bedrooms cont'd

Our bedroom isn't really my favourite room in the house. It's small and cramped and I'm not sure what I was thinking of when I chose the paint colours....but I love my bed, and I love my bird painting, and I love my snuggly little baby boy sleeping next to me. I think one day I will paint it white and it will feel bigger and brighter and more lovely.

The two little bed-jumpers are toby and his best buddy gavin. Gavin's mom has an awesomely cute blog Every little thing





The dresser was a thrift store purchase that I've been intending to paint for a year. It came with the bright turquoise handles and all! Somehow I kind of like them.

Bedrooms

toby's bedroom is a work in progress. When I asked him what he'd like on his walls, he said "a tractor and a digger and maybe a moster truck". So there you have it. I had some blank canvases on hand that day and we sat out on the lawn and painted a tractor, a digger and monster truck! He's also very fond of his "beans" painting. Beans is my mom and dad's little jack russell....toby's good friend. I painted it the week before toby was born.




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my house of giggles.....and smiles...and messes....and fun.....and definitely more than a little chaos

Welcome to my house. It's old (ish) ...not the cool kind of nice character old, but the sort of awkwardly boxy kind of old. I live here with my husband and two little boys, Toby (2 and a half) and Finn (3 months). My days are spent playing cars and tractors, cleaning up messes, putting babies to sleep and sometimes doing a little decorating to top it all off. I get bored easily with decor, and am constantly changing things up in my house. I'm pretty sure it drives my husband nuts. Even the smallest little "projects" delight me and I'm inspired so often by the great ideas I see on all the wonderful blogs out there!