Home Decor: Guest Bathroom

My kids are all potty trained and are getting a little neater in general so I went ahead and redecorated the guest bathroom. I call it "guest" but we don't have too many guests. Mostly the kids and their friends use this bathroom. But, it is on the main floor and when guests do come, this is the bathroom they use. So I wanted it to look nice.

I bought a gallon of paint last summer from the reject pile at Lowes. I loved the color and knew I'd use it somewhere. $5 instead of $33 was too good to pass up. The color in the can is a very dark teal and some of these pictures reflect that but when standing in my bathroom it looks like a very solid navy.

I like to use the Sherwin-Williams Color Visualizer before I paint in order to make sure I'll like the "after". It still takes a bit of time and obviously it always looks a little different in real life but using this tool gives me a much better idea of what I'm getting myself into.

Since it is a tiny room, I wanted to do something a little more cool and unexpected. I thought I wanted stripes. In the Visualizer I played around with stripes of all colors and widths, horizontal and vertical. To me, it ended up looking like a collegiate bedroom. Not what I was going for. So I started re-browsing my saved photos in Houzz and came across this. I love how this designer used paint geometrically to set apart this corner of the room. It is a clean line with a subtle but big impact. Can subtle and big impact be used to describe the same thing? Well I guess it can.

Contemporary Living Room by Portland Interior Designers & Decorators Jessica Helgerson Interior Design


So using that as inspiration I drew up a design (in Visualizer). I immediately knew I had what I wanted. It is different. It's not what you're used to seeing. But it doesn't look strange or unappealing. Not to me, at least. In fact, I LOVE IT!

The photograph over the toilet was moved from the master bathroom because it worked here. I took this in downtown Ogden a few years ago. The signs say 128 Roosevelt Hotel. Private Baths, Steam Heat. Restrooms are for tenants only.

I don't own a wide-angle lens so you'll have to look at the pictures and use your imagination for how the back wall looks. It comes to a point in the middle and then up and over the door on the adjoining wall.

The shelf was a wedding gift. It fits perfectly in the diagonal corner (again with the oxymorons). I'm not very good at decorating shelves because I don't really care for decorative items. But I had all these things and just put them on there. I had originally thought I'd be hanging a plant or diy mobile or something in that corner but then I remembered we had some peacock feathers that we got when we visited the Sri Sri Radha Krishna Temple a few weeks ago. Bingo!

Notice the new soap pump is the same one I raved about in my kitchen except here it is gray.

The rug was a little difficult for me. I'm realizing I'm picky with my textiles. I knew I wanted my rug to fill up the floor. I didn't want something small just in front of the sink or toilet. Something bigger would make it feel more spacious and finished. It was hard to find something the right size that was also machine washable (needed for obvious reasons). I looked all over including online and wouldn't you know I found it at Walmart. I like how the flowy-flowery pattern contrasts with the sharp lines on the wall but it took me a few days of mulling it over before I decided to keep it. I am hoping it looks cool and not old-fashioned. Anyhow, I like the visual impact it carries.

I used to want the bathroom door closed at all times but now I don't mind when the kids leave it open. It makes me smile when I go in there and that is rare for a bathroom, I've gotta say.

Summer in the Mountains - Part III

Here's the 3rd and final post on our Summer in the Mountains.

One beautiful evening we headed up to Brighton Ski Resort to walk around Silver Lake. Such a lovely area! I'd love to buy an A-Frame there one day.

We enjoyed the walk around the boardwalk. Well, we mostly enjoyed it. There was one tense minute. You know how, as parents, we like to tease our kids sometimes? You know how when you're around bodies of water you like to grab onto your kid and pretend you're pushing them in? Well, a few minutes after I did that to Madeleine she decided to do it to me. Except she actually pushed me. I was facing her and the boardwalk curb was directly behind my feet so I flailed! I was THIS CLOSE to falling into the water and mucky guck. My arms were instinctively trying to grab onto whatever was closest, which was Madeleine of course. So my instincts were saying HOLD ON! and my motherly sense was saying LET GO! After what felt like forever I finally caught my balance and was safe. It was a miracle. Buuuut...my reaction towards Madeleine was less than pleasant. I started yelling (later realizing that I'm sure it echoed around the entire lake to the ears of many other people) and had to walk away to cool down. She started crying. Ugh. I'm pretty sure Rob was quite embarrassed but he was smart enough not to say anything. After a couple of minutes and a couple of apologies everything was good again.

Halfway around the lake we decided to start going up another trail toward Twin Lakes. We only made it halfway because we weren't prepared for a longer hike and didn't have jackets. It was getting late anyway so we headed back down but not before getting a good look at 4 deer.

On our way down the mountain we stopped at a pizza place at Solitude. It was a perfect night. Except for the yelling.

This was in Fairview and at a lake up the canyon. She's getting so big.

We wanted to take the kids on the hike up to Timpanogos Cave and decided to invite our super fun neighbors along. We left the littlest ones with a babysitter and up we went. The kids all did great!

Nate looks so excited here.

Hehe.

There were two negatives about our venture into the cavern, though. First, a family who also went into the cave at the same time as us brought their tiny newborn baby who screamed the whole time. This family also kept touching and sitting on everything and the ranger had to keep saying, "Please don't sit on the formations." Haha.

The second incident was that Nate drank his whole camel pack on the way up so even though we stopped twice for a pee break before entering the cave, a third of the way through the tour he was needing to go again. Make that desperate to go. No, he was going to go! But what were we going to do?! We couldn't go backwards by ourself, the tour wasn't close to over, and we couldn't make the guide run us all the way through with everyone else who had hiked all the way up to see the cave. Obviously Rob would not have been game to let Nate pee on the wall in a dark corner so instead he pulled out an empty water bottle. Haha. Gross!! Then Nate had to pee again right as we were exiting. Sheesh!

Ice Cream and a Bomb

When Rob and I used to go to the Ogden Temple we loved to stop at Farr's Ice Cream across the street, obviously! So it was a MUST to take my kids there, too. Can something be nostalgic for me when it's only been a few years? Well, it is.

I couldn't take enough of these pictures. The lighting and colors were just right!

On the way home from Ogden we stopped at Hill Aerospace Museum. Nate loved this place when he was small. Again with the nostalgia...

Warning: Fuzzy pictures follow.

Nate is blasting off out of the ejector seat.

Awww. Aren't they so sweet together? Actually what looks like a nice hug is actually Madeleine trying to wrestle him out of the chair so she can give it a try.

Caroline thought all the Boy Ken's (boyfriends/Ken dolls) were fantastic! She even saw one off in the distance and was excited that it was moving! Madeleine's like, "Cara. That's just a guy." Nate was sure to show her all of the headless Boy Ken's and also just the heads that were on display elsewhere, laughing all the while. The look on her face is priceless! Makes me laugh every time I look at this picture.

Nate had read about the Blackbird so that was his favorite plane to see. On our way out a docent stopped us and talked to us for a long time about that plane and many other things :)

Nate also likes reading about the atom bomb.

How often do you get to snack underneath a huge plane of some sort?

Such a fun day!!

P.S. One funny note I want to make is that the morning of this, of course, we procrastinated getting Nate's church clothes found and put together. Yes, his church clothes always need to be "found". Anyway, we either couldn't find them or they were dirty or something so I told him to put on the nicest pair of jeans that he had and found this nice, clean button-up shirt for him to wear. It was taking him forever to come downstairs so I yelled up to him. After a while he came down crying mad and saying, "I hate this outfit! It looks so dumb!" I had the hardest time not laughing. I rolled up the sleeves and un-buttoned the top button and that was good enough for him to wear it just for the day. Then I took the shoelaces out of Rob's dress shoes and put them in Nate's dress shoes. Nate keeps taking out his laces and losing them. After the second pair of laces I bought and he lost I gave up and he's been wearing shoes without laces to church for the last couple of months. Ghetto, I know. Haha.