A Quick Before and After

I'm still alive.  Truly.  I am.

Just busy with life, and kids, and all the other fun stuff that comes along with that!

I keep getting emails from lovely people asking questions about my kitchen and other such things.

It's amazing to see that people are still stopping in to visit this blog!

From time to time I remember that I have a blog that I used to write regularly.

And from time to time I start to feel like I want to start posting stuff from our house again!

Maybe once school starts up again around here (school is NOT starting in our neck of the woods as the teachers are on strike!!) I'll have more time.  But how about a quick before and after...

After our lengthy kitchen renovation we took a much needed break from any renovation projects.  But a few months ago we finally decided to tackle the downstairs play room.  The goal was to make it look bright and fresh using only the things we had around the house.  In the end we ended spending a tiny bit of $$ on a couple sheets of plywood to add rustic looking planking to one of the walls, but other than that, everything (even the paint) was just sitting around the house waiting to be used!

So here's the before.

I took this picture before we got started on "operation makeover the play room".  This really was the play room in it's best "before" state.  You can actually see some of the floor in the picture.

Usually you could not.

After purging about half the kids crap toys we painted the room.  Caleb was super helpful.

We ended up adding wood planking to the one wall since the drywall was not in nice condition... after a few throw pillows and a gallery wall of a some mismatched frames from around the house the room was done.

(not the best quality photo-- I know.  But who has time for a real camera these days!!)

This room turned out to be one of my favourite rooms in the house-- and we spent next to nothing to change it up!

Oh, and now I want to paint the rest of the house white!  I know you all already think it's white-- but now I want WHITE white :)

pulled out the spray paint again

I bought this little table at a thrift store last September.  It was an ugly reddish brown colour.  

It may look okay in this picture but in real life it was real ugly.

But last weekend I whipped out a can of white spray paint.  

Turns out there was cute little table hiding in there!  

I love cheap thrift store finds.  I love white spray paint.  I love this little table.

The end.

ps- If I'm painting it white I always spray.  It is WAY easier.

pps- Always prime with Kilz no matter what kind of paint you plan on using.  The BEST.  Spray it on-- instant stain blocking and instant perfect surface to apply your paint.

ppps- I used Rustoleum Painter's Touch.  Used it a few times now and love it.

The Great Outdoors

Today is window day!  Doug and I painted all the trim in the garage last night, All the blinds and curtains are down, and the first window is in!  I'm so very excited to have brand new clean windows-- especially because my windows have been exceptionally dirty lately.  When you know that new ones are coming-- why clean the old ones?  Am I right or am I right?

So like I mentioned, I've been trying to decide on trim.  What style?  What color?  Well after looking at my options, I decided to keep it simple.  Our house was built in the 70's and it's basically just a white square box.  There's nothing special about it.  It has a flat roof, a couple of windows, and white siding.  I've seen some people around here upgrade the exterior of houses like mine with expensive siding, stone work, and crazy elaborate trim... and while it looks nice... it kind of looks like you're trying to make your house into something that it's never going to be.  No matter what I do to my house, it's never going to look like a gorgeous Whistler chalet, a beautiful Victorian with load of character, or an eclectic and cool old farmhouse.  Nope-- it will always look pretty basic.  So, I decided to just go with it and keep the exterior simple-- and then add character in other fun ways!

So I've decided that...

I'm not painting over the white siding.  I'm not going to add crazy fancy trim around the windows.  I'm not going to paint the trim a crazy color-- it's going to be white-- like white white.  Instead I'm going to try and achieve a more sleek modern clean look.  We're going for wide trim all the way around the windows, but it has a clean modern profile.

Here's some of my inspiration...

While my house will NEVER look like this-- I dig the style.  A clean modern farmhouse look.

White on white.  Keeping it clean.

Look at how GORGEOUS this house is-- that porch-- oh my.

I saw this house makeover a long long time ago and it really inspired me.  Instead of tearing down the 70's rancher this amazing couple decided to work with what they had and transformed the house into this amazing beauty.  For before and after pictures click HERE.

So the backdrop will be white and clean-- to add a bit of drama I'm going to paint the front door  and the garage door black, or charcoal, or maybe even a really really dark brown.  How gorgeous is front door?

I love this door too... and the styling... perfect.

My next move is to upgrade the lighting.  I'd love to put up two gorgeous vintage-y, galvanized, barn lights-- one on either side of the front door.  And then I'd love to add another one above the garage door.  Kind of like this...

Here are some of my favorites from Barn Light Electric.  I'm just going to dream a little...

Barn Light Radial Wave Sconce in a galvanized finish.

And then maybe this one for above the garage-- in the galvanized finish.  This one's the Barn Light Aztec Sconce.

Other contenders...

Barn Light Colby Sconce.

Barn Light Gunsmoke Sconce.

And finally, the Barn Light Montana Sconce.

Tough call... they are all so fantastic.

And then the last layer... a collection of plants in gorgeous weathered clay pots... with the plants preferably alive.  Isn't this beautiful?

Anyhow... getting those windows in is the first step.  The Toews boys are hard at work.  I popped outside to take a little look-see and my brother in law offered to clean the outside of each new window as they install them.  Music to my ears... let me tell you.  What do I want for Christmas this year?  How about new CLEAN windows!!!

All images via my Outdoor Inspiration Pinterest board

The Advent Countdown is On...

Okay, so please tell me that I'm not the only one who woke up shocked to discover that it was December 1st.  Wow... the Christmas countdown is on... time for an Advent Calendar!

  

A few days ago I was sitting around trying to figure out what to do... what to make... what would be cheap and easy... and I suddenly it came to me-- picture frame... twine... clothes pins.  All things I had around the house.  I jumped off the couch and started racing around to gather my supplies.  I'm pretty sure Doug had thought I'd lost my mind, but soon he got the vision and stepped in to help out.  In the end I think it ended up looking pretty great.  This frame used to be a chalkboard-- so I popped out the chalkboard portion and tacked five lengths of twine along the back.

I really wanted to use vintage looking tags-- but I didn't have any.  So instead I cut some cream colored cardstock into the shape of tags.

Then I used a dollar store number stencil out of Caleb's crafting supplies to number the tags.  I traced them out with pencil and filled them in with a black sharpie.

In the end the clothes pins I had lying around the house were too big-- so I picked up some mini ones at Michael's.  They were the perfect size.

Each day Caleb (& Eme) get to take the appropriate number off of the frame.  On the back of each number is a Christmas-y activity that our family will do together.  Some activities will be big and awesome-- some will be small and easy to accomplish with minimal effort on my part.

I decided that I reserve the right to only commit the daily activity to the card on the night before... I have a list of things we want to do-- but I'm not committing until I know what each day is going to look like.  But Caleb doesn't need to know that... of course :)

I've got a list of activities started... some of these items will be done more than once, some we may not do at all, and I will probably add other things to list as the days go on.  Here's what I've got so far...

Eat some candy canes

Drink hot chocolate with marshmallows—of course J

Go for a drive and find the best Christmas lights in town

Go visit the nativity

Watch a Christmas movie with popcorn and pajamas

Read a portion of the Christmas story from the Bible

Go see Santa in the Mall and admire him from afar (my kids would be way too terrified to sit on his lap-- that I know for sure!!)

Decorate Christmas cookies

Have a Christmas orange

Make a gingerbread house

Make Christmas cards

Decorate the Christmas tree

Do a little Christmas shopping

Make a Christmas Craft

Make snowflakes

Sing some Christmas carols
Read the Grinch that Stole Christmas-- and then watch the movie

Go Skating (I will watch from the sidelines with my bad knee)

Have a Christmas Music Dance Party

And that is our Advent Calendar.  Our activity for tonight is-- eat candy canes... I figured we should start out small and work our way on to the bigger items.  I don't want to set the bar too high right off the bat :) 

Are you doing an Advent Calendar this year?  Any other suggestions of fun activities I could add to my list?

A Cheap Curtain Trick

Over the past few months we've started tackling the downstairs family room-- it didn't need a whole lot of work, just a little facelift!  The room's been painted and I picked up a new area rug for the room a few months back (I'll have to post some before and after pictures one of these days!) but I've been stalling on the window treatment.  This was one of the only rooms that didn't have blinds or any sort of window coverings when we moved in-- so it's been a bare window for the past few years.  Since we tend to use this room more often in the summer months (it stays a whole lot cooler than the main floor of our house) I wanted to get something up to cover the windows.  I could have made some curtains-- and I did consider it-- but while the window is pretty narrow... but it's very wide.  It would have taken a ton of fabric to make my own curtains.  So instead I picked up my favorite white curtain panels from Ikea (two packs for a total of 4 panels-- like I said, it's a wide window) and decided to take the easy route.

But... I had to DIY at least one part, right?  The curtain rod.  Finding an inexpensive 10' curtain rod that's not flimsy is easier said than done.  So I decided to make my own.  I've used this trick before in some of our previous houses, I don't why I didn't think of it sooner!  To create my own curtain rod I just picked up (correction-- Doug picked up) a 10' long piece of 5/8" metal conduit (used for electrical wiring) and spray painted it with some flat black paint in the backyard over the weekend while we were setting up the pool.  In total, it probably took me 2 minutes to whip out the spray paint and make it black.

It was an easy DIY curtain rod and it was so cheap-- the 10' long piece of conduit was around $5.00.  I already had the black spray paint sitting in the garage from a previous project and some random wall mounting brackets sitting around.  I don't have finials for the ends-- you can buy finials that can be adjusted to fit bars of varying diameters-- but I haven't seen any that I like.  I might just have to make something up myself.

When it came time to hang them up we decided to put the bar right at the ceiling.  Even though it's a basement room with a narrow window, hanging the drapes from the ceiling made the room feel taller and the window so much less awkward looking.  Doug and I both couldn't believe how much of a difference the curtains make in the room.

Here's a view of the top of the curtains-- these particular Ikea curtain panels are my favorite because they have hidden tabs sewn onto the back instead of a pocket to hold the rod.  This makes them look a bit like pinch pleated curtains when they're pulled to the side.

Here's a close up of the curtains-- I love the texture.  They look amazing when the light filters through them during the day.

I still want to throw them in the wash and pre-shrink the panels before hemming them (I always pre-shrink because they WILL get dirty and need to be washed at some point in this house) but I thought I'd throw them up and enjoy them for a few days!

And... here's one of my next projects for the basement family room-- another MCC thrift store purchase that needs a bit of a makeover.  While I actually don't mind the funky floral print all that much... I'm thinking that a slip cover may be in order :)

It was time...

... for another project.

Last weekend-- or maybe it was the weekend before-- Doug and I were sitting around with nothing to do.  I came up with a spur of the moment, totally free, make work project for us (actually Doug, not "us") ... creating floating shelves in the bathroom.  I've hinted at it before but I'll say it now-- any projects that require any amount of specialized skill are executed by Doug!  I'm the creative brain who dreams all these crazy things up... Doug is left to figure out how to do it!

So after I shared my vision with him, Doug sprang into action.  He pulled out some scraps of plywood and MDF and turned on the table saw.  In about an hour or two he had the 2 shelves in place.  Here's how he did it:

1.  Created a frame with scraps of plywood-- screwed into the wall... making sure it's level, of course.

2.  Pinned a top and bottom piece onto the frame-- these are capped off by a front piece with mitered corners to give it a more seamless look.

3.  Once the nail holes were filled, sanded and the edges were caulked, I needed to convince someone to paint it for me.  Thankfully I had a very willing helper...

And done.  The shelves are for pretty things right now... but in the future they will give me some added storage for towels and baskets full of other things you need in a bathroom.

One day I will renovate my bathroom... but for now... the shelves and the roman shade pretty it up enough for me.

Oh, and the total cost of this project?

Free.

Feeling Green

Remember a looong time ago when I showed you this side table that I wanted to paint?  And I showed you a few of my not-white inspiration photos?  Well, I finally chose the color and finally finished painting the table.  And here it is today!  Not bad for a $15 thrift store find!

After much consideration I decided to go for pink.  What?!  Long story short.... I went to home depot with the intention of purchasing hot pink paint (and as Caleb would say: "it only LOOKS hot but it FEEL cold... right Mom?") but once I got there and started to look at the samples I changed my mind.  Why, you might ask?  Well, all the pink's I liked required a clear or deep base-- which would mean many many many coats of paint to get the desired shade.  So I decided to look for green, and decided on Green Energy (UL210-17... whatever that means) by Behr.  After primer, a couple of coats of the green and some Polycrylic for a more durable finish... I was done!  This is the first time I've used a protective top coat after painting... but now that you can't buy oil paint anymore, a top coat is definitely needed.  I'm hoping the finish will be as durable as oil paint, but I guess time will tell!!

Anyhow, I LOVE the green.  Doug loves the color too.  It's a bit of a bold choice, but the green looks fabulous in our room, it also looks amazing in Caleb's room and Emerson's too!  This is helpful-- since I'm constantly moving things around in our house.  And one day I will probably paint it again... but not for a long time :)

For those of you who are a bit squeamish about kid stuff-- stop reading now.

Let me fill you in on all the gory details of the week.

So as you may recall, Caleb's head isn't looking so hot these days.  He recovered quite quickly from his accident (the incident definitely hasn't stopped him from running around the house at breakneck speeds and crashing into walls head first) but two days ago he succumbed to the flu.  Of course I only realized he was sick after barf fest 2011 took place in my living room.  Let me tell you, I haven't seen or smelled something that terrible in a long time.  This resulted in the rental of a steam cleaner and Doug and I have spent the past 48 hours steam cleaning every carpeted/upholstered surface in our house.  And the car.  And Doug's mom also steam cleaned the carpets in her house.  Gotta get your moneys worth, right?

Then to top it all off, Caleb awoke this morning with a nose bleed of epic proportions.  Poor kid-- head injury, flu, nose bleeds, many many sleepless nights. yuck.

But today he must have been feeling better because I turned my back for 2 minutes and he colored all over his pants with marker.  Great.  Thank goodness for washable markers.  And with the amount of laundry I've been doing these days, I didn't even flinch.

And my little Eme bear.  After several days of being little miss grouchy pants the tooth fully emerged and my happy little girl returned.  Thank you for all of your teething advice... it will come in handy when the next tooth decides to make it's appearance.  This week Emerson has a cold... and still has grouchy days here and there, but nothing like last week!

I turn around for 2 seconds and my daughter starts eating grass.  I do feed her... really I do.

Okay, that's it!

the end.

It's a pinch

I started this project at Christmas.  I'm so behind... I can't believe I'm only finishing it now!  But while I was at home over Christmas my Mom taught me how to make pinch pleated curtains.  I love a good window treatment... and I think pinch pleats are the bomb.  I found this fabric at fabric.com for a steal of a deal... like $6.00 a yard or something crazy like that and thought that it would make great curtains.  I can't find it on fabric.com anymore-- it must be sold out... but I found it here for $23.99 a yard.  I like my deal better :)

So I made my curtains over Christmas with my mother's guidance and brought them home in my suitcase.  And then I got lazy, and they sat in the office waiting to be ironed, hemmed, and hung!  All of a sudden-- over the past few months-- I started noticing this fabric pop up here and there...

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Apparently there are other people out there who like the same things I do... kind of reassuring :)  Well after many many months of procrastination, I finally hung the curtains!  Here they are...

Even though we have a smallish basement window in our office, I decided to hang floor to ceiling drapes to make the room feel more like an upstairs room... it makes the window seem grander and more important.  I was a bit worried about how they would hang, since there is a bit of a ledge half way up the wall, but Doug stretched the brackets out as far as the could go and you can't even notice the built out half wall.

For those of you who don't know what pinch pleats are, here's a close up.  You basically sew heading tape into the top,calculate how many pleats you want and how far apart they need to be (Doug's mad math skills sure came in handy for this step!) sew up your pleats, and insert metal hooks into the back of each pleat.  When it comes time to put them up, you place the hooks into metal rings that are attached to the curtain rod.  As you can imagine, making these kind of drapes are time consuming.  There's a lot of handiwork involved in creating them... which is why they are so expensive to buy!  So it was definitely more affordable for me to make them myself.

I love the look of drapes that "kiss" the floor.  And yes, I do realize that my floor length drapes hang over my baseboard heater.  I only turn it on occasionally on colder days when I work in the room, so I figured I can pick this panel up off the floor when I decide to turn it on.  Don't worry people!!

I'm loving the way the office feels with the new curtains.  There's something so great about cheerful curtains... they really make a room feel fun and bright... even a basement room!!

I ordered 6 yards of the fabric and only ended up using 5 to make these curtains... what to do with the remaining fabric... can anyone say throw pillows?

I see chalkboards everywhere...

My friend Kathleen said it first...

If you want to invest some money in something, I say invest it in whomever manufactures chalkboard paint. Everyone is into painting something in their house with chalkboard paint. Are we rebelling against the white board?

Yup. I see chalkboards everywhere.  And alot of them are pretty darn cute.  That's why we went a little bit chalkboard happy when it came time to think about wedding decor.

Making your own chalkboard is remarkably easy.  Here's how I made mine out of picture frames:

1. pop out the glass and the cardboard backing
2. Cut a piece of hardboard (or any other thin material with a smooth surface) to the same dimensions as the glass
3. If you don't have any scrap material (or a handy husband with a table saw) and want a quick and easy solution try using cardboard-- I ran out of scraps of hardboard for the last few "reserved" frames so I cut up a bunch of my cereal boxes, painted the inside (the brown side) with chalkboard paint and once it was dry I used my scissors to cut it to size.  They worked just fine... but this probably isn't the best solution if you plan to use your chalkboard regularly.  Don't use corrugated cardboard-- your going to end up with a "wavy" looking chalkboard.  Flat and smooth works the best!!
4.  I used brush on Rustoleum chalkboard paint-- it went on nice and smoothly with a foam brush.
5. I did 2 coats-- instead of rinsing out my brush I put it in a plastic bag and tied up the end so that it didn't dry out.  It's ready to use at a moment's notice!
6. Let it sit for a few days before using!

Now... just for fun... here are a few ideas of how you could use chalkboard paint!!

You could create a chalkboard for your super organized home office... 

You could paint a calendar on your wall...

If the fancy frame isn't appealing and you'd prefer a more clean modern approach, all you've gotta do is paint a big rectangle on your wall.  You could do it in your kitchen to write out your meal plans, recipes, to-do lists for the hubby... so many options.

I have no advice on how to remove it from your wall however.  If you start painting your wall with chalkboard paint you'd better be ready to commit.

I personally love chalkboard with fun fancy frames.  I always love the white...

But how about this red one!!

These are totally drool worthy... so are the chalkboards.

You could paint a piece of furniture and label the drawers so your husband kids have no excuses when it comes time to put things away in the correct drawer...

You could label your herbs and other potted plants... how cute.

You could paint an entire wall in your house with chalkboard paint and go chalkboard crazy.

You know how some people like to take weekly or monthly photos of their kids with a sign or object to track how big they are getting at each stage?  Why not take a picture of them in front of a cute chalkboard... you just write their age or another cute message and snap away.  I LOVE this one :)

How about using a chalkboard at a wedding in place of a guest book?  Just have the guests write out marriage advice for the couple on the chalkboard and have the guests photographed with it!  How cute is that?

And finally, the most GENIUS idea of all.  If you absolutely hate your ugly fridge but cannot afford to replace it... paint it!!  I can't believe how awesome this fridge turned out.  You can read all about this kitchen's transformation here.

Happy Chalkboard making everyone!!

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