A Before shot

My bed looks a little unfinished to me. Perhaps because it’s missing a headboard…

I have the parts to make one so that’s today’s project. Once it’s up, I have to decide if I want to remove the C hearts A art. I think it might be able to stay but I’m not sure. I do have a spot picked out in the room for it if it needs to move. Only one before shot though because I’m making the headboard on the other side of the room and it’s messy now :-p The room isn’t where I want it to be yet but I’m closer to my goal I think. I don’t particularly like the duvet because the color is not what I thought I was ordering. It’s much browner and would be better suited in some place not my room.

OH! But I bought a fluffy flokati rug last night and it should be here within the week (YAY!)

The trunk is staying on Cody’s side of the bed, but my bedside table will be replaced. I don’t think it goes with the look I am going for in here. I may paint it and stick it in Wes’ room since he’s expressed interest in it.

The rest of the room has the armoire we bought in Japan, a radiator bench under the windows and the chaise part of our red couch. I still need to paint the little nook thing that’s around the windows but the previous owners added trim and it’s hard to paint over their browny yellow color. It fit them well but it’s so not the look I’m going for in the room…

Edited: December 31st, 2009

Before and After on Ohdeedoh… a followup

Ohdeedoh posted a before and after of my super cool (in theory) whiteboard table. The idea was sound, we executed it according to the instructions we received, the table looked lovely.

It still looks good in a photo because the camera won’t pick up all the damage. I am extremely disappointed in the paint job though. OMG. I used RustOleum whiteboard paint and it does not age well at all! It yellowed, cracked, stained, and didn’t erase! Yes. My whiteboard paint  didn’t erase unless we used a wet rag on it and eventually even that didn’t work which was AMAZING to find out when a visitor doodled something a little crude on the table. So now the table looks like this

because underneath that rather large table cloth is a whole lot of yuckiness. Cracked, yellowed, stained and just yuck.

It’s bad enough that I am slowly sanding down my table again. Slowly because this stuff does NOT want to come off once it’s on. I shudder to think of how it would react to a wall and how you wouldn’t be able to remove it easily if at all.

I could just redo the table and pretend we no longer liked the idea of a giant whiteboard, but I just can’t do that. The idea was sound, the product used was not. I can’t even ask for a refund because I don’t have the receipt anymore. I shouldn’t be surprised the product sucks though considering it’s now onsale at my local Lowes for $4.50 a can instead of $28. /sigh

Edited: December 30th, 2009

A Black Room

I’m currently repainting my studio (formerly the back living room). We originally painted it in a hurry (we’d started ripping down wallpaper before we knew an inspector was coming out to value the house and had to finish up the job quickly). The current color is called “Slate” and was lovely but not what I was going for for this room. So I have leftover “Blindfold” from painting my bedroom and I decided it NEEDED to be used downstairs in the studio

I *love love love* the black paint. I loathe the curdled cream colored trim that doesn’t match the rest of the house. We had a plan for removing the trim and replacing it with stuff that matches the rest of the house but dad came to visit and said he loved that you could tell it was an addition to the house… I think I’m still going to replace the little trim with chunky trim that matches everything else. Then I’m painting the door white. I may wall paper the inside of the panel on the door. I will be removing the hardware on everything in the room, putting it in a crock pot full of soapy water and letting it sit overnight on medium. Obviously we’ll never be eating from this crock pot again but it’ll safely and easily remove the paint from our door knobs, hinges, window latches etc which will let me keep the originals without them looking like poo.

I have some more spots in the room to replaster, things I didn’t notice until I was repainting. Then I’m going around the edges of the baseboards with caulk to try and help seal up our house a little better. THEN I get to finish painting. The little bit of black on the wall was test black to see if I liked it down here. I have 6 windows in this room alone so it gets enough light during the day that the paint doesn’t look like a dark and scary cave.

Next up? Hanging pictures over my couch. I moved the tree until Cody can help me take it down tonight. Then I moved my damask couch to the tree corner and put my luggage table beside it which leaves my knob wall accessible and doesn’t cover up the radiator.

I put the flower picture over the couch to see if I liked it. I have a set of three of them and was going to send them to my mom since she liked them but I may just keep them and put them over the couch after I paint the living room a nice dark blue color. I’m not sure though. What do you think?

Edited: December 28th, 2009

How I store Christmas decorations

We have a bunch of different decorations. Things we purchased while living in Japan, things my boys have made, things themed military, handmade, glassblown whatever… a lot of stuff. I found the best way to organize them was in a bunch of small brown boxes that I then store in a giant plastic container.

I posted that photo already but I’m too lazy to go take another one… In any case, we’re going to do Polaroid looking photos for the tops of the boxes and call it good. I didn’t decorate as much this year as we normally do and I rather liked it. So I think I’m going to try it again next year and if we still like it, I’ll be gifting some stuff to the Salvation Army.

Speaking of the SA, I get to go there later and drop off 5 boxes of stuff. It’ll be fun…. I’ve been going through damn near every single thing we own and just deciding if it’s garbage or donation. There is no sell pile. I’m tired of keeping things because of the money I spent on them. I’ve noticed though that my thrift store purchases make me happy. I actually prefer the $50 vintage thrifted couch over my um.. $2500 couch… and that kills me. We haven’t purchased brand new stuff again and I’ve noticed it makes it easier for me to purge that stuff when the time comes BUT I like it just as much as the brand new stuff. So anyway. Trip to the Salvation Army today… yay…

Edited: December 28th, 2009

Go Ask Alice

We have this wall in front of our stairs and it’s one of the first things you see when you walk in to my home. I’d put some art on it per the instructions that the Steampunk Home gave me when she was kind enough to help me figure out which direction to take my front living room.  I’m removing the shelf that’s by the front door and going to put art there though so I took it all off the wall which left it very very blank. We noticed that it looked a lot like little doors though and decided to go with it. I went on a little road trip with my friend Cooleen and she took me to this weird salvage place where I found really neat knobs (including heartshaped ones) for a whole 49 cents!

I ran out of screws to put them into the wood, but we’re going to go buy some more and finish up this project. Once all the knobs are up, I plan on putting a little face around one and it’ll be even more Alice in Wonderland but not too in your face noticeable.  Noticed my lovely stack of Christmas books? Those get packed up with the Christmas stuff every year and only come out once a year so my boys actually read them. The new damask couch is perfect for all that. I love the way this area is turning out even if it’s not quite what TSH told me to do. She was vital in figuring out what the heck to do with this room. Pretty soon it will be all sorts of lovely subtle Alice in Wonderland meets Steampunk goodness!

I plan on painting this room after the holiday season is over. We already moved the bookcases that were behind the door and they’re now upstairs in the boys’ rooms. My mom sewed curtains for me and they’re great winter curtains to help keep out the cold. I’ll be buying more fabric to sew other curtains for it too. I may just have to splurge on the velvet ones I want… we’ll see

Edited: December 26th, 2009

Merry Christmas and all that jazz

damask couch, asian quilt

YAY! MANGA!

Mono Poly

I wrapped everything in kraft colored paper with a mixture of blue and silver bows. I loved the way this looked and plan on using it for normal presents too. It’ll mean less wrapping paper in the house which I love.

We tried a new cinnamon roll recipe and I was not impressed. I’ve exchanged text messages with friends and family. I bought my honey a bunch of stuff from tulle this year during their cyber Monday sale. They still have a good sale going on but Cyber Monday was AWESOME! I picked up a jacket and sweater for the husband, two dresses, a cardigan, and long gloves for me and spent a whole $90ish (including shipping). The quality of their clothing is fantastic too which was lovely. Cody and I ended up with a lot of clothing this Christmas season (including a cool velvet jacket my mom bought him that looked awesome at the Christmas party). Zach ended up with a ton of Manga. It’s his new obsession and between Jordan and I, we bought him quite a bit of it. Wesley ended up with a lot just weird stuff. He’s Wes… it fits him.

It’s been a lovely day for the most part. I’m saddened for my friend Sandra because her sister Susy died on the 23 after a long illness. Cody’s aunt Kathy also died after a brief battle with cancer. They are both sorely missed by those that knew them. It’s times like these that we wish we lived closer to family and old friends

Edited: December 25th, 2009

Ripping out Cabinet doors

We hate our kitchen. It has an addition off of it and is just poorly laid out. Add in the tomato soup color, cabinet doors that swing open constantly, cabinets the width of a bottle, and three layers of tile floor and you end up with one unhappy cook. The food cabinets bother me the most. Really just tick me off because the damn doors swing open all the time. You look at them wrong and they’re open. What’s a girl to do? Take the doors off of course.

As you can see… the insides of my cabinets suck. Yeah, stick the door a mere inch or two from a shelf support so that nothing fits there. Put a small shelf that barely holds a soup can at the very top of the cabinet and one in the lower part of the cabinet. This is after we removed most of what was in there while trying to figure out what the heck to do. The supports bugged me but we thought they were necessary. Turns out they weren’t. It’s awesome! We took our dremel to them and cut them in the middle. Then we yanked the piece of wood off the the cabinet. It means I can’t put doors back on but I’m good with that!

It’s still nothing like how we want the kitchen, but it’s a start. We’re planning out our kitchen renovation and figuring out what parts we can do ourselves and what we should let a professional do. Most of it though is stuff we think we can do. And really… it’s not like we can bring down the house in the process and if we  hit something we can’t actually do, we’re ready to call in the professionals. I’ve been reading a lot of “Young house love” lately and they give us hope that we can redo parts of our house too. So now we’re talking about what we like, what we hate etc., finding kitchens we like so we can pull ideas from them, and looking for software to help us plan it all out. It’ll be fun!

Edited: December 21st, 2009

“Silly Putty in Hair”

“Silly Putty in Hair” is the search I got to do the other day… thank you youngest son. I have no idea what the heck he was thinking but my youngest son (age 6) decided that hair and silly putty mix well together. He squished silly putty in his hair while watching tv and we didn’t know until we were going out the door for a friend’s last minute dinner going away thing. So what did we do? We did what any sane parents would do and let him wear the silly putty in his hair until after dinner… I mean short of cutting it out, we had nothing on hand to get it out with and we were literally on our way out the door. … With his hair looking like he had some growth coming out of the side of his head

A lot of our friends were there and they gave him a tiny bit of a hard time and then dropped it. He kept his hand over his hair most of the evening, not that it helped. We googled some more when we arrived home and found out that Antibacterial hand sanitizer works wonders and just dissolves the silly putty. Amazing and slightly disturbing at the same time. It also dries our your hair something horribly. It works though without having to shave off all his hair. YATTA!

Cody held a towel over Wes’ eyes while I combed the hand sanitizer through his hair. We did lose some hair because of how much he’d put in, but for the most part he’s doing fine. I had to put some nice conditioner in his hair to help it feel better, but he looks fine now. I’m hoping the having to go out with it in his hair will keep him from doing something so stupid again. We’ll see…

Edited: December 20th, 2009

Chalkboard Planter

We had this ugly planter downstairs that I decided needed to be fixed so I can keep it. It’s a neat planter because you just add water to the bottom and the plant waters itself as needed. It was an ugly color though. So what did I do? I painted it! It’s now a lovely chalkboard planter the boys and I can doodle on when we want.

Right now it holds the plants my mother in law brought to us for our new house. It sounds like a simple task, but it wasn’t. That plant is a clipping from one of her mother’s plants. Gma died on my birthday 5 years ago and she lived in OR. We’re in Missouri… My mother in law is in Arizona. So the clipping was packed in a ziplock baggie and hand delivered when MIL and FIL came out to visit us at our new house. It’s been living in a giant pickle jar until we found a container for it. It was actually thriving in the jar and built up quite the root system. Once I figured out how to paint my planter, it seemed natural to put this special plant in it. I hear they’re really hard to kill and I hope that’s the case because I have the black thumb of doom. No plants (except weeds) make it in my house… I’m hoping the self watering container will help me not kill it.

Now I just need to sew a little cover for Ms. Anni’s kennel so that it’s not quite so ugly. Then I’m putting a board over the top of the kennel (and under the cover) to add stability. She’s going to become sidetable Anni….

Edited: December 17th, 2009

Mustache Pillows

My mom helped me figure out how to use my sewing machine and I’ve been having tons of fun doing various projects. One of those projects consisted of giant mustache pillows for my boys’ rooms. No in action shots yet because the pillows are a present, but these photos will give you the general idea

They’re made out of really really nice wool felt. Princess Lasertron recommended Wool Felt Central for felt and well she sells a lot of felt stuff so she can’t be wrong. And she wasn’t. They have awesome felt and it isn’t insanely priced either.

After I was done making the two mustache pillows (one gray, one teal), I decided I want to make something harder. I went for a wallet and ended up making um five of them.

Want to see other fun crafty projects? Check out A Soft Place to Land and Today’s Creative blog

Edited: December 15th, 2009