Isn't she a beauty?

Well, beauty IS in the eye of the beholder. Some may see a chair that used to be in grandma's house. But I see how beautiful she could be! High gloss black paint. A super cool bold fabric. I can't wait!

Here's the thing though, I've never redone any furniture. Never reupholstered anything. Nada. Zippo. Zilch.

I'm figuring I can find some instructions or tips online to help get me started. Miss Mustard Seed is an insipriation. So, I've been trolling her site.  Any other tips or sites I should check out?

I did it!

I can't believe I actually did it. I bought a Silhouette cutting system yesterday. 

Why can't I believe it? Because I'm cheap. Cheap. With capital C-H-E-A-P.  But, thanks to Brooke over all All Things Thrifty.  (Oh, and she just had a baby! Congrats Brooke!) I got a killer deal. And I couldn't pass it up.

So, now what do I do? (That was the first question my sister asked me when I told her.)

Kierste at brown paper packages does a lot of great things.

And, I've kinda become obsessed with subway art. Maybe I'm easily influenced...cause it's everywhere!

Anyone have any other ideas? What should be the first thing I make when my new Silhouette arrives in two weeks!

I want one!

A Silhouette, that is. Seriously, it's the coolest thing. I want one to decorate our new house with great things. I want one to create great gifts for my family and friends. I want one to...oh, I don't know, I just want one!

And guess what? All Things Thrifty is giving one away! Woo hoo! If I don't win, I'll be heartbroken. But, I think I'll recover because they are also offering a great deal!

Go check it out!

I want one!

A Silhouette, that is. Seriously, it's the coolest thing. I want one to decorate our new house with great things. I want one to create great gifts for my family and friends. I want one to...oh, I don't know, I just want one!

And guess what? All Things Thrifty is giving one away! Woo hoo! If I don't win, I'll be heartbroken. But, I think I'll recover because they are also offering a great deal!

Go check it out!

What to do, what to do...

I had every intention of making this super cute stool I saw over at brown paper packages. But, I didn't have a stool. And it's cold here. And I didn't want to leave the house. And my four year old was running a temperature.

I still wanted to do SOMETHING though. But, I had to be able to find all of the supplies here at home.

What to do, what to do.

Scrapbook paper, picture frames, double stick tape, and my camera =  Silhouettes!

I remembered seeing some cute silhouette projects, so I binged "diy silhouettes." (Yes, I'm a bing-er, not a googl-er.)

The one from Crafty Mama is the one I remember, but I also found one from Modern-Day Family that looked even easier. So, I followed Modern-Day Family's tutorial.

I got the kidlets lined up, took some pictures and printed them out.

I like the symmetry that having three objects brings, so along with an individual picture of each of the kids, I also did one of RC giving Baby Peach a kiss.

I don't have a stapler, so I just taped the picture onto the black paper and it worked just fine.  Once taped, I cut around the picture.

So,  the frames I had were 10x13. Scrapbook paper is 12x12. Dilemma.  I wasn't sure what color of paper I wanted to use so I had pulled out a couple of different colors.  I ended up using one to create a mat for the mat.  I just cut the accent paper into to strips (I love my straight cutter!) and taped them onto the mat.

I have a confession to make. I suck at hanging pictures. As a result, I don't really like doing it. Usually, my DH does it. He breaks out the tape measure and the pencil and the level (seriously). Well, he wasn't around while I was doing this and when I finished, I wanted to get them up on the wall.  Down to my tool box I went and grabbed nails, hammer and you guessed it, a tape measure. No level though. I couldn't find it.  And, I still ended up hanging one lower than the other. I have another confession. Measuring and math are not my strong suits. I eyeballed it and pounded the nail in again and it looked close enough.

Here's the result:

It took me about two hours from the time I started taking the pictures to getting them hung up.  Baby Peach has some little wispy hairs on the top of her head that didn't turn out exactly as I'd hoped, but you have to look really close to notice.

All in all, I really like the way they turned out! I can't wait to hang them in our new house.

Linking up with Saturday Nite Special over at Funky Junk Interierors!

The "Befores" (Finally!)

I've been saying for months now that I was going to post pictures of the new house. Well, I'm finally getting around to it.

I'm warning you though, some of it ain't pretty. Some of it is down right U-G-L-Y.  Why did we buy the house, then you ask? One word. POTENTIAL.  Ok, maybe more than one word. For as outdated as it is, it immediately felt like home when we walked in the door. We were able to see beyond the wallpaper and fake beams. We were able to see our family growing in this home and making it our own.

So, without futher ado...

The master bedroom.  Sigh. God bless her. (In the south, I think they say "Bless her heart," this is what we say in the north.)

Nuff said.

It looked like this within a month or so of us closing. The weird cubby is coming out and another closet is being added by taking the hall closet.

Master bathroom. Pretty tiny, but we were impressed that a house built in 1976 even had one.

My son, RC's, room. I'm going to have to get creative with organization and purge! (Not sure if you can see it, but if you look along the seam between the wall and the ceiling, you'll notice a faint line where the lovely wall paper border was.)

Baby Peach's room. Two layers of nasty carpet. Sigh. (And, RC's hands.)

Upstairs bathroom. For me, this is probably the worst room in the house. DH and I are using it as an opportunity to expand our knowledge of tile installation.

We've never had a separate dining room before. I think I'm excited about it. No whining to watch TV while we eat supper.

The front room. The room that doesn't serve any purpose. This is going to be my library.  (Oh, and the posts are already gone.)



I'm actually excited to have a nice, white kitchen! We need to update and clean it up a bit, but the appliances are pretty good and we can live with them for a while. We are going to took out the counter and cabinets on the end and are going to replace them with a stand-up pantry and somewhere to sit. We haven't quite decided yet what to do with that end. If you have any ideas, let me know!

I really see the family room as being where we spend most of our time and am really excited about the potential!

And last, but certainly not least, the ugliest laundry room in America.  We already took out the lovely sink. We are going to add a toilet (there is no bathroom on this level) and replace the vanity.

Remember the beams in the kitchen? Well, I had mentioned to my DH that I wanted to just paint them the same color as the ceiling so they would disappear. His response? I don't think they are structural, let's see. They weren't but this is what was underneath. I laughed right outloud when I saw that wallpaper.

Needless to say, the beams in the kitchen and the family room are now gone. Along with all of the wallpaper in the kitchen, master bedroom, upstairs bath, family room and laundry room.  The carpet is also all gone. So is all the trim. The carpet was installed up against it instead of under it, so we had to take it off to install new flooring anyway.

I can't wait to start painting!

We've pretty much got a blank slate to work with, if you have any suggestions on any of the rooms, let me know!

What does clean smell like?

For the longest time, I thought cleaned smelled like bleach, Mr. Clean and Pine Sol. You know the smells. They kinda hit you over the head when you open the bottle.

Now, I think I know what clean really smells like. Nothing. Nada. Zilch. And I LOVE it.

In my goals for 2011 post, I said I was going to live greener and start making my own household cleaners.
Well, this is week #2 of cleaning with a vinegar and water mixture and baking soda. I mixed up the vinegar and water and added about 200 (ok, maybe 30?) drops of orange oil. Instead of our bathroom smelling overwhelmingly like bleach when I'm done cleaning, it smells like nothing (not even orange vinegar). 

Ah, I can take a deep breath while cleaning and not go into a coughing fit from the nasty cleaner I used to use.

I went the cold turkey approach. So, I've still got a few bottles of cleaners that I'm not really sure what to do with.

Here they are (along with some stray bread crumbs). My grime fighting teammates. I love 'em.  After reading this post from DIYLife, I might recruit apple cider vinegar to be part of my team too. We'll see.

What does clean smell like to you?

Home Goals for 2011

When The Nester asked what people had for home goals in 2011, it didn't take me long to know what mine were.

As I've posted before, we bought a new (to us) house back in November. Since then we've been tearing it apart.  I see it as a chance to start over with how we approach decorating and make it our own.  As a result, I only have one goal for this home in 2011.

Don't fill it up with things we don't LOVE

In the past, we've had a tendency to buy things because they matched our decor or they were a good deal, not necessarily because we loved them. I want to change that with this house. If it takes us a year or two to finish all the rooms, so be it. I'd rather live with an partially finished room we love than a finished room we just kinda like.

The whole remodel process is new to both of us. We've done some sprucing here and there on houses we've had in the past, but this is the first time we are tearing up floors, tearing down wallpaper and tearing down fake cedar ceiling beams (Yes, I said fake cedar ceiling beams...they were everywhere!)

All of the possibilities that come with starting from scratch are a little daunting, but I can't wait! Here's to a fabulous "new" home in 2011.

Organized recipes, here I come!

We were snowed in here from December 30th until January 2nd. Like, even if DH had snowblowed the driveway we couldn't have gone anywhere because the drift on our street was as tall as the mailbox.

Needeless to say, the Christmas stuff came down (and actually put away in an organized fashion for once), the house got cleaned, movies got watched and wine got drank.

Come Sunday though, the hall closet was driving me crazy. It had become a dumping ground. So, I took everything out of it, put the garabage in the garbage (novel idea), decided to donate the things I didn't love, didn't use and figured someone else could use, put what was left back in a way that made sense (another novel idea. why not put the things that get used the most on the middle shelf in the front!), and all was right with the world.

Until, I went to put away one of my recipe books. Sigh.

I print a lot of my recipes from online and emails I get. And, to date, they've been getting shoved into this one little book.  There are also quite a few written on scraps of paper that I've grabbed from either my mom's or my grandma's.  Everytime I need to find something I have to shuffle through the whole stack.

Well, on Sunday I'd finally had enough. I sat down and sorted all of the recipes into categories and threw out the crap that I'll never make. I had a vision of a lovely binder with all of my recipes organized by category.

Where would I find such a thing?

First stop? Target. They did have some lovely binders. But, they were over $5 and didn't come with any plastic sleeves. But, right next them were the plain jane binders. Aha! I'll make my own! Into my cart went a plain white binder ($1.84), 50  plastic sleeves ($3.84), and dividers ($.97).

(They joined the two 4 foot pre-lit Christmas trees that were $3.50 a piece. $3.50! I couldn't pass them up. Anywho, back to the binder.)

JoAnn's is right across the street from Target, so that was my next stop. Pretty paper, here we come! ($1.20 for two sheets.)

I broke out my Fiskars paper cutter and some scrapbook letters and went to work.

This was my final result!

Isn't it pretty? And all for $7.85. I sat and gazed adoringly at it for a bit.  The DH even thought it turned out nice.

(Please forgive me for the picture quality. As I mentioned in my 2011 goals post, I'm trying to figure out my camera. I'm extremely frustrated at the moment, but I'm hoping it will get better as the year goes on!)