and now she has curtains. sorta.

Another step towards finishing Kat’s room.  Curtain rods!

I had a bit of a hard time finding exactly what I wanted.  It didn’t seem like I was asking for much… white, wooden, double rods, with the main rod having some girth, and finials that were pretty and yet simple (but not too simple!), and still substantial in size (I wanted them to stand out a good bit against the darker paint).  As it turns out, I’m lucky to find double rods at all locally, forget about white wooden ones fit for a little girl’s room.

So I stumbled upon the JCPenney website and found these on sale.  I had some issues with JCP customer service (rude responses, not answering my questions, etc)… but the rods finally arrived, in one piece and they’re perfect.  Yay!  (Still undecided as to whether I’ll shop JCP again.)

The curtains are Pottery Barn Kids chambray curtains that used to hang in Jag’s room a few years ago.  We’ve changed the colors of his room since then and they no longer matched, so I’d packed them away hoping to reuse them.  While they aren’t exactly what I wanted for Kat’s room, they’re close enough that I’m not going to bother spending money on something new.

As you can see, some of the panels are a lot shorter than others.  I bought 4 panels in all originally, but only ended up using 2 in Jag’s room.  I bought the extra long panels because they were on clearance, so I had to shorten them for his room.  So the other 2 panels are still extra long.  I can’t let out the hem on the shorter ones because even with a wide hem, there’s still not enough fabric to reach the floor, so I think I’ve decided to cut the long panels down to match the short ones, then sew a wide white eyelet ruffle to the bottom of all 4 panels so that they reach the floor.  (I recently saw some wide eyelet ruffle sold by the yard at Joann’s - it will match Kat’s crib skirt perfectly!)

I realized after taking this picture, that after I get the curtains hemmed and trimmed, all I’ll have left is to paint the dresser and hang wall art!  Not that those are especially small jobs, but they’re not huge either so I feel like I’m almost done!  Yay!

flyin’

So here’s my latest thing.  We’ll see if I can keep up with it.

I’m doing FlyLady.

Haven’t we all tried this at one point in time?  Has anyone actually ever stuck with it?

Here’s the deal.  I have no patience.  So following her exact plan is tough for me.  Some days I might only want to spend 15 minutes decluttering, other days I just need to keep going until I almost literally drop just so it’s done already.

A few weeks ago, Jason had to go out of town on business, and I knew shortly after that that family would be coming to town for Kat’s birthday, and then shortly after that my Father-in-Law would be visiting for a weekend.  I knew that if I didn’t bust my rear and do a full-on marathon cleaning before all the chaos started, that I’d never get it all done and I’d be hiding piles of stuff in my master closet when we had guests.  Again.  ;-P

So that’s what I did.  I actually did a pretty good job, no half-assed cleaning here.  I reorganized linen closets, cleaned out drawers and cabinets, donated and recycled a TON of stuff… and somehow I’ve managed to maintain it really well.  I’ve actually surprised myself!  Ha!

I decided that since I’ve not let the house go to pot, that maybe I’d put myself on a deep cleaning plan - hence the decision to follow FlyLady again.  I’m actually not following anything on her plan except the “FlightPlan” where you deep clean a “zone” for an assigned couple of days.  I find this pretty easy to follow, and then I do everything else (laundry, dishes, picking up toys, vacuuming, etc etc etc) on my own schedule.

So far so good!  Last week was easy because it was the dining room, foyer and front porch.  This week is a little harder for me because it’s in the kitchen.  And I don’t know what is wrong with me, but I h-a-t-e cleaning the kitchen.  I hate dishes, I hate wiping down counters 38290 times a day, I hate scrubbing food off the table, I hate cleaning out the fridge… anyway, I’ll get through it and then I’ll be able to move on to fun rooms again, like bedrooms and the family room. 

prettying up the house

Is “prettying” a word, and if so, did I spell it correctly?

Anyway.  Speaking of cameras and pictures…

this is what I’ve done in my foyer.  I’ve been collecting a variety of stuff to decorate my house with for a couple of years now, and a lot of those items still haven’t been hung or set out.  Seriously, two posts previous when I said I’m a slacker?  I meant it!

So this is where I finally started.  Right inside my front door.  The mail/postcard rack was a clearance find at Pottery Barn last year.  Frames were purchased during one of Michael’s 50% off sales year before last (hence the old prints in them - I need to update those), antique cameras were gifts from my antique-savvy Mom several years ago (there are a lot more I haven’t put out yet!) and the little red table was actually a recent find, 30% off at World Market (I also got a smaller, matching one that is sitting on the opposite side of the front door but I have nothing on it or over it yet).

A little progress in my Finally Decorate the House project! 

tgif!

Long time no post, eh?  I thought I’d brush the cobwebs off the blog and post a few random things while Kat eats her breakfast.

• I logged into WordPress today to see that it looks completely different!  I wanted to update the look of the blog, I think it’ll have to wait a couple of days while I click through and explore.
• floor update - it’s taken longer than we thought.  Jason cut his thumb on a coping saw and it slowed him down considerably.  We’re in the home stretch though, only the laundry room left!
• after the laundry room floor is done, we’re going to take a break (a forced break, actually - Jason has business out of town and then we have family coming into town for Kat’s birthday), but then we’ll move on to tiling the bathrooms.
• speaking of Kat’s birthday, because we took on the flooring projects, her bedroom won’t be done by her birthday.  I feel terribly guilty about that.
• I got Jag a little fish tank for his room; he’s loving it so far!  He picked out all the decor… red gravel, a skull for the fish to swim through/hide in and a few little plants.  He’s got a reddish purplish male betta and 3 rasboras in there now, and we’re thinking of maybe adding a couple of cory cats soon.  He’s been good about feeding them everyday without me asking.
• I’ve been feeling yucky for a long time now, and finally found out this week it’s vertigo.  Not fun.
• Kat’s had a verbal explosion lately.  She’s singing, counting to 10 and pretty much saying everything she needs or wants to say.  It’s funny to finally understand what’s going on in that little mind of hers - she’s quite a character!
• I’m in a photography slump, one of those where I don’t feel like taking pictures, and the few pictures that I do take, I’m really unhappy with.  I know this is pretty typical for all photographers (this isn’t the first time I’ve been through it), but it’s always so painful for me.  I’m ready to get back into the swing of things and feel good about my work again!  I’m thinking of updating my version of Photoshop and investing in Lightroom in hopes of a fresh start.
• I’m addicted to the Packrat application on Facebook.  I’m too embarrassed to say how much time I’ve wasted playing at night after the kids are in bed.
• I bought this as part of Kat’s birthday gift, and it is just sooooo cute.  Seriously.  I almost hope she doesn’t like it so I can keep it for myself.  (also, I bought it from that very site and the transaction was flawless)

That’s all I’ve got for now - it took me over an hour to type just that with all the interruptions.  More later!  (and email replies as well, I’m WEEKS behind - I’m so sorry!)

floor sneak peek

We’ve been super busy with this whole new floor project, but thought I’d take a minute to post a quick pic I took last Friday of the breakfast nook.  This room has been grouted now too, but we’ve moved the fridge and some other random things in there while we work on the main part of the kitchen so I haven’t taken updated pictures yet.

I’ll scrounge up some time to post more later - hope you all had a Happy Easter!

there’s no turning back now!

And I’m freaking out!!

We finally made a tile decision over the weekend.  We ended up going with something that’s sort of a grayish, brownish and maybe even a slight hint of greenish (if you look in last week’s picture, it’s on the very top right, although the colors look different in our kitchen).  Don’t tell Jason, but I’m having doubts again.  I don’t think he’s keen on taking 22 boxes of tile back, so I’m going to give it a couple of days to see it in different light.  Even if I don’t love it, I think it does look *okay* and honestly I’m not sure I care enough to start the decision process all over again.  So we’ll see.

After we got the kids to bed, Jason started ripping up the vinyl floors and I started to panic.  OMG, we’re doing this!  We can’t change our minds now!

I know in the end we’ll be glad we did it, but right now I’m wondering why we thought it was worth the chaos we’ll have to live in for the next… well, however many weeks it takes to scrape the adhesive off the concrete floor.  ;-P

Jason started ripping everything up so fast, I didn’t have a chance to get before shots (although I have a couple of decent pictures of the kitchen that I took a couple of years ago when we thought we were putting it on the market so I’ll dig those up later), but I did grab the camera and get a couple of the lovely concrete slab and adhesive.  These pictures are poor quality, but you get the idea…

Next on our decision list:  carpet!  I brought home a sample board of frieze, want to get that decision made ASAP so we can get the ball rolling on that as well.

new floors! - a home improvement project

This is going to be a loooooong, drawn-out project (like pretty much every project we do, ha!)  I’ll document with posts and photos as it progresses.

First, I have to tell you a secret.  The floors in my kitchen?  Not wood.  Nope.  It’s VINYL!  Vinyl that looks like wood.  Okay before you groan and say “ew,” I will tell you that I can’t count how many times someone has come into our house and said “beautiful wood floors!”  Granted, that’s before they actually walked on the floor.  But totally fooled, so it’s always made me feel a little better about it.  (The wood floor in my foyer is not vinyl however.  I love it, and it stays.)

A little back-story:  when we built the house 4.5 years ago, we asked for an estimate on putting wood floors throughout and actually didn’t think the number was that bad, but the real estate agent/builder’s rep (who was awful to deal with, just awful) told us it would be even cheaper to do it ourselves later.  We believed her and had them put in this wood-looking vinyl in the kitchen, breakfast nook and laundry room to hold us over until we got around to getting the nice floors in.  Welp, we never got around to it (ha, another typical story for us) and come to find out, it’s way more expensive for us to do than it was to have the builder do it.  She was on crack.  And we should have done our research.  So here we are.

Okay so with that out of the way, I’ll also say that we have decided to stay in this house a little longer (and by little, I mean more than a year, less than 4 - we don’t have an exact number).  Since we aren’t here for the long haul, we’ve decided now against the wood floors throughout.  It’s just not worth it to us (we’ve got another idea for that money now - more on that later).  So we’ve decided to replace vinyl floors with tile and replace our old, crappy builder’s carpet with new, pretty carpet.

Yay for new floors!

Um, except booo on picking out new floors!  I never realized how overwhelming, exhausting and just plain NOT FUN picking out tile is.  I’m not enjoying it.  I’ve got a stack of tiles too heavy for me to even pick up by myself and none of them look right to me.  We have different light in different parts of the room, so tiles that look good in the natural light of the breakfast nook look like junk in the artificial light of the kitchen, and vice versa.  Really frustrating.

I’ve gone from darker tiles to lighter tiles; from grayish tones to brownish tones.  Nothing is striking me.  And I need something to strike me before I can commit to it.

Jason saw a discount/factory outlet type tile place in town, so that’s our next stop.  Cross your fingers for me, hopefully something there will be perfect and maybe I’ll get lucky and it’ll be inexpensive too!

Oh and on the bright side?  I *did* find carpet that struck me!  Hopefully I can find tile that works in the kitchen AND coordinates with the carpet because I really love the carpet.  More on that when we’re done dealing with tile!

chalkboard: the final-after shot

All done!  I endured the 3 day wait, “conditioned” it as the can of paint instructed, and now I’m free to write and draw anything I can I dream up!  Yay for chalkboard paint!  (I actually wrote that on the chalkboard, hehe!)

final color

Welp, painting is done!  There are a few touch-ups that need to be done, but otherwise the bulk of the work is over and I can show a semi-after photo!  (I’ll show a final-after photo when the whole room is done, of course!)

I’ll admit, that dark pink was really overwhelming for me at first.  I walked into her room several times over the course of the day yesterday, looking at the color in different lights, trying to decide if I loved it or hated it.  I think I’m starting to love it.  And once I get all her furniture painted white, I think it will help immensely.  As you can see, it’s pretty cute with the white bookshelf!

Still so much to do, though… paint the crib and dresser, sew some curtains, make or buy wall art (most likely I’ll make most of it, I’ve got a lot of ideas - too many actually, she doesn’t have enough wall space for everything I’d like to do)… but I’m motivated now, so hopefully I can crank it all out quickly.  I’m making it my goal to have it finished by her birthday at the end of April.

Oh, and speaking of making things myself… I quickly painted up a letter “E” for her bedroom door last night in-between feeding the kids dinner and Jason getting home.  I used a purple floral patch from her quilt as inspiration.

(I bought a “J” for Jag’s door too, but he’s decided he wants to paint it himself, so it’s in the works… )

UFOs

While my Mom-in-law was visiting last week, we got to talking about all our unfinished projects.  I was telling her of my huge stack of unfinished sewing stuff and various other ideas I’d had and bought supplies for.  She told me that on a sewing/quilting forum she’s on, they call these “UFOs” - Un-Finished Objects.  She said she’d once had around 25 UFOs but made it a goal to get them done and had managed to wittle that number down to only a handful.  I was inspired!  Hence the starting on Kat’s room (which, btw, is still a UFO - hopefully we’ll find the time to get the paint done this weekend *fingers crossed*).

I remembered this week a project I bought supplies for several months ago - a magnetic chalkboard wall in the kitchen.  Since buying all the supplies, we had a change in ideas for the wall I had in mind so I had packed the cans of paint and rollers away.  Once I got to thinking about it again, though, I realized I had one other wall space that would work.  It’s much smaller than the original wall space, but actually a lot more practical in location.  So I won’t be able to do large fun drawings, but I will be able to write reminders to be seen as we’re leaving the house, or grocery lists or weekly menus.

I got to work on it yesterday just as soon as Kat went down for her afternoon nap and managed to finish it up right after the kids went to bed last night.  Yay for knocking out a project in one day!  I did 3 coats of magnetic paint and 2 coats of chalkboard paint.  I didn’t take a before, but here’s my semi-after:

I say semi-after because we can’t write on it for 3 days.  Right now it looks like nothing more than a black accent wall (and I’m not an accent wall kinda girl, so it’s bugging me).  Once we can start writing on it, and it’s apparent what it’s purpose is, I think it’ll look better.  (you’ll have to please excuse the condition of the baseboards and doors - dogs and kids will do that.  one day I’ll get around to repainting them all)  And just FYI - that door leads to the laundry/mud room, which then leads out to the garage, so we go through it every time we leave the house.  To the left there are the doors to the pantry, and to the right (not pictured) is the fridge.  So this really is a great location for a chalkboard - it will make it easy to jot down notes or To Buy lists.

So there you have it.  The first UFO I can mark off my list!  YAY!