Picture frame hair clip holder

I know these are all over blogs right now, but I just had to try one of my own for my daughter! Not only was our bathroom looking a little pink (when it is supposed to be quite blue and espresso!) and scattered with hair accessories (very hard to clean between the  clips and head bands!), but I needed a "cute" Christmas present. Seeing that I am posting this on Christmas Eve means that it was just finished last night! Right on time! Here is how I made mine. . .

 

Step1: Buy old frame from the thrift store. Use spray paint. When it sticks to the newspaper, peel excess off! I also added some white hooks to the bottom. (Left-overs from a jewelry holder project I did a while back).

 Step 2: Add ribbon. I decided to keep the "back" on it--I wanted the glass part so she could use it as a message board if wanted (or that I could write bible verse on it as the years go on. . .always thinking of the future!) So I used those little foam scrapbook squares to make sure the ribbon pops out a bit from the glass. I cut scrapbooking paper down to size (scrapbooking paper from the ActivityVillage website), and mounted that on the cardboard backing of the frame.

Step 3: Glue ribbon down to backing--I used double sided tape and then went over it with packing tape. Hopefully that holds the test of time and craziness of "accessory-choosing!"

Step 4: Turn it over and evaluate if it will work or not. . .

Step 5: Add a few decorations (wooden flowers at the top--from Michael's--they match a clothes/sweater hook I made for her room a few years back). And Voila--Christmas present done!

Can't wait for her to open it and spend time "organizing" her stuff! I guess I'll have to post a picture of it handing on her wall and full of the barrettes, headbands, elastics and flowers! Merry Christmas, Princess!

a little garden fixing. . .

I selvaged this little garden sign from my MIL yard garbage pile, probably about 5+ years ago. It has been in my garage that long, waiting to be fixed up and painted as the thing was almost wood again, no colour. Last week, I finally gave it a try.

Added some wire. . .I was going to hang it on my tree or fence and take the stake off.

But it didn't look too bad like this, so here it stays for now.

And here is my previous ivy patch, all dug out (well mostly in this photo). Why is it that every spring/summer I want to change around all my gardens? I'm not a great gardener--just learning as I go, listening to others, and looking at what they have done (and of course using the good ole computer!). Hopefully I will fill this spot with a variety of hostas instead. But for now, I am busy weeding and cutting down overgrown gardens!

Happy gardening!

Kitchen+ Update

It's been a while since I've posted anything about our kitchen. . .so here goes!

This was probably taken in April. . .the cabinets are roughly in and the counter tops were just installed.

A very simple white Shaker style with Giallo Ornamental granite counter tops. What a process! Hubby and I went together to a bunch of stores, then I went during the week with my trusty camera and took pictures of EVERYTHING I liked. I talked to a few people at different stores, many of them were very helpful. We called people who had done renos themselves to check out for details we were missing. . . and searched the Internet like crazy!

(notice all the tools still in the corner?)

We still need some of the upper trim, below the cabinet trim and some edge finishing.

Then it was picking out tile. . . again. . .here was me, buying samples of everything and then returning them the next day only to purchase more samples! We finally decided on one we liked and that matched our counters, cupboards and floors pretty good.

(oops, sideways picture!)

Finally it is all installed. . .probably a month and a half after we finally picked it out. You can also see in this picture (maybe) the wall colour. Hubby went on some painting binges and had some help from a friend as well. Very appreciative of that!

Here is our office nook (the bump-out). . .I finally found some bulletin boards and white boards for our message center that I was happy with. After all the searching I did, it turned out to Wal-mart I settled on!

 So. . .a run down. . .
The island. . .

 The kitchen corner (see my sink~the domsjo!!!!). . .

 Kitchen corner, part 2. . .

 Here is our dining corner. . .just to show the trim style hubby changed it to.
(still thinking about painting the one wall--office nook one-- a darker brown. . .)

 Front window with no valences. . .

And of course, there is still lots of work to be done. We just hung some more pictures, etc this evening, but every day is one step closer to having it closer to being done. We still have furniture strategically placed to keep our little mover our of danger! Gotta love renovations at this age! (Although we always seem to do it. . .)

 This was just a fun memory for us. When putting some of the IKEA cabinets together, E wanted to help. Of course, there are no directions, just very poor photos (although I would think about becoming an installer if my teaching career ever crumbles!). So E started "reading" the directions. This one apparently tell us that "the bird is sad when it is getting broken." Note to IKEA: Your people look like birds, according to this K kid!

There you have it. . .our work in progress continues. . .

Laundry Shelves

Ohh. . . look what I got my husband to do!!!

Our laundry room was "finished" about 2 years ago. We installed a counter top and shelf over top, and had a "leg" or "peg" holding the counter top up.
Then a half year ago+ our hot water tank broke and things got re-done.
And I liked it, but I didn't love it.

But then I was directed to the Ana White website, fell in love with it . . . and gave my hubby a choice. Buy a cabinet with drawers for laundry to go in and fit under the counter top we have (which could mean re-doing the counter top, filling the wall, re-painting, re-caulking, etc. if the cabinet didn't fit perfectly) or build a variation of this.

It may have helped that I had been up with a teething child for the whole night minus 3 hours of broken sleep, that a few other issues came up that he may not have handled well causing LOTS of additional work for me, and that I was just plain overwhelmed with life even at 9 a.m. that day, but he started building. (And I didn't stop him!)

Maybe there are a few blessings that go with bad days for moms! :)

I can't find a "before" picture (sorry!), but here is what he did- his progress:

The frame of it all
The painted finished product

A close up of the "shelves."

In the end, the project cost about $60. . .but it could be less if you used pressed board or more if you used fancy trim or melamine board. Hubby said he thought it was pretty easy, that I could have made it on my own. A nice compliment. . .not so sure if I could, but that means it is also an easy-ish project.Like I said, we had to make it work for us, so we used Ana White's tutorial as a guide for us. We had a "foundation shelf" to deal with in the back, and for cleaning purposes, I wanted to keep the back open. We also had a specific height to work with, so there is room on the bottom so I can store smaller, flat totes (see in above photo).

I am extremely happy. . .(and extremely happy to have a hubby who can do this!). . .and now have a place to store some of my sewing totes as well (on top), and can kinda use it as a sewing table. (Thinking of finding/making a flip-out or slide-out table to go with this for the sewing machine. . .we'll see)

Check out that website--there are tonnes of ideas. . .my hubby doesn't know what all I have planned for him to do still! :)

Some Room Decorations

Ever since we moved E to his new room (and painted it a bolder colour--rather than our typical "some shade of brown"), I've been looking for some ways to decorate it. Because he is getting older and I don't want to be doing this very often, I wanted to try to find something that could stick around for a bit. Something that was not too old and not too baby-ish either.

Here was some artwork I kinda liked, from HomeSense. But I never got it--it just wasn't quite right.
In talking with my sisters, I was first thinking about trying some of those vinyl stick-ups or so. None of the ones I found really suited what I wanted either. My sister, Helen, made these cute wall-hangings. She bought the material from Quilt Essential Fabrics (in Abbotsford, BC) a year or so back, from an Eric Carle line. (Based on the book, Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See?). I really liked them and she gave me her extra material to do the same kind of thing.

However, my hubby wasn't a big fan--he thought they might be on the baby-ish side, or not too fitting for the room E was currently in, so I had to do some thinking again.

I did sew some curtains for him to match the comforter (sorry for the sideways picture!), and we did hang up some bulletin boards for all of his "stuff" (he is a collector of stuff--anything--he NEEDS to keep, so this is a good place--otherwise it is all over the house!)

I still liked the idea of the frames my sister had made, so I decided to check out Quilt Essentials as well. I'm terrible at matching colours and prints. I just don't have an eye for that, so the ladies there helped me out a little. E picked the one fabric he liked (the transportation one!) and then the other ones were "matching" ones. I picked up a fat quarter of each, and then went home to decide what to do with them.

I did a little searching, and ran into a tutorial here about fabric covered wall canvases. So I decided to give it a try. I didn't like the brightness of the fabrics I had chosen just because the rest of his room was grey and navy, so I tried to incorporate some of the fabric from the curtains into it. . .but I didn't have a bunch of it left! So here was the new plan:

First I got my hubby to build some frames for me. . .

Then I followed some of the advice from the tutorial to wrap the fabric around the frames. Some of my staples didn't go in all the way, so I got to go a little crazy with the hammer too. E had to inform me that he didn't know mommy knew how to use tools. Did I show him! :)

With a little help in the idea department from an old IKEA catalogue, I finally came up with a "set-up" I liked:

Here is a close up of my "solution" to the fabric being too bright. . .and not having enough pieces of curtain fabric. This is actually two small pieces sewed together, and then I made a band that kind of matched the bands holding the curtains back. I figured this might look nice with the curtains, and add enough dark colour to the colour scheme. If I were to do it again, I wouldn't have chosen the orange that they recommended, but gone with a reddish or green instead.

So here it is on the wall (the most time consuming part was hanging it all up!) The big "canvases" are 17x17--perfect for those fat quarters! The small frames are 7x7. There is 3 inches of spacing between it all. Notice how this lay-out doesn't match the above one? Not sure which one I like better. . .but I suppose that can be changed. . .

And here is my happy kiddo.

So. . .that is one of my Spring Break projects completed.

Project

We've been thinking about what to do with E's room for the last little bit (since he moved down to the guest room). Here is his "before" picture. . .
These are the "after" ones. After consulting a few friends on paint colours, we settled on "Stone Fence" (Behr 720F)-a grey tone that was still kind of blue. I find that I am always choosing a blue that turns out to be too bright on the wall. This was almost a denim/grey colour, and I was actually happy about it. We already had the comforter, so I sewed some new curtains for his room to match. I still need to do some tie-back loops because I made the curtains using some heavier materials and with casing enclosures at the top. That will be done in the next week.

We even went out and got some new knobs and hooks for him to match the rest of the ones on the furniture (ie: the toybox had similar ones) and to get rid of those old 70-ish ones that were in his room.

We still need to find some cork boards for his walls (or something like that) since his walls are pretty bare right now. I was thinking about getting the cork board tiles (that will match the oak wood dresser and toybox, etc in his room) that Walmart sells and making a group of four on one of his walls, but they have been sold out the last few times I've been there. Maybe I'll have to check out Michael's or so. There are still a few "decorating-type" things to do and a few toys to return to his shelves, but the big job of painting is done and he is sleeping in his room again!

Here is the happy E in his "new" room. :)

An "OOPS!"

Just thought I would post about a funny oops that turned out okay. . .

I was out, and my hubby was going to try to give the baby room a fresh coat of paint. We decided, just stick with the same colour as the room, and then it would be less work--only one coat needed to fix the scratches and blemishes, right? The room used to be E's room (hence the blue stuff still in it).

The hubby went looking for the matching paint. He found one that said "E's room" and started painting, without regards to what colour it was.

When I came back with the kids, he wanted to show me something. This was it:

Yep, it was the colour of E's room, but back when his room was what is currently A's room. So. . .

now the hubby had repainted 2 wonderful coats of this darker brownish colour rather than sticking with the lighter one. :) Good thing (for all of us!) I'm not too picky about the hue of this future baby's room!

Next painting project is E's new room. . . we will see what happens with that!

Few House Changes

My hubby and I both had some time off between Christmas and New Years. When we are both home, it is generally a good time to make some changes to the house here and there. What we wanted to do was change this
into this. . .

But instead we ended up ripping out carpets in three bedrooms and getting new stuff put in. We also had an area rug bound out of the same carpet for our living room. . .here it is (not that these pictures show it off very well!):

In the process, we found tried to fix some of those squeaky boards. J found one that was actually a bit broken and had to do some bigger-than-hoped-for fixing. On the plus side he was able to fix some electrical stuff that was just kinda old with the floor out.

Unfortunately, when you re-do carpet in the bedrooms, you also have to get rid of all the furniture for a while too. The family had some fun having a few nights "sleep-over" in the playroom, but our house looked like this for those few days! (And of course we had my sister's family visiting all at the same time!)

While we were re-setting up some of the rooms, we were able to keep our kids busy by having them play in "odd" spots. Who would have thought a bed frame with no mattress would be one of the most desirable places to play in the house?

This was all kind of a last-minute decision to make this change, and it was also a last minute decision to then change E's bedroom instead of re-setting up his room and moving him over closer to when the baby arrived. So. . .here is his "new" room--paired as the guest room. We have some major work to do down here (painting it blue or brown or grey, new curtains, organizing toys, decorating it a bit (not sure he is into Monet prints as wall-hangings). . .)

About the same time, we had our kitchen light burn out. It was one of those old fluorescent ones, and the other half had burnt out long ago, so now we had a chance to replace the whole thing. While looking for lights, we found this cute one on clearance, so I had to get it for "our princess."

Here is our old light spot. . .it needed a little fixing and painting. . .

Here is our purchase. . .

And here is the final product. . .minus one of the lights--it was broken and is on back-order. So while we wait for the fifth light, four will do for now!

So maybe now we will get around to doing something about that fireplace of ours. . .