Guest Room

July 20, 2009

I took the day off today to decompress after this long summer of weddings and birthday parties. It was just what we needed. I spent the day repainting the guest bedroom which was previously our bedroom. I had quite a few ideas including painting one wall red. I really wanted some pop in this room since it's also my office. Since this room will likely change again, I decided on this light color and add bold splashes using bedding and throw pillows instead.

The color is Vanilla Bean by Eddie Bauer in Satin. Its a creamy color with a yellow tint. They claim you don't need to prime but I totally had to prime. The blue was still showing through and made the wall look green.

I still have some touching up to do and the molding needs repainting. Since the room is a mix of furniture I'm painting some of it white for a cohesive look.

I moved the dresser to the other side of the room and put the bed here against this wall. I think I'd like to put up some wall shelves here and lean frames on it.

Today, I repainted all the trim and molding in white high gloss. We did a hasty job the first time around, so I wanted to make sure I did it right this time. Tomorrow I'll go over the edges again in Vanilla Bean and give the walls a second coat.

Project: Closet Expansion

I sketched up some plans of my closet expansion idea.

Existing Closets


New Plan for Closets - Knock out the walls and put up new walls which will be slimmer giving us a few more inches in width for bulkier clothing. Take up both old closet areas to make one large full size master closet with a set of bi-fold doors. Move the supply grille.


The closet depth is the width of this wall here. Behind this wall is where the closet magic will happen.


Current closet in the master bedroom


Hopefully this is what it's going to look like when we're done. We're going with the Craftmaster Bi-fold doors. This way we both have access to the closet at the same time (as opposed to sliding doors that overlap). The 60x84 doors make the most sense. We can get more height in to reach the shelves (which we'll install) to put our shoes or blankets. Also, it's the perfect width so that we can still open the bedroom door without covering the closet doors.


Another issue with these closets are the doors. In the spare bedroom (where I have to keep my clothes), I have to open the bedroom door in order to get to the closet door. Then the closet door is banging into furniture. The plan is to seal this opening up. Then make a boxed out closet to the right of this with double sliding doors to conserve space.


Office/Nursery/3rd Bedroom Closet - We would like to extend this one too.


If only I had all the time in the world.

Revisiting the To-Do list

July 19, 2009

We have pretty much completed all the major to-dos including all the things we added to the list throughout the year. Our priorities have shifted as well so we let a few things slide too.

What I'm most proud of is finishing the kitchen including tiling the floors, mulching the garden and setting the perennials in place for next year, and getting rid of a lot of clutter via yard sale! In addition, we even decorated the master bedroom, bathroom, and hallway upstairs and downstairs. I have also picked up a new trade - sewing!

Here's what is left over from last Fall:
  1. Doing the half bathroom - The estimate is $3K, so we're holding off. After the kitchen reno, we're not ready for the first floor of our house to get turned upside down again.
  2. Install gutter guards - I'm just dragging my feet. We've had so much rain too. I better do this before the leaves come down in the Fall.
  3. Replacing windows - The estimate to fix the springs in all 15 windows is $1700. To replace is $400 per window. We need at least 2-4 windows replaced at minimum.
Here's our new and updated To-Do list:
  1. Knock out our bedroom closets - Moving away from the superficial, let's talk about function. None of our bedroom closets are large enough and haven't been updated. Our plan is to knockout the wall that the closets (and 2 bedrooms) share. Turn the 2 old closets into 1 large closet for the master bedroom. Make a new closet that boxes out into the spare bedroom.
  • Update lighting in the dining room - Remove the gymnasium fluorescent light fixtures and replace them with recessed lights or just seal it up all together. Add a light attachment to the ceiling fan.
  • Update the Guest Bedroom - It's a mish mosh of furniture and colors currently. I just want to give the whole room an overhaul.
  • Extend the garden/landscape in the front of the yard.
That's it for now. I don't want to overwhelm myself with projects.

Sun Room

July 13, 2009

On the east coast, this is also known as an enclosed porch (foreign to you west coasters who have wonderful weather every day of the year - you suck!). This porch has evolved quite a few times. Originally, it was pink and I painted over the pink in white gloss. It was filled with hand me down furniture in navy and yellow.



After my painting extravaganza this weekend, I got rid of all the clutter and just re-used what we already had. The only thing that is missing now are some cushions for the love seat and rocker which I plan on sewing new covers for. I'm just looking for the fabric right now. On the other end of the porch (not shown) is where we keep our shoes and tools (since we lack a garage). I'm thinking about getting little cabinets to hold our stuff in which can also act as seating or a place to put plants on.

Uncle Paul's Seafood Sauce

July 12, 2009



Inspired by my husband's uncle's delicious seafood sauce on linguine that I had to come home and try making it myself. He didn't give me the recipe, but I came up with something based on what I tasted. I added some chopped tomatoes, fish and bay seasoning to kick it up a notch. I love Cioppino and that was what I was going for.

Here are my ingredients:
  • a full bunch of parsley (no stems)
  • 6 cloves of garlic
  • 1 onion - diced
  • olive oil
  • butter
  • white wine - Yellowtail
  • 2 filets of fresh catfish
  • seafood mix - mussels, clams, calamari, baby shrimp
  • 1/2 lb jumbo shrimp - cleaned and deveined
  • 1 can of whole tomatoes - coursely chopped
  • 1/2 jar of clam juice
  • Bay seasoning, salt, pepper
  • 1 box linguine
Cook the onions, garlic, tomatoes, etc and make your base sauce first. Add a little white wine and the seafood mix. Then add the fresh fish and shrimp. Serve over pasta with some grated cheese or lemon juice.

To you it's a broken chair. To me it's a new stool.

I was a complete maniac this weekend. I had a few things that were lingering on my to-do list for a while and during yet another neighborhood yard sale, I took advantage of my time outside to polish some of those things off my to-do list.

(I apologize for the lack of updates. Both my camera and laptop are messed up, so posting has been painfully slow to impossible)

Before: Given to us by my husband's uncle who got it from his mother who probably got it from her brother. His uncle has the mate to this chair in the same fabric pattern except this is a rocking chair and the one his uncle has is a round. It's so cool to walk into their house and seeing the "matching" chair.


I turned the chair over and unscrewed the seat. I took it outside and wiped it down.


I gave it two coats of clear polyurethane. Look how shiny!


I traced the shape of the seat onto the fabric leaving 3" around. I stapled the fabric down just as I did with the canvas wall art I made last week. Pull it tight when stapling. Trim off the excess.


The fabric had a really pretty, iridescent pattern. I also put the fabric pattern on a diagonal. Screw the seat back onto the chair.


After: Like new!


Before: Hand me down end table. The gold trim really made the table look out-dated. Otherwise, it's a perfectly sturdy table.


After: 2 cans of white gloss spray paint and I have an end table for the sun room for my plants, coffee and magazines. The round, wicker thing is actually a charger plate from Walmart $3.50. I was looking for a runner for the coffee table, but even Target was something like $25 for a wicker/bamboo table runner/place mat, so instead I bought a couple of these instead.


Before: I totally trash picked this from my neighbor's garbage. This belonged to a pink Disney Princess table and chair set. I think someone bought the table at the yard sale. The back of the chair broke off so this is what was left. Some may see this as a broken chair, but I saw a stool!


After: Currently, I'm using it to hold up my magazines in the sun room, but I plan to use it to elevate some of my house plants. I might even get creative and sew a seat for it. I admit, I'm mostly motivated to do this, so I can blog about it and not necessarily because I need it. Then again, who doesn't need a spraypaintedmagazineholderandplantstoolthatusedtobeapinkdisneyprincesschair???


Before: Last, but not least, this was the first project that I embarked upon in the early morning actually. We got these from our neighbor and it's been really useful when we had company, but come on...don't they look like they were from a school gym or church basement? Motivated by the company I'm having over next weekend, I finally decided to give them a new face. I took them outside during the week, thoroughly cleaned them and allowed them to dry in the sun.


After: Each chair required at least 1 can of spray paint. Color "Pebble". Honestly, I can't say I liked doing this. It was such a pain and half way through I just wanted to give up. I bought 2 cans of lime green with the intention of doing 2 of the chairs in some color with a pop, but it looked putrid so I painted over it.


I spray painted a few other things around the house as well. I wish I had something more fun to show you, but that's it for now. I'm exhausted! Spray painting is great alternative to turn something that didn't work with your decor before into something that does making it new and shiny too!

Play Dress Up

June 28, 2009

The neighborhood little girls love to get together and play dress up princesses. Sometimes I see them all fancy with their princess costumes and heels which is the most adorable sight. I had some old dresses that I was about to toss when I thought it would be a great idea to turn them into play dresses.

Before: Size 4 Women's


After: Size 4T


Pretty pretty Princess: Priceless

DIY: Canvas Art

Here's a really quick and easy way to add some color and art to your walls especially if you're renting.



I picked up a yard of fabric $6 (30% off) at JoAnn's and an artist's canvas for $10 (50%). I laid the canvas down and decided where I wanted the pattern to sit.


Cut the fabric leaving 2" over the size of the canvas.


***Practice caution*** Using a staple gun and BOTH hands, hold the gun firmly and staple one edge in the middle. No joke, I watched a girl staple her own hand once, so please be careful especially with the old school staple guns that are all silver and it's not clear which end is the staple end. Do NOT "test shoot" the gun into the air or pointing it towards you or anyone else.


If you've never wrapped a canvas before, this is how you do it. Start on one edge in the middle and staple it. Go to the OPPOSITE edge, pull it super tight and staple it in the center along the edge. Do the same with the 2 other sides.


Do the same at all 4 corners and DON'T bother making it look nice. Just pull it tight and staple. When all 4 corners are stapled, THEN go back and fold the fabric over making a nice corner and staple away around the whole frame.


Viola! Instant art!


Other ideas: Use small, square canvases and use fabrics with different patterns and/or color.

DIY: Nursing Covers

Finally! I can post about these! (I didn't want to post till mommy received them first) When my bloggy pal Tiff posted about these nursing covers, my sew-happy little heart lit up to give these a try. She lives in Europe and doesn't have Etsy, so I told her I would sew them for her. Especially since they retail for $32+Shipping for what is essentially a square piece of fabric with a strap and it would be nice to have more than 1.

I made a casual, neutral gray one for her husband (when he gives a bottle) and a fun polka dotted one for mommy. She says it helps keep baby from being distracted while feeding which is why her husband uses it too.



I eyeballed the dimensions and laid the fabric on my chest/shoulders to gauge the size of the cover. I've met mommy and daddy in person before, so I had an idea of their frame and marked the strap to go from edge of collar bone to collar bone.

The nursing covers have a stiffer piece around the neck to allow you to look at the baby while you nurse. I went in search for something and the ladies at JoAnn's suggested boning which they use to make big hoop skirts (think Gone with the Wind). I sewed a little piece into the top edge.


Using 2 D-rings, I sewed a little "tab" through them on one end and the strap to the other end of the boning.



The strap took more trials than expected. I sewed 3 different straps and lots of ^&*($%^^ before I settled on one that I liked. I'm getting better at the seams now too. Then, sewing the strap to the actual cover was frustrating. Next time, I'll have to think about a better way that will make it look neater. I checked out aprons and straps on bags in stores and they were all sewn similarly which I didn't like. It's a "box" with an "X" in the box. Whatever.



With the fabric scraps, I was able to make a few wipes. The white fabric is a fuzzy soft wash cloth fabric. It's so soft like a puppy I kept rubbing my cheek on it. :)



Oh and meet my new pincushion "Pokey". I cut the elephant out of the fabric I used for my GF's baby shower gifts and stuffed him with pillow filling. Viola!

Window Dilemma

June 7, 2009

Before: Here's the delimma. We have an oddly proportioned living room. It's a little colonial that just wasn't meant for a tv and modern furniture. The windows are "inconveniently" placed and the room isn't wide or long enough. This window is the middle of the wall and furniture looks funny when placed against this wall. Everything just seems so vertically stacked ie. stand, tv, window. Also, I thought about how we would decorate the walls and the wall IS wide enough that picture frames would look odd. Several picture frames together might make it look worse.



After: So I had the idea of balancing the room out by extending the curtain rod beyond the edge of the window giving it the illusion that the window is wider than it actually is. I think it worked! I sewed the curtain panels myself. I bought the fabric from JoAnn's and the rod is from Walmart.



Living room in progress...

Pins

May 26, 2009



If I have to sew, I might as well have some pretty pins to play with. Aren't these pretty?

Ottoman Cover

May 23, 2009



Sewing instructions to come...

Bed Cover Sewing Project

May 18, 2009

If you're looking for me, I'm not at home. I'm in the garden! :D

So besides spending every waking moment in the garden, I'm working on finishing up our bedroom. We installed a swing arm lamp, put up some picture frames (photos on order), and now I'm sewing a bed cover. Here's a sneak peak:

Hallway II

May 3, 2009

Here are some better photos of the hallway. You can see here that it's a much prettier, citrus sorbet orange. The faux stain glass decal really adds a nice touch especially when there is a lot of light.



On the right: Different knobs from Anthropologie and hooks from Target for different sized items.


Above the door: My birdie

Showers forcasted for Saturday

May 2, 2009

What am I up to?



More to come...

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