Friday, July 26, 2013

Baby Girl's Nursery, Part 1

"It's not who we are that holds us back; it's who we think we're not."
-Michael Nolan

What I'm reading:  It Starts with Food
What I'm writing:  Not much right now.  At least I'm honest!

Most of you know that I have three boys (10, 7, and 6) and one little girl (2).  When we found out we were expecting a girl, I was a little... excited.  Just a little.

Now don't get me wrong.  I love being a Boy Mom!  When we started having kids, I wanted boys and I was blessed with three in a row.  They are best friends and they are fun and rowdy and dirty and sweet and I adore them.  But after all that boyish fun, I hoped for a little girl to help even out the estrogen-testosterone balance (or lack thereof).  And I really, really wanted to craft and decorate for a girl.

I may have gone just a wee bit overboard with the nursery.  But Husband just smiled and got out of my way, and boy did I have a great time!  The only thing that slowed me down was Girl's decision to show up 3+ weeks early, which put a serious cramp in my crafting.  This is the first of a series of posts showing projects from Girl's room.

My inspiration for Girl's room came from Chris at Just a Girl Blog.  Her daughter's room is adorable.

I love the robin's egg blue walls, the pink, blue, and green color scheme, and the tree.  This picture is actually a little different than the one I looked at, since her daughter is getting older and they are updating the room.  As you will see in later posts, I shamelessly ripped off some of these ideas.  But when something is as perfect as Chris's room, it's hard to resist.

This is what we had to work with: our room in its original state.  The wall color isn't bad, but it's just kind of a bland beige and every room on the first floor was the same when we moved in.  Neutral paint colors are great when trying to sell a house, but now that it was ours, I was ready for some color.
The room had become a repository for all the unused/unwanted furniture and other items that we didn't know where else to put.  Note the beautiful rose-colored cabinet.  You'll see that again later.
Other challenges include large windows on two of the walls (great for light, not so great for furniture placement) and a closet on the third.
We were also cursed blessed with mismatched curtains on ceiling tracks.  Oh, the design potential.
 And finally, we had this treasure of a ceiling fixture.
The very first thing I did was rip down those, ahem, special curtains.  I truly loved them and shed great tears of agony as we gently deposited them in our large black trash receptacle.  Any neighbors who heard someone yelling "Woo hoo!  Die, evil curtains of Mordor!".... well, clearly that was someone else.

Next we patched the holes left in the ceiling from the curtain tracks, and painted the walls (you guessed it) robin's egg blue.  As we were painting away, Husband gave me a weird look and said "You know, now that we're finally getting a girl, I find it ironic we are painting her bedroom blue."  But I had a plan, you see.  I knew I would want to use a lot of pink and I wanted a different color on the walls to give the room some contrast.  No little girl needs to live in Pepto Land.  I also wanted to go with kind of a cutesy, outdoors, woodland feel.  The soft aqua was a nice "sky" without being too literal.
The little owl was handmade by me using this pattern from Little Hibou shop on Etsy.  Which, by the way, when I looked up the link I realized the shop has added a bunch more patterns and I am going to have to put those on my Christmas list!  I have just the set of five.  I was going to make all of them but again, little Girl arrived early.  The owl was not difficult at all and I would describe my embroidery skills as "extreme novice."  I would really recommend this pattern if you're looking for cute stuffed animals.

Ahem.  Sorry for the detour.  Back to our regularly scheduled nursery make-over.

One wonderful thing about our 1970s house is the big windows.  One complicated thing about big windows is finding affordable window coverings.  In the end we decided on white vinyl blinds for the nursery, but we had to put two blinds in each window because they are so large.  We found these great curtain rods at Ross Dress for Less.  I have had great success finding extra-long curtain rods for a reasonable price at Ross.  I think these were less than $10 each.  I especially like the glass balls on the ends.
I also stressed way more than necessary about the curtain panels.  I wanted something thick enough to potentially block light and drafts from the old windows, but all the lined thermal curtains were less-than-cute.  I found lots of fun sheer ones but they wouldn't block the light.  Finally, after much indecision and endlessly texting my sister pictures from every store in town, I settled on these tab-top striped cotton twill panels from WalMart.  I debated because of the yellow and orange- I was afraid it would bring in too many colors.  But in the end, I decided I love them in this room.  They bring a lot of bright fun and energy.
Maybe someday she'll outgrow the stripes, but for now they are perfect for my spunky, silly, sassy little girl.  P.S.  I know these pictures are kind of dark.  I am not a professional photographer, but I'm working on my skills.  Thanks for being patient with my learning curve!

The paint and windows were the first step.  In the next few posts I'll share some of my fun decor items.  Our budget for this room was extremely tight, so I'm pretty excited about the cute things I was able to make for very little money.  Stay tuned!

(Apparently my learning curve is steep and includes the post scheduling feature.  This post was supposed to go up on Friday, July 26.  It did not post on its own so I manually posted it on Tuesday, July 30... but it is still dated Friday, July 26.  Why must you mess with my mind, Blogger-demons?)

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

My milk glass cupboard and my friend Goober

"Progress, not perfection!"
-Fly Lady

What I'm reading:  It Starts with Food (Husband is also reading!)
What I'm writing:  Still working on that first romance

One of the great things about our house is all the built-in storage.  Our kitchen is humongous and we have tons of cabinets!  (Which is great for stashing stuff, but kind of overwhelming when considering a cabinet-painting project.  That's a subject for a different post...)  We have a display hutch in the kitchen with glass doors.  I've started collecting milk glass over the last few years and put it in this cupboard.  But it was just so BLAH.  No color, nothing to draw your attention.  The brown wood back of the cupboard blended in with the brown wood of the other cabinets.  Yawn.

I am not always good at taking a picture before I start projects (I'm working on it!), but here is one with a bit of the cupboard in the background so you can get an idea.  In the foreground is Boy 2 enjoying his PlayDoh.  He is much cuter than the cabinets.
I've been looking for something perfect to go in the back of this cabinet.  I considered wallpaper.  Textured, paintable wallpaper.  Contact paper.  Paint and stenciling.  Burlap.  Fabric.  Wrapping paper (one of my favorite items, which you'll see more of on this blog).  But I'm a perfectionist and I stared at that cupboard and just couldn't quite figure it out.  And I couldn't find quite what I was looking for.  I love all things old and antique and vintage, but I also love color.  I'm kind of going for a mid-century funky vintage sort of vibe.  I stocked up on all kinds of wrapping paper but it all seemed too formal (brocade, damask, etc).  I spent way too much time on the Interwebs looking at expensive Contact paper.  And then around Christmas I was in Hobby Lobby and I found it.  The perfect wrapping paper.

So I bought a roll, brought it home, and put it in my storage room where it collected dust for a while.  I just kept obsessing over how, exactly, I was going to put it up and make it straight and make it stick...  Until one day I was staring at that cabinet AGAIN and I said to myself, "Fly Lady says Progress, not Perfection!"  I found Fly Lady in January and she's changing my life, but I'm still a perfectionist in recovery.  So I marched downstairs, got the wrapping paper, and got to work.

I started by pulling out all the milk glass and washing it.  Then I took down the sliding glass doors (they're just on a little track so it wasn't hard) and pulled out the shelves.  Here's what I had:
You get a sneak peek of the roll of wrapping paper in the photo below, next to the very dusty shelves.  Just keepin' it real, folks.  
I took regular ol' Scotch Double-Sided Tape and started applying it around the edges of the cupboard back.  Then I put strips of it across the center, just every so often.  No measuring or being all perfectionisty- I just stuck up a bunch of tape until I thought I probably had enough.  If you look closely, you can see it along the edge in the photo below.
Now a part of me wanted to measure the cabinet, measure the wrapping paper, and cut out a pre-measured, perfectly fitting piece to go in the back.  I actually tried measuring the inside of the cabinet.  But it was hard to get a good measurement and I was frustrated.  So instead I cut a piece that I knew was just a little bit too long.  I matched up the corner and started pressing it to the tape.
I worked my way across the top first.  And it wasn't perfect.  By the end I was about 1/8" off.  But when I tried to pull the wrapping paper off, it really didn't want to come.  I didn't want to start over.  So I repeated to myself, "Progress, not perfection!"  And I started working down the side.  As I reached the bottom, I pressed the paper into the bottom corner of the cabinet with a Pampered Chef scraper.  You know, those brown plastic square thingys that come with P.C. stoneware?  They are good for all kinds of things!
 Once I had the paper taped down good and flat and had made a nice sharp crease with the P.C. scraper, I sliced off the excess paper with a craft knife.  In a few spots the cut was a little jagged, but it was so small and near the bottom that I knew it would be just fine.
I was almost done and feeling pretty dang awesome about myself when....
ARGH!  Egads!  Drat!  This spot did NOT want to behave and it had a good tantrum when the knife came along!  I was so frustrated.  So close to finished and this happened!  You'd think I was just using cheap wrapping paper or something.  Oh, wait...

I sat back and looked at this spot for a while.  Then I looked at the massive pile of milk glass air-drying on the counter.  And I decided to leave it like it was.  I KNOW.  Obviously I'm some kind of defective crafter, right?  What kind of wanna-be DIY blogger leaves a goober like that in the middle of their project?  A goober so nasty it deserves to be formally named Goober?

This one.

Yep, I'm okay with it.  I'll show you why.  Here's the cupboard with the shelves back in:
If you look closely you can see my friend Goober in the bottom center.  I mean, the polka dots are so amazingly adorable that they distract the eye, but still.  But be patient, my friends, because here is the finished cupboard with my milk glass.
Yup.  I put a plate right. In. Front. Of. Goober.  Mua ha ha!  No one will ever know Goober is there!  Wait, except for all the tens of people who may look at this post. Shoot.  I've gone and blown my dirty little secret.

Seriously, though.  I love it.  Just the right color and retro-styled fun to add a little pop to my kitchen of brown.  I love how the milk glass stands out against the red.  This cupboard makes me smile every time I walk by, and I think part of that is because I let myself be less than perfect and everything turned out fine and not one person died because the wrapping paper was not quite straight.

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

Doors and Date-Night Jeans

"Hope is wishing something would happen.  Faith is believing something will happen.  Courage is making something happen."
-Unknown

What I'm reading:  "It Starts with Food"
What I'm writing:  Not much right now.  Focusing (occasionally...) on my first romance novel

A few days ago I was pulling weeds and thinking about what to post.  I'd already come up with my first post, kind of an introduction and mission statement, but it was a little serious and heavy.  Where is the fun, lady?  It occurred to me:  I am about the same age as my house!  It was built in 1977 and I was born in 1979.  Maybe I should stop referring to my house as "older!"  Sometimes I still feel like I'm in high school, although a few quick bounces on the trampoline with my kids quickly remind me that it's been a while.  Honestly, I have no issues with getting older, per se- I was thrilled to turn thirty.  I had a great time in my twenties and accomplished many things.  I looked at my thirtieth birthday as a milestone and a gateway to an awesome new decade.  And it has been.  I feel like I've finally started to figure out who I really am and who I really want to be.  And that all of those things are within my grasp.

I've felt a new attachment to my house since I put its age and need for improvement into perspective.  There's not a thing wrong with this place just as it is, but like all of us, I'm sure it's itching for something a little new, and a little fresh! Girlfriend needs a pair of date-night jeans.  And we started with the front doors.

This is our front entryway from the outside.  Most of the time we only use one door, but the other door does unlatch.  My husband digs the double doors.  He's Mr. Practicality, and when we were moving in, this wide entryway made moving a breeze.  Well, I should never refer to moving a piano as a "breeze," but it was much easier than trying to squeeze the thing through a standard 36" door!  If he was the kind of guy who kissed inanimate objects, these doors would have got the love.

But... they're old.  Kind of outdated.  The storm doors had those funky decorative grids and the inside wood doors...
Really kind of cool, with the decorative carving and the metal scrolly-thing around the doorknob.  The varnish was cracked and peeling and the wood was faded.  I'm pretty sure this was the original finish.  Replacing these doors is not a top priority right now, and they are still very solid and in good shape.  But they are the first thing you see when you visit the house and it says OUTDATED.  As in, that haircut your aunt has had for thirty-five years that was super trendy back when she was seventeen.  Kind of like this:
So we decided to work with what we had.  Yeah, baby, saving money and making the retro fresh!
Here is one of the doors laid out in our garage, in the middle of a good sanding.  You can see the carving better here, as well as the bad finish.  One thing I learned from this project:  Your cute little Black & Decker Mouse Sander has a little attachment perfect for sanding all the nooks and crannies of the carving, but it does NOT need your help and you do NOT need to push it down onto the door for more sanding pleasure.  Use your fancy new CrossFit muscles somewhere else, because putting that much pressure on your sander will cause it to have a nervous breakdown.  Okay, literal breakdown, and I had to replace the sander.  Anyhoo....  Next the doors got a lovely new coat of primer.

Husband even put on his happy face for this project!  We applied the primer with a paintbrush and it worked great.  Finally, the paint.  I am a believer that a new coat of paint can fix just about anything.  I was looking for a good, deep cherry red.  The red we got ended up a little brighter than I expected, but I love it.  I unfortunately did not take a picture of this step, but Steve used a little sprayer from Harbor Freight with his air compressor and sprayed the door.  We decided that was the best way to get an even coat in all of the fancy carving.

While Steve painted the door, I removed the extra grills from the storm doors.  It was easy- they were just attached with screws so they came right off.  (Sad note, and marital tip:  Make sure you stash things like extra grills from a storm door in a safe place if you are planning on using them for another crafty project, because they may become victims to Husband's periodic urges to clean the garage.  Le Sigh.)  Husband removed the doors, I took out the glass, and I used just regular black spray paint to give the frames a makeover.  We also spraypainted the same, original doorknobs.  We debated for a long time about that metal scrolly-thing and in the end, decided to spraypaint it too.

New, sleek storm doors back up, doors painted and re-installed...
 I love the sleek, simple look of the storm doors with no grills or decoration!  I can't tell you how many people have asked us if we bought new doors.
This gives you a better idea of how the hardware looks.  I was really torn about whether to keep the scrolly-thing (yes, that is its official term) but Husband (not his official name) really loved it and now I do too.  I think it looks cool and it keeps some of the original unique charm of the house.  The 70s were not really my favorite decor years but I think even in updating, you have to respect what a house is.  This will never be a Victorian-era cottage, no matter how much bead board I install.
Here's a view from inside:
The doors are great.  I still want to replace them at some point, but that's mostly because I want more interior light and these are solid wood.  But until that project moves up the list, I love my bright red doors.  They will be getting another makeover soon because we are painting the exterior of the house, but the hard work of sanding and priming is done.  A new coat of paint and we're in business!

I smile every time a friend stops by and says "I love what you've done to these doors!"  A lot of visitors don't even come inside, so it's important to me that the entryway is inviting and attractive.

And I like to think my house appreciates looking pretty.  If these doors are her date-night jeans, I guess she needs a statement necklace next, right?

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

Welcome to the DIY life!

"We women have a lot to learn about simplifying our lives.  We have to decide what is important and then move along at a pace that is comfortable for us.  We have to develop the maturity to stop trying to prove something.  We have to learn to be content with what we are."
-Marjorie Hinckley

I've thought a lot about what I want this first post to say.  This blog is a new adventure for me.  I've blogged before.  I had a blog as a Stampin' Up! demonstrator where I posted lots of cute projects and class ideas and had a fair amount of page views.  But life moves on and things got busy and I'm not a demonstrator anymore.  And we bought a new house (well, it's an older house, but new to us) and my projects become more home-related than just paper.  I also had a blog for promoting my efforts to become a published Young Adult fiction writer.  As much as I tried, I just didn't have enough to say on the subject to keep the blog alive.

I've considered starting a DIY-type blog for several years, but I wanted to do something a little different.  Something that would really be "me."  And then it hit me.  We bought this house four years ago, the same year I turned 30.  I was really excited to turn 30 and to see what my new decade would bring.  


(This is our house just a few days after we bought it.  The ultimate "before" picture!)

I've spent the last four years not only working on fixing up our house, but on fixing up me.  We found Dave Ramsey and paid off all our debt except the house.  I joined CrossFit and lost about 30 pounds after my last baby, even though I've never considered myself athletic, but I still have so far to go and I'm terrified of sliding back downhill.  I'm still chasing the elusive dream of publication.  I started a part-time job at a law firm, with very mixed emotions about leaving my kids.  And on top of it all, we have a fix-it list three miles long.

It can be exhausting.  Overwhelming.  So many projects, so little time.  I know you've all been there.

So this blog is about the DIY life- whether the project is a bathroom, a waistline, or chasing that dream you've always wanted but have been scared to say out loud.  At the same time, it's about finding sanity and realizing that in the midst of all this improvement, the most important thing is family, friends, contentment, and spiritual balance.

Is it possible to be content while still striving to improve?  Can we seek for better things while still remembering to simplify and keep our priorities straight?  This blog is my attempt to figure it out.  I'm so glad you've visited, and I hope you'll come back often and share your thoughts.