Sockin' it to Ya!

Ava is mobile in full-force now. We are used to the spills, slips and bumps that come with the territory. I realized, however, that most of her socks don't have "grippies" on the bottom. Maybe that's because she has tiny feet and most of her socks would fit a baby that can't even crawl yet. :0) So I remembered a tip I saw in Real Simple: use puffy paint! Remember? From the 80's?

Here is a picture of her new socks. (or "shaaaa!" in Ava-ese) I put cardboard inside the socks so the paint didn't leak through to the other side. It was pretty super easy. And Ava stays on her feet (a little bit) more. :0)

You "otto" do this project. Wah-wah.

FINALLY! I finished another long-standing project. Yay!


When I moved to Wisconsin to start teaching, I was really excited to outfit my very own apartment. It was the cutest apartment you've ever seen. I called it the Hobbit House. The tallest thing in the place was the refrigerator. I could reach everything! It was very exciting. (I am five feet tall :0)

I bought two of these slipcovered ottomans from Ikea. As you can see, with one wash they started to look a little like they were wearing "highwater" pants.



As I had been seeing a lot ruffles and pleats out in blogland, I was inspired to make those ottomans a little more ladylike (and cover up those legs!) Basically, I cut 4 1/2 inch strips of fabric, ironed them a 1/2 inch on either side, pinned them to the original slipcovers and sewed them around. On the first one I pleated it, ironed it and put some basting stiches in. On the second one I ended up just pleating it as I went a long and that was a LOT easier. I ironed it afterward.


I read a tutorial or two, but I ended up eyeballing the pleats. Its a nice little Ikea upgrade! I like 'em!

Linking up to:

The Shabby Chic Cottage

Miss Mustard Seed

A Tale of One Filing Cabinet

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times...Grab some popcorn people, this could be epic. Or probably just long... The saga begins in February, 2010...

Behold, the before of the office:





When Mr. Wonderful and I married, I inherited this filing cabinet. It's not a bad filing cabinet, but it didn't really go with the antique table we're using as a desk. It's more contemporary, shall we say. But it's made of wood, so of course I wanted to paint it. Mr. Wonderful gave me permission to do whatever I wanted with it. Yay! But, needing to make things complicated, and having seen this post on Centsational Girl, I decided to experiment with paintable wallpaper. You know, I had a 9 month old child, what else did I have to do? I found it on sale at Menards for about $10. We don't have a bathtub, so I used storage tubs to soak the wallpaper.
Fold it, glue-y sides together.

Originally I had planned to wrap the paper around to the back, but it failed epically, as the drawers are too close together to allow for the raised surface of the wallpaper. So I decided to just leave it on the fronts.

After painting the whole cabinet Cottage White by Behr, this is what I had. (These pictures are from back in March)

Looks pretty good. I knew I was going to add hardware eventually. I ordered some label holders for my birthday (some women want clothes, some women want hardware!), and thought I could use some of my "found" hardware to go with them.

But the reality was that it wasn't working. I ignored it for many months, but the wallpaper wasn't totally adhered to the filing cabinet, I had a curious toddler on my hands and I knew it was just a matter of time until things got ugly, but I felt stuck with it.

Enter screen molding. I think that's what it's called. I looked for the cheapest molding I could find at Menards, basically.

I used a miter box (yes, it was even me! It wasn't even Mr. Wonderful!) to make some 45 degree cuts using the measurements of the drawer fronts.

They looked kind of rough

So I found something that looked like an emory board and filed away.

Looking better!

Using tiny headless brad nails I hammered the moulding to the fronts, used a tiny nail punch to get them all the way in the grooves, painted them with some off white freebie paint I had (antique white from Glidden), and used caulking to fill in the corners as well as the sides where the edges of the wallpaper showed through. Then I added hardware--the label holders I got for my birthday, and chunky pulls that match our kitchen hardware.

Here's a close up.

And the full effect of our office, which is located in the butler's pantry.

Now if I were a good blogger, I'd have written something clever on the chalkboard. MAN! But, I'm pretty excited about how it turned out, even though it took...mmmm 6 months. Thanks for hanging in there to the end!

I'm linking up to Thrifty Decor Chick

also linking up to Miss Mustard Seed

also linking up to Funky Junk Interiors
Whoops! I linked to Thrifty Decor Chick again! Sorry everyone!

A Before and After + a Fall "Mantel"

Thanks for joining me for the Laura Ingalls party! I had a blast reading the posts and always marvel at how much one can learn from bloggers. And I'm glad Nellie Olson didn't come. :0)

I finally have gotten to the point where I feel like I'm pretty much done with the "mudroom". I may come back to it in the future if I have any spare beadboard or trim, but I decided not to go out and buy it special. I dressed it up for fall and it feels finished to me! Yay!

Here is the grizzly "before". This is just the top of our stairs, what you see if you turn left when you enter our back door. Welcome to our home, right?:I gave the mildew a scrub down with bleach, fresh primer and paint, new baskets/tags, hooks, a corner seat, and accessories!!!

I seriously hardly ever get to accessorize. No room for it. Here are some fall leaves from our yard:

Pine cones, berries and a fern from our yard:

The mirror used to hang in my sister's and my closet (is that right, Grammar Police?) when we were kids. It is from an old wardrobe. I've been trying to use it in our house, but it's VERY heavy and I couldn't find a good spot for it. I like it here!

It's kind of a difficult spot to photograph, but hopefully you get the picture. (wah-wah). We've been using this area more and more as it's gotten colder and I really love it. It has also become the place to store our library books throughout the week, which is handy and cute too!

Happy Autumn, all!

Pump Up the Jam. And the Pillows.

Hey all,

So kind of a silly project. At least I feel silly for caring, but c'mon look at these pillows! Flat as pancakes. Not very inviting. Just sad, sad pillows. I mean, in the swing of things not a big deal, but I just wanted fluffier pillows! So I took the cases off:

One was from Ikea, one was from Kohl's. Circa...2005. Maybe pillows just get flat over time. I tried fluffing them by hand, but I decided to bulk them up with some extra batting I had after taking apart a quilt.

Here they are in their new pumped up state!

Silly? Yes, but I like it!

Don't forget--Get Your Laura Ingalls On party tomorrow. Link up! I'll have instructions on how to do it on the post.

Coffee Talk

As you may have read in this post, I have several unfinished projects around the house, nagging at the back of my mind and preventing me from starting some other projects I'm interested in doing. I was hoping to finish them this past weekend, but of course it didn't happen. But I did finish ONE of them. A big one.

I found this table in Mr. Wonderful's basement after we got married. I love the lines in the legs and the squares on the top. We used it upstairs for awhile. It worked great for playing games, but it is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay too big for our 10x10 living room. It was also in pretty rough shape. It had a thick amber shellac on it that was chipping in a lot of places. So I decided to refinish it. If I had my way, it would have probably been painted. But Mr. Wonderful didn't want to cover up the wood, so I planned to refinish it, forgetting that I was 8 months pregnant and shouldn't be using poisonous chemicals. Preggo brain, right? So that didn't happen. It has been sitting in our garage half-done for 16 months.

Until now! I used chemicals, sandpaper, a sander, a profile sander, a Dremel, a drywall scraper thing and even a flat head screwdriver to sand, scrape, chip and wish that thick amber shellac away. It was not a scientific process. It was not always pretty and I'm not even sure I got it all. But here's what it looked like when I decided to just hope for the best. I actually kind of like it like this. It reminds me of old leather:

(check out the saw horses I got for Mr. Wonderful. $5 at a rummage sale. They saved my back some aches and pains)

Here it is after 1 coat of Red Mahogany:

I read in a post somewhere that vegetable oil gets oil based paints off your hands. It did a pretty good job, and I was thrilled to not have to put mineral spirit on my hands!

The table now lives in the man cave where it has room to run around. I love how the grain of the wood alternates:

I put two coats of polyurethane on it. I think it's improved and its DONE!

Dirty Laundry

Well hello!

I am making sure and steady progress on my projects, but today I am going to divert us to a new one. The other day I was balancing the Quicken files and reconciling receipts. I noticed that the last time we bought laundry soap, it cost us $13! Apparently Tide has gold flakes in it or something. I was instantly motivated to get going on learning how to make our own laundry soap. At least to try.

We bought an HE washer before Ava was born. Partly because we wanted to cloth diaper, and partly because we needed a new washer anyway and there really is no comparison between top loading washers and HE washers when it comes to water efficiency. Seriously. We love it.

So after browsing some tutorials online, I decided on liquid soap. It can just go in the regular detergent drawer. This recipe is supposed to be low-sudsing (which is apparently why you need to buy special HE soap in the first place) which will also make it great for washing diapers. If diapers get soap built up, they won't absorb. If they don't absorb, they leak. If they leak, I cry. (Just kidding. Mostly.)


I used this tutorial (which is fabulous.) It really has all the info you need, but here's my step-by-step. First I grated some Ivory soap with a cheese grater: Put about four cups of water in a kettle. I was feeling really hard core and used a stock pot. Turns out that is totally unnecessary. You can just use a regular pot. Little by little put the soap flakes in and stir until it gets nice and soapy.

Put 3 gallons of water in a container. In case you were wondering, a gallon is 16 cups. I used my 4 cup measuring cup, so 12 of these puppies: (right? I hope so. Math is hard, let's go shopping.)

Add your soap soup from the pot to the water in the bucket. Then you add a cup of washing soda. (Yes, that's right, Walmart employee who tried to sell me baking soda instead. I want Washing soda.) Turns out washing soda is hard to find. But a friend of mine tipped me off that they carry it at a local grocery store (County Market, but I've also heard they carry it at IGA). You can also order it at Ace Hardware and they'll ship it to the store for free.

Oops, my bad. It's "super" washing soda.

Then a half-cup of Borax. Borax is a little easier to find. We got ours at Target or Walmart or something.

Then you stir it all up in your container and let it sit for 24 hours. From what the tutorial says, we should enjoy a significant cost savings. $.03/load as opposed to something like $.20/load. That's pretty serious! We will miss the gold flakes in Tide though. :0)

I read on the tutorial that you can often get buckets like this at delis, so I tried at a grocery store. And they gave me one! AND the lady saw Ava and asked if she could have a c-o-o-k-i-e. I said she could and they gave us a free cookie too! It was quite a haul at the grocery store today.

So there you have it! It was really easy. I hope it does the trick.

Loose Ends

Hi all,

Well I finished a major portion of my business start-up today and got it in the mail. And my mind immediately went to....projects! Big surprise, huh?

I realized that I have a lot of unfinished projects hanging around. I don't like the feeling of having them hanging over my head, so I made a list. (Love lists!)

I started this filing cabinet last winter, and came up against some roadblocks, which I think I have figured out to address. (Sorry the pictures stinks. Ava was sleeping and I wasn't going to take a chance to turn on the light. She's the lightest sleeper ever.) Here is the entryway as it looks today (you'll see that I didn't clean up before taking any of these pictures.) I have a few more ideas to add to this space.
I took a trip in July. Look what Mr. Wonderful was up to while I was away! He designed this shoe rack with CAD (a computer program) last winter and started it while I was gone. It fits perfectly in our entryway.
So, funny story. I took some maternity leave before Ava was born, and got really nesty. As in, I cleaned the stove top with a tooth pick and a q-tip. No joke--and what a difference! Anyway, I thought it would be a good time to tackle refinishing our coffee table. This huge monstrosity:
Once it was out in the garage, I realized that all the chemicals involved were probably NOT a good thing to expose to my pregnant self! So guess what. It went on the honey-do list (isn't that totally jerky?). And then Ava was born and we had no time for it and it's been sitting in our garage. Well the time has come, my friends. It's not sitting in there for another winter! So I'm doing a little at a time during naps.

So there you have it. Four projects I want to finish! There are a few others that I want to do before winter (too cold to work in the garage) and I MADE myself promise I wouldn't start any new ones before I finished these.

I think fall is so motivating! I was feeling really lazy about stuff and then I started seeing posts about fall and it got cooler for a couple days and I was reading a fall issue of Taste of Home and then I just got crazy with project lust! Poor Mr. Wonderful. He's in for a productive weekend! :0)

The NUMBERED Cottage

Whew!

It's been a long time! Long story short, I'm starting a small business, so projects and blogging (and lawn mowing as you will soon see) have been on hold. BUT I'm really excited about this post, because although the exterior of our house could use a lot of work, we did an upgrade this past month that really makes a big impact on our "curb appeal".

Behold: The "before" front of our house: (creepy stalkers and burglars note that we don't have anything of interest in our house, so ignore the house number). Note the sticker house numbers. For Christmas I asked for these FABULOUS house numbers. They can be found at Home Depot, but interestingly not at their website. It's like a wonderful insiders secret!

Mr. Wonderful did all of the work to put these up. I will tell you that he used some caulk-type stuff to secure the numbers, and then used the tape to hold them in place until it set. I got to enjoy the job of scraping off the ancient sticker numbers that were on our door frame. Let me tell you that Goo Gone did not really work on these suckers. Mostly just elbow grease and some scrapes in the paint on the metal door frame.

Much prettier! I love how modern and clean the numbers look. And much more readable. I would also love to paint the front steps and then paint the house number on the front steps too. Mr. Wonderful says we should worry about the exterior NEXT summer. He's probably right!

Also I changed out the flowers in my wreath to match the ones in the coffeepot on the front steps. Less cluttery that way, I think.

the Mama Bag

Woot! The sewing bug has bit again. And the venom is sweet.

I tried out another bag from Handmade Home by Amanda Blake Soule. This one is called the Mama Bag. That's right. I sewed myself a purse! Mr. Wonderful laughed at me because he thinks I have too many purses. I did buy myself a purse this summer at a rummage sale, but believe it or not, it's TOO big. It's so cavernous that I can never find what I need. I wanted to downsize. And I wanted something less...hippie-ish. Don't get me wrong, I love hippies! I just don't want to carry their purse all the time. :0)

I added some pleats to the front ala Gussy. Gussy makes me want to pleat and ruffle everything in sight.

Can I tell you that I was like a woman possessed during this project? I finished it in a day, using one whole 2 hour nap and probably another hour during the evening. I couldn't stop myself! I am so excited about how much better I'm getting at sewing! Next I want to try tackling patterns. Patterns are very intimidating to me. With their fragile nature and their tracing chalk. They are kind of like bobbins to me. Although I think I am slowly conquering the bobbin!

I think what I have learned from sewing is to just go for it. Yeah, maybe your idea won't work, but you can always tear it out and try it again. And I've learned to be a little more careful with my work. I think having a young baby I got in the habit of being happy if things just got done, and didn't worry about the quality of the job. So I took my time with this purse, and got a little nitpicky with it. It paid off!

Now get out there and sew!