Quick and Easy

Our "entertainment center" is a bookshelf type table from Ikea. We got it so long ago that they don't even sell it now. :/


Its kind of like this though:

Except all the squares are even instead of small on top. You get the point. 

Anyway, if you can tell from that, its an open back and that means when we hook up all our tv and dvd and surround sound and all that junk, there's a lot of wires going on.

Previously my solution was to tape all the wires going down the back along one of the shelf pieces so you hopefully couldn't see it. I got a lot of the wires that way, but there were still a few that just couldn't be tamed:

                                                                     See?! So annoying. 

It was making me kind of crazy and one day an idea just popped right into my wittle head! I ran out to the store and bought some poster board and a gold paint pen and came home and got to work! I used three full poster boards (luckily, standing tall side, they fit exactly into the spot! I didn't measure because I like to wing things and hope they work out.) plus one little strip of a fourth poster. (Oh, and by poster board, I don't mean thick foam board. I mean a measly flimsy piece of paper thats big--I'm cheap.) And I used up one whole paint pen and then about half of another. 

So I just grabbed one of my kids old cups and started making polka dots. I didn't measure them out perfectly, I just eyeballed it. I didn't think it would really matter if they were perfect, especially since I have decorations in the cubbies that would break up the pattern anyway. I suppose if you're a really big perfectionist it might bother you, so do this according to how well you'll be able to sleep at night. :)

This is the cup I used--little mermaid!

Are you ready for the after!?

I super love it, its amazing how much interest and fun it creates!

Here's a few different shots to give you a better look, enjoy!

                                                         (haha crooked pictures...oops!)

Instead of having to deal with ugly wires OR buying a whole new stand, this project cost me maybe $5-10. What do you think, do you have something you can do this on? :)

linking up here: Tatertots and Jello

Before/After

My husband was in Korea for two weeks in March, and I kind of went in lock down mode. :) I actually made a list of a bunch of projects to do to keep myself busy but I was torn between doing them and curling up in a ball and not getting out of bed all day. ;)

I thought it would be fun though to post some before and after pictures so far of what we've gotten done, since I've been so horrible about actually blogging the projects!

The before pictures are from the MLS listing, so the furniture is from the old owners, etc.


This is the front room, the door on the left side is the front door.
Living room:

This is the same room, just from the view of the front door. This is what you see when you first walk in:

This is one side of the kitchen, not a real big difference I just painted over the red. I wish the pictures did the old color justice, it was a very deep red almost purple wine colored. And very ugly. :)

This is the dining room:

And this is the half bath:

There weren't a ton of MLS pictures, so I can't do a before and after on everything, but its still kind of fun to see! :)

Some of This and Some of That

No real tutorial posts, but I have been doing a bunch of projects in the house. Some of the things I've done:

*Painted the living room

*installed a little shelf 3/4 of the way up the wall (also in the living room)

*painted a chevron type wall (in the living room as well)

*got new beds in the girls room

*hung pictures in the living room 

*painted an old clock my mom gave me 

*painted an old frame and added a saying inside

Next up, I'm painting a chalkboard wall in my family room and I need to paint over these horrible deep red/wine colored walls in my kitchen! Trying to get the oomph to do it but I cut my pointer finger up last night making dinner and not really feeling it! Boo. Just over two weeks ago I also tripped down our stairs and beat my foot up pretty good. Do you think these are signs I need to take it easy?? Doesn't matter if they are, I declared to my husband that February was going to be "PROJECT MONTH" and we were going to get stuff done!! ;)

Although I feel good about what we've done so far, I really want to get all the boxes unpacked and it just feels impossible sometimes! I'm going to let you guys in on a little secret (I'm pretending like I have any followers or that anyone reads this at all, it makes me feel better): sometimes I get so sick of craft blogs because the houses are huge and beautiful and have great details and it seems like the bloggers must have an endless supply of money because holy crap, how do they pay for all these projects?!?!

So I'm hoping you can come on a little journey with me. I have a normal house. It was built in the 80's. It has ugly blue carpet upstairs and ugly gray burber carpet downstairs. Its not big at all and it doesn't have a ton of architectural details. Its pretty much just small square rooms and thats it. We don't have a ton of extra cash laying around and so I have to get pretty freaking creative about how to do stuff. And also, the Goodwills around here suck. I mean seriously, they suck. They are ridiculously overpriced and they pretty much have no great crap. I miss Utah's thrift stores like you wouldn't believe. So, if you want to come along with me and see what its like to have to fix up an old ugly house, that maybe is closer looking to yours. I would love that. :)

I'm done with feeling inferior to other crafty type bloggers and I'm not going to compare my house to their's any more, I'm just going to keep plugging away and keep track of what I've done here and hopefully I can help other people in the same boat as me.

And now, for some pictures! 

(please excuse sideways pictures and empty frames, I'm still not done working on it!) ;)

("I crave a love so deep the ocean would be jealous")

If you want any information or tutorials on anything in here, just let me know! Hopefully in February I'll have a lot of stuff to share! 

My Favorite Christmas Decorations

I love Christmas decorations! I try really hard to have sentimental decorations, ones I've had for years and most of my tree ornaments are ones my mom made when we were babies or my great grandma crocheted! I love these because Christmas for me is all about traditions, so to use decorations that mean something to me is the best! Some of my favorite things this year:

I ALWAYS love seeing everyone's cards and displaying them somewhere we can see them all the time!

A live wreath is awesome, smells so good! And I loved hanging these bells on the doorknob, and hearing them jingle every time the door opened and closed! So merry!

I've had this Christmas village since before I got married, it goes up every year.

My mom collects nativities and has some amazing ones, she found this one and gave it to me. I love that it has a little drummer boy, so cute!

And the reason I love Christmas the most: making it special for the kids! haha

The Painting of The Girls' Room

What an adventure its been trying to get this house put together! It seems the same problem keeps happening: I think a project will only take so long, and I really should just double it. ;)

I've been working on the girls room for a while now and have run into a few hiccups. First up, I decided not to prime over the light turquoise walls. My thinking was that the white paint had covered the darker turquoise in the boys room, and since I was doing yellow, it would cover easier right??

Wrong.

What really happened was that it took four coats and the entire gallon of paint to cover three walls (basically two because one wall is just around the closet, not hardly any wall to cover). I would start painting and it would look like it was covering so well and as it started to dry, the turquoise and the yellow would blend into a weird greenish yellow. :/

Finally I went out and bought another gallon of paint, this time a lighter yellow. I had picked out a sort of mustardy yellow and I wasn't loving it. This time I got more of a butter yellow and I think its perfect!


Here's the before, and aaallll that minty color. Once again, the old owners decided to paint EVERYTHING, including the baseboards, the windowsill, inside the closet, even the closet ceiling! What fun they were!! *strong sarcasm here*

Here's the start of the yellow:

Here's after the new yellow gets going:

The last wall I wanted to do something fun for, and decided on stripes. So I got smart and used primer for that one! haha Then I did a coat of regular white and then I started measuring. I wanted the wall split up in three sections, so I measured the wall, did the math and made three vertical lines. Then I measured the height of the wall and split up how wide I wanted my stripes to be. I decided on three inch stripes, so I made little tick marks every three inches all the way up the lines I originally did.

Then I started taping, I just laid one end of the tape on a mark, pulled it tight and lined it up with the mark at the other end, then pushed it all down flat (if that makes sense?). The lines are definitely not perfectly straight but I don't think its noticeable at all. Especially once there's furniture and pictures on the wall it will be even less.

 (this is where I ran out of tape.) (the little white lines are where my tape isn't quite wide enough to go the full three inches, why do they make tape 1.4 inches wide? Thats dumb.)

Here's the gray going on. Did two coats of that.

And here it is with the tape all off:

See I don't think its that easy to tell if any lines aren't perfectly straight! But I think it looks so fun! What do you think? Would you take on a stripe wall?

 Can't wait to show you the finished room! Yay!