Packing and Moving, Blech!

So I thought I'd be around more these past couple of months since I don't work over the summers, however at the beginning of June we found a new house that we liked in the next suburb over. We put in an offer, and it was accepted! We were all set to close on July 30, however it got pushed back and we are now anxiously awaiting a phone call with a new closing date (tomorrow perhaps?!) We've been fervently painting, staging, and fixing things around the old house, as well as packing and carrying things to the first floor to make the big moving day go easier and quicker. I'm a little worried about moving in 90 degree heat and a million percent humidity. That is seriously going to suck.

I've also been out thrifting buying things both for the new house and things to stage the old house. I watch all those HGTV shows like "Designed to Sell," "Unsellables," and "Get it Sold," not to mention "House Hunters," "My First Place," "Property Virgins," etc. I know wall color should be warm and neutral. My red dining room wall probably isn't cutting it. Neither was the country wallpaper borders all over the house. Hubby and I got to work removing all the borders and repainting. Of course, paint can get expensive, and so I had a plan. We went around to just about every Lowes, Home Depot, and Walmart in the city and gathered up various "Ooops" paints. In large five gallon buckets, we mixed various tans, browns, yellows, and creams and actually came up with a B.E.A.U.T.I.F.U.L. shade of butterscotch. We had ten gallons of it for about fifty or sixty bucks. We also bought some blues and some greens to mix. I found a wonderful shade of turquoise for the laundry room at the new house. I'll almost want to do laundry with a turquoise laundry room :)

I found some window treatments at the thrift store that I fell in love with. (Photos to come later once we get all these boxes out of here). We also took a trip to IKEA and found packs of two panels of sheers for five bucks! I bought three packs! They also had a duvet cover with matching pillow cases for five bucks! Don't you just L.O.V.E. IKEA?! While at IKEA we also bought some contemporary end tables for ten dollars apiece, and an awesome entertainment center for $220. That was a bit of a splurge, but we love it :)

The little one is waking up, so I better go tend to him. Hopefully the next time you hear from me, I'll be moved into a new house!

Son. One. Fun. Done.

I have a son.
My son is one.
I love my little son who's one.
We had a party and had some fun.
But now the fun is over and done!


Hand-me-down dress shirt, 30c thrifted tie, and 50c thrifted black dress pants. Love it!

The shirt and tie came off, and the clearance bib went on.

Making my fish face.

I saved money by making his cake (in a little thrifted cake pan I might add!) The candle has been sitting around for ages. I actually bought it for T-1's son when he was turning one, and I do believe he's five now. We never did use it, and so I figured we'd use it for Joel. Too bad I broke the foot off and was trying to melt him back together. It worked. Kind of.

Thrifted sippy cup for 19c!

Clearance napkins :) I paid full price for the cupcake liners though (75c I think). Boo!

Clearance party hat from either Joanns or Michaels. It's made of foam, so it's the kind you keep and reuse! I originally bought it thinking it would make a cute wizard hat for the dress up bin.

A thrifted number one (19c) on a quilt I made from scraps. I do love me some scraps!

Speaking of scraps, I made that banner too. My family oohed and ahhed over it. Well, not really. They're not the crafty types. They were like, "I would have just bought one at the store."

Cupcakes with junk mail security envelope flags on a thrifted blue tablecloth.

90c thrifted mobile, new in package :)

$1 thrifted Gap 12-24 months winter hat, still new with tags!! I gave it to him as one of his birthday gifts. I think it's a little big :)

Thrifted balloons. A brand spankin' new pack of 72 balloons for 90c. I don't know how much balloons cost, so I hope this was a good deal.

Thrifted loot bags, new in package. 59c I think. I sent people home with cupcakes :)

Five hard plastic signs, all thrifted, new in package, for 90c. These are very durable and can even be used outdoors with metal sign stakes.

Happy Birthday, little stinkpot! Here's to 99 more :)

Bathroom Update, Part Deux

I don't have much time because I'm squeezing this blog entry in before heading over to the in-laws' place to go swimming. I took some photos and just wanted to share! Sorry the photos are pretty crappy... lighting was bad!

Brushed Nickel finish

I'm a medicine cabinet in disguise (and it only cost me $14 plus tax!) Sure beats these prices

Once again, bad lighting... the brown is actually quite a bit darker than the photo shows. It doesn't look all that great in the photo, but in real life it looks nicer. I like the handles!


This isn't installed yet. This is a photo of the box :)

If My Blog was a College Student...

... then she'd be able to drink adult beverages now! She has reached the almighty 21 followers! Wow. When I started this blog, I didn't really think anyone would give a hoot about what I have to say. It blows my mind that there's people out there who aren't my relatives who actually come to my blog and read it. (Actually, not even my family reads it except occasionally my husband, and even then I have to beat him with a club and threaten to serve liver and onions for supper before he begrudgingly visits my site).

Okay, I'm kidding about the liver and onions part

In other news, I got back from vacation last weekend. We took a trip down to Chattanooga, Tennessee and visited Rock City, Ruby Falls, the Incline Railway, the Chattanooga Choo Choo, took a train ride, swam in the hotel pool, and experienced country's longest yard sale. I was very disappointed in the Rte 127 yard sale as I thought prices were too high. If I wanted to pay antique store prices, then I would head on down to the local antique mall. I didn't buy a single thing *gasp* You know it's bad when I walk away empty handed!

Since I've been home, I've actually had to do some work. I was glad to get all my school stuff out of the house and shed and back to school where it belongs. We actually had to take two carloads over to the school. I'm all moved in now but still have a lot of work to do in the next week. The fun part about getting ready for the upcoming school year is going clothes shopping. I got a $10 off card from Kohls, so I headed on over today. I spent $13 out of pocket (and used up about ten dollars from a gift card), but I saved $141 by shopping on clearance! For my thirteen dollars, I got four short sleeved shirts and one mid-sleeve shirt for work, and a toddler t-shirt and two baby outfits to give as Christmas gifts. Not bad for $13, eh?

But what's been taking up the majority of my time would have to be the bathroom. Before we left for vacation, I made the mistake of excitedly ripped off the wallpaper border in the upstairs bathroom. I then took down all the pictures hanging on the wall and patched the holes. I bought a gallon of tan "oops" paint at the Home Depot and have plans to repaint the walls. But was this good enough? Noooooooo. I wanted a new light fixture and faucet. So we bought those for $50 and $92 and had my father-in-law over for the install. I also hated the el cheapo medicine cabinet door, so I took it off its hinges and replaced it with a $14 picture frame. (Photos will come later, I promise).

But do you think those changes were enough satisfy me? No, of course not. I also bought a new mirror from Walmart for $35 and painted the vanity a dark brown color. But what about the knobs, you ask? I bought some new, sleek contemporary ones for $5 each at Lowes. They look sharp if I do say so myself!

Jason pointed out that I had brown kitchen cabinets, and I painted them white. I had a white vanity in the bathroom and just painted it brown...

At this point, I decided what the hell. We might as well rip out the tile flooring and tub surround and put in some tile that I actually like. I found some 12x12 tiles at Lowes for 40-some cents apiece but they actually rung up for eight cents apiece! The guy in the flooring department practically called every store in Ohio to see if he could find me any more of those tiles. I ended up with 29. That is not enough to cover the whole floor, so I found a 6x6 tile that looks good with it, and we'll have a cool pattern laid. We're also planning on having our bathtub refinished for less than $300, and we bought a new tub faucet for $118.

We have five different handymen coming to the house for free estimates over the next several days. Keep your fingers crossed that the tile work won't be too expensive!!

Now if you'll excuse me, my blog and I are going to go have a glass of wine and retire for the evening :)

I didn't go to BlogHer

I think I'm the only blogger in the US that didn't make the trek to the Windy City last weekend. Instead of mingling with blog-stars and battling what sounds like fierce, greedy crowds, I stayed home this weekend. Here's ten things I did that I could not have done if I went to Chicago.

10. Cleaned out the basement closet and the pantry. I was inspired by a fellow blogger (can't remember who, so if it was you who just blogged about it the other day, let me know so I can give credit where credit is due).
9. Discovered I have five jars of pickles in the pantry. I can't even blame it on the pregnancy. I never craved pickles.
8. Took craploads of stuff out to the shed for a future garage sale. (And in the future, I'll probably go through it again, decide that I really do need this stuff, and bring it back into the house).
7. Sewed Joel a bean bag chair, filled with my stuffed animals rather than normal bean bag stuffing.
6. Tore off a piece of wallpaper border in the nursery, which led to a full-scale redo.
5. Sewed window treatments, painted stripes on the nursery walls, repainted a toy box, and painted a book shelf for the nursery. (I just painted that toy box green a couple months ago and now decided that it really should be brown).
4. Continued with my de-wallpaper-borderizing in the upstairs bathroom. Now I'll have to paint that room too. While I'm at it, I will go ahead and repaint our bedroom as well. Pfew.
3. Make tons and tons of Beef Vegetable Soup, froze it, and will bring it with us to Tennessee for free meals in the hotel. Also made and froze baby food green beans, carrots, and sweet peas for the little one.
2. Went to visit my mom's dad and stepmom because they were having a ginormous garage sale. Came home with lots of free stuff, including a blue and white platter, plastic fruit for Joel's toy kitchen, tons of vintage trims, rick rack, seam binding, and bias tape, some children's books, and "Cottage Style" for my reading pleasure. Will blog about that later.
1. Spent time with my family and got spit up on by my baby boy a million times.

What did you do last weekend?

Nursery Walls Redo

My son is five months old. I'm just now getting around to removing the wallpaper border and painting the nursery.

It's not really worth making it all cutesy since he will outgrow that kind of decor lickety split. Instead, here is the color scheme I have come up with. I've picked this color scheme because the tan and the green were already on the walls when I moved in eight years ago. Yes, I'm lazy. All I want to do is paint the area where the border was.

Painting stripes. Good times. I painted the brown stripe first (color chosen because I already had a quart of it in the basement). Of course, the color ran under the tape. Argh. And to make matters worse, the painters tape pulled up some of the green and tan original paint in several spots.

Plan B: Add blue stripes above and below the brown. Why blue? Because I had some dark blue paint, and I had leftover white paint from the kitchen cabinets. Dark blue plus white equals a nice light blue.

I went out and bought a different painters tape. This one is low adhesion and is rated to go over paint that isn't cured yet. We'll see how that goes. Keep your fingers crossed.

Also this time I am going to paint a clear coat under the blue. This way, the clear coat creates a bond with the tape so that the blue will not be able to seep underneath. I learned that little trick from Danielle Hirsch on HGTV. She's the bomb diggety painter.

I'll keep you posted!

Happy Earth Day, my Peeps!

So did you do anything green today? I watched plenty of HGTV that was very green-oriented. That made me happy :)

"What?!" you ask. "What were you doing watching TV when you have a kitchen to redo?!" Well my friends, it is almost done :) And besides, when Joel is crying all I can do is sit on the couch and hold him (and have HGTV on in the background, of course).

So while watching HGTV, I discovered countertops made of recycled paper. How cool is that? I looked it up online and found this site. You should totally check it out. The first countertop on that website is made from recycled green glass. I totally love it, and want it! Too bad it's expensive.

So why am I now looking into countertops? Isn't painting the cabinets painful enough?

You all know from the other day that I was debating between white and blue for the cabinets. I decided to go with a very light blue that looked almost white so that it would look good against the white appliances and the beige colored countertops. (Yes, I know what you're thinking... how awful is it that the previous homeowner mixed white and beige?)

Now that the paint is up on the cabinets (for the most part), I can definitely see that the "blue" paint is not blue at all. It looks terrible up against the beige countertops. And I also discovered that the dishwasher is beige! I've lived here for seven years, and I always thought it was white. Geesh. Up against the stark white cabinets, the dishwasher looks very dirty. *Sigh*

If I have a job next year, I'd replace the countertops in a heartbeat. (I so, so, so want those green glass countertops!!!!) If not, I will have to live with it. Either that or go back to the store and get a darker blue paint I guess.

But who has the energy for repainting the cabinets? Not this gal!

Maybe I could just get some appliance paint and give the dishwasher a facelift. Or maybe I should just replace it since the house is twenty years old, and the dishwasher is most likely original to the house. We already replaced the fridge, and the previous homeowner had replaced the oven.

Speaking of the oven... they had replaced it but not the range hood, so the range hood was still beige (and really nasty at that). A couple years ago at a flea market, I totally lucked out and found the exact same model of range hood but in white for five or ten bucks. It sat around in my basement, not installing itself, for a long time until my father-in-law installed it last year. Woohoo! What a find :)

On another happy note, I do really like the new drawer pulls, and how they pop against the white cabinets :) Photos will come soon, I promise!

What Have I Done?

I am insane. Insane, I tell you. I went to Lowes and bought 20 new drawer pulls for the kitchen cabinets. They look very sleek and contemporary... not usually my style, but I've been watching so much HGTV that I'm convinced my house will never sell with its current "country" decor. I do like the knobs though, and they were only 97c apiece so I got them.

Keep in mind I'm throwing a wedding shower in a week. One Week. And it's at my house.

So I told my husband to put the baby down to bed and get ready to help me unload the kitchen cabinets because I'm going to wash them down, sand them, prime them, and paint them (two coats).

Yes, I have gone completely, utterly insane.

We now have food, glasses, plates, silverware, pots, pans, vases, cookbooks, and a heap of other things piled in the dining room and living room. My husband doesn't know it yet because he went to bed before I did, but I also emptied the entire cabinet of plastic containers into the playpen. It filled up the entire playpen. I need to get rid of some of this crap.

The good news is our local Volunteers of America is in desperate need of donations because they had a mercury spill the other day and had to throw away everything in the store (even the racks). Wait, nevermind. I can't believe I just called that "good news." Ugh. I cringe thinking of all that going to the landfill. And it wasn't one of those little stores either; it was a really big one.

Anyway...

I forgot to mention that I still am not done cleaning the grout on the bathroom floor (though thankfully the shower is done so we are able to shower at home again).

Pray for me this week. And don't expect to hear from me much for the next seven days. I will be busily tearing apart my kitchen and putting it back together.

Chickening out

I'm worried that if I were to paint my kitchen cabinets blue, I would turn off potential buyers when we put our house on the market in a few years. I would hate to paint them blue for my taste, but then turn around and paint them white a few years later so that the house would sell easier. *Sigh* I think I'll just go with white cabinets. Not that that's a bad thing of course! I absolutely love white painted furniture. I'm quite shabby chic :)

Here's some inspiration.

Kitchen Cabinet Makeover

My mom hates painted wood. We've gone round and round through the past decade about it, since I love white furniture. She loves oak.

I hate oak.

If I have to have the real wood finish showing through, I like cherry or maple pretty well, and even a rustic pine is nice. But oak is just fugly.

I have wanted to paint my kitchen cupboards since moving into this house seven years ago, but was worried that if I did, I would never hear the end of it. The other day, she gave me the green light. She said that my house is twenty years old, and so I could paint the cabinets to give them a bit of an update. Woot, woot! I am so excited.

I am thinking of having a painting party, and y'all are invited. And by that I mean, how about you come over and clean and paint my cabinets?

Here's some pictures of kitchens I like. I always assumed I would go with a creamy white, but lately I've been thinking I'd like blue cabinets. My appliances are white, and the walls are faux finished with a tuscan plaster effect. I just can't decide on the paint color. What do you think?