How NOT to remodel (or build) your home

Being a first time homeowner is a challenge. Knowing what you want in a home that you are BUYING, I think, is a work in progress. There are the easy parts of the checklist: number of bedrooms & bathrooms, size of garage, gas vs. electric, approximate age & neighborhood.... but then there are other things.... things that you don't really know until you've actually been there, done that, and bought the t-shirt (metaphorically speaking). In other words, you gotta make a few mistakes, get your hands dirty, fix what you don't like (if possible) and make a new list for the future of what to look for in a home. Things that a trained and/or experienced eye know to look for. Some are obvious, some are more difficult (but still able) to spot...

The obvious:
-I now know that I don't want tiled countertops. Ever. Never. Not on your life. Please, if you are ever doing any type of countertop work DO NOT put tile on your counter. Promise me.
-I now know that I DO want a larger laundry room. Mine currently is basically the walk-through style, w/washer & dryer facing each other and you pass between them as you come into the kitchen from the garage. Basically, the only thing this does is keep you from having to stand in a cold garage to do your laundry. There is NOWHERE to put ANYTHING.
-I want a yard that I cannot spit across. I have a very wide yet narrow yard. Next one needs to be bigger.
-I don't want to have to remove any wallpaper anywhere.

The less obvious... the things you really have to look for:
-I don't want to need or even want to replace any major fixtures, cabinetry, etc. I don't mind walls that need to be painted. I don't mind if your taste in light fixtures isn't great, b/c my husband is pretty good at changing them for me. I don't want to need new cabinetry b/c the one in my bathroom has been taken over by mold, which I didn't know because you put down shelf liner on top of it. I also don't want to have to re-drywall the bathroom because of mold b/c you are too cheap and lazy to install wallpaper correctly. And I don't want to have no option in having my foundation repaired b/c you installed new windows after it was damaged thus rendering the new windows ready to break if we fix said foundation. (I could really go on but what's the point?)
-If you are the home builder, DO NOT put FAKE rock (that is actually cement and glazed to look like rock) around the fireplace. That's disgusting.

My husband and I are slowly trying to dig ourselves out from under this mess. Seeing as we have two young kiddos and a small amount of debt to get paid off, its taking a little while. A step at a time. I know that we will make it and I know that our home will be more beautiful for our hard (albeit slow) work. I know that every young couple is better off for learning the hard way, for not pouring themselves into more (expensive) house than they can manage, for coming by a beautiful home by the sweat of their brow so-to-speak. I just want things to be pretty. And nice. And safe. They don't need to be perfect, or expensive, or even absolutely the most trendy thing ever.

The most bitter pill to swallow is that there are some either stupid or dishonest people who think shortcuts are the right way to do things. They are willing to make things appear nice on the outside in order to get the home to sell, all the time the choices that they've made, I have to undo at double, triple, quadruple (etc.) the cost. It would have been so much more cost-effective to do it RIGHT the first time.

It truly is a slow learning curve.

Sigh.

a few little things i've been up to...

remember that whole "new years resolution" thing? well, i've managed to keep up with one of them... the one about sewing at least one thing a month. boy do i love having a sewing machine! (not to mention do i love you, dear reader, for not getting on my case about my current disdain towards capital letters, since we know they slow me down)...

but i digress...

i triple pink puffy heart my sewing machine!!!!!!!

(here we are on christmas morning)

so (or sew) first i made a quilt front as a gift for a woman here at work (sidenote: 3 women in my building have been diagnosed with breast cancer in the last 9 months. CHECK YOUR BOOBIES!)... when it is finished it will be a prayer quilt. another woman here at work is going to do the back and whatnot, and then individual threads will be pulled through where each of the corners meet up and the quilt will be taken around our building and indviduals will tie a knot in the thread while saying a prayer for her.

next, i made her some burp cloths (she is 8 months pregnant) as a shower gift (i think they turned out pretty cute)

and finally, another friend is having her 30th birthday this weekend and recently started as a counselor, so these throw pillows are to cheer up her drab and handmedown furniture office...

so... fun stuff!

Bringing the pretty

My mentor in home decor, the Nester, is doing a FANTASTIC series about simple ways to address each room in your home, helping make it more beautiful, more functional, more liveable, more you. The one on Master Bedrooms really got me thinking, especially when she followed up w/a how-to beautify your bedroom on a budget. I was a woman on a mission.

The ideas she presented spoke to me. My bedroom needs to be my sanctuary. And it doesn't all have to be about spending a ton of money, finding what's 'in style', or even having to buy a bunch of stuff.

My goal in this project was to NOT spend a ton of money (for my birthday I had been given a gift card to Hobby Lobby, a little bit of money, and my mom had purchased me some sewing supplies to go with my new sewing machine). Some projects were in the works! And really, I'm putting myself all out there for you... my bedroom was a mess. It was the dumping ground for piles of laundry, shoes all over the floor, bed unmade... frump frump frump! So cleaning up and cleaning out was going to be a major part of this project... and here's the kicker... I had 1 day to do the majority of the work. I had taken a day off and while I COULD certainly spend more time on it (more time, more money, more STUFF)... I wanted to make this easy and simple. I knew this could all be a starting point and my mantra at Hobby Lobby was: you don't have to get that now, wait and see what you REALLY want in the room...

so, I present to you the before:

...I know. Its bad. All I can say is, I'm sorry.

And the after:

ahhhh.... OK, yes its just a starting point, but seriously? SO much better than the before, right? I bought the fabric for the comforter and curtains at Hobby Lobby, along w/a solid color sheet set at Target. Because I was doing this w/o husband knowing AT ALL what I was up to, I knew I needed to err on the side of caution with my fabrics and and not do any big floral prints. I knew there would be room for added touches of femininity as time went on. I hope to provide more posts later on as I finish out with a few more details.

For more information about bringing the pretty, and to gather some inspiration for so many others who are joining the Nester's party, click the button below...

Personal disclaimer: due to the nature of my project and the horrid mess I was starting with, my personal project took more than 10 minutes.

It is time...

We are one of those families that doesn't have a large decorating budget for our home. Scratch that. We don't have any decorating budget for our home. I make or piece together a lot of the things that we use, or find things on sale or whatnot. Much of our furniture is that good ol' handmedown newlywed stuff. I'm totally ok with this. We are working hard to get out of debt which means that having a new couch is not a priority. But, that doesn't mean I want my house to look like trash. Like so many couples, we have left our bedroom as last. More often than not, it becomes the catchall for baskets of laundry that need to be put away, miscellaneous papers and books that husband hasn't sorted through, etc.

But I'm ready.

I'm ready to have a pretty bedroom. I know that I can't guarantee that it will always stay pretty and clean and neat. That just doesn't happen with a household that contains two parents who work full time outside the home and two toddler girls who haven't quite figured out how to always help with putting things away themselves (although older daughter IS learning).

We have new bedroom furniture, an anniversary gift to ourselves last year (yes I know it makes no sense to pick out nice pretty grown up bedroom furniture and not also buy nice pretty linens) and our walls are painted a really great shade of grey (that I love, but husband is getting tired of, although I'm certain if I can actually DECORATE the room he will love the shade again).

So I want to find something like this:

Its from anthropologie's Izak collection. The duvet is $200. Surely I can find something COMPARABLE (maybe not in quality, but in design) at a better price...

should I buy a plain comforter (the cheapest, plainest I can find) and attempt to make a duvet for it from fabric I can find at the fabric store?

should I buy a less cute print (not that I've found one) and try to pretty it up with other accessories in the room?

should I buy a solid color comforter and find some other accessories?

Goals or Resolutions

My online mommy group decided to do a list of goals/resolutions. I'm not sure which category my list falls under (I'm thinking goals)

either way, here's my list

Get back on track with our budget
Pay off our credit card and husband's student loan (that would leave only medical bills and mortgage for debt!)
Lose 20 (maybe 25) pounds
Complete one sewing project every month (did I tell you all I got a sewing machine for Christmas)
Buy husband a truck
Keep up with the house more
Get oldest daughter fully potty trained by the start of the summer

My garland... the hard way.

So, add me to the list of people who had to undergo much tragedy to achieve garland beauty (but not perfection!)...

The GOAL was to hang a shelf like the Nester's above my fireplace in order to have a faux mantle. Husband and I found out the hard way that our rock fireplace is in fact cement painted to look like rock. Lovely. Tacky. Blah. Not only that, the cement adamantly refuses to have anything hung from it for more than about 15 minutes. Fortunately/unfortunately I did not take a picture of the broken shelf (with garland beginnings still attached!) lying in a pile on the base of my fireplace. I just couldn't bear to do it, b/c it took a LOT of work to try to get the ding-dang thing up there. So, I waited a day to let the frustration and dust settle and compromised by repairing the shelf (in a very 'what would Nester do' sort of way... with my glue gun!) and hanging it above my couch. From there I adorned that puppy like there was no tomorrow and came up with this final product... (I'm posting a few pictures b/c some of them make the garland look better, others you can see the lights better)....

so, that's my garland story!

sneak preview

don't you want to see the rest of this?????

garland still to come

OK, with the busyness of trips to the ER, blown breakers to dryers, making arrangements for car purchases, not to mention a 'mantel' that just didn't want to go up without a WHOLE LOTTA work, I haven't garlanded up YET, but I WILL!!!!

THIS WEEKEND!

PROMISE!

Lest I always be too serious...

I'm trying to make this a short post.... let me just say that there is decorating planned. And one of my favorite things in the work is to go from having garland that looks like this:

to garland that looks like this:


(thanks Nester for the tutorial!)

(BTW, neither of these is my actual home, but the first does accurately represent what I've done in the past, and the second is what the Nester made that I plan to attempt to re-create!)

Halloween... my entryway

I have one of those very narrow entryways, although I am not complaining, because every other place we've lived doesn't even have a seperate entryway, the frontdoor would just open into the living room and it always drove me crazy. But I digress... some friends passed on a lovely little table that we've put there, we got a great little mirror w/pegs from Hobby Lobby (for like $15!) and the rest of the items are things I've gathered from around the house. Anywho, I wanted to dress up the entry a little for Halloween w/o having to go all fake cobwebs-door stick ons-screaming ghosts, know what I mean? So, I started on a few little projects...

the first I only have an after picture of (at the end of the post) but the inspiration was from Chris at Just a Girl. Its the crow perched on black bare branches in this post. (I couldn't find faux crow anywhere, but I did find a 3 pack of little white birds in the Christmas decor at my local dollar tree... nothing a little black spray paint couldn't fix, ya know since I had it out to do the branches anyway)

I already had a cute little ceramic pumpkin (not a jack-o-lantern thus I can leave it out until the end of November) and a few little faux gourds (they are small so I don't know if you can see them in the picture, but they ARE there).

Finally I made this...

I had this little 3-part frame that just wasn't really my style and didn't have a place (or person to regift it to) for it...

So I painted it black...

And got some orange paper and black foam letters... (sorry it was still wet, but I just couldn't wait to see how it would turn out!)

Final Halloween-y look for the entryway:

Oh, and in case anyone thinks I'm weird that I have a lightbulb perched upside down on top of that little box (which is where we store our spare keys... now you can break into my house and steal my car! ha... I DARE you to steal that junker!), it is actually a jar that was given to us at our Dave Ramsey FPU. It is filled w/pieces from our shredded credit cards. I like displaying it right there in our entryway. Its a nice reminder of how hard we we're working to be debt free and on our way to financial peace. If you haven't heard of the program, its definitely worth a look! We love it.

I'm such a mistreater

so I didn't have any bright ideas when the nester was doing her big mistreatment party... but last week a bright idea finally came to me! my youngest daughter's bedroom is kind of a temporary room. it is our hope when she's a little bigger that the girls will share oldest daughter's room, so despite husband's complaints, i've resisted painting the 'nursery'. so how do you incorporate grey walls into a nursery? well, we went with a ladybug theme, using some bedding and wall decor from target combined with red bumper and red gingham w/a few bright green accents. the curtains were a question for me because i don't like buying a whole bedding set and being completely matchy-matchy. i like for things to coordinate but not match, if that makes sense. so i bought some great fabric

and had my mom make some simple curtains.

accept i didn't really measure first

and i wasn't very happy with how it all turned out.

so i went to work revamping the curtains using a long sheer, some thumbtacks, some ribbon, and some binder clips (and yes that is really my supply list. i did not feel like going out to buy official decorating things, so this is what i had and it WORKED!)

after fluffing and tucking and pinning and binding (turns out you can take the silver prong off of the binder clip after you've fixed it into place, so on my black fabric you can BARELY see the binder clips... see:)

and came up with this

which means i am now officially a member of the Nester's mistreatment club... YAY!

what would you do?

I'm trying to enter the Nester's world of mistreatments. however, I don't want to spend a gazillion dollars to buy a bunch of fabric to cover the monstrosity of windows/sliding doors in my dining/living room area. What's a mom on a budget to do?

Let's see if I have any pictures of the window/door area in question....

so this is before we moved in and were in the midst of painting... so don't mind the mess... yes we still have those awful vertical blinds up because i don't know what to do!!!! they will likely stay up unless i can find super cute super thick super cheap fabric for my mistreatments, because this area faces west which makes it HOT in here w/o them closed (ha ha that sounded like Hot in Here take off my clothes)

this is oldest daughter and neice peering out those yucky blinds

this shows a pretty good shot of what the room looks like now except it was taken 2 christmases ago and its more focused on my mom and she's blinking... professional photographer i am not

Weekend plans... Maybe.

So here's how the weekend is going to shape up... Friday leave work and head to husband's home town for a family reunion (which takes place during the day Saturday). That evening we will be eating at the most fabulous Mexican restaurant, one I haven't been to in oh... probably 7 months... I can taste the HOMEMADE chips and guacamole right now! I can't remember if they sell beer/margaritas but if they do, I will totally be having one (or three) because that's what my week has been like. Saturday morning it will be out to breakfast at this totally cool quaint breakfast place and then taking the girls to see prairie dogs before the reunion. Sunday we will go to Church and probably have lunch with his family before heading home. (Cannot wait for this! Not that I won't have a good time at the reunion, but to be on the other side of it and at home and able to rest and do stuff I want to do is sounding really good)

So, Sunday evening/Monday & Tuesday (our daycare is closed all of next week- its a home daycare- so I'm watching the girls Tuesday) I plan to: finish painting a bookshelf that I MADE for oldest daughter. It is going to match a little desk that my dad built for her for Christmas. I also plan to paint my old rocking chair (which I gave her the previous Christmas) so that it will all match. Maybe. Maybe it needs to not match. Once I get the shelf finished I will see if the chair needs to match or not.

here she is sitting on it, Christmas morning... our first Christmas in our own Home!

My sister also gave me some of those little ledge-shelf-moulding thingys. Two of them that are an awful light oak color but I am painting them black. I've already painted the first one and it looks great but my spray paint ran out so the other one is still waiting. Maybe I'll be really cool and take a picture of the one that isn't painted and a picture of the one that is painted so that you all can come back and see them and oooh and ahhh over how fabulously I spray painted them and at how genius my decorating choice to paint them is/was. Maybe.

I've also decided to get to work (this will involve putting husband to work, so it will probably have to be on Sunday when he is home)on finally rearranging the living room. IF I post pictures of the 'after' (I won't post pictures of the 'before' because really its too horrendous to even admit to anonymously) you all have to promise not to laugh at how stained and horrid my couch is. Because, see, we are living frugally which means keeping this danged handmedown couch, and honestly, the Nester says I have to love my stained couch because its evidence that we live in our house. (well she put it more eloquently than that.) So... when we rearrange the living room I will be 1)hanging a really cool and funky quilt that my grandmother made on a wall (I tried to google and find an example of said quilt but alas, didn't find anything like it) and 2) trying to talk husband into 'letting' me paint this old door we have sitting in our garage in the way to hang as art. The Nester and another blog I can't remember right now did this and it is so cool. This is a plain (structurally) door so I will be doing it more like the other one. I think it is the blog on my list over there --> called silver circles. Anywho, hers was really cool because she painted it brown and then painted 1 Corinthians 13 in FRENCH on it in cream and then glazed it w/ gold! How cool is that?! I totally love the idea of putting words on my flat plain door, so I'll be brainstorming today and tomorrow for the perfect thing to write.

Speaking of which, isn't french just beautfiul? I could put my grocery list in french up and it would look LOVELY. I took 3 years of French in high school which culminated in me reading The Little Prince in french which was a TRIP! Did you know that Baobab in french is Baobab?! So, I guess not all things translate into something mysterious huh? Oh, and did you know when I googled Baobab to see how to spell it, that they are real things?! Here's a picture....

Isn't it interesting the way my 'to do' list seems so huge and totally not do-able? Kind of like the way tending the Baobabs in The Little Prince (or Le Petit Prince if you are cool like me ; ) seemed like too much? (isn't that the story line? at least for that part of the book?... yeah, I got a C my 3rd year of French which is why there wasn't a 4th year.)

Finally, my next post (Maybe.) will have lots of pictures. Yay!


Maybe.

my awful living room... HELP!

i'm so lost on how to arrange my furniture in my living room... so i'm seeking input. i 'drew' a rough layout of the room (architecturally speaking) and i'm including a few pictures of the room (note: the furniture in these pictues is NOT mine- i don't have that bad of taste! these are pictures from when we bought the house... oh, and for what its worth we have new carpet, paint, and light fixtures in there too)