Letting the Geek Out

So little sister, there's something you might not know about me. Oh, wait, you totally know it. I'm a huge geek. I'm not just saying that to be cool, because geek is chic now. I'm the quiet book nerdy type of geek, with a little video gamer/comic book nerd/board gamer thrown in. I haven't had much time to read lately, so I've had to geek it up in other manners (ie. magic the gathering).

Luckily I have an awesome husband who is just as geeky as me (sometimes more so). So when I was trying to figure out what to do with the gross blind in our living room and he suggested we paint a Super Mario Brothers mural on it, well, I fell in love with him all over again. What can I say, I <3 Super Mario.

We still had my friend's projector so for a couple of nights after Z went to bed, we painted our ugly blind and made it purdy.

Let me tell you, it sounds all fun and it looks awesome now, but holy cripes it took so much more paint than I was expecting. This is probably because we have the honey comb blinds in the living room and the paint just went right through the layers. Some got on the windows. Yay for putty knives! We made a smart decision and put two coats of primer on before we started painting with our acrylics. Otherwise we would have spent a paycheck or two on paint.

All in all it turned out really cute. And it fit in with our crazy cat shelf of a wall. Basically we're working towards turning our living room into a world from Super Mario Brothers. We may just dress the cats up as Mario and Luigi and have them run some levels.... Or not. Or yes. :)

So the blind is part one of our grown up playroom. Stay tuned for part two! (Hint: it'll be a couple of months, so don't hold your breath. We're working on getting supplies.) 

DIY Kitchen Cubby Bar

I know, I know this post has been a long time coming.

I finished the kitchen bar thing in time for our house warming party. Just barely. I had to go out and buy a hand saw and cut about a quarter of an inch off the end the night before because it was too long. Mike said "measure twice, cut once." Well I measured about 4 times. And I watched the Home Depot guy measure a couple of times too. Apparently all that measuring was just not enough.

So before I show you the awesome pictures, a little back story.

I found this awesome minimalist desk on Pinterest one of the first days after I signed up and I fell in love. It was simple and functional and awesome. And we had just put a bid on our new place, which had a little space for a kitchen table. But we don't have a kitchen table. We do, however, have two bar stools. So I put two and two together and decided that this desk would be perfect in the kitchen. A little counter to put the bar stools under. As a bonus, it would be a test run for the bar that we're thinking of putting in in that space.

I liked the minimalist idea, but I wanted to give it a more kitchen-y feel and less of a desk feel. So I switched it up a bit. I used 1"x10" boards for the bottom and the sides (and the cubby hole sides) and a 2"x12" board for the top.

I had a ton of fun (can you read my sarcasm) sanding them down by hand, and I'm super picky, so I rounded the edges out a bit to give it a more home-y feel (and also as a bit of protection for the Z as she toddles around.).

Then I drilled pilot holes on the top and bottom where the ends were and also for the cubby separators. I put wood glue on both ends of each side and screwed right through it to strengthen the bond. In hindsight, I should have just used wood glue for the separators as I ended up with screws in the middle of the bar that weren't pretty. Just used a little bit of wood filler over them as camo and poof! Almost gone.

I wiped it down with paint thinner to get all the dust off and let it dry. Then I used Minwax pre-stain wood conditioner to get it ready for staining. (I have to say that I would have skipped that step, but we got a "welcome to the neighborhood" coupon from Ace for $10 off, so I thought, what the hell.) After letting it dry, again (you will see a pattern forming here), I stained it with Minwax Wood Finish in Puritan Pine. Insert more drying (the drying was the suckiest part of this project), and I sealed it with 3 coats of Minwax Polycrylic (more drying between coats).

Sidebar comment: Jeeze, you'd think that I'm getting paid by Minwax, but I'm not. I just heard good things about their products when I was researching how to stain and seal the bar.

I hung it on the wall using some cabinet cleats I found at Home Depot (something like this, but a stronger version rated for 200 lbs. Also I used two of them.).  I screwed them into the studs and used wall anchors -- the good kind and ones that are rated for 75 lbs. The whole bar doesn't way 75 lbs, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

Ok, in that short description I left out the part where it didn't fit when I tried to put it on the wall and I had to take apart one end and saw off some and then reassemble it. That part is like the mistakes that Mom use to make in her cross stitching. :)

So yeah. That was the whole week long process. I wanted to take pictures of the process, but I did it all in our garage space and I kept forgetting to bring the camera down. So you'll just have to imagine. Or use the photos from the original post I used as inspiration. Those are pretty good.

In any case, here's what the kitchen looked like before:

And with our awesome addition:

Oh yeah, we painted the walls as well. After tearing down the wallpaper. Actually -- credit where credit is due -- the Dads attacked the wallpaper, skimmed, and painted the walls. And they did an amazing job. 

And the actual bar:

 I love the cubby holes and can't wait to find bins that will fit in them. And that corner is totally going to become my desk area for all the bills and paperwork that comes in. I've already got an in and out box up there (tutorial coming soon) and I'm going to have letter bins for Mike, Z, and I as well.

So slowly the kitchen is coming together. Can't wait to get all the ideas out of my head and into the real world.

Tick Tock

So I'm a clock fanatic. We have wall clocks in every room of our house. (Wait, let me think.... I need a new one for the kitchen. The old one didn't fit the new decorating scheme and is now in the office. And I don't have any in the bathrooms. But almost every room in the place has a clock.) I didn't use to be this way, but with Z having to be at day care and me having to go in to work in the afternoon instead of the morning, I started losing track of time (and my cell phone). It became easier to just look at the wall and see what time it is no matter where you are.

It helped that I had a clock that I absconded with when I moved from Cali. I think that was the first wall clock I had and the rest of them I've collected over the past couple of years. Every time I think about getting rid of the original clock I find a new place to put it. And now, I get to give it a second life (or third, or fourth life. I haven't really been keeping track.)...

In it's old incarnation it fit in perfectly with Z's old room. (Remember those striped bins? Perfect, right?) Well, now the Z's room is purple (as are the bins). And really, I'm not going to have a green and blue room again any time soon. So what to do? Paint it! I love painting things. I'm so glad we have a paint closet in storage, because we have so much paint now. Love it!

I designed and printed up some new numbers (free printables!). Sanded down the face of the clock a bit, and then painted it purple with the left over paint from Z's room. I marked where the numbers were on the side edges and kind of guesstimated putting the new ones on based on the marks. The plain purple with the numbers was kind of boring, so I reached into my ginormous Sharpie box and added some curly cues. Cover the whole thing with Mod Podge to seal it and hang it up.

And now the Z has a clock that fits right in with her decor! I think it's the only clock in the house that doesn't tick, so I don't have to worry about it bugging her when she goes to sleep. (Like the one in our room does to me. Thank goodness for earplugs!)

What to do WIth a Pile of Jeans and Pillow Forms

Since you didn't get a chance to post this week, I'm going to do some sharing with my post. Because I couldn't have finished this project without you. (Ok, maybe I could have. But I'm lazy and didn't want to go to the store. And you're awesome and sent me what I needed.)

The other day I was trying to simplify our life by getting rid of stuff we don't use and I stumbled upon...

Pillow forms and jeans! I had a ton of pillow forms and jeans that were just sitting in under the bed boxes. What a waste, both of space and function. Since I knew Z's room was going to be awesome and I know how much she loves flopping on the husband pillow we have, I thought I'd create the perfect reading nook with jean pillows for her.

Lucky for Z, I love weird jeans. And since I love them so much I can't help keep them even after they don't fit any more. I have had some of these since high school! (Flare much?) One pair had lace up sides. I kept the sides because I knew they'd be awesome for something, and poof! Lace up jean pillow! Thank you so much for the ribbon, it is perfect! We really are doing some long distance crafting!

Really the ribbon was perfect, and perfect timing too. I tried some other ribbon I had and it didn't work. So that pillow was just sitting around waiting to get done while I lazily ignored it and watched Castle. :)

The pillows finish up her nook perfectly. I'll do another post on the rest of her nook soon, I just wanted to get this one done. She loves sticking chalk and magnets in the pocket. She grabs books (well I grab them for her, they're kind of high up as she kept pulling them off the shelves at the old place.) and then sits down and leans back on her pillows to read!

Holy Healthy Eating, Batman!

Ok, so I'm doing this happiness project with some of the girls from work. (Sorry for the shameless plug, actually, no I'm not. I love where I work!) I think I told you to read the book The Happiness Project by Gretchen Rubin way back when we visited in October last year. I think you were a bit busy, so I guess you can be off the hook for not reading it yet. But I totally think you should. And then you should start your own happiness project, because it is... well not really life changing, but it is empowering. And it's making me get off my butt and be productive.

Anyways, the idea is that you set aside one thing to remember or change or work on each month. This month my thing is to take better care of myself. You know how I eat (or rather how I don't eat). I know that Z's still pretty young, but I'm afraid of her picking up her eating habits from me. So I decided that we're going to start having family dinners. Which Mom made seem really easy to do. I don't know how she did it. I know that we always had a fridge full of food, but until now I couldn't understand how she did it. Our fridge is always just the bare minimum of stuff. Anyways I was perusing Pinterest, like you do. And I came across a menu planner someone made. A bell went off in my head and I realized that if we planned dinners out for the week and just went shopping for that stuff then we'd be able to eat better. (You don't want to know how we use to shop.)

So I made one up for us.

I took a piece of foam board that I've had lying around our home forever and covered in scrapbook paper. The days of the week go down the middle, the left side is for main dishes and the right side is for sides. I used velcro to attach them to the board (the rrrrrrip is so satisfying!)

 I like being able to change up the meals by mixing different sides with different main dishes. Also we have some really simple main dishes - like "Chicken Breast." But that gives us more room to play with what we want to do and allows us to change menus without having to make a bajillion new cards. I also made up two fill-in-the-blank cards, one for main dishes and one for side dishes. I covered them with clear packing tape and I can write on them with dry erase marker. That way we can test out new dishes without having to make new cards for them. (See the main dish for Saturday?)

We had an unused recipe box, which is perfect for storing all the unused cards. And since I had so much of the navy card stock left, I cut it up and store it in the back of the box as well. Now if I want to add new cards, I just need to print them up and glue them to the card stock.

Of course I had to make the recipe box match the menu planner, I couldn't just let it be boring brown.

Yay for spray adhesive. I know you're not a big fan of it. But it made the recipe box covering so easy. I just cut out the pieces of scrapbook paper then sprayed them and stuck them on the box. *Note: Don't be lazy - make sure you have a drop cloth or newspaper or something under the box. I didn't and ended up with a sticky kitchen floor for a few days. 

So yeah, I had fish tonight for dinner. I still don't like it, but I ate it. I like to think that Mom would be proud. She'd probably also say something along the lines of "About damn time." :)

(I would like to apologize for not having step by step photos, but I'm working on doing it better in future posts... like way in the future. The next couple of projects are lacking in the step by step photos as well. In my defense, they're pretty easy projects and the step by step photos would be boring.) (And now I have the Step by Step theme song stuck in my head... Step by step, day by day. A fresh start over, a different hand to play....)

Simple Turned Special

I always see these little signs in stores. You know the ones, the ones that you'd expect to find in little coffee shops. And you always look at them thinking "I can't put that in my house, I've never been there."


Well, now I can actually say "I have been there." And it was the most wonderful place in the world.

My hubby and I fell in love with Paris on our honeymoon. I would have to say that we both enjoyed it most of the 6 European destinations we plowed through in 2 weeks (yeah- do the math - we plowed through). Its the one where we had the best meal, duck at Le Petite Canard, and had our first Creme Brulee. We experienced art through architecture and history. Ahh, to be back in Paris....

I finally felt I had the right to purchase this decorative piece.

But see, I have a thing.... I like to make things my own. Since no 2 people are alike, we should all make our things unique. It was my wonderful hubby that had the idea of turning this into a photo holder.


We hot glued little clothespins (found at your local craft store) that we painted black (to match the letters of course) to the back of a few letters, to allow for photo options later. With a photo of us from our wedding, we now had a piece that brought together our wedding and our honeymoon.

Now, we will always have Paris.

Giving Tree

I'm stealing unsecured internet! (This problem will hopefully be solved by Tuesday. Fingers crossed!) I probably shouldn't be logging in to things to protect my passwords, but I just can't help myself, Z's room is almost finished and I have to share one of my favorite parts. Her Giving Tree!!!

I'll get more pictures up soon of her whole room, I'm waiting for some glue to dry on the trim around her bookcase right now, so it'll probably be early next week. But I finished the Giving Tree on Friday and I am so excited to share it with you. 

So the whole thing is that I LOVE Shel Silverstein. I love his zany poems, I love his whimsy, I love everything about his writings. And I want Z to have part of that. I especially love The Giving Tree. What a great story of friendship. So many people have come and gone in my life, and it's nice to read that story and remember the people who even when they leave, they are still there for me and still caring about me even when we don't talk every day. 

At first I was thinking vinyl wall cling, but those are EXPENSIVE. Especially when we are talking about the size that I'm thinking. So I thought, why not just paint it on? It can't be that hard. And it wasn't. 

Kudos to Curt for letting me borrow his projector, it really made the whole thing go very easily.

My set up.

 I had to get out the old MacBook. No literally, the OLD MacBook. The new one didn't have the right plug to work with the S-video adapter that we had. So glad I saved it after all this time.

Outlining!

As you can see, the tiny MacBook meant I had to do it in parts. Not horrible, but inconvient. 

Painting the outline

Filled in

I think painting that outline was the worst part. I'm just not patient enough to find it enjoyable. And I've got just enough perfectionist in me to be annoyed when it's a little bit off, but not enough to care enough to fix it. 

Anyways, here's the finished product. The lighting is kind of crappy, but I'll get a better picture up when I take pictures of her completed room. Which means you have to wait with bated breath to see the awesomeness!

It really turned out amazingly well. Ideally I'd like to get a picture with her in her crib reaching up for the apple like the little boy on the front of the book, but Z's not one for performing. At least not performing what you want her to do. That's not to say she's not a little performer. Yesterday before nap time she walked out of her room and up to the TV to dance to the Muppet Show theme song. As soon as it was over, she turned around to me and gave me the sign for bed. "That's it mom, I just needed to dance before nap time. I can go to sleep now." It's amazing how she talks without speaking :) 

Bins!

Ok, so I can't just sit here and work on stuff and not share it with you. So here's the beginning of Z's new room.

Bins! I love bins for organizing. Mostly 'cause it's so easy to keep everything in one place. We have bins in every closet. The one's in Z's closet are the most fun. I was so happy when I found the blue and green striped bins at Bed Bath and Beyond. They matched the blue and green striped clock I found in Cali, so it was perfect for her current room. In the new place I want to make something that she can grow into. I really feel like pink in a little girl's room is SO over done, so I decided to find a purple that would grow with her. I picked out Showcase from Ace, but I think it may be too much for her walls. It's perfect for these bins though. 

Thank you so much for telling me I could paint fabric! I was so scared even after asking you. I didn't know how it would turn out, but it was so easy. And what a difference it makes! The best part: chalkboard paint on the tags. Basically, I am lazy and I never change the tags in the bins. This means that we have a bin that says "18 months" which is currently holding blankets. The chalkboard paint is perfect! Now I can update the tags as I change the contents of the bins. Win-win!

All you need is paint and a paint brush! I got 2 quarts - one of the light purple and one of the dark purple. I haven't even used the 1/2 cup of chalkboard paint I made from the dark purple yet. (For directions for the chalkboard paint check out Martha Stewarts recipe, don't get me started on chalkboard paint recipes...). And I still have half a quart left of the light purple. I did paint the bins with a white base coat. I think this helped keep the purple from soaking in to the fabric. Also, I thought I was just going to paint them white at the beginning, so it was a good starting point. I don't know if I would do the white base coat if I did them again.  

Ok, so happy bins means happy Carin. Most of them are done, now I just have to finish the striped ones and then put them all together. I wanted to do a big before/after reveal for her room, but this is even better. Now you can see how everything evolves as I go. 

Now if only I didn't have to go to work so I could craft my way to closing... 

-Carin