Home Goals for 2011

I saw a post on Chic On A Shoestring called Home Goals, and it inspired me to do a post too. Maybe by writing it all down, it'll motivate me to get it done. Possibly. Hopefully.

Goal Numero Uno

I think my first goal is to get the girls/guest bathroom done. I've done absolutely nothing with that bathroom, besides hang up a shower curtain. It's pretty blah, and you'll usually find water and toothpaste all over the mirror no matter how often I clean it (I have no idea how a 5 and 7 year old can get water spots all the way to the top of the mirror.) I admit, I rarely go in there, so it fell off my home decorating radar.

My one futile attempt at decorating this bathroom

Isn't it great how children magically appear in pics when you're taking them?

So the goals in there. Paint the wall, obviously. Thinking like a light aqua beachy color. Or a very light gray. I saw a decal on Etsy that I fell in love with (the seller is on vacation so I can't post a link) but it's tree branches with bird silhouettes. I want to do the branches in a gray with the bird in a bright pink color. The branch will start just to the left of the shower/toilet room door, and will stop at the door trim piece, and then I'll continue it around the other side of the door. And this shower curtain. I found the bird cage candle holder at my favorite thrift store for $3, and I picked up a bird at Hobby Lobby that will go next to it. I don't have much counter space, so I think that'll be enough. I told hubsters that I wanted the decal, shower curtain, and the bathroom painted for my Valentine's Day present. Isn't that romantic? :)

Goal Number 2

Next up is my bedroom.

I LOVE these mirrors, but hubby doesn't care for them.

Yay for a mom who was a seamstress for 20+ years, she made all the drapes in our house.

First, I need to paint the nightstand that's been sitting in my living room for the past week. I found it on Craigslist for $25, which is more than I like to spend on CL finds, but it matched hubby's nightstand almost exactly, just a bit smaller. We didn't have room in our old apartment for two nightstands when we bought the bedroom set, so we just bought one. So for a while, I was using a jewelry armoire. Then I found the glass nightstand you see in the picture at a thrift store for $8. I bought it, even though I wasn't in love with it because it was the right height. Note to self, don't buy things you're not in love with, just because you're impatient. So that's first on my list. Next, I'm saving up my Swagbucks to buy this comforter on Amazon...

I love our comforter now, but we've had it for the past 3 years, and I'm ready for something new. I showed hubby the upholstered headboard with nailhead trim on Centsational Girl and he loved it too, so that's on our To-Do list. My mom made a headboard just like it a number of years ago, just without the nailhead trim. Our bedroom is a good size (13x17 with 12 foot ceilings) so I'm thinking a oversized headboard, to take up some room on the wall. And lastly, I want a light gray paint on the wall, instead of the normal neutral cream color. I have a hard time knowing what to do with the walls, since they are soooooo tall.

Goal Number Three

I hesitate to post these next pictures, since I fought every urge I had to stage this area before taking the pic. But, if you are to understand why an area irritates me so much, you might as well see it in all of it's glory.

So, this area is called the "planning area". This area connects the kitchen (where I'm standing) and hubby's office. The door to the right in the second pic is the laundry room door. In the first picture, the little arched window you see faces the entryway. This area usually catches anything that we need a flat surface to put it on. And you'll usually find dog food all over the floor (why a dog needs to pull out every stinkin' piece of food and place it on the floor is beyond me). The girls backpacks, Awana bags and vests, art supplies and random crap stuff all ends up in here. And as much as I try to keep this area clean, it just doesn't happen. A kid tornado will come through and destroy it again.

So my plans for the planning area? I want to paint the walls a light tan color, like the color in my living room. And I want to do beadboard and a chair rail, with hooks for the girls bags. And enforce the "if you get it out, put it away" rule. And have a talk with the dog about not being a weirdo when he eats his food. Think he'll listen?

What are your home goals for 2011?

The Cheese Dome to Cloche Bandwagon

So, I did it. I jumped on the bandwagon of bloggers who have stalked the racks at Goodwill, eyes peeled for a cheese dome and a candlestick. Then did a happy dance because you knew that after some paint and glue, you could turn it into something fabulous.

I originally found this idea at House of Hepworths a while ago, and had it on my "Things to keep an eye out for" list. I don't have a picture of my original find, but it had an ugly, fruit printed ceramic plate in the center. But for $1, I couldn't complain. A little pressure with a simple screwdriver, and it popped it right off. I used my favorite E6000 glue, and put the cheese dome on top of a candle stick that I found and glued those together. I wish I had a picture to show these steps, but I'm sure you can imagine.

My candlestick glued to the cheese dome plate I painted black. See that $8 sticker on the candlestick? I paid $1 at GW. YAY!

I found another dome at a different thrift store, but for some reason, it didn't fit the plate cutout/crevice/circle thingy it came with? I'm thinking they didn't go together originally, but for $2 I couldn't pass it up. But, as luck would have it,  I came across this pedestal hurricane candle holder at my favorite thrift store. I found one just like it online for $35. It still has the Crate And Barrel sticker on the bottom, and guess how much I paid for it?

Yup, it says $2 on it.

And I guess it was meant to be, because my other dome fit on top of it perfectly.

Then, looking at it, I didn't like how similar the heights of these two were, so I bought a small round disc from Hobby Lobby for $1, spray painted and glued it under the dome on the left, which raised it up and I like it so much better. I don't plan on displaying them together, I like groupings in odd numbers, but you never know.

Ahhhhh. Much better.

In the dome on the left, I just have a simple cream colored candle, surrounded by some fake branchy stuff (picked up a huge bundle of it at a thrift store for 75 cents). I really want to do a bird on the fatter dome like Decorchick put in hers, but I'm not having any luck finding a bird that will fit in there. So for now, it sits empty. I have a feeling that if I keep my eyes peeled, I'll find one. I keep seeing little birds that people are picking up at the Dollar Tree and making them super cute, so maybe I'll have to check there.

*If you find a dome without the wood plate (I found a TON of lone domes), or if it comes on a tray (instead of on a plate) it still might be worth picking up. You might find a pedestal like I did that it will fit on. Or maybe you could use a ceramic plate? Use your imagination
*If you are going to be putting a wood disc under the candlestick, either to beef it up, or raise it higher, you'll want to sand it first before painting. I didn't, and after I thought I was finished, I had a bunch of little wood thingies hanging off the bottom. So I had to sand and respray. Lesson learned.
*Again, if you're going the wood disc route, unfinished wood soaks up spray paint like a sponge. So it might be worth using a primer, or be prepared to do a lot of layers with the spray paint
*And lastly, with the wood disc, you might want to set it on the floor when you're at the craft store to make sure it's level. Or, you could end up with a really warped one like I did, and have to send hubsters back to the store to exchange it for you.

Have you jumped on the bandwagon? How'd it turn out?

Happy Crafting!

Who doesn't love free advertising?

Did I say free? Yes I did. You know we all love free. There is a blog called "Sweet November", and they are graciously offering free advertising to their first 300 followers. I now know how to make my picture into a link, thanks for a sweet reader who gave me a tutorial. Thank you Charlotte!

                                             

My Five Favorite Things About My House

I'm 78.6% sure that I read a blog somewhere that had a "5 favorite things about my house" post, back before I was a blogger, and just a lowly blog stalker. I did a search for it, and couldn't find it. I did find blogs about "My Favorite Movies" and "My Favorite Posts Of The Year." But 5 things about my house? Nope. So I either imagined it, or it disappeared somewhere in the depths of Blogland.


I wouldn't have been able to do this post a year ago, when we lived in our apartment. I hated that place with a PASSION. We lived on the third floor, and each step had a metal trim piece on the edge, making it SUPER slick if it would rain. So I was always terrified that me or one of the girls would slip on the stairs and tumble to our death. And you had to love our neighbors would had a daughter who would come up on our back porch and steal borrow my daughter's toys/chalk/bubbles. But you had to give that mom credit for being able to act surprised and say "Oh, I didn't know where she got those at?" every time I would go bang  knock politely on her door and tell her that her daughter took my daughters toys AGAIN. But living there just makes me appreciate my house so much more.

One of my FAVORITE things about my house is my bedroom closet. I couldn't get the whole closet in the picture, but it measures 7 feet wide and 16.5 feet long. We always joke that it's like it's own bedroom. My side is on the left, and thank goodness my husband doesn't complain that I also took over half of his side too. And that I took over his DVD rack and made it into my shoe rack. Thanks Baby.

Another thing I love about our house are the granite countertops. It's called santa cecelia, and apparently it's very popular. I just did a google search and there are a ton of pictures of it. This was one of the upgrades we did on the house, since the standard choices were all blah. I love granite because of the dark and light spots, the veins, the random patterns. The standard choices were just the same pattern, repeated over and over.

a close up

This pic is from December, while we were still in the building process.

So, I don't have a good picture that shows how high the ceilings are, but these pics from when we were still building show the height pretty well. The ceilings in the living room and our bedroom are 12 feet high, and the entryway ceiling is 16 feet high. We do have that weird angle thing that you can see in the first pic above Jake's head, and it's in the living room, our bedroom, and all three kids rooms. So you can't just paint the walls, because then, you're stuck with do you paint that angle thing, or not? Then, if you're going paint that, you might as well paint the ceiling too. And with the ceiling height, even with our huge ladder, it does take a lot of convincing to get my hubby to agree to painting.

Living room

Entryway (babe's office is to the right, I <3 his doorway arch)

Our bathroom was the second room we painted after we moved in (the living room was the first). I always envisioned a cool, relaxing bathroom. We use Ralph Lauren's "Beach Water" on the walls, and use RL Candlelight on the top. We bought those at (I think) Home Depot, and they were discontinuing/not carrying the RL line anymore, so everything RL was half off. So the Candlelight paint that was normally $50 a gallon was half off. Yay!  The candlelight topcoat looks a lot like watered down school glue, and you do have to get the candlelight special roller (okay, maybe you don't have to, but we did. For half off). The roller was just like a very bumpy roller. You want to make sure you do a very random pattern, or you'll be able to see streaks as it dries (we have a couple of streaks, but what can you do). It's hard to take a picture of, I had to take 14 pictures just to get these two halfway decent ones.

Yup, we have that weird angle thing in the bathroom too.

I'm not a bath person, but I love the garden tub. My mom made the valences, the fabric matches the master bedroom drapes.

The last thing I love about our house is the fireplace. We upgraded from brick to stone, and we had them extend it from about 5 feet tall to ceiling height (which just accentuated the height of the ceiling). You can see it when you walk in the front door, so it's definitely a focal point. And you'll see it in the background of most of our posed pics. I did a grouping of "D"s on the mantle (for our last name). The picture on the right was a wedding gift from hubby's work. The fireplace insert was a housewarming gift from my good friend M. I would love to put a huge starburst mirror above the mantle, but hubsters doesn't want to cover up the stone, so I let it go. For now.

So those are the top 5 things I love about my house. What about your house would be in your top 5?

Wall Medallions

You know, the hardest part of this whole project was trying to figure out what I'd call these in my post. I was pretty sure that there was a better name for these than "wall circle hangy thingies." But with help from my friend Megan, we decided on "disc wall decor." Sounds fancy, doesn't it?

*edit* an awesome reader commented on my MEDALLIONS. I knew there was a name for these! Post title changed with a Thank you Amnah! 

I picked these up a couple of weeks ago when I was out with my Grandmother. She was down visiting from Michigan. We love going to thrift stores together. That lady is like a bloodhound, and if there is a good deal for an item, she'll sniff it out. I'll go down an aisle, and not see anything I like. Then she'll go through the same aisle, and she'll say "Look at this gorgeous (candlestick/frame/mirror/etc) and it's only ($1/$2/some other steal of a price). But I did happen to stumble across these on my own. Guess how much I paid for them? $1 a piece. Woot woot.

I can always tell when hubby isn't thrilled with something I bring home, because he'll look at it and say "And that's going where?" But I knew these could be turned into something fabulous. And yes, he loves them now.

So my first step? Let's get out one of my favorite things: spray paint. I'm pretty sure spray paint has to be in the top 100 inventions of all time.

I love this color. And next we're going to set up our spray painting area. It's super fancy, don't be jealous.

Yeah, we're going to pretend I didn't get spray paint on the grass from a previous project. Shhhh.

And then, with spray painting, less is more. It's much better to do a bunch of thin coats, than heavy coats. Then you're stuck with uneven coverage, drips, globs, etc.

See how thin my first couple of coats are?

So I decided to try out a new (to me) product. I've seen a lot of people "age" crafts, and it looks super cute. So I grabbed this product at Hobby Lobby. They didn't have a 40% off coupon that week, but I didn't want to wait. My awesome father in law spoiled me at Christmas with a really nice gift card to HL, so I used that to purchase the $3 antiquing medium.

So then I set up my work station. My work station = my kitchen counter. I'm not cool  lucky enough to have a dedicated craft room. But I'm not jealous. Nope. Not. Jealous. At. All.

And yes, a Coke is a necessity when I craft. And eat. And watch TV.

The antiquing medium says to use a foam brush, which I have a ton of laying around. But if you don't, I think you can pick up a 4 pack at HL for a buck or two. I'm using the 1 inch brush, I knew I'd have a harder time getting into all the small crevices with a larger brush. And I save the paper that they use at HL to pack up your breakables when you check out (the cream colored paper under my largest disc). It's great to use under my projects when I'm painting. And yay for using them before just throwing them away.

So the above picture shows the middle part that I already did, and the outer part that I'm starting on. I added just a teeny amount of water to the medium, but I don't think it's 100% necessary. I just wanted to give myself a bit more time to mess with the product before it set. But it seemed to work fine on it's own. I made sure to get the medium into the crevices, since that's what we're trying to bring out.

Finished with the first one.

The antiquing medium says to brush it on with a foam brush, and then use a soft cloth to wipe it off. I didn't have any tee shirts on hand (one suggestion I've read). But we do have a bunch of Viva paper towels. I normally don't buy such expensive paper towels, but we had to use them as baby wipes for a while (Ava had really bad diaper rash and the pediatrician suggested to use Viva paper towels and water). Anywho, I used these paper towels, and they were awesome. No little fuzzies came off (like with cheap paper towels). I only used two paper towels for this whole project. I did use q-tips on the smaller discs to get into the crevices.

Here is a before and after.
 

And here it is on my wall. Not bad for $6. And that wooden bowl underneath? Another Grandma find for $5.

*A little stain goes a long way. I didn't use very much antiquing medium to do all three discs.
*Dabbing the stain off seemed to work a lot better than just wiping it off (would leave streaks) or rubbing the paper towel in small circles (it would sometimes take off too much from the crevices.)
*Work in small sections. You don't want to get too ahead of yourself, and it starts to dry before you've been able to remove the stain from the places it's not supposed to be. 

Feel free to leave a comment and let me know what you think! Happy crafting!






Linking up to:

Korean Traditions

Am I the only one who thinks it's cool to read about other cultures traditions? My mom is Korean, and my dad is a blend of a few things: Italian, Norwegian, English with some Scotch and Irish. So that makes me mixed. Growing up, I hated being mixed. I just wanted to be "white", with that blond hair, blue eyes, and tanned skin. But I'm quite the opposite. I have super dark hair and eyes, and light skin. I burn before I tan, and end up with a bunch of freckles during the summer on my cheeks and shoulders. Surprisingly, some people don't know or can't tell that I'm mixed. And when people do know, they usually ask if I'm Hawaiian. I hate the questions growing up. "What are you?" I'd much prefer "What are you mixed with?" or "What nationality are you?". "What are you?" just makes me feel like I should respond with "Ummm, human?"

Me in a traditional Korean dress when I was three years old

It's funny in pictures, sometimes I look really Asian, sometimes I don't, guess it depends on the angle. My husband loves that I'm mixed, and says that's why I'm so pretty (awwwwwww). He says, and I've heard a few people say, that mixed people are so pretty because they get the best qualities of both races. But I don't know, I'm just me.

I think I look obviously mixed in this photo.

I love being mixed now, though. I love being part of a different culture. Although, if I get told again that I look like the actress China Chow, I might scream.

  China Chow

My mom lives 15 miles from us, which is awesome. Yay for free babysitters! She's taught my daughters a lot of Korean. I wish I knew more of the language. She tried to teach me when I was younger, but I had no interest in it. I always figured that I'd have no use for it. Then, when I was in the military, the first base I was stationed at was Osan AB, South Korea. Hmmmm, should have paid more attention in Korean class, huh. I can understand more than I can speak. I can do what I call "baby talk." "I'm hungry."" I'm tired."" Can I have a Coke, please?"" I'm ready to leave." Little phrases like that.

But we do keep up with some traditions. I always take my shoes off when I go to my moms house, it's a sign of respect (plus it helps keep the carpet clean). And I always bow when we're out and we see one of her friends, things like that. Koreans, and a lot of Asian cultures, are really big into respect. Especially respect for your elders.

My mother in a traditional dress in Korea

We did one of our traditions yesterday, since it was New Years Day. Every New Years, we go to my mom's house, and we do a "big bow" and she gives us "bow money." Basically, the older people in your family (parents, grandparents, etc) sit on the floor, and you kneel in front of them, place your hands on the floor, and place your head on your hands. And when you do that, you say a phrase that basically means "Best wishes for the New Year". Phonetically, it would be

"Say hey boke mah-knee pa ju say yo"

Yes, even Ava did it.

Then Jasmin.

And Arielle.

And me. Perhaps I should adopt my daughter's butt down technique.

And even Jake does it. I love that my husband supports our traditions.

Oh, and if you didn't notice the blinding colors, my daughters dressed themselves that day. I don't complain when they do, I'd rather they are happy with what they are wearing, than worry about people noticing that they look like a couple of ding dongs. We do have a joke though, I'll ask them "What do you say if someone asks who dressed you today?" And they will both say "We did!". I've learned to pick my battles.

My ding dongs that I did NOT dress that day

So after you bow and say your phrase, the person you bowed to will give you some money. It's basically the principle of "you get what you give." So if you give money in the New Year, you'll get money through the year. 

Then we'll have a big lunch together. Yesterday we made yaki mandu (some people call them pot stickers). It's a lot of work, but it's fun to spend that time together. Plus the home made ones taste so much better. 

My mom makes hers with ground beef, cabbage, tofu, chop chae noodles, and salt and pepper. 

yaki mandu before it's fried

Are there any traditions from other cultures that you participate in?