My $7 chair

So the other day I headed out fully intent on purchasing one of the two $99 chairs I had scouted out, but came home with an extra $92 in my pocket. Wahoo!!!

I ended up taking a random trip to a few thrift stores and found this beauty... don't be jealous, yes that is a baby pink felt seat!



7 dollars, some upholstery fabric I had lying around, a thin layer of batting, some staples, wiped it down, added a layer of stain and viola... a new chair for our master bedroom.

Sick post...

Sooo, I made a new post on Tuesday but then deleted it because I wasn't in LOVE with what I had done. I had grand plans of fixing it and reposting on Thursday, but sick happened and I spent all day yesterday and today laying on the couch... not so good for my project goals!

So now I will just repost what I had on Tuesday... hopefully I can redo it and make it fabulous and show you later.

Our biggest problem with our kitchen is our pots and pan storage. We've tried storing them under the stove like normal people, but stacking and unstacking has proven a little too frustrating for us. So, I created this solution...

I won't bore you with what I don't like about it... but basically I don't like WHERE I put it. I'll have to play with it a wee bit, but we'll see!

Square Foot Garden

I was FINALLY able to mix the soil and put together my square foot garden this week!!! I has been really windy on all my days off recently, so I haven't felt that I had the ideal mixing dirt together conditions.... you know... those ideal playing in the dirt conditions we all know and love, right?

Anyhow, for those of you that don't know, square foot gardening is a newish style of gardening that uses small space (4 foot squares usually) to grow large amounts of veggies. The idea being that you use (mix your own extra fertile, water holding and weed seed free) soil that will yield high amounts of food. For example, 1 square foot of garden will grow 4 heads of lettuce or 16 carrots or 1 pepper plant. And since you have 16 squares per box you can grow all sorts of veggies! I'm pretty excited about it, hopefully it warms up now so I can actually PLANT my veggies.

The process is pretty simple. Screw 4 boards together to get the box. Tear out grass, put down weed fabric (paint your boards if you want, I wanted). Mix your soil (1/3 vermiculite, 1/3 peat moss and 1/3 compost). Put it in, put up your dividers and plant... the end!

Here's my almost finished (plantless/seedless) product. so cute....

Chalkboard door(s)

So this may look like just a boring black door (not that black doors are boring, I happen to LOVE them!), this is a black painted CHALKBOARD door! Woo hooo! I painted both our pantry door and our door to our basement (both in the kitchen) with chalkboard paint (from Lowe's I believe). I would have written something cute, like my shopping list (cuz we all know that shopping lists are cute!) but I have to wait 24 hours before writting on it and it has only been.... 18 hours. Don't wanna mess everything up!!!

You can also see my other project of the week, the FINAL repaint of the kitchen, all gray now!

New Goal

Hi everyone.... yes, still alive. Sorry, Facebook has absorbed my online attention lately! I'm making a goal and making it public so that I HAVE to do it. I am now making a goal to blog once a week (not picking a day, that's too much restriction!) and I will blog one project a week that I have *completed*. Double bonus for me... I get to blog again and I HAVE to complete projects! I have been in a bit of a project slump lately so hopefully this will get me going again!

Here's my project from last week. Installing bamboo blinds in my dining room. Ties it in with the bamboo blinds in my living room. I like how hanging the blinds outside the window frame makes my windows look huge! Not a big project, but I did it!

Christmas Decorations

Yay!!! Decorating is one of my VERY favorite parts of Christmas and it was so fun to have my very own, new to me house to decorate. Here's some pics...


I've been excited to put a tree here since I first saw the house... part of the reason I wanted the house, who doesn't want a house with a perfect Christmas tree spot?!

And here are our stockings hung by the chimney with care... there's Paul's (the plaid one) by the way.

My latest craftiness

Store bought stocking and some good old fashioned creativity and felt! :)

I'm doubting myselft... HELP!

So... I'm doubting a paint color choice. I need some opinions. I have a fairly modern styled house, not neccesarily by choice but dictated by my house, and i think my remodeled kitchen is looking too traditional. I'm not willing to post more pictures till it's done, but this is a glimpse so I can get opinions. If I change, I'm thinking of sticking with the gray I have in the living/dining room. I DO love gray and white, but I also love green. Oh the DRAMA!

Pumpkin carving

Happy day before Halloween! Paul and I carved pumpkins together for the first time in our married life... they turned out pretty sweet if you ask me! And no, no templates in our house... pure creativity and heart and soul into our pumpkins! Probably don't need to say, but the snake is Paul's and the "R" is mine.
Oh... and I learned that my Mom really, really must have loved us kids. It never failed that we got roasted pumpkin seeds when we carved pumpkins... it's a PAIN to seperate those slippery devils out from the guts! Love you mom!!!

Our life for the past 4 months or so....

So, my sister, yes the one who made me post pictures of my house, says that she's bored of looking at my living room. So here's more stuff... and NO she's NOT the boss of me!!!!

So, let's see. P.S. this is our life according to our camera... and as we all know I don't take pictures very often so it's rather sporadic.

We went to Carthage finally..



Then my mom came to visit. We went to Milwaukee on a whim to watch a baseball game. Turns out the team I was rooting for won... and I didn't even realize it. I'm a HUGE baseball fan... obviously... not. But Paul was in heaven, it was his happy place; a Giants baseball game.



On the same trip we went to

We did a double decker bus tour. TOTALLY worth the money!!! Definitely the way to see the most Chicago in the amount of time we had.
This is for my nieces, Grace and Ella, who LOVE American Girls, a WHOLE store devoted to them... heaven!

Lots of skyscrapers... cool town I tell ya!

We did the cool Iowa thing, which means we went to the Field of Dreams.


Other than that, we've just been working on the house. The kitchen is my current project. And it is riddled with problems. But what's a renovation without problems?! Here's 2 of them...

That's a countertop... look closely at the edge and you'll see white dots from them sanding the edge down (couldn't be avoided... Rrrriiiight!) I fixed it, don't worry!

This is a cabinet door... lovely eh? Don't worry yet again, they're fixing it for me! It'll be beautiful when it's all done. No pictures till it's done. So be patient my friends!

Paul has been in school. No pictures of that, sorry. He turned another year older. No pictures of that, sorry. We both got sick. No picture of that, lucky you.

The end. :)