Mini-Bar in the Toddler Room

Hey good and faithful readers!  If you’re reading these words right now, I love ya!  You are the bestest and sweetest and have stuck with me after a two point five week (unintended) break!  Christmas prep (read, the play kitchen) kicked mine and Anthony’s butts and then right after the big reveal Christmas day, we started packing and headed out and up to St. Louis for my best friend’s wedding!  Then we all decided to get sick and we’re still sick and trying our best to recover.  It’s been crazy around here and I don’t think I picked up my computer once in that span!  But, never fear, I’m back and I’ve got some good stuff to share and lots of catching up to do! 

As much as I’d love to take up a whole post writing about how great 2014 was and all the highlights and lowlights and in-betweenlights, time is precious around here and I think we’ll just skip right into 2015 without a look back.  What a better place to start than one heck of a DIY – the play kitchen.  You guys.  This little kitchen we were so excited to make became the bane of our existence for three days straight.  What was supposed to be an easy and fun DIY turned into a problem-solving challenge.  It was one thing after another.  Not to mention the fact that we did this with the three kids running around!  We had it locked up in our bedroom and we’d take turns watching the kids and being locked in with it, working hard to get it done before Christmas!  But, we got to the end and we’re so happy with the way it turned out!

In case you didn’t read this post, we found an entertainment center at Goodwill for $5.99 a few weeks ago that matched our criteria for a future play kitchen.  We had been on the hunt for one for months and were willing to spend up to $30 so this one was heaven-sent at 1/5 of that price.  The structure itself is made of laminated particle board and in great shape and the doors are solid wood and beautiful!

It all started with a simple plan - use the basic structure of the entertainment center as is, separate the large compartment on top into two by adding a partition down the middle, add the double doors (refrigerator) to the left side of the large opening, create an oven in the left compartment under the fridge, add a curtain for storage over the right compartment, plant a sink and faucet above the curtained compartment complete with some faux penny tile and a faux window on the back wall above the sink.  Add some paint and little details here and there and bada bing, bada play kitchen.  And then alllll that changed.  On second thought (and right before we started), Anthony decided our initial plan wouldn’t be very conducive to play.  It was too small of a space to accommodate two little girls + their friends + the occasional mom/dad/little bro bomb.  So, we decided to remove the top of the entertainment center, repurposing it as a fridge.  I’ll get into that more later.

Once we had our final plan and all of the supplies were accumulated, it began.  (I know that not every entertainment center is the same so I know that the way we did things won’t apply to everyone but I hope that in some way, a tutorial will help inspire you to create one yourself and maybe help in the how-to area.  Also, I’ve included affiliate links to some of the products we used.  We purchased everything we used ourselves so if you click and purchase through an affiliate link, we’ll get a (very) small kickback.)

The wood doors of the entertainment center were unattached when we bought it from Goodwill and had a good amount of tape residue on them.  Also, all of the hinges were very rusted and needed to be removed and tossed.

To remove the tape residue, I sanded down the gunky areas with a medium-grit piece of sandpaper (soap and water didn’t cut it).  Then, to roughen up the doors a tad to ensure maximum paint adhesion, I sanded them down quick with a fine-grit sanding block. 
   

After all was sanded, I vacuumed up all the sawdust and used a damp cloth to wipe everything down.  The last thing I did to prep the doors was fill in all the hinge and hardware holes.  I used the same technique I used with filling in the hardware holes on this desk awhile back – over-fill holes with wood filler, let dry, sand, wipe, over-fill holes with spackle to make them smooth, let dry, sand, wipe.


Post-wood filler:

I also took the fine-grit sanding block to the rest of the cabinet to prep for paint.  (I had some issues with primer and paint sticking even after sanding.  They must’ve used some sort of spray adhesive during assembly at the factory because there were areas along seams that resisted paint and crackled when painted.  I’m assuming it was glue overspray.  I didn’t have time to backtrack so I just painted a few coats over those areas and eventually it covered even though it’s still rough in some areas.  Next time I paint anything laminate like this, I’ll probably wipe the entire thing down with some Goo Gone or something like that.)

After everything was sanded, it was prime time.  The oven door and fridge doors were going to be spray painted silver so I primed them with some gray primer we had left over from way back when.  The inside of the oven also got primed gray.  Everything else would be light or white so it got primed white.

Let’s break it down now (imagine the musical notes emoji):

The Fridge

Instead of the built-in fridge we had first planned, we went with a standalone.  To build it, Anthony sawed off the entire top 2/3 of the entertainment center and took it apart, piece by piece.  In the end there were around 10 different pieces of wood trim, the sides, the top, hardware, etc…  The sides of the fridge are the original sides to the top of the cabinet and the top and bottom are the original top of the cabinet cut in half.  Get it?  To connect everything, he used the existing L-brackets and pocket screws.  (I didn’t take any pictures of this part!  So sorry!  We were so involved with this thing that snapping a still or two was the last thing on my mind!)  The existing backing wasn’t large enough to cover the whole space of the new fridge because the girls had knocked out a large perforated area so we cut and taped together a couple of pieces to fit.  You can see the seam above the top shelf.

 
(The doors look a little splotchy in this pic because they are.  Explanation to come…)

To give off the feeling of “cold”, I painted the inside a cool blue (Sprinkle by Valspar).  The shelves are the existing shelves that came with the entertainment center, primed and painted to match.  The outside is white and the doors were spray painted with Design Master’s super silver.  I was so excited to try this DM spray paint because I had read great things about it and how it has the best reflective quality and as much as I loved the color, I’m disappointed in the quality.  I only used 3/4 of a can to spray paint all of the doors, front and back, plus the stove burners but there seems to be a lingering residue.  It was all over Anthony’s hands the day after they were painted, as he was attaching them to the kitchen.  We chalked it up to the fact that they had only been drying a day but days later there will still be a silver residue on our hands if we rub the doors.  I wiped them down to see if it’d help and not only did it not help but it made the doors a little blotchy.  Such a bummer for a comparatively expensive spray paint.  Anyone else use DM spray paint and run into this issue?

Back to fridge construction though, the box Anthony built was a little too large length-wise for the doors (intentional so that he didn’t have to cut off the ends where he could reuse the pocket screws, so he added a piece of trim from the original structure to the bottom to cover the gap left there when the doors were closed. 

Attaching the doors took us a couple of hours and earned us lots of patience points.  We purchased four new hinges (two for each door) and it was matter of me holding the doors up to the cabinet, Anthony measuring, re-measuring, measuring again, drilling, screwing, having two screw heads break so, redoing, blah, blah, blah.  I’m not including the links to the hinges we used because of the crappy screws they came with but these are similar and hopefully better.

On the left side of the fridge there are four holes along the top where trim was originally attached so I screwed some Ikea knobs through the holes so the girls could hang their aprons.  :)
 

The long bar hardware on the doors was purchased on eBay.  I got all three bars for $15; a fraction of what I would’ve paid at Lowe’s.  They’re nice and heavy and the quality is great!  I’d highly recommend this eBay store if you’re in the market for some!

The Stove

The stove is on top of the left compartment on the bottom half of the entertainment center (mother’s sister’s friend’s wha?).  To serve as a countertop, we bought a piece of 1/2 thick plywood from Lowe’s, sanded it down so it was nice and smooth (no slivers to be had here!), gave it a couple of coats of clear Polycrylic, and attached it from underneath with some screws.  Originally, my plan was to paint it white and give it a faux marble look with some gray streaks (like Jesse’s countertops) but I kinda liked the butcher block look in the end and so for now, natural it stays.

For the burners, we used two sizes of round wood plaques I bought at JoAnn Fabrics and some square wood rods that Anthony cut into pieces (also found at JoAnn’s).  The knobs are made out of small wood rounds and pieces of the square wood rods cut down to size and cut with a point at one end (he cut an extra knob dial just in case I wasn’t happy with the points on one…good hubby knows his wifey.)


I spray painted the burners silver, painted the small rods black, and attached the two with Liquid Nails.

The striped black background of the stove area I drew on with a ruler and hand-painted black.  It wasn’t necessary but without it, it looked a little funny with just some random burners glued to a countertop.  The striped area helps to define the stove.  :)
 
On day two of the kitchen’s existence, Basher Smasher (Sebastian) managed to remove half of the little black rods we worked so hard to make and the stove area looked like this:
 

So in a bag they went, labeled “for more mature days”, and I went back in and painted on the burner lines.  The knobs I have yet to reattach but I’m trying to figure out how to Seb-proof still.  They actually spin, which is super cool.  We used Young House Love’s technique to make that happen.



I still want to add a HI and LOW around the knobs but for now, here’s where we’re at:
(The oven door and countertop look a tad warped in the above picture thanks to the camera lens.  They’re straight in real life…promise.)

The Oven

The oven was our biggest challenge.  Painting it was simple.  It was when we went to attach it to the cabinet that we had some issues.  I primed the entire inside with gray primer and painted it with the gray paint I had leftover from stenciling our entry rug (Cathedral Stone by Valspar).  The door was primed gray and painted with the DM silver.  We grabbed an 8 x 10 piece of plexiglass from Lowes for the window that Anthony cut out of the door and attached it with some Liquid Nails (and then C punched it out during a temper tantrum three days later and we’re in the process of a re-install that’s tantrum-proof).  The wire rack is the one that belongs to our actual microwave (we never use it) and that happens to fit perfectly width-wise even if it is a little short depth-wise.  Anthony cut and attached two pieces of 1 x 2 to fit along the sides of the oven to support it.



Here’s where things got dicey.  We wanted the oven to do as ovens do and open from the top.  But, because of the trim on the very bottom of the entertainment center, it wouldn’t open more than a couple of inches before it hit the trim below (read:  scratch the paint I worked so hard at brushing on).  We realized this prob circa midnight the night before Christmas.  So, Anthony grabbed a leftover piece of trim, cut it down to fit width-wise into the bottom front of the oven and then sliced it in half length-wise so that we could attach the oven door to it and still have the door fit the space; not hit the countertop above.  The hinges we used for the oven door are strap hinges and more heavy-duty than those we used on the fridge.

It took a lot of last-minute painting and install but we got it in.  To hold it closed, Anthony installed a magnetic catch at the top center of the oven.  We also had to install some friction lid supports on each side of the door to keep it from opening all the way so that the kids couldn’t climb on it once open (which they tried) and to keep it from hitting the trim below.
  
We didn’t have a choice between brass or silver with the lid supports at Lowe’s but personally, I have a thing for gold and gray and so I’m totally fine with it.  :)

The Sink Area

The sink is actually a stainless steel mixing bowl we had laying around.  Anthony cut out a circle, lined the lip of the bowl with some silicone caulk, and dropped it in.

Progress:
 

The faucet is our old, leaky faucet that we actually threw out, realized we could use it on the play kitchen hours later, and dumpster dove for.  Don’t worry, we gave it a thorough cleaning and cut all of the copper wiring and excess tubing off the bottom.  Anthony attached it just as it was attached to our countertop, with the existing nut and bolt.



I sewed a curtain out of this Nate Berkus fabric to cover the space below the sink and hung it with some curtain rings on a small tension rod.

 


And I think that just about does it!  Whew!  Right?  Can we talk about a labor of love?  This one takes the cake!

Before:

After:
 

>>> Budget Breakdown <<<

Entertainment center:  $6 (Goodwill)
Spray paint:  $3.75 (MIchael’s - $7.50 + a 50% off coupon)
Paint and primer:  $0 (used leftovers)
Bar hardware:  $15 (eBay)
Hinges and magnet:  $9  (Lowe’s)
Friction lid supports:  $6 (Lowe’s) 
Burners and knobs:  $10 (JoAnn’s – used a 25% off total purchase coupon)
Plexiglass:  $3 (Lowe’s)
Wire rack:  $0 (belongs to our microwave)
Piece of 1 x 2 for wire rack supports:  $3
Plywood countertop cut-to-size:  $12 (Lowe’s – they cut it for free)
Faucet:  $0 (our old one)
Sink bowl:  $0 (already had)
Fabric for curtain:  $9 (JoAnn’s – was on sale for 40% off plus used a 25% off total purchase coupon)
Baskets:  $0 (JoAnn’s – stolen from Sebastian’s room)
Knobs on fridge:  $0 (Ikea – bought years ago)
GRAND TOTAL:  $76.75 ($27 over our inital $50 budget but even so, not bad!)

We moved the kitchen to the girls’ room yesterday and I’ve got plans to still get in the faux penny tile backsplash I wanted along with a window and a light above the sink.  Oh, and did I mention that we moved the girls into our previous guest room a couple of months ago? 
 

Their room is pretty plain right now but I have plans yo.  They might take awhile to come to fruition but I can’t wait to see it evolve.
 

As you might’ve guessed, we moved Seb into their old room and he’s still living with half of their decor on his walls and their pretty curtains over his closet.  Progress is slow ‘round here folks.

Slow but with great results…usually.  ;) 

Better Late…

…than after Christmas.  That’s my motto these days!  Per the usual, I’m behind on all projects ‘Christmas’ thanks be to motherhood (Not a complaint!  Just a fact!).  I’m always amazed by all these mom bloggers with the gorgeous, Christmas-ready homes.  That my friends, is not me.  Maybe next year.  I know that having three kids under 2.5 isn’t the norm and so most peeps don’t have the in’s and out’s and up’s and down’s that come along with that so I’ll just use that as my excuse and get moving on…   :)

I mentioned last week (or two weeks ago…who’s counting) that I was going to make us some stockings this year and I am!  I just got the last of the mailed-in supplies and have to grab a few more things at the fabric store before I start!  So, it might not be until Christmas Eve that we have our stockings hung by the mantel, maybe with care but probably with haste, but they will be there and I’ll have a tutorial up after Christmas that the internet world will be able to use next year on the how’s and what’s.  Spoiler alert:  It’s gonna be good! 

Also in the same, slow-going, late fashion, here’s this weeks project:

This is the girls’ new play kitchen, pre-Anthony & Sheena reno.  I had been looking for an old entertainment center for months before I stumbled upon this one at Goodwill for $6!!!!!!  That’s right, $6!!  All of the doors and shelving were taken off of it but set to the side, so not missing, just removed.  It had been marked down and marked down more for some reason and then I came along and snatched it up faster than you could say “dude”.  Even though the cabinet itself is laminate, the doors are solid wood and super nice!  You can see them and the shelves all stacked atop the kitchen.

Our goal is to have it done and sitting under next to the Christmas tree for the girls on Christmas Day.  This morning I removed all the rusted hinges and knobs to make way for new ones.  See how rusted they were? 

I also ordered some bar pulls off eBay for the refrigerator and oven.  Anthony and I sat down and settled on a final plan for it so we’re just collecting supplies right now and then next will come a little bit of building, a lot painting, and some fun accessorizing!  I’m so excited!  I’m going to share peeks into how it’s going on Instagram so if you wanna see, check there!  Our budget is $50 for the entire thing, start to finish.  We’ll see how close we actually come to that numero.  :) 

Thanks for checking in on this Monday!  I hope everyone has a great week! 

Sebastian: 11 Months

In all my years, this one has flown by the fastest I think.  Maybe it’s because with the birth of Sebastian left my sleep-filled nights and while they returned for a very brief stint a couple of months ago, they’re now just a memory.  And we all know that with lack of sleep comes days that seem to float by and weeks that seem to meld together and months that suddenly are gone and “wait, where did January go?  Oh yeah, I’ve been as good as sleep-walking since then.”  Okay, so maybe that’s a gross exaggeration and I really don’t flit through my days carelessly and aimlessly but it’s the only excuse I can think of to explain the passing year. 

I think about time passing quickly a lot but recently whipping up Seb’s 11 month tie really made the thought count.

That cute kid’s gonna be ONE next month!  Like, whoa!

I’ll release all my emotion and thoughts on his past year next month but until then, let’s take a walk down Last Month Lane.  (I stole all these pics from Instagram so I apologize if you’re seeing them twice!)

Swing, meet Sebastian.  Sebastian, meet swing.  I don’t know why it took me this long to take all three kids outside together by myself but it did.  It was only this past month that I braved the backyard alone with them and was smart enough to sit Seb in the swing, which he LOVED, and which allowed me to watch the girls without having an extra 20 lbs. in my arms.  In my defense though, I guess the heat plus all the blood-sucking skeeters were good excuses to stay indoors but you can bet your bootie we’ve been out lots since this first time.

 

All I have to say about this one is, a plaid onesie?  #gimmealltheplaidonesies

I got Sebastian fully dressed this day and zero other people in the house were.  Not really an important detail to explain the photo but, just saying.  I just loved how he went from cute young gun to old man within the two seconds it took to set him in that teeny rocker.  And then within two seconds of being set in the rocker he would fall forward out of it…not his thing.  It’s swinging, not rocking, apparently, that rocks his world.

 

We’re borrowing this triple threat from a friend and this particular excursion was our second using it.  I was exceptionally exhausted that day thanks to the main character of this post so I let muscles do all the pushing.  It was, after all, the day after Thanksgiving and even though he can eat and eat and eat and eat and not show it, I considered it a selfless act of love; letting Anthony work off all those new calories.  ;)

 

And after the walk we parked the stroller in the front yard and it served as stadium seating for this guy to watch yard work being done.  His cute face totally redeemed him for the havoc he wraught the night before, so naturally I took a picture so that it could redeem him the next night, and the next night, and the next night…

Well that was last week and now I think I need to print it out and tape it to his door so I see it through my groggy eyes every time I have to walk in.  :)

I love you my son.  :)

DIY Faux Fur Tree Skirt

Anthony and I got married a few weeks before Christmas in 2007 and so by the time we were back from our honeymoon and he had moved in, it was time to decorate our first house for Christmas…a.k.a. dole out $25 for a little Christmas tree on Christmas Eve and an extra $2 for a yard of Christmasy quilting fabric that we both picked out together at Walmart and that I wrapped around the base of our little tree.  It wasn’t a tree skirt by any means, just a piece of fabric that was strategically placed to look like one and that left a foot of floor visible at the back of the tree but nobody knew it but us!  Funny thing is, we’ve been wrapping that same piece of fabric around our tree every year since, partly because it has some sweet sentimental value and partly because we’re too cheap to buy a real skirt.  But all that’s changed this year and our new (to us) nine footer’s legs are covered from front to back!  Check it:

Here’s how I made it and how you can make one too! 

I found this faux fur at JoAnn Fabrics.
 

There are lots of faux white fur(s?) out there but I wanted something that resembled shaggy bear fur vs. a curly or short fur.  Using a 50% off coupon got me two yards of this fur for under $20 (around $17).  The fabric itself is 60 inches wide.  I wanted to be able to bunch up my skirt (in the most modest way possibly) so I bought two yards so that I could use the whole width and make one 60 inches in diameter.  (I think the norm diameter for tree skirts is anywhere from 40-48 inches). 

So first I cut off the excess 12 inches to give me a 60’ x 60’ square.  (The plan is to use that extra 12 inches to make a few lumbar pillows!  Those should be fun!)  Fur cutting tip:  When cutting fur, cut with the backside facing up and cut as close as you can to the backing so that you don’t cut off loads of the fur.  Also, cutting little bits at a time instead of long chomps minimizes fur loss.  Ain’t no Rogaine gonna help if you cut too much so slow and steady does it! 
 

Next, I went all geometric and cut my future tree skirt into an octagon instead of a circle.  I have a love for all things ‘agon so I went with my heart on this one.  To figure out what length each side of my octagon needed to be and how much to cut, I scrapped my rusty math skills (although I did sit and try to do the math for five minutes) and used the handy tool from this website to do it for me.  Once I knew what each of my sides needed to measure, I simply folded over my corners until each side measured what I needed it to measure (I think it was 24.5 inches for a 60 inch skirt) and cut them off.
 

If you want to go the traditional route and cut your skirt into a circle, Holly gives a good tutorial on how to cut your fabric to get that circle.

Then I cut a slit up one side and a small round hold in the middle in true tree skirt style. (Our tree is fake and our trunk is a skinny thing so the small hole works fine.  If you go real with your tree, you’ll probably need to cut a bigger hole.)
 
Slit-cutting tip:  Decide which direction you want your fur to lay before you cut your slit!  For example, if you want the hair to flow forward towards the front of the tree, cut your slit on the side where the fur ‘grows’ away so that that part is at the back of the tree.  Does that make sense?

The last thing I did before dressing the tree was hem the new skirt.  Originally I was just going to leave it as is, with cut edges, but decided after folding under the edges that a hemmed edge looked a lot better.  To make things easy on myself and to eliminate any fur matting a sewing machine hem might make, I used hot glue.  All I did was run a line of hot glue around the edges of the skirt…

…and then I folded each edge over onto the hot glue.
 

I worked in small segments so that my glue didn’t have time to cool before I could hem.  In under five minutes, I had a perfect hem all the way around.


We LOVE our new tree skirt!
 

The full monty:
 
(Tutorial on how to make a pipe cleaner tree topper like ours here on love Maegan.)

I mentioned this in last Friday’s post, but I invested $10 at Dollar Tree into a bit more Christmas decor this year.  Along with some new ornaments, I also bought three long strands of gold/silver tinsel garland and strung all three strands down the center of the tree.  It’s hard to see it in pictures but in real life it makes the trunk of our tree look like it’s made of glitter and adds lots of magic!  As much as I love the economical sense of a fake tree, their skinny metal trunks don’t hold a candle to the real thing so adding the garland does wonders!  You can see it in this picture, in between the silver and red ball ornaments:

 

I had high hopes of making more of this leaf garland to adorn our tree this year too but alas, I didn’t have the time and was antsy to get the ornaments on so we’ll tack that onto next year’s wish list.  :)

Are you a tree-skirter or do you prefer it bare?  Maybe presents are your tree skirt?  Or maybe we’re not the only ones who have done it wrap-style?  Or maybe you don’t even have your tree up yet so that’s the last thing on your mind?  :)

Oh and btdubbs, what’s a holiday without a party?!  I’m skirting into All Kinds of Things Christmas Link-up and Remodelaholics Anonymous!

.           .           .

If you like it, put a pin in it!  :)

Ornament Decorating for the Tots

A bunch of my friends got together for an Advent ornament party this year – you’re assigned a day or two of Advent and given a list of supplies you’ll need to collect to be passed out at the party where you’ll walk away with a potential ornament for everyday of Advent.  It was such a great idea and I can’t wait to craft up the ornaments we got with the girls but I’m waiting until next year when handling glue and paint won’t be as chaotic.  If we didn’t have Sebastian roaming around I think it might be doable this year but as it is, I’d rather have him and wait a year to be on my guard with toddlers plus craft supplies.  :)

But, the idea of letting the girls create their own ornaments doesn’t have to wait until next year.  It would’ve though, if I hadn’t stumbled upon these nifty geometric, paper mache ornaments at Hobby Lobby last week.
 
[They were $1 each, on sale.]

With a little bit of crayon, I thought they’d make for perfectly imperfect ornaments.  So, first I primed them with some white spray primer (Rustoleum).  It’s really not necessary to prime them.  I did because I figured the girls coloring would show up better on a white background vs. a tan one.  After the ornaments were completely dry, I handed the girls their crayons and let ‘em go to town on their ‘ormamens’.
    

Last, in the spirit of experimenting, I took a blow dryer to the colored ornaments to melt the crayon wax.  I thought maybe it would branch out in spider-like branches, giving the ornaments a cool abstract look but such was not the case.  They didn’t look any different blow-dried.  So then I took my finger and swirled around the blow-dryer heated wax.  The result was a watercolor-ish look…or a mess, pick your thought.

Seraphia’s:

She’s very light-handed and delicate when it comes to coloring.  I had to get her to color on her ornament everyday for the last week in order for the coloring to be dark enough.  :)

Cecilia’s:
 
She loves dark colors as you can see and she colors with a vengeance – attacking her ornament with stabs and spurts of intense scribbling.  :)
 
Like I said, they’re perfectly imperfect.  :)  It was fun to watch the different ways the girls colored; it was like watching their personalities emanate out in color and art.

And speaking more of imperfection, in the best way, here’s our tree this year:

I’ll put up some better pictures of the whole tree with an actual camera instead of my iPhone when I type up a tutorial on our new DIY tree skirt.  Look for it next week!

We sold our old 7’ tree on Varage Sale (a Craigslist meets Facebook type site) this year and bought a new 9’ tree off the same site.  Now our tree fits in with the peaked ceiling in our living room and its slimmer figure doesn’t invade the room as much.  However, it does require a few more ornaments to bedeck it’s branches, being bigger and all.  I had great luck at the Dollar Store!

I found and love these little scalloped ornaments:
\
They were in a pack of three and came in red and gold.

I also got a few of these green, sparkling ornaments there too:

They were a buck each but they’re four inches in diameter so it was well worth it.

This is the earliest we’ve gotten our tree up and decorated since we were married seven Decembers ago!  It’s been so fun lighting it up and hearing the whispered, powerful ‘woooowww’s from the girls each and every day the lights flicker on.  And amazingly, Sebastian yet hasn’t terrorized whatever branches he can reach…knock on the faux trunk. 

See you next week with more Christmasy DIY!   

Shut the Front Door…Literally

Because it’s looking a tad different these days.  The last time we left off in the entry way it looked like this:
 
[It’s (not) funny that I started working on the entry way in an attempt to work on one room until it was “finished” before I started on another.  Well, I started nine months ago.  Either I’m really, really slow these days, which is a huge possibility because of the kids, or I’m just really bad at sticking around in one place.  Or maybe both…]

You might also remember that I painted the outside of the door a bright reddish-orange (Red Hot by Behr):


Well we loved the color it added to the entry when it was open so I just took a dip in the leftover paint and painted the inside too.
 

Before I started painting, I removed the roman shade and filled in the holes left by its hardware with some spackle (the door is steel so the filled in holes don’t look perfect but unless you knew they were there, you probably wouldn’t notice them).  Then I taped off the windows and hardware and painted away.
 
I didn’t prime first because I was just painting over the existing paint but I did sand it down a teensy bit.

The roman shade (tutorial here) is gone for good because it clashed with the red on the door.  My plan is to sew up a rectangle of fabric that can be attached to the door at night with some magnetic hooks we have.  It seems an easy project but I’m stuck on whether I want solid or patterned fabric.  The windows are pretty small and so it might seem that they might not need to be covered at all but when you’re standing at the front door, it’s not hard to peek inside and we like our privacy, so cover them at night we will.  Until I decide and execute the fabric rectangle plan, we’ve been using a white trash bag.

You never thought I’d stoop that low, did you?  ;)  Oh but I did and you can bet your bottom dollar that thing is off and out of sight when company is here because…uh, embarrassing!  ;)

The plan now is to paint the walls white in here and add a colorful something to the small empty wall to the left of the door.  I already have the white paint; it’s just a matter of when I’ll have a chance to slap it up. 

The entry way has come a long way since its brown days, no?
 
And all for under $100! 

I’m itchin’ to see white walls in there but right now my sole focus is Christmas!  I’ve been decorating more than I ever have in years prior because the girls finally have a slight grasp on what’s going on and it makes it so much more fun!  This year I’m making us all stockings and I can’t wait to share!  We also sold our old seven foot tree and bought a new (to us) nine footer!  It’s been fun decorating it!  How are you coming with Christmas decorations?  Do you decorate a lot or a little?  I pulled the kids’ plastic manger scene out of the attic last night and it’s become the new favorite toy, causing lots of giggles and lots of fighting, pushing, and tug-of-warring over the “amals” (animals).  Such a$$es… ;)

Advent Calendar & DIY Leaf Garland

A couple of weeks ago I hauled the kids to our usual haunt, Tarjay, in search of many things; one of them being an Advent calendar.  We’ve never had one in our little family and my family never had one growing up but it’s a tradition I want to start with our rugrats.  Unfortunately, I wasn’t too excited about Target’s selection but imagine my joy and surprise when my friend from college, Kristen, asked me the very next day if I’d want one of the ones she’d designed.  I took one look at it and my excitement went through the roof!  It’s gorgeous!  Online it’s beautiful but in person it’s even more so.  It consists of 26 cards, one for each day of Advent (duh) and on the back of each card is the reading for that day and a short reflection.  On the front is a watercolor design (each day is different!) illustrated by Clarissa Krajewski.  You can either purchase it in printable form (you print) or you can purchase a pre-printed one and have it sent to you.  If you’re still looking for a calendar this year, I highly recommend this one!  During one nap time last week, I got ours all hung and ready.  See?

It’s hanging in our kitchen, where we’ll be able to pray with it around mealtimes when we’re all in one spot.  I got a little crafty with how I hung it after a long naptime and a dose of ambition called my name last week.  I used twine I had leftover from this soap dispenser project to hang the cards and along the twine I strung leaves that I picked off some tree branches Anthony had trimmed off of some trees in our front yard last weekend.  I’m not sure what kind of trees they are but the leaves are similar to magnolia leaves in that they’re thicker, a little waxy, and stiffer, making them perfect for this project.  After I cleaned them (I just swirled them around in some water + dish soap in the kitchen sink), I used our hole punch to punch a hole at each end of each leaf.

Then I simply strung leaf after leaf onto the twine.  All of that probably took me 20 minutes…not long.  It was actually so refreshing even if it was a tad tedious because while I worked I listened to Bonnie’s podcast interview with Kristen on This Inspired Life.  If you haven’t heard, you should lend your ear.  Bonnie tells about her now-four-year-old son’s run-in with death at his birth.  You guys, he had no pulse for 61 minutes!!  But he’s now a happy, healthy, normal little boy thanks be to Jesus and the intercession of Blessed Fulton Sheen.  That’s all I’m going to give away…go listen when you get a chance!  (Pssst…If you don’t have a chance to listen right away but are dying to find out more about this miracle, you can read about it here on Bonnie’s blog.)

Back to the leaves…after I was finished stringing, I grabbed my favorite gold spray paint (Metallic Accents by Rustoleum), hung the strands on our swing set, and sprayed each down with a couple of coats.
  
You can even make strands like this to serve as garland for your Christmas tree or mantle or anywhere that could use a little sprucing!  Silver, gold, red, blue, sparkled…oh the options!

It bears mentioning that…I hung two stands, as you can see in the first picture, and strung and painted one strand at a time.  The only reason I’m telling you that is because I realized, while stringing the leaves onto the second strand, that I had picked EXACTLY the right amount of leaves to fill both strands.  It was crazy.  Here I was listening to Bonnie’s miracle and stringing, stringing, stringing until I was done stringing and there were zero leaves left but I was done stringing anyway.  Here are the two ends of my second and final strand to serve as proof.

I had even gone outside and grabbed more leaves before I started this strand because I didn’t think I was going to have enough.  I know I’m rambling about it and you probably think I’m nutso, but let me just tell you, it was crazy.  Enough said.  :)

The last thing I did before I hung each card was hand paint a little arrow design on each clothes pin.  I used a small test pot of the color Sonora Rose (by Valspar) I had on hand and a small paint brush and went to town.  It only took me about five minutes.

And that’s it!  I had everything I used on hand making this project 100% free and man, I love those kinds of projects!  I love how our calendar turned out and I can’t wait to start praying with it!
  
[P.S.  I have hanging 27 cards even though there are only 26 days in Advent.  The “instructions” card was too pretty not to hang and the way that I hung the cards, it looked better to have an odd number of cards on top and an even number on bottom, so I included it in the bunch.  Also, I hung the calendar over the frame collage but I’m thinking I might take the frames down because it looks a tad cluttered.  I’m not a huge fan of that collage anyway and have been itching to switch it up so after Advent might be my chance…]

Do you have an Advent calendar tradition?  What about Advent traditions in general?  I’m looking to expand ours so do tell!  I can’t believe it starts next weekend!