Why Vacuums Don't Suck

Vacuuming is my least favorite chore. Which is why I constantly ask Mr. Curly to help me pull up carpet and refinish the hardwood floors in our house.

We did that in SD. When we first pulled up the carpet I was confused as to why the edges of the room had smaller, nicer finished boards than the middle of the room did.
I soon realized the answer - carpets.

Whoever built our SD house had money - even the woodwork inside the closets was trimmed out nicely and stained, a sure sign of money in houses from the early 1900s. And whoever built it put carpet in their formal room.

Only, I'm pretty sure there were no vacuum cleaners at the time. If I remember my Victorian home history, these houses would've just had carpet tacked down in the middle of a room. Tacked down, so that it could be pulled up, taken out to the clothes line, and have all the dirt and junk beat out of it.

So yeah, I hate vacuuming, but when I think about having to drag carpet outside to beat it clean, vacuums don't really suck.

But I'm still not going to stop asking Mr. Curly to pull up our carpets, even if it is just to do this:

source

Living Room Re-do

In the past year, I've redone my kitchen, my dining room (2 different links there so you can see the rearranging of furniture and the new color!), and Curly Girl's bedroom (which you can see here along with her birthday celebration).  Which meant my living room was looking pretty drab.  Kind of beige walls, nail holes from previous owners and where I had moved pictures, no real sense of design.

Driving me crazy, it was.

So we did this:

The lighting is BAD here, really bad, and I somehow don't have a better before picture.  But we went from beige-y blahness to fresh pineapple.  A bright yellow, not too bright.  Honestly, not really my color, but looks awesome with the rest of the house.

We have this little side area in our living room I call the "office offshoot."  It needed something more than just a coat of paint.  So after 2.5 weeks of trying tons of different things, we went with just nice big diamonds.  It honestly makes me wish I would've done it on another wall too (the one our front door is on), but it gives this nice area a sense of purpose and design.  AND this is a better representation of our actual wall color throughout the living room.

 And then I decided to decorate.  So using a technique my friend taught me (scrapbook letters on canvas, paint over, pull off the letters), I made this sign with a fantastic Tommy Boy quote to hang in the middle of the 22 (yes TWENTY TWO) family pictures I had printed for the wall.

 This is my new favorite room in the house.  Our hallway.  I had to completely clean it out to paint, which meant the million boxes waiting to go up to the attic, had to go.  And the toys by the bedroom doors had to go.  And it had to be vacuumed after I finished pulling all the nails out of the walls (pulling out original lathe and plaster with them) and then plastered all the holes.
Anyway, I painted it the same fresh pineapple as the living room (this hallway is off our dining room, but you can see it from the living room), using the same marshmallow white as the diamonds above to paint white frames on the wall to give me my own little version of an art gallery.
You can barely see it, but on the right hand wall, above most of the pictures (which are all family shots of siblings and parents with some old dating and college things thrown in) is the beginning of the Ferris Bueller quote "Life moves pretty fast...." I free-hand painted that on the wall with acrylic paint and a tiny paint brush.  It isn't quite centered in its square, which might drive Mr. Curly crazy.  But I found out when trying to scrub off the crayon I had used for practice, that the blue acrylic will wash off pretty easy.  So we might fix it in a week or two.

So. Living room and hallway done.  Now I'm just trying to convince Mr. Curly that we've had the same bathroom design/linens/color for six years and we should redo it.  And pull the wallpaper out of our bedroom.
But maybe I should give him a break from changes first.

Happy Autumn!

Happy Autumn, everyone!

This is my  new tawny port tomato dining room (it is more orangey in real life).  I ADORE it!!

And those are the leaves my kids and I made to hang from the ceiling to start decorating for fall.  I hope to finish it all today - we'll see!

In the meantime - it's FALL!!!!

Sympathy Nesting Pains

I have THREE friends pregnant right now - my SIL due in June, and two friends here in my town due in September within days of each other.

And I'm experiencing sympathy nesting for them all!

Friday all the bedrooms got cleaned.  Which is on the cleaning schedule.  But it also meant completely re-doing the linens in my room (bedding, covers on the box springs, curtains, everything!).  No new stuff bought, just pulled out curtains that we haven't used since the first year of marriage. And they go perfectly with the "new" design I want in our room!
So now, my "clean" bedroom has 2 tubs of curtains and blankets waiting to go back up to the attic.  I can't move them to the hallway, because it was 2 tubs of clothes waiting to go up!  Yes, I know, I need to start walking those stairs!

And then Saturday, I woke up, showered, began baking, planned all my meals for this week - all before 9:30!  But that wasn't enough, so I decided to wash all the curtains in the house (minus my bedroom, 'cause I had just washed those to put new ones up).  And then decided all the woodwork needed to be polished. 
Not ALL the woodwork got done, but the dining room did, and I'll do the living room next weekend.  And maybe the bedrooms the weekend after that. 
It is amazing what a good coat of Old English polish will do for 100 year old woodwork!  We have a basement door that looks practically new!

I promise, I'm done with the exclamation marks.  But probably not the cleaning.  I even took down the light cover from the dining room to wash it.  And washed the windows.  Which just proved that I REALLY need to get outside, get the storm windows off the house, and wash the outside of my windows too.
Mr. Curly was joking that I only did it so that when we hit our 10 year anniversary this summer he can't say "In 10 years my wife never dusted or washed a window." (2 things I hate even more than vacuuming.)

I'm completely blaming the pregnant friends.  Otherwise, I'd just have to admit that for all these years, my Mom was right.  A clean house makes a great home.  Love you, Mom!

Kitchen Kitchen

Picture Post of Kitchen Remodel!! (Which is not quite done, but close)

Old Kitchen Look: Peeling wallpaper, white counters, white cabinets, white floor.

 

What we found beneath the wallpaper

 

Curly Girl helping - this is actually a Butterscotch brown- looks better with several coats and dry!

 

New black countertops

 

Me on Paint day - Granny Smith Apple Green!

 

Finished pictures coming soon!

Stream of craftiness....

I wrote this great post about working on a novel during April..... and then I quit writing.

Seriously - writer's block on the novel, lack of spiritual inspiration for the Bible Blog I'm participating in, no stories to tell here....  I hate when that happens!

I have been crafty!  I'm working on Curly Girl's Easter skirt:


Sneak preview of all the colors she chose!



I made these nice little cardboard signs to go above our couch in the living room.  They are three verses that sum up what our "Godliness, Character, Contentment" philosophy of our family is.  Such an easy project - cardboard, poster board paint and a sharpie marker!


Walk Humbly with God (Micah 6:8), Love One Another (John 13:34), And Be Thankful (Colossians 3:15)

And I took this towering inferno of kitchen appliances, removed the wheels, thereby making it MUCH more steady, and lowering everything about 5 inches.  Great for me, Mr. Curly, not so much.

Hey! You can see me here!
That cute shirt came from a consignment shop and cost me a whopping $1! 
One of my  new favorites!

PLUS, I've made a little Easter vest for Curly Boy 2 (previously Curly Baby, that is it's own post), and started on felt food and felt superhero magnets for Easter basket gifts.  We've rearranged the living room, I'm working on desk organization, STILL trying to get Curly Boy to hold a pen and write something.....!

So I've been busy.  I hope to finish Easter crafts soon, complete the birthday crafts (again, a whole 'nuther post), and get back to work on my baby blanket quilt.  I'm thinking - hand quilting.  What do you think?

A little bit of this.....

I love reading blogs of people who can decorate with whatever they find or have on hand (Epbot and On the Banks of Squaw Creek are my two faves - completely different styles, so inspired, and make me wish I was more artsy!)

I've got spring fever BAD and since I have no money to paint (it's coming, it's coming) and no money for new things, we're making do with what we have.  We rearranged the living room.  And Saturday I completely re-did the dining room.

We now have an artsy/multimedia dining room.  It holds our record player, bookshelves, reading chair, has an art gallery wall for my kids, and holds our family table where we eat our meals as well.  I'd like to fit my kids art easel in there, but that will happen this ACTUAL spring, when the bird feeder my dad made us for Christmas can finally be put outside (it is so beautiful!).

So, here are some pics of my "new" dining room:

This is an "in process" shot.  The bookshelves used to be on either side of the hall entrance. 
The bookshelf on the right side of that door had a rocking chair in front of it.

Here you see the bookshelves together. I think Mr. Curly tolerates that top left shelf of books of mine (all history books, 9 of them which are about Doc Holliday or his contemporaries), like I tolerate his stack of truck magazines on the bottom left.



This is the cushion chair that my children and I adore and Mr. Curly
would rather get rid of.  It used to be in our living room.
It needs a lamp, but I think it looks quite cozy here.



The rocking chair that used to be in front of the
bookshelves.  While the blue blanket on the seat
might look funny, it actually ties the rest of the
room together nicely.  I'm looking for that color
material to make a nice cushion for that chair.



And a close up of the art work above the cushion chair.  Mr. Curly
drew the large picture on the left while in college. I've wanted to frame it for quite awhile, and decided this last weekend just to make it a quick cardboard one.  It doesn't look as half as bad as it sounds!
The top right mountain picture was a parting gift from a friend,
and the lower right mountain picture was painted by my dad while
I was in middle school.  He made the barnwood frame himself as well!

The cushion chair is now the perfect bedtime story spot - all three kids and I can cuddle close for that time.  I'm thinking I'll check out some of our flea market stores for an old lamp.  I mean, when you have an old record player and use old record player speakers for plant stands, the lamp has to be vintage too - right?

My favorite things...

This year, out of all our Christmas decorations, THIS is my favorite:

The shelf was a gift from my youth leader for my wedding, the pictures inside I printed from the internet.
The snowmen and tree were made by my Daddy back when we lived in Central Kansas.  The snowmen were made in 1995 and he made a bunch to give as gifts to the families in our church.  The tree was made in 1997 for the same reason.  When Mr. Curly and I got married my mom sent me a bunch of Christmas ornaments from my childhood and I put these up every year.

The basket and the votive candle holder were given to me last year by Mr. Curly's Grandma.

Isn't it great how a random collection of things spanning almost 20 years can lead to such a cute little display?  I love it.  And it is all hung over my absolute favorite chair in the house that I never get to sit in anymore because the kids have bogarted it.  Oh well.

Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!

"Marble top" deep freeze

We have this deep freeze.  It was bought for Mr. Curly and I shortly after we were married when his father came to visit.  Father-in-law wanted to stock us up on steak and pork chops and chicken and all sorts of meat, only, we had an apartment size fridge, which meant a freezer big enough for... well, a pound of hamburger and some ice cream.

Instead of spending tons of money on meat, he bought us this nice little sized deep freeze that we put on our back porch.  We LOVE it.  It went from our back porch to our garage, to the corner of our dining room where I covered it with a tablecloth (because never thinking I'd have it IN my house, we never paid much attention to what we sat on top of it), to my laundry room, and now it sits in my kitchen.

I should've taken before shots - the top is covered in paint rings and has a few scratches.  It looks pretty rough and not usually clean.  Almost 2 years ago Mr. Curly wanted to buy some wood veneer stuff (super thin wood we lined the top of our mantle with in the SD house) and cover the deep freeze in it so that it would match my kitchen island. A little wooden deep freeze -wouldn't that be cute?

Only we kind of never got to it.  And I got really tired of it always looking messy, especially since the deep freeze became an extra counter in my now super tiny kitchen.  So I did this to it:

 

This is covered with marble-looking contact paper made for lining shelves.  While you can't really tell here, I cut the paper into 12x12 inch squares so it would look more tiled.  I'm thinking about getting some super thin gray painters tape to make "grout lines"  What do you think?

I even wrapped it down around the side.  This is what is on my deep freeze - a chore chart system that Curly Baby likes to destroy (several magnets missing) and handprint art from my niece when she came up for Curly Girl's birthday party.

 

And a view of that side of my kitchen.  My kitchen island, with the awesome microwave stand Mr. Curly made me for Christmas, his toaster I got him for our 8th anniversary, my under-cabinet radio I got for a birthday about 7 years ago from my parents, our microwave (also from my parents when we moved into our first place), our breadbox which was a wedding present from one of Mr. Curly's old football coach and my solid wood cutting board (covered in papers, but reserved for raw meat only) that was a Christmas present last year.  You know, just in case you couldn't live without knowing how we got all that stuff.  And of course, the deep freeze, the recycle can, the trash can, and you can just see the trim for the door to our pantry.

 

 

More kitchen info than you'd ever like to know!  But this should give you hope - have a nasty topped deep freeze?  Cover it in contact paper - lots of choices, washable, and removable when you change your decor!

(By the way, the kitchen walls are going to be remodeled SOON - Mr. Curly is thinking this weekend we'll start pulling wallpaper!)

The Family Table

I realized that in July I promised you a blog about my new dining room table and I still haven't written it!  Another sign of aging....

Anyway.

Old Table - This was my great-grandma's kitchen table that my parents took when she had to move to a nursing home.  They gave it to Mr. Curly and I when we got married.  It's a beautiful table, so 1950s vintage, with brown vinyl covered chairs (but they're pretty ripped up).  It has served us well, and I'm kind of sad that it is down in our basement right now instead of being used.


Beautiful vintage Formica top - see the chip - HISTORY

I do truly love the legs on this table - and those are the original chairs back there, just recovered for a little more class.

 

 

New Table - provided by my in-laws - they found it for a great deal at an estate sale and couldn't use it, so we loaded it up and brought it home.

 

Drop leaf sides.  Makes this perfect for breakfasts with just Mr. Curly and I - pop them up and the Curly Kids join us.

FOUR leaves are stored in our closet.  We can expand this enough to fit 20(plus) people (and I can do it all on my own - the craftsmanship is remarkable and it moves SO easy!)



 

 

And aren't those legs beautiful?  LOVE the claw feet.

 

 

Of course, we have no chairs to match.  And I'm using shelf liner cut as place mats to protect the wood from heat and little kid spills, but I love it.  I love that it works for a romantic dinner for two, or can fit my parents, my parent-in-laws, my brother and sis-in-law and kids and my other sis-in-law all around it at the same time.

 

The wood also matches amazingly with the woodwork in our 1912 home.  I just love old things.  We'll continue saving to find the perfect chair - I'm planning a big flea market day - I'm just not sure when it will happen!

Spring sprung a color chip leak

I have never thought of a house as dark until we moved to IA.  To be fair, we moved from a huge, airy, ginormous windows everywhere house, to a very  nice, normal house, hemmed in on all sides by buildings blocking any morning sun, or afternoon sun, or evening sun to come in.

Which is why, when spring came and Mr. Curly and I started contemplating which room(s?) to paint, I went a little springy in the color department.

My throw cushions in the living room, look like this.  They sit on a light tan chair, a dark leather recliner, and a plushy sage green microfiber couch.




So, for the living room I chose:
(Tropical Surf, Almost Aqua, Lemon Ice, Soothing Green Tea and Celery Sticks) 

 

Almost Aqua was my choice last summer (we have kind of a gray-ish, maybe hint of blue carpet, and mahogany natural woodwork), but now.... now celery sticks is really gaining my attention.

For the dining room, which I bought these (I have 2 though only one is pictured here, sitting on the chair covers my mother made me) sunflower plaques.  I bought these almost 3 years ago, and have never hung them up, because first the dining room in SD was waiting to be painted, and then it was painted, but the house was for sale, and now the dining room is waiting to be painted again.

You would think the colors would have to do with flowers, considering the inspiration, but no, it is lemon ice and pineapple upside down cake.

The kitchen is where Mr. Curly REALLY disagrees with me.  He wants bronze and tans and burgundies and wrought iron and a nice little coffee shop feel (which I think is nice, and would work in an eat-in kitchen, but we don't have an eat-in kitchen).  The colors I chose? Granny Smith Apple, Fresh Pineapple, Refreshing Mimosa and Homemade butterscotch.

 I think the apple and butterscotch would be the best together, but there is something just super fun about a yellow and orange kitchen, don't you think?  Or maybe its just because the white paint is chipping off the brick wall board and the wallpaper and border is peeling off the walls in various places that makes me want to do something crazy.

And why is that all my favorite colors are named after foods?  Except the blues.... there aren't many blue foods.

Remodel

New header!  That is the extent of this remodel.  I added Curly Baby's not quite curly hair to my header.

So, no big news. 

I've done content management on official websites before for businesses that have employed me (generally employing me as office help and then adding this responsibility), but I'm not a web designer.

Still, I like having all the curly hair up there - mine, Curly Girl's, Curly Boy's, Curly Baby's.... if Mr. Curly would let his hair grow enough to curl, I'd put his up there too, but I doubt that will happen.

So bring us some figgy pudding....

First, my Six Word Saturday links have brought in new readers and new comments.  YAY!  And HI new readers!!

Ok, with that out of the way.... onto the party post!

Saturday we had TWO (count 'em, one, TWO) Christmas parties at our house.
The first was an open house for our church friends and family from 2-5, and the second was a small dinner/hang out party with our playdate friends.

For the parties I baked grinch cookies (mint chocolate chip), fudge, shortbread cookies (in the shapes of the different people/animals that you see in a nativity scene), spritz cookies (that only the Christmas trees came out looking right), and rice krispie ornaments (rk treats shaped in a ball, with a small candy cane stuck in them and then dipped in almond bark).

We had WAY too many goodies (as always), but my house was spotlessly clean by 2:00 on Saturday.  That is the good thing about people coming over - the entire house gets cleaned in one day, instead of just cleaning it one room a day and always having a mess.

While the treats were good, the thing I'm most proud of is this:

We moved our dining room table in front of the window, buffet style, and above it, hung snowflakes that I made with the Curly Kids.  They painted with glitter paint on construction paper, and then I cut the shapes out.  It looks especially cute when you can see that the decor on the table is a sign I made at my LIFT group that says 'Let it Snow' and my salt and pepper shakers are snow men.

This may be no big deal to others, but to me, it was a huge.  I saw a commerical where they had hung Christmas ornaments from the ceiling over a table in the shape of a Christmas tree.  With climbing kids and a cat and no budget for matching Christmas ornaments, I knew I wouldn't be able to do that.  But I wanted a centerpiece feel without losing the table space.  Enter - creativity!  A nice snowflake centerpiece, no table space lost.

Yes, yes I am extremely proud - and love the look so much I think we'll have to do it year after year.  I'm even thinking of doing it for other seasons.... leaves in the fall, flowers in the spring.... Butterflies in the summer?  I don't know, I'll find something!

Nostalgic windows....

Our 1912 home has the original windows in all the bedrooms.  Which I ADORE.  But, unlike the original windows in the SD house which were awesome, these let in tons of cold air.
It's something to be fixed, and is on the list.

Until then, I've found a way to use all those baby blankets I just can't bear to part with.  Well, five of them anyway.

Using spring rods, I chose 3 blankets for Curly Girl's room and 2 for the boys's rooms.  If Curly Girl had kept the Winnie the Pooh theme, we could've matched the extra quilts to her room decor, but since she's switched to princesses, that was a little harder to do.  Thankfully, when she was born, someone gave us these two gorgeous silk baby quilts.  We never actually used them as blankets - they were too beautiful! 

Her third window is covered by my favorite Winnie the Pooh quilt that has a pink backing (which of course is the side she wanted facing her room).

The boys's room has one quilt that matches the crib bedding.  The other quilt is a blue Winnie the Pooh quilt turned so the backing faces into the room, therefore matching the rocking chair covers.

It's a little odd looking, but at least the rooms are warmer!

What are you doing, you madwoman, you're wrecking my apartment!

We rearranged furniture last week.

When Mr. Curly and I moved into our new home in Iowa, we were overwhelmed by boxes. You couldn't get into the boys's room, my couch was in the dining room... it was awful!
So, to give us an anchor in the sea of boxes, we created this furniture set up (view from the front door):

This allowed us to have a small box free area. Boxes were put behind the couch, behind chairs, used as end tables... but we had a small clean area to play.

Five months later, that small area was driving me crazy! It's like we had taken 1 huge room and chopped it into 4. So I got some graph paper, cut out our furniture to scale, and started trying to find a good arrangment. After 4 hours of paper arranging and having no luck, Mr. Curly sat down, spent 3 minutes looking at it and said "Let's move this chair to the dining room and put the couch here."

And so it was done. The blue recliner was moved to a dining room corner and will be returning to which it came (my parent's house), and this is our new arrangement.



I LOVE it! It is so much more open, the desk is less noticeable when you're sitting around, the kids can hide their bigger toys behind the couch, and did I mention it is so much more open?
Curly Girl cried when she saw it. It ruins the running path she was wearing in the carpet. I also turned the dining room table, but the kids won't change where they set (wonder where they get that creature of habit thing from), so I don't know if that will stay.

Mr. Curly thinks the TV is slightly too far away and that the light causes a glare on his face, but I think he'll get used to it.
Or maybe we'll just buy all new furniture to fit this new space. HA.

Post title from Music & Lyrics.

The Bargain Bathroom

I told you about our medicine cabinet bargain. Due to a gift card from a generous friend, we were able to replace the wooden bathroom fixtures with ones that are more our style. Ttal cost to us $5. The curtain was bought by my mother for a single window we had in our second house. It desperately needs to be hemmed for this window, and will be as soon as the second set of curtains and Easter clothes are created! We also need to paint, but for now - here is our bargain bathroom!

Why, yes, these pants are lycra.

First - apologies to anybody who thought this would be a super cool post about rock stars, their music or their clothes.

This post is actually about Curly Girl's new curtains.

With the move, Curly Girl went from one window, to three. And she has also started waking up with the sun just a hint on the horizon. This meant the sheer hot pink curtains from her room in SD were really not going to work.

Since she is 3 and 1/2, I decided to use her input to decide what type of curtains she wanted. I'll give you three guesses, and the first two don't count.

Yep, that's right, like all little girls, she wants princess curtains.

But store bought Disney Princess curtains can be kind of expensive, so I decided to make them myself.

While Curly Girl says she wants a purple and green room, the material she picked (after looking at a multitude of purple and green princess options) is, of course, pink.

Why, yes, these curtains have finished seams AND are lined (something I hardly ever do, even with clothes I make). Because someday, when my granddaughter wants princess curtains, I'd like these to be an option.

Post title from "Stranger Than Fiction."

My Bargain of the Week

My sister-in-law always posts a bargain of the week. Being a true bargain shopper (she would totally take the gold in Olympics) this is a pretty easy post for her. Me, I'm more of a "I'll buy it when I need it" sort of shopper, so I don't get in on this very often.

But this week - I have a post!

Moving from a 4 bedroom 2 bath house to a 3 bedroom 1 bath house has not been as difficult as imagined. The biggest problem - the bathroom. In SD, we had a tiny bathroom with the tub tucked under the stairs that was the "kids" bathroom and held all their things. Our "main" bathroom upstairs was huge by bathroom standards, as it was actually a converted bedroom with the walk-up attic door.

The bathroom here is more of a "oh yeah, we need a bathroom" tack on, slightly smaller than normal size. The biggest issue - the sink - not even a pedastal, but just one that hooks to the wall and tucked in a little corner with a shower wall not 2 feet behind it, there is NO counter space.

The linen closet holds about 8 towels, and a stack of hand towels and washcloths. Then there is a little cabinet area for toothbrushes and such.

However, this bathroom also has walk-up attic access, and some smart person built shelves in there. So we also bought an over-the-door pantry shelf unit and now most of our bathroom supplies are tucked in the attic stairs. It doesn't change the fact that we had no space for toothbrushes, combs, mousse, make-up, shaving supplies (see Mr. Curly's new hobby), etc.

So after this long explanation - our bargain of the week:

We found this fantastic old medicine cabinet at the Habitat for Humanity ReStore.

I know to most it's an old piece of junk. But seriously - $5!!! $5 for a medicine cabinet that totally fits my decorating style, the age of our house, and our bathroom and budget needs.

Much better than the $70 MDF ones we were finding at Walmart.

Once it's actually up, I'll post pictures of the bathroom (which needs painted as well) - but I was too excited not to share!

For more great bargains of the week and other money-saving tips, visit Life With Mrs. B.