Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Finds on the World Wide Web

Hello one and all! I am sitting here waiting on my contractors to come and install my new front door. Yippee! I am soooo excited to show you when this one is finished. We decided this is a project we didn't want to diy again. Anyways...while I am waiting on them I thought I would tell you all about a few finds on the world wide web. The hubby and I tackled some finishing up stuff in the guest room last week. (Can't wait till it completely finished and I can show you!) But, I was not going to let a little unfinished moulding stop me from FINALLY decorating it, which is my fav part! I had some really cool looking dark picture frames that looked like they had designs carved straight into them. My sister Maria picked them up at a garage sale for me for $.50 each. I have heard of other people finding cool free printable art online, so I decided to give it a try. I googled it and I find the most awesome site.


I couldn't get any to upload because they are too big and you can only resize them when you are going to print them. Take my word that they have some really neat pictures and I will be showing you soon when I do the guest room reveal which ones I picked. =)

My sister Maria has been making homemade crayons for a while now. She had interest them so she started making them to sell. Within one day she had almost an overwhelming amount of orders, offers to have her in craft shows, and boutique wanting them to sell. She is celebrating her gratitude for this responce by giving some away on her website.


Bop on over and enter! You will love them. So cute! Have a great Thanksgiving and remember how truly blessed we are here in the good ole' USA! I know I am counting my blessings and you all are in them!

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Up'ing the Cuteness Factor

Happy frigid Thursday to one and all! I have another "wrap up" project today that Miguel and I got finished this week. Adaliah's room is basically a finished room, aside from installing blinds. There is one thing in her room that has always bothered me, her ceiling fan. It was just a plain white one that I picked up at a garage sale for a few dollars. I stenciled butterflys and dragonflys in the colors of her room, but it still seemed kinda blah. So, my decorating blogs to the rescue! I had saved this idea http://kadburyis.blogspot.com/2011/04/lampshade-redo.html ever since Kadbury first posted it. I knew I wanted to try this, but Addie already had several lamps in her room. Then I saw another blog that I love who did this project http://thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com/2011/04/prettying-up-ceiling-fan.html. The wheels started turning, if I combined the two projects maybe this would bring the cuteness factor I wanted to the ceiling fan. So, I started searching garage sales and thift stores for a drum lamp shade and guess what?!!? I found one by the curb. It just had a bit of dirt on it. But hey people it was FREE and I would be covering it anyways. So I happily skipped (as decreet as I could of course cuz I was picking up trash lol) to my car. Now for the flowers. I decided to use pink, purple, and white. I searched high and low and couldn't find many second hand options. The dollar tree to the resue. And here she is.....




I followed Kadbury's instructions from the above link. I just didn't do the last hot glueing step. I realized something though when Miguel and I were deciding how to hang it.....



Since this was going on a ceiling fan that hung in the middle of the room, you were going to be able to see where I punched the stems through. Not cute at all. So I thought and came up with cutting up an old white sheet and I used spray adhesive to attach it inside to hide the stems. If you have never used spray adhesive it is wonderful! I have been using it for a lot of projects lately and it is so much easier to use them most glues.











I was going to get it completely smooth, but I decided I kinda liked how it looked ruffled. Now, how to hang it. Sarah from Thrifty Decor Chick showed step by step how she hung hers, but I knew we didnt have those supplies on hand and I wanted to work with what we had. So, I googled "how to add a drum shade to a ceiling fan" and came up with this awesome blog with a great idea for it. http://www.fingerprintsonthefridge.com/2011/04/how-to-add-shade-to-ceiling-fan.html Here's hubby installing it.









We ended up having to cut the metal parts inside and thread it through the wire through the shade with a needle. It was not hard to do just took a bit of time to get it to hang correctly. Then Miguel just put the shade back over the bulb.






Here is the finished result lit and unlit......







Total cost of the projects was around $11 for the flowers. Everything else was free or we already had it at home. What do you think? Does this project up the cuteness factor in Addies room? I have to say thanks to all the people who blog and give me ideas! It is one of my favorite things about the internet. God bless and enjoy your day!
Linking up to thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com and


http://www.thegrantlife.com/search/label/financial%20friday



http://thestewartestate.blogspot.com/2011/12/link-party-3.html

Monday, November 14, 2011

Another Eyesore Gone! (AKA An Office Redo)

Happy Monday to one and all! We have been busy at home wrapping up some "little" projects that have been on hold for awhile. One of such projects is our little office area. Since this is an old farmhouse, over the years the various owners have done some remodeling that left some awkward spaces. One of said projects was a former owner moved the furnace from the utility room to a little space off of the living room. This space use to be a little foyer area from the front door. This door is no longer the front door because we do not own the driveway that you would enter by to get to the front door. So, we had a side door that entered into a room with a furnace that you had to open another door to get into the living room. Awkward yes? Confusing too. Whew! I hope that all made sense. Therefore, we decided to completely eliminate this door and we sided over it when we sided the house. This left us with a little room with a furnace in it. I do not like unused spaces so I thought "Why not make this a little office area" ? A place for the computer, some bookshelves with books, and a filing cabinet for our paperwork. It was pretty ugly in said room.










This is a shot of what the floor looked like. (Thanks to Adaliah for this random picture cuz it was the only "before" picture I could find lol) We also had a computer desk in it but it was waaayy to big for the space and gave no room for anything else. We also had a very nice, sturdy desk chair that I picked up at a garage sale for $2.












It wasn't exactly the most beautiful chair, but it was in great condition and only two dollars. Now, we had the makings of a projects list. I wanted new flooring installed, a new computer desk, and to recover the chair. Before we could tackle any of this Miguel had to cut a pipe that was sticking up above the floor. When the previous owners moved the furnace they repiped it with the pipes above the floor. Not so attractive. Miguel had to crawl underneath in the crawl space and cut and reattach them in the crawl space. Now we could install the new floor. Meanwhile I was on a hunt for fabric for the chair. I didn't want anything too pricey as the chair was only two dollars and this was my first attempt at recovering something. I didn't want to mess up expensive fabric. While I was hunting for fabric, I was at a thrift store one day and I saw 2 really nice full size sheets that were what I was looking for in fabric. I wanted something with brown or tan in it with some pops of color. They were only $1.50 each so I bought them. With the help of hubby I picked one for the chair and went to work. I dismantled the chair as much as I could. The back rest part didn't come off completely so I couldn't hide all of the staples. The bottom was easy though. I followed the advice from Lindsey from http://mrsbucks.blogspot.com/ when she redid her kitchen chairs. Thanks for giving me the courage to try this Lindsey! And here is the finished product.











I was pretty pleased with the turn out, especially since the entire project only cost $3.50 for the chair and the sheet that I used. I even had some of the sheet left over that I have other project in mind for.





Here's Addie trying it out. (Please ignore the wild hair. lol)

Here's the shot of our new office area. The flooring was peel and stick tile from Lowes. We had to purchase two boxes so I think it was like $35 for the floor plus we had to purchase some underlayment since the floor was way uneven. That was $20 I believe. We also had to purchase a room divider t-moulding thing because we were transiting from one type of flooring to another. That was probably the most expensive item at $35 for the one piece. Sheesh! The desk I found at another thrift store for $4. So, total this project ran us around $100 total. But, getting rid of another eyesore in my house and marking another project off our list is priceless to me! =) Have a blessed day.




Linking up to thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Pause for a Tuesday Update



Happy Tuesday! As promised here is the much anticipated, I'm sure you are waiting with baited breathe update. =) First off, let's talk about my cutie, Adaliah. She is going to be 3 in January so she is not old enough to start pre-school, but this girl needs to be kept busy. So, Maria, Nicole, Keb, and I all started homeschooling are kids 2 days a week. It's going really well and we are having fun. We try to do a color, number, and letter a week. With the colors we strive to get them to start identifying objects for themselves that are a certain color. This skill is pretty much master with all of the kids. Since all of the kids have been able to count to at least 10 for a while we are having them write their numbers. The letters have been the most challenging. All of the kids love, love "Big A" so they seem to only wanna write "A' no matter what letter we are on. So, we have only progressed to the letter "E". The kids write the letters and know the sounds they make. Here is Addie on the first day of school.




Ok, not sure why this picture is next but I do not feel like moving it, so I will tell you about it next. =) We have been wrapping up the harvest of our garden. Tomatoes and most of the other veggies did not do well at all, so we were not able to can many of those. Peppers did fantastic so we have a bunch froze up for this winter. A sister from church and another lady had tons of green beans and had enough for their families so they graciously gave us some. This is the picture of the PILE we worked on one day. The second lady told us to just up root the whole plant so we could just work on it at home.
Notice the little helpers in the background. All of the kids helped for a bit, but Maria's two won for staying at it the longest.



As you can see we were at this for many a hour. I believe Maria, Nicole, and I worked for 9 hours or so on this pile. But, our work paid off and we each have about 60 cups frozen for this winter. Now back to Addie. =)
Her and her buddy/cousin Micah.

Grandma Esther send this adorable dress and headband. Thanks Grandma!



Another one of Addie. She loves to wear "bubbles" which is polka dots to the rest of us. =) And yes, that is a sneak peek at one of the heart stopping purchases behind Addie.



This is the most recent picture of her taken only a few days ago before church. She is pretty good about letting her curl her hair and it stays soooo well. =) She is styling a zebra print outfit from Grandma Janis in this one.




This is her dressed up for some fall fun. I know there are mixed feelings of that holiday in October, but Miguel and I both feel there is no harm in letting her dress like something nice and go and play the kids games that were taking place in town. We feel its a balance with everything. Just like we do decorate for Christmas and teach Adaliah about Jesus, not Santa. (Not wanting to start a debate on here and I am sure some disagree with that, but that's ok. God leads each of differently and we have different convictions about the "gray" areas. I said all of that to explain why Adaliah is dressed like an Indian Princess. lol)



With that last picture of Adaliah its pretty clear now what one of the purchases is, a new ventless fireplace for our living room. We have one already that was in a dining room but it was not decorative and it wasn't centrally located so it didn't heat the areas of our home that we are in the most. We love it and pray it helps with the heating bills! I thought I had a head on shot of the fireplace, but I can't find it. So, I will post one soon.

Drum roll...............



Behold, the other heart-stopping, major purchase. A 2012 Ford Focus. Here's the story. A couple of months ago we sold my Jimmy. It is a gas guzzler (yes dad and grandpa you can say "I told you so") and was costing more and more money to maintain. So, good bye to my first vehicle it was. Then Miguel purchased the scooter which I told you about in an earlier post. Well, that left us with the 2000 Ford Contour and the scooter. The weather was turning and my Arizona born and raised husband didn't think he would like riding a scooter 30 miles to work in the cold. I tried to tell him he was being a baby, but he wouldn't listen to me. ;) just kidding, honey. Well, that means he would need our only car pretty much full time and I would be left without a vehicle. I was fine with this, but Miguel wasn't real comfortable with the idea. So, here comes the clincher. I was driving Adaliah to her very first day of pre-school and our only car started acting up. I was pressing the gas but it was losing speed and it was making a really funny noise. So, I pull over and thank the Lord Miguel wasn't working that day and he came to help. He had no idea what was going on and was not to keen on further examination along the highway so I had to drive the car across all 4 lanes of traffic on 30 while it was stalling. I was praying and crying thinking "If I stall in the middle of this highway a semi is not going to have time to stop". God was watching over us (as always) and I made it across, but I was very shaken up. This incident happened after we put $700 into the car just a few weeks prior. We only paid $1700 for the car 2 years ago. So, Miguel went car shopping. The thought of a car payment, after 4 years without one made me sick to my stomach, but I told Miguel I believe you are the head of this house and I will trust your judgment. That is how I have my very first brand new car sitting in my drive. I do love it and it gets excellent gas mileage. About 47 on the highway and approximately 33 in town. It also has the inSync feature where my cell phone is linked to the car and I just say "Call Dad" and it does and I speak and hear through this speaker thing. Pretty cool stuff.


Well, there you have it folks. You can stop holding your breathe for the update and go on with your regularly scheduled Tueday. Blessing!