Who doesnt love a "Quick Fix"??????

 

We all have corners in our house where we can add POPS! of color to... 

I happen to have one in my kitchen...

 

What to do... what to do... this girl has a spray paint addiction/love.... I have free product for a project....  Well here's the scoop...

 

My mother gave me 3 cookie sheets the other day she had purchased for a school/teacher project - she got them at the Dollar Tree.

 

I went and purchased this delicious color of Rusteolum Spray Paint at Walmart - for around $4.00 for the can...

 

 

 

 Painted - LOVING THIS Citrus-y Lime Green color for spring/summer!

 

Added some magnets from my fridge to hold recipes and a wonderful picture of the most beautiful baby girl I know...

I also had 3 canisters that I made for Finley's birthday that mildly matched... they were containers I purchased at Goodwill, Painted the Candlesticks from the Dollar Tree and glued them together.  These 3 containers hold easy to grab snacks for my daugher.

 

Here's a few views of the set up/arrangement....  enjoy!

 

Easy fixes - Easy splash of color for my kitchen!  I also have a bright orange olive oil container that sits on my countertop by my stove currently.

 

Do you have an area that needs a POP! of color - or an affordable spring refresher?

 

A walk down memory lane.... our digs in Osky

So I missed Throw Back Thursday that is becoming the thing on Facebook yesterday, so I am going to throw it back today, Friday.... I never have been the one to follow the "rules". 

I thought it would be fun to share photos of our first home in Oskaloosa.  This home has alot of great memories in it... ones filled with friends and family.  This is the first home that Shawn and I lived in together, one that has housed my brother and a wonderful friend.  When we moved out, I cried in the driveway...  If I could have moved this house to Pella, I totally would have!

I saw this house online and fell in love with it immediately.  I loved the front porch, the porch swing and the overall bungalow look of the house.  The potential for this house was unbelivable!  I was lucky enough to negotiate a great price on the home.  It did need some repairs, new flooring as the owners previous animals has taken liberties in using the carpets as wonderful pee pads.....   oh and the carpet colors were so wonderous... a beautiful country blue and a dusty rose... with matching colored walls. 

Many friends came over many nights to paint walls, drink some beers and to help me with moving in.  To this day I am so thankful for all their help and support in this new adventure. 

 

Onto the inside!

 

Living Room

 

 

 

Dining Room

 

 

 

 

The Kitchen

 

 

The first floor bathroom

 

Our Bedroom

 

Guest Bedroom

 

 

Our Basement Storage area -

basement also included a laundry area, a non conforming bedroom and a bathroom with a shower.

 

 

Laundry Area

 

 

 

Onto the 2nd floor!

 

The Office

 

And now... my absolute favorite room of the entire house.... my haven...  my retreat... whatever you would like to call it... it was wonderous!!!!

 

My scrapbooking room...

 

 

Outside! 

Shawn misses this garage more than anything,

 it was a great sized garage for all his toys and guy stuff...

 

 

 

Our patio and backyard

 

 

 

Final photo folks... the ole driveway... and final view of the house.

 

Thanks for taking a trip down memory lane with us!

 



We're Seeing Green!

 

We are seeing green around our house - all over - the grass has turned green, the tulips green stems are just waiting to bloom.   Our trees in the front yard are budding - I am looking forward to seeing the green leaves POP out and shade our house. 

Our front door, garage side door and internal garage doors were all painted a red color - which is lovely - but there are several houses around town with red doors - so of course I wanted to be different... 

Here is the before photos of our doors....

This is our internal garage door and our front door is above.

 to the right is our other garage side door - on the inside...



I went online to Pintrest and collected several color ideas:

• Bright Yellow
• Grass Green
• Orange
• Lime Green
• Teal/Turqoise

All of which would go great with our dark grey house paint and bright white trim......  now which color to pick....


We decided to go with Lime Green!  Sherwin Williams color swatch named: Frolic

 

 

A couple of photos of the 4 coats of paint that was put onto the doors...in the process...

 

 Side Garage Door - taped off

 

 

 

I put on 4 coats of paint onto the doors, 3 with a smooth surface roller and then the final with a small handbrush. 

 

Shawn also helped out with this painted project, and sanded, primed and then painted our planters for the front of our house in the same color.

 

  I cant wait to plant pretty fuschia pink flowers in the planters this summer. 

 

 

Here is the final pictures of our doors!!!!  I love the lime green with the dark grey!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Are you doing any spring updates to your house???? 

 

 

Diaper Bag Frustrations - so much stuff... for one little person!

The Diaper Bag Dilema...  I need all this stuff...  just in case....

How does such a small person require so much stuff? 

How many of you have gotten to the resturant and realized... crap... I don't have a bib for the baby...  or perhaps you have one of those children who likes to snack, however you never seem to have the right snack...  pretty soon your carrying a mounting hiking backpack to every outing and you are having to schedule regular appointments with your chiropractor because the weight of the gosh darn this is out of control. 

The common question in mind keeps rising ....
"How does one little person require so much stuff?" 


So in order to tackle the clutter... and to ensure that my little one had all that she would need and then some... I decided to divide all the "goodies" into different sections.... hence the magic of diaper bag organization...

Materials that I purchased for this project:

4 Pencil Bags - Dollar Tree - $1.00 a piece


And here we go... how I organized my daughter's Diaper Bag....

First Bag O Goodies.... The Entertainment .... aka the toys...

Our daughter loves to have many different options to play with... so thank you to Dollar Tree for many of the items in this bag of fun....

 

• Foam Stickers
• Stickers
• Scratch Paper & Crayons
• Four Puzzles
• Play-Do
• Eric Carle lace up cards with 4 laces

Second Bag of goodies.... aka the snacks... or as they are called at our house "NACKS"

 

Again, we need alot of options... in hopes that we always have the right snack for the occasion..

Crackers, Fruit snacks, Fruit Leather, Applesauce on the Go and Gold Fish.  Sometimes I change out the fruit snacks for dried fruit - she loves dried apricots... I can't keep them in the house!

 

You will also see in the front pocket that we take along alot of hand-wipes.  - $1.00 for a large packet at the Dollar Tree.

 

 

Third Bag of fun.... the eatting utensils and bibs.... nothing fancy here... pretty explanitory..

 

We used bibsters and the silverware is also from The Dollar Tree.  The carrier came with them.  We have 2 sets that we trade out so we can wash the used ones. 

 

And the final bag of goodies.... the actual diapering stuff....

 

 



Diapers - 4 of them

Wipes

Changing Pad

1 change of clothes/outfit

1 pair of socks

Diaper Cream

Lotion, and Hand Sanitizer

and a plastic sack for any accidents/messes

 

Finally, the stuffed - I mean  - organized Diaper Bag...

 

 

 

Hope these ideas inspire you.  Maybe you have ideas on other items that Mommys out there would benefit from...  What all do your kiddos need/want in their diaper bag?

Blocking the Drive By's and Lookey-Lou's...

We have a house with a HUGE bay window in the front of the house, facing the street.... and it provides a direct view right thru our house and thru our kitchen... I am pretty sure if one studied the house slowly as they were driving by they could see our neighbor's 3-season porch behind us.  LOL!

I could never find a curtain that I liked the looks of, I thought about getting bamboo shades or even having a custom roman shade whipped up.... I knew whatever we purchased it would need to be something easy to maintain as it is behind the sink so it recieved alot of wear and tear from the overspray and playing of soapy bubbles....

So of course I hit up my favorite website for creative ideas, Pintrest...  I found several ideas and various ways to do no-sew roman shades or roller shades....Pinned them for future reference



My favorite ideas from Pintrest are listed below...


http://awelldressedhome.com/519-quick-and-easy-diy-window-shade/

 http://365days2simplicity.blogspot.com/2011/04/easy-no-se

http://evolutionofstyleblog.blogspot.com/2011/08/no-sew-all-faux-roman-shade.html

            My material list for this pull shade is:

          2 yards fabric - Hobby Lobby - $9.38           

Roller Shade - WalMart - $4.97

            Spray Adhesive - Lowes - on hand
      Roller Mounting Hardware -WalMart - .97

                   Process for Roller Shade:

Mount roller brackets in appropriate location on your window. We used the celing mount option.

Then we moved onto attaching the fabric to the roller shade... we rolled out the shade to the full length, laid the fabric over the top for a dry fit...  then we sprayed the roller shade with spray adhesive and attached the fabric.  We smoothed out the wrinkles as we went.

Next I trimmed the excess fabric along the edges
and on the end of the shade.

 

 

Final step.... put the roller shade up in the mounting brackets and pull down for shade from the evening sun, and from a complete look thru as you drive by our house!

 



Here is the final product in action! Lovely dose of green and blue polka-dots to compliment our kitchen and dining room paint colors.