Finishing up some projects and starting new ones

We've been working on various projects around here lately. We finished up our swing set (for the most part) on Saturday. That felt great!

My boys painted the canvases I prepped a while ago, but for some reason I didn't get around to hanging them up until today. Here they are in our upstairs hallway. My baby seemed to know which one he did (the one in the middle). He said something that sounded like, "I did this one" when I was taking him to his room for a nap today. He's 15 months. Blueberries were on sale last week, so I had a couple of friends over and we made 3 batches of Blueberry Lime Jam (recipe found in this cookbook).

Last night, I fell asleep thinking about all the projects and things I need to get done. I decided to pick an area in my house and just work on it until it feels "done," or as done as I feel like getting it. I picked the kitchen and spent a good half hour or more thinking about my apron situation. I originally planned on using a pegboard to hand my aprons. The flowery red/black now all black one found in this post. After spray painting it, I found out it wouldn't fit in the space available! I'm still trying to find a new home for that one. Inspiration struck last night and I decided I would make a shelf with hooks.

I was at Home Depot the other day, pricing out tiles for a craft night I have coming up. I ended up wandering into the lumber section on accident and they had a TON of nice pre-cut wood for 51 cents a piece. I grabbed a bunch of 1x12 for some shelves I've been planning on doing in my kitchen soon and then because it was so cheap, I grabbed a few other nice boards with no real plans for them yet. My 1x4 board became my shelf today!

This only took me about 20 minutes. I used a handsaw to cut the back and the shelf part. Then, because I got a jigsaw for Christmas and haven't gotten to use it yet, I cut my own corbels for the shelf. Can I just say how much FUN it was to use a jigsaw? I never knew power tools could be so fun! Loved it and will definitely be doing something with it again soon. I scrounged around and found some nails, then glued and nailed the whole thing together. It's too cold today to spray paint, but I'll be doing that soon. I'm also going to be getting some nice little hooks at Lowe's soon for my shelf, too. I plan on doing a word in block letters for the top of the shelf soon and I'll take pictures and post them when I get that done.

The Swing Set

We got the kids a swing set for Christmas. We picked a kit that you have to buy the wood separate. It took us a month, but we finally finished it. This past Friday, I pulled out all the wood for the platform to the slide and put it together while my kids were doing quiet time/naps.

Here it is, half the planks screwed down (above). And here's my two youngest having fun on the finished product (below).

Saturday came and we devoted the whole day to finishing it up. It was a lot of fun, but a lot of work too.

Here's a couple of pictures of us putting it together.

And the finished swing set (so far)! We were so excited, we went out for pizza for dinner.

We still need to stake the swing set down. My husband was trying to do that, but the ground here around Tucson is rock hard and the stake wouldn't go but a few inches down. We also need to attach the slide to the swing set. The slide was supposed to come with hardware, but for some reason, it didn't. I keep forgetting to call and see if we can get new hardware shipped to us. When I get around to that, we'll be adding the slide. Until then, our kids LOVE the swings!

**After finishing this project together, my husband told me that he would be willing to help me with some more projects (like all the furniture piling up in the garage that needs to be refinished! Yippee!**

New dining room table

**Edited to add to Thrifty Decor Chicks Before and After party.**

The other day I was out running errands and I saw a Pier 1. I have to admit, I don't know if I've ever been in Pier 1 before. I have always thought of it as a store with overpriced decor items. However, I read on another blog how Mikael found a great deal on a dining room table at Pier 1. I decided to stop in and see what I could see... and... I found a table! It was on clearance, but one corner of the table was smashed in, so I got an extra $100 off. Grand total? Just over $200! Yeah! So, here's a before and after.

My parents bought this table for us when we were first married. As you can tell, it badly needs to be refinished. The biggest problem though is that it's only 3 ft by 4 ft and there are 5 of us now. Can you say, tight squeeze?

Here's our new gorgeous table! I fell in love with the legs and I have to admit, that's a BIG reason I bought this table.


With the leaf in, it expands to 6 1/2 feet, so it'll comfortable seat 8, but we could squeeze 10 around it if we had to.

And another shot of those gorgeous legs. I told my husband that when/if we wear this table top out, I'm keeping the legs.
And, I just have to say, I love my minivan. I was able to fold all the back seats down, move my kids up, load up the table and keep running my errands. It was great!

We still don't have chairs for our new table, but I'm planning on making benches using this great lady's awesome furniture plans and possibly refinishing two of my old table's chairs to match. Before that though, remember my old table up top? Here it is again:
It's getting a makeover! I can hardly wait. It's going to be my work table in my craft room! Woohoo! I'm so excited!

Powder room progress

I've been wanting to get a few projects done lately. Just as I was going to haul our computer desk outside for a new finish - the weather got rainy. So, I shifted gears and painted my downstairs bathroom this past weekend.

This is the closest things I have to a before picture. I was taking the back of the tank off the toilet.

Here's my finished-so-far bathroom. It's a light purple (Sensitive Tint, I think, from Sherwin Williams color matched at Home Depot). I picked the color out of the sky in the painting below.
My little "iron man" I bought at Panama City Beach, FL my senior year of high school on a band trip. The painting came from a friend. She'd pulled it from a dumpster (the glass was broken) so she could have the frame and when I told her I'd take the picture, she gave the whole thing to me. My husband replaced the glass in it for Valentine's Day a few years ago. The little dresser came from Overstock.com. It holds extra toilet paper and hand towels and will eventually hold small bottles of the cleaners I use to clean the bathroom.

I'm not finished with my bathroom yet. I'm planning on putting a scripture verse in gray vinyl around the top of the wall, like a wallpaper boarder. I'm thinking John 8:12. I headed out to Joanns this week and got another Thomas Kinkade lighthouse and a frame for over the toilet. I also have a basket for the back of the toilet to hold lotions. I'm still looking for something for across from the toilet, too. I'm looking forward to seeing it all come together!

Work in Progress

We're working on a few projects around our house at the moment.

Our boys got a swing set for Christmas. We decided to do a kit and buy the wood separately. It's our first DIY project with power tools (which we bought just for this swing set). Here's my hubby measuring the boards for cutting. We've been working on this every weekend. Hopefully we'll be done this weekend.
We have a lot of blank walls in our house at the moment. I decided to get three canvases and have each of my boys (age 4, 3, and 1) paint them. I pulled these out yesterday and painted them a nice off-white base color. My boys will be painting them this afternoon!

I finally decided it was time to start tackling our bathrooms. We still haven't painted our bathrooms and our bedroom. We started last night in our downstairs powder room by taking the toilet tank off and getting everything off the wall. Hopefully, I'll finish prepping the room and taping off today. I'm hoping to get the first coat on this evening. I'm going with a light purple, but I'm starting to wonder how I'm going to like it. We'll see how it goes.

Organizing and other things

I've been working on organizing my house. You know, the whole, a place for everything type thing. It's a slow process since I can't just go out and buy a ton of cute storage containers. Here's what I've got so far.

We have a coat closet in our house, but it got turned into a food storage closet, so I had to come up with something else for hanging our coats. I bought and stained these peg boards years ago, but never really used the, so I painted them brown and hung them in my entryway for our coats. (The red peg board is now black, but it didn't fit where I had planned to put it and it hasn't found a new home, yet.)
It is so nice to have a place to hang our coats!

In my quest to find creative ways to store/organize toys, I came across a website that had some great ideas. One was a new way to store our growing collection of board games.

Before

After

We put all the small pieces in various sized ziplock bags so they won't spill all over the place and put the boxes on their sides. I told my husband we have room for more board games now!

I'm planning on implementing more of their great ideas in our toy rooms soon. I can hardly wait to have that disaster of a room cleaned up!

I started hanging all our art and pictures and things. I put this little plaque I made in my 9th grade art class on the wall and thought it needed a little something more. This scripture came to mind, so I headed down to my vinyl cutter and cut it out. My parents gave me a ton of leftover tile from their house remodel back in May so I had the tiles. I used Gorilla Epoxy glue (thanks Shanty2Chic for the idea!) to attach sawtooth hangers to the backs last night and hung them up this morning. I think it makes my little plaster mold look more complete, don't you think?

Also with my quest to keep things neat and orderly, I recently bought two baskets. I found them at Big Lots of $5 each. Once I get done painting them (I ran out of spray paint yesterday), and I get a liner made for each of them, they should help keep things on the right level. I plan to put one at the top of the stairs and one at the bottom to keep things that end up on the wrong floor organized, and then we'll swap them at night and put things away. I'll show you the finished project when I get done with them soon.

Vinyl decorating

Here's a couple of vinyl signs I did recently. This one below is located at the bottom of my staircase so I can see it each morning and throughout the day to remind me to read my scriptures. So far, it's working well. That and my three-year-old loves to have me "read the letters, mom." I took this picture standing on a step above the words, so the angle looks a bit odd. Sorry.

Now, if only I could find a cute quote that would inspire me to clean my house...

This next one, I saw in a friend's house and I liked it so much, I repeated in mine and in the same spot - over the sliding glass door to the back yard.

My husband helped me put these up the other day after the kids went to bed. Let me just say that putting vinyl lettering on a textured wall is NOT fun. It looks good now and that's all the matters, right? As a side note, you can see where I was spray painting my bed frame against the back of our block fence.

I also put "Welcome" on my front door again and I did a "No Soliciting" sign on our side lite. I was getting tired of all the door-to-door sales people that come through our newly built neighborhood.

I put a sign above my pantry door, but I don't like it, so I'm going to take it down and try again sometime. Hopefully, I'll get a before and after.