"Some Scratches" An Update

Last week I told you the story of a Craig's list find. 

A leather couch and loveseat with "some scratches."

It was a great deal mainly because the corners were ripped to shreds by a cat with some emotional issues.

The silent conversation Jeff and I had over the seller's head went something like this:

J: Are you serious? The corners look terrible.

Me: I can fix it. Trust me! It is perfect for our space. It is the best deal of the century.

J: I adore you and don't want to hear you whine about the 'deal of the century your mean husband wouldn't let you buy.' So okay, but I reserve the right to say I was right.

Me: You won't be sorry! I love you most fantastic wonderful husband!

I fixed it with a patch of faux leather and hotglue.

After deciding the couch was PERFECT, but the loveseat didn't really fit in our space, 

I advertised just the loveseat on Craigslist.

I said things like "classy mahogany brown leather" and "professional looking patch that does not detract from the beauty of this quality piece of furniture."

I sold it in 5 hours for the same price as we paid for both the couch and loveseat.

I said before that God gave me this deal! He is a good God who takes care to clothe the lillies of the field and find the perfect deal for my basement furniture. (Matthew 6:28)

I am so fantastically blessed to have a beautiful couch that was essentially FREE!

Before basement remodel.

After new windows, paint, baseboard, subfloor, carpet and pad, and new lighting. Before dreamy leather couch.

After!

Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, 

what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. 

Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. 

Are you not much more valuable than they? 

Who of you by worrying can add a single hour to his life? And why do you worry about clothes? 

See how the lilies of the field grow. 

They do not labor or spin. Yet I tell you that not even Solomon in all his splendor was dressed like one of these. 

If that is how God clothes the grass of the field, which is here today and tomorrow is thrown into the fire, will He not much more clothe you, 

O you of little faith?

So do not worry, saying, `What shall we eat?' or `What shall we drink?' or `What shall we wear?' 

For the pagans run after all these things, and your heavenly Father knows that you need them. 

But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well. 

Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. 

Each day has enough trouble of its own.

Matthew 6:28-35

Know When To Skip the Housework

I've heard a lot of advice recently about not cleaning my house.

* the dishes can wait, the babies can't *

* a clean house is the sign of a boring person *

* Don't cook. Don't clean.

No man will ever make love to a woman because she waxed the linoleum.*

~ Joan Rivers

Keeping Kids' Clothes Organized

I have what I think is a good system for maintaining my children's abundance of clothes.

Can you tell?

Ehem.

Even good organizing requires maintenance. Apparently. 

Basement [another update]

We are enjoying our "new" basement space so much.

We knew when we tackled the project that it wouldn't be easy.

From dank and moldy,

dark and creepy,

dirty and cluttered,

to...

"Go to the basement!" punishment

My kids like to drive me crazy and "run the loupe." The loupe goes through the living room, dining room, hallway, mudroom, and right through the middle of the kitchen and back again in a circle. Pushing some noisy car, screaming and chasing eachother, blankets over their heads and running into walls. It's especially loud when other kids are over. Oh my! 

Every day when they are running to and fro, I say, "If you want to run, go to the basement!" There is plenty of room down there. But the children do not go unless forced.

"Come on, please just go play in the basement!!?" I beg, I plead. I force.

They cry.

And what's not to love?

Windows covered over because they are broken.

Mold growing in the corner.

Cold, uneven, dirty concrete floors.

Storage space mixed with all the un-loved and broken toys.

Dark and dank. 

Circus paint treatment from previous tenants. Not to mention the outdoor siding used on inside walls.

One of my nephews was over at Christmastime and I sent the kids downstairs to play. Soon after, my nephew came up crying, "There are mice and slugs down there!" And what could I say to comfort the poor boy. It's true.

Mice and slugs.

For 9 years we kinda pretended like we didn't have a basement. On tours of our house, I would skip that door saying, "Oh, its just the basement. It isn't finished. More like, "It's frightening."

About 8 years ago, Jeff made a valiant effort to spruce the place up. He thought it would be a fun game room for friends to hang out. He cleaned it all up, put up the falling down ceiling, and painted the walls white. The big problem was still the coldness, moisture, and it was VERY loud. Two adults couldn't have a conversation if anything else was going on. 

We rarely used it.

Jeff and I decided it was time to tackle this project. Is it even possible to turn this unused, creepy, dank space into a livable, inviting retreat for young and old?

We started about 3 weeks ago with a major clean-up. Also, Jeff installed new windows. Let there be light! A subfloor was next. Then paint. Then carpet. I can't wait to show you the results.

Someday soon, "go play in the basement" won't be a punishment. :)

Multi Surface Duster Scam

I like gadgets as much as the next girl.

I had a coupon and needed to buy a Pledge product. So I grabbed this "Pledge, Multi Surface Duster" off the shelf and I was on my way. The instructions on the box looked easy enough: Unfold handle, Fluff duster, Insert prongs into duster. I was giddy about dusting. And that doesn't happen very often.

I opened the box at home and discovered I had been scammed. I had fluffy white duster things. NO wand thing. In tiny, tiny print on the bottom of the box it says, "refills." Who has time to read these things when their children are blowing up water wings and trying on flip-flops one aisle over?

I felt the same irritation as when I bought into the Swiffer fad only to discover that I had the MAX and Swiffer doesn't make MAX refills. Not to be outsmarted, I now put a damp towel onto the Swiffer and use it anyway.

I am fighting injustice, one cleaning product at a time.

(Craftsman brand BBQ fork)

I don't need no fancy wand.

Eat my dust Pledge.

Ehem. Literally.

More kitchen help... pretty, pretty please!

I recently posted about my kitchen (click here) and many of you chimed in with ideas to make my space more functional on a $0 budget. I've been watching episodes of HGTV's Spice Up My Kitchen online. I haven't seen them do a new kitchen for less than $50,000. Let me wipe the drool off my keyboard. But back to reality... a dream kitchen won't be happening in my near future.

(the kitchen "before" is what it looks like now)

With everyone's help, I did a mini kitchen makeover in Photoshop with some new colors on the cabinets and minimal structural change.

(the "after" version)

This photoshop fun is addicting. I tried all sorts of colors and ended back with beige and brown. I took out the soffit and added a pendant light over the sink. The tiles are updated with stickers designed specifically for the kitchen (nifty). And check out those roman shades. I found them while searching "roman shades" through Google. I took the picture off someone's blog post. Selecting the shade and deleting the inverse left me with a shade I could work with. I used the skew tool and made the shade fit the window. Then I duplicated the layer for window #2.

Easy, right? I really love these shades and the blog I took them off of said they were $24 each at JC Penny. I went to JC Penny's site and they are discontinued. Ahhh! I've search a bit and have found nothing even comparable.

My idea is to set my readers to the task of finding the shades for me. The incentive is coffee. Or at least a coffee shop gift card of your choice. Post a comment with a link (or links) to an affordable substitute to the window shades shown above. Did I mention an affordable substitute? I'll announce the winner once I've made my selection from your links (in a few days). Keep the ideas coming!

Fence me in... please.

I had no clue that paint choices would elicit such a response from my audience. It's awesome. Thanks to everyone who chimed in. It looks like paint option number 1 is the winner. I sure wish the process was as easy as it is with photoshop.

Our fence project has been at the forefront of the spring season.

A very busy road goes in front of our house. It hasn't been a problem in the past, especially since Emma saw our cat run over by a car 3 years ago. She's been especially cautious. Mandy on the other hand, has no concept of the danger and likes to play chicken. Add one very quick little boy who is crawling at 5 months, and you've got one super nervous mommy.

Jeff saw my concerns and we worked a fence into the budget now instead of 5 years from now.

Thanks to my blog audience who gave us sound advice and we chose a 4 foot narrow picket vinyl fence. We ended up ordering it from an online source called USA Fence. It wasn't necessarily the cheapest of the cheap (Home Depot has that corner on the market), but it was the best quality for our money. The 8 foot sections are reinforced so they won't sag. Also there are no external brackets that end up rusting.

We did lots of driving around looking at terribly installed vinyl fences. That's what we really didn't want. Our new fence has a job to do (keep the kids in) and it also needs to look great for a long time. Jeff did research online about how to do everything "right." I assured him that I watched at least 5 fences being put in on This Old House or other HGTV type shows. That makes me almost an expert.

The fence arrived in a big pallet of pieces a few weeks later. My husband is so hard core. He started the project in the rain, digging the two holes for the driveway posts right away by hand. We planned on a gate, so he welded up some iron posts for the white vinyl post to slide over the top. The base of the posts are buried 3 feet with a 2 foot iron base and buried in twice as much cement as recommended. Just don't back into our end posts. You'll hurt yourself.

(Can you even believe someone gave these boots away for free at the MOPS swap?)

I was actually working, people. I ran the post hole digger!

The fence system is really ingenious (it just took me 3 times through spell check to spell "ingenious").

It integrates, each piece building upon the next. It allows for a lot of flex so we could level and re-level as we went.

The first 4 holes went beautifully smooth with the post hole digging attachment on the tractor. But then we got closer to the big Black Walnut tree and encountered these:

The roots were everywhere. We didn't find any advice in our research, so Jeff attacked this problem with a chain saw.

I love this man.

In all my years of This Old House watching, I've never seen them cut tree roots in a 3 foot deep hole with a chain saw. I'm really not sure what they would do....

Not put a fence near a tree?

Even with our complications, all 8 of our posts and rail sections were in by the end of the afternoon. A wind and rain storm were predicted, so we quickly filled in the holes enough to hold (or so we thought) the posts in place.

The next morning the fence was all out of whack. I was seriously worried. It looked like one of the awful, Home Depot, DIY specials we made fun of during our research process. The rain made the ground incredibly soft and the posts settled and the rain twisted them to and fro. Jeff came in after surveying the damage and said, "Well, the fence fell over."

We learned a lot during this process. First, the ground was really too saturated and the project would have been much more fool proof in the Fall or Summer. Secondly, we also learned that the fence system is very forgiving. With a bit of bracketing and tweaking, the fence looked as good as new. Which is good since it was new. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Jeff anchored some things in place, waiting for the water to go out of the holes, and the job took a bit longer than we planned. But the finished project look like this:

I look out the window now and see this view and think it was worth the effort.

It totally fits the style of the house and I'm glad we didn't go with the swoop as I originally wanted.

(The Fence Company website photo)

What would I do without my faithful blog audience? Make terrible fencing choices, that's what.

Since this picture was taken, Jeff installed the two white rail gates that close off the driveway. No more playing chicken.

It's coming time to paint the house. I knew it. My painter man extraordinaire knew it. But it wasn't until we saw this picture that we realized that the brand new, spankin' white fence makes the house look really in need of paint. 

And that's where you come in. 

Do you want to come paint my house? I make stellar oatmeal cookies as payment.

No, no, really, I just need you to lend your expertise on a color scheme:

Option number one is to paint the house light brown with white shutters, white trim, and a red front door.

Option number two is to paint the house a lighter brown, call it "taupe," with white trim, dark green to black shutters, and a dark red front door.

Option three is a lighter taupe, brown shutters, and a white front door.

There you have it. Make sure to vote. And schedule a work day. I'm joking. Totally joking. Sorta.

Our fence project was really a lot of fun. I would encourage all you DIYers to give fencing a try.

* Beware that if you google "fencing" you'll get results of white suited figures jabbing pointed sticks at each other. *

Sing with me, "These Boots Were Made Like Slippers," and "Please, Do Fence Me In."

Can you believe these boots were only $1 each?

I love end of season sales. My original thought was so give the girls these boot/slippers for Christmas, so I bought them big. But then Mandy got into this phase where she HAS to wear shoes around the house. Since all her shoes are incrusted with mud (how does this happen?), I tried to think of another option. I remembered the slippers and viola!

Who knew something so simple could make 2 little girls so happy. Ask them how they feel when they don't get any Christmas presents, but at least they'll have the memories. Just joking. Maybe.


For those of you wondering if Emma is wearing stilts. No, she's just growing like a weed, 3 inches since Christmas.


And no, I don't let Emma wear this skirt out in public without leggings. Wowsa, it looks short in this picture.



In other news.... do you know what makes me incredibly happy?

These guys.

And this fence that looks so fantastic. More on that later.

The House the un-Cleans Itself

You are familiar with barnacles, right? They are those strange sea creatures that attach themselves to rocks on the ocean shores. You can see them when the tide goes out and there they cling to every surface they can find. I have them in my house. Not sea creatures, but stuff, stuff, and more stuff. When the whirling tide of family life resends for a moment, "clutter barnacles" can be seen on all available horizontal space. If there is a shelf by the back door to set something on, stuff will get set there. The top of the piano, the mantle, the dining room table, the desk in the kitchen, the top of the hutch.... these are my trouble spot.

I wish I could tell you there is an easy fix. If only there was some 76 step process that would rid us all of clutter barnacles for good. I've done the research, my children have added their stuff to mine to help with my experiments and I've discovered only one universal, frustrating, tiring solution: clutter requires constant tidying and pick-up.

Having a place for everything and everything in its place is a huge step in the right direction. I've talked about "The House That Cleans Itself" before and I love the book for all its organizational genius. I followed the principles in the book last year and Jeff built a shelf for the back entry. It is just what we needed for the spot and I'm not sure how we functioned without it.

My house has been cleaner and tidier lately and not because I figured out how to add more time to my day. I simply figured out how to be more productive with the time I have. The Motivated Moms Checklist has made all the difference. I highly, highly, highly recommend it. I'll write a whole post on it at another time because it has changed my life. I'm not even being overly dramatic. Truly. Changed. My. Life. For the better.

But I still have barnacles. It is constant and I think it is totally normal for a family to have clutter. But I'm working on my organizational methods so that tidying up isn't stressful, painful, frustrating, and tiring.


Trouble Spot #456:





This is the highest barnacle shelf in my home: the top of the hutch in the dining room. It is pretty much the only place that my really agile children with their go-go gadget arms and scaling devices cannot reach.

You are looking at everything I don't want them to touch without direct supervision:

• Play Doh. Otherwise known as let's-get-the-150-piece-set-out-and-make-a-huge-mess-and-be-entertained-for-less-than-2.46-minutes.

• Beads. Who's crazy idea was it to think beads were a fantastic craft project for preschoolers? I think that was me because I knew the girls would love them. I was right, both girls LOVE threading beads onto ribbons. Then, Mandy usually gets bored first and all the beads end up on the floor where I chase said beads around with the broom.

• The "washable" markers that aren't actually washable. Everyone is so concerned about lead paint on toys these days. Well, someone should really start lobbying against faulty marker labeling. We have 2 sets of markers in our home labeled "washable" that are anything but. I have the marked up table, floor, and walls, and couch to prove it. It does seem to wear off children's skin within a few days. And that is the good news.

• Puzzles, puzzles, and more puzzles. Puzzles are a great source of entertainment. I just need to know the who, what, when, and where of all puzzle activities. Unsupervised puzzle-ing ends up with 19 pieces missing out of each box hidden somewhere with all the missing sock mates and then there was Georgia and Wisconsin from the the US puzzle that went through the wash. Hence, all the puzzles park on top of the hutch.

• Various other "supervision required" items.

My natural instinct says that nothing should be on top of the hutch. Mmm. *Insert dreamy, wistful look*. That would look so nice and clutter free. It should stay un-cluttered. Yes, yes it should. But it will not.  Experience has made me smarter. If I found a new location for everything, it would look nice for a few days, until I needed to get the "needs supervision" items out of reach again.

What was necessary was something to contain the items that I know will end up there anyway. Plus, I wanted the containers to be easily accessible when I was supervising their use at the table. They should be pretty to look at too because it is necessary for balance in my life. I'm weird that way. Function must be accompanied by form. I was willing to spend a few dollars. Do I need to remind you of how terrible it looked before?







Emma actually stumbled on the perfect containers. I was looking for baskets, but they were too expensive. The dollar store had a lot of $1 quality items. Emma saw some large bowls and said, "Look mom, these would be perfect." And they were. Watch out, this girl has an eye for design and she's only 5 years old.

She found the perfect thing at Wal-Mart. Plastic (function) and a beautiful red (form) and the price was $1.50 each.






I organized the top of the hutch during the children's rest time. For those of you curious about whether Emma still naps, no, she usually does not sleep. But every single day she rests quietly at the same time as Mandy and Remington. Some women run marathons as a major accomplishment in their lives; I get three children sleeping/resting at the same time every day. That is my major accomplishment.






Oh, the dreaded markers. Washable, my %^#$&^@. Crayola's Color Wonder markers are a fabulous scam idea if you want to continually invest in the special color books and paper. In the meantime, I now closely watch the girls with their "washable" markers.



The result is a very practical containment system that is still out of reach. Plus, it looks nice and tidy too.





Being organized feels so good!