Clean It Up

We're trying to be more intentional with our cleaning and keeping up our house. It's so nice to be in a clean house, and to have our house clean enough to have people over (or not freak out when they drop by!). It's so frustrating to get up on a Saturday morning and realize you have to clean the entire day. Our hope is that this will help.

And, because I like free things, I'm giving it to you as a freebie as well. Feel free to edit it to your needs. Enjoy!

Click HERE to get the free download. In the corner, click file, download as, and choose Word Doc and the formatting will be correct. Enjoy and feel free to share with a link back to the blog!

Best. Neighbors. Ever.

In a previous post, I mentioned that our neighbors moved. They had a big garage sale, but all we bought was a $2 antique radio. The hubs has a thing for radios? Well, before they left they had a few things left over... and they gave them to us!

We got a great little dresser. They said they used it for their first baby (adorable). Zach painted the knobs navy blue, instead of the powder blue they were, and it's currently sitting in my craft room waiting to be filled with all my fabrics! Can't wait to show you how very organized the craft room is... once I clean it!

Hoorah for great and generous neighbors. Do you have any stories of great neighbors?

Old Man Door

I mean that in the most endearing way possible. Every time I looked at our front door, it made me think of my grandparents house. They've had the exact same door since I was little. We lovingly called it our grandpa door. However, we didn't really like the obnoxiously shiny chrome door as the focal point of our home. We have been looking for a new door since we moved in, but nothing comes in a 38" door without being special ordered (read: too expensive). We'd looked at some options to re-frame the door into a smaller, normal-sized door, but seriously a 38" door is nice for moving furniture in and out. So we waited.

Then, I got sick of it. I started doing some online searching to find out how we could fix and saw that a few people had spray painted their metal doors. We figured it couldn't hurt anything, so we took down the door, unscrewed all the pieces, removed the windows, and started painting. We considered white, tan, and a few other colors, but finally decided on our favorite stand-by, oil rubbed bronze by Rustoleum (they don't pay me, I just love them). We thought it might warm-up the outside of the house a bit and look nice with the brick.

The trickiest part was painting the edges of the windows. We finally decided to tape them and cover the glass (plastic?) with pieces of garbage bags. It worked! We also decided to replace the handle and springs while we had it taken apart, so now we can lock the door and it doesn't slam shut (or open!).

This project literally took us a few hours and made a huge different in the way our house looks - not bad for the cost of two cans of spray paint! We think taking off the "fencing" was a major improvement too. I wish I could show you how it has changed the whole look, but showing full pictures of the front of my house creeps me out - sorry! But just know that there is now a super cute wreath on that door! Oh, and the door has definitely held up against rain and heat over the past few months. It looks the same as the day we painted it.

Bang, Bang

As some of you might know, guns aren't really my thing. At all. They freak me out. But, before this gets weirdly political, let's get to our project! My hubs had been looking for a gun cabinet for his guns, so obviously, I took over that craigslist search for myself. (Spoliers: he never got one.) And, I found this beauty for $10. Sweet!

So, yeah, it's kind of early 90's and has no glass. Bonus, it did have a key! Always have to look for the positives. And, because guns freak me out, I had no desire to keep it as a gun safe. Instead, I knew it would work perfectly in our living room corner as a catch all. I'd been looking for glass hutch at auctions, but they were always too expensive. This is definitely better than those were anyway!

So, first things first, I had to wash it down. This beaut was in a sketchy basement in a random farm house. It was definitely one of those times where I text a few friends the address I'm at, ya know, just in case we're never heard from again.

FYI, that's how I feel when I go to buy a Craigslist item!

Zach did the wood-working for me on this project. We had planned to knock out the actual gun racks, but they were actually built into the shelf. So, instead we cut out some shelves from scrap wood and used one to completely cover the bottom "rack". We just attached it liquid nails, that stuff never comes off! Then, Zach used his nail gun to attach the top two shelves from the outside of the shelf on the sides and back. Unfortunately, you could still see the top part of the rack under the shelf. To stop this, my brilliant husband added a 2x2 to make it look like it just has a built in ledge. Again, he used liquid nails to attach it. (Update: It's held up for over a year!) 

Then, we went to Ace and picked up a quart of a really nice light yellow paint color and used some left over white paint. Note, the next time I do a project this dark, I will do some primer. The white covered pretty well actually, but the yellow took five coats. Seriously, five coats. The yellow on the can lid is closer to how it looks in real life, the other pictures look brighter for some reason. It's a nice vintage yellow. 

After it dried I used some 60 grit sandpaper to give it a little distressing. And, surprisingly enough, once the cabinet was painted white, we didn't even need to repaint the pulls or hinges; we actually liked the way it looks. I also put a protective layer of wax on it to keep it nice. In retrospect, it really wasn't necessary because it doesn't get used, opened, or touched too much. It's more of a "pretty" than a functional piece. Before I reattached the door, I stapled on some chicken wire where the glass should be. Someday, we might have a piece of glass cut for it, but for it's current location we like the look of the shabby chic chicken wire.

And here it is, actually in my living room. It's a place for some extra knickknacks that don't fit in my china hutch. Don't you looove that strawberry tea set? It was a gift from my mom and I think it's adorable! Plus, it hold our wedding sand, a few bibles, and a few depression glass pieces from my grandma. It's a shorter pieces, probably only 6 feet, so we felt like it needed some items on top because our ceilings are so high. I like the way the fan and the candles give it some height while keeping the mix-matched feel. It also conveniently sits over our modem and router so you can't see all the messy cords.

Was this a worthwhile upcycle or would a gun rack have been better? Eek! We've discussed moving this to our main bathroom at some point for towels and lotions. It could be a pretty versatile $10 piece. What do you think?

One Set Out, One Set In

Our old neighbors had lived in the house in front of us for over forty years! They were really great. When we first moved in they told us all about our house and who had owned it and which trees had been planted when. They are kind of like our neighborhood historians.

They decided to move to a condo in town, so I was waiting for their house to come up on Zillow. I have a weird fascination with real estate and assessment prices and how much people list their houses for. Well, disappointingly to me, but excitingly for them, the house never even listed! Someone approached them about it and they sold it, without ever putting a for sale sign in front! Crazy! I'm sure someday that will happen for our house... not. Did I mention that our neighbor's house is more than 3x what our's cost? Yep, we got the location!

I searched high and low for a new neighbor gift idea, but I couldn't find anything that wasn't Christmas-y or involving an expensive gift basket (read: I don't have that kind of money!). Or there were some cute ideas that involved cleaning supplies, but I kind of felt that it might be rude to be like, "Hey! We're your new neighbors, get to cleanin'!" Plus, they bought a really nice, not dirty house. I did find one thing that I considered that suggested baking bread, but I make weird bread (whole wheat + steel-cut oats) which I enjoy, but others probably don't. So, when in doubt, go with sugary treats.

I picked up some cute glass bottles and made some cookies. I thought I had a cute container for the cookies, but no, I didn't, so into the plastic baggie they went.

Oh, and attached this tag. I saw this saying on other sites, but they were Christmas themed, so I've made you one that you can either print-off and sign, or customize with your names at the bottom. If you want to customize it, you can just download the document above or make a Google Drive copy of it. Or, if you want to keep it simple, just download this image and print!

Enjoy your freebie and keep your neighbors on your good side. You never know when you might need to borrow a shovel or want them to please not call in a complaint if you haven't mowed your yard in a while...

Blueberry Hutch

I hate blueberries. I am so not a picky eater, but blueberries are disgusting. They have the weirdest texture and they aren't really sweet. What's the point of a fruit if it isn't sweet? One time when we were traveling I sent my husband to the store with a few things to pick up, one of them being greek yogurt so I could make my smoothies. He came back with this.


Seriously. I was so upset that I drove thirty minutes at midnight to go buy decent yogurt. (Sorry Chobani, I love you, especially honey greek yogurt, but blueberries are gross!). So I may have overreacted that night, but now it's our inside joke. When ever he goes to get something or I ask him for food, blueberries always come up. Yuck yuck yuck.

So this is not a yogurt site, so why am I talking about blueberries? Because I also don't like the color blue. It's so common and overused. It just doesn't do it for me. However, my living room now has blue pillows, my guest room has blue/green walls, my other guest room has a blue comforter... it's popping up everywhere. It's easy to throw into a room as a type of neutral, especially because I almost always use navy. Well, when we started this project I told my hubs I wanted to paint it blue, so naturally we discussed blueberries. While I wanted to go for a navy, he convinced me to go for another shade. Hopefully you'll like it too! Don't worry, it isn't blueberry blue, this whole opening was for absolutely no reason at all. Here's what we started with.

This is the Craigslist picture that I responded to. It is one of our few Craigslist finds, because it creeps me out! We far prefer the local Facebook swap groups, at least then you *hopefully* know it's a real person and not a scary one. The people we got this from were really nice though, so not everyone is creepy! But just as a safety measure I always text a few friends the address of where I'm picking something up, and I always take my hubs with me! Anyway, this beauty was $100. Which is a little steep, but I had been looking for one for a year and this one fit my measurements exactly. It was a win. So we drove an hour away to pick it up, loaded it up, and drove an hour back.

When we got it home we promptly washed it. Apparently driving for an hour at highway speeds causes bugs to be firmly smashed all over the wood. Then, we disassembled it and started painting.

The knobs were first on my list. I actually liked their ornate look, so I didn't want to totally abandon them for new ones. Instead, I decided to paint them white. They were orignally a little more brassy than what the picture shows, which doesn't really go with any of our style and decor.


I used some basic Walmart spray paint and covered them with several coats of paint. We also decided to go ahead and do the hinges too because they were the same brassy color and are slightly visible as well, even when the doors are closed. Did I mention our house came with some very questionable turf installed at the entrance of our garage? No worries, it's all painted with random spray paints now. The handles needed plenty of time to dry before we tried to reattach them.

The paint I chose was a very light blue. I wanted to chalk paint it, but our local hardware stores don't carry any chalk paint. So, I looked up some tutorials, like this one, and made my own. I mixed the chalk and plaster of paris, loosely following the directions, I basically kept adding more of each until I liked the consistency. It worked.

Then, I painted three or four coats. The wood didn't seem dark, but compared with how light the blue was, it needed lots of coats to get rid of the streaky-ness. I even had to bust out some tiny art brushes to get in all the nooks and crannies.

One of the best tricks I've picked up for painting furniture is to use cans underneath them. It makes the edges and bottoms so much cleaner and easier. Plus, I think it makes it easier to pick up the piece when it's done. I can't remember where I saw it, but it's something we always do now! You can use expired sweet and condensed milk cans or old paint cans depending on how heavy the piece is.

It even works on windows and doors. Just make sure the paint cans are completely dry! I don't know what I did before using cans!

Finally, I distressed it. I love distressing things. It makes the piece look like it belongs in our old, slightly shabby house. It feels at home. I just used some 60 grit sandpaper and went around the edges and where the knobs would "rub" if they moved. It's pretty light distressing, but I like it.

The one step I didn't get pictures of was the waxing! I bought some wax from Ace and put two coats on over the piece. I used one like this wax, which smells nice and is easy to use. Literally wax on, wax off. It's kept the piece nice and makes it really easy to clean. Any water just beads up on it. It was a clear wax and it made the piece look more matte, which was perfect.

Lastly, I attached the handles, which made a nice contrast! Once the wax was dried the hubs and I carried it upstairs! Project done!

Here it is unfilled and waiting for some accessories....

And here's how it looks now, minus a few knickknacks. It is a soft color, but really seems to pop against the dark paint and wood in the room. We almost always get compliments on it and how unique it is. I love how different it is than the original. Someday I might go in and wallpaper (or paint?) the back and shelves with a fun design, but for now, I'm happy with. What do you think? Too blueberry? 

A little before and after before you go.

Pool Tables

Every single time anyone says anything about shooting pool or makes any sort of pool table reference, I sing this song from the very first musical I fell deeply in love with. I have every song and word memorized. Ask me about it sometime.

Ten points if you watched all 4 minutes and 39 seconds. Ten more if you sang it along with me. Ten more if you know what he is saying (and what it means) at 2:42 - 2:51. I have no idea. 

Anyway, our house came with it's very own pool table light. I seriously almost didn't buy the house because I hated it so much. Thankfully my husband is much smarter than me and knew that we could replace and light fixture easily. Did I mention I grew up in a family that didn't "do" home renovations and fixes? Thank goodness for hubs. Ten points if you're still listening to the video while you read. Trouble... trouble... trouble...

But seriously, look at that light. Wowzers. The picture is from the original listing for the house before we bought it, flouncy curtains and all. The greens and browns are even more vivid in real life. Nice. And it's right at my husband's head.

Thankfully we have a few good friends. You know the kind that come over at 10pm after working all day and putting their own kids to bed? Yeah, those kind. The ones that climb up on a ladder and help you figure out what isn't fitting where it should. Yep, that's him! (Thanks Matt!)

Anyway, we went ahead and bought a flush mounted light from Menards (this isn't the exact one we bought, but it looks like it!). Zach put in a dimmer too because it is our TV room, which is really nice for our movie nights. In fact, we liked the light so much we went back and bought 3 more for the upstairs bedrooms. They were even on clearance for $27! Deal. Matt also helped us uninstall the fan in the adjacent room and install one that matches this light. I'll show you that one later! It has a really nice mission/craftsman feel to it, and it's even in our ever beloved oil rubbed bronze too. Here's our much improved after shot with the hubs observing his handiwork.

Ten points if you continued down the rabbit hole and watched more Music Man videos with me while you read. I watched this one, this one, this one, and this one while I blogged. I may or may not have sang that last song out my window at night like that when I was in middle school... ♪♫ Goodnight my someone... ♫♪ Yep, I did. Can you tell I'm from Iowa? And the town we live now in may or may not resemble a not-so-modern-day River City, fourth of July celebration and all... if only we had a singing school board... 

Okay, since you asked, one more for the road. This may or may not have been my ringtone shortly after I started dating my now-husband. I may also be clingy. Enjoy.

Bright Find

We love auctions. There is something about hanging out all day with a bunch of random strangers and my hubby and talking about all the cool old stuff. The best part is watching what people buy and how much they spend. Zach and I don't have tons of dough to spend on stuff, but the people who do are really interesting to watch! When we go, we really ever plan don't spend more than twenty bucks. Sometimes there is something awesome and we do a little pow-wow and some calculations and bid on it. But normally if it's cool, there are other people with more money who think it's cool and we don't get it!

So, when I saw six boxes of really cool old lanterns I got excited. Buuuut, I figured we wouldn't get them. Lanterns are super trendy right now and I was sure that other people (read: grown-ups with lucrative jobs) thought they were cool too. Check out this lady's sweet Pinterest board with a ton of cool lanterns. And obviously I start having visions of backyard dinner parties that look like this sweet tree picture from Pinterest.

But my Pinteresty excitement was not for naught. The lanterns, which I spotted at about noon, didn't go up for sale until almost 4. Which meant most people had already left - sweet! They were also one of the last 20 things to be auctioned. The competition was definitely lessened. But bummer... the first three boxes went fast and for wayyy too much, like $50 a box which was about two or three lanterns. Keeping my fingers crossed, I was able to pick up the last two boxes, seven lanterns, for $14 total. Which is only $2 a piece! Sweet!

Unfortunately, all of the lanterns I got looked like this. Exactly like this. This is one of them. They were rough. In fact, before we brought them inside, the hubs found one that had some... um... remains inside of it. So we left that one in the back of the truck to be toted to the dump on our next trash run. At that point we were down to 6, but that's still pretty awesome.

 The hubby then took the caps and glass out of all six and scrubbed them down. I wouldn't touch them was busy doing other things, so I couldn't help. Then, he did some sanding to get off any chipping, rusty spots. We have an obsession at our house with the Oil Rubbed Bronze Rustoleum spray paint. As of today, we've gone through about eight cans of it. We put it on everything because it covers well, doesn't scratch and looks awesome and modern while still looking old. That didn't make sense but hopefully you get it! This is what we ended up with!

Check out that lantern! He even got the cap to sand out to it's original gold color. And the new paint looks so clean and nice. A huge improvement. Normally we try to restore things, but these lanterns were too far gone to restore, so we didn't feel too bad repainting them entirely. If you look closely, you can even see the brand names of the lanterns, which was not very visible initially.

There goal is to put these up in our porch once it's finished. Right now, they're scattered around the house looking fancy. I think they'll look great with some solar candles in them. What do you think?

Wino

But really, a wino. Well, a wino or two visited our house. We rarely drink a bottle of wine, but between some celebrations and parties at our house (my brilliant husband graduated! Woot!), we had some friends and family gift some wine and help us drink it, too.  

There is something kind of beautiful about wine bottles right? I love the way that they're shaped, the different colors, and some of the pretty labels. Obviously, I couldn't just turn these in at Hy-Vee for the five cent deposit now could I? My parents never had alcohol in the house growing up, so there is something about wine bottles that seems classy and grown up, but I get that wine decor probably isn't for everyone! So logically I put them on top of a cabinet and let them sit empty for two months... ya know to ferment? Ten points for a wine word.

So step one to make something pretty. Get rid of the labels. Fun fact, the more expensive and fancy the wine, the harder they are to peel off. Perhaps this is a perfect excuse for some Walgreens wine?

Illustrating my point. Cheap bottle came off clean, expensive one didn't. You're welcome for that totally necessary picture. In the middle of peeling these off head downstairs for while and wait for the tornado sirens to go off. That's what I did.

Step 2, wash them really well. Especially any wine drops that were left to ferment for two months. Also, imagine that this picture is in a beautiful white porcelain farm sink... Ahh. Also, be afraid that lightening from the aforementioned tornado is going to shock you will you wash them. Again, personal experience.

Last step, spray paint! I used this spray paint from Walmart. It's just basic chalkboard paint, but I've always had good luck with it. You can see that the wet spots are shiny, but as it dries it turns into a really sleek matte black. I also did this on the garage floor - my husband was obviously impressed (it's on our list anyway!). I did four coats and then flipped it upside down to hit the bottom. It's not really necessary, but I wanted them totally covered. Then, let it cure for a few days - I know, torture!

After you've been thoroughly tortured by waiting 2-3 days, grab some of these bad boys on Amazon. They're chalk paint pens! I've wanted some for a while, but I haven't sprung to order them before now (Spoiler: totally worth it). Did I mention I live in the middle of nowhere? Seriously. There is no Target. Not. Even. One. It's sad. But you can also assume that we definitely don't have a Michael's or craft store either so I have to order it online or drive an hour (yes, an hour!) to pick one up. Gahh, I love Amazon and free shipping!

Then, do some pretty writing. It's totally harder than I had thought to write on a curved bottle, thank goodness the pens wipe off well. Another reason to make sure your bottles are totally cured before you try the chalk pens! You could totally do this with regular chalk too! I'd like to decorate them a bit more and maybe add some burlap or rope to them to make them pop. But for now, they sit on my kitchen window. The hubs is going to work on some radiator covers (eventually) and I think they'd look great in the dining room on one with some accessories. Happy crafting! What have you done lately with chalkboard paint?

Two Years!

We just celebrated two years in our house! TWO YEARS! A lot has changed in our house (and lives) and I decided it's time to do some updating on this site. Let's go!

One cute puppy picture just for you (and you and you and you) for sticking around with me even though I've been an absent blogger!

Obviously Cedar enjoys some of the new additions... green chair!