Home Improvements – Paint!

I knew when we moved in that I wanted to paint both bathrooms, they both have white or cream tile with silver fixtures and looked very nice that way, we definitely could have left them alone and they would have been just fine.
Here is the before picture, of the guest bathroom, from the night we moved in.
And this is what it looks like right now.

Doesn’t it look awesome! I love it! (except for the fact that my hand towels are uneven :/ oops!) I was able to purchase the shower curtain at Kohl's for $5.00 and everything else I had on hand from our first house. I am planning on making a sign for over the toilet but you’ll have to come back to see that – its going to be cute! The only thing left to do in here is find a bath mat/rug and a few more decorations to finish it off. So how about a quick side-by-side for examination purposes.

It almost looks like a different bathroom!

Hope you enjoyed checking out my guest bath come back again to see what other painting we’ve been doing.

Linking to A Living Sacrifice Home Improvement Party - Check it out!

Little Projects

I told you in my last post that I had some ideas {mostly from Pinterest} whirling around in my head for our house and now I’ve done some of them and couldn’t wait to share! In fact I’m at a loss as to how to go about sharing them because I’ve done several… should I string you along for several weeks? …should I give them all to you at one time? … how about showing you the before pictures now and giving you the finished product later?  I just can’t decide! So until I do your just going to have to be happy with some of the small projects we have accomplished!

This was a fun little project I did in under an hour. I saw a picture of an old Coco Chanel perfume bottle used as a bud vase. Well I finished off this perfume – an old adidas perfume I bought when Kenny and I were dating – popped the top off (with the help of some pliers) washed it out with soap and water a stuck these babies in there. These are just dried flowers from an arrangement that was here at our new home when we arrived. Long story short, this was a “free” project using just the things I had on hand {my personal fave}. Also, I think it looks kind of cute next to my coffee pot. – For the record, after taking this picture I went back and cut the stems shorter so you don’t see them and then did a re-take of the first picture. -

 

 

 

I showed you this picture of our living room and told you that I wanted to put something like “est. 2011” underneath the picture collage. Well… I made a few changes after a trip to Kohl's, during their Presidents Day sale.

I usually stay clear of any kind of shopping when I know they are having crazy sales – I don’t like shopping with a lot of other people running around, personal preference – Any ways we just happened to be there and there was not very many people, win, win! {by the way, I added up our savings, and we saved over $300.00 on all the different things we bought!!!!} While there I found one of those wall decals on sale and bought it with full intent to put it in our bedroom –

 

 

 

 

 

then I had one of those “Ah-ha!” moments and well…

 

 

I even got Kenny to help! I always knew he’d be a good “DIY-er!”

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those are all the little projects… at least the ones I can show you without giving away what else I’ve been working on! Hope you’ll come back and see what else we’ve been up to.

Packing

I decided to take a break and show you some of our packing progress. To be very honest, at the moment, I feel like I’m doing all this packing but I’m not even making a dent in all of our stuff :/ what’s worse is I also feel like I’m in a non-stop mess! But don’t worry I know I’m making progress and things will look a lot better around here after the “Donate” pile has been hauled off and the “Sell” pile is going down. Any ways here are some pictures if your interested… and some helpful (at least I thought they were) moving tips I’ve gotten all over the place!

The “Donate/Sell” Pile – it pretty much takes up the whole room!

- My Packing Station -

  Former “Man Cave” now my stash for already packed boxes.

 

Now here are the Tips:

• Use small boxes to pack books. This may sound like an inconvenience to pack several small boxes with books but them being small will save your back later as you load and unload your truck! FYI we went to our local grocery store and asked for milk boxes and they gave them to us for free! Can’t beat that deal. – This back saver came from Pastor Mike Haley, being a Pastor he has moved a lot of books through several different moves so I think he would know how to best do that.
• Wrap/Pack glasses, dishes, and breakables in plastic grocery bags. They are way cleaner than newspaper and allow for a tiny bit of jiggle room in your boxes so things are less likely to break (of course you still want to pack things tightly) and for the best reason, they are free at the grocery store just start saving them as you purchase things and ask your friends to do the same. – This one comes from my Grandma who has moved many, many times and has experienced little to no loss of her numerous dishes!
• Pack dresser drawers (any drawers for that matter) and cabinets as full as you can. No sense in wasting that empty space, fill it with things you are taking with you any way. – I think this one came from my Mom who moved around a lot as a child/teen/young adult.
• Place pictures and other flat items in-between blankets, sheets and pillows to keep them protected. Just be careful when your un-wrapping! – this one came from my friend, Sabrina, who has also moved several times with her former Marine hubby.
• Use the “Color Coding” system. Pick a color for each room of your new house, (i.e. Yellow – Kitchen, Blue –  Garage, etc.) then label your boxes accordingly – I got this hint online somewhere but I can’t remember where so I could give them credit for an awesome idea
• On my colored pieces of paper I’ve also been labeling what is in each box so when we get there it will be easier to find what is needed instead of having to unpack every box right away. – This one is from Mom (she’s a super woman when it comes to packing things!)

Well that is the end of my borrowed brilliance! Any other tips I should know or could add to my list?

~Bex

Some More Pinterest Projects

With preparing to move I’ve been using some of my Pinterest pins off of my board Around the Home – Cleaning board. Here are a few that I’ve done.

 

 

 

 

Cleaning Your Dishwasher

I know, why would you clean your dishwasher? Well read the post and you’ll find out why. My dishwasher didn’t look too dirty until after I cleaned it and now it is sparkly white! And this method gets rid of any musty/mildew-y smells that may be present when you move into a new place. Definitely worth a try!

 

 

 

 

 

Cleaning Your Glass-top Stove

I actually used this method on our stainless steel stove at work and it didn’t quite get everything off but I also didn’t have a lot of time to spend on it. I’m planning on trying this on our regular stove around the burners where things get cooked on and look kind of yucky after a while.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Making "Orange Vinegar"

I use vinegar or baking soda for almost all of my cleaning and I’ve gotten used to the smell. – FYI if you’ve never used vinegar for cleaning that smell goes away after it air dries. – But if your not convinced this is a good easy recipe to change the scent. If your just really sensitive to the vinegar odor your probably still going to smell the vinegar a little but for the most part its just orange-y. Also, I did not notice any difference in the effectiveness of its cleaning, the only thing that changes is the scent.

 

 

 

 

Cleaning Your Washing Machine

Again, the question, why? Same answer, read the post! For this one my water was not flowing right, soap scum or something was plugging it up or something so I gave this a try. You would not believe how nasty looking the water was while it was soaking the first time, I was amazed! The benefits of cleaning your washer, for me, was fresher smelling laundry and my water flows better. :)

Updates and Projects

We have had a TON of stuff going on recently and I feel like I haven’t been able to catch my breath! Summer has gone by like a whirlwind and I haven’t gotten half of my glorious “to-do list” done! Oh well :)

I’m going to try to do a post this weekend about how camp went so your going to have to wait on that one. However, I am going to let you in on some projects I have going for the RU ministry, the Youth Group and finally the house.

For RU (Reformers Unanimous, drug addiction program): They give out a lot of rewards for challenges completed, attendance, memorizing scripture, etc. So Pastor Haley came to me and asked if I could create a poster or bulletin board to show who has earned which reward, kind of an incentive for those not doing so well in the program to step it up a notch. Here is what I came up with:

On the right side is a list of all the rewards you can receive and a brief description of how you get it (Psalm 23 pin = Memorize and quote Psalm 23) simple right? the colored squares at the top of each row are name tags that are attached with Velcro. (Not trying to sound heartless but in this ministry people come and go so if a person stops coming we can easily remove their name and put someone new in that place without messing up the whole chart.) Lastly, the colored dots, when a person earns a reward a colored dot is placed in their section by the rewards name. (once again it is taped on so it can easily be removed if needed.) So what do you think?  I’m still in the beginning stages of putting this together so I’m open to any comments or suggestions that would help make this better.

For the Youth Group: Sorry but I neglected to get pictures but I’ll try to paint you a verbal picture until I get pictures later this weekend.

First, the church had some leftover Chalk board paint that was used in another classroom so I painted the back of the door with that and I’m going to go back and add a painted color border with leftover neon paint that was used in the Children’s Sunday School room.

Next, I made a Ninja score board with little ninja’s for each teen on it back in January. Since we have a couple new teens my plan is to make more “ninja’s” and instead of having a score board I’m planning on putting the ninja’s on the wall or on the outside of our door (the side that faces the hallway) and put their weekly total points next to their ninja. I like the idea of putting the ninja’s on the door because the teen’s parents can see them and hopefully be encouraging their teen to do better. Is that an evil plan?

I also have plans of making a collage of the different youth activities we’ve done on one of the walls in our teen room.

Our House: I confess I’ve been waiting to show pictures of our house until I had everything “just perfect” but I’ve come to realize that that endeavor may take a lifetime to achieve! So starting next week (hopefully) I’m going to start “Take a Tour Tuesday” and each week show you a room or an area of our house. The plan is, after I finish showing you the house, to start showing you things we are doing to make our house more like home. But real quick I want to show you the sign I put together today for our Laundry room.

I thought this would be cute on a red mat in a black frame. I especially like what it says because our laundry room doubles as the back entry :) I hope no one takes this literally, that could cause some embarrassment! :)

Well, there you have it! I hope you enjoyed seeing the beginning stages of my projects and that you’ll leave some suggestions about what we could do with the RU Rewards Board and the Teen Room (I LOVE feedback!)