Crap Buckets {for all the crap your kids leave out}

We have had a stair basket for as long as I can remember.  It is kinda thrashed, but it has been well used.  It sits on our stairs and gets filled with things that need to go up and get put away.  The problem with it is that no one ever wants to clean it out, including me!  So, it gets overflowing and stuff gets piled all over the stairs, and still no one wants to put it all away!

Well, I came across this fabulous idea for everyone to have a basket of their own!  Beth over at The Neat Get Neater shared her idea for Crap Baskets.  I decided this was a great idea for us!  Our upstairs only has the kids’ bedrooms, so the only things that need to go up there belong to them.  I couldn’t find baskets but I found these adorable buckets at IKEA for only $7.99 each!  I first tried some plastic buckets from the Dollar Tree which were more in my price range :) but they were too large. 

{more after the break}

My House, continued- The Master Bedroom

I love my bedroom.  It is huge.  I’ve never really gotten around to decorating it.  But I like my furniture.  My parents bought us this bed when we got married as a wedding gift.  I liked the antique look of it.  I would probably choose something different now, but I still do like it.  It is a BIG bed and it is HIGH.  You kinda needs steps to get on it.  So, we needed BIG bedside tables to go with it.  These ones are file cabinets with leather tops.

I need some new lamp shades.  I got these lamps for a great price at Hobby Lobby years ago.  But they didn’t have two with matching shades.  My bedding came from Target.  It was on clearance for like $40 or something.  I had to buy the sham in the middle and the gold pillow separately.  I think they cost about $40 together from Dillard’s or somewhere.  I don’t know why king bed sets only come with two Euro shams.  That’s not enough in my opinion.

Sorry, the color on this picture isn’t great.  The steamer trunk at the end of the bed is an antique my mom bought me for a hope chest.  I refinished it inside and out for my Young Women in Excellence project.  It will be with me till I die, I am sure.

This antique dresser was my dresser from childhood.  I love it so much.  I am so grateful my mom let me keep it when I grew up.  Thanks, Mom!

This little table in the corner with the TV was made by my great grandfather.  My mom had it in her house for years with a thick coat of turquoise paint on it.  Not sure who painted it that way but I know it wasn’t my mom.  Back when I had my first son and I was living with my parents I refinished it to match the room I had as my living area.  Forest green was big back then so I painted the legs that color.  I need to repaint it now but that is way down on my priority list.  But I love having a table that was made by one of my ancestors.

And here is my bathroom.  Nothing special.  I chose cream paint in here way back when so I wouldn’t get any sickly reflections on my skin.  It is a nice bright bathroom with natural light, which I like.

That’s my room.  You can’t see it but there is an elliptical machine on the other wall that I use to hang clothes on:)

Here is my closet/my husband’s office.  He used to have his office in the room downstairs.  Then he had a job where he didn’t work at home and we needed that room for a bedroom, so we moved his stuff to our closet, which is almost as big as the kids bedroom and has a non-functioning window.  Well, a couple years ago he got a job where he needed to work at home again.  So, the poor guy works all day in our closet.  I know he is looking forward to having an office where he doesn’t have to look at clothes and all our crap again.  He is a good sport.

Well, that is the end of this tour of my home….until I get some pictures taken of the last bedroom.  I hope you enjoyed seeing it.  I have a degree in interior architecture and design, and yet my home is FAR from perfect.  But how your home is decorated is far less important than the love it contains and the family it holds.

My House, continued- The Boys’ Bedrooms

Don’t laugh.  My kids bedrooms are not cute.  At one point they were.  I loved my nursery.  I decorated it just after we moved in while I was pregnant with my second son.  He is now almost 10!  And the other bedroom used to be cute too.  We decorated it in a African theme for my oldest son on Christmas eve.  He was at his dad’s house that night so we could do it and surprise him on Christmas morning.  I was sooooo tired that night!  My parents came to help.  We painted and I had made duvet covers with animal print faux fur.  But that was many years ago.  Now, they are just a place for kids to sleep and keep their stuff.  We have had two kids in these rooms for a long time.  And they are small bedrooms.  It is cramped, to say the least.  But, here they are so you can see. 

Don’t you love the basketball posters over the baby border?  My 8 year old is in here now and my 17 year old stays in here when he is over.  The shelves above the windows used to hold a teddy bear collection.  I had cute crib bedding in these colors with teddy bears in clothes on it. 

And don’t you love the beds?  They are made out of boxes of food storage.  Remember, I am one of those crazy Mormons!

My kids have tried to rip off some of the little wallpaper decorations between the words in the border.  It looks great!

Here is the other room.  We did repaint it a few years ago to this cream color.  The bed isn’t made from food storage, but it has a lot of it underneath.  And that is my crib with the side taken off for a toddler bed.  My youngest could sleep in a big bed but there is hardly enough room in here for one.  So he will stay in this bed until we move.

Here you see one dresser in the corner.  Then we have this armoire that I got for a closet for my first son 17 1/2 years ago.  We had to put it together ourselves and then finish it.  One of my kids (not sure who) broke out that bottom panel.  I still use it as a closet for my youngest.  It works well.  Next to it is the changing table.  I can NOT wait until I no longer need a changing table!  I don’t think I will feel sad about giving up diapers forever!

I would love to be able to decorate my kids rooms cute again.  But with these rooms being so crowded and funds being tight it just hasn’t seemed worth it.  Besides, once your kids get to a certain age (boys especially) they aren’t too keen on you dictating how their room should look.  They seem to enjoy hanging “ugly” posters on the walls and ruining the look you’re trying to create.  What I wouldn’t give for a girl who wanted her room done up in “my style”!

My House, continued- The Boys’ Bathroom and Laundry

This is my boys’ bathroom.  Its nothing spectacular.  We added bead board and pegs to the walls to give it some architectural interest.  Unfortunately, the pegs are too high for little boys and some of them have been pulled loose by kids tugging on their towels to get them down.

I used to have a cute shower curtain, but it got ruined.  I bought a white fabric one on clearance recently that I’ve been meaning to do something cute to but I haven’t been able to figure out what to do.  Anyway, it works for showering and brushing teeth!  I am REALLY looking forward to having more bathrooms though as there is MUCH fighting over this one.  YES, boys fight over bathrooms, too.

I made the artwork by putting wallpaper frogs on canvases and coating with a clear coat.  I think they are cute.

I don’t know why this A is hanging so high.  Someone must have knocked it off and then hung it back up wrong.

This house is AMAZING when it comes to the electrical.  The lights in this bathroom and the master have not burnt out in 11 years!  Can you even believe that??

These cabinets need a new coat of polyurethane.  They’ve had water dripped down the front a few too many times.

Here is our laundry room.  Nothing special.  Not decorated.  But I LOVE that it is upstairs.  I will miss that so much! And yes, I have a lot of crap!

My House, continued- The Loft

Let’s see, I guess we will move upstairs.  There is one room down stairs I didn’t get photographed yet.  It’s my son’s bedroom and he hadn’t made his bed yet when I was doing the photographing.  Hopefully I will get it done later.

At the top of the stairs we have a loft area.  This room has been changed around numerous times to try to accommodate different furniture.  For years we had a green plaid camel back sofa that I got when my first son was born.  It was a very good couch that held up extremely well.  It has recently been moved to my mom’s basement where my oldest son will be living, in fact right back into the spot where it lived when I first got it!  He was nursed as a baby on that couch and now he will be using it as a college student.  Probably not sentimental to a 17 year old boy, but it is to me.

This room is where we keep toys and the kids hang out.  We recently got this big comfy sectional from a friend.  It is great for our whole family to sit on together so we had to get a new TV for us to all watch movies together up here.  We have really been loving having this space for family time.

Before we got this sofa we had the other one centered on this wall under that big magnet board, with a bookcase on either side.  The kids display their artwork on the magnet board.  I meant to frame it out with molding but never got it done.  It looks pretty sloppy all the time, but at least the kids have somewhere to display their work.

Remember the big buffet I got that someone had put out for the trash?  Well, here it is all refinished.  I haven’t gotten around to writing a post about it but I will soon.  It is the perfect piece for this room and stores all our movies as well as a DVD player and VCR.  I just love it!

Those are all our photo albums.  Don’t worry.  I am not up to date at all on those.  I think I got all my pictures into them up until I got a digital camera in 2009 or so.  But they pictures are just stuck in and I need to go back and journal about them.  Pictures are my nemesis!!! They stress me out soooo bad. 

That sign sitting in front of the albums used to be downstairs but I wanted to bring it up here.  It is supposed to be hanging up above the TV but we haven’t gotten around to that either.

Behind this half wall are 5 huge toy bins full of toys.  We have way to many toys, but I have a hard time getting rid of them!  Soon I should be able to get rid of all the babyish toys, which makes me happy and sad at the same time.

I chose this cream paint color for up here because downstairs used to be so colorful that I just needed to be able to get away from the color.  I do love off-white though.  I like this room because it is always very light and bright.  And sunshine makes me happy.

If I had unlimited funds and ample time all the rooms in my house would be very different.  I used to spend a lot of time thinking about and decorating my house.  But then I got more kids…a lot more kids!  And I have since decided that having a perfectly decorated house is just not that important in the grand scheme of things.

Do you have a good space for your family to relax together?  If not, get one.  It has made a big difference in our home!

My House, continued- The powder room

Next up is my powder room.  Boy oh boy has this room been a pain in my neck.  When we were first painting this house, my husband broke the pedestal sink.  I knew that I wanted to turn a dresser into a vanity and have an above counter sink.  But I think we lived with no sink in here for 3 or 4 years, maybe longer.  I finally got my hands on an Ebay dresser that was the right size and style.  I had to refinish it because the paint job on it was SUPER shabby Chic.  I found a bowl I loved at Home Goods and had my dad drill out a hole for the drain with his dental drill.  I found a faucet I could afford on Ebay.  Then it took quite awhile before I could get it all assembled.  My younger sister who is good at wood working helped me to alter the drawers to accommodate the plumbing.  I hired a company to come and put it all together.  They did a good job except they caulked around the bottom of the bowl with some ugly caulk.  I hurried and got it off and recaulked it. 

Hanging on this wall is a quilt top made from decorator fabric samples.  I got boxes of these samples from the job I had before I was married.  I cut them all into 12x12 squares and asked friends and family to sew them all together.  We used them as blankets at the picnic we had after my wedding in the St. George temple.  It looked gorgeous!  I love this red one, especially because I love red and am unable to wear it with my red hair and complexion.  I intended to actually up0holster this wall with this quilt top, but alas, it is still hanging up with the thumb tacks we stuck it up there with 11 years ago!  The wall behind it isn’t even painted, except it says “HI” with a smiley face in red paint, compliments of my husband!

My House, continued- The Family Room

Ok, next up is my little family room/ craft room.  I don’t love this space.  I dislike how you come into my house and it’s the family room.  But it had to be done.  I hate my couches!  I’ve wanted to replace them for a long time.  But my kids have been pretty hard on furniture and I was worried about how I would react if I got new couches and then my kids ruined them.  So, we still have these ones.  They are ok.  I am just tired of them.  They are slipcovered and if I had more time and money I would attempt to make new slipcovers for them.  But I have neither.  The coffee table needs a facelift.  It will actually be going to live with my son who is starting college in the fall.

The chandelier used to hang down to table height and we had a dining table there.  We tied it up with a zip tie when we changed things around and its been that way ever since!

The drapes were made by me and the curtain rods are made from copper pipes with amber light bulb finials. 

This room used to be painted in dark fall colors.  It was fun for awhile, but when we started using this room more I got tired of the dark colors and we repainted it this light green.  That orange wall on the stairs needs to be repainted, but again, haven’t gotten to it yet!

I’ve had this buffet here for a long time.  It used to have a large mirror over it and was a nicer entry.  But we had to have a TV when we changed this to our family room.  So the mirror went upstairs to my bedroom and the flat screen went on the wall.

Here you can see my craft space.  I do love this space.  It is very useful and helps me contain most of my crafting messes to this space, rather than spreading them all over the kitchen like I used to do.  Here you can see the green buffet that I got with the dresser in the kitchen.  I had originally planned to cut the top off and make an upholstered seat to put on it like a window seat.  But the two layers of surfaces were so useful I kept them as they are.

I got the huge buffet and hutch from a guy on Craigslist for $40.  His grandma had passed away and he needed to get rid of it.  He seemed happy to see it go to someone who would really love it.  I had planned to paint all this furniture off white so it would all match, but it hasn’t gotten done yet!

The little hutch on my desk came from an antique store.  It is so great!  It must have been a mail sorter’s hutch or something because it has all little cubbies and drawers.  It is just perfect for all my office supplies.  And I love having something that is so old and been around for so long.  It was a great find!

Our floor was laid by my husband with the help of his dad about 8 years ago.  It is laminate.  It has been a great floor for our family. 

Here is one more view of my kitchen I forgot yesterday:

My House, My Home

We have lived in the same house since we got married almost 11 years ago.  Well, for the first 3 months of our marriage we lived with my parents while we were waiting for our house to be finished being built.  We moved in in September of 2001.  When we bought the home, we expected to be there only 3 to 5 years.  Well, a couple years later the market in Vegas went CRAZY!  Homes like ours, that we bought for a base price of $165,000 were selling for $450,000!  We couldn’t sell our house and move into something else because we wanted to stay in Las Vegas and we couldn’t afford a $600,000 mortgage.  As our family grew we rearranged rooms to try to fit everyone in.  We have rearranged the furniture in our house about a million times, switched kids around into different rooms, even turned our family room into part of our kitchen and made our living/dining room into a family room/craft office. 

We love our little house.  Our four youngest children came home from the hospital to it.  We have many good memories there.  It is home.  And it is OUR home, small though it may be.  We will be so sad to leave, but the time has come for us to move.  We are going to be living in a different home, a much larger home.  And while we are excited to have more room to spread out, my heart is breaking a little at the thought of leaving this home that we have put so much love and work into. 

We will be renting out our home to some friends of ours, which makes me feel very happy.  I cleaned it ALL for them to come and take a look at it.  And since having my WHOLE house clean all at the same time is an extremely rare occasion, I decided to take that opportunity to photograph my home.  I thought it would be fun to “get real” and show you my house.  Some of it is not so great.  Projects we never got finished…repairs we never got around to (though we will for the renters!)…redecorating we could never afford.  But it is a home full of love and learning and for better or worse we love it!

So, let’s start with the good.  I love my kitchen.  About three years ago we got new countertops and backsplash and sink and faucet.  I repainted the kitchen island, which we widened to support the large granite top.  I added some textured, paintable wall paper to it to make it more architecturally interesting.  We got new hardware on the cabinets.  It is a small kitchen, but a very efficient one.  Here it is.

See the mirrors sitting on the floor?  Those are a project I never got to.  I meant to mount them on some cool old doors and paint them to match the buffet.  Some things just aren’t at the top of the priority list!

My table was a custom sized table from one of those Mexican furniture stores.  It is 48” wide and can seat 12.  It has been a nice table for us.  I got it with no finish so that I wouldn’t be mad if my kids scratched it or colored on it.  And they have done both numerous times.  The great thing is I can just sand it down!  The chairs are outdoor chairs that came with little tables from Wal-Mart.  I got that padded bench at Marshall’s a couple years ago and I store potatoes and onions, among other things in it. I’ve been meaning to make a little slipcover for the top, but haven’t gotten around to that either!

If you have kids I highly advise AGAINST rush seat stools.  These were from Ballard Designs and the straw is always all over the floor and it pokes the kids in the bums, knees, etc.  I HATE them and my husband is in the process of cutting me new wood tops for them to replace the rush seats. 

I got this awesome 70’s dresser, the mirrors, a king sized headboard, an actual buffet you will see in the craft space all for $100 from Craig’s list!  It’s a long story, but I basically bought it from someone who had bought it from the original seller.  They kept the two nightstands and sold us the rest for $100 which is what they had paid for all of it.  I was THRILLED!  I had fallen in love with this dresser and the buffet and when the original seller told me he had already sold it I was so sad.  I asked him to call the people and see if they really wanted all of it.  They were willing to sell me all those things and I couldn’t have been happier!

This is my only expensive buffet.  It came from Ballard Designs.  I love it.  I love the white aged finish and I love being able to display dishes and my pumpkin yellow ware collection.  I hope I can find a place for it when we move.

This is the door to the closet under that stairs, which is between the kitchen and the living room.  We use the space for food storage. 

Its sort of a mess, but it holds a lot of food since our pantry is small.

Well, that is my kitchen.  I will be sad to say goodbye to it.  It’s not perfect, but it makes me happy!

What is your favorite room in your house?

CHALKBOARD CALENDAR

I am so excited to show you my new wall calendar!  Remember a long time ago I did a post called “Command Central”?  I had put up this cute magnet board in my kitchen to help keep us organized.  It worked well for a couple years, but then it just started looking junky all the time.  This is on a wall that is a straight shot in from the front door.  I was tired of having this junked up board be the first thing people saw when they came to my door.  I also have soooo many things going on now that I needed more space on my calendar to write things.

My inspiration for this came from one of my bestest friends in the whole world.  She starting making GIANT magnetic wall calendars a few years ago.  She has a huge one in her house and I just LOVE it.  Here it is:

Isn’t it so cute and bright and fresh looking?  It doesn’t hurt that she has the MOST perfect handwriting in the entire world!  You can see hers is quite a bit bigger than mine.  Each of her squares is about the size of a piece of paper! The numbers are magnetic.  I just love how graphic hers is!

Shelli sells these calendars and can make any size you want.  If you would like to buy one from her, please email her at shellibryan @ yahoo.com.  I am not sure if she ships but if you live close to or in Las Vegas you could come get it!  I think she may also be selling kits with everything you need to make your own!

So, I had considered making one just like Shelli’s, but then I decided it would be fairly costly to get the dry erase vinyl.  I also wasn’t up for a big project like that.  I would have had to take my magnet board off the wall and remove the fabric to get the vinyl on.  And getting the vinyl to lay flat and have all those lines straight is NOT easy!  I leave that to the professionals, like Shelli!

Instead, I decided to just use my Silhouette to cut squares of chalkboard contact paper.  I first did an experiment to make sure it would stick to the fabric.  It did!  I used the magnets that I had on my board before for the numbers.  I replaced the papers I had inside them with this turquoise paper and then added vinyl numbers to the fronts.  These are watch maker tins, in case you were wondering.

I applied vinyl days of the week to the wall above it in order to maximize the space I had for my squares. 

I just LOVE it.  I think it looks so cute and it is super helpful to have all the family’s activities right there where we can all see them and know what is going on.  I wrote on it with regular chalk I got at Wal-Mart or somewhere, but I recently purchased some chalk from Amazon that is AMAZING!  It write soooo much nicer.  You can buy it HERE in case you have a chalkboard that needs awesome chalk. 

You can see on the 22nd and 28th I used the new chalk.

Another reason these huge calendars are so great is that you can put up invitations for parties and events on the day they are going to happen.  That way you have all the info you need right there.  It is just a great way to get your family organized. 

I encourage you to contact Shelli and get one for yourself!

If you love this, please “Pin” it!

Flickr Tags: calendar,wall calendar,chalkboard,dry erase,blog,organization,vinyl

TABLECLOTH DRAPES {Decorating}

I have toile drapes on my sliding glass door.  I made them from tablecloths!  I did this years ago.  My mom helped me put some little pinch pleats in them, and they hang from drapery pins on metal drapery rings.  I have loved them!  I think I had to hem them, but then I washed them and they shrunk so I took out the hems and they are just perfect.

Anyway, tablecloths are such an easy way to make drapes.  You don’t even need to put pinch pleats in.  You can simply hang them with clip on drapery rings.  You can buy tablecloths for all seasons and holidays and change out your drapes.

A couple years ago I found some Halloween tablecloths that I loved at HomeGoods.  I picked up some really cool clip rings at Hobby Lobby with a coupon, and suddenly I had new drapes for October!

The rings weren’t super strong and the drapes would come out a lot, so I tied some string around them to hold them closed and attached these spiders to the string.  I got that cute orange ribbon and tied a bow on each ring.

I love how they look.  They make me happy!  When the holiday is over, I just take them off the rod, rings still attached and put them in a box to wait for next year.  While they are up I get my other drapes washed. 

I am hoping to come across some Christmas ones sometime soon!