Junk Drawer

It's Thursday and we are all on the mend here finally. Boy this virus we caught has been awful. Now that I'm feeling a bit better it makes me want to clean, clean, clean!!! Get all the ick out of the house. One of those ick spots has been our junk drawer for a while. A few weeks back I picked up this little shelf at the thrift store for $2.


It had some little dated country craft wood piece in the front. Sorry I didn't take a picture of it before I removed it. I originally bought it to possibly paint it and put it on the wall. Then one night I saw the JUNK DRAWER..... I thought it would work perfectly in there. Those junk drawer spacers in stores can add up quickly. So here it is getting ready to be filled and organized. Look at all the junk on the table. That drawer was filled with all kinds of crud.


Here it is put back in it's spot. The sun was shining in so I had a hard time getting a good shot. You get the idea though. I love that I found this little shelf. It works perfectly. Now I just need to make a small spot for some pencils for our boys. They like to do homework on the kitchen table and they like to keep their pencils in the drawer. They are one of the reasons the drawer got so messy in the first place. Sounds about right for two 7yr olds and 5yr old, doesn't it?

Sorry I was away.

We had a wonderful week last week up until the weekend. Read at the bottom of this post for the bad part of the weekend. My twins Gabe and Blake had a music concert at their school. It was a very proud day for me, being a mom. I wondered if they would ever have a concert like this. It was just for the first and second graders. The theme was All Around the Barnyard. Gabe chose to be a duck and Blake was a cow. Look how cute!


Then the weekend came. We planned on finishing up the tile. Which we did. It looks fabulous by the way. Now I just have to seal it. I also painted the back storage room next to the laundry room. We used to keep our dog Max's crate in there. It was like his own little room, but it took up so much space. Now I I plan on trying to be more organized and keep it nice and tidy back there. We have so much storage space in this house we just don't use it right. Our old home had ZERO. Thats why we bought this house. Lots of storage. Except for our tiny kitchen & master bath. But that's another blog post.

The tile being grouted. See the crazy cat watching Greg on the washing machine. She is SO nosey!


The storage room. Max looking at me like, "what the heck you doing to my room?" See the old previous owner wall color. It just not my color. I'm the boring brown kind of gal.




Saturday night we let the boys have a sleepover in Reide's room (our youngest). Gabe woke up in the middle of the night puking everywhere. That's when it all started. It is now Wednesday and Reide started throwing up last night. It has ran it's course through all of us. Except my husband Greg. I really hope he doesn't get it. I haven't felt that horrible in years. Yuck! Hope everyone is happy and healthy out there. Have a great day!

Thrifty Finds

Reide, my youngest and I went out today to do a little grocery shopping and we just can't help but stop by the thrift store while we are out. So I wanted to share with you my little thrift finds. I can't wait to revamp all these goodies. I got all this stuff for $24. I had to buy my son a couple of stuffed animals for being so good on our shopping spree. But my total for everything today was $24.
2 Mason Jar lamps $2 each
Wood Handle tray $4
3 Wall ledges $5 for the set
Mason jar w/lemons inside $1.50
Bigger Jar with wooden lid $1.50
Set of 3 glass jars $3
Shells were $6 (but I had a $10 off coupon for all my items so I sort of got them for free, thats how I justified buying them.)
2 Brown Plush Pillows were $.50 each
Wooden Toilet paper holder (thats what i'm using it for) $1.50
Birds $1 for the set






Oh how I love the thrift store!!!! Any recent goodies you have found? I would love to see.

Back to the Laundry Room

So last week I was thinking about the walls in my laundry room. Everyone seems to have very light laundry room. I'm sure so you can see all the wonderful spots and stains their families make on their clothes. Well I have a hard time with white or light colored walls. I don't feel comfortable in those rooms. So I was thinking about this awesome color we have in our kitchen, it's called "Baked Bean" by Pittsburgh paints. I love it. It's like a reddish orange color. From our kitchen you can see into the laundry/ mud room so I thought it would look nice to have the back wall & wall behind the washer and dryer the Baked Bean color. So when you look down that way to the laundry room it just flows. I had 3/4 of a can so why not? Then the opposite walls still a tan so they could bounce light back on the red color. Well, it was dark. Crap...it was way dark.

So my hubby mentioned a track light. Ugg, do you know how ugly track lights are? Well I thought they were until I went to Home Depot last week. I spotted the coolest one right away. Not a bad price either $59. So I bought it!!! I couldn't wait for Greg to get home and put it up. He was tired but did it anyway for me. Such a good guy! Check out his head lamp. That's his new toy he got at HD. He's been fixing all sort of things around the house with that thing. Too cute! He's pretty proud of it.


And my new Track Light!!!!! TADA! It's so bright! It doesn't look that way in the photos but it really is. I wish I had this a long time ago. It gives off a bright natural light. I just love it!


Then our other project this weekend was TILE! Oh the tile. It's been a year since we finished the tile from our entry to the kitchen. We stopped at the laundry room because spring came and you just want to be outside. Well, the previous owners of this house put 2x2 tiles EVERYWHERE in the house. So pulling up all those tile has been quite a pain in the butt. We still have to get rid of them upstairs as well. So Greg finally got all of them pulled up in the back storage room on Saturday. Yippee. I didn't think we would get any tile down this weekend but we did. We got a lot further than we thought.

Tile gone. Notice my new light?


Tile going down. Greg will be so mad that I posted a photo of him in his overalls. LOL. They do help with Plumbers Crack. HAHA!



So I plans are to put some cabinets up on both sides of the window and then get some front load washers so I can have counter top to fold laundry. That's one project that is in the works and should be completed soon. Stick around for the finished results in a few weeks. Does anyone have front load washer suggestions? Any brand or options that are better than others?

Thanks for reading. Have a great day!

Valentine scrap page

My son had a Pajama Valentine's party at preschool last week. He was SO excited. He loves pajama day. He had such a good time at school. All digital products are found at Peppermint Creative This is a new kit by Miss Mint called Sweet Cheeks.

Pottery Barn inspired chandelier shades

I saw these online at PB ($29 for 3 shades) last week and really liked the look of them. All around the blog world everyone seems to be doing things with jute. Well I happened to come across a big roll of it at the thrift store the other day for $1.50. Good thing I grabbed it! So my thought was, "Hey, I already have some plain linen chandelier shades why not jazz them up with the jute?" So I did.


I didn't braid like PB. Just ran the jute around with my glue gun. They came out pretty nice I think. The only thing I'm bummed about is that the room I have them in is pretty dark, so when the light is on you can't really tell the jute is one there. Here is my finished result.



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Just Something I Whipped Up Monday

Cork Board Art Wall

I got this idea from Ready Made magazine a few years ago. I saved the image forever until I finally gathered everything I needed and placed everything together. My boys love to draw and do anything crafty so I wanted to make a spot for them so they can display their art. I saw this and thought it was perfect.



My sons Art Wall.
They are so proud of this spot. They love to hang new pictures up all the time. Obviously they don't always fit perfectly, but it's their little gallery wall on the way down to the basement.




Items needed:
Random frames painted any way you like
Roll of Cork (found at Office Max)
Foam Board to back the cork and so thumb tacks can stick in the cork

Simple as that! No i'm starting to think I need to repaint that yellow wall. I'm not liking it too much lately. Hmmm...color suggestions?

Have a great day!

$2 thrifty find turned into family keepsake

I had been looking for a tray to put on one of our coffee table's and wasn't able to find one at a reasonable price. That was until I ran to one of my favorite thrift stores. I found this. For $2. Then I had a $5 off coupon for anything over $15. So needless to say I got a box full of goodies for $12. Anyway, back to the tray. I will show you all my revamped goodies later. The tray was ugly but I knew it was perfect. Plus it had glass on top of that 70's needlepoint.



I was so excited I had to paint it the very next day. I had to unscrew the whole thing and clean it up before paint.



Let the painting begin. I used Behr's Forever Black Satin Ultra paint and a foam roller.



Then I was thinking of putting a cute piece of scrapbook paper inside. I didn't have one in the colors I was thinking of so I thought about the drawer full of California maps. I found one with our old city on it and it has our old street on there too. Reide kept asking me to show him our old street over and over again.



Instantly this little tray became a wonderful keepsake for our family.



Thanks for reading and have a great day!
Entered at the Power of Paint Party

Working on our Laundry Room.

It has quickly become a disaster! I just wanted to show you a little something I have been working on for our Laundry/Mud room. This cute little bench. It was quite an eye sore when I picked it up at the thrift store. I got it for $10 and knew I could use it somewhere and bring it back to life. Notice the floor in the photos. ISH! We are redoing them if you couldn't tell from the before and after photos of the bench.

I used Behr Forever Black Ultra Satin and foam rollers to paint this bad boy. I distressed the edges a little with some 80 grit sandpaper. Hope you like! I plan on making a new seat cushion and charming pillow for it once I learn how to sew. I can't wait!

Stay tuned for more laundry room improvements.