Craft Room Furniture! This is Finally Happening!

Hello! It's been a while since I've blogged. I'm afraid to look at how long. If you were reading my blog before, I'm sure you thought it was dead. I meant to keep blogging. I never meant to stop. But, I got very busy trying to be Utah's sole source of actresses between the ages if 17-35. I think I was in every community production In Utah County in the last year. If I wasn't, I saw it or knew someone in it. I got sucked into the vortex of community theater and almost the only crafting I did was sewing my costumes for productions. 

Recently, I was Ms. TeaVee in Willy Wonka. Using a mash up of vintage patterns, I made this dress: 

Anyway, I'm getting distracted. What I really came to post about is this disaster: 

Yep, my craft room. Sad, isn't it? And, this is after cleaning up for a while (a long, long while--and paying one of my kids $10 to help me). A huge part of it is that I have no workspace, so stuff ends up everywhere when I'm working. (Also, I have too much stuff, but I'm pretending that isn't a problem.)

Well, my friends, that is about to change! I recently came into a very cool couch and about $100. I want the couch to fit in this room so people can hang out with me while I craft, and the $100 is perfect for building a huge desk.

Last Saturday, David and I went to the Habitat for Humanity Restore looking for kitchen cabinets to use to make this desk. We got a big fat zero, and they were more expensive than I was hoping. I could have cobbled something together, but it would have eaten my entire budget and nothing would have matched. Nothing would have matched! It was not working for me. So, on the way home I got the bright idea to look on KSL (basically the Craig's List of Utah--no idea why everyone posts there, but we do).

And there it was. Some guy remodeled four matching kitchens and was selling off the cabinets for $10 a piece. And he was home when we called! And didn't sound too eccentric! We were wrong about that last part, but that's okay. 

So, we go to this guy's house (which is upgraded in every possible way--the doorbell chime lasted longer than Beethoven's Symphony No. 9); he makes us remove our shoes to walk across the hardwood floors. Then we ride his elevator (yes, elevator) down to the walkout basement four car garage where he has the kitchen cabinets. We pick out six of them, and pay the guy. We was a perfectly nice normal guy. I'm not sure why he had an elevator, but I'll go with it. Our daughter was with us, and she thought it was cool. 

So, here they are, my new cabinets. 

The dude who sold them to us told us there was nothing wrong with them; that they were just outdated. Dude might have an elevator, but he was wrong about that. They are stinky--like old apartment smell--and greasy and damaged in spots. The hinges have plastic pieces that were breaking apart. There is some nasty gunky on one of the shelves that I am not even going to attempt to clean off. That thing is just getting replaced.

However, they are perfect for what I want them to do. More on that soon. Very, very soon. 

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Simple Rules to Create Organization that Sustains Itself Plus Master Bath Organization

This is Part 2 of my How I Organized My Entire House for $0.00 (Really!) series. Part 1 (Intro) is here.

I want to start off this series by giving myself a set of rules (more like guidelines) to follow. It's easy to get carried away and easy to lose sight of your goals, so this will help keep me on-track.

1. Think about how you live your life. It doesn't make sense to have a system that doesn't work with how you live. Have the things you use together grouped together, not always like with like*. You usually use tape and scissors and wrapping paper together. Have them together. You usually use toothpaste and toothbrushes together (if I'm making any weird assumptions here, feel free to educate me! :) )--make it so you only open one drawer or one cabinet to get them. Think efficiency.
2. Have the things you use the most in easiest reach. The stuff you use less can be harder to get to. Make things easier on yourself.
3. Along with number 2, have the things where you use them, or put them where you are more likely to use them.** Don't get too caught up in where things are "supposed" to go. Put them where they work for you.
4. Make things easy to put away. If they aren't (and you are like me), they won't get put away.
5. Make it simple. Don't go overboard labeling stuff. Don't make a tiny compartment for everything. Have a place for everything, but there's no need to make it more complicated than it needs to be. If you want. Simple systems are the most self-perpetuating.***
6. Reevaluate. Organize, then go back a week later and see if it's working. If not, tweak. Just because you organized it one way doesn't mean it has to stay that way. And it's easier to rework it when it's still somewhat organized than when it's completely disorganized because the system didn't work with the way you live.
7. Get rid of stuff you don't use. I've heard if you haven't used it in the last year, get rid of it. But, I think that's unrealistic. I have things I haven't used in the last year that I want to keep and it would tick me off to replace. But, there is a lot of good in honestly evaluating if you are going to use it. Are you holding onto something because of guilt? Because of what it represents?**** When getting rid of stuff, the biggest thing is to be honest with yourself.
8. Educate your family on your new system, but don't overwhelm them. Make it fun. Get their input if it affects them (I've found it works a lot better if ideas come from everyone, instead of my trying to impose a top down approach).
9. It doesn't have to be perfect. It won't be perfect. What you organize now will probably have to be organized again at some point. Hopefully a long, long time from now. But, your life will change. Your needs will change. Don't get caught up in perfectionism or get overwhelmed. One little piece at a time.

*For example, put a pair of scissors in the places where you need them the most--not all the scissors in the same spot. Then the scissors will be where you need them, they won't travel all around the house, end up in tossed random drawers and never make it back to the scissor drawer and then you can't find a pair when you need them. For example, I have a pair of scissors in my bedside table, so does David, a pair in the kitchen for opening food packages, a pair in the office, a pair in the wrapping paper box, a pair in the kids' art box, and then the specialty scissors where they go--do not touch my sewing scissors please

**I have a topical acne medication I need to use every day, but not within 30 minutes before or after showering. When it was in the bathroom, I didn't use it regularly. But, put it by my laptop, and suddenly I remembered to use it twice a day like I am supposed to.

***It's my experience that I will put something box in a drawer, but not necessarily a certain spot in that box in drawer. For example, if I have a box for often-used medicines: works great! If I have a certain spot for Tylenol in the box, it doesn't get put there every time by everyone and I get frustrated. It doesn't work across everything (forks have a certain spot, dang it!), but it's a generally good rule of thumb.

****Sometimes that's ok--you may pry my great-grandma's quilts out of my bloody fingers--but sometimes it means you need to let go of that to get rid of it. I kept some kitchen gadgets for a long time, because if I had kitchen gadgets, then surely it meant that someday I was going to be fabulous and motivated to cook all the time, right? And, it would make life easy, and I would transform into super chef-type "good mom" person. I was invested in seeing myself as "person with cool kitchen gadgets" and invested in thinking that a good mom cooks every night. Once I let go of that--good moms don't have to cook every night--then I could get rid of the clutter that wasn't helping my life. Or my cooking.

Do you all have any other tips? I'd love to hear what has and hasn't worked for you! 

(Also, I need to take my own advice! I am just horrible at putting things away and not always good at setting up things that work for me, but that's the point--right? To take time to set this stuff up; to stop and think about it.)

Now, onto the bathroom!

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Curtains in my Kitchen!

My sister moved a few weeks ago. I mentioned this in my last post. When she moved, she and her husband ditched a ton of their stuff. Which means, I got a lot of their stuff.

One of the "stuff" I got was the curtains that were in their living room. They just happened to go perfectly in my kitchen.

This is the before shot:

This is what they looked like before I hemmed them. Yeah, way too long:

And the completely finished after:

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Bamboo Blinds

Alas, today is my first day back at college. Which means, my very fun summer is over. Sad face. But, I have the very small number of only 12 credits left. I have debated, made my mind up and changed it back so many times this summer over the question of whether to go full time this semester and finish already or to finish up gently and go half time this year. I'm STILL not sure. I've been going to college for 10 years on and off and I want to be done! However, if I go half time, less stress, I could maybe get a part time job from home, I can defer my student loans a little longer. On the other hand, I could be done in time for Christmas and graduating would be the very best Christmas present in the entire history of the world. It seems surreal that I could actually have a college degree.

On the other hand, going half time would leave me free to do other things, like admire my bamboo blinds and make really horrible videos featuring them. I think the voice over isn't too bad, but the visuals leave much to be desired. But, shaky, dark video aside, I still saved a ton of money.

Humm, maybe the pictures weren't too bad after all. Here are the pictures:

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Flying Birds

I've crossed off a few more things from my UFO list! I'm determined to finish that list this summer. I realized the oldest thing on there is a cross stitch I started back before I was married, about 11 years ago. 11 years (that's a little over 1/3 of my life). I guess I should just be happy there aren't older objects sitting about. The cross stitch is actually all finished, but it's never been framed; it's been sitting in a box for 11 years. I think I'm going to make a pillow out of it.

Anyway, that has nothing to do with my post today! I hung up some art in the corner of my bedroom where my chair sits.

I happened to see this tray by Eskil Design on Young House Love somewhere in the advertising sections and was very attracted to the graphic elements of the trees, clouds and birds. I designed something highly inspired by it (ok, I nearly copied it--although I went off memory and tried not too look at it and also put my own spin on it).

The tray:

  My version:

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

I Knocked Through a Wall--Which Option Should I use to Fix It?

So, when we moved in, there was this little shelf in place:

 
When we were touring the house with the inspector, I was like "What's this weird hole/shelf here for?" And he was all like, "There used to be these types of phones that you had to plug into the wall. . ." I liked our inspector. He was sarcastic. I might have told that story before on the blog. It's a good story.

Anyway, it existed to set the phone on. Because there was only one phone jack and it was in the living room. That wall is between the kitchen and the living room.

But, it really annoyed me. It's not at eye level. Unless you are between the ages of five and eight. Considering that only three of the six people in our house qualify, I felt it needed to go.

(Also, woah, my kitchen has changed a lot since then!)

Rather than knock it out and fix the drywall, I thought--why not make this hole bigger? So, David and I worked on that.

And we got to this point. It hasn't changed in a while. Because we can't decide if this should have shelves or not have shelves, and if it has shelves what they should look like.

So, I used the magic of Photoshop to approximate what shelves would look like in different configurations.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Massive Bookcases=Massive Post

David and I are bibliophiles. I don't read as many books as I used to now that I discovered the joys of the internet and blogs, but I still read fairly voraciously. If I get on a reading kick, reading material becomes scarce quickly. I can't do a thing (except eat bags of M&Ms one M&M at a time) until I've finished reading every book in the vicinity. Usually I get my reading material from the library, but we like to buy our favorites to have on hand for multiple readings (I mean, who doesn't, really?). I also have a lot of my favorites from childhood still around. I'm hoping the kids will start reading them at some point. So far, I've only convinced Xander to read Mrs. Piggle Wiggle.

Our books have been lugged around in boxes from apartment to apartment. We have never owned enough bookcases to have them out properly. For a lot of the time, they've lived under the bed or our in the garage in plastic bins. This is less than ideal. I cannot tell you how many times I've been in the mood for a certain book and not been able to find it.

Anyway, that's the set up for the need for some massive bookcases. When we moved in, we mounted our flatscreen on this wall downstairs, planning to build a huge entertainment center around it.

Also, this is a blank wall (more on that in a minute). It's only tangentially related to the bookcases, but since what we did on it showed up in the photos, I'm showing it to you. I can't believe how much taller Griffin is now, compared to last year. He's the blur slightly to the right.

Well, that TV didn't exactly stay there. David won a TV at work (!!!), so the wall-mounted TV moved up to our bedroom, and the new TV was moved in. Good thing we didn't start building the entertainment center yet, because I'm not sure we would have planned for a TV quite as . . . gargantuan. I feel like I need to install velvet curtains and a popcorn maker to help it feel at home. You'll see what I mean in a minute.

David and I started building the bookcases. David really did most of the work. I helped, but I was mostly grunt labor. I maybe got in the way more than I helped. We built them out of MDF and plywood. We actually got them built with MDF shelves, but they were strong enough and once we put books on them, they started to bow, so it was back to knocking out the shelves and putting in stronger ones. But, luckily, we found out before we painted the second one.

It took a long time. About four hours to build the first one, then about an hour to build the second one, then about three hours to paint the first one, then about three hours to fix our shelf mistake, then about four more hours of painting. You get the picture.

We also ran into a problem of an electrical outlet. The shelves are 12" deep, but would have covered one electrical outlet about half way. Not good. So, we knocked a hole in the wall and moved it over. Not exactly a small job. At this point, I was deeply worried we were getting into a Give a Mouse a Cookie situation. The type where you end up with pink walls and a new tile floor with radiant heat and you wonder how you got there. We managed to stop though. After a little bit.

However, while we were patching that, we figured we might as well patch the other holes that happened to be in the room. It turned out to be quite a lot, actually.

1. The hole for the electrical outlet.
2. The hole we knocked in the other side of the wall while moving the electrical outlet
3. A hole cut at the top of the wall that was there when we moved in--for some work that was done--who knows what
4. A slight dent we made while moving in while getting the couch down the stairs
5. Someone got over-zealous when putting in an electrical outlet and cut the whole too big (not the one in the above pictures, someone who I don't know who did this before we moved in)
6. Our children put a slight dent in the wall (this is not surprising. It's actually surprising that of the six patches, only one was caused by our offspring).

That was a lot of patching to do. Really, the rest of our house does not resemble Swiss cheese. It was odd to look around and see just how many spots needed to be patched.

Then, we were able to put the bookcases into place. We realized that we had not built them quite high enough to have the gap between the wall and the ceiling be able to be bridged by the crown molding we plan to put up. So, we had to figure out a solution to that problem. But, otherwise! YAY! And other words which I will not say on this blog, because they involve curse words of joy.

That picture makes me laugh though, because the large TV just throws the scale all off. Those bookcases are over three feet wide. The TV is sitting on an old computer desk. That's a nightstand underneath the computer desk. Yet, I still feel like my eyes are telling me that's a small wall. It gets bigger once you put books on it.

We eventually settled on a trim. Here's a close up. It will be covered a lot by the crown molding, but we planned on that. It will give us something to attach the molding to.

Through the magic of the internet, you get to skip the six or seven hours I spent categorizing, organizing and cataloging books! I made a spread sheet with every single book we owned! Then I sorted them by genre, making very tall stacks! Tripping hazards for more than two days! I didn't actually put them up on the shelves in alphabetical order though. Even I have my limits.

The only thing is, we are missing a box of books. I'm almost certain it is not in our house. We looked pretty thoroughly at my parents' house (our last residence). It's a box that was probably books that we hanging out in our master bedroom. It had my Anne of Green Gables series in it, a few books from my childhood I was trying to convince the boys to read, a Chelsea Handler book (verdict still out on whether or not I liked that one), one of the Borne Identity books in it. Probably quite a few more that my brain has filed away somewhere. I hope that box didn't get donated. I WANT THAT BOX. I'm mostly concerned about my Anne of Green Gables series. My aunt LuAnn gave the series to me when I was nine or ten and I opened it on Christmas Eve and read about most of the first book that night. It will be sad if I can't find that series--it has sentimental value.

Anyway, here are the finished bookcases in all their glory.

A close up of some of the decorated shelves. These will probably evolve some more.

That blank wall I showed you earlier? We actually did this project months ago, but we put up a map and framed it with trim. It's an idea floating around blogland that I saw and loved. When we first talked about buying a house, we ordered this map. It was the first thing we bought specifically for our first house. Cue cute awwing noises. (We might have hung it a little high, but. . . with all the staples and nails in that thing--it's staying.)

And here are some more views of the room. Because I always want more views of the room when people do huge projects like this. These views make the room look huge--wide angle lenses do that. It's pretty big, but probably not as big as it looks here.

And one of my couch cushions looks oddly purple. The color balance on these photos was giving me fits. Oh, and we are not planning on leaving the desk and the night stand as our TV's home. We are planning on building a media cabinet to go between the two bookcases and a bridge along the top. But, it works for now. And I have an awesome photo arrangement planned for under that airplane. One thing at a time. . .

And that concludes this massive post about massive bookcases that I alluded to in this post.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Picture Ledges (from scrap wood--so basically free!)

David and I are nearly finished with a huge project in the basement family room, which I will show you very soonish. I'm very excited about it and I will give you a clue--it's made out of wood. Soon, my friends, soon.

Anyway, we had some scrap pieces, so I commissioned David to build me some picture ledges out of the scraps. Which apparently annoyed him, as I wanted him to do it while he was building the other thing he was building. I was helping with the other thing he was building here and there, but I was also sitting around sometimes, so I thought it would give me something to paint.

He built them out of MDF and cut the groove in them with the table saw. Then it was a matter of nailgunning the pieces together.

Then I painted quite a few coats.

Then I bugged him again to help me hang them. Apparently, David is a methodical builder who likes to do one project at a time, finish it, and then move onto the next project. I didn't realize that. Technically, I was asking him to help when he wasn't working on the other thing he was building, but oh well. He was nice about it, but he usually doesn't betray that much annoyance with me.

Which reminds me of this morning, actually. I got up when he did (I usually get up right as he leaves for work) and he was in the shower) and I knocked to get into the bathroom. I drank too much water last night right before bed, so I had a bladder about the size and approximate weight of a bowling ball; I hate getting up at night and I probably should have anyway. He was definitely annoyed when he asked what I wanted (we don't technically have a master bathroom--it's across the hall). I said I wanted to use the bathroom and he told me to go downstairs. No way was I using that pit. I make the kids clean it unless we are expecting company (then I double clean it and use highly concentrated cleaners before I will touch it), and I'm not sure when the last time I made them clean it was anyway. We have three boys. Enough said. The bowling ball was staying until he got out the shower.

Apparently he thought I was Maxton.

Anyway, here's some of the stuff I put on it. You can see how I made the dragonfly frame here. The tree and the monogram letters (they are hard to make out in the bottom left corner; I need to set them on something) are from Hobby Lobby. The bird is from Dollar Tree. The frame near the monograms is getting an ampersand and the other two frames will get photos of David and me as soon as I figure out a way to scan our wedding negatives. I never could get my negative scanner to work and I got rid of it.

I don't particularly want to take it to a developer, as it's a medium format negative and I'd like to get them all done and I've only seen 35mm offered. I'm sure I could have it done for a fortune. I'd rather do it myself, but I'd like a negative scanner that would work with my existing scanner and would work with my medium format negatives and I have no idea where to find one. Our photographer let us have the negatives after 5 years--how awesome is that! Just need to have them digitized to make them really useful.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

A Little Vanity Makeover

I know I'm on a serious home decor kick lately. I haven't done much crafting lately. Mostly it's school, school and oh, more school, so when I get some free time, I want to move and not sit down.

I actually painted my bathroom vanity a while ago, and I thought I would save it for a whole series on my bathroom makeover, but eh, I feel like showing it to you now.

It used to be this lovely oak. This is a photo from the first day we moved in, so excuse the random toilet paper rolls on the bathroom cabinet. Toilet paper is one of the first things you need to install when you enter a new house. It's not good to forget. Personal experience after moving 8 times since my marriage.

Then, after a lot of sanding and a lot of patient painting, here's the finished product. Or near finished product. I'd like to replace the top sometime and the faucet (obviously).

I took out the bottom two drawers, because we weren't using them anyway, and found a basket that fit the space. It's where my blow dryer and flat iron go, which is nice, because after I'm finished, I just toss them down there. That's the only way anything ever gets put away at my house. Tossing. I'd like to paint the inside of that area black, but half finished projects are how I like to do things. It's more exciting that way. The mystery of never knowing when I will actually be all the way done with something is so intriguing.

I really, really like the black and the new drawer pulls from Home Depot! I also painted the bathroom gray (I will post pictures eventually) and it looks so good with the walls!

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Bedside Table Makeover

Greetings, Faithful Readers!

I have not posted in a while. I have a lot of excuses for this. I'm about to bore you with them. I was finishing up last semester. Enter braggy brag time. I earned an A in my Organizational Effectiveness class. I earned an A- in my Public Speaking class. That minus is making me very, very mad. I could get all ranty about it. I did get all ranty about it to my family. Very often. They are sick of my ranting. I will not bore you with the ranting that I can do. It is impressive ranting. Have you noticed that I am a perfectionist? I am a perfectionist.

Then we did the Christmas thing, which was very nice. I love Christmas.

I have been doing projects. I have been taking pictures of projects. The pictures that I have been taking are not very good pictures due to my broken camera situation, which I have ranted about before (see major themes of this blog lately: perfectionistic tendencies, ranting, broken equipment. Funny, I thought I was writing a crafting blog. Whatever happened to that, anyway?) These less than good pictures have made me reluctant to post to the blog, because I want to show off my projects in the best possible way (I'm thinking that if you google perfectionist, I will be among the top hits).

All that to say--Da-da-dah-DAH!--here's my bedside table that I made over a little while ago for the master bedroom makeover.

David picked up this little guy for free once while buying something else off KSL (the Utah version of Craigslist--it's actually a local TV channel. Not sure why everyone posts stuff to KSL instead of Craigslist, but we do. Quirky Utahans.)

Yeah, yuck. I love that it has three drawers. I need three drawers. The inside of the drawers looked like this:

Again with the yuck. This picture does not show the dirtiness of this drawer.

So, I sanded it down and painted it black and added some wrapping paper from Hobby Lobby (I geeked OUT when I found out we were getting one nearby--I nearly passed out in the car when David pointed it out to me) with mod podge for drawer liners.

Then I added zebra print drawer pulls, also from Hobby Lobby. My goal is to have a touch of zebra print, a mirror and a clock in each room of the house, so here's the zebra print for the master bedroom.

 

Ahhhhh, much better than the before, even if the pictures are not the best and my wires are out of control. I'm going to work on that. . .

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Leaves Paint Treatment in My Master Bedroom

Ages ago, before we even moved into the house, I planned on doing our bedroom in greys, yellows and blacks. I knew I was going to paint the walls grey, the ceiling yellow, put up crown molding and have a grey bedspread. I've been looking for ages for an acceptable king-size bedspread that also didn't require a 2nd mortage. I happened to find a fuzzy grey one at Shopko for $30 not too long ago, more than 1/2 off. It's basically just a huge throw, but it works for me. I'm just happy it didn't cost $300. Eventually, I want to get lots of pillows and make a cheerful quilt to put at the bottom of the bed. I'm thinking I will probably even knit at least one of the pillows.

So, the throw started a chain reaction. Mostly, I've just painted the bedroom and the bathroom grey. I had the idea forever ago to paint the wall opposite our bed with a huge white graphic vine leafy design, so as I painted the room, I had to work out how to do that too. I was pretty darn proud that I figured out how to get it even, with my low tech painter's tape and poster-board template. It's not perfect, but you all are not supposed to notice that, 'kay?

First, I did some rough white as an undercoat. Probably should have just bit the darn bullet and risked the cracked teeth and consequential dental work and painted the whole area white, because it would have saved me work in the end. You can see how pathetically uneven my leaves are here, so when I did the measured ones, parts of the tan showed through. Eventually, David ended up filling in the whole area white for me for the bottom three sets of leaves.

(KEEP SCROLLING, THIS IS NOT THE FINISHED PRODUCT. DISCLAIMER ADDED BECAUSE OF A CERTAIN PERSON IN THE COMMENTS. YOU KNOW WHO YOU ARE!)

Then, I ran a level piece of painter's tape from ceiling to floor. It was of the 3" wide variety. Then I made a template for the angle of the stems, and measured off the spacing of the stems, and used painters tape again for the width.

Then I made a template for the leaves (and extended the angle of the stems up onto the template so it stayed the same) and traced them on the wall and cut in the leaves in with a paint brush. Which was annoying, but not as annoying to me as trying to tape it off and having the tape bleed. And yes, the tape bled on the stems, so I came back with the brush to touch them up. I've heard about various methods to prevent this, but I've never had much luck with them--so rather than go through that, I cut in when I can and touch up when I can't . Maybe I need to buy better tape.

Repeat down for five sets of leaves and about a million coats, and I got this (which I took when it was still wet; it looks a lot more even now):

Another angle (it has low dressers in front of it now, and it looks awesome!):

All this was done between school assignments. When I couldn't stand to work on school anymore, I would paint. When I could stand to paint anymore, I would work on school. It worked well. David did all of the rolling, bless him. I don't like rolling much. I'm going to show the bathroom soon, which looks sooooo much better!

I'm dying to make some curtains for the bedroom. I have a fabric picked out. I fought the idea of making curtains, but I shopped around and discovered the curtains, they are not cheap. This fact was previously unknown to me. I do not own a single curtain. So, I could have generic yellow curtains for the same price as fabulous, beautiful, graphic patterned curtains. Guess which one I am going to pick. Eventually. When I decide I want to spend $100 on curtains for my two bedroom windows. I could probably do yellow curtains for a lot less if I made them myself, but if I'm going to make them myself, I think I will do the amazing ones.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Project Progress: Kitchen Update Week 11

This week is basically a quick post to show off the chairs I've finished so far. I've got five done. You can check out my first finished one here, along with the before pictures if you didn't catch the first post.

They look darling in my kitchen. Just what I pictured.

I cannot wait to get all six around the kitchen table! I have eight chairs, but two of them hang out in my craft room most of the time.

I love how they pick up the colors in the wall art. The navy bowl in the center was a wedding present, and the teal bowl in it was from my great-grandma and it looks charming as a center piece, particularly when filled with green apples.

I still really want to get new light fixtures and curtains. I have not a single curtain in my entire house. Luckily, there are nice blinds on most of the windows, but there is a horrible lack of window treatments.

And, I need to finish up my rag rug. I've been working on it, but like I said last week, that is taking much longer than I anticipated.

I also want vintage metal stools for the breakfast bar. I bought one and it's perfect, but I want three more, all different styles. I'm hoping I can figure out a way to get all the things that I want. I usually can. I'm very crafty (I mean this in the stealthy, cunning way this time) when I want something. And I want to finish this kitchen makeover and complete the whole vision of the thing.

On the other hand, I must not get too caught up in decorating fever. There are more important things. Hard to think what they are at the moment. Humm. . .

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.