Got the Itch...

Ok, now that does not sound nice...but I do...I have the itch...the itch to craft! I am finding that with 2 children and a full time job, it is hard to do anything, much less anything crafty. Today, though, I decided I would do something. The first thing I did was finish a lamp for our 4 year old's room. Her room is pink, pink, pink! I spray painted a wicker lamp Watermelon from Rustoleum. It turns out to be a great contrast to the pink on her walls. We had seen cute lamp shades with flowers on them on pinterest, so we decided to do that ourselves. We went to Michaels and picked out some daisies. At home we found an old lamp shade (and by old I mean dusty and taped together.) Then we pulled the flowers off of the stems. We then cut the tips off where the flowers attach to the stems. Next, we broke out the old hot glue gun...one of man's best inventions. A little hot glue on the flowers, we stuck them on the shade. Once we had them all glued on, we put the shade on the lamp and it made for one happy little girl. As you can see in the picture, she quickly added a crown to the lamp...how fitting for a princess.

Board and Batton

So I first got this idea from The Nesting Place (see http://www.thenester.com/2010/05/board-and-batten.html). I then googled board and batton and found some other sources, pictures, directions, etc. (http://hookedonhouses.net/2010/09/15/how-to-hang-board-and-batten/, www.centsationalgirl.com/2011/01/basic-board-and-batten ). I was happy to know that Gary was all about it when I approached him with the idea. That definitely makes doing a project like this easier. We have wanted to do something in the dining room for awhile and this turned out to be the thing!

We talked about it, decided how we wanted to do it, decided on our height and got started. Saturday morning we were off to Home Depot. Cash flow is tight right now because we used so much of it when I was on maternity leave and not getting a pay check...so...4x8 sheets of MDF cut into strips created our moulding. Again, got that idea from the fabulous blogs listed above! And according to said blogs, the store would cut them to size...yes, Gary was excited about that! Made the project a whole lot simpler! We used 3/4 inch MDF. I was afraid that 3/4 inch would sit funny on our existing moulding because we were not removing or redoing the moulding, so we decided to cut the bottom at an angle. Not so exciting for Gary, but he agreed because he knows I can get picky about the little things sometimes...he obliged and it looked great! He should know by now that I'm always right, right?!?! We had Home Depot cut 3 inch strips for the battons and 5 inches for the moulding around the top. Once home, we, and by we I mean the hubby, cut the strips to 5 feet. We decided to do 5 feet above our existing floor moulding which is about a foot off of the ground, so our battens are about 6 feet tall.

While hubby was cutting the battens, I began priming the dining room that was already chocoloate brown. We then painted the walls with the exact color of our moulding, in semi-gloss. I must say that by exact, I mean the color the moulding was painted a long, long time ago, soooo....it mostly matches, but the old moulding is not quite a white as the new walls. Close enough, but one day they could use a new coat of paint.

After all of the cutting and painting, the next step was nailing up the strip of moulding across the top. Then we nailed up the battens. We used a nail gun...a gift for Gary at our couple's shower when we got married) and that made the process a whole lot faster. An extra piece of MDF cut to 14 inches made a spacer for our battens. In theory this was good, but in reality 14 inches did not always work. We used it when we could, but for a lot of the battens we eyeballed it (is eyeballed a real word...never typed that out before) and did what we thought looked good as opposed to what was exactly right measurement-wise (again...not a real word). We nailed a 3 inch strip of MDF on top of our moulding strip to make a little ledge and then put quarter-round underneath. Finally, caulking and a final coat of paint finished it off. We need to caulk a little more, but we've kind of decided that we like the look it gives without being perfect...makes the room seem a little older...like the board and batten's been there forever.

Now for me...the most important question is....where were the children while we did this?!?!? Avery is now 3 1/2 so she is pretty independent. She was back and forth between the dining room, her room, and a movie. I'm not a big fan of movies and tv...I didn't even let Avery watch tv until she was 2, but sometimes when you're cleaning or working on a project, a video can be your best friend! Looking back I keep thinking, where was AnnaLee, but then I remember stopping frequently during the project to do bottles, change diapers, rock, bounce, etc. She was not quite crawling at this point so when she was happy, we were able to set her up in the den within eyesight and she played with her toys. She also took an unusual, amazing 2 naps that day which helped a lot. And she even slept through the nail gun! She must have know we needed some time...good job AnnaLee...so smart already :).

I must say we are super proud of this project. We still look in the dining room and say, "That looks really good...I love it!" So here are the pictures to show a little about the project. I'm not very good at this blog thing and I'll try to get better at detailing how we do things. Overall I thought this project was relatively easy...especially with Home Depot doing a lot of the work! Hats off to the hubs for all of his work too...we make a good team!

Time keeps on slippin'...

"Time keeps on slippin', slippin', slippin' Into the future..." The Steve Miller Band has got it right. This is how my life feels. I've always got great ideas (or stolen ideas from other blogs!) and great intentions. Why do these usually not play out? Maybe it's the 2 kids and the job and the husband and the need for sleep...just maybe. But even with all of those excuses-I mean reasons I should be thankful-I get very frustrated with my lack of productiveness.
Ok...I've vented, made my excuse, whatever you want to call it! Done. So, since having our 2nd little one we have gotten some things done. First, we painted the bookshelves in our den (see last post) and our next big project was doing board and batton in our dining room. Tomorrow I will work on posting our pictures and our inspiration sights and how it all came together. Until then...I'm off to bed...we pulled an all-nighter last night with a stuffy baby.

A Crazy Whirlwind

This title describes this summer for me. It has been just that...crazy and a whirlwind. I'm already down to 3 weeks with my sweet girls and that makes me sad. The time passes so quickly. The crazy part has been having a 3 year old, new baby, and 5 puppies, yes, that's right, 5 puppies! Our newest addition, sweet Dixie, showed up on our porch. She just happened to show up pregnant which means we got to experience puppy birth! Wow! My dining room, which will be a project soon, turned into a labor and delivery room for pups. Thankfully the birth went well and we have 5 healthy pups. Weaning will start this week. I've heard it's messy, but that won't be much different from anything else around here. We have homes for 3, maybe 4, of the pups and we have to find 1 more home...I CANNOT have another dog as much as we would like to and as cute as they are. 4 is pushing the limits, well let's just say it, crossing the limits and 5 would just be crazy. We can hardly keep up with the 3 we already have!

Soooo, with all that said, it's been hard to get projects in, but I've managed to do a few. Today I'm going to share our first project because it made the most impact and should have been done a long time ago. I say "our" because I could hardly get anything done without my mother and Gary. They each did just as much work as I did on this one! In our den we have beautiful built in shelves placed here by the previous owners. They did a great job with them, but they were in a dark color (blue or green...we never could decide and it depending who you asked!) Dark shelves+ plus bad lighting=dark room. With a one month old at home, I decided they had to be painted...don't ask me why. We also decided to add bead board to the back. The hubby tackled that part of it. He cut the bead board to the width and height of the back of the shelves. We quickly realized the bead board would not fit in one piece so we strategically cut the board where we knew a shelf would go. This part turned out to be much more difficult than expected. There were outlets in every section of shelves so he had to cut out outlet holes for each one...quite the pain. After all of the was done, he nailed them in.We then caulked all of the holes and cuts. Then, priming! We primed everything first and then began to paint with the same color all of our mouldings are in a semi-gloss. I do not know the color because it is a match from the previous owners. After 2 coats of paint, the shelves were done and they look great! The room is so much lighter and looks sooo much bigger!(See the after picture at the top...sorry about the placement...I'm figuring this thing out!) Someone tell me why we didn't tackle this 5 years ago when we didn't have the added difficulty of kids and a million dogs!

Speaking of kids and dogs...lets talk about the reality of the project. In concept it seems like a simple project, right?!? Adding the kids and dog part made it more complicated and difficult to accomplish. In my old life, aka, before our two precious and awesome additions, this project would have been completed in a weekend. For some reason, in my head, I still thought that was how it would go! Two weeks later, painting during every nap time, we finally finished up. It was well worth the effort and was very rewarding, I just got a dose of reality of our new project time frame!

Getting Started

So I've decided to blog. Will I be good at it? Probably not. I started a blog after my first daughter was born and I've made about three posts. That was three years ago! My intentions are to update my family blog more often and begin to share on this blog about my attempts, failures, and successes at decorating, crafting, mothering, and just living in general.

I enjoy projects and like to stay busy. Busy at what...not always sure. I especially love to paint. My husband says our house is losing square footage because I am always painting the walls. Lately I've enjoyed painting furniture because it is a quick change to old pieces and is usually quick and satisfying. Painting the walls has gotten a little more difficult now that I have two girls, one of which loves to help!

On this blog I want to share my projects and to be real with the trials of getting anything done while being a great mom!