Happy Birthday Boys!

Fun Fact: Each of our boys was born in May. Two years apart. Neat, huh? Not exactly planned that way, but it makes birthday MONTH a big deal! We chose to honor their actual birthdates with a special dessert of their choosing complete with candles, singing, and a gift from their parents and grandparents. Then on a Saturday evening we had a couple families over for a get-together, not really a party, just to keep it simple.

I wanted to include a tiny bit of my boys' birthdays on my blog. All of these images are taken with my cell phone and are unedited. Better birthday pictures are on my personal Facebook account, for all you family and friends out there who might be curious. 

I'm trying to keep this short--it's supposed to be Wordless Wednesday, after all--so I've captioned the pictures and will let that serve as explanation for the rest of the post. Enjoy!

Birthday Countdown on our chalkboard wall

May 4 - It's Jared's 4th birthday!!!

Jared asked for a berry pie with ice cream.

May 9 - It's Jonathan's 6th birthday!!!

Jonathan asked for ice cream cake. I built it with ice cream sammies + ice cream.

May 16 - Josiah turns 2!!!

I missed the cell picture of him blowing out his candles but got this cute pose instead!

These cute vinyl cling trucks gave us a party theme!

I used clean toy trucks to hold party food!

We had two families over to help us celebrate. No games, no gifts, just simple fun.

I used tiny plastic cups with truck stickers to serve veggie sticks with ranch as well as apple slices.

Sweet little Josiah is getting so big!

Jared never holds still!

Jonathan loves to socialize.

Happy birthday to each of my little guys! I love you and am so blessed to be MOMMY to each of you!

Our Kitchen {Tour}

Yesterday I shared our chalkboard wall and backsplash in our rental kitchen. Today I'd like to show you around the rest of the room. 

If you were reading a few months ago, I shared how this step of our journey is completely providential. I continue to believe that is the case, as everything, down to the silliest little detail of our concerns has been taken care of. We are blessed. 

This little house is one of the major blessings, as my boys and I are home every day. I also take a lot of joy in making a space comfortable, attractive, organized. This home is part of the package my husband gets for working as a dean. It's older and downright quirky in places. Like a lot of rentals, it has seen years of use and abuse without little things being taken care of. If it was our house--bought with our money--we would have quite the list of repairs and improvements. But as a place to live for a year or two, we are thrilled!

The kitchen isn't newly remodeled, but it's a lot cleaner and newer than our old kitchen. The cabinets are those thermofoil, in stock, standard size, piece-together ones from Lowe's. The counters are laminate. There's no backsplash. The floor is linoleum. 

But it's white and bright! The cabinets are sturdy and the lower ones have pull-out shelves! The appliances all function well, and there's a dishwasher!!! First time I've had a dishwasher in five years!

I mentioned when I wrote about the chalkboard wall that I might put beadboard wallpaper up as a backsplash and paint the upper section above the upper cabinets (header?) white again. I think the stark black and white is too much contrast. It will still have the striking black chalkboard wall at the far end of the kitchen, so that should provide the contrast the kitchen was otherwise lacking. 

I might also add knobs and drawer pulls as some of the cupboards are hard to open, and they would be pretty! I will certainly add a decorative window curtain over both windows--I'm thinking a burlap valance. I've already purchased a goose-neck faucet with a pull-down sprayer. I was thinking a colorful rug might be fun, but this floor gets abused with my constant cooking and my three little helpers. 

Of course I'll keep you posted!

The window over the sink looks out onto a little patio between the house and the garage where the main entrance to the house (a mudroom!!!) is located. It would be perfect for a little bistro table. I saw this set at Kroger and still kinda wish I had bought it. But it was $80 and I just can't make impulse purchases like that! Super cute though!

The other window in our kitchen needs a sign: Mommy's Drive-Thru. It's the perfect height for doling out drinks, apples, gum, etc. to a couple little boys who play out there. It's also great for keeping an eye on the boys, and I admit to hollering at them to stop doing XY or Z sometimes!

To the right of the chalkboard wall is the door to the basement. It also technically has is the main door to the house behind this interior door. Kind of awkward. There's a small landing with scary, creaky hit-your-head-on-the-ceiling stairs to the basement, the main entrance door with a screen door too, then a tiny, weird closet (more on that later--I've made it my bread baking supply closet), and a couple steps up to this door to the kitchen. Confused? Me too! I can't imagine welcoming guests into my home from that awkward place, and everyone seeing my dank basement before entering the kitchen... So thankful for the added entrance with the mudroom!

I know we're lucky to have this much freedom in a rental, but if you're wanting to change something, it doesn't hurt to ask! Show your landlord pictures of your idea, offer to pay for the cost of, say, painting a chalkboard wall, and compromise. For instance, if your landlord is afraid of a big black wall, offer to paint it back to the original color before you move out. Hey, that approach might just work with your husband too! 

Before you leave, let's take a look with our backs against the chalkboard wall. I know in this era of custom kitchens with bars and islands being so popular, and so much real estate being all about the kitchen, our little galley kitchen is not the ideal. But it's a layout that works great for us! There are plenty of prep areas on either side of the sink and stove, the working triangle is nice and tight but not too crowded, and the kitchen is not a main thoroughfare. It's an easy kitchen to feel at home in and to cook and clean in. 

So what's at the opening of that end of the kitchen? The dining room! I need to take pictures and show you that sweet little area, but I have a couple more posts up my sleeve first. 

Coming soon: Tips on organizing your kitchen to maximize its function. Stay tuned!

Our Chalkboard Wall

With the crazy unpacking/sorting/purging and other home making I've been doing since we moved to Ohio in March, I've stopped posting from my Inspirational Files. After jumping back in to blogging last week, I noticed that the very last post I left you with was an inspirational post on chalkboard walls.

 

 Those images must have stayed in my head because even before the living room looked like home, before the guest room was unpacked, and while there were still boxes in my husband's and my bedroom, I had bought a $16 quart of chalkboard paint. I actually got another quart of magnetic paint (which is also black) to use as primer and for the added fun of the walls being magnetic, but it was a FAIL. I don't know if it isn't thick enough (I did two coats) or smooth enough or what, but the walls are not magnetic.

Verdict: I love this chalkboard wall! It's lots of fun to doodle on instead of waiting for water to boil. We enjoyed using it for our birthday countdown and Happy Birthday messages to our boys. Remember our three boys each have May birthdays. :)  My husband's verdict? Notsomuch. I think his exact words were, "Let's not do this again." Maybe it'll grow on him?

The boys loved drawing on the chalkboard wall for the first couple of weeks, but it's been awhile since they've asked. We went through a lot of chalk and it was really dusty, to be honest.

Another thing, part of the reason why I wanted a chalkboard wall was for the color. I like black and the kitchen is pretty light. Having painted all of the walls and backsplash black, however, I think it's too much! I'm thinking of leaving that back wall black but using beadboard wallpaper or something easy for the backsplashes. Just so you know if you're considering doing the same thing. Oh, and chalkboard paint can be bought in many different colors or even made to the color of your choosing.

I'll show you the rest of the kitchen tomorrow!

Do you have a chalkboard wall? Do you use it?

My First Mantle: Spring Edition

When we first saw the house we are now living in, it was empty and dirty. It's an older house with lots of redeeming qualities like lots of windows, tall baseboards and plenty of character. Like the mantle. It's crooked. Lopsided. Wider on one end than the other. The fireplace it frames is not useable right now (chimney issues), but it's still fun to decorate a real mantle!

I used what I had, what hadn't found a home on the bookshelves or other places in the house.

*A window from our barn in Iowa.

*A star my husband made for our first married Christmas tree.

*Our family initial I painted on a piece of wood found in our old barn.

*Two original blue Ball jars filled with colored glass found in the garden at our old house.

*Two blue glass thing-a-ma-bobs I found here in the basement.

*A topiary I bought for my first house after college (1999!).

*A pretty vase filled with the reddest, biggest tulips I've ever seen! Picked on the property!

Don't worry, this isn't going to turn into a how-to-decorate-your mantle blog. And I might not remember to update you the look evolves. It might not evolve much, truth be told. But it's still fun to decorate!

And Christmas? Can't wait!!!

 

PS: Who votes for whitewashing the brink? Still brick, not white, but lighter.

How to Fake-Upholster a Wingback Using Staples and Hot Glue

 You guys! I did it! 

Ok, truthfully my chair not completely finished. Don't tell anyone! I ran out of hot glue. 

And, oh yeah, there's another one to fix.

I've had these wingbacks for about 17 years. Ok, months. Not quite two years. I know, because I had to sneak away from my little baby Josiah who was still nursing to go pick this set of wingbacks up. They were a craigslist find for $35. Both--not each! I wasn't thrilled with the mauve but thought I'd get around to covering them right away. Well, my little guy turns two today and I'm still working on this project! Does that ever happen to you?

So at first I wanted to reupholster my chairs from drop cloths, a la Miss Mustard Seed, or sew proper slip covers with the drop cloths. But then I thought I was way out of my league. My sewing machine and I don't get along THAT well. 

So then I started seeing (because I was looking) all of the posts on painting over upholstery. Bingo! Except, no, it sucked. If you care to scroll up two pictures, the chair on the left suffered from this experiment. I used the right tools and thought I followed directions, but not only did it take forever, but it made a huge mess, ruined my spray bottle, cost a lot more than I wanted it to (paint + fabric medium), and left my chair crunchy! I'm glad some people have success with this method, but I did not.

Somewhere between pins on upholstering box springs with staples and DIY desperations, I resigned myself to spending a little more money to save my basically ruined chairs. I bought 5 yards of duck cloth in off white for $30. My one chair did not use all of it, but I'll need a couple more yards to finish chair #2. 

I also invested in an $8 stapler and a couple packs of staples.

Working in sections, I'd hold up a length of fabric, eyeball the measurements, cut off a section on my roll of cloth and tuck/staple it in.

 

I learned pretty quickly that the staples only stayed in where they met wood, so I resorted to using my hot glue gun in those places, and where I didn't want the staples to show.

For instance, in the photo above I stapled the first layer of cloth around the rolled arm, then hot glued the flat section on top of it. I also glued the section of white cloth next to the brown but stapled the edges of that front flap under the chair and behind the legs where it would be tucked under another layer. 

I worked on this project for a couple hours at a time as I could. It took three days for one chair.

 I'm sure the second chair will be faster because of the learning curve, but be prepared to invest several hours of your time for this. 

One technique I learned was to staple the under side of the flap of fabric (here it's the back of the chair), then flip it over and pull it tight. One more strong, stapled, hidden seam!

On the back, you saw how I stapled the top and this shows how I stapled the bottom. In between those steps I tucked and glued the left and right edges, as I had already stapled the side panels and I needed to cover everything up. The hot glue worked very well on this material (duck cloth) and isn't visible at all. It's also a pain in the neck to pull off if you make a mistake! Not that I would know... {ahem}

 See, all pretty and hidden! I need to spray a few wrinkles out of my fabric. I also plan to scotch guard these like crazy, as there's no way to wash the fabric and I have three little boys can be messy.

  

The cost of this project is still pretty sweet when you end up with two pretty chairs! Let me break it down:

2 chairs on craigslist - $35

10 yards duck cloth - $60

stapler + staples - $12

hot glue sticks - $5

Total = $112

Oh, look at that, a before/after shot that isn't spliced together!

 

 What have you pieced together and totally loved lately??