DING! DONG! The Door is Done!

What can I say?

We like to drag out our home improvement projects around here.

Case in point: we began painting our home in May 2010 and did not finish until four months later.

Why we didn't paint our front door when we painted the house in 2010 is beyond me, except that I know we would not have picked orange back then.

Nope, a year ago we probably would have played it safe with a dark ink blue or even {gasp!} stayed with the white.

Boooorrrinng!

No offense if you have an ink blue or white door.

Its just that Justin and I are finally discovering our design tastes and, as it turns out, we like a little bit of funky now and then.

Cue the 80's disco music!

"Won't you take me to funky town,
Won't you take me to funky town..."

You should know I have killer dance moves for this song.
Just ask my kiddo.



Anyhew...
I touched on some of my pop of color inspiration back in July.
After trying two different paint samples and taping about twenty different swatches on top of that we finally settled on Bird of Paradise.

Justin bought the Behr paint and primer in one, which I didn't realize until I was already shaking up my Kilz primer on paint day. When Justin pointed out that I didn't need to prime I was ecstatic! I might go so far as to say that the time consuming 'prime, dry, then paint' process was the reason I dragged this project out for so long, but who am I kidding.
I am just lazy sometimes. And impatient.


Any job worth doing is worth doing well, right?
Which is exactly why you should be slightly suspicious when a product claims to simplify your painting by elimating the priming stage.


Mistake #1
After two coats of the Behr you could still clearly see the spots of green paint underneath.
Grrr!
In hindsight, I should have done one coat of primer first, especially with the beatings that doors take.
It also didn't help that I was using a sponge roller.
Lesson learned.
(NOTE: we don't intend to buy the paint and primer again; we haven't been impressed with it)


For the third and fourth coat I used a roller with a longer nap.
Much better.


Mistake #2
No matter how great a multi-tasker you are, never attempt to paint while watching a kiddo and preventing two cats from sneaking into the warm house while the front door is open for painting.
In fact, remove the cats from the equation altogether if you can.
Otherwise you will find yourself scrubbing a path of orange kitty footprints off your carport cement.


I'm convinced I cannot complete a home improvement project without drama.


But at least the end results are worth it.
The combination of our house color with the white trim and orange door is funky awesome!

Let's recap the transformation of our door/carport, shall we?

{Dingy white with a screen door through May 2010 - blech!}


{Still dingy white with no screen door in October 2010}

{Still dingy white and covered with orange paint samples in July 2011}



{Nekkid door in September 2011}


{Today}

Somebody please ask for directions to our house.

I am dying to say "Its the house with the orange door."



{Disclaimer: we still need to do a clear protective coat and add a kick plate at the bottom before she is completely finished. I also want to add some typography below the window. But like I said, I am impatient. I wanted to show you a photo already.}



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Adventures in Chalk Paint, Chapter 2

To my fam in Alaska that bought me my first two cans of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint for my birthday:
this post is for you.
I love showing you the latest fun I am having with this paint.

My first chalk paint project was a repurposed yard sale frame turned tray for our dining table: 

My second project was this wood caddy, which I found at my local thrift store for $2.

Although you don't need to prime when you use ASCP, I did anyway on this one. I really didn't want those those purple grapevines showing through.

Here she is after spray primer, a coat of ASCP Louis Blue, and some light sanding.

This paint distresses beautifully!

I wound and hot-glued jute around the handle for a little more character.

Unfortunately, I had a little shelving mishap in my basement last month and my can of Louis Blue suffered some major spillage. I managed to salvage a little paint in the can, but the majority was lost.

Booooo.

But instead of crying over spilled paint I think I will go chat with the hubs about my Christmas wish list.

Do I have you inspired yet to go scrounge your local thrift store for something to paint?

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Even Vikings Get Sick Sometimes

Here is our adorable viking all ready to go trick or treating.

Complete with a shield...



 a hammer...

and the hat.

On Halloween, Justin and Kendry picked me up from work and off we went to enjoy the evening.

Sort of.

Once we got in the car Kendry started telling us his ear hurt. We thought it was the hat. So, as much as it killed me for him to go hatless in his costume, we kept taking it off to relieve his ear.

Except that didn't really help.

He walked around the downtown trick or treating with this expression on his face the entire time.

Call me silly, but as his mommy I was hoping for something more like this.

The elusive smile above is courtesy of our local fire station.

They keep an engine nearby for the kiddos to sit in.

After a mere half hour spent downtown we went to see Nana and Grandpa; but upon our arrival at their house Kendry reached meltdown mode.

He wasn't hungry or thirsty.

He couldn't have cared less about the candy.

He just wanted me to hold him.

Poor kiddo.

Seriously, Kendry has a great immune system, but when he does get sick he has the worst timing.

Remember this last Christmas?

And now Halloween?

Sheesh.

We were home by 6:30pm, threw on our jammies and curled up on the couch.

Within 45 minutes after a dose of Tylenol Kendry was back to his regular self.

Sort of.

On Wednesday morning he woke up with really goopy eyes. A few hours later we were picking up some medicine for pinkeye and an ear infection.

Fortunately, he was back to his regular self this morning, with no goopy eyes.

Here's hoping next Halloween goes a little better.

By the way, for those of you who feel slightly intimidated about making a homemade costume for your kiddo, don't.

This viking costume was easy peasy and turned out so adorable!

Plus, it was cheap and we essentially had it completed during one naptime.

We got the viking hat from Justin's Warrior Dash (the initial inspiration for the costume).

Kendry already had the white shirt, brown sweats and winter boots.

The belt was fifty cents at our thrift store.

The shield is an aluminum pan from the $1 store, which I painted and then used some rope we had to make a handle.

The hammer is floral foam from the $1 store, cut and spraypainted to look like a rock. The stick handle is from outside and we already had the garden twine used to hold it together.

Finally, I paid about $7 for the faux fur fabric and $4 for the leather laces (both from Joanns using coupons).

I used my sewing machine to make the sleeves for his arms and legs, but since you strap them on with the leather laces you don't really need to sew anything.

This costume was also inspired by this post at I Am Momma Hear Me Roar.

I can't wait to start brainstorming his costume for next year!

Ten on Tuesday

{1}

November already?!
EEK!

{2}
We are fresh off a beautiful fall weekend for which we had nothing planned.

Notice I didn't say nothing to do, because with a fixer-upper there is always something to do.  

Like our sanded but still unpainted front door.



Its not done quite yet, but it is now three coats of orange paint closer.

You heard me right - I said three coats, and still not done.

I'll explain later.



{3}
When you find yourself with free time on a beautiful fall weekend - after you've spent a half hour on your hands and knees scrubbing orange paint kitty footprints off the carport cement (more on that later too) -
why not attempt a fall photo shoot with your adorable kiddo?

{4}

FYI:
The kitty hanging upside down in the photo above is one of the prime suspects in my investigation of the orange paint kitty footprints mystery.

{5}

Just when we thought we were making progress with Operation: Play Quietly in Your Bedroom Until 7:00am, we wake to this:

And thats why you never store your filing drawer in your kiddo's bedroom.

Perhaps mommy's little paper pusher has an office job in his future?

{6}

These Cake Batter Truffles just might be the death of me,

but at least it will be a tasty death.

I've made these twice in the last month.

{7}

As an agricultural lesson, Kendry got to pick his own carrots from our friends' garden:

Thanks again, Stan and Polly!

{8}

 And the fall/harvest activities continued with a trip to the Clearwater Corn Maze:

It has been such a fun fall!

{9}

We are hosting Thanksgiving at our house this year and, believe it or not, I'm not stressed about it one bit.

Come back in three weeks and ask me how I'm doing.

{10}

This Week's Blessing:

I've already got three people checked off on our Christmas shopping list.

I am on a roll, people!

The Prettiest Inbox You Ever Did See

Remember when I assured you I was still working on projects, I just hadn't finished any?

Well get ready to see some fun reveals, people!

I've got plenty of projects to work on - the hubs has issued an ultimatum on my growing stash of projects in the basement (EEK!) - and I have lots of time on my hands now that my half-marathon is over.

Let the creativity resume!

I found this piece years ago at Ross.

Loved the price ($5 maybe?).

Loved the distressed sage green.

Loved the flowers.

Loved that it could hold some cute decorative plates in my kitchen.

(please excuse my icky kitchen cabinets)

Except this piece never actually held plates, plural.

This little stinker has the funniest spaced shelves and no matter how hard I tried, its shape was never conducive to any plates I liked well enough to display.

See the square plate on there right now?

That plate has a twin to go on the top shelf, except that it won't fit on the top shelf because the bottom plate sticks up too far.

Oh the dilemmas in my life, right?

 So there the lonely shelf and plate hung.

Totally drab.

Mostly useless -

except for every so often when the hubs would use it as a mail catcher.
(as seen above)

Drive me crazy will ya?

Bills sitting out for the world to see?

Okay, so I don't have quite that many visitors in my kitchen, but still...

I don't like having my financial business just lying around the house.

And then it hit me.

**LIGHTBULB ABOVE MY HEAD**

Re-purpose, baby!

This piece obviously wasn't cutting it as a plate display so I needed to think outside the box.

First, I gave it a little makeover with some Krylon silver spray paint.

Then I cut two small strips of wood an inch shorter than the width of the shelves.

After sanding each strip I marked and drilled two small holes into each one.

Each strip of wood received a light coat of Sherwin Williams Creamy followed by a little distressing.

I stenciled the word "IN" on one and "OUT" on the other.

Lastly, I cut four pieces of thin wire and hung the "IN" and "OUT" on the shelves, like so:

I love it!

For $5 (wire and wood) I turned this piece into something we actually use.

It now hangs in our command center.

TA-DAAA!

Finally completing this area was such a relief.

You saw the desk makeover back in July.

Now we have a place to work on the computer, jot down our grocery list and miscellaneous notes (dry erase board tutorial to come), keep tabs on our to-do's with the Honey Do Board, and organize our incoming and outgoing mail -

all in one spot!

You know how much my OCD self loves this kind of organization.

You're getting two before and afters today.

{BEFORE}

Plate display

{AFTER}

Turned mail organizer

{BEFORE}

Laundry/hallway

{AFTER}

Turned command center

Next up?

A Halloween costume.

I am a DIYer mommy after all.


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