I'm so happy, I could spit.

Well, that may be a bit of an exaggeration, knowing how I detest body fluids. But I am very pleased with myself.

You can see in this picture that I have many blank, empty, LARGE walls in my living room. Actually, in my entire house, but that is not the point. The living room is where we hold our weekly vespers program, it's the first room you see when you walk into my house. And it's bare. I can't use the excuse that I'm still settling in, because we've lived here for 3 1/2 years. I'm just design-challenged.

But I finally decided to do something about it. It all started with this stack of frames:

Five of them I found at Goodwill for $.98 each. They had some 70s flower photos in them. Ugh. The bright orange and green ones used to hold alphabet cards that spelled the twins' names in their nursery. They've been sitting in my closet since the boys moved to their "big boy" room. So what am I going to do with all these odd frames? Spray paint them, of course! They turned out to be exactly the same size, even though the styles were slightly different.

So now I have a bunch of black frames. What do I do next? Wait for a few weeks for inspiration to strike, that's what. Finally I decided to do a patch of botanical prints. Problem was, I couldn't find any. I found a few free ones online, but our color printer got fried by some lightning the other night, and I didn't really want the hassle of printing them somewhere else. So I looked at Barnes & Noble for a botanical print book instead, you know, the coffee table kind.

No such luck. They didn't have anything to mention. Bummer. I looked around online for some books, but when you can't really look inside to see, I wans't going to risk not getting the full-size prints I needed for this project.

But today was my lucky day. I went out while Filipe was home on a conference call, and on my way to Borders, decided to stop by Half Price Books first. I went over to the Gardening section, and SCORE! found a reference book of wild flowers of America, with 400 full-color, full-page prints! Oh, I was in heaven. And better yet, the book was only $7.98!

The hard part was choosing which prints to use, although I suppose I can switch them out at will.

Anyways, I used a scalpel (yes, we have those around here) to cut out the pages I wanted, used one of the backings of the frame as a template to cut the picture to size, and got everyone lined up.

I took the pictures downstairs, got a big sheet of paper (really it was four sheets haphazardly taped together) and laid the frames out in their grid. I spaced the frames, measuring and squaring carefully, then traced around each frame. I then measured and marked where each of the hanging thingies goes. I found this method on this blog and it really worked well for me.

I then taped the paper grid to the wall, using a level to make sure it was all good.

That was the end of the hard part. Now I just tapped in my nails where I had marks, and hung my frames. They came out even! I was so excited.

And now I'm in the process of rearranging the furniture in the living room. I just can't leave well enough alone. But I am happy with this project because it was very difficult finding large art to go on this wall, and because this project was so awesomely cheap-- a grand total of $15.68. Can't beat that, folks.

And now I've finished rearranging the furniture, so here's a view of the room now:

looking from the dining room....

looking from the front door....

Yes, I think I'm one step closer to that homey living room I'm going for. Now I need some valances or something, maybe. And a few end tables. And maybe another soft chair. Yeah, that ought to do it.

 I'm also participating in Transformation Thursday on The Shabby Chic Cottage

Goodwill rescue, Part II

Well, I finally decided the fate of my ugly Goodwill headboard.

I thought for a while to use it in my new guest room/sewing room as an actual headboard, but I just wasn't digging the idea. So, when I saw this post on Centsational Girl, I knew this was the answer. I have been needing something to hang the dress shirts and stuff that comes out the dryer before I take it upstair to hang in the closet. Perfect fit! And this solution also has enough hooks to put the kids coats on, too. I'm so pleased with how it turned out. For a recap, here's how it goes:

• Find cheap, ugly headboard at Goodwill.
• Avoid husband's glowering looks as to why you would buy a cheap, ugly headboard at Goodwill while trying to reassure yourself some good will come out of this (pun intended).
• Sand/prime (forgot this step, actually. Regret it)/paint the ugly sucker.
• Look at it in the garage for a couple of months, trying to figure out what to do about it.
• Saw the legs off.
• Attach coat hooks.
• Attach D-rings to the back.
• Hang (the rack, not yourself).
• Look confident when your husband notices.

So thanks to Centsational Girl for the idea.... Everything told, this project cost me less than $20! Unless you count the fact that I now feel the need to revamp my entire laundry room... That could add on a few $$.... Stay tuned :)






And Trash to Treasure Tuesday (a little late) at



And Transformation Thursday at *The Shabby Chic Cottage* 

Easy changeable wall decor

I got this idea originally from here. I got a shadow box from Hobby Lobby (50% off) and a medium paper punch from the scrapbook section. I raided the recycle box for some colorful paper, stuck on some 3D Zots (glue dot things) and voila! a fall wall art project. I will likely trade out the leaves for butterflies or something when the seasons change. I might also use scrapbook paper, with more of a  solid or very small design in order to really make the shapes pop. But this makes me happy for now!

Instilling fear into my offspring

Every time I pull out the spray paint (which is getting ridiculously often), my daughter gets this look of fear in her eyes that makes me think she's expecting to be next!

I did a couple more projects this last week, and here are the before & afters:

A lovely, flawless table I found at GW, only $7. Loved the wood, too. But I have a bit too much brown/neutrals in my living room (and the rest of my house really) so this little friend was turned to.......

Black! I know, you're surprised, aren't you?

Also went to Salvation Army today and found this cute little box thing.

It has the nice garden-y cutouts and frosted glass inserts. I took out the inserts, gave a nice coat of Valspar's Porcelain, and voila!

A lovely tray to hold my bathrom clutter. On a side note, the Valspar doesn't seem to give as good of coverage as the Rust-Oleum stuff does. Anyone else notice that?

Can't wait to see what's sprayed next.....

I'm linking to DIY Day at

And Transformation Thursday at The Shabby Chic Cottage

Work in progress

Got out my spray paint again.... Today's find is a "Family" thingie from Salvation Army. First time visiting in this town. I liked it, it had nice stuff, good prices. Nice and clean, not too cluttered. Anyways, it is nice and heavy, no chips. It's just gold. Don't love gold. And since this fella's destined for the fireplace, it needs more contrast with my neutral walls..

Hello, black.

I'm upping my game...

So I found this little piece of ugly at a Goodwill a while back, labeled "end table." And I'm sure it one time was, in all it's 70s-style leggy form, faux-nail-trim-head glory. This little piece was crying out for help. I wasn't entirely sure what kind of help I personally could render, but I bought 'er anyways.

Lucky for me, I found these two little pretties at an antique/used furniture store up the road aways....

And no, the cute little lady was not part of the deal. She came at a hefty price 4 1/2 years ago.

But I digress.

I saw the vision of what that sad little table was destined for..... a desk for my two fellas! And since I've had so much fun with the black spray paint lately, I pulled it out again, to the dismay of my daughter. "Aren't we going to paint something a different color? How about pink? The boys like purple!" Poor lass. Black is the color of the week.

Well, a few coats of primer & paint later, and this is what we come up with:

Oh, yes, and I added the green stripes using some craft paint I had left over from doing the boys' nursery. I will eventually stencil Sam & Ben's names on their respective chairs. Sofia was insistent that the chairs needed to have some green on them, too. Stripes, wiggly lines, something.

Here's a picture of the boys enjoying their "new" furniture:

Quick Change

I got a little carried away with my can of black spray paint. After yesterday's adventures, I couldn't stop. So I gathered my collection of random glass jars. I use them to put in pasta, dried beans, rice, all my dried goods. I'm too cheap to buy real containers, and these work great. They just don't look so great.

So I gave all the lids a nice coat of black, and now they look like the (almost) belong together! I kind of think they look like a crowd of waiters at a nice restaurant, ready to serve. Maybe it's just me.

Oh, how I love spray paint!

I'm not one of those people who walks through a thrift store, sees some ugly piece of random junk, and thinks, "Oh! what beautiful lines! I think that would look great after a fresh coat of paint!"

But the other day, I was walking through Goodwill, I saw some ugly gold colored bowl thing, and I thought, "Oh! what lovely lines! I wonder if that would look better black?"

So I bought it.

$1.99.

The lady at the checkout, who apparently owns an antique shop, said it's soapstone, or something like that. It's fairly heavy, and it really does have nice lines. And since I'm new to this whole spray-paint-everything-including-your-own-mother game, I thought, "why not?"

Hot dog, do I like spray paint! I gave this little fella one coat, and some of the gold still shines through. I was about to give it another coat when I realized I totally dig the antique brassy thing happening. So I left it.

I put some fruit in it for the picture, but I'm hoping to make some decorative balls soon to put in it for my mantle. My sad, sad mantle. But he's going to be a little happier now, thanks to my $1.99 Goodwill find!

Welcome to my couch!

What, not enough pillows, you say? My husband begs to differ. He almost had a stroke when he saw me hauling bag after bag of fairly ugly throw pillows into the house. But he doesn't seem to realize, there's a method to my madness. Our current throw pillows came with the couch/loveseat three years and two toddlers ago, so they are sadly deflated. I have also been collecting clearance Christmas and Fall material from Joann's to make some throw pillow covers. And these bad boys were on clearance at Kohl's for $1.99. That's right, two bucks, folks. So I scoured all sections of our local Kohl's bedding department and found nine of them. Plus I had a 15% off coupon. Score! So coming soon to a couch (or three) near you will be a festive assortment of fluffy throw pillows, just in time for my favorite season.

Strange thing is, my husband is still not impressed.

Goodwill rescue, Part I

So you may have noticed a few blogs down there on my list.... I LOVE those crafty, thrifty, decory (I know, not a word) bloggers. They are downright inspiring. I want to try virtually every project they show, especially the ones with tutorials. But I'm not really much of a follow-through kind of person. I like ideas, not action. And I generally don't have the materials on hand, or the know-how to use them.

But a few weeks ago on a "mommy only" trip to town, I came across this headboard at Goodwill. It reminded me of a project I saw here on Centsational Girl, one of my all-time favs. And she's a huge proponent of spray paint, which I've never used, but have been flirting with lately. So I took this little $5.99 diamond-in-the-rough (I hope) home and stored it in the garage.

Keep in mind this is a first-time project, so I may have done some steps wrong, or skipped them altogether, but I'm pleased with the outcome. Here's what I did:

1. Sand the ugly little bugger. I just used a medium grit sanding block, and I wasn't especially thorough in the little groovy turny things, which may have hampered my paint coverage in the end, but it's not too bad.

2. Wipe it down, make sure all stickers & dust is off.

3. I used Valspar's Porcelain White in the Satin finish. It's white, but not too white, but not too beige.

4. I gave it about 3 light coats, when all was said and done. I don't know if priming it first would have reduced this, since I was painting over a dark wood, but whatever. This is me watching the paint dry.......

5. Oh, yeah. I'm done.

So it's all nice and painted now, and I have to decide what to do with it.

Soon we will be switching the boys' room and the guest room for a variety of reasons, but this means that I will have the "new" guest room/sewing room as a blank slate for me to decorate any which way I please. So I bought some new paint, Frosty Mint, or something like that. A lovely shade of green. And I don't know how this is going to fit, but I'm going to make it. I haven't decided if I'm going to use it as an actual headboard for the bed (that's why I left the holes in the legs, in case I need to attach it to the bedrails. Otherwise I would have puttied them and painted over them. Still might have to. We'll see), or perhaps some kind of decoration for the wall. Maybe attach upside-down hanging bundles of dried flowers? I'm thinking pretty cottagey/shabby chic kind of look.

Any ideas?

Need some input!

Okay, so about a year ago we installed drawer pulls and cabinet knobs on our kitchen cabinets. Looks great! Problem is, now I'm thinking of replacing our kitchen faucet & light fixtures. When we chose the drawer pulls, I picked the satin nickle because it matched the door handles we replaced throughout the house. But know, when I'm thinking faucet, rubbed bronze is stuck in my head. So I went to Lowe's and picked up a rubbed bronze set to see which I like better. The satin nickel makes the kitchen look sleek and more modern. The rubbed bronze makes it a bit more elegant (I think), and maybe matches the dark stone in the countertops.

Here are the choices.... what do you think?

I love the public library!

I finally got my act together and skulked in to my local library to pay my $28.79 fine. Normally I'm very good about returning library materials on time. The month of May was the exception. The bulk of that fine was a replacement fee for a DVD the kids lost. I'm guessing it ended up in the trash. I love 2-year-olds. But after that was taken care of, we were free to roam the free books & movies. The kids got some good movies & books, and mommy got a couple of goodies too. I can't wait until naptime!!

Free paint!!

So I found out on one of my favorite blogs, Thrifty Decor Chick, that Glidden paint is giving away a FREE QUART of paint! Awesome! I love free! Even if I didn't have any immediate plans to paint, I do now. So if you want to get your paws on some (only while supplies last, or until July 2) head over to Glidden, choose your color, enter your info, and voila! Free paint on its way!

For those of you who are dying to know, I chose Steel Blue... I'm thinking of doing the master bedroom. Although I really do adore the pukey pink it currently is sporting.....

Budget Curtains

I've been living in this house for three years, and have yet to put up curtains in the living room. It was only very recently that I even had a rug or coffee table in the living room. I'm not a big fan for spending money (love craigslist) so I had to come up with something inexpensive that didn't look cheap. So here's before:



And here's after:





These were the expenses:

2 5'9" x 8'9" Canvas drop cloths------ $20 (total)
black wooden curtain rod-------------- $9 (Walmart clearance)
3 packages curtain hooks--------------$15
____________
Grand Total $44.00

Yay! Love bargains. I still have one window to do in the living room, then I will be happy. The canvas has a lovely texture to it, and I really like the black curtain rod & hooks. All in a day's work!

playing catch-up

Obviously it's been a while since my last post.... so I'm going to do a superspeed catchup post that will contain a few highlights of the past week and a half.

First off:

My father-in-law and husband started a remodel in my garage. We got rid of the old kitchen cabinets that looked like they were useful and a clever use of un-needed cabinetry, but were in fact a huge waste of space. They then built me some lovely floor-to-ceiling shelves so I can keep all my garage goodies in boxes and out of the way. Happy! That completes phase 1.

I also had a lovely girl's night out with my girls from church.... that is, after I found the place. I have the worst sense of direction God could have given me. If there is an option to go left or right, no matter which I choose, I should have gone the other way. It doesn't fail. My friend, Dear Abby, diagnosed it one time for a writer (not me), it's called Directional Dyslexia. A serious (okay, not) condition. Anyways, a little shopping center 20 minutes from my house took me very close to 1 1/2 to find.... after driving all over several sides of San Antonio.

I got there 15 minutes before the shops closed, but was still on time for our reservations at Bin 555, a lovely restaurant where we dined on the porch. For dessert I had s'mores--can you believe it? After feeling like a grown-up, eating miniature goat-cheese grilled sandwiches with tomato marmalade sauce, naan flat bread with hummus, and pommes frites (haha!) I have campfire dessert. But it was good, and it came with live fire! And although much of our conversation centered around our children's and pets' body fluids (my apologies to the people sitting at the next table), it was a much-needed connection with other moms pretending to be adults for a while.

The next day I headed up to Michigan where my sister graduated from Andrew's University with a BA in Communication & Spanish, after which I traveled down to my parents' house in Kalona for a little R&R. There's so much I didn't do there, I don't even know where to start. Let's say I had a fantastic time being 17 again. No kids. No husband. No responsibilities. No curfew. No cooking. Lots of Lazy. I went through a bunch of old memory boxes in the attic.... man, was I really that much of a drama queen in high school? How immature! Oh, right. I was in high school. And although it was good to get away, it was awesome to get back to my babies & my hubby. Dorothy had it right--there's no place like home.

I was pretty sure the kids would be devastated with their mommy gone. This is how bad it was:

So I think Daddy buying them a pool helped. But I guess there was also a little of this going on:

So that made me feel a little better (isn't that terrible?).

I got back late Tuesday night, then Wednesday Filipe reminded me we have to get the kids' Brazilian passports for our August trip. That requires a trip to Houston, which is where the closest Brazilian Consulate is located. So I packed up our bags, and we left town after the boys' nap. The trip normally wouldn't be all that dramatic, if it weren't for the fact that our portable DVD player mysteriously stopped working. And brilliant mommy didn't bring alternative entertainment. So they made some entertainment of their own.

We stayed the night at a hotel, then in the morning Filipe went to a couple of hospitals to get some work done while we were there, and I took the kids to Hermann Park. The boys almost posed. Sofia was having a "day."

And don't be fooled by the cloudy atmosphere.... it had to have been 99% humidity--it was awful! And that was at 9am! I had rivers of sweat running down five minutes into this adventure, which is why we stopped by the fountains next.

We went to the playscapes next, and I did manage to sneak in a picture of Sofia. Boy, did she give me one dirty look afterwards.

And last, but not least, cooking for Friday night worship. I made Prosage (fake sausage for all of you non-veggies out there) cheese muffins, Chunky Apple and Raisin Bread, Banana bread with chocolate chips, and Taco Turnovers for dinner. Oh, yum. This batch of recipes was a good one!

So now you're all caught up, I think. Maybe I can stay on top of it better now. Next adventure: Guadelupe River for Mother's Day!