Design Dilemna: Foyer and Living Room

So, now that our two front rooms are completely cleared out after The Great Sale of 2011, I am left with the opportunity to redecorate!  Yikes!  My house is decorated in Yellow, Green, and Red.  Well, not exactly those colors- more like this:

The curtains in the Living Room and Dining Room are the same with a base of green and touches of yellow and red.  The walls in the living room are "Belgian Waffle" from Olympic Paints with white trim.  We've always had a formal living room, but now we want to make it more comfortable, I just don't know where to start.  It really is a blank slate.

 

Oh, and just in case you want to know what this house looked like when we bought it, you can see more of it here!

Freebies: Household Notebook- Detailed Focus List

This is a 3 page printable detailing my weekly and monthly chores for my Household Notebook.  I use this a general checklist to make sure I get everything done in each room.  I check it once before I get started, and again when I am finished.  It helps my day move smoothly, and if I get interrupted (which happens often with two kids) I can easily get back on track.

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Detailed Focus List

Tutorial: Quatrefoil Homework Station

I picked up this cute little wood box from Hobby Lobby for $5.99.  It has a turntable under so it spins! And with a little bit of spray paint and vinyl I turned it into a homework station for Big Sister. 

I should have sanded it before priming, but I will know better next time!

This green really isn't sea foam green- it's more like a dark celadon, but it's 107 degrees here so I won't take the time to make sure the settings are right on my camera.  You'll just have to take my word for it.

So, that's 1 coat of primer, 2 coats of paint, and 2 more coats of clear sealant.  I played with my cricut a bit, and cut out a cute little quatrefoil design in white vinyl (I used the Elegant Cakes cartridge).  And here's the finished product all packed and ready for the new school year:

I kept pencils and crayons on one side, scissors and glue on the back side, and her home reading book in the middle!  I just love the quatrefoil design, and Prince Charming has even agreed to make a stencil so I can paint the backs of the shelves.  This whole time I was trying to figure out how to do the white on top of the yellow, but he says, "Why don't you paint white first and just stencil the yellow on?"  Brilliant!  The colors in our kitchen are yellow, green, and orange.  One day I will show you the whole room, but for now you will just have to get bits and pieces!

Tip:  When using spray paint, save your manicure by wearing rubber gloves on your spraying hand.  For some reason I always end up with a bit of spray paint on my trigger finger!

Mess Management Monday #7: Spice Cabinet

Okay for those of you who are keeping track- there is no #6.  I forgot about one of my early MMM posts, and have decided not to go back and renumber.  This is the seventh post- therefore it will be #7!

My spice cabinet is perfect- well, perfectly placed, and pretty well stocked.  Aside from that, it is a MESS!  Well, it WAS before I got inspired!

Source: google.com via Lisa on Pinterest

No, it isn't mine. I HAVE shown this to Prince Charming, so maybe, one day, if I keep my fingers crossed. Just a bit of inspiration!  The jars in the picture are from IKEA- I have no idea whose this is, so if it is yours please let me know, and I will give you credit.

I always kept my spices on the lazy susan- isn't that what it's for?!  And I would struggle to find that one that got shoved to the center, and spin, and spin, and ... well, you get the idea.  Something would always fall off the back and get lost, and then EVERYTHING would have to come out to find that one lonely spice.  Oh, and I HATE greatly dislike the double-decker lazy susan.  This used to be one, but I took it apart when I kept loosing spices in the middle!

Now, all of my spices are in glass jars I got at Hobby Lobby (glass is 50% off this week- yay!).  I got the smaller size for my standard spices, and the larger jars for whole spices and spices I buy in bulk.  My lazy susan was put on the top shelf to hold all the big bottles of stuff, including the vegetable oil, now I just have to give it a little spin and can easily get what I need!  I can fit 10 large jars under the shelf, and 18 small jars on the little white risers.  I have labeled all the jars with my label maker.  If you do this figure out how the jars will fit best before labeling, I ended up switching the labels from front to side several times before getting everything in the right place.

Spices I use more often in the front, and spices I use less often in the back.  I know you are wondering why there are two lonely jars in the bottom shelf- so much wasted space!  But don't worry, I bought all the jars they had at Hobby Lobby and they are ordering more especially for me!  If they don't come in this week, they will still be the 50% off price- yay!  I am also keeping rice in this cabinet just so it is easy to get to- we eat rice several times a week.

I have many more plans for this cabinet.  The first is something like this:

Source: infarrantlycreative.net via Lisa on Pinterest

Stay tuned for more about my spice cabinet!

Freebies: Household Notebook- Cleaning Rountines

This is the Cleaning Routines page from my Household Notebook.  I use this everyday to keep my house cleaning on track.  I can see at a glance my daily, weekly, and monthly chores so I can quickly go about my day. I have a more detailed list I will share later which breaks down the duties for each room.  We have a large home, and without this list my home would be in chaos.  I hope you find this helpful.  I have included the blank list, so you may adjust it as needed to fit your family.

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Cleaning Routines Blank

Cheap Vs. Frugal

So for years I have called Prince Charming "Cheap."  But I recently read an article called "Being Frugal vs. Being Cheap" at Live Renewed and started to wonder if maybe he's just frugal.

Example 1:
Cheap:  He would rather 1 ply toilet paper.
Frugal: He doesn't complain when I buy the good stuff.

Example 2:
Cheap:  He drives a vehicle that has no air conditioning and the windows don't roll down.
Frugal:  He drives my old van because he bought me a new new-to-me van so the kids and I could have A/C, automatic doors, and windows that roll down.

Example 3:
Cheap:  He never lets me buy any big purchase.
Frugal:  He shops around until he finds it cheaper (although sometimes he can't find one, and once he agrees to the purchase, the item/sale is gone!)

Example 4:
Cheap:  We bought a 5000 sq ft house 6 years ago, and have only finished remodeling 3 of the 4 bathrooms (actually one was a half bath and we only changed the floor and the commode).
Frugal:  We bought the house as an investment and have already increased the value by $60,000!

Example 5:
Cheap:  He always wants to know how much I have paid for things
Frugal:  He never complains or makes me return the purchases- he just likes to know that I looked at the price.  I used to be a pretty bad shopper and would spend $300-500 in a day, and not really even know what I bought.

I think, in the end, maybe he really is cheap, but he has taught me to be frugal, and since I am the one who does 99% of the shopping for the family, maybe, just maybe, his cheapness is a good thing!  We've never been able to do the classic budget cuts since those things usually weren't options to begin with- Prince Charming makes most of the repairs on our home (he's very handy), I don't get my hair colored (no grays yet!), we don't spend a lot on clothes- buying on sale and off season), we eat at home 6 nights a week, etc.

What are some things you do to cut your budget?

Home: The Great Sale of 2011- Preparation

Prince Charming has finally agreed that we have too much stuff!  We have a 5000 square foot fixer upper so there is plenty of room for the stuff, but I don't use it, love it, or even want it!  The best part is that he has agreed not to buy (or pick up from the trash) any more stuff AND to sell the stuff we have without regard to how much he spent on it or what he planned to do with it IF he ever got the time to do it.

Our Plan
-We are going to have an indoor sale since it is way too hot outside AND we are getting rid of nearly everything in our living room, foyer, and den- we can set up all the sale items in these three rooms.
- Big Sister will be selling Lemonade as well as all of the toys she no longer plays with ,and will collect all of her earnings.  She is currently saving for a pink chair she saw on a recent trip to IKEA!
- Prince Charming was inspired by a recent trip to IKEA, and has decided to sell most of the furniture in our formal living room, and junky den to make room for a more comfortable living room, and a new media room.
- I will be adding to the mix by getting rid of all the extra chotchkies, and junk I have managed to collect over the years.
- I have even started going through my craft supplies and have listed several items in the Destash section of my Etsy Shop. 

 

So far I have collected 2 dining tables (we still have two more), 2 couches, 2 loveseats, 2 chairs, 3 recliners, a coffee table, a side table, 2 computer tables, a rocking horse, lots of china, lots of silver, and misc knick knacks that we never even put out in the house in the 5 years we have lived here.  Wheeew, that's a lot of work, and that's only from the downstairs, I haven't even touched the upstairs yet!

Keep an eye out for the results of our sale!

Mess Management Monday: Game Storage

So Prince Charming hates to see clutter.  And yes, according to him, board games on a shelf ARE clutter.  He didn't mind the first few, but as Big Sister has gotten older, the board games have multiplied.  And now with Baby Brother here, we can't get rid of the ones she has outgrown for fear he might want/need them.

We went through the games and kept the ones we play/love and sold the rest in The Great Sale of 2011. But we still had the problem, of where to put the ones we kept.  Prince Charming doesn't want the kids to have a play room because he's afraid it will always be a wreck (maybe he's right).  So all of Big Sister's toys are kept in her room.  But the games can't be stored there because (1) there's no more room in her closet, and (2) we play them at the Dining Table.

Why not store them in the Dining Room?  But where?......

After The Great Sale, I was able to combine all of my table linens, serving pieces, silverware, tea sets, etc into the sideboard and had the entire bottom of my china cabinet empty for....GAMES!

You'd never believe how much fun we can have in a formal dining room- there's even room for Twister!

Do you have any furniture that does double-duty in an unexpected way?

Home: Downstairs "Before"

Take a tour of our house.   Over the next few months I will show you pictures of our house AFTER the remodel.  But these pictures our BEFORE we did anything.  Thankfully, someone came through and took out the garbage, and the fleas, although they did leave a rat that I got to meet a few times before we finally killed it.  That took a really BIG trap!

I fell in love the moment I peeked through the front door, and although it still needs A LOT of work, it is much better now than it was in these pics.  We bought the house in October of 2005, worked on the house for 10 LONG months before we moved in, and lived downstairs for 4 months while we worked on the upstairs.   It ain't perfect, but it is ours.  To keep this blog as brief as possible, I will just show you the downstairs today.

Foyer:

The first thing I noticed about the house was those stairs.  What a great entrance!  This house has great bones, but needed MAJOR work.

Living Room:

 I think this was one of the only rooms that didn't have major damage to the original plaster, but what you don't see in the pic is the vine growing on the front wall INSIDE the house.  

Den:  What were we thinking, this place was disgusting! The den was apparently the "smoking room"- the walls were covered in tar.  You can kinda see the white spot on the wall to the right.  It's not actually "white" just not as dirty as the rest! 

Dining Room:

This room needed MAJOR work- plaster, floor, everything.  You can see outside the window on the left there is a bit of wood in the top of the window.  That is actually the "porte cochere."  I kept calling it a carport, but was corrected enough times I decided to look it up, and found that, yes, i admit it, I WAS WRONG.  

So here it is: A porte-cochere (French porte-cochère, literally "coach gate", also called a carriage porch) is the architectural term for a porch or portico-like structure at a main or secondary entrance to a building, through which it is possible for a horse and carriage or motor vehicle to pass, in order for the occupants to alight under cover, protected from the weather.

 Anyway,  the darn thing was falling down, and the previous owners we told to put it back up, or tear it down.  They PROPPED it up with a too short 4 x 4 cemented in a 5 gallon bucket!  The new roofline poured water into the house through the hole where the beam should have been attached, and really damaged the floors and walls.

Kitchen:  How do you say "ugly" in a way that doesn't sound rude?  It looks a lot bigger in the picture.  Behind the wall on the right (1st pic) was a butler's pantry, in addition to the food pantry you see in the second picture.  Tons or storage, but not much SPACE.  There was a wall oven taking up a good portion of the wall to the left, and they had, apparently, had a small fire at the stove.  Just in front of the door in the 1st pic there was a hole in the floor so that we could see the ground under the house.  We were told that was where they would pour the food out of the bag for the dogs to eat! 

Notice the interesting doorway arrangement in the second pic.  We were never really sure what to think about that.  That piece of molding butting into the middle of the doorway is actually a second doorway with a small cabinet behind it.  Seems like a HUGE waste to me, since there is NO WAY to put a door on either of these two openings!

Breakfast Room:

This room was the icing on the cake, the worst of the best, the part that made me need to go straight home and take a shower.  This was a sewer pipe- a BUSTED sewer pipe.  They had opened the entire wall to fix it, and just left it.  So all the gases and disgustingness could linger in the house.  YUK!  What were we thinking?  Do we really have this much time and energy.  Please note:  the staining on the ceiling is actually a different problem, it is rust from the metal lathe under the plaster caused by a leak in the drain pipe coming from the sink.  We found this one when our light fixture filled with water and we had an inch of water on the floor.  But that is a story for another day!