Ikea here I come!

I'm making a trip to Ikea on Saturday. It's pretty far away so I don't go often. Or at least I tell myself it is far away. I read about people who travel 4-6 hours or more to get to one. The nearest one is only about an hour and 20 minutes from here.

I want to get a couple of items for the bathroom, and then it will be done! So much for a quick and easy update. It does look much better though. I'm not sure what the next house project will be. Hopefully it will warm up and stay warm so we can work outside.

If I go missing, I've moved into Ikea and am eating meatballs and dark chocolate.

Random picture because I don't like blog posts without pictures!

I didn't want to clean today.

So I spent the morning taking random pictures.

An apple?

I've been working on the ledge shelves in the bathroom. I spray painted the frames a while back when we had a nice afternoon. I thought it would be fun to get some mat boards for the art. Well, they were $2 or $3 each. Dang. I'm not paying $3 for a matting to go into a thrifty frame holding a scribble. So I coughed up the money for a mat board cutter. I didn't even know they existed. I'm certainly not an expert on using it yet, but I can do a pretty good job. Now I can wait until the huge sheets of mat board go one sale at Hobby Lobby and cut several (10? 15?) in custom sizes. The cutter was $30 and the mat board goes on sale for (I think) $4.

DIY ledge shelves

John made me these shelves. They are three feet long. He made the same thing for my Mom for Christmas. Hers are four feet long, and she painted them white. Idea/plans here: Ana White Ten Dollar Ledges. Her site used to be called Knock Off Wood, and it is where we also got the plans for our headboard.

Remember the bird print from my Indy thrifting trip?


It was in the cheapest plastic frame EVER. It just peeled off the picture in one big piece. The front was real glass though, so I kept it.


I spray painted a gold frame I already had, cut the matting, and put the birds in. It's an odd sized frame though. I'm not entirely pleased with it.

It's a big improvement from when I bought it though, huh? I'll keep my eye out for a different frame for it.

I'm feeling pretty good about the stuff I bought in Indy. I've used the Easter eggs, the man's shirt, the thrifty frames and the one from Target. Oh, and the wreath.

Coffee filter wreath.

And the mirror for Ellie's room that I bought at Target that day.

It was the perfect size and shape.

I can't believe I paid full price for this and painted it.

I think the mirror was twenty bucks. Considering she has a free dresser and lamps, I figured it was okay to spend so much.

Busy me! I realized last night that my bedtime is no longer 10:30pm. I usually stay up until 11:30pm or midnight. It's catching up with me though. I've got to start going to bed earlier. Right after I finished my next couple projects. That sounds like a plan to me.

from my thrifty shopping list

A wooden bowl. We looked everywhere. I finally found one I liked, so we started looking for a wooden candlestick. Apparently there are none to be found in Indianapolis. So I kept looking locally. Finally I found one for a quarter.

"How YOU doin'?"

I think the wooden bowl was a quarter as well. It said 50 cents on the price tag but it was a green tag, which was the sale color of the week. So I am pretty sure it was only 25 cents. My lucky day!

After.

Now I don't know if you'd find such a thing in a retail store, but if you did it would be more than 50 cents.

I have no idea why I made this.

Maybe I made it to hold fake nests? I need to knit a bigger one. This nest goes in another bowl. I could also see it with Christmas ornaments. Full of acorns or buckeyes? The possibilities are endless.

Inspiration here.

Bathroom is nearly done. I have the walls, ceiling, and trim done. New shelves are hung up. New artwork on the way from Etsy. John took the doors down and sanded them today. He redid the doorknob holes and added the trim pieces to match the other doors we've done. Now just 2 coats of primer and 3 coats of paint and I'll be done with them. Why it takes so much paint I have no idea. We sand the doors down, but that old sort of fake wood (I think it's real wood, maybe just poor quality? it's super dry? who knows?) just does not want to be painted. I'll get them whipped into shape though. And soon. Because next Saturday, I'm Ikea bound. Woot!

More pre-vacation projects

The ol' "before March 1st" list really was super long. I just ran out of time to take pictures and/or blog about them.

Shirt turned pillow cover.

I bought this shirt on my thrifting trip in February. It was on sale for 37 cents plus tax. I have no idea why I didn't look for more shirts! Maybe next time. I thought I'd seen an online tutorial, but I couldn't find it when it was time to sew. So I just cut the front and the back apart, then measured and cut the fabric the correct size. Sewed around the outside and it was done. So easy and quick!

Bitty Baby needed a wardrobe change between pictures.

Ellie's looking tired in that picture, huh? Yeah, she fell asleep right after lunch today. I hope she's not getting sick again!

The little pillow got recovered too. I just used some of my drop cloth fabric from either the curtains or the table runner. I can now whip up a pillow cover with piping without looking at the instructions. It's easier than it looks. I took down the big window/door thing over the table and put the floral painting back up. I love that painting. John bought it for me a long, long time ago.

So now my entry is ready for spring! It has been so nice here. Tomorrow it will go back to being cold.

I'm making progress on the bathroom. I'm done priming the walls, trim, and ceiling. I have one coat of paint on the walls. It still seems like there is a lot to do. Second coat of paint on the walls, two coats of paint on the ceiling and the trim. Removing the old caulk from the tub area and re-caulking it. I haven't even started on the doors. Maybe this weekend. John has to take them down, sand them, and then reconfigure the holes for the new knobs. The knobs I chose (for the entire house) said they will fit into almost any existing door. But not ours! Thank goodness John is handy with woodworking and figured out a way to drill/move the hole out a bit without destroying the doors. I love DIY! Nothing is as easy as it seems.

I do love fixing up our house. It makes it ours. It makes it home. When we walked into the kitchen Saturday night after a long day of travel, the first thing I saw was the entry. It was almost like I'd forgotten we'd remodeled it. It felt like "oh! yeah! home! This house I love and am making ours for our family! Yippie!" Or maybe I was just momentarily insane from the 4 hours in the plane followed by and hour and a half in the car.

Back home again and it's spring!

We've been on vacation. We went skiing in Utah. Now I'm back, I'm refreshed (that is, refreshed as a person can be after waking up at 4am every morning on vacation due to being 2 time zones away from home), and I'm ready to go again.

Simple spring centerpiece.

I think I did everything on my "to do by March 1st" list before we left. I actually lost the list itself. I do know that on it was to clean up this HUGE ironstone bowl, to cover these jumbo sized Easter eggs, and to add stripes to my drop cloth table runner. The bowl was so dirty when I found it that I almost didn't recognize it as ironstone. It was a not so thrifty find at five dollars, but it was too cool to pass up. It's so big that it will not fit into my kitchen sink. The eggs are from the Dollar Tree. I covered them in pages from an old DT book that I'd used for the wreath last fall. I still have book pages to spare. The runner was already made, and I just painted the stripes on with craft paint and textile medium. It should be machine washable.

Ellie saying "cheese!" and wondering why I keep snapping pictures of the centerpiece.

About a week before vacation I got my next round of ideas. Ledge shelves (done and waiting to be hung) with spray painted thrift store frames containing the girls' artwork (almost done). They are going in the girls' bathroom. But then I was giving them a bath one night, and thought that I should really paint the walls before I hang the shelves. The tub needs re-caulked too. A while back I'd decided to just leave the bathroom as is for this round of remodeling. But soon all the other trim (except the kitchen) will be white, and the bathroom will stick out like a sore thumb. So I am just going to paint the existing woodwork to match the new stuff we've been installing. I'm painting the walls (and ceiling) with a neutral off white color. I got the supplies this morning, and will be ready to prime tonight. It won't be a huge change, but it will make me happy as I sit in there and give the girls their baths. It will also solve the problem we created when we installed the new light in there last winter.

Bathroom before new windows.

It doesn't show up very will in the picture, but there's a ring of lighter colored paint right around the light. Some day will be be gutting this bathroom, but I think the white woodwork and some fresh paint and decorations will keep me from finding out if that wall in the middle of the room really is load bearing or not.

DIY cheap artwork

I am ready for spring! So ready. About three weeks ago, I made a huge list of things I wanted to do around the house. Sewing, decorating, etc. On the top I wrote "MARCH 1st." I am crazy. I think I have less than a third of it done. I have lost my mind. Maybe I should add "2012" on it and pretend I was giving myself a year instead of three weeks.

Last fall, I saw a painting on the web (with tutorial here). I loved it. Knew I had to have it. A couple weeks ago, I bought three boards and had John cut them down. I spent about $6 on all three. I had the paint and stain. It was an easy project, and I am really pleased with it. The tutorial itself was inspired by a $2,000 piece of artwork from Anthropolgie. If you look at my tree, it's very similar. I simply took my time and copied it. I was actually surprised I could do it.

I have Mary's curtains done! I have them up on one window. I measured about 5 times, but didn't get the rod level. So John's going to fix that for me tonight and hang the other one too. Pictures to come.

Ellie is napping. I should be doing something. I wish I was smart enough to nap too.