House Goals for 2012

Here are some of the things I hope to accomplish in 2012. This is an overview. I'll post more detail in individual posts.

Baby room- it needs to be painted and set up before April. I've never had a nursery before, so this should be fun!

Paint MBR/Bath- even though we do have a separate room for the baby, he'll probably be sleeping in our room for the first little while. I'd like to get our room painted (and dejunked a bit) before he comes.

Finish Office- For Christmas I cleaned up the office for Bob. I got rid of several boxes we had left around and moved some longer term storage out and into the basement. I scrubbed the walls, baseboards, and floor (it was a nasty mess!) and put my cute Ikea rug down on the floor. All that is left to do is organize my craft closet, put up those shelves I bought and put some computers in there so we'll actually use it.

Set up Guest/Playroom- I did a lot of cleaning recently in this room too. We need to get a bed, a few wire shelves for the closet, and maybe a rug for this room. That and I need to make some kid friendly labels for the toy storage bins (maybe they'll clean up after themselves... in my dreams).

Organize closets- speaking of labels... I want to make some to use in organizing the two linen closets we have in this house. I spent some time organizing the one near the girls room the other day. I like how it's turning out. It just needs a few tweaks and some finishing touches. The other linen closet is in our room and it needs a bit more work.

There are some other projects I'd like to do around the house, but we'll see what we can get to before the baby comes and then what we can do with a baby again.

So they can't see me make-ed

The first time we took our girls camping, my oldest was about 4. The campground had a pool a short distance from our site and I took the girls for a swim. After we were done, we stopped in the bathroom and my daughter did not want to keep her suit on. I took it off her and wrapped her up in her towel to walk back to our tent. Once we got back to our site, but not inside the tent yet, she dropped her towel. I explained to her that it wasn't appropriate to be naked in public. Then to clarify, she asked me, "so they can't see me maked?"

One of the things that really bugged me about our house after we moved in was the window coverings (or lack thereof) in the master bath.

master bath pic from the listing

The large window is not only right above the big bath tub and right next to the totally clear glass shower, but it is also on the front of the house facing the street (one of the few front facing windows actually).

The previous owners had two bamboo shades in the window. They did not completely cover the window and they were dirty and dusty as sin. There was even some sort of wasp nest or something up at the top of the INSIDE of the window!! We finally took them down and put up a curtain rod. Instead of a curtain, I used the fabric shower curtain I bought when we were selling our old house.

The result is actually a brighter bathroom than before and best of all, no one can see me make-ed.

How I Cleaned my Blinds without sneezing

The house clean up continues. Our new house has three bedrooms we're not using as bedrooms right now. Almost every time I'd go in one of those rooms (or even in the girls' room) I'd end up sneezing. There was a lot of dust. I've been trying to clean up the dust a bit at a time. Fly Lady's duster has been quite handy. All of the bedroom window coverings were gross with thick dust. I decided to wash them in the bath tub. I haven't tried washing the roman shades in our room yet, they might be too far gone. But I washed all of the blinds from the other rooms. Some were thick plastic molded to look like wood. A couple were painted metal. I washed all the same way. Run some hot water in the bath tub, add old laundry detergent (the new machine needs HE detergent), then put the blinds in. Don't pull them up, leave them extended to make cleaning easier. All the blinds weren't too hard to get down. Although there were two different kinds, both snapped out of the hardware which stayed attached to the wall. I only washed one at a time since one fills the tub and doing it over several days avoided burn out. I let the blinds soak for a few hours then usually because it was bath time for the girls, I'd hurry and wash each slat front and back with a rag. I'm not going to lie, it takes some time and work, but it got the blinds totally clean and with no sneezing. The blinds look like new and I'm happy!

Halloween Costume/Pregnancy Announcement

Why tell people you're expecting when you can let your belly do the talking?

I drew half of a rib cage on a regular piece of paper. I cut out the pieces to use as stencils and traced them twice (the second time in reverse) with a sharpie on some white felt.

I sketched a baby skeleton on another sheet of paper. I found plenty of inspiration online.

You can buy pregnant skeleton shirts or pregnant skeleton iron ons from various websites.

I used the window as a light box to trace the design on to some white felt. I ended up cutting the baby skeleton out in one big piece and filling in the negative spaces with the black sharpie.

I was going to use liquid stitch to attach the felt to my black shirt, but I couldn't find it. I went with glue gun instead. It held up for two days of all day wearing (over a long sleeve shirt). I don't know how it would do in the wash especially since I used a regular sharpie and not one designed to withstand laundering.

5 Awesome Halloween Costume Helps

1. The Thrift Store- So many creative costume options at very affordable prices. My costume last year came mostly from the thrift store. I was Velma from Scooby Doo. I found a bulky white sweater turtle neck and dyed it orange. I found a polyester maroon skirt there too. In years past, large neon green shirt for my husband to be Mike from Monsters INC, purple shirt and pants to go under my scaly dress for a Celia costume, and red pants for my Incredibles costume all came from the thrift store!

2. Solid colored t-shirts and/or sweats- They can be the foundation for so many costumes! I bought solid red, long-sleeved shirts for my husband and I the year we went as the Incredibles. I printed out the logo on regular paper and taped it to the shirts. It looked great!

3. The remnant bin at Joann's- Around Halloween, the fabric cutting line at Joann's is crazy! But after a big weekend (big coupons, holiday, whatever) the fabric remnant bins are full of fun stuff. You might even find exactly the kind of fabric you wanted (or never knew you wanted till you saw it). And best of all, all the remnants are 50% off!

4. Felt- Available in paper sized pieces in a rainbow of colors at a multitude of stores, felt is some handy stuff. If you want something a little nicer than paper stuck to your solid color shirt, felt is incredibly easy to work with and has a nice look. You can sew it, glue it, or even tape it on. On my husband's Mike costume, I used felt to make the eye and the mouth. I taped it on because I was lazy. It held up alright through the night, but if we had wanted to get multiple wearings out of it, a more permanent adhesive would have been better

5. Group costumes- Having a group costume is fun. Sometimes it can be tricky (like when your kids start developing opinions on their Halloween costumes) but having a group theme can make it more obvious to other people what you are supposed to be. When we did Monsters INC, people who just saw our daughter (she was Boo in her pink shirt and purple pants) didn't get it. But when 'Mike' was holding her hand, it became pretty obvious.

Cleaning the Carpets- Rug Doctor

Our carpets were pretty gross and they smelled weird. They needed a cleaning. My dilemma was how best to go about getting them clean. I decided that it needed to get done and that I wasn't going to get around to finding a professional to do it quickly enough. My choices were down to renting a carpet cleaner or buying one.
After consulting with my husband, we decided that getting a smallish home carpet cleaner could be a good idea, but that since I needed to clean all the carpets right now, I'd rent a rug doctor. The downside to renting a carpet cleaner is that they aren't always all that clean. People return them all dirty and gross. The one I rented was absolutely covered with white fur on the bottom. I had to clean the cleaner before I could get started. It ended up being about $40 to rent the cleaner for 24hrs and to buy a medium sized bottle of cleaning solution. After moving almost all of the furniture out and vacuuming (I think a lot of people forget that step, thus the super dirty carpet cleaners) I cleaned the carpet. I had to refill the tank many, many times. I also went back over the whole carpet with just hot water.

I learned from having a little carpet cleaner in the past that the solution left over in the carpet quickly attracts dirt. The carpet looks a lot better, but you can still tell where the previous owners' sectional used to be. Perhaps the pros could have done a better job getting those old traffic stains out (I didn't use a pre-treatment either) but at least it is not totally gross any more. It was tiring work and took quite a while. I also vacuumed and cleaned the upstairs hallway. That required far less furniture moving! The carpet is still navy blue, but at least it no longer looks brown in spots, nor does it smell like dog any more. My sweet husband, determined to get the max value out of our rental, took up the effort after I tired out.

The family room before, complete with dancing kiddo.

He cleaned the living room carpet and the carpet in the master bedroom. In the end we got pretty much all the carpet in the house cleaned.

The family room after. I guess I didn't get any pictures of the blue carpets.

DIY You Make the Call

This is an inexpensive dresser I bought at Ikea a few years ago. It was originally used by me and my husband. It was then my daughters' dresser for quite a while. It went into storage while we were staging our house to sell. Now I need to use it in our master bedroom again. The original stain job I did on it is "interesting" to say the least. The stain didn't really take, so I just globbed it on and let it dry in a faux grain pattern. And even that interesting finish has seen better days at this point. Getting banged up by the kids, having stickers applied and removed, and finally being shut up with packing tape (and removal of said tape) have done a number on it. So the question is, what should I do to redo this dresser?
Some thoughts: decoupage? I'm not sure what with. paint? what color? Stencil? Try to sand and re-stain? I'm at a loss. I'm hoping for some great suggestions. If you have any thoughts, please share in the comments!



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