On Some Future Projects

I have been a total crafting/DIY slacker lately.  I haven't done a dang thing.  It's been time at they gym after work and that's about it.  And I miss my craftiness.  I miss it a lot.  So I'm trying to find a way to do both.  And maybe making a list will light a fire under my buns and get me started doing something.  Maybe.

Or maybe I'll just sit and ponder how the shirt I'm wearing today looks like something my granny would've worn....

So, what am I hoping to work on craft-wise?  I'm so glad you asked.

• A new fall wreath for my front door.  I hung my Mizzou argyle wreath on the other front door.  And I still have my black and yellow scrap wreath hanging on the actual front door.  But I want an actual fall wreath.  I'm thinking something like this.  But maybe wrapped with burlap instead of the stripes.  And of course bright fall-ish flowers.
• A gold spray painted jar to serve as a vase for fall/winter.  I'm thinking doing the bottom glitter dipped like this.  The best thing is, I think I have everything on hand to make this so it will cost me zero dollars.
• I also need to touch up the paint on my front door so I can show it off....  Yet another DIY fail.  Oops.
• And I'm going to finish my fall mantle.  I've had half finished pumpkins in my floor for the past.... Um, let's be honest, month.

Stay tuned this week, I'm going to knock it all out of the park.  Also,  Work it Wednesday is coming!  And anniversary details.  Saturday was six years of being together and tomorrow is our third wedding anniversary.  So, this is pretty much going to be an amazing blog week.

What have you guys been up to?  Can anybody tell me how to better balance blogging and working out?  Ug, I need help!  And apparently better time management.

Peer Pressure

Okay, maybe not peer pressure, maybe it's more jumping on the bandwagon.  I'm a sucker for link parties.  I wasn't going to participate in the Hey Girl link party because I wanted to save my poor hubby.  But then I started seeing all the clever ones out there and I gave in.  So, to protect him a little, I used pictures that are from a different angle so as to protect his anonymity a bit.

If you want to see more and laugh a little head on over to Two Twenty One, View Along the Way, Domestic Imperfection, Bliss Ranch, or Decor and the Dog.  There's some pretty good stuff.  And we all get to brag on our hubbies.  I threw one of our dog Rowdy in too.  Wishful thinking.

This may have happened this week.  My husband is amazing.

Yup, this happens.  Sometimes instead of fishing.  *We do not hang balloons with any frequency, these were for our wedding.

We may have very recently had conversations about me repainting things.  I think I have an addiction.

 

Said Rowdy never.  But he does like to crawl up in our chairs.

So, did you participate in the Hey Girl link party?  Does your husband watch really chic-y shows with you and never complain?

Showin' a Little Love

Holy cow you guys!  Someone nominated me for one of the Homies awards on Apartment Therapy.  I'm nominated for Best Home Project & DIY Blog.  Guys!  I don't know who nominated me.  I didn't even know I was nominated until I noticed my traffic was way up and the Apartment Therapy website was the referring address.  Holy cow.  Whoever nominated me, thanks, you're the best.

So, if you want to vote for me you can click here and it will take you there.  And if you don't want to scroll forever and try to find me, you can hit "Ctrl F" and a cute little search box will appear and you can type in Lip Gloss and Flats.  Or you can vote for whoever you want to.  I'm not the boss of you.  There are tons of wonderful people nominated.  Lots of sweet people whose blogs I read and more I can't wait to start reading.  Either way, head over and vote for somebody, show some blog love.

And in spirit of some love I'm back with some fun little Valentiney projects to share with you.  First off, my other front door wreath.  Remember, back when I shared this wreath with you, I promised there was more in store.  So, here we go.  Since I have two front drawers, I have to have two front door wreaths.  Apparently at all times.  It's become an addiction.

So, this is a foam wreath wrapped with white yarn.  I hot glued on pink and grey diamonds and wrapped hot pink yarn to make this snazzy argyle pattern.  To finish it off I hung it with a grey ribbon (the ribbon came off a blanket I got for Christmas, resourceful!)

And my Valentines mantle.  I wanted to do more but....  I got lazy is really the only excuse.  So, I dressed up my candle holders, I just wrapped some pink polk a dot ribbon around them.  And I made a pretty pink wreath.  I wrapped bright pink yarn around a foam wreath.  And I made a big pink bow out of felt.  So pretty.  And then there's the heart canvas.  It's the cousin to my Christmas confetti canvases.  The canvases from Christmas came in a three pack so I had one left over.  I grabbed all the bottles of pink paint from my paint stash.  I just went to town making pink dots in the shape of a heart.  I used a piece of wax paper cut into a heart stencil as my guide.  It's not perfect but I think it's pretty cute.

So, there we go.  The rest of my Valentines decorations.  Did you decorate for Valentines?  Or are you like me and had great intentions of pretty decorations and then just got too busy.  Sure, I could do a couple more things this week/weekend but I don't see much point when Valentines is next week.

New spaces, New faces

You may notice a few new changes around the old blog.  Thanks to a few handy little pins on Pinterest, I made a couple of updates.  And I may be ridiculously proud of myself.  The new header, that's just thanks to me being crafty.  And Microsoft Publisher.  I decided it was time for a more streamlined header.  And I like it.  And then I realized my header was slightly similar to another blog out there.  Completely unintentional.  Oopsy.

And I added that "Posts you might like" bar under each post. What?!  Man, I am so impressed with myself.  In the whole scheme of blogging, it's probably not impressive at all.  However, I'm usually fairly tech challenged.  But I can google like crazy.

So, really probably not that exciting, but...  I'm also working on streamlining my categories and making it easier to find related things.  Fingers crossed that it works out how I have it imaged.  We'll see.

What are you working on this week?  I'm hoping to finish my dresser project tonight, last night my plans got derailed.  Anybody else get ridiculously proud of minor accomplishments?

Out with the old, in with the new

Wow, 2012 is almost over.  How did that happen?  2012 has been a year of home improvements.  Maybe not quite as many changes as 2011.  But we've settled into a rhythm at our house.  And we've started our second year of marriage.  And I'm finally figuring out how long it takes to get dinner ready.  It's been a great year, I'm looking forward to what 2013 will hold.

So, let's look back at all the home improvements we accomplished over the year.

January

I painted the basement over Christmas.  We went from dingy cream colored walls to a light celery green.

February

February is always kind of a lull at our house.  It's too cold to go anywhere.  We've hit total cabin fever.  So there weren't really any major house pictures in February.  We took a little mini-vacation to Lake of the Ozarks and then to Springfield to see Brad Paisley.  

March

My mom and I landscaped.  We planted flowers, we ripped out tons and tons of weeds.  Our new landscaping was then ripped out by our new puppy in April.  We also got new gutters in March.  And new fascia. 

I also painted the bar in the basement.  I know the picture from January might lead you to believe I painted the bar in January, but it was really over spring break.  I kept making people come over to stare at it, weird, I know.

We went from this

To this!  Such a great change!  The hardware got a coat of ORB.  And we just pretended we liked that green tile.

April

In April we kept ourselves busy with the sweet little puppy I got my hubby as an early birthday present.  Turns out labs are never calm and cuddly, even as tiny puppies.  I think the only time he was calm was on the drive home.  So, there wasn't much home improving in April but there was a lot of puppy corralling and cleaning up of messes.  He was awfully cute though.

We did manage to install a new mail box in April.  One we got as a wedding gift.  So cute!

May

I love May.  School gets over in May and the desire to DIY seriously kicks in.  We installed 6 new light fixtures.  Two on our deck, one by each front door, one outside the basement, and a new fixture in our hallway bathroom.

I also refinished three light fixtures.  Two of which were ceiling fans.  We had some doozies of light fixtures in our house.  The most amazing was in our basement.

Before.  Man oh man, that thing is ugly.  And those are the tiniest ceiling fan blades I've ever laid eyes on.

After.  Blades were spray painted and fixture was painted with silver boat paint.

Over Memorial Day weekend we also started staining our deck.  Not the best idea I ever had.  It didn't get done until July.

June

In June we started work on the outside of our house.  Not big work, but work.  I also painted our mantle and built ins in the living room.

Built ins before.

Built ins after

This month I finally tackled the trim in the kitchen.  After months of my mom's nagging.  And I couldn't figure out why it took me so long to do something so small that would make such a big difference.

I also bought a new table for our front hallway.  I was supposed to meet one of my friends for breakfast and we ended up hitting a garage sale.  I brought home this little gem.

After two coats and two different colors of spray paint and new knobs I had a brand new table.

July

Man oh man, it was hot in July.  July brought paint with it.  And stain.  We finished staining the deck.  A month and a half after we started the project.  It looks gorgeous.  I love it.  But I hated doing it.  Hated it so much.  My least favorite house project to date.

I also painted the front doors in July.  That old ugly blue is gone.  And bright shiny red is here to stay, until I get tired of it anyway.

We also re-floored the front entryway in July.  We went from ugly, curling up linoleum to nice brown tile.

 

My mom and I refinished a table.  We also made a faux Roman shade.

We started working on the trim to go up on the outside of our house.  We also started painting the outside of the house.  And that's still not done yet.  Don't judge.

August

I made some sweet paintings for our living room and bedroom.

And there was more painting outside.  Always more painting.  And I found out I'm allergic to the whole world.  

September

We took another mini-vacation.  Our anniversary tradition, just a month early.  We went to Lake of the Ozarks and stayed at a the resort my husband lived at when we started dating.

In September I also got super excited about fall and created a fall fireplace.

October

My elementary kids at work helped make decorations for a Veterans Day Assembly.  I also made some sweet flannel envelope pillow covers.

I made an adorable tray that almost did me in.  Ug.  Seriously.

November

Oh boy, November brought a mini-series:  No-Clutter-November.  I tackled my laundry room and bathroom cabinet.  The success was the bathroom cabinet.  It's still totally snoop worthy, especially since I painted the inside of it.

I participated in the Fall Pinterest Challenge by making a couple of sweet little wreaths.

November

Man, in November our TV broke and we were left looking like rednecks.  Bad news, that's how we're still living too, one TV in front of a broken TV.  And in November I went on my first ever duck hunting trip with my husband.

Another friend and I threw a baby shower for one of our favorite friends.  I also made that friend a bunting for her nursery.

I did some fun little projects for Dare to DIY.  I made these fun little glitter candle holders for the Dare to Entertain challenge.

December

In the third challenge for Dare to DIY I made a homemade project to gift, a sweet little wreath.

In December I pretty much glittered and crafted anything I could get my hands on.  Man oh man, do I love decorating for Christmas.

All in all, 2012 has been great.  I can't wait to see what 2013 will bring.  One thing I know for sure, there will be new kitchen floors in 2013.  Right now there are samples laying all over the place.

So, how bout you?  How was your 2012?  What are you doing tonight for New Year's Eve?  Any great plans for 2013?  We're spending tonight curled up on the couch watching Mad Men with a bottle of wine.  We really know how to live it up.  Have a safe and happy new year!

So Grateful

Okay guys, I could not be more excited right now.  Like I really, really could not be more excited.  I feel like I'm dreaming.  Holy cow.

So, you know John & Sherry over at Young House Love, right?  I'm sure you do.  Everyone does.  They are pretty much amazing.  So, they host all these giveaways.  I always enter because I figure, someone has to win.  Well.....

Today I opened my email and noticed I had an email from John.  Strange.  We don't know each other in real life.  I'm sure they've probably never seen my little blog.  But there it was, an email from John.  I won one of their giveaways.  Holy cow guys.  I screamed.  I almost fell out of my chair.  At work.  All of this was at work people.  I'm sure I made quite the scene.

I know what you're thinking.  Get a grip on yourself Mary, haven't you ever won anything before?  Well, sure I have.  A free slushy at breakfast with Santa when I was a kid.  A CD or two.  Free beer and pizza at a local bar for happy hour.  Honestly, I'm sure I was fairly excited over those things too.  But....  If you read Young House Love fairly regularly, you may remember that their last giveaway was for $500 from Homes.com.  Well, the Mary that won, yeah that was me.

I'm dancing guys.  Maybe not literally, but there is some serious jumping up and down going on in my brain.  I can't wait for my husband to get off work so I can tell him.  Stay tuned to see what crazy DIY shenanigans we get into with our gift card.  It's going to be great.

So huuuuuuuuuge thanks to John & Sherry and Homes.com.  This girl is feeling pretty grateful on this Thursday afternoon.

On Why I Blog

As we all know, I looooove working on my house.  I love DIY.  I love organization.  But I’m pretty sure none of my Facebook friends care about the fact that I organized the cabinet under my bathroom sink.  They also probably don’t care that I’m planning to organize my laundry room Friday when we’re out of school.  But it’s really interesting to me. 

I know my blog is nowhere near the coolest DIY blog.  It’s definitely not even close.  I don’t know all the tricks of creating a fantastic website.  I have some vague knowledge I picked up in college from the guy I was dating at the time.  I’m slowly learning a couple little things on my own.  But it is definitely nothing fancy.  And why is my header so dang big?  Um, I made it in Publisher and I made it too big.  Fail.  But, I tried, right?  And at least it’s not the plain old blogger template. 

I don’t have a fancy camera with all those snazzy settings to make my pictures look like they come out of a magazine.  For quite a while, I was taking all my pictures with my cell phone.  My new camera is better, but it’s not professional quality.  And I don’t really have the ability to edit photos.  So, what I take is what you get.  I’m learning a little though.  There are some things though, that I just can’t figure out how to get a good shot of.  Though it might help if I didn’t always wait until night time to take pictures.  Or if I would not sit in the middle of the floor and take pictures on our stained carpet.  But, we work with what we’ve got.

My house is never going to look like it belongs in a magazine.  I just have to come to terms with that.  Yes, I am absolutely 100% proud of the improvements we have made.  But, when your house is made of paneling, you can only do so much.  And I love our house.  It has quirks (i.e. lots of paneling and a tiny master bedroom).  But it’s our house.  I may be horribly embarrassed by our kitchen floor.  I mean it’s super bad guys.  The linoleum is peeling up.  It is insanely stained in places.  No matter how many times I mop, it looks dirty.  But, I know it will be better someday.  And until then, I try not to look down.  I have dreams of replacing the linoleum with some nice wood laminate and then carrying that same laminate into the living room and down the hallway.  It will be gorgeous.  But, I try not to live in the future.  Right now there are parts of our house that are ugly but it’s still a thousand times better than when we moved in. Like this....

And when I remember how it used to look, I feel so much better about things.  I read so many of these blogs where people are making over an "ugly house"  Oh boy.  Sometimes I just want to laugh.  There were so many truly ugly things about our house.  I am so proud of our before and afters.  No, it's not magazine perfect, but it barely even looks like the same house anymore.

I still have tons of plans for our house.  Do I feel like I have to an amazing project to blog about every day?  Yes, I really do.  But, that’s really just not realistic for me.  I work full time.  And my commute is an hour each way.  And my husband likes to eat dinner.  And I like to watch Gilmore Girls.  So, am I really ever going to have a huge project to show off every day?  No way.  But, I can show you little pieces of things I’m working on.  Or occasionally talk about other random things.  Like my nail polish adventures (still totally in love with my turquoise ombre nails, they’re totally distracting me today BTW).  And my extreme love of Gilmore Girls and country music.

So, basically I blog because I like to.  It will never be perfect and it doesn’t have to be.  And I’m okay with that.

On What's To Come

Oh boy, I'm excited about posting this week.  I'm trying to have self-control so that I don't create the longest post in the world.  But, here's a little tease of things to come....

• A project with my sewing machine
• A lamp shade
• Apple cider
• Spray paint
• Yarn

It's been a great weekend full of projects.  I can't wait to tell you about all of it!

Under Construction

I am working on updating the look of my blog. I am having some issues though so please be patient if things look a little weird. Hopefully it will get better!

So it seems I am smarter than I thought, it just took perseverance.  I need to read a book on website design I guess.  Or not.  Probably not.  I will probably just continue faking my way through it.  Oh well, I got the job done.

Why DIY bloggers make me crazy

I love to DIY as much as the next girl. Maybe even more. I love to paint, refinish, improve. However, all these DIY blogs do nothing to inspire me. I read them and then I end up feeling like a failure as a wife and a homeowner. Like I am not doing enough. But then I remind myself of what I do. I work full time, I'm a school counselor. We bought our house last year while I was finishing my master's degree. We have done a ton of improvements over the past year. I should be proud of what we have done. Instead, while I am reading these DIY blogs over lunch, I feel like my house does not measure up. I have to quit comparing myself and be proud of what we've done.

So, some pictures... Oh hell, my iPad won't let me upload pictures to blogger. Sigh. So, instead a project list.

Entryway
-Rip out skanky old vinyl flooring (I like to call it linoleum because that's what we called it when I was a kid)
-Put in shiny new peel and stick vinyl tiles
-Do a happy dance that the first thing you are greeted with upon entry to our house is not curling up linoleum with holes in it.  Classy.
-Find a skinny bench to store shoes under so I can hide the shoes I like to kick off when I come in the door though (Not too skinny of a bench though, I have big feet)
-Paint over terrible crackle finish 
-Paint weird white trim brown
-Paint front door 
-Paint closet & laundry room door 
-Paint ugly barnwood door frame 

 Kitchen
-Rip out skanky old vinyl flooring.  It's covered with paint and has holes in it.  So attractive!
-Replace sub floor by dishwasher that is soft from the great pre-dishwasher installation leak of 2011.  Ug.
-Beg best friend's boyfriend to install pretty new wood laminate floor
-Bake best friend & BF's BF butterscotch brownies in appreciation for new floor installation
-Try to convince someone that building a seat under bay window for better kitchen seating is a great idea and that they want to help me build it
-Paint trim
- Paint walls 
- Paint cabinets 
-Repaint ceiling fan fixture and overhead kitchen light 
- Install new backsplash 
- Build exposed shelves on end of cabinet 
- Replace ugly pink Formica countertop 
-Replace brown cast iron sink with a shiny new sink 

 Living Room
-Find art
-Hide light sconce cords (yes, there are cords for our light sconces, it's tacky and I can't help it)
-Paint fireplace mantle
-Paint built-ins by fireplace
- Replace movie theater light sconces with normal ones 
- Rewire overhead light in a safe way 
- Paint walls 
-Paint other ugly barnwood door frame 
- Hang pretty curtains
- Buy new couch and chair

 Master Bedroom
-Find a bed frame and start sleeping like a grown up.  We are too old for our bed to sit on the floor
-Get organized, that room is a disaster!
-Learn to put away my clothes.  Geez.
-Paint
- Install double closet rods and built in shoe rack 
- Hang pretty curtains 

Master Bath
-Find real curtains to replace blinds
-Buy bathroom rugs that actually match the bathroom
-Paint walls 
- Repaint built in cabinets
- Hang art 

Basement
-Finish painting bar
-Paint door (inside and out)
-Think about refinishing trim on stairs
-Desperately wish for a good way to paint the top half of the walls in the stairway
- Paint walls 
- Paint bar (most of it anyway) 
- Knock out weird shelf in the bar and put in a mini fridge 
- Hang art 
- Buy fancy new TV
- Make curtains out of sheets because I am cheap and it requires no sewing 

Outside
-Paint outside of house -- shutters, trim, siding
-Power wash house (that should probably come before the painting)
-Power wash deck
-Stain deck
-Paint and install trim around sliding glass doors
-Demo front side walk
- Trim shrubs 
-Plant flowers (and actually kept them alive!)
- Buy pavers to replace front sidewalk X Put in pavers to expand downstairs patio 
- Desperately wish to rip out shrubs
- Pick shutter color 
- Repaint garage doors (it's so fancy now!) 

in the office

I am terribly terribly behind.  I write things, email them to myself and then they never go anywhere.  And now I'm playing catch up.  I wrote this the Monday after the Super Bowl.  Sheesh

I am a grown up.  I don't really believe it, but other people seem to.  I am twenty-eight and I have my own office.  I want to say I am wonderfully organized and I have it all together.  Lately I have been reading all these blogs about organizing things.  And it makes me feel a little bad about not being more organized.  But then the counselor side of me thinks these people must have some serious OCD to be that organized.  I mean, I love me some organization but there is a point when you have to say enough is enough.  

Yes, I organized my office on Friday.  I have magazine files labeled for each grade for guidance lessons.  I have a shelf of binders and two shelves of books.  And then I have a shelf that is neat piles of stuff that I don't know what to do with.  I also have little baskets to put my clutter in -- one on my desk for post its and such, one behind my desk for my coffee cup, spoon, and instant caffeine & sugar free coffee, one with random CDs and hand sanitizer (because that goes together) and one with play-do, silly putty, and a couple stuffed animals.  To me, that is organization.  I still have a pile of files on my desk that I am always needing to get to.  I have an over flowing box of things to be shredded and another box of stuff to be filed.  And yet I'm okay with it.  No, I am not nearly as organized as my mom would be, but I'm still more organized than most people.

We had a Super Bowl party yesterday.  I love having people over and I love getting ready for people to come over.  That sounds kind of weird, but I love the excuse to really clean my house and make it look amazing.  It's hard for me sometimes to get the motivation just to clean it, but if I know people are coming over I kick into high cleaning gear.  And it's great.  Cleaning products make me break out though, like really bad and I have to quit cleaning and take allergy medicine.  So I've started cleaning everything with vinegar.  It's fantastic.  I would do a commercial for all the magical cleaning properties of vinegar.  I really clean everything with it -- I have a bottle of vinegar and water that I use in the kitchen for pretty much everything.  Then I have a bottle with straight vinegar that I clean the bathrooms with.  It makes them sparkle.  I even mop with vinegar.  My favorite though -- baking soda and vinegar on the stove.  I have a gas stove so I really hate to use chemicals on it anyway.  But stoves get so gross sometimes with grease or whatever other gross cooking stuff.  So I sprinkle baking soda all over the top, spray it with straight vinegar and wait for magic to happen.  Then you can just wipe off literally any gunk, no scrubbing required.  It's the best!