If I had money to burn

Or maybe more accurately - if I wasn't so cheap

I'd get these:

source

to put above my bed once the bedroom is redone.

Wouldn't it look great on a white wall with the other walls Benjamin Moore Wythe blue*?

But I think I'd want it about 30 inches across instead of 20...

source

and one of these with the initials of my grandchildren

including baby Kate of course.

source

I'd find a place to put this.

And while I'm dreaming I'll take one of these too:

I'd be OK with either one...

 not sure where I'd put it 

but if I had money to burn I'm sure I could figure something out

...maybe as an entrance to my Kindermusik studio

(yes I would keep teaching and you better believe I would use it!)

Have to get the old cheap copycat brain to work on the first two anyway...

* Benjamin Moore Wythe Blue

Found them!

The laundry room before, during and after pictures:

 These pictures reflect the way the room felt.

 (in addition to my poor photography skills using my new dslr on manual setting - 

which I didn't realize I had done until the room was ripped apart)

BEFORE:

 

DURING:

AFTER:

My Summer Vacation cont...The Bathroom

 The basement bathroom has been an ongoing project that began shortly after we redid the main part of the basement for Kindermusik a year ago. This is actually the largest bathroom in the house but since it was in the basement it was neglected until the domino theory kicked in. Main room looked great, bike room looking amazing, bedroom already looked pretty good and now this really looked like a pit.This was compounded by the fact that it was not being used regularly and became the dumping ground for basement "stuff". Note - we never actually lift weights IN the bathroom. The pale blue-green counters and the vinyl floor with the matching blue-green squares that had pulled away from wall long before we moved in, had outlasted their stay. Not to mention the light strip. The towel racks came down, which was much easier than keeping them up (we are towel rack challenged) and the work began. The photos below already have the wall behind the door partially textured.

Late in the spring we found a great handyman, John. He quickly put two and two together and discovered that he was one of Mark's students. He helped with a lot of projects and is one reason we did so many this summer... he recently moved to Boston to start his first job. We will miss him


To fix up this room we textured, painted almost every surface, stenciled one wall using this stencil. This room was the experimental room with the Giani countertop paint. It turned out OK, way better than the blue-green laminate and I got better at it as I went. The cabinets got a fresh coat of white paint, I used this tutorial to frame the huge mirror that is permanently attached to the wall. It was so easy, I will be doing it again. John put in new light fixtures in addition to a new tile floor. Mark and Christian installed new towel racks into studs next to the shower/tub where you can actually reach them when you need them!

 It's a bright happy bathroom that I'm no longer to embarrassed to allow people to use. It comes in really handy for Kindermusik too.

My Summer Vacation cont...The Laundry Room

Do you have a room that causes a sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach and every time you open the door you just want to run and hide? I have felt this way about our laundry room since we moved in.

 It measures all of 5 1/2 x 6 and has two doors, one going to the family room and one going to the garage. From the garage it gets shoes and boots, hats, jackets, gloves, dirt, lint, saw dust, backpacks and more. From the family room it gets dirty rags thrown on the floor and all the stuff that no one knows what to do with. I this room we store light bulbs, wrapping paper and gift bags, Costco packs of toilet paper, kleenex, paper towels, three cowboy hats, the hot plate we take to hotels so we can make our own breakfast, cloth grocery bags, the high chair I keep for the grandkids, stamps that I use occasionally and of course the usual laundry stuff.

We got a shoe organizer, put up hooks and shelves above the cupboards and across the other wall. Mark put up a bar for hanging up wet clothes. I organized and reorganized and rearranged the stuff in the cupboards trying to find something that works but in the end I could never really reach any of the upper shelves without getting a chair from the kitchen and the pile on the dryer just grew until it would all fall down.

Just inside the family room I created a place for back packs and school books and relocating that stuff  helped some, but in between major cleaning efforts and reorganizing the laundry room looked like this...

(I can't find my before picture)

After I joined Pinterest I began to see all kinds of ways to decorate and organize a laundry room and I began to dream and plan...

Someday... 

in the far distant future... 

when our washer and/or dryer died

 my laundry room would no longer be the armpit of the house.

And then one day I was washing a load of tennis shoes to help with an eagle project and it happened...
a size 14 tennis shoe wedged itself between the agitator and the inside of the washer
(even though I did all I could to prevent it) and, well...
may my old washer rest in peace...

Having paved the way from my new laundry room:
still so small it was hard to get a picture where you could see most of it all in one shot.

Ikea cupboard I love you!

View from family room - garage to right

View from garage

 
New from top
(How many packs of Costco TP? the world may never know.)
to bottom
(John, who did my tile got into the decorating and painted my drain cover black!)

storage for brooms, mops and folding step stool

 
Funny how excited I was to have a step stool so I could reach everything in seconds, now that I have a space to store it.

There is no divider in the bottom of the cupboard so I can fit the high chair, my large cutting mat for sewing and my laundry basket ... you can actually open the door to the garage  WHILE I'm doing laundry...
who'da thought that was possible?!

I want to go out and buy more toilet paper just because I have a great place to store it!

While I will not say that I suddenly I LOVE to do laundry and this probably is not my FAVORITE room in the house, I have to admit that when I open the door, this room makes me happy. I don't mind being in here, in fact I kind of like it. I don't cringe at the possibility that someone will enter my home through this room.

My laundry room is still very small but it's functioning so wonderfully!

labeled and accessible storage with towel bar for hanging

Need a light bulb or wrapping paper? 

I can have it for you in two seconds, without causing an avalanche!

precision spacing so that all doors open without hitting anything 

I like this room enough that I will put hanging things away quickly,
and even iron rather than let them hang there and block my "window".

And the stackable washer and dryer... GENIUS.
I guess there are all kinds of blessings that come from helping others.

What I did over my summer vacation

I've been in denial about school starting again. Not that I don't like school and having a schedule again but it seems like Summer just got here. It was a cold Spring and I was busy with this 

and this

and I'm not really ready for this

followed by this..

BUT in an effort to embrace carpools, packing lunches, and getting up at 6:15 AM.

 I will share with you a few things I have done to my house this Summer.

Starting with something small:

Not the greatest picture I know but it's all I have.

Notice the countertops, 24 year old formica, scratched, cracked in places with wood trimmed edges.  What you can't see is the 24 year old porcelain sink which has long lost it's luster and stain fighting abilities, rimmed with a stainless steel crown, equally aged and tarnished...

Mark has offered to replace these with granite but I'm holding out...

At some point I would like to reconfigure the kitchen a little and replace the tile floor.

So I'll be patient... but still there has to be some way to fix it up without spending $$$.


A google search turned up Giani Countertop paint.
It was reasonable and worth a try. I experimented first in the bathroom in the basement with mixed reviews and decided to try a different color in the kitchen. I also discovered that putting the paint on a little thicker allowed the colors to blend and make a really cool "stone like" texture.
(I realize that any geologist would quickly know it is a faux finish but to the layman it looks pretty good)

I also got a new sink and faucet...

And painted the basement door RED... just for fun.

What I've been up to...

busy with life

having a blast with kindermusik

getting ready for Erika* to come

and while Mark was out of town for a week I took on a few projects

OK a few too many projects

but here are some I finished:

 Made two of these for the living room, 

same fabric, different birdy placement

 Dresser for Jenn's room

used to be a plain, cheap pine dresser

 painted and stenciled - some new knobs

Gutted and set up Jenn's closet.

*more about Erika soon.

No spitting today

I feel a little bad for my rant last time

(mostly for letting it sit for so long)

I felt much better after a run... gotta love those endorphins.

  This was the view from my front porch this morning.

(taken in my pj's - burrrrrr)

 Fall has been amazing this year. We had our first real storm last Saturday. It's cold but the colors are spectacular and the leaves are finally falling because of the rain and wind. But even in the midst of the storms the wind will blow the clouds away and we get short periods of sunlight that make the leaves glow bright yellow. These pictures don't really do the leaves justice.

And inside...

 cleaning out cupboards - just the bottom shelf - I don't want to get too ambitious.

But I did wash off the turntables and wipe down the containers.

 It was relatively quick and it looks soooo nice. It was long overdue.

(Maybe someday I will have a few cabinets with glass doors just like the decorators do.)

  

 It felt so good I decided to do the other spice cabinet too...

Only now I need to figure out what to do with all the stuff that came out of the cabinet.

Looking through it I realized why it was in there...

I didn't know what to do with it.

And I still don't...