We’re so excited to have our custom leaves silhouette painting featured on Remodelaholic today! Head over to check it out, along with other great tutorials.
Year: 2010
Painted Pantry
As I recently showed, we did a little deep cleaning and organizing around the house. Of course, I couldn’t stop obsessing over the great pantry update I saw over at House of Smith’s. In true Amanda style, I really needed wanted our pantry to be pretty. In true Ben style, he thought I was crazy. Yep, that’s us; Amanda equals the desire for pretty, even in unseen places. Ben equals utilitarian. Well, I went ahead and spruced up our pantry anyway.
First, I removed everything and put it on the guest bed.
And the closet…
After turning our guest room into a make-shift pantry, I prepped the real pantry for paint. Here’s a sneak peek inside.
Yeah, not that bad, but not great, either. I don’t think the pantry has seen a paint brush since the house was built. I started by giving the shelves and supports two coats of Vermont Cream, the same paint we’ve used for all the trim in our house.
Now you can see just how ugly the color really was. I had forgotten how much of a pain it is to paint shelves. Yeah, it’s not just one side… I let everything dry, then taped the white portions off to prepare for my accent color.
Then, I brushed the same paint we used in the dining room and basement on the walls of the pantry. Two coats and we were in business. Right after applying the second coat, I removed the tape and paper. This is the trick to getting nice, crisp lines.
Voila! A pretty pantry. Now for the fun part, organizing. Because I had recently organized everything, I had an idea of where things would go. I didn’t, however, have pretty jars to store baking staples then. Remember this post? Well, I went back to Hobby Lobby and picked up six more of the tall guys.
Can you believe they were only $2.50 each?! I know!
Rather than keeping flour and such items in their bags, I filled the bad boys up. Don’t they look pretty in their new home? (The answer is yes).
Am I lame that they make me smile? (The answer is yes). I filled my canning jars with baking powder (blame Costco) and quick oats, getting rid of the ugly containers and freeing up valuable space. I had a cute storage box (see on the top?) lying around, so I filled it with our abundance of straws (blame Costco again).
After sorting the canned goods, I grouped liked items, making stacks out of the items we had more of so we can see what we have. Pasta and mac and cheese are in a little group, as well as the cereal and baby food. We also have mass quantity of Salted Nut Rolls (blame my brother-in-law), so they are in the treat jar.
My organization fixation doesn’t stop there, though. Shelley over at Wonderfully Wordy (and House of Smith’s) hooked me up with this awesome set of custom vinyl labels.
The labels are affordable and super easy to apply. And they are the icing on my cake. So, there you have it. A few days, $15.00, and 5 labels later, our pantry is finally pretty.
How about you? Have you ever had the itch to give a seldom seen place a make over?
Goodwill Goods
After a long week of hanging with our boys, I pawned them off on Ben to do a little retail therapy, alone. I know the moms out there understand how great this is. I find thrift stores are difficult to go to with kids. Target usually has the same inventory, but thrift stores are ever-changing, so it takes more searching. Off to Goodwill I went. I didn’t find much, but I wasn’t looking for anything, either. I did find a cute stone bird.
I did think twice about this guy, trying to keep my bird obsession in check, but he wanted me to rescue him from the shelf. So, I did. I immediately snatched this brass leaf-shaped bowl.
I left Goodwill $4.50 lighter with two more projects in the works.
Come back soon to see what I did to update my finds. For now, though, I want to know what specific items you go to thrift stores to find. Dishes? Furniture? Lamps? Spill.
Mission: Organization
Project: Pantry
Technically, our pantry never was unorganized. If you know me, most things are organized. That’s not to say things can never be more organized. Ever since I saw a fantastic pantry redesign on House of Smith’s, I’ve been itching to change things up with our pantry. Over the weekend, I got a metaphorical bug up my butt and started changing things up.
Here is the before:
Yeah, not super great. Most of our grocery shopping is done at Costco, so everything is in bulk and a little tricky to store. I will admit, we are lower on some of our supplies shown in the after photos.
Ben and I started by throwing out everything that was past its prime or giving it away. I grouped like items together and made a shelf for each grouping.
The bottom shelf has cookbooks and potatoes, leaving room for larger items to be stored after a Costco trip. All canned, boxed and bagged dry food items are on the same shelf along with baby food and formula. Then we have a baking shelf, including flour, sugar, and chocolate chips. Cereals and soda joined the baking party. Finally, the top shelf has alcohols, large serving platters, straws, paper plates and coffee supplies.
Lucky for me, Ben got in one of his deep clean moods after this! I love when this happens. Ben becomes a cleaning machine. He removed all the screens and windows (our window panels can be removed to leave a huge opening) and cleaned every piece. Then, he took everything out of our refrigerator and scrubbed down every surface. It’s like we have a brand new fridge.
As if cleaning windows and refrigerators wasn’t enough fun, Ben also removed everything from both bathroom drawers, vacuumed and scrubbed the insides. Yes, I am one lucky girl. Then I went through all the contents. I threw some things away, donated others, and organized the rest.
And our drawers are clean, too!
So, that was our fun-filled weekend of cleaning. Have you deep-cleaned or organized anything recently?
Letter Magnets
We have officially started redecorating our boys’ room by adding some pops of sunny yellow, including this magnet board.
I love the magnet board, but not the ugly plastic letters. Fortunately, I found this great tutorial at Nice Girl Notes detailing how to create pretty magnet letters. What a fantastic (and cheap!) idea! Using the tutorial as my starting point, I headed off to Hobby Lobby to buy my supplies.
At Hobby Lobby, I found 2 inch round wooden discs for $3.99 per pack of 22. I chose to use plain green and aqua acrylic paints, rather than spray painting my circles. I bought 44 discs and decided to make 3 of each vowel, so I removed 15. Then, I painted the remaining discs aqua on all sides. The paint dries quickly, so I applied another coat.
I knew I wanted to incorporate both green and blue, so I made the vowels green, figuring the boys would learn their vowels easier if they were different. After painting the aqua, I mixed up my green. I couldn’t find the exact green I had in mind, so I added some white to get the right color. Once I had my color, I painted all sides of the 15 reserved discs green.
The tutorial used rub-on transfer letters, but I couldn’t find a font I liked. Yes, I am very picky. Instead, I used a pencil to draw the letters, keeping them roughly the same size. Then, using chocolate-brown paint and a fine tipped brush, I traced over my penciled lines.
I didn’t have time to look for magnet strips while at Hobby Lobby, so Ben picked up a roll of adhesive-backed magnet from Lowe’s. Simply cut the roll into 3/4 inch or so pieces, remove the backing and place on the back, pressing firmly to attach. I considered using Gorilla glue, but the adhesive seems to stick pretty well, so I’ll glue if any magnets fall off.
Vincent started playing with his new magnets, but quickly scuffed them up. Luckily, I had a jar of glossy Mod Podge on hand, so I quickly gave the front side of each magnet two coats. Worked like a charm.
Don’t the new magnets look so much better than the plastic ones? Better than the looks, this project was cheap and easy-just the way I like ’em. Even better? Vincent loves to play with them.
This is not in the photos, but we had a toy mail box from Target’s dollar department that I glued magnets to. It’s the perfect holder for the magnets!
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