Category: Our First House

Our first house, a 1960 ranch home.

Glass Container Sale: Part Deux

Published on by Our Humble Abode11 Comments

If you recall, Hobby Lobby had a 50% off sale on all glass items a couple of weeks ago.  On my first trip, I left with a few canning jars, a small apothecary style lidded jar and a tall glass container for spaghetti.  When I returned home, I realized the tall jars would be perfect for our pantry, so I went back to buy 6 more.  Add a few pretty labels and we were done.

Well, in that same trip, I picked up the larger apothecary style jar and another footed, covered container for our main bathroom.  I filled the largest with soap, the medium with cotton balls and the smallest with Q-tips.

This is the bathroom our guests use, so I wanted to keep some often used items out to limit searching.  And I love that everything is white and pretty. 

We haven’t had any visitors since this addition, but I hope it is useful.  If not, I still don’t mind looking at them.  What about you?  What do you do to make your bathroom more guest friendly?

Magazine Artwork

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The first time I saw the Skinny Cow ads was when Young House Love turned it into art for their nursery.  I fell in love with it right away, and the colors were perfect for our boys’ room.  So, I Googled around to find more ads.  I found one print ad and a few more designs used on the Skinny Cow website. 

I love that the dachshund is being held up by a balloon to share with the giraffe. 

Aren’t the monkeys from this coupon cute, too?

I couldn’t find other printed designs, so I went to You Tube and found two commercials. 

I paused on the frames I liked and did a print screen and saved the image to my computer.  Then, I opened the images in Photoshop to make alterations as I liked.  After an hour or so of playing around, I had five new 5 inch by 7 inch art pieces to frame. 

I had to recreate the koala and monkey images to place them on a solid background.

 I didn’t have to do much to the other images, except remove the ice cream and text for the actual ad.  I bought five ugly faux wood $3.00 frames from Wal-Mart and gave them a quick coat of gloss white spray paint.

I love how the group of five looks in the room, adding a dose of whimsy and a pop of color.  Not bad for $15.00.  Have you turned any magazine pages into artwork?

Painted Pantry

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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?

Letter Magnets

Published on by Our Humble Abode12 Comments

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!

Trim: Office

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While planning my office, I fell in love with a box pattern so much, that we added it as trim.  The custom cabinets Ben built were already in place, so we wanted to have the top of the trim match the top of the cabinets.

Our cabinets are 36 inches high, not including the Brazilian cherry top, so our total trim height is 36 inches.

After determining the trim height, measure each wall, marking the center.  If you have cabinets, mark the center of the area between the wall and cabinet to make the design centered on the visible area.  Then, mark the center of the height.  The easiest way to calculate the center is to add the height of the baseboard and top trim pieces then subtract that number from your total height.  For example, we used 5 inch base board, 2 inch top trim and a 1 inch thick ‘shelf.’  Subrtact 8 from 36 to get 28 inches.  Now, divide in half and mark.

To create your box grid trim, first install the baseboard.  Now you’re ready to start creating the boxes.

We wanted 10 inches of space inside the boxes, so Ben marked 5 inches each side from his center lines.  We cut 3/4 inch thick MDF sheets to our dimensions, but you can also use square stock trim.

After ripping down the pieces, Ben cut the horizontal box trim 14 inches long to allow the vertical box pieces to butt into the horizontals.  Secure the horizontal pieces to the wall, keeping level.  Once the horizontals are in, add the vertical pieces to complete the box.  After completing one box, measure from the outside of the box to the baseboard and top trim.  Cut several pieces to length, ours are 7 inches on all sides,  nailing centered on the box.  Use the additional pieces as spacers to continue creating the boxes.  Repeat, repeat, repeat.  Then, fill the nail holes, sand, prime and paint both the trim and wall.