House Quiz....

Okay - so what do you do when you have a sleeping one year old, a husband at work, a house to be cleaned, $20.00 worth of purchases at Goodwill and two cans of spray paint??


The answer??? Spray paint your Goodwill purchases of course!!! ha ha ha

Here's some idea as to what my day has entailed so far....

Before - this is some sort of hand-carved tray I found for $3 at Goodwill.


After: What a difference!


Before - these are wholesale type primitive style trowels. I thought they would go perfect on my kitchen wall cabinet.


After - Right again!


So here are the pictures of my kitchen. It's always a work-in-progress project. At some point we'd like to get new flooring, new countertops, a sliding glass door, new windows, curtains, new appliances (which we desparately need) and rid of the large over the refrigerator cabinet. But for now, it works well for us.

The Bathroom Make-Over

When I moved into the house, my husband had the one and only bathroom decked out to the hilt with Tommy Hilfiger. He had the shower curtain, the towels, everything. Even the wallpaper was navy blue....Ughhh... Anyway, after we took that down, we went strait to the country bath house feel. Double ughh. That was just gross! So for the last month or so we've removed all the wallpaper, patched the holes from previous bathroom accessories or pictures hangers, etc. Today I painted the bathroom in a "jade" color to match my shower curtain mistreatment... (If you want to know what a mistreatment is, see The Nester's blog. There's a link to it in this blog.) We checked with a tile guy to do the walls and floor in our tiny little bathroom. He wanted $2100 for labor only and we supply the materials. The labor I thought was extremely high considering the fact that our bathroom is 9x4 with a 3x5 offset, which is mostly fiberglass shower install. So, I went down to Home Depot today and bought a gallon of paint and some painting supplies. I have to say I need to keep my day job and not try to paint for a living. I believe I just might be the world's worst painter! Regardless, the painting is done and the bathroom looks... um... bright... Actually I really like how it turned out. It isn't quite what I had in mind, but it works well. I matched the paint color to the fabric I used for the mistreatments and it looks great put together. So what's left on the TO DO list for the bathroom? I'm going to paint the vanity, mirror frame, and bath accessories in flat black. We need to order the 18" prehung door unit and get it in for the closet so we have more space. Then, the bathroom should be done for a long while...

This weekend Joe showed his hidden carpentry skills, too. Wow! What a great job he did! Remember when our ceiling in the living room fell? Well, there was a gap in the edge of the new drywall and the wall knotty pine. Also, where the ceiling heat was, it was much thicker than the 5/8" drywall we put up. So, Joe went to Home Depot on Saturday, bought the crown molding, measured, cut, stained, and hung it all. It looks so good! I'm so excited about it! Now, if I can only talk him in to letting me paint the knotty pine paneling & update the living room a little. That would be all she wrote.... LOL

My Guest Bedroom... De-Cluttered!!

I've been using the guest bedroom as a storage room and only cleaning it up when my family came to stay. Other than that, the door would stay shut to the room to ward off any junk that wanted to escape! Well, I spent plenty of time decluttering and trying to make it a little more cozy. Although it's still not done to the point where it is absolutely completely finished, it's much better than having the pile of junk in the corner!

DIY Laundry Soap Recipe

They removed the video from Metacafe of the recipe I used to make the laundry soap. Fortunately, though, I wrote it down & will include it below:

You Will Need:

a) 1 bar of soap, grated up into a pot that holds 6 C of water ( I used Ivory once and Fels-Naptha once

b) 3/4 C Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda (It is specific for laundry not regular baking soda - the Super Washing Soda is difficult to find. You may have to order it on-line if your local grocery doesn't carry it)

c) 3/4 C Borax ( I use 20 Mule Team in the laundry aisle)

d) 6 C + 1 QT super hot water

e) 1 1/2 gallons of regular temp water out of tap


In the pot, grate the entire bar of soap. Add to it 6 C of super hot water. Stir it and heat it on the stove until all of the soap is completely melted & you cannot see a single shred of soap. Then add the washing soda and borax. Stir it until it is not gritty. This will take just a little bit of time. While the mixture is dissolving in the water, add 1 qt of super hot water to the bottom of your laundry soap container. I use a 5 gallon storage container with a lid from Wal-Mart. It's a Sterilite or Rubbermaid type of container. Once the mixture of soap, water, washing soda, and borax is completely dissolved, slowly stir into the container of 1 qt hot water. Stir well, then add 1 1/2 gallons of water. The laundry soap is ready to use at this point, but is best left to sit 24 hours to gel up. The water will separate from the gel consistency, which is okay. Use 1/2 c per load of laundry. Homemade laundry gel does not suds up like store bought laundry detergent. It does work, though. I love it and have been using it for a few months now.

Other items I use include white distilled vinegar in a liquid fabric softner dispenser ball for fabric softner (I use this instead of Donwny type of softner)

Wash cloth soaked in liquid laundry softner to put in the dryer instead of fabric sheets (Bounce type sheets)

If anyone else has any other cost saving, frugal laundry tips, please send them my way!

i-Robot Roomba

Okay, so who has one of these robotic vacuums? My mother (LOVE HER) bought one for us for Christmas this past year and I have fallen in love with this for two reasons:
(a) I don't have to vacuum
(b) it helps to keep my house clutter free - at least on the floor (does anyone know where I can get a robotic duster???)

Anyway, so if you don't have one, you NEED one... For those of you who do have one, I put together my own little cleaning kit that I thought I would share. I found that getting the tangled hair (which I have long curly hair) out of the brushes was really hard. Every day it was, "Please inspect & clean Roomba brushes". It was because I couldn't really get to all the tightly wound hairs on the brushes. I shed like crazy - Gross, I know....

I'll upload a picture of my cleaning kit later. But, here's what it consists of:

1) 3rd food Gerber Baby Food Jar = I've got plenty of those around the house they're great storage & organizing containers

2) One hard rubber rat-tail comb to brush the bristles clean

3) One pair of beard and mustach trimmer scissors - the pointy, thin sharp end can help get under the rims of the turning brushes easily

4) A corn cob holder - yes that sounds crazy, but they have very sharp pointy ends, too, that you can use to pull the tangled hairs loose to cut them with the scissors

5) A double ended mini screw driver - to take apart the bottom to clean it out

6) The yellow brush hair remover that came with the Roomba

Anyway, my i-Robot; or "Butler" as we like to call him (& stole the idea from my mom) stays hairless and tangle-free with this handy dandy cleaning kit.

Our house is mainly hardwood floors, vinyl, and ceramic tile. We have one room with carpet. The Roomba does a great job in all of the rooms, no matter what floor covering type... At least in our house. The only down-side to the Roomba is that it doesn't get into the corners. So you have to broom the corners out into the open and let i-Robot clean it that way. But that's okay because that gives me a reason to want to build a round house... Can you imagine??? Oh YIKES!! That sounds like a decorating nightmare!

Anyway, if you don't have one, get an i-Robot Roomba. If you have one and don't use it, ARE YOU CRAZY??? ha ha ha