Showing posts with label home improvement. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home improvement. Show all posts

Collage Wall

What a crazy year 2012 has been so far!  We have moved, my husband graduated, we had a baby, all in 5 months!  Since we moved, we have a long to do list, but because of the other things, ya know school and a baby, there isn't much crossed off that list.  We FINALLY finished our collage wall, which has been nice, it actually makes his house feel more like our home.  Funny how simple things like hanging photos will do that. 

Here are a couple photos of the finished product.  Please excuse my very poor photography skills.  I had been collecting various things over the years that all came together nicely on this wall.  I already had most of the frames, the majority of which were from IKEA, and decided to paint the middle one blue for some extra color on a white wall.  I promise they are all hung straight, I swear when I look at these photos, half of them look crooked to me.  The 987 is our anniversary date, everyone asks "what is 987?" when they come over, LOL.


I really love how it all turned out, it helps that I have super cute kiddos too!

Sources:
Brazil free printable
Button Monogram
SLC Temple Print
Family Proclamation made by a friend
Joesph and Emma print given to me by my sister
987 DIY

How to Remove Hard Water From A Faucet: Tidy Tips

So this tidy tip is courtesy of my husband, he did all the hard work! We have started to notice that our faucets were spraying all over the place. One look at them and you can see why, the gross hard water build up around the tap. Seriously looking at this makes me sick!

I have sold my husband on vinegar and it's many wonders and he thought he would put it to the test to try to remove the hard water from the spouts. Here they are in all their gross glory.....
He put the vinegar into a normal drinking glass, and stuck it in the microwave until it was boiling.
One he pulled it out of the microwave, he dropped all the parts in, and it was like Alka Selzer, the hard water started to bubble right off! Look at how amazing the difference is. Clean and shiny, good as new.
As you can see the water is now flowing freely without any crazy splashing going on.
Oh vinegar how I love you!

Pretty Little Projects: In The Nursery

My good friend Liv from Liv(e) is sharing some of her projects from around her pink house. I love a good project, the little things always make a big difference!

My step-dad Marc came into town about a month after Aspen was born and worked around the PH almost non-stop. Kev made a chore list and Marc diligently got a whole lotta things done for us.


My favorite chore was the one that got the art work up on Penny's wall. Soon after she was born I reorganized her room for the tenth time and it left me with a big wall space that needed to be filled.

Marc did an awesome job, especially since Kev had all his levels with him at work. I told Marc that as long as everything looked level from the nursing chair we'd be good. Wouldn't it be awful to be staring at crooked frames in the middle of the night with a baby attached to your chest?


Many thanks to my parents for all the help last Fall!

Thanks so much for sharing Liv! I LOVE Aspen's room, it is so bright and fun! Stay tuned for more pretty little projects from the pink house.

Do you have a pretty little project you want to share? Would you be interested in doing a guest post? Email us bagsnrags3 (at) gmail (dot) com.

My Favorite Cleaning Supply...

We ALMOST made it through the winter without getting sick...then BAM a nasty cold has hit our house hard this week. First it was the baby, then me, now my hubby too. All I have done this week is wipe noses, wash hands, and try to keep my house disinfected to prevent spreading any more germs. The other day I mentioned I am trying to go more of a natural route when it comes to cleaning, and a few months ago, you may even remember a post about home made cleaners. We have fallen in love with vinegar in my house! You may think "Yuck the smell", but as soon as it is dries the smell is gone.

The other day we bought a giant 2 gallon box of white vinegar from Costco and it listed a bunch of uses for vinegar. I am going to post my favorite 10, there are far more uses than this though!

1: Toilet Bowl Cleaner- Clean & deodorize your toilet bowl by pouring undiluted white distilled vinegar into it. Let it stand about 5 minutes, then flush. Stubborn stain may require a gentle scrub.
2: Ants- Ant invasions can be deterred by washing counter tops, cabinets, and floors with distilled vinegar. This is a lot more pet and child friendly than ant poison!
3: Grass or Weeds- Kill unwanted grass on sidewalks and driveways by pouring on vinegar. Love the alternative to poison.
4: Irons- Remove burn stains from your electric iron by mixing one part salt with one part vinegar in a heated small aluminum pan.
5: Glassware- 1/2 cup of distilled white vinegar added to a gallon of rinse water will remove soap film from glassware and make it shine. I just add it to my dishwasher, no need to buy Jet Dry.
6: Vegetables- Liven up slightly wilted veggies by soaking them in cold water and vinegar.
7: Meat- A marinade of 1/2 cup of your favorite vinegar and a cup of liquid bouillon makes an effective meat tenderizer.
8: Cheese- Keep cheese moist and fresh by wrapping it in a cloth that has been damped with vinegar and sealed in an air tight wrap or container.
9: Onion Odors- Quickly remove onion odor from your hands by rubbing them with distilled white vinegar.
10: Flowers- Add 2 TBSP of vinegar plus 3 TBSP of sugar to a quart of warm water to keep fresh cut flowers blooming longer.

What do you use vinegar for?


Master Bedroom ideas

It's Friday, and I have lots of things that need to be worked on for my Friday Freebie posts. I have had sick kiddos,though, and it seems to make crafting impossible! Instead, we've been snuggled in my bed watching lots of Max & Ruby episodes. Spending an extended period of time in the boudoir got me thinking that I need to mix things up a bit in there. I like our bed linens, have a sufficient number of pillows, and I like our bedroom furniture; but I'm having issues with my accessories and decor. I'm just not sure how to decorate the wall behind our bed.

I could go with a classic look~ three pictures in a row...




I love food, so anything involving plates catches my eye...





There's always room for one more frame...



A monogram would be simple and sweet...



Mirrors are pretty and add extra light to a room.



Using natural elements is an option...



And book cases would be great for storing all of our books...




You see the difficulty one can have when deciding how to decorate that darn wall.

Home Improvement

Five years ago we bought our current home. Here are a few pictures of what it looked like then:

Lovely pink bathroom. That is carpet on the floor. With really cool roses on it, actually. :)
Wall-O-Mirrors. When I first walked through the house the thing that shocked me was how many mirrors there were. EVERYWHERE. I don't like to see how bedraggled I look at every moment of the day, so I took most of them down. This wall was actually a little harder then some of the others, because each mirror tile was attached with adhesive. I used heavy gloves and safety goggles and a painter's putty knife to pry each one off the wall. After they were off it really only needed minor touching up and was ready to paint.
The wall in this picture of wooden paneling came down one day while my hubby was at work. I decided I was done with the paneling and I thought, 'This can't be all that hard' so I pried off a section and hauled it out, then the next, then the next. It wasn't hard at all. AND, lucky me, the wall behind the paneling only needed minor touch-ups as well. (It also needed us to frame in a window opening that opens into the garage, but you get the idea).
Ah, the kitchen. A friend of mine recently admitted that she refused to eat at our house when we first moved in because the kitchen was so gross. I don't blame her, I hated the kitchen as well. We have known that we wanted to change the kitchen quite a bit, but we needed a band-aid job to make the kitchen livable (and hopefully make it less gross so that our friends would come play). I did some sewing for a friend of Hubby that makes cabinets. He graciously accepted the sewing as payment for the labor of making new cabinet faces for all of our kitchen cabinets. We covered the old formica with new. We pulled out the carpet. Yes, carpet in the kitchen as well. I sewed curtains for the windows and we purchased new appliances. So, here is our band-aid job and pics of the other rooms as well.

This is the once-pink bathroom. Right now, we are in the middle of this room's renovating, so you can't see the finished product just yet, but trust me it will be improved. :)

Living Room, wood paneling gone.
Kitchen. Improved. For now. In the next twelve months we will be doing a lot of projects around this old house of ours and I will post occasionally to let you know how we did certain aspects of the projects, and maybe Hubby can do a guest post about painting--he's pretty sure he has it figured out. ;)