Blog – Page 43 – No. 29 Design

mod podge tray tutorial

Today I’m going to show you how I transformed the girly pink tray I bought at Target for $2.50 into something you might need to have around the house. {supplies needed} tray of any size (preferably smaller than the paper you are choosing so you don’t have to tile the paper) paper or wrapping paper Mod Podge brush (I prefer foam brushes) Begin by cutting your paper to fit the inside of your tray. I use a paper cutter to get straight even lines. The next step is to paint over your tray. I used Benjamin Moore paint left over from the paint sample. Normal acrylic paint would work as well. I painted 3 coats to make sure no pink showed through. Since I was putting paper on the inside I didn’t bother painting that. A small trick I use to paint and dry the bottom is to place 4…

A tray for my junk

There is a section of my kitchen which I keep for my own purposes. It basically is the command center, just not a desk. The top cabinets have cookbooks and boxes with everything from screwdrivers to tape. There are two drawers below the coutertop. One is the designated junk drawer. The other holds all our chargers. Below that is my printer, paper supplies and the kids coloring books and crayons. It is not perfect but it will do for now. On the countertop I used to have my computer. Since I have a laptop now I gained back that space so I purchased a container which holds files for each child. Their homework and any necessary paperwork that I need on a daily basis is in there. The rest of the countertop is empty and usually has my cell phone and anything that needs charging. We had a hole cut…

Family Room Mood Board

I’ve had my family room on the brain lately. As the construction is going on downstairs, I’m decorating. Here is what I’ve come up with. This is a wish list of ideas of course. We are going to be putting the wall of Ikea cabinets, the rest is still negotiable. I know I want a neutral scheme with pops of color. I see some sewing in my future! Do you have rooms that you are working on. I’d be happy to help!

The walls are up!

Framing happened yesterday. There are now walls and if you use your imagination you can see the rooms. Shall we take a tour? First up we have the door looking into the laundry room. The configuration changed from the original plans. The sink, washing machine and dryer will still be along one wall, but there won’t be space for the Expedit in there so I’ll be using another cabinet I already have for storage. The laundry will be kept in a rolling sorter that can move around and won’t take up too much valuable space. I’ll put open shelving above the washer and dryer. This section is the kids corner. There is a closet on the right which will have shelving for all the toys. The Expedit isn’t going to stay there. It will probably end up in the garage or utility room. Still working on that one. This section…

Things are moving along

Today is day four of the serious work going on downstairs in my basement. Yesterday was a loud day with the last of the cement being cut and the exterior door getting fit. A storage closet we had down there was cut apart, and we now have this. Here is the doorway that caused all that dust. We are going to have to call it Dusty or something. My kids seem to like naming everything anyways. Our cars even have names and my husband and I both refer to them by those names rather than by what type of car they are. I drive Puffy, my husband drives Jack. No idea how they came up with those names, but they’ve stuck. So the site of wood stacked up in the middle of the room and tools stored in the corner are a welcome sight. The framing is going on as…

The most expensive mirror I never paid for

One day in late summer I was reading an email from my towns’ listserv. I had to read it a couple time to make sure I had it right. It said something along the lines that a family was moving and had some things on the curb. One of these items included a mirror from Ballard Designs. I checked the website to make sure I wasn’t daydreaming when I read which mirror was sitting outside, still in the box it had come in. They were giving away the Audrey mirror for FREE. Brand new, still in its original packaging. I pulled my jaw off the floor and told everyone to get in the car. I might not have said it that nicely. I have been drooling over that mirror for about five years. I have been looking for lookalikes at Home Goods and everywhere else with no luck. Eighty nine…

The dust is still settling

Saturday morning our basement looked like this. It was still full of some items that we hadn’t moved out yet. The work was mainly supposed to be outside so we were told to make an eight foot radius of free space around the small window in the middle of the picture. Notice how it is slightly open. Bad. Very, very, very bad. We were going about our business upstairs. It was loud, since they were cutting through the cement foundation at that point. The troops were entertained watching everything going on outside the dining room window. Then I heard the carbon monoxide alarm going off in the basement. I opened the basement door to this. Remember that little window that was open. All the dust from the cement cutter made its way inside. Inside the relatively clean but not yet emptied basement. Dust was EVERYWHERE. It even managed to make…

The View From My Window

Yesterday morning my yard looked like it always does. The birds were eating at the bird feeder. The squirrels were picking up the scraps on the ground. Bunny rabbits were hopping around. Fast forward a couple hours and we had pure chaos in my serene backyard. Trucks parked so close to the house that some siding was broken. Holes of soft dirt and clay that caused the before mentioned truck to become stuck. The smell of gasoline in the house from the trucks and the saw used to cut the cement in the foundation wall. Big huge pieces of cement steps lifted on a crane and brought much too close to the dining room window. I’m really hoping this was the messiest day. Let’s just say there is a fine layer of dust EVERYWHERE. The closer you get to the basement level, the less of a fine layer it is.…

Project Basement Idea Board

Pinterest has kept me very busy over that past couple of months as I’ve planned the basement out. I thought I’d share with you what is going on in my head. All the following ideas are via my Pinterest board. Some of the images are random, some are because I only like one thing about the image, and some are because I want a room exactly like the one I see in front of me, down to the dust bunnies in the corner. I’m basically looking for a cozy and easygoing look that does not sacrifice on style. These looks might not all happen, but since this is just the beginning of the project I’m still in the dream phase. Enjoy!

The Mudroom Show & Tell

Since our basement project seems to be moving along at lightning speed, I’m going to show you my mudroom as it is now. In the next coming weeks it will change dramatically. I’m good at doing the best with what I have. The mudroom is one of those instances. I did some simple things to it, purely cosmetic, to get it functional for my family of five. Here is the before picture, to let you know what I was working with. This is the only before shot that I have. The mudroom is on the same level as the garage and has direct access to it. The door you see in the photo leads out to our backyard. The mudroom is connected to our family room, where you can take the stairs up to our main floor, or the stairs down to the basement. So as you can tell the…