Strawberry Patch

We are big fans of strawberries over here. Brooklyn would eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner if I let her (if she gets sugar to dip them in, it's even better!). We knew when we bought a house, we wanted a yard, and when we got our yard, we wanted to plant a garden. We moved in May of last year so we technically could have started a garden last year. But seeing that we had to buy a lawn mower and a fence first, we decided to put the garden off until this year.

I have been SO excited to try to grow a garden. I have a black thumb. I kill plants. I can never keep anything alive (besides my children...I've been really proud of keeping them alive). I went to a few gardening classes at Thanksgiving Point hoping to get all of the answers. I've pinned a million sites, read so many articles about gardening. So here we go! Our first gardening season!

We have a few small garden spots so far, but today I'll just share about our strawberry patch. Dane found these cool bricks in my grandpa's garage before he moved. He brought them all home and threw them on our side driveway. (In fact, we still have some there...we still look like the white trash neighbors...) He dug out a spot of grass where we wanted our strawberry patch and built a circular, well almost circular, patch with the bricks. Then he bought some stakes to go through the holes to keep them in place.

He filled the hole with some weed barrier to keep out the weeds/grass. We filled the hole with dirt, got some strawberry plants his brother was getting rid of, and now we have a strawberry patch! In the future, we want to build another patch just like this next to it, but this year, we'll try out this one.

It has been so fun checking on them every day and watching the little flowers start to grow. Pretty soon we'll have strawberries and I'm going to have to keep Brooklyn away so she doesn't eat them all at once!!

Little Miss Headboard

*Disclaimer: This is a pretty boring, lame post compared to others, but it is a project I just finished so I figured I better go ahead and write about it...

Brooklyn, our almost 3 year old, has been sleeping in a toddler bed for the past year or so. She shares a room with our guest queen bed. The past few weeks, she has been climbing up into the queen bed (which is pretty high off the ground) and trying to sleep in there. We figured it was time to move her up to a twin bed for her own safety.

Lucky for us, we scored a twin box spring, mattress, and headboard at my grandpa's estate sale. (Seriously, we've been so lucky.) Knowing that the girls will eventually share a room and want to decorate it, we didn't want to buy new bedding right now. So lucky Brooklyn got mom's old college sheets and comforter. She doesn't know the difference, so it's great!

The headboard, however, I could do something with for fairly cheap.

I took the extra white chalk paint I had from the entertainment center and started painting. I used all that I had left and had to buy one more little can, which is okay because I'm using it for a future project as well. This is after 2 coats.

It took 3 good coats of the chalk paint. Then I sealed it with 3 coats of the wax to help protect it. We put it in Brooklyn's room and she LOVES it!

Someday she'll get a cute room with painted walls (so it won't be a white headboard against a white wall) but for now, she's just so excited to be in a big bed! I found a bed rail on a facebook yard sale site for $3 so now we don't have to worry about her falling off.

Next step is getting her past her middle of the night wake up calls...seriously, anyone else have a 2.5 year old who forgot how to sleep?? My girls go in phases of being amazing sleepers to not being amazing sleepers and their phases never overlap. I'm not sure if I should be grateful that I'm not a complete zombie sometimes or that I'm tired all the time. :)

Master Closet Makeover

One of the great things about Fieldstone Homes is their big closets. There are walk in closets in every bedroom. The master closet is no exception. In fact, when we first looked at our house with our realtor, he showed us how we could run sprints in our closet for exercise. Thanks, Mitch. :)

While Dane was tearing out all of the closet shelving and replacing them, we decided to create a closet space that worked for us. Home Depot has a really cool tool that allows you to create custom closets. We entered our measurements and designed where we wanted rods, shelves, etc. Then instead of going to the store to buy the materials, we used what we had already bought and Dane put it together.

We each have 2 half size hanging rods. Is that what it's called? I don't even know.

Then we each have a full size hanging area with a shelf above.

Then there's center shelves for both of us which separate my side from his side. The one long shelf at the top is great for any extra storage. And we obviously don't have a hard time filling that up.

Here's Dane's side.

And the shoes are all at the end. Funny story, one of my first interactions with Dane was a BBQ he and his roommates threw when they first moved in. For some reason, my roommate and I welcomed ourselves to a tour of their place and saw one room with a TON of shoes on shoe racks. When we questioned them, Dane sheepishly said they were all his. He seriously has more shoes than I do. Although he has hardly bought any since we got married. Sorry, babe. :)

We brought our dresser into the closet because we got tired of having clothes two different places. And we had space for it.

So there you have it! There really isn't a whole lot of storage in our house besides the closets, so we have to stick other random things in our closets. Brooklyn's closet has all of the holiday decorations, Callie's closet has all of our kids clothes storage boxes, etc. Our garage is tight enough with 2 cars in it, we couldn't store much in there like we did in our last place. Thankfully, our bedroom closets are big!

Stripes, Stripes, and more Stripes

I have this thing with stripes right now. The last couple of times I have gone clothes shopping (which, let's be honest, hardly EVER happens), I've looked down and 4 out of 5 of the things in my hand to try on have stripes. It's a problem.

This winter, my kids were really sick. Croup, ear infections, colds, roseola, all sorts of fun things. By the end of January, we had been stuck inside so much that this one big white wall in my kitchen/dining area was starting to really bug me. I painted almost all of the main floor light gray (Benjamin Moore's Revere Pewter, to be exact) but I left this wall white. I had already put up vinyl that I didn't want to take down and throw away. That's the real reason why I didn't paint it gray. Lazy and cheap.

After the sicknesses, I'd had enough. I searched for accent walls on pinterest and found a striped wall. Perfect! It covered my addiction to all things stripes AND I could leave my vinyl on the wall (if I strategically placed it so it was on a white stripe). I used the extra paint I had from painting my pantry door and my front door (a $9 Home Depot can) and went to town.

By the way, this is the one and only project Dane didn't lift one finger. In fact, he laid on the couch and watched TV while I worked. Typically, our roles are reversed (insert monkey covering face emoji) so I was VERY proud of myself for figuring it all out. 

I ended up taking down the big vinyl letters that spell FAMILY because they were big and easy to not rip. The small letters underneath, I folded down if they were too tall. The tape covered the rest. I put x's on the stripes to NOT paint, because knowing me (I painted after the kids were in bed...I was tired), I would accidentally paint what was supposed to be white.

It took two coats of paint and voila, I now have my striped wall! I get a lot of comments on it (maybe people think it's super weird and have to say something nice in order to cover up what they are thinking), but I think it's pretty fun.

I'm still working on the bench cover. I changed color schemes a bit and want to find a fun navy fabric or a fun yellow fabric (to go with the yellow baskets in the entertainment center) to recover the cushion. This is where the girls and I keep our shoes. Someday we'll have a mud room to put them in, but for now, this is the place!

P-P-P-Pantry!

Before moving in, Dane wanted to tear out all of the wire shelving throughout the house and replace them with wood. We bought our lumber at CR Doors & Moulding in Springville and had them delivered to our place. We used the same place in our previous home for baseboards and trim and they were great and very well priced.

We bought $5 Sherwin Williams mistint white paint because we didn't care if they were a little off and painted all of the shelves before installing them. (By we I mean Dane's family helped a LOT with the painting part while Dane installed and I took care of a brand new baby.) The pantry was one of the first place that got a new look!

It has a lot of space, we just aren't huge fans of wire shelves. I know some people love them, but we prefer solid wood so things don't fall through or won't stand straight. So he took those out and began installing shelves that go all the way up to the ceiling.

Now I know that this looks like a headache to some people. Not everything is in a bin (bins from the Dollar Store). They don't all match. Things aren't spaced out perfectly. But it works for us. :) I still need some help with my organization skills. Or my super healthy eating skills (macaroni and ramen anyone?? They are my 2 year old's favorite foods).

I love that I can keep all my food in one place (besides the fridge/freezer). In our last place our pantry was pretty little so we had food in the pantry, under the stairs, in cupboards, wherever it would fit! We have space in here for food, extra appliances, serving dishes, food storage (still working on building that up...), grocery sacks, etc.

Brooklyn loves having her snacks and cereal on the shelf she can reach. Plus, I love it because she can fetch her own dang food every time she wants to eat. And as tiny as she is, I let her eat any time of day. :)

So there you have it. New shelves in the pantry, a whole bunch of stuff stored in there, and a door I can close to hide it all when people come over. :)

Recycled Entertainment Center

Our family room wall is big. Really big. We had a little TV stand with a TV mounted on it when we moved in and it worked fine. It just looked really small against the big wall. We kept our eyes open for things we could use to build an entertainment center.

Remember when we got that whole kitchen set from my grandpa's basement? At the same time, we were put in charge of preparing his house for an estate sale (he was moving to an assisted living center). Looking through all of their furniture, we found 2 matching bookcases. Light bulb when on in Dane's head (he's the mastermind of almost all of these projects). We brought them home and he went to work designing.

I painted the pieces white with the Americana chalk paint from Home Depot. It's a tad cheaper than other chalk paint and does the job great! No sanding, no priming, just paint right on. Love it. It ended up taking a lot more paint than I thought, so I had to buy like 5 of those little 8 oz jars. They sell the bigger size online, but I was in get 'er done mode so I just kept going back for more. I left the back piece alone and ordered some patterned contact paper from Amazon for a pop of color. However, once it came, it didn't stick well, and the color was hard to see. Bummer. So I ended up ordering a color of chalk paint Home Depot didn't have in stock called relic which is a dark gray. I. Love. It. It's dark, which in a white entertainment center against a light gray wall, is exactly the pop I was looking for.

Dane pulled two of the extra kitchen cabinets down from the garage (he hung all the extra ones in the garage for storage) and put an entertainment center together. I seriously don't know how he figures it all out, but he does. It was like putting a big puzzle together! He attached the two cabinets to the wall, hung the TV on a wall mount, and put the bookcases on either side and attached them, too! Then he added fancy little borders around the edges to make it feel cohesive.

I love the storage in the cabinets. We keep movies and games in them. I am still working on the decor on the bookcases. We went to Ikea and found a few frames and things that were cheap but cute. I searched our bookcase in our bedroom for cool looking books and books that remind us of Christ. I kept the bottom of the bookcase open for toys and found these amazing bins to hold toys--one for Brooklyn and one for Callie. I love them and love the pop of color.

This fits SO much better on that big wall and I love that almost every piece of it was recycled from old furniture. Hooray for not spending a whole bunch of $$ on a big statement piece in our house!!

Floors, Glorious Floors!

Moving in, we knew we need to update the flooring ASAP. However, we also knew it would cost a pretty penny. We are both pretty cheap frugal and have a hard time throwing down a lot of cash at once. We shopped around. A LOT. In our previous home, we laid dark brown laminate throughout the entire main floor, so we'd done this before. And we'd shopped around a lot then. This time, we had already finished our kitchen cabinets dark brown so we didn't want to go with the dark brown floors (although I LOVED them in our last home). We aren't huge fans of light or medium brown, so we decided to go gray.

This picture was before the cabinets were stained, just showing the linoleum floors in the kitchen.

We searched and searched for gray laminate (we like the look of wood without the cost of wood) everywhere. Home Depot, Lowes, Lumber Liquidators, every flooring warehouse, specialty flooring stores. Everywhere. Nothing had the shade we wanted for the price we wanted. Finally, we went to Lumber Liquidators for the second or third time and they were having a sale. And there was a light gray that we liked (not sure if we loved, but we liked). PLUS there was an extra 10% off that weekend on that brand.

Laminate the previous owners had laid in the dining area. I hated the shiny finish. Every single drop of anything showed and I felt like I had to clean it every 30 seconds!

Luckily, Dane's fall break was coming up so we decided that's when we'd get the project going. He carefully ripped up the baseboards (because we did NOT want to pay to replace them all, although I would love to have new baseboards someday). I took up the old laminate the previous owners had put in the dining area. I was pretty careful about that, too, hoping we could sell it (which we did for $60 on ksl). Dane tore up the carpet along the entryway to make a traffic flow coming in from the front door. That was pretty much all we had to take out before we could start laying down.

Entryway had a little bit of linoleum and then carpet until you hit the dining laminate.

Dane's family is all very handy, so his dad and brother spent some time here that weekend helping out which was so nice. We were able to get everything cut and laid and put back together that weekend (except the half bath, which he just finished last week...). While they were cutting and laying, I repainted the baseboards so they at least look clean and white. Brooklyn even helped lay the pieces in the back corner of the pantry. :)

After it was all done, we were in love with it!! It is so hard to tell on a little sample at the store what it will look like in your house. But we were so happy with our choice and the price really couldn't be beat. It ended up being around $1.30/square foot (that included the padding underneath so we didn't have to buy OR lay that separately. Money and time saver.)

We do understand laminate floors will be ruined if they get water underneath. So if our house ever floods, we'd be in trouble. But we are pretty careful about that and little spills are no big problems. Because let's be real, with 2 little ones, little spills happen ALL the time! But these floors have held up so well and clean so easy.

Little Half Bath

Our little half bath started out WHITE! The previous owners had replaced the original sink with a washing sink. The laundry room is across the hall and doesn't have space for a sink and they must have really wanted a washing sink! I'm not that fancy at laundry, so I knew I wanted it gone. Behind the sink they had a weird white plastic thing on the wall. That made the mirror move up higher which was NOT okay with me. It'd be fine for Dane, but I felt super short (I know, I am super short...), so I wanted to move it back down. They had left behind an over the toilet shelving thing that was ALSO white. Oh, and the toilet was super low to the ground and didn't flush well. Being the guest bathroom, we figured maybe we should have a better toilet. :)

First things first, I painted the walls. I used the same paint that I used in the laundry room (the $5 mistint gallon from Sherwin Williams). However, I ran out so I had to have them match it and get another gallon (not as cheap). 

I spray painted the over the toilet shelving and added a few little knick knacks on it. And we got a new toilet that looks and feels a little better! Thanks, Costco.

Dane found a great little sink at DI for around $25. It is a corner sink, so it looks a little silly in there, but I like it much better than the washing sink that shook when you touched it. Someday maybe we'll fit a real sink in there. :) I painted the cabinets white, added some new hardware, and washed it up. Good as new!

(Funny story. One day I finished painting one coat of white on the cabinets and left it to dry. I went to nurse Callie and Brooklyn was quiet for awhile. I asked her what she was doing and she called out, "Painting!!" She was being my helper and painting the white for me...ON THE WALLS!! She was so sweet about it, I couldn't even get mad because she really thought she was helping me. She had helped me paint the blue in the laundry room and bathroom. The one and only mischief she really got into while nursing the baby...)

We took down the towel bar and got just a towel ring. I like it much better. Last thing I want to do is frame the mirror. It's really boring just like that. It's on our long list of projects!

Here are the before and after shots together!

Little Laundry Room

The little laundry room on the main floor was B.O.R.I.N.G. Not that a laundry room needs to be exciting, but I figured I'd be spending some time in there and wanted it to bring me happy feelings, not lonely feelings. Laundry isn't the greatest chore, so I wanted to spice it up a bit! So it became the first room we worked on before moving in.

I figured it was small enough to paint quickly before the washer and dryer came. Sherwin Williams sometimes has mistint paints for $5 a gallon. I found a color I liked and 5 bucks later was on my way! After I painted, Dane laid down the extra flooring we had from our old place. We had just enough to fit in the tiny space.

I found an idea of shelves on Pinterest that I showed Dane and he went to town. (I LOVE having a handy husband!!)

I found the Laundry sign at Hobby Lobby, added the other decorations I already had, and threw an extra laundry basket up there for kitchen towels and wash cloths. It is just the right amount of space to store laundry supplies.

We moved in the day before Mother's Day (which was also Dane's birthday that year) and the night we moved in, Dane came home with my Mother's Day present. It has been the greatest thing ever for a small laundry room! (It folds against the wall when not in use.) He thinks he got it at Ikea, but I can't find it on their website anywhere...

Last Christmas, Dane's parents gave us a deep freezer. The only spot we really have for it is in the laundry room, so that's where it went! It's a tight squeeze, but we make it work. I love having the extra space for freezer meals (or 40 lbs of chicken when Macey's has it on sale for $1.29/pound).

So there you have it. Our little laundry room that I love!!

PS-Someday, we might move the laundry room upstairs. Our neighbors moved their washer/dryer up to their master bath (which is huge...someday I'll blog about it) and then use this room as a mud room for shoes, coats, backpacks, etc. When our kids are older, that will be AMAZING! But for now, it's our perfect little laundry room.

Closet Under the Stairs

In our old townhouse, we had most of the kid toys stored in the closet under the stairs. It was nice when we had people come over, we could throw everything in there, shut the door, and pretend we had a clean house. We knew that we wanted to do something even more fun with this space. Then I saw what Brooke Walker of Studio 5 did in hers here and was inspired to do it right then.

We started by searching through the "as is" paint at Home Depot. That's probably my favorite section in the whole store. They sell their gallon buckets of paint for $9 if it was mistinted. I was able to pull out 3 colors I liked and then choose one. Because it's such a small space, I knew I wouldn't need more than a gallon.

After painting the walls (and LOVING the color), we went to Ikea. We got two spice racks to hold books (after I painted them white).

We also got 3 frames for the wall. I'm still deciding what to put in the center frame...

At Hobby Lobby we bought a cheap chalkboard (using their 40% off coupon, it was super cheap!) and I painted it to match.

We already had the magnet board with alphabet letters, an ABC poster, and 2 map posters. We used the magnet board to hide the water turn off thing. We didn't want the kids trying to get in it, and it was ugly. The magnet board fits right over top!

We wanted some sort of seating in there to sit and read books, so we grabbed a bench and pillows I had made for an upstairs bench that NEVER gets used upstairs, and threw that in there as well.

With the little extra wall space we had, we decided to get some cheap Command hooks to hang princess dresses. Before this, they were stuffed in a box, so we thought it'd be fun to display them...and they get used much more now that they are out in the open!

Here it is all together:

For being a fairly easy, inexpensive project, we were happy with the way it turned out! Last thing we need to do is get a little light in there to make it easier to read anytime of day. It gets plenty of light during the day with the door wide open...but it'd be nice to have a light. :)

PS. This is still the place we throw all of the toys when people come over...so don't ever ask to see the closet under the stairs. :)