Posts tagged ‘home’

For the past month I have been working with my husband on a basement remodel. I’ve been trying to save the post for the end of the project, but in these final stages it has been such an all encompassing endeavor that I haven’t had much else to write about. So I’ll just go ahead and share where I am now.

Believe it or not, this picture shows you a mostly finished utility room. All of the work supplies are hoisted in here so that we can paint the play room floor with epoxy paint and get some mold resistant wainscoting up on the walls.

When we moved into our home there was a “finished” basement room with some nice taupe walls and tan carpeting on the floor. Well, when we had some water damage it saturated the under layer of the carpet and made a wet basement event turn into a moldy basement situation. After having a few waterproofing companies come and explain what they planned to do and how much it would cost I decided some elbow grease would be a better investment. Worst case scenario, it doesn’t work and we go ahead with the waterproofing anyway, but if it works we are saving 90%.

So, give me a few days, there will be a great post, with before and after shots and some details on the work we’ve done. If all goes well, all the toys will take up permanent residence in the new play room and my living room will be much more livable.

First of all, I really felt silly after I quit doing this so quickly. I was sure I’d make it at least a couple of weeks, and I only made it one. But the reasons I quit were pretty legitimate.

First of all I loved getting up and knowing exactly what I needed to have ready for my day. It was a lot like my girls’ school uniforms, get up get dresses get going. If I was feeling colorful I’d grab some cool tights and a scarf or a belt, but I didn’t need to do that if I was running late and I’d still be put together.

But when we were going to be flying for a whole day to get to Austin I knew that nursing my baby was not going to work in this dress, I’d flash the whole plane! So I grabbed some jeans for the flight with a blouse to wear for the day, and packed my dress with some accessories and some shirts to wear with it into my suitcase.

Then Rob walked in and saw me in something other than my October Dress and he said, “I’m really glad you’re wearing something else. I like it when you have more color near your face.” And that was the end of the dress project. But I do feel that I will be picking my few staple pieces out more often. I loved the simplicity of being dressed well right away.

So I plan on using my October Dress much more often, and will try to incorperate into my wardrobe most days this month and I will continue to take photographs when I think I’m making it work. Hope no one thinks I’m a pansy for chickening out!

My girls all celebrate a birthday in a four week period, so rather than have a party with friends for each girl I decided it made sense to have a party with all of our friends and their families at once. To eliminate the arguments on what the theme should be I just chose a generic theme that I thought would be fun for everyone, including our boy guests.

The theme we was Silly Socks, and the invitation read as follows (it was a last minute party so I invited people on facebook, lame me):

Come celebrate our kids’ birthdays. Elise Turns 4 on Sept 21st, Cress turns the BIG ONE on Sept. 29th and Olivia turns 6 on October 21st. We’d love to have you all over for a party and a pot luck dinner. I’ll make a main dish and the cake, you can bring your awesome family, a dish to share and wear some silly socks.

Please don’t feel obligated to bring gifts, we have a small house! But if you really want to bring something for the girls to open, a gift of silly socks would be great, they can wear them with their school uniforms.

I had planned to make a sock shaped “cake” of cupcakes, but I didn’t have a board big enough to hold them all, so we ended up just eating pink and purple cupcakes. Everyone wore their silly socks and played in the living room while we chit chatted and ate yummy food.

Then after dinner we tie dyed socks to party favors. It seems like an ambitious project to tackle with all these kids, but after tie dyeing t-shirt at VBS with 50 kids this summer I felt confident it would go well. Moms and Dads helped rubber band the socks, and kids chose which color to dye them. Then as everyone was heading out the door I rinsed out most of the dye and dropped the socks into zip lock baggies with some home care directions. Everyone was pretty excited about them.  I’ll post the final sock pictures early next week, as my crazy life schedule has prevented me from finishing washing or drying the socks! Stay tuned!

I’m fascinated with home energy efficiency & resourcefulness.  I want to wrap my mind around the pros and cons of green living roofs, radiant floor heating, & grey water systems.  And because I have no plans of building a new house, how feasible & cost-effective are these for an existing home?

So, for a little research, I went to the Museum of Science & Industry’s Smart Home.  I was disappointed that we weren’t allowed to photograph while inside the home, only outside (because of some inventions & artwork).  But besides that, the house was amazing to visit and completely worth the $10 admission.

I liked:  the solar shades within the windows to keep the solar energy out, duel flush toilets, countertops made with recycled glass, a portable fireplace that runs on denatured alcohol, a gray water system to move used sink water to the toilet, open floor plan for air flow, and of course the rain barrels, green roof, & composter.

And since they renovate the home every winter, I hope to revisit it sometime to see the new technologies.

Growing up, Mom always hung clothes outside to dry.  I thought it was a waste of time because we had a dryer.  Then I wondered if we were too poor to run the dryer.  That was more concerning.  But I just went along with helping hang clothes.  At least if I helped, I’d make sure the underwear were hiding behind the towels.

Then in college, I really was a poor college student.  I hated spending those quarters on laundry, so I hauled wet clothes to the dorm room & placed them strategically over chairs & shower curtains to dry.

After moving to our house, we bought a washer & dryer.  I happily dried clothes in the dryer.  I thought, “Look at all the time I’m saving.   I just push the button! And my electric bill is affordable.  This is great!”

But in the past two years I’ve been gravitating toward all things sustainable & energy efficient.  I was shocked to learn there’s no energy stars for driers.  Then I realized Mom is more energy-savy than me.  Kicking & screaming, I resolved to hang my clothes outside.  I thought it’d be terrible & too much time & too hard with the kids.  But, I found that I like it.  I’m saving energy, and it’s not all that hard.  It takes 5 minutes to hang (I don’t bother with clothes pins), and really no more time to take them down while folding them.  Plus, since my clothesline & drying rack are under the deck overhang, I can dry clothes no matter the weather.  …Thanks Mom.

Being in the “business” of repurposing things means that I get a lot of bags of things destined for the landfill or Goodwill. My friends, family and acquaintances will drop stuff off here before they donate or pitch it. I love this. I rummage through the goods and take what I want and then drive the rest off to a Goodwill donation center.

In my most recent bag-of-stuff acquisition I found, among other things, these cool vintage flour sack tea towels with calendars printed on them. There’s no wondering what year they were made, as it is stamped right on there. I kept them even though they don’t match my decor at all. They just seemed so unique and quaint. Now I am wondering what to do with them. I don’t want to put them into my regular rags, since they get used for things like wiping up grape juice, but I can’t think of a good place to display them.

Should I just let them make their way to the thrift store, or should I keep them around for some project later on?

Last week some friends came over to help weed my driveway.  I didn’t pay them , nor was I in dire need because I broke a leg or something.   It was just an experiment in helping each other.

See, some of my girlfriends regularly get together for brunches.  But Devona & I brainstormed, “Why not do work projects for the person who hosts brunch?”  So last week I was the first work brunch hostess and kindly received lots of help with the overgrown weeds in my driveway.  I chose a project we could do while socializing & watching the kids.  We worked for an hour on what would have taken me a week alone.

Have you tried anything like this with your friends or even family or neighbors?  I’m curious what other ideas are out there.

For years I’ve had the most ragged garden, one which I apologize periodically to my neighbors.  This year it was, “I’m sorry my mint is appearing in your lawn.” and “Sorry about the raspberries looking so messy right near your garage.” But they’re nice about my urban gardening experiments, plus I always give them fresh produce!  So to curb the chaos, I’ve teamed with my husband to build three raised garden beds.

Here are instructions for building a wooden raised garden bed, plus tips on how to set it up in the garden space.  I think it’s much easier if two people work on the project together.

Supplies (for building the wood square):

tools for building bed

-4 pieces of wood per square.  Mine is 6″ tall 2″ deep, and cut to 4′ long, so my box is 4′ x 4′ square.  You can change the size, but keep in mind that you need to be able to reach all plants from the outside perimeter.  Ideally, I wanted 5′ square, but the wood only came in 8′ pieces, so 4′ square didn’t waste wood.  By the way, the nice people at the hardware store only charged $.25 a board to cut my wood.  That saved so much work!  Also, I used untreated wood.  I don’t want those chemicals near my plants.

-8 wood screws per square.   Mine are 2 1/2″ long.

-drill, extension cord to reach your drilling area, a drill bit that’s a little skinnier than your screws (for predrilling holes), and a screwdriver bit for the drill (unless you want to hand screw them with a screwdriver instead). Read more »

My husband told a friend recently that I’m a “house hacker”.  With embarrassment I asked, “Did you tell him what I did with the windows?”  (Ha, ha that might be for another post!)  But I am a hacker when it comes to my home.  I’m always trying to make something run more smoothly, resourcefully, or efficiently.  And the goal is to be aesthetically pleasing (or at least acceptable) as well.

You can probably guess that my little sign to the left is for dishes.  My husband begged for clarity on the state of the dishes.  He suggested buying a magnet.  I thought, no I can make a magnet.  So I made a magnet but soon realized my dishwasher isn’t magnetized.  Then I was going to drill a hook into my tile, but thought that was too permanent and risky if I didn’t like it.  Finally, I used a sticky hook and made this sign from two laminate countertop samples (from Zero Landfill).  The holes were already punched in them.

It’s useful & it works…dishes clarity!  And it doesn’t look too bad.  Plus, I could remove the sign for special occasions, and the little hook isn’t too conspicuous.  Do you have any interesting kitchen hacks?

Our flower gardens are in full bloom. And if you have  little girls, like me, then all of the floral bounty is probably turning their imaginings to the subject of fairies.

This dish, filled with water, became the paddling pool for some fairies on our dining room table this week. I let the girls cut the flowers from my hostas before I trimmed them down to use in decorating the pond. They also clipped some lamb’s ears, some pink flowers (I don’t know what they are!) and some of the petals from my day lilies. The day lily petals made great boats.

The bonus feature for this “craft” is that it makes a wonderful variation on a center piece. The flowers remained vibrant for about 5 days before I needed to remove them from the table giving us plenty of time to enjoy the arrangement, and plenty of time for the girls to retell Thumbelina around the dining room table.