It's All in the Details

One of the first things I needed to do to our new place was give us a little privacy. Our front door is one of those that once you walk through it BOOM you're in the living room...yeah, annoying, but whatevs as that's not the real problem. It's also one of those door with the full length skinny window beside it - I'm sure it has some technical name but I'm not fancy enough to know what it is.

Now don't get me wrong - I love natural light. I constantly have my blinds and curtains open to let the sun light in, so that wasn't my complain, instead, the freaks trouble came out at night. We'd be sitting on the couch and you'd look out this bare skinny window and see nothing but darkness. Someone could stand and watch us and we'd be none the wiser. And Momma walks around half dressed, as does the brood, so we can't have the entire neighborhood gettin' a little looksie.

Enter - window film.

Sorry for the blurry photo. It's from Lowe's, the window film, not the blurry photo. It didn't cost more than $20, an investment I was willing to make. Installing it was simple enough. I did need Ethan's long arms at one point and Ari was my helper as usual. First we measured the length and width we needed.

And I decided which part of the design I wanted showing. I trimmed it with the nifty little cutter it came with as E and Ari held it for me. Then we used this little kit to apply it to the window.

The texture of the window frost was nice, it allowed for natural light to shine through during the day while blocking the view at night due to the pebble-ish texture of the film. The film also helped hide some air bubbles, seriously you have to inspect it really close to determine if there is an air bubble in the film due to the texture.

From afar it's subtle and simple - you can hardly tell in this photo, it's tough to photograph not only because of the sun but because of the subtleness of it.

And while we are doing little upgrades to the house to make it feel more like ours, Jersey is napping in random spots around the house.

To be a cat for a day. Actually no, scratch that, I enjoy not burying my poop.

Happy Hump Day, ya'll...

Lor

My Towel...No, MY Towel!

Source

When I saw the hooks pictured above at Anthropologie I knew they had to be mine. But at $12 a pop I thought I could find something similar at a much cheaper price. Now before you get all concerned about my fiscal well-being I realize that $12 isn't a huge amount of money. Heck, even buying three of them (which is what I wanted - one for each kid) would only total $36 dollars but lets get real, $36 simply for three hooks is ridiculous in my cheap mind. 

So when I found a similar item at Micheal's for .99 cents I knew they had to be mine. They were being sold as drawer pulls but I knew I could convert them into hooks somehow. So I bought some wood, with the help of Owen and Ari, at Lowe's (forgive the blurry iPhone photo)

along with some hooks and got to makin'. First I stained my wood, which was a $1.97 1X4' furring strip that I had them cut to 36" (and kept the rest for a future project that I already have in mind). 

Then I painted it with some left-over blue paint I had on hand. Then I sanded it to give it the distressed look I was going for. Next I took the hook I purchased from Lowe's and screwed those bad boys into the wood. But I only put one of the screw in each hook. 

Then I whipped out my drawer pulls and screwed them into the top hole of the hook to make it look like one unit (to the left in the below photo), rather than a hook with a drawer pull placed above the hook (like the one on the right). 

Then I removed this ugly towel bar

to make room for the new one. I saved it in my closet though so that I could reinstall it when we move (we are in a rental). Then I just drilled my new masterpiece straight into the studs of the wall. And voila! My babies have a personalized towel bar! I needed to touch up the holes where the old towel bar was but we've since decided to move to a bigger house so I'm just leaving it as-is since we'll be packing in about three weeks anyway.

Since making their own towel bar I can now I can give them all the same colored towels since then hang them on their specific hook. Trust me, prior to them having their own hooks there were arguments over whose towel was whose. So much so that we had to buy color coded towels per child. Ari had pink, Ethan red, and Owen green. But, alas, with their individual hooks they can all have the same color towel so that their bathroom decor looks cohesive even with their towels hanging up!

I think I did pretty good price wise - I already owned the stain, poly, paint, and sandpaper. So with the wood being $1.97, the pulls being $.99 each, and the hooks being $3.51 each, I came in at $15.50. Holla!

Any bathroom updates in ya'lls house? The kids' bathroom got neglected for so long because they have been gone for five months so the room never got used except by the occasional guest. But that's definitely changed these days. It now gets plenty of use and is often overrun with bathtub toys and dirty clothes littered on the floor, but I wouldn't have it any other way! Take care ya'll! 

Muah,

Lor