Averyville

So if you know me, you know I always have a project I'm working on. That's not hyperbole, y'all - I seriously have a project constantly going. I've become much better about it though, now, instead of having numerous projects ongoing I limit myself to two at the max, so I can't start another one until I've finished one of the two. It's helped get things done quicker, so that's nice. If you're a perpetual project-doer like me I suggest you try something similar. Anyway...

I realize it's only September, but with my constant projects coupled with the fact that I make each of my kidlets two of their Christmas gifts each year, its totally necessary to start my Christmas projects early or they won't get done. Kinda like that t-shirt quilt of Owen's that I've been working on for two years. No exaggeration. I just need to bind it but it's the least fun part so I keep putting it off. Le sigh.

I have two and a half DIY gifts for Avery this year. The "half" is a hack I plan to do to an already built ikea play kitchen so I can't really claim that as a total DIY. I like that its made mainly of wood,  if there's anything I've learned in my 16 years of motherhood its that quality toys are what you want. Don't get me wrong, she has plastic toys as I'm no prairie/crunchy mom despite what some of my friends may say, but the majority of her toys are wood because they last longer. With my oldest he had 8 million and one toys and with Avery she has significantly less. I've learned that less is more. But that's a post I plan to bring to you another day.

Now to go with Av's play kitchen area I thought it would be super cute to make her a sign. She loves role-playing lately (taking care of her baby, 'cooking' me food, 'reading' to herself) so a kitchen and serving area would be right up her alley. Check out some of the cute hacks I found on Pinterest, this is the kitchen I plan to get her but my 'hack' is going to be slightly different as I plan to pull inspiration from some of these and yet make it all her own and to go with the rest of her decor in her play nook.

Can we talk about that faux marble contact paper they used on the counter of the first kitchen?! Mama like. Essentially this kid is gonna have a nicer kitchen than me. Which I guess isn't that difficult seeing how we are in a rental and its builder basic. In a couple years, when we aren't moving states or countries every five seconds I'll have a pinterest-worthy kitchen, just you watch.

Now, to go with her kitchen I made her a cute little sign. I love personalized decor so I thought it only proper to give my girl her own sign. I went with the "Averyville Cafe". I promised my girlfriend a quick how-to and figured it'd be a useful blog post as well so here goes...

1. Decide how big you want your sign. I plan to hang this directly above her kitchen. The kitchen is 28" wide so I made my sign 27" long. I had this wood already stained and left over from a past project so all I did was measure and cut. Yay for easiness.

2. Hop on your computer and open up Photoshop of whatever editing program you like to use. Pick the size and face of your font. The font I used was "Sweet Pea Regular" in all caps at 250 size font. That was after resizing my image to the size of the board (27" wide by 5" tall).

3. Print your saying.

4. Position your saying at your desired location on the board and tape it in place.

5. Using a sharp pencil (a pen would work too) trace over each letter HARD! This is going to leave an indent in the wood.

6. Choose your paint.

7. Remove the paper and hand-paint the words on your sign using the indentations as your guide. You need a steady hand for this so enlist the help of someone else is you tend to be a bit shaky.

8. Let it dry.

9. And a coat of poly to it (this will prevent the paint from being chipped) and viola!

Easy as pie! Tracing the letters took me the most time. And I think I spent about 30 minutes total on this project and I already owned everything so it was free, what's better than that?! I do plan to distress the sign a bit but I want to wait for it to dry for a couple days before bringing it into contact with sandpaper then I'll poly it so that'll probably take me another 10-15 minutes but I'm not complaining. Now I can't wait from Christmas to show you what I do to the kitchen. I'm more exited than I probably should be, guys.

Welp, hope this tutorial helps you bite the bullet if you've ever wanted to try your hand at making your own custom sign. Merry Christmas Happy Fall, friends!

February Flashback and Pinterest Addictions

When you're trying to edit photos but your computer, well, your 11 year old's computer, is sloooooooower than slow for some reason and you want to throw it across the room but you know you can't because your laptop is gone-zo because two years ago you spilled water on it and almost died from a panic attack during the spillage but it kept working for some reason so then you were happy but then two years later (also know as last month) you go to turn it on and it's dead, then you pay some dude hundreds of dollars to tell you that your MacBook Pro, that cost over $1000 is not going to work because the water damage you did to it finally corroded some component inside of it so now you're using your 11 year olds laptop but it's your old MacBook from your undergraduate years so it's like 6 years old and is suuuuuper slow and you're tempted to walk across the street to the BX to buy that beautiful iMac you saw on display last week but you have to pay over $7000 on the 4th when you move in to your new place so you know a $1200 purchase at this moment isn't smart so you stop editing photos and write a blog post on some two and a half month old photos you found because you couldn't get to your present day photos because, again, the computer is being stupid and yeah...

Whew! Who else is tired now?

Today I'm gonna rewind to February, Valentine's Day mainly. I know it's almost June but humor me, aight? I came across some photos of V-day Rumdizzle style and thought I'd share. Mother, I am sorry for not sharing sooner. Oh, and your yearbook for 2012 should be arriving to your house in a few weeks. I know 2013 is half over but I'm a mess I tell ya. Without further ado...

Ethan is in middle school. Read: Too school for cool. Read: No parties happening in the classrooms. Read: They will long for V-day parties in 20 years. Seriously, these middle schoolers think their too old for this shit and then one day BOOM they're 30 and E's like, "Dude, I wonder if Theresa likes me" and his friend is like, "Dude, Valentine's Day is tomorrow, wait and see what she writes on your valentine at the party." And he's like, "Dude, smart i.d." Because they shorten everything nowadays and instead of saying 'idea' they are gonna say 'i.d." Mark my words. Then tomorrow comes and Theresa gives the whole class Charlie Brown Valentine's that say "From, Theresa" But she gives E a Charlie Brown Valentine that says, "From Theresa. :)"

It's that simple gentlemen. Ethan! Write this down. Or bookmark this post or whatever kids do nowadays. That simple ':)' that she didn't give anyone else means, "Will you be mine" but when your 30 you don't get Valentine's parties and shit so you'll never know how Theresa feels because men are stupid and don't understand when women care about them it makes them absolutely crazy and they can't make. you. understand. truly. how. they. feel. Ok, for real this time, I'm getting to the point of this post...

Owen and Ari needed to bring Valentine's to their classes party for the big day. We make everything around here because when I was a stay-at-home-mom it filled my day but now that I'm a work fulltime mom I still feel the need to do these little things with my kidlets rather than go to walmart and buy them a box of valentine's and shove them in their backpacks. Plus I'm a nerd and like doing artsy stuff. So we whipped out our slew of crafts and got to makin'.  I loved that they both made their own cards. Instead of being worried about them being perfect and asking me to do all the work they made the majority of them. Of course I was in charge of doing stuff like punching hearts out of cardstock or cutting things.

Ari is obsessed with mustaches. So her cards were mustache related. She's a creative peanut, she wrote things like, "I mustache you a question - will you be mine?" So. damn. cute. that kid.

She needed something to put all her valentines in at school so we took a jar and decorated it. Hey, I like to use what we have.

 

And yes, I spray painted the lid. #It'sTheLittleThings

And here's my baby posing like the ham he is.

Oh, and since it was just me and three minors on Valentine's day they didn't want me to feel unloved so they made me coffee. And by 'they' I mean 'Ari' because she's the only one that knows how I like my coffee made. And as I was getting in the car to go to work, with coffee in hand, Owen ran back from the bus stop to give me a flower that he picked. "For the best Mommy ever" as he always says. They have no clue but it's little things like that that mean a lot to me. Seth always asks what I want for holidays or special occasion and I try to tell him that the things that mean the most to me aren't things he can buy. That may sound corny but for me it's true. Some chicks dig diamonds and stuff. Me? Making me coffee and picking me a flower means more than a dinner and bouquet of roses ever would.

Speaking of which, my favorite gift from Seth to this day is two broken heads from his watches that he gave me and put in a shadow box. It's a long story but here goes: we met at field training (our version of basic training) and we were pretty much attached at the hip the whole time. Seth was our flight commander for a while so when he was in front of our flight preparing to march us from one event to another people would sometimes ask him for the time or he would simply look at his watch to make sure we got there one time (for instance, if we showed up a few minutes too early or late for chow we didn't get to eat so time was of the essence for those 28 days). A week in to it and the straps of his watch broke so instead of looking at his wrist for the time he'd have to pull out the head of the watch to check the time. He had the supply officer buy him a new watch on one of her supply runs but that watch, too, eventually lost its strapped. So he now had two strapless watch heads.  So I'd ask him everyday, in formation, out loud, in front of our CTO and FTO, "Cadet Rumbarger, could you please tell me what time it is?" And he'd stand there, at attention, and have to pull out this little round head of a strapless watch, hold it up to his face, put it back in his pocket, pop back to attention and say, "It is 1310!" And we'd both struggle to keep our bearing and not die laughing because it was so ridiculous to see him pull out his broken watch rather than simply consult his wrist. So yeah, two broken watch heads are my most treasured gift because of the meaning behind them.

Not only did Owen think of me on Valentine's day, but he also hung on to his daddy for dear life when he came to visit a few weeks before Valentine's day. We celebrated it while Seth was with us rather than actually on 14 Feb. Seth had been in Owen's room with him playing and when he went to leave the room Owen jumped the floor and grabbed Seth's leg begging him to stay.

I love the relationship these two have. Seth has been around since Owen was two years old so all Owen knows me with is Seth, and their bond is a close one and I absolutely love seeing them together. Owen is totally a Mommy's boy, but when Seth is in town he's all about Daddy. Seriously. Seth and I will be sitting on the couch and Owen will come downstairs after waking up in the morning and he'll go sit on Seth's lap and I don't get so much as a "Good morning Mom"...it's like I'm chopped liver.

Oh, and on a more updated note, we signed for our house today! It's official - we move in on 4 June! We will be furnitureless because our household goods won't be here for another few weeks but that's fine because we will keep busy painting anyway. At first we planned to just paint over the crazy bright kitchen and laundry room and maybe liven up the curently cream/tan living room walls but after looking over photos of the house we took we realized the sunroom will need painted too because it's currently a muddy orange color and while I love yellow and orange they just aren't jiving for me in the shades the owner picked. And then I made the mistake of getting on Pinterest and I've come up with all sorts of fun ideas like a stripped accent wall in the kids' playroom and a moody gray living room, and awesome color blocks in O's room and and a super dark blue half bathroom. I'm pinning my little heart out. Seriously, if you click here you can see the thousands of pins that I've pinned. On my, like, 30 different boards. I'm sure my family would appreciate it I focused less on my 'For The Home' board and more on my 'Recipe' board. Fo' real.

Lorri The Not-So-Magnificent Chef

God Bless Pinterest

...or America, whichever you prefer.

If you know me you know that I love me some Pinterest. In the past I've made many things after being inspired by Pinterest. And this go 'round I decided to get all patriotic and make my version of an American Flag. I saw this beauty at Pottery Barn a while back and admired it through my computer screen because there was no way I was paying $129 for it. 

Source

I've had the idea of making it for a few months now but I kept putting it off and telling myself to wait until we move next month before making or buying anything else. But I could no longer resist!

So I went to Lowe's and bought 4 furring strips and asked the fine people of Lowe's to cut each of them in half. I also bought three one half pint cans of paint (red, white, and blue), as well as these flush mounting thing-a-ma-jiggers to hang the finished product with. 

When I got home I took a furring strip that I already had and cut it in half to use as an anchor for all the other strips. Photos are courtesy of my awesome helper, aka 10 year old daughter, so they are a bit blurry

Then I lined everything up and got to screwin'. Wait, that sounded bad.

And now we had the flag built. The photo below is of the back of it so that you can see how I used two pieces of a furring strip to hold the whole thing together.

And here's the front. Ariana said, "Momma! Does it look like my head is floating?!"

The flag is four feet long, to give you an idea of how tiny my ten year old is here are a few silly pictures. Oh, and forgive her wild hair and mismatched clothes, we were in 'let's bum it around the house' mode.

Then I brought it outside to tape it off so that I could stain/paint it. I wanted to stain it first so that when I sanded it the stain would peek through. Had I been thinking I would have just painted the whole thing white after staining it so that I only had to tape off the strips once. Oh well, you live you learn. 

After getting all the painting done I sanded the heck out of that puppy. First I was sanding by hand because I was afraid of sanding too much. But then after sanding by hand I realized I loved the super distressed look and it would have taken me far too long to do it by hand so I broke out my lovely sander and went for it. Then, with the help of the kids, we added stars to it. I simply bought a Martha Stewart star punch, used some white contact paper I had on hand and Ari punched them all out for me. Ethan helped me add them to the flag. And here she is all finished:

When we move next month I plan to hang it above Ethan's bed. In the meantime I put it on a blank wall in the boys' room.

So there's my version of Pottery Barn's $129 flag. Mine was under $35. And it was made with the help of my kidlets so that makes it extra special to me.

All my supplies from Lowe's (four furring strips, paint, one pack of flush mount hangers) totaled $22.94, and the Martha Stewart star punch was $11 after a 40% off coupon at Michael's, all the other supplies (stain, brushes, tape, contact paper, sander, screws, etc) I already owned. Not too shabby, eh? Gotta love Pinterest!

Xo,

Lorri

Pop Goes the Boys' Room

I admit it. I have totally neglected the boys’ room. Partially because I knew our current digs is temporary and partially because I didn’t have a vision for the space. Well, thanks to *sound the trumpets: dun, dun, dun, duuuuun!* Pinterest I found a solid foundation on what I’d like to build the style of each of the boys’ rooms around, but the problem is that they currently share a room *whomp, whomp, whomp, whooooomp* (I really need sound effects for this post). So I’ve decided to simply get started on a few small projects that will work in the shared space for the next few months as well as work for their own individual rooms when they get ‘em. 

You can check out the boards I have for E’s and Owen’s rooms on Pinterest to get a better idea of my starting point, but to be honest, a lot of the design for their rooms is simply stored in my head.

I’ve recently started to dig distressed, unperfect looking art and furniture so for E’s room I envision the focal point to be a huge piece of art hung above his full size bed. To be exact, I want to do a painting of an American flag but give it a distressed look. I also want to do some sort of wall-mounted shelves to display his knick-knacks on. And this kid has a lot of display worthy items, namely Legos. He has a future in architeture, I tell ya. So in addition to the shelves I plan to one day make I was keeping an eye out for other awesome, vintagy pieces that I could turn into a cool display piece.

In comes Craigslist. Holla!

It’s hit or miss with Craigslist when it comes to finding neat-o things. But when browsing the site one day I came across this:

It’s an old pop crate. A Pepsi bottle crate to be exact. Super cool. And with a price of a cool 20 bones I had to jump, I didn’t even barter with the guy, I wanted it thaaaat baaad. What’s even better was that the guy actually had two of them that he was getting rid of. Can I get a 'what what'?!

The crates are old so they already have that rustic look that I’ve been envisioning. So all I did was give ‘em a good wipe down and slap some poly on it.

Now don't let the sentence "all I did was give 'em a good wipe down" fool you into thinking that this was a ten minute process. The bottoms of the inside of the crates were filthy with...I guess it was dust. It looked like it had been sitting in someone's basement for years and just collected layers upon layers of dust on the inside. So I washed them with water, sprayed cleaner on them, scrubbed, rinsed, and repeated about three or four times. Then I had to let them dry for a day and a half to make sure they were totally dry before putting the polyurethane on them. And the poly just helped to warm up the color of the wood, so they still have that rustic look.

Four screws later and I’ve got myself some spiffy looking shadow boxes.

 

I love the vintagy, worn look. And the PEPSI on the sides.

Gotta love the power of Craigslist. And poly. And 20 dollar bills. And pop. And all things distressed.

Xo,

Lor

Lucky Us

I have a confession to make – I’m addicted to Pinterest. Which may sound like a negative thing, but I bet if you asked Seth he would tell you he doesn’t mind. You see, one of my boards is ‘recipes’ and so I’ve been trying new recipes on the regular, (this from a woman who typically doesn’t cook...or at least not well) so he loves it. But not only have I been getting my cook on, I’ve been gettin’ my craftiness on as well. So with “Make/buy/find/personalize entryway art” on the top of my list-of-things-to-do-around-the-house I decided to put my own little spin on something that I recently ‘pinned.’ Here’s the original pin:

Source

Super cute – huh?!

I don’t happen to have a machine in my back pocket that stamps out words onto copper so that was out of the question. But I do have pennies. Baller! Also, I wanted to somehow create something to go on the wall rather than a keychain, so I suppose the photo above was more like inspiration, or should we call it...pinspiration? I couldn't resist.

So I dug through the plethora of piggy banks in our house, one for each child (yes, our not-yet-conceived child has a piggy bank and there is 54 dollars in change in that mo'fo - Ari counted)... 

...until I found these babies

Their significance? The year that’s printed on each of them.

There’s the year Seth and I got married and then everyone’s (mine, Seth's, Ethan's, Ari's and Owen's) birth year. I played around with a few layouts. The first, and most obvious one I came up with was a pyrimid.

But I wasn't diggin' it. So the next layout I toyed around with was making the number one with the pennies.

Yet again, I wasn't happy. So I walked away - a technique I used when I was in college if I experienced writer's block. Works every time. So 20 minutes and half a glass of wine later I came up with the idea of a family tree, but instead of putting names on the tree I'd put the pennies on the tree. 

So I just freehanded the silhouette of a tree onto black card stock and got to cuttin.' From there, I used white sticky letters that I dug out of my closet (which still needs organized, mentioned here) and put the words “Lucky Us” to the side of the tree.

Oh, and to make the pennies a bit shiner I just plopped them in a mixture of ¼ cup of vinegar and 1 tsp salt for  5 minutes. After I removed them from the vinegar concoction I immediately rinsed and dried ‘em.

So there you have it, my Pinterest inspired art for our teeny tiny entryway which I'm trying to slowly transform into something I can be happy to look at on a daily basis. Now if only I can find something to do with these shoes…

 Xo,

Lorri