Pea Pops!

Where do people come up with this stuff??? I have seen them in 2 blogs so far and have been wanting to try them so I finally did. Eating veggies doesn't get any more fun than pop sickles, right? They are actually super good, but I love sweet peas so my opinion may be slightly biased. Zander on the other hand, NOT a big veggie fan.

To make your own:
1) Get some peas, I use frozen, but beware!! There was a massive recall on Pictsweet (sp?) peas due to glass shards. Scary! I thought I should throw that in here.
2)Add a squirt of Agave or honey or whatever sweetener you prefer to taste.
3)Smash and freeze.

Super easy and so fun!

Mommy Crafts

Crafty women who become moms take on a new theme to their work.. babies... lol. Baby crafts are so much fun and so darn cute they're hard to resist. These are old pix, but now that I have a new little one, I may get into them again. I'd like to make some of those soft sole baby shoes and who knows what else. There's just too much to choose from. The down side of baby crafts is that once I figure out how to do one, I seem to run into a hundred other women who make the same things. Here's some of my creations...

We've all seen these...

 

And a baby medicine case...

This was super fun to make. I need one for Avalon!

This I did for my baby shower. It is an advice card drop box. I made little advice cards for first time mom and the guests filled them out and dropped them in. IMO it is a great keepsake idea.

I loved doing these little baby sock roses. So much fun!

I thought I was so brilliant when I came up with my own home-made Hooter Hider, but alas, I wasn't the only one lol.

And what sewing mom hasn't made her own sling? 

my "guitar hippy" sling ;p

Oh! we can't forget the diaper cakes! Whoever thought of these was a genius, seriously.

Semi Temp Kitchen Makeover

This is by no means a "real" renovation. We actually have every intention of relocating the kitchen to another room entirely BUT we have more important things to worry about right now. For some reason though, men just don't seem to understand how much the decor and environment of a home can affect a woman's state of mind. At least mine anyway, lol. I find dark, dingy, peeling wallpaper and closed in claustrophobic spaces very depressing. Such was the state of our kitchen. It made me not want to be in it. The ovens (which did not work anyway) were built into the island in line with the doorway to the living room so if you were in the kitchen, you couldn't see around it. That was not good with children that need constant supervision. So while Jon was out of town one week I decided to do a quick mini makeover just to brighten things up and make it a "happier" place to be. Really all I did was paint, tear out the ovens, put up a temporary back-splash and some curtains but it made a world of difference and it left me feeling all bubbly inside ;p

Here is the only before pics I have. Shame on me for not taking more. We came to look at the house before we bought it and the hoarders were still living here. I took pics then so I could look at them and plan lol. This is one of those pics....

And this is while we were moving in. 

 

And here's the after mini makeover! I am seriously in love with my wall color. I was really scared to go that bright but I love love love it!

 

The back-splash is a nifty story. I had wanted one like this before we ever moved. After we moved and I was cleaning out all the leftovers from the previous owner I found several sheets of this stuff brand new in the package. I was literally about to chunk it out the door to burn and decided to take a peak at what was inside. SO glad i looked lol. It was dark green and super fugly colored so I spray painted it (my remedy for everything lol)

And my awesome mother-in-law sewed these incredible curtains for me. The best part of the whole room. See my curtain rod tutorial if you want to know how I made the curtain rods.

Lastly, Jon brought these home for me the other day. I didn't think the chef would go with lime green but I actually like them there. The black kinda ties it in.

Oh! and did I mention I was somewhere between 8 and 9 months pregnant when I did this? Now THAT is what you call "nesting" ;p

Conduit Curtain Rods

I found a tutorial for making home-made curtain rods and thought "I HAVE to try this!!!". I had actually just went and bought some cheap curtain rods for my living room that ended up costing me a total of almost $50. After I saw this tutorial, I immediately took them back. No way am I going to spend $50 on something I can make for about $4 each! This house has a lot of windows and I'm all about saving money. This is especially good if you have super wide windows or French doors.

Materials: 1/2" conduit, cabinet knobs, 5/8"dowel rods, L brackets, conduit straps, spray paint, a hack saw and drill.

Cut the conduit to fit your window.
Cut the dowel about an inch long. This is just to hold the screw from the drawer pull.
Drill a hole into the piece of dowel and insert the screw for the drawer pull.
Slip that into the end of the conduit and you should be able to screw the end on and off like a regular curtain rod. (I actually tried to short cut and hot glue my ends on but that does not work lol. Hot glue and metal are not a good mix.)
 And finally, spray paint them whatever color you want. Just don't forget the screws like I did... both times.


These were my first attempt. I actually found a random bag full of drawer pulls in this old house. Score! Once I had them done and up, I realized I didn't really care for the ends but they were free so I can't complain...

And these are my second attempt for the kitchen windows. I bought literally the cheapest drawer pulls in the entire store and I really like the way these look. I'm seriously never buying curtain rods again :)

To see the original tutorial click here.

PS. A few tips: 1) don't buy cheap spray paint, and 2) apparently knowledge is not a prerequisite for working at a hardware store. If you can't find what you're looking for, just ask the oldest man you see or the guy with the greasiest jeans.

Shnazy Headboard Tutorial

Hmm.... let's see if can type this with a sleepy nursey baby on the boppy and a 
cranky toddler to boot.... 

So most of you know I recently finished my long awaited upholstered headboard. Between renovating, caring for a toddler, and planning for another birth it took me quite a while to finally get around to finishing it, but alas, it's done! I would be lying if I said I wasn't ecstatic :)  I tried to take pix along the way to show how I did the steps for those who want to know, but you'll have to forgive the very unprofessional quality of my photos. Our computer recently crashed and while it is "fixed", I can't seem to recover any of my programs. No more Photoshop or Microsoft. It's very frustrating.

So here we go...

I always start any project by browsing tutorials. (gotta love Google ;p) There are tons of headboard tutorials so it's not hard to find what you want. I was originally going to keep it simple with a basic rectangle but decided to go all out, do something crazy and pray it turned out decent enough to hang lol. It was honestly a lot harder than I anticipated, most likely because it was such a large project, but still fairly simple. 

I used a 1/2" piece of plywood. Freehanded the design on one side and made a stencil with some wax paper to trace on the other side (notice my toddler's green crayon artwork lol). Jon cut it out for me (I have a phobia of saws). The saw actually went ca-put with about a foot left to cut. Such is my luck it seems lol. I really didn't want to put out the money for a new saw but even moreso I didn't want to leave a half cut piece of plywood when I was finally ready to do it. ugh. So off Jon goes to the pawn shop :)

After it was cut out, I laid it on the foam (ended up using egg crate foam instead of regular foam cuz it was just so much cheaper) and traced around the foam with a sharpie. Cut the foam. Spread the batting on the floor, then the foam, then lay the wood on top and ready to start stapling. Bad luck again! I scrounged up a total of 4 staplers but my pack of staples didn't fit any of them! Off to the store again. 

Next I had to freehand the swirls and curls over the batting and stapled down the lines where the nail head trim was to go so it would be easier to find after I put the velvet on. Once again, as luck would have it, Joanne's had discontinued the nail-head trim literally like 2 days before I got there to buy some, and of course no other store in town carries it, but I did find a little old couple that sold me some :)  They wouldn't take my Joann's coupon though...

OK this part was a little tricky. Since it has so many curves and some really sharp turns, just trying to wrap the velvet around to staple would not have worked at all. I ended up making a pattern of the whole headboard with wax paper, traced it onto the velvet, cut an inch around the traced line for seem allowance. Cut long strips about 4" wide and sewed them around the edge of the front piece to overlap onto the backside. I don't really know how better to explain that part and I don't have pix so sorry. I hope that made enough sense to get the point across. 

And lastly, with my awesome little helper, I put the velvet cover on, more stapling, and attached the trim. I ended up spray painting the trim black because the "French natural" just didn't look good IMO. I used the trim that comes in a roll. Awesome stuff! I only had to nail every 5th hole. Anything that makes the job simpler, I'm game for lol. 

And VOILA! 

My new centerpiece for the master. It's still a work in progress. Now that I have my main piece done, I am much more motivated to finish the room. 

......

Hope you enjoyed! If you are wanting to try this and need some help, feel free to contact me. I had a VERY hard time finding advice while working on this. I frequented several decorating forums and spent who knows how many hours looking at tutorials, but for some reason I honestly could not find a single soul to answer any of my questions about upholstering. 

Brag Post

Since this is a blog centered around home, I think it's only appropriate that the first post should be on my most boast worthy home creation... my daughter :)   Baby #2 born at home in this very room I'm sitting in right now. It's been 3months already, but I'm still elated over the experience so you'll just have to endure my ranting lol. I'm so so so thankful to have had the home birth that I dreamed of (minus the tub of course). For lack of time, I'm just going to copy and paste the mini birth story I shared just after the event, typos and all..

"ok i'm gonna try to write this up real quick while i have a free moment and
before i forget everything... i'm not even going to go back and re-read it or anything so don't judge me for errors lol. still haven't' wrote up zander's.

first off i'd like to say this has been one of, if not the most incredibly amazing experience of my entire life. the whole concept of being at home in a peaceful environment. just me and jon and the few helpers. i could do whatever i wanted. move however wanted. get in whatever position i wanted and ultimately do what worked best for my situation with the professional advice and support there when i needed it, but not forcing me to hurry up and fit in their time schedule. midwives and doulas deserve huge medals! i cannot even begin to explain how grateful i am to have had the experience i did and the ability and opportunity to birth my baby in the healthiest possible way. i also thank God for blessing us with such healthy pregnancies and deliveries that make that possible. so...

July 13th woke up having contractions. had a feeling it was gonna be the day but
didn't want to get my hopes up or send out any false alarms so i dealt with them
as long as possible. by the evening they were getting pretty strong and closer
together. i think about 9-10 i finally decided it was the real deal and about
midnight my doula, Amy, made it over. Jon and zander were asleep int he living
room. my mother-in-law came over about 1am to help with zander. he woke up when i
was upstairs and finally went back to sleep a little while later and slept late
this morning. my regular midwife was out of town so i called another one who was
attending a birth at the time, she made it here around 2-3ish i think (still off
on times) and baby came at 5:22am. i was sooooo looking forward to a water birth
but that didn't work out lol. i had amy and my mother-in-law wake jon up after
the midwife got here to set up the birthing pool. he put it together in the
living room, filled it up, and the sides collapsed flooding the living room in a
few inches of water lol. so he put it back together and filled it again and i
could NOT wait to get in there. my contractions were getting pretty unbearable.
by the time i got down stairs and was heading to the pool i knew pushing time
was getting close. well i only got to be in the water for a few minutes because
it was about to collapse again (they forgot to put the bottom in) sooo.... that
was highly disappointing but baby came VERY quickly after i got out. i ended up
on the cough for a bit and finally on the floor on my knees resting my head on
jon when i pushed her out. it was SUCH an amazing experience! i felt every
little detail. incredible! i only pushed a few times and she was out. perfect in
every way. i looked down to see if she was in fact a girl like
we all suspected and she was :) i moved to the couch with her still attached to
me via the cord and held her for a little while waiting on the cord and all
that. she was wide eyed as can be. i was going to try breastfeeding her. i
pulled her up on my chest but before i could get her latched on she literally
just jumped right at it and did it all her own. it was so cool. she weighed 9lbs
and 10 1/2oz. 21 inches long. needless to say the newborn diapers did not fit,
same with zander. the midwife gave me a shot of pitocin and some herbs to help
get the placenta out. jon cut the cord. she had her first poopy ;p it's about
8pm now and i feel pretty good but still cramping a lot. i almost forgot the
pain doesn't all go away as the the baby is out but oh well. it was more than
worth it :)

most of you all know we had absolutely no idea when my due date was supposed to
be. i just had to make a random guess in the beginning which put me at the end
of may, then we changed it to June, then i had an ultrasound later on that put
me at July 1st but that agian can be off as much as 4 weeks so needless to say
we hadn't any idea how far along i really was. well after she was born and
checked out and all that, the midwife said she had all the signs of a perfectly
full term baby and did not appear to be overdue at all."