New Addition to the Family

No, this is not a baby post. This is a post about a piece of furniture that makes me so happy it has become a part of our family. Yes, I love it that much.

Our kitchen has only one wall of cabinets. On the other wall is where I had this ugliness.

Please excuse the trash that sorely needed to be taken out.

I had been perusing Craigslist forever looking for a piece of furniture, preferably a buffet to fit this wall. Well all of the buffets I ran across were too wide for my odd length of a wall (46"). Then one fateful evening my Aunt and I dropped in on a little shop in Moberly called Endless Possibilities. It's basically a flea market in a store. They always have new and unique things. After borrowing a tape measure from the store owner I found this (can you believe it!) BUFFET!!!!

This buffet dropped down from heaven I tell ya! And the owners had it marked at $150... Womp womp. Remember that whole money is tight, paying for school, thing? Yeah, this buffet didn't fit into that budget. Luckily the owner happened to be at the store and he brought it down from $150 to $100 for me. The cheap-o in me still though it was a little high. So the scaredy cat Olivia went home without the buffet. All the while wondering if it would be there if I went back, could I find something better on CL, would I ever find something to fit that gosh dern wall?!??!??!?

Ok long story made a tad bit shorter I had my aunt go back and pay for it the next day. Also since my birthday is coming up, she and my grandma both put in $20 so this bad buffet rang in at $68 after taxes.

 

I cannot put into words how much this buffet adds to the kitchen. It has almost doubled my counter space, I now have a place to prepare things and use my mixer and it gave me a ton of additional storage! LOVE!

I'm not sure if I'll refinish it or not... still contemplating. This night-time picture really does not do it justice. Oh and that filled to the brim ledge above it either. The funniest part of this story... when Eric and I went to go pick it up I asked him what he thought and he said "Well it isn't what I was expecting." I replied with a what do you mean? He said he was expecting an actual buffet like at a restaurant. That got a few snorting laughs from me as I pictured a 24-hour buffet in our kitchen. Dream on buddy! Ah boys, gotta love 'em!

Cleaning Schedule Printable!

Hi Everyone!

I'm soooo giddy! It's Christmas Eve. Which means the big happy day is tomorrow and Eric and I are opening presents early so we can head to Grandma's in the morning. Anything concerning morning is early for us night owls so we figured we'd just open presents while were still wide awake. Plus when Eric gets home it will technically be Christmas. I never can think that way. Eric always says it's the next day when its after midnight, but if I haven't gone to sleep yet, it's still the same day. My days are just defined differently, that's all. Anyways on to business.

Some of you may remember that making a cleaing schedule is on my list of things to do over Christmas break. Here's a refresher for everyone:

• Make cleaning schedule.
• Paint kitchen cabinets.
• Find something to replace microwave cart.  More on that after Christmas!
• Read "Time of My Life"
• Finish Christmas shopping.
• Clean out LR closet.
• Finish BR closet (buy baskets to corral stuff on shelves and paint it)
• Paint trim in BR.
• Have a photo shoot with Mojo and Junior.
• Host a holiday party????

I have a hard time keeping my house as clean as I would like it, beause everything piles up and then I don't even want to begin to touch it. So this handy little schedule will keep me on track and cleaning my house manageable. Oh and I snuck in chores for the hubby which can always be changed as I think of more. :). Eric really doesn't do a lot around the house he's always helpful when I ask him to do something, but thats about it. Wait I'm lying, we take turns doing dishes, which definitely counts. I have come to peace about this laziness situation because I'm kind of a gotta-have-it-done-my-way gal. So when he does something wrong, I get all the more frustrated. Anywho here's what I came up with:

I had seen a lot of printable cleaning schedules, but none of them really fit how we clean the house and what days work best for us so I made one. I plan on putting this in a frame and sticking it on the fridge so that we can mark off as we go with a dry erase marker. Also since I am a nice person I created a few more color schemes and I am going to share them all at the end of this post, so you can customize and make the schedule your own.

For my red-loving friends:

And the sassy green one:

I have to give credit where it is due, so I did NOT come up with the banner I got it from this great site. When you are editing these, please don't take the "Created by Little House on the Left" thing out. I didn't make it permanent as I normally would have and also didn't make it a big part of the design, so just leave it please.
Here are the links for the schedules:

Turquoise Cleaning Schedule
Red Cleaning Schedule
Green Cleaning Schedule

They all look a little wonky in the viewer, but just click "File" then "Download Original" and it should open up a word document for ya. Enjoy!

Hope everyone has a safe and merry Christmas!!

Free Wrapping Paper

I haven't bought wrapping paper in. a. long. time. I pains me to watch all of that beautiful paper being thrown away after everyone rips into their presents. Well, that and I am a cheap-o pennyless college student :D. Usually I just throw newspaper on gifts along with a bow or reuse gift bags. This year I am getting the Wall Street Journal due to an award I got which means it's fa-reeee and it has some awesome full page ads and by golly they get pretty festive around Christmas-time. So I made the fronts of the gifts pretty and used newspaper to stuff bags with in leui of tissue paper. These gift aren't going to The White House or anything, so its ok if they're a little low key.

Here's what I came up with with a few little snippets of our Christmas tree:

The funny thing is that the watch one is actually a watch kind of gift.

And all lit up.

Kinda blurry, but you get the idea.

This was actually really easy. I just perused the newspaper, found my ads and cut them out. I wrapped the whole gift in newspaper and then taped the ad on the "front." Topped it off with ribbon and viola.

Or you could just do what Eric does...

Pretty, ugly, big or small its the thought behind the gift that matters most of all!

Are you guys ready for Christmas? I just have to get Eric a few more things and then I'll be ready.

Merry Christmas!!

Olivia

Killing Pumpkins

It is 8 days 'til Christmas and I still have pumpkins around outside...... Enter my genius idea to have a shooting date with the hubby and blow them to smithereens. It was fun and now our house looks a little bit more in tune with the date. No I didn't take pictures. I MUST remember to take my camera EVERYWHERE.

Someone else must be on the same level of my geniusness, because there were other rotting pumpkins at the shooting range. Nice to escape the painting madness around here for a bit :)

Happy Weekend Everyone,
Olivia

Slow Process

Hi everybody!! I made it through finals... somehow without a scratch and then it was high time to start in on my Christmas break to do list.

• Make cleaning schedule.
• Paint kitchen cabinets.
• Find something to replace microwave cart.
• Read "Time of My Life"
• Finish Christmas shopping.
• Clean out LR closet.
• Finish BR closet (buy baskets to corral stuff on shelves and paint it)
• Paint trim in BR.
• Have a photo shoot with Mojo and Junior.
• Host a holiday party????

This is just a quick tentative list I jotted down last week and my first day off from school (yesterday) my aunt and I dove into the biggest task of all since it was a rainy ucky day and we had already planned to anyways, painting the kitchen cabinets.I wanted to get this done before I start working full-time on Sunday. Boo. It is now day two and I am slowly chugging along at my own pace and trying not to have a nervous breakdown because my house it a wreck. Everything will get a final coat as soon as I get done writing this and then the cabinets will get a 3-4 day "cure time". Hooray for no more mismatched cabinets!!!

Here's a before picture to jog everyone's memory.

 And a sneak peek picture ;)

Yes that is a heart shaped paint glob on my arm. Had to take a picture. I'm a nerd, I know.

Closet Conversion

So everyone out there has a perfectly organized closet right? Ha! Well some of you may, but I most certainly do not. I have no idea what the little person who built our closet was thinking... Instead of the racks (is that what they're called?) going from side to side, they went from front to back. *Sigh* no it is not a joy to get dressed in the morning for me.

Exhibit A



See what I mean it makes no sense. So I being the creative thinker that I am... not really... decided to turn the rods (there it is) sideways and stack them. Wow. What a difference.

The total cost of this product was nada. I used the existing rods, and wood except for two 2x4s that I got from my father in law. Although they had a million staples in them I can deal because they cost zero money and everything in there is going to get a coat of fresh white paint soon anyways. Sweat equity is my game and I'm dominating. 

All in all this project took four hours. Don't judge, I was by myself and it is not easy to hold rods in place while you screw them to the wall or saw boards by hand. (Note to self get the proper tools for home renovation; will save you loads of time) This little closet makeover was sparked by sheer frustration and I needed to finally got out all of our winter clothes and put the summer ones away.Now if I could just get the shelves on the left hand side organized the closet will be complete, oh and the paint, and pulls on the doors of course. Does the list ever end? Now I can actually see what I pick out to wear in the morning and that makes me one happy chick.

What about you guys is there anything in your house that you wonder, "what was the previous owner thinking?" Are your closets spic and span? You can tell me.

Silence....

Hey folks,
 I just wanted to drop by and say that the blog might be a little quiet for a few days (or longer). As a prime procrastinator I have hit what I call crunch time. All the projects and papers my professors assigned way back in August are due next week right before Thanksgiving break?!?!? Sneaks up on ya no doubt. My procrastination (as well as that of many other college students) has put my life in quite a turmoil. So as my fingers fly to write up all the sparkling work I will be producing in the next week or two they will have less time to visit the blog. My apologies!

House Tour Video

Ok so it took me a while to figure out the Flip cam but once I did all went well. Hope you guys enjoy and this gets everyone up to date!

Sorry about the shakiness :(.

Floors Galore

Our Kitchen has a lot of updating that needs to be done. However the one thing I want to talk about today is the floors in this room, the bathroom and the laundry/dining room. Here's what they look like now.




Kitchen

Scuffed Surface

Back Room

First off I just plain don't like the kitchen and bathroom floors. Second, they have big gaps in the linoleum and third, the finish is wearing off in some places. The laundry room floors got destroyed by a puppy and since they were in terrible shape we also painted in there and they're really not pretty now. Enough said. So I spent the better part of my life on Monday checking out my options of peel and stick tile. I 'm pretty sure we're going to go with this option because

1. It's super easy and we have no tile laying experience.
2. It will adjust to the uneven floors of our old house well.
3. There's a huge variety to choose from.
4. It's inexpensive.

See that little #3 up there? That is proving to be a tad bit of a problem. I can't make up my mind! First off I wanted to go with the Lowe's ebony tiles that I saw in this laundry room. I really like the look of them and they're super affordable ringing in at $.88 a square foot.



Unfortunately there were a ton of reviews saying that after they had been in for about two months the finish gets hazy in high traffic areas. I know, insert let down music here. We are in the kitchen a lot and the tiles will have to hold up to the dog's nails. So even though it was love at first sight. Ebony tiles were a no go.

So here are the contenders and their prices.

$1.39

$1.69

$1.39



$.88




$1.69



I am completely torn. I would like something darker so it doesn't look dirty all the time, but I like the look of all of them. Then there's also all the different prices to consider. I'm at a loss at this moment. Here are a few more pics of the kitchen now.

And my inspiration pic.



Found Here



 HELP!!! What do you guys think? Should I save money and go with the cheapest? Which one do think would look best with the white cabinets, Oil Rubbed Bronze and coutertops, without being too matchy? I'm so ready to tear out the floors it is killing me.

Well while we all stew on all that information I hope you guys have a great weekend! I'll be working on a little project with a Flip cam for Monday's post! Stay tuned!!

Chair Upgrade

Sunday on my way to work I got an unexpected call from my momma. She told me that Kent (my stepdad) had picked up some chairs and a table at an auction this weekend because no one else bid on them. I held back my groan (Eric and I seem to be magnets for old furniture and we're running out of room!) and told her I'd be by Monday to look at them. The table was bigger and I'm perfectly happy with my "dining table" that serves mostly as a laundry folding table. House tour coming soon I promise. Anyways the chairs were a lot better than our current ones which I despise because of their ricketiness..... yes that is a word now... well for today anyway and their fabric cushions couldn't be wiped down and they looked gross from stuff being spilled on them etc. So for 10 bones Eric and I toted home 6 new chairs. Perfect number for when I get the dining area done. Here's the before and after...

Before

After

Right away I felt like it added room. I wasn't constantly banging the utensil drawer into the left chair and it just looks better to us. The old chairs were too boxy and the solid backs made them look heavy. No the new ones will not stay hunter green. That's not what I'm going with in the kitchen (Once again I promise to get a house tour done soon, sorry!) Never mind the walls and floor as well, if all goes according to plan they will be changed too.

The hunter green will go, but I actually like the wood grain of the seats.It's a little more cherry than my style, but I like it for now.

My camera doesn't do them justice. Although I like the seat portion I'm not 100% decided. Two of the chairs I got don't match the rest and they need more work so who knows I may wind up sanding all of them down and staining the seats a different color or painting the chairs a solid color.

These are the other chairs that you may have spotted in yesterday's post. They are out in the potting shed just waiting to be painted :).

So what do you think? Did I get an upgrade or are you not feeling them at all? Should I stick with two tone? Or all one color? All input is appreciated!

Is that a Snowflake?

Oh wait it's 70 degrees outside. I feel like fall has scooted right past us. I haven't really seen the vibrant colors I usually do. Maybe it's because of the dry summer? I don't know. Anyways whether it feels like fall or not I am thinking of winter. So today I did a little winterizing in the form of draining and taking in garden hoses and getting my potting shed tidied up. Since Eric got electricity to his garage, I inherited what I call the potting shed. After a busy summer of yardwork and gardening it looks a little like this.

and this...

and this...

Yes I had mouse friends that liked the sunflowers I grew this summer. At least someone likes them; the birds are turning up their noses at them. Maybe they will be more enticing when we get three feet of snow on the ground ;).

After some cleaning and reorganizing it was looking better.

I reused the coutertop we cut out to fit our sink as a cutting board of sorts on the potting bench. More on the kitchen progress later.

Not wanting to throw anything useful away I also emptied all my little planters of dirt with deceased seedlings in them into one coffee can. Now I have a jar of dirt for next year. Where's my jar of dirt? Leftover Halloween candy for whoever guesses that movie reference :).

So what about you guys? Do you have any outdoor spaces that need some sprucing up before winter hits?

Welcome!!

Welcome to this newborn blog! I need inspiration, motivation, communication.... you get the idea. First off please bear with me. I am super busy as is with school and work, but I am going to try to stay religious with this. I look forward to meeting new readers, hearing opinions and sharing our little house. Thanks for dropping by!

Olivia