I'm a wife, stay-at-home mom, crafter, and blogger living in rural New England. As seen in Martha Stewart Living, Food Network Magazine, and more! | Tutorials, DIY, crafts, parenting tips, recipes, money saving tips, product reviews, local product features, New England living, intentional living, and more! |
Making over our daughter's room has been slow-going to say the least. We had a busy, wonderful summer and now I'm already deep into Christmas ornament orders so finding time to work on the whole makeover has been tricky.
In progress
Today I finally hung the book rails I made in this tiny nook and I think it will help make this space functional. Now I need to make something to hold the large, heavy books on the floor - and finish the rest of the room - and then I will share the whole project! ;)
I don't know about you, but I'm obsessed with HGTV's Fixer Upper and Joanna Gaines' Industrial Farmhouse Style. Summer has me dreaming about redoing our outdoor spaces so I thought I'd put together a collection of great Amazon finds to bring you some farmhouse inspiration on a budget. | This post contains affiliate links |
Ever have a favorite mug but the handle broke? :( Well that very thing happened to this great Salmon Falls Chowder Mug I have. I superglued it back together and while the repair looked pretty good I didn't dare trust it to hold a piping hot cup of soup or coffee over my lap anymore. I was thinking of tossing it but decided to repurpose it into a little herb planter for the kitchen instead.
The first step was to fill the bottom with some gravel so my herbs won't sit directly in water. Alternatively, you could drill a hole in the bottom for drainage and put a saucer underneath, but since I don't have anything to put under the mug that matches I decided to use it as-is.
Then I filled it with dirt and added an Italian Chive plant I picked up at the local garden center and it was done! (Pretty easy, right?) Depending on the size of your mug and your plants, you could add more than one type of herb in it. You could also grow your herbs from seed.
Now I just need to keep it on a sunny windowsill and water it very carefully as needed. Keep in mind since there's no drainage hole at the bottom and it's a small container, it would be very easy to over-water a plant like this.
Today was my first time going to IKEA and let me tell you, it was ah-mazing!
We live about 3 hours away from the nearest IKEA, and that's probably a good thing because I liked way too many of the things they have there. What blew me away most was how beautiful, sturdy, and reasonably-priced the furniture was.
We left with "big girl" furniture for our daughter's new room since she'll be transitioning out of her crib soon (eek) and moving into what was my craft room. We got her the small Hemnes dresser and Hemnes twin bed (full review and room makeover will be on the blog soon). And since my craft room will become her room, we decided to bite the bullet and get the Hemnes sideboard to hold all my displaced craft supplies. I just loved the Hemnes line from IKEA, can't you tell? We also picked up a cute (and cheap!) wooden train set for her.
I was expecting IKEA to be a lot of modern furniture and accessories, but I was pleasantly surprised to see they had a lot of great "farmhouse-inspired" pieces that fit with our New England style.
I should have taken more pictures for the blog while we were there, but I was just too busy browsing and shopping! ;)
Okay, so I struggled for a bit whether to blog about this little DIY closet makeover. I really loved the project and I think it came out great, but it was just SO impossible to photograph. This closet is at the end of a narrow hallway with no natural light, and there's no way to photograph the whole thing in a single picture. So please forgive me for the poor photos - they aren't to the standard I like to try to keep for the blog but the project and message were just too good not to share. | This post contains affiliate links |
When we moved into our home we quickly realized we needed a "drop zone" by the back door. It was really the only door we used and we needed a place to put all our stuff as we came and went. Thankfully there was an under-utilized pantry here and while we can always use more storage, for us it was more important have a mudroom/drop zone. After surfing Pinterest we decided to turn it into a mini mudroom complete with beadboard, a shelf, hooks, a built-in bench with metal baskets underneath for shoes, mail organizer - the works. And so within weeks of moving in we took the door off the pantry and it became our temporary drop zone while we planned... and there it stayed for three years (yikes).
Embarrassing, right?
You see, our dream mini mudroom would have cost big bucks and we kept sidelining it for other, more important things (furnace fixes, putting in a vegetable garden, repairing the driveway..). And then we got a puppy. And then we had a baby. And then spending big bucks on a teeny mudroom was just absurd. And the closet stayed the way it was, and just looked ugly and cluttered.
Then we realized: it's great to dream big for make-overs and remodels but what's more important is to assess what's realistic now. Realistically we couldn't afford now what we wanted to do originally but we still needed a mudroom - so the design got cut to the very basics. We needed a shelf, hooks, and mail/key organizer; the beadboard, bench, baskets, and accessories would have to wait.
The first step was removing the Closet Maid shelving system. To do this, I used a flat head screwdriver and needle nose pliers to pull out the pins and drywall anchors that held the shelves and supports in place. We saved all the shelves and supports in case we want to add more shelving to another closet down the road. We were left with a ton of holes to fill, but some drywall patch and light sanding filled the holes in fine.
Afterwards I repainted the walls of the closet with some white ceiling paint we had in the basement. My goal was to use as much materials as we had already and I didn't want to buy a new can of paint just to do this little area. The ceiling paint covered great and it only needed one coat.
Then I marked the studs with painters tape and cut a 1x12 (given to us by my father-in-law who had scrap boards in his basement) down to the length of the back of the closet, attaching it into the studs with long screws.
I cut the angled side supports down and cut another board to make the top shelf (all cuts were made with just a chopsaw). Everything was glued, screwed, and nailed into place so it was nice and sturdy. Then I patched all the screw holes and lightly sanded before painting the shelf with trim paint, which we already had on-hand.
Once the paint was dry, I added the hardware - the only items we actually had to buy for this project! The four coat hooks were from Lowes and cost about $4 each, the two accessory hooks were also from Lowes and were less than $1.50 each, and the mail/key organizer was from Amazon and cost about $10. All-in-all since we reused paint and wood we already had we spent around $30 for everything! Someday I'd still like to add a bench, baskets, and cover the textured walls with beadboard but in the meantime we have a functional, simple, efficient mudroom which is what we really needed from the beginning. I'm kicking myself for living with the messy old closet for so long when doing a simplified mudroom was so achievable this whole time!
Our little one may be happily playing independently but the second I go to make dinner she demands to be held and refuses to be put down, making cooking impossible. To help keep her occupied but still involved I've been eyeing a learning tower / kitchen helper on Amazon for months now, but at $200 it just wasn't in our budget. My sister-in-law had made a learning tower from a plan by Ana White and suggested I try to make one too. I was unsure at first, I've never made anything more complicated than a birdhouse, but I decided to give it a go! Read on for my lessons learned and know that you can totally make one too. | This post contains affiliate links |
{ Note: the plans that I worked from were from Ana White and can be found HERE }
The first step to making the learning tower was buying the lumber.. which is easier said than done when you just have a little car! Nevertheless, Miss M and I made the nearly hour-long trek out to Lowe's to pick up lumber, paint, and screws. One thing I really liked about the Ana White plan was that it had both a shopping list and a "cut list" so you knew exactly how much of each kind of wood to buy and then how to cut it up. I made a mistake at Lowe's though and ended up buying 6-foot boards instead of 8-foot.. I don't know if I read the sign too quickly or what, but it made me come up short for the project. Thankfully we had some extra wood in the garage and I was able to fudge it.
For our learning tower, I made some modifications - some were planned and some kind of happened as the project went on (partly due to the wood shortage). For example, I decided against doing the arches on the top - as lovely as they were, we don't have a jigsaw so I had to nix it. I also did the base of the tower a little differently and I didn't do the tip resistors (at least not yet), my sister-in-law omitted the tip resistors and has had no problems. Our little one is pretty good with the tower (knock on wood), but for peace of mind I think we will do something to help prevent it ever tipping - most likely adding some scrap wood to make a lip that will fit under the edge of our counter. Another thing I did differently was make the front and back top railing wider, the reasoning for this was two-fold - for one thing, it gave me more room to screw in the the top railings without the screws running into each other. Another was that the wider wood makes it impossible for our little one to open the kitchen drawers in front of her (so key).
One criticism of Ana White's plan is that while it gives you a great outline of what to make and how to go about it, it definitely doesn't spell everything out - and for this detail-oriented person that drove me nuts! For example, it doesn't detail how many screws you should use when attaching each piece or how to position the screws when you join sides together (this was a huge issue so they didn't run into each other). Another big problem was that the plan had quite a few typos and some of the steps would stop mid-sentence missing the full explanation of what to do.
I highly suggest cutting all the wood, labeling it, laying it out and really thinking through how it's going together. My biggest challenge by far was figuring out a good way to hold the pieces together while I pre-drilled and screwed them together. The wood the plan calls for is pretty thin (another downside of the plan), so that limited the ways I felt I could hold it without damaging it. I tried using vices and clamps to help hold everything together but they always seemed to be in the way so I ended up holding it in place anyway I could, even with my foot if necessary (awkward).
I also had to improvise on how to center the front and back side pieces against the wider side of the legs. It turned out that a picture book we had was the perfect thickness and became a great spacer.
To space the boards for the platform I placed some extra screws between them as spacers. Once it was all attached together, I just pulled the screw spacers out.
For paint, I used a high-gloss black enamel paint by Val-Spar and gave it two coats (though I probably should have done 1-2 more). I really recommend using high-gloss paint or stain so it can be wiped down easily after every use.
I wanted to add some personalization or decoration to the learning tower, but also wanted to keep it simple so that it would blend into the kitchen better. I decided against personalizing the tower since we're hoping to have more kids and I wanted to keep it "neutral" - so I settled for stenciling "ABC" on one of sides for a little decoration, using the Martha Stewart Monogram Serif Stencil Set.
Our little one loves her new learning tower and now feels like she can "help" when I'm making dinner. This tower also makes arts and crafts a lot easier (here she's playing with some homemade playdough).
Safety Notice: It goes without saying, but always supervise your little one while they're using the learning tower and make sure there is nothing dangerous within reach (hot plates, knives/other sharp objects, stove, off-limit foods, etc). Use at your own risk.
My parents-in-law gave us an awesome old milk can and it took me a little while to decide what I could do with it. After some thought I decided to use it as a country-inspired house number display. | This post contains affiliate links |
The milk can had already been re-painted at one point and while the green paint and the rust spots definitely gave it a nice patina, I decided to clean it up and repaint it to make it a little cleaner and kid-friendly.
First step was to clean up all the loose paint. I used a wire brush, metal scraper, and rough-grit sandpaper to clean it up and make a good base for the new paint.
Once it was ready I used Rust-Oleum Professional High Performance Protective Enamel in matte black and gave it two coats, letting dry about 24 hours between coats. For the stencil I made a point to choose a font and size that looked like it belonged there - that maybe the farmer numbered all his milk cans and this was just one in the lineup. The stencils I used were from the Martha Stewart Monogram Serif Stencil Set, trimming the letters down and taping them together with painters tape. I had used the "o" previously for another project.. hence why it's brown.
I used white acrylic paint to stencil it and filled the gaps in the stencil with a small brush after. I think the milk can came out pretty cute and adds the perfect country touch!
I had to share this picture, I just love the sun that comes in the craft room in the morning. It makes you want to get started on some projects.. now if only a little one would let me get some work done ;)
