Archives for September 2013

Settled In September FREE PRINTABLES!

September 30, 2013 by Jules Leave a Comment

This post is simply full of every printable you might want from this months series- Settled In September. Click the image to download the printable For FREE! If I missed something, just comment to let me know 😀

Living Room: Mantel:

Eating Spaces: Kitchen Decor:

fall printable

Laundry: Hanging Laundry Basket Shelf:

laundry basket labels:
blank template

our labels

School Room Organization:

Labeled Chore Chart cards and the tutorial

Toy Basket blank Template for Labels

Our Toy Basket Labels

Boy's Room:

Sometime Being a Brother is Even Better Than Being a Superhero

Master Bedroom:

Saying to paint on the wall-
I will Love you my whole life. You and No Other. And I you, You and not other.

Filed Under: Being a Help-Meet, Decorating, Home Tour, Homemaker, Projects, Settled In September, The Ones about Post Series, The ones about the Rothacher Home

Master Bedroom {Settled In September}

September 27, 2013 by Jules 3 Comments

I love our Master bedroom. We've gone from small, to tiny, to a little less tiny, to HUGE, and now to "just right". It's right off the living room on the same side of the house as the kids rooms but not connected to the same hall. A lot of people may not like that but for us, it gives enough distance but not too much ground to cover in the middle of the night when someone needs something.

It also has a "hall bath" like feel to the bathroom BUT I like it because it keeps my clutter to a minimum and guest feel comfortable using either our bathroom or the "kids" bathroom which are both easily accessible. I don't like having rooms that are useless space, and for me that means not used daily. I felt wasteful in our last house with certain rooms because even if they were used daily, it was only for either for guest occasionally, a nap or bedtime baths.There are still some things I'd like to finish in this room but for now, we're settled. We sold our comforter set I bought just a couple of years ago when we moved into big blue. I loved the idea of a nice-looking bed spread but after we got it I realized the fabric was NOT comfortable, it was too hot and crunchy to sleep under, and a major hassle to make the bed with the bedding we slept with and then add on top the cutesiness. It rarely got used. Again with the wastefulness.

When we moved here, I decided since we had nothing really to have to match, I would start all over with something simple. Matt has a "no flower" policy in our room as well as nothing else too girly. I chose not to buy and new bedding and stick with the solid white down comforter we already have. I'd been wanting to paint our dark wooden dresser set {from Matt's childhood} for a while now but couldn't commit.

I took the plung after a date night with my hubby where we walked around target talking. I'd fallen in love with what I started calling the "target green color". I'd seen it on a cute picture frame there as well as a couple other random items. When we were parusing I also noticed I was drawn to dark navys. There we have it. I'm going crazy and painted the dressers GREEN!

{furniture & lamp TUTORIALS to come}

I think this is a good compromise: fun but not necessarily masculine or feminine.

Then I took all of our black frames {sets & otherwise} we've collected over years and painted them navy blue along with an old green lamp that was in the girls room. In our last house(s) we decided to only put pictures of Matt & I in our master bedroom. Since our kids, friends and family are plastered everywhere else, we thought it might be sweet to have just us in our room. This also encourages us to take pictures together more often as well. Don't pay attention too close...some of these are OLD. 🙂 We also chose to make all the pictures black and white to make them feel more uniform. I love it.

I like the idea of having something red in every room and also think red goes well with the navy and green, just not too much of it. I was going to paint a could of the frames red just for fun but after starting...I realized I didn't have enough paint left in the can to finish the 2 I chose... oops. I decided to do the same technician on these as I did the table in Jamin's room. It didn't work as well but its okay for now.
The big mirror on my dresser is one we've had floating around for a long time in different areas of the house. I think I may end up painting it red or navy as well.

Here's our closet organization:

Thanks for taking a tour around our master bedroom! 😀

Here's a side-by-side just for a better idea of the dresser transformation

Filed Under: Being a Help-Meet, Decorating, Home Tour, Homemaker, Organizing, Settled In September, The Ones about Post Series, The ones about the Rothacher Home

Girls’ Room {Settled In September}

September 26, 2013 by Jules Leave a Comment

I talked earlier about purposely "theming" the kids' room for genders. This will eventually be the bedroom for all 3 princesses. I think this general girliness will last for years.

On the large blank wall, we have 2 twin beds in each corner. The post bed {that matches the dresser} was given to us by my sweet aunt after my cousin outgrew it. The trundle bed was my bed growing up and was my mom's and her sister's before that. It started as a medium brown wood before I painted it off-white for our guest room and then white for the girls room.We've always used the trundle part {not popped up} as the next step/toddler bed before moving into a tall twin bed.

Hope you enjoyed it. Oh, and yes, that is a black out curtain. It helps with naps and bedtime. I do have really cute colored sheers that are going to be hung as soon as I go buy a cheap curtain rod. 😀

Eventually, there will be a large "princess" tower in the middle of this wall. Magdalene means "high tower". The castle will have a banner on the top that reads, "Devoted Promise" for our Isabella {devoted to God} and Elizabeth {oath of God}. I am now waiting to let our awesome artistic friend do their castle/tower as well because, for real, you can't have J's room next to my sad tower now. lol

{castle for inspirational affect}
This dresser was given to us with the post bed. The shelves are simple wood cut to the length we wanted it, painted and attached to the shelf braces I found at a yard sale years ago. I was going to paint them white but ended up leaving them yellow & think the extra color is fun.

I'm not gonna lie. This part of the room feels cluttered. We purposely keep their rooms simple and don't have toys in the kids room because

we want them to sleep without the temptation to play with toys
we know there needs to be plenty of room for beds/dress(es) in the long run

They are getting older and have random "stuff" and I've slowly let it leak into their rooms. More high school era frames with pictures of just the kids who share the room, painting the girls did with our sweet "Ms Biwee", piggy banks, iPod with sleep time music, and hair things both in and on the "headband holder" as well as the matching jewelry boxes their Uncle Andrew gave them that were cluttering up their bathroom which is also the guest bath have moved in here. I'm not sure if it will all stay or not.

Here's the dresser organization:
Currently, both girls pretty much wear the same size which makes it easy to do laundry as well as purchase clothes. I know this won't always be the case so we are practicing minimalism already. The girls do have their own drawers for PJs and shorts/pants since those seem to matter more than the size of shirts or dresses.

We also have the awesome wire shelves from the pantry installed in here for the girl's bed linens! Love it!!! This keeps them easily accessible and make the higher shelf open for larder-sized hand-me-downs and other randomness. {these are the kind of shelves that will be in J's closet as well}
On the back of their door we have a simple shoe divider used for just that, sorting shoes and other accessories. Larger things like boots remain in the corner of the closet but it keeps most shoes/flip flops tucked away.
Outside the closet is this adorable princess crown our artistic student from the valley made the girls. I added a dowel rod with ribbons hanging off of it so we could use it as a bow holder instead of the sad one I made along time ago.
The same awkward wall that pokes out when you come into this bedroom we also used for decoration. The long white shelf came from our living room and the smaller one was part of another black set and I painted it white to match the other stuff in this room. Elephants were sweet gifts and Ellie will get one when she arrives. Letters are already for all 3 girls even though it will be awhile before El joins the girls in here.
That's the girly room!

Filed Under: Cleaning, Decorating, Home Tour, Homemaker, Organizing, Projects, Settled In September, The Ones about Post Series, The ones about the Rothacher Home

Boy’s Room {Settled In September}

September 25, 2013 by Jules 2 Comments

I know this post is entitled "Boy's Room" and in the long run, it will be but I thought I should let you know that for a while, there will be a superGirl rooming in this awesome room. 😉

We did our last 2 nurseries in veggie tales as a cute but unique unisex theme. When we moved this time, we chose to do very gender themed rooms. In the long run, this is how we plan to room our children, no matter how many there are of each gender. We wanted these to "themes" to last many years so for the boy's room, we went with Super Hero!We love murals and have always done them ourselves in other houses. When we moved here, we met an awesome artistic {to say the least} friend who offered to help us with the rooms. Yeah, other than the main base color of the rooms, he did the rest. hehe This is the cityscape wall behind the toddler bed. It will stay here and be converted back into a crib when Ellie needs to move into this room {likely when she starts sleeping through the night and/or moved out of the cradle in our room}. This is the brick wall where the twin bed will go {opposite corner as the table} when J moves to a larger bed. The table in the corner is an up-cycled table we found on our upstairs patio in our last house. It was really weathered but still really solid wood. I decided to try a fun technique I saw on Pinterest.

I spray-painted the edges of the table where you would normally scruff up if you were distressing something. The paint job looked terrible because I didn't paint the entire thing; one, the entire thing didn't need it for my plan, and two, I was using leftover yellow paint.
After that dried, I took an old tea candle and scrubbed over the edges covered in yellow and then spray painted the whole thing with a thick black coat {or 2}.
When that dried, I simply took a piece of a Brillo pad and wiped the edges where I'd layered on the candle wax. The black paint wiped off every easily exposing the yellow without removing any of that layer leading to the wood. So fun! I really wanna try this on something else!!!

On the other wall, we left the fun blue and hung shelves that have been in all our nurseries. This time we did them off centered while making sure they were still in studs. You DEFinitely do Not want these shelves falling on an innocent baby on a changing table! We put pictures of J on the top shelf along with some lil superhero guys. On the bottom shelf, we put our diaper bin and wipe tub next to a fun canvas an artistic student from the valley made for Jamin. Next to it is J's personalized step from my parent {they got made at a local craft fair}.

The dresser was my dresser growing up. It was a medium shade brown {covered in stickers}. Before I used this dresser, it was my dad's. LOL When I painted it with heavy gloss black paint, I also used strips of velcro securing the changing pad to the top of the dresser. When the season of diapers is over, I'm sure there will be some fun clean up to remove the sticky film. This is the breakdown of his dresser/changing table.

The awkward wall that sticks out when you first enter the room we chose to put something decorative.

On one wall is a giant canvas a friend from our last church made for J.
The other wall has tiny shelves that used to be in our dinning room,
a hat rack that was in our master bedroom in our first home,
old frame from my high school days,
and a wooden letter and cardboard pizza round I painted & hot-glued together to resemble a superhero logo. hehe

In case you care, here's a glimps into the bedroom closet. I wish I already had the other shelves but up but nope. Not yet. The white wire shelves {from the kitchen pantry} will go depth-wise in the closet below the hanging clothes and will be used for the linens that belong in this room {leaving our "linen closet" available for GAMES!}.

Hope you enjoyed the tour around our lil Super Hero's retreat.

Filed Under: The ones about the Rothacher Home

The Dress

September 21, 2013 by Jules Leave a Comment

{sponsored post}

I remember being in high school, so excited to find a fancy dress since I was normally a very practical/comfy clothes kinda girl. Formal season {my senior year} was a fun time. Stressful but fun. I'd never been in pageants. I'd been in one wedding when I was ~3, and had never been to a dance before my senior year. This was the year I got to pretend to be fancy some times.

Then, when I headed off to college, I realized I could find really inexpensive formals for the annual "winter formal. #winning

Sadly, I never did the wedding planning for years and years but when I finally did go to find "the dress", I was ready to get one I loved. I am NOT planning on doing this again. I headed to David's Bridal thinking I was just looking. I for sucked into the $99 sale...lets just say, my poor mamma paid more than 99 dollars and more than I should have ask her to but I still love my dress. 😀

But for bridesmaid dress, we didn't do the whole shopping experience. I actually handed out color swatches of the colors I wanted them to wear and allowed them to find a floor length dress in the style and price they wanted. I think it turned out great!

If you're looking for anything from wedding dress, cocktail dress, evening dress, bridesmaid dresses, etc you may be interested in going to online shopping route with a place like DressFirst or somewhere less expensive.

For {especially} high school formals, I highly recommend resale shops or consignment events! These things are getting worn once and then tossed. There are tons of them out there for great prices. I have some in my closet if anyone's interested 😉

Good luck in whatever fancy season of life your in right now!