Decorating Archives - Page 5 of 8

Living Room: Table Redos {Settled In September}

September 5, 2013 by Jules 5 Comments

So these are the tables Matt and I have had since we got married back in '04. I like(d) them.

I did however decide it was time for a change. I sold them thinking I wanted something completely different. I bought this lil table at a flea market & gave it a makeover.

I liked it alright...but what I thought I wanted wasn't gonna work. So I sold it. {have more pics of process if anybody really wants to hear/see about how I did the 2-tone table}.

The things I liked about the old tables:

large- can hold lots of guests' drinks, plates, feet, etc.
height- the end tables were a great height for setting drinks, remotes, and randomness
storage- the 2-tear tables allowed you to have decorative items as well as practical things stored on the table

Things I'm moving away from in the old tables:

uniformity- having bought this living room furniture when I was 19 {yep- married Young}, I feel like I either didn't know what I liked or have changed my taste a lot since then. I've come to find out that I don't like matchy-matchy furniture.
massiveness- I know I said I liked the size BUT the square tables just felt bulky
glass/nice wood- we want to LIVE in our home which for me means having tables that don't make people worry about setting a moist glass on

Here are 2 tables we already had at home. Aren't they awesome?!? My husband inherited them from "the queen of end tables" when he bought his 1st home. Out of the gazillion he had, these 2 have made the cut through 4 moves and NOW are getting yet another facelift.

oh, avoid doing this spray paint in 90+ degree weather...at least I think that's what caused these bubbles that had to be popped with a needle and squashed down. OR maybe it was because I painted this with a satin-esk paint last time and didn't bother to sand the table down 1st... hmmm

Sorry, not much of a tutorial today. Just my favorite method- SPRAY PAINT! {anybody know where I can get a sponsor for all this paint 😉 }

find other post in this series HERE

Filed Under: Decorating, Projects, Settled In September, The ones about the Rothacher Home

Living Room: “Big Betsy” {Settle In September}

September 4, 2013 by Jules Leave a Comment

When we moved into this new home, I wanted to get rid of all of our old furniture. We’ve had our furniture for almost a decade. We got them when we were first married. They’ve been loved on through our first 3 kids and although they are still small, I wanted to sell these pieces before they weren’t worth anything 😉
My hubs was okay with this until I sold them all so quickly we were sitting on lawn chairs. Among the fun transition time, I found “Big Betsy” on an online garage sale. I thought it was a pretty good deal until I sent my hubby and his buddy to retrieve my find and they returned with the clunker including but not limited to a handle missing, another handle that looked like they got it off the bottom of the ocean from the titanic, and 2 bullet holes. YEP. You read that right. GUNSHOT HOLES.

First, I ask Matt if the wife seemed…okay. Any bruises etc. lol She was said to be in ‘good condition’. After my concern for her well-being, I ask if he requested a discount after discovering its condition. Like a good hubby, he didn’t question my agreed upon purchase price and simply handed over the cash and heaved this amazingly heavy solid wood junker into the back of a truck and brought her home to me. She sat in the garage for a week until we were completely moved and I had a lil time to love on her. I laughed every time I saw her. I wish I’d gotten better before pictures for you.

When I finally got started, the process didn’t really take that long. About two days with the assistance of a painting pro friend, my handy hoss husband and a rain delay.

I removed all the handles and soaked them in a white vinegar and backing soda mixture in the sink overnight. I don’t think that much time was necessary…I just forgot about them.
I removed all the drawers and wiped them down Really Well. Gross.
I taped off the drawers so only the fronts were exposed. I did this for a couple reasons: I thought other people projects looked cool with some of the original wood showing and it would take less paint. 😉
My friend and I toted all the drawers into the back yard onto a giant plastic drop cloth we had left from painting the kids rooms. We had to place logs on the corners of the plastic to make sure they wouldn’t blow around as well as place logs inside the drawers slightly so they would stay face-up for easy painting. This literally took less than 30 minutes. Read HERE for my silly non-pro tips for spray-painting.
When I realized this project was trucking right along, I hurried into the garage to glob some wood puddy into the big gun hole that went through the middle of the left side, through a drawer, and out the back. I only filled the giant side hole and left the drawer, back, and smaller side gunshot hole.
After I remembered the handles the next day, I hook a magic eraser and very easily wiped each handle off as best as I could. They cleaned up pretty nicely. I considered saving myself the paint cost and leaving them this color…
until the titanic handle refused to come as clean as the rest of them.
I took all my newly clean handles into the backyard on broken down cardboard boxes and spray painted them white.
I chose to start with the backs an only did a light coat.
My hubby was getting ready to head to his office so ask him to through the same plastic drop cloth over his dad’s dolly and but the bones of “Big Betsy” onto the dolly. He was a bit skeptical but this way my pregnant-self could roll it out of the garage, into the driveway and back in if it started to rain or if it was taking too long and I didn’t want to be THAT neighbor.
I used my amazing palm sander to tackle the top of the bones where it looked like someone had taken a very angry, not-declawed cat by the torso and drug it up and down the center of the dresser to add precious claw marks deep into the top. Sweet huh? I chose not to fill it with the wood puddy simply because I’m lazy and impatient. Using the puddy on the gunshot hole was the first time I’d ever used the stuff and wasn’t confident my mad skills would work as well on the TOP of this piece.
While the dust settled, I returned to the backyard where I flipped all my handles over so the fronts were showing. I also flipped the handle piece up as if they were hanging upside down on the dresser. I put a thin coat while they were in this position
Going through the house feeling like a traveling crazy, I went back to the bones in the front yard and washed her down really well with hot water, rolled her into the side yard, took a deep breath, and then started spraying. It took about 3 cans of my fancy dancy gray paint to cover her. Again, if I wasn’t impacient, I would have gone to buy one more can for that extra coat…but I didn’t.
Did I mention it sprinkled for 1/2 a second while I wasn't in the front yard? Yeah...
Making the treck again, I went back to the handles and flipped the handle pieced downward in their natural hanging position. I did that so my final top coats of paint where on the side that would be showing 99% of the time.I let the handles dry for about 45 minutes- an hour. It was super hot outside so it didn’t take long with them basting in the sun. While they were drying I distressed the drawers and wiped them down.
While the bones dried for hours while my husband and I put all the handles back on.
When the bones were dry I distressed it, wiped it down, and the hubs toted inside the house for me. Adding the drawers felt like such a success!
The last think I did before loading her down with my craft supplies was add that foam-ish shelf/drawer liner to each drawer. Not all of them cleaned up perfectly and this would keep things in place as we opened and closed the drawers so often.

I love the end product!!! I originally thought I would put board games in “Big Betsy” but after discovering her quirks I also realized the drawers were extremely shallow. Each one might have held a single board game box. After much thought, I decided to swap the “craft closet” and what I thought would be the “gaming shelf”. I love the swap. It works so much better. Tomorrow I’ll share with you my embracing confession of craft crap hoarding and all things organization in our living room. Those include the throw blankets, movies, games, and craft supply storage.

find other post in this series HERE

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

1st Day of Rothacher Academy {2013}

September 3, 2013 by Jules Leave a Comment

I'm tired. But not as tired as I expected to be today. I'll equate that to not being on social media until now and feeling lots better in the sinus department. I have always been curious about what different people's homeschool day looks like so today I wanna share a timeline of what our day basically looked like.

1st School Day of Rothacher Academy {2013/14}:

6:45 I got up {with an alarm 🙁 1st time in years other than Sundays} and shower

7:00 Girls show up in my bathroom bright-eyed. They had already made their beds, put PJs at the end of the bed for a second night of wearing, and dressed head to toe in their "first day outfits" we took separate special mom-daughter shopping dates to pick out.

7:10 I put biscuits in the over and finished getting dressed and drying hair while the girl went to brush teeth and hair.

7:20 The girls returned and got their "chore assignments" for the morning: put away dishes and move wet laundry to the drier and start it.

7:30 We all ate breakfast and finished chores. I had to write my fun HIPPY request for acceptance before our meeting.

8:00 The girls played with computers until everyone was finished {mainly me and my letter} then we finished putting up hair and took 1st Day of School Pics

PreK-3

8:15 We cleaned up toys and headed into the school room to do the rest of our 'morning routine': calendar, season, weather, chore credits, and talk about our routine {combination of our old morning routine and chore chart} for the rest of the day.

8:30 Finished cleaning up breakfast, loading the dishwasher, grabbed shoes and items we would need for our HIPPY meeting, put a diaper over J's "unnies" so if he had an accident while we were out it would be less...clean up.

8:45 Loaded in the van, hit up the Sonic for a morning DP and took off for Library Day.

9:20

We had a discussion about how we behave in a library, unloaded and marched into the new-to-us Faulkner County Library.
At the desk, we got our forms to fill out for 3 library cards {every "School Kid" gets a library card in our house 😉 }
Constant wiggling, talking too loud by the one with no volume control, and poop. Yeah. I was a sweaty mess just trying to fill out tiny forms and correct children.
We turned in our forms to be processed, got to pick out what color card we wanted: I bet some of you could guess, Mags- Pink, Izzie- Purple, Me- Yellow.
She said it would take a while so we headed to the really cool "children's section" where we got to see a "service dog" and read several books.
I let each kid pick one book to check out. Mags got one of her 1st "Level 1" Readers :'(
The cards still weren't ready so I let the girls go into the bathroom by themselves while Jamin and I looked at the sad selection of movies.

10:00 We checked out our books {each with our own cards}, change the nasty poopy pants, and head to library #2 for the day.

10:30 We made it back to Vtown with just enough time to scout out the library here in town. We had enough time in the little bitty library to each check out one more book each.

10:45 We swung by our house and picked up Matt so we could all go to the HIPPY orientation meeting together.

11:00 We signed in, turned in our letter & other documents, set a weekly meeting time, and picked a seat for our meeting.
During the meetings here in Faulkner county, the kids were taken back to...do something while the parents sat and did the meeting part.

11:30 We got our supply & snack bags for the girls and headed home to figure out what was for lunch {we weren't sure if they provided lunch like the other HIPPY program or not so I had nothing planned}.

11:45 We ate ham & cheese sliders, grapes and the juice boxes from their HIPPY snack bag. One by one, each kid finished lunch and showed daddy all their library finds and told him what all they'd done that morning.

12:15 We finished cleaning up lunch, loaded dishwasher, pottied, and headed to naps.

12:30 I started in on the catastrophe that was the school room. I have no idea when all this went down but I feel fairly accomplished having

unloaded the closet of all items the kids had been grounded from and added them back to their rightful place {this is usually the kids' responsibility since Not Cleaning Up is probably why they were grounded from it but I was reorganizing so I went a head and put them where I wanted them.}
organized and loaded book shelves
cleaned out and sorted writing utensil drawers

started the slow cooker for dinner {stew meat and potatoes already in the pot in the fridge from when I thought I'd make it Sunday}

rearranged some of the shelves to work better
hung all the printed/laminated/hole-punched labels on the canvas bins
Sorted, organized, trashed, moved to a new location, etc things like scrapbook paper, stickers, toys to be sold at the consignment event in a few weeks, etc.
traded out drawer organizer for better usage

got together snack and juice cups for when the kids got up from nap

hung kids name canvases and other framed canvases
created a new dress-up center using a quilt rack I've had forever
unpacked a box of "older kid" books and curriculum
lined the wire shelf in the closet with cut up canned soda boxes so the books and curriculum wouldn't fall through
sorted paper/new reader books into bins.
created a new coloring book center
set up pictures of my babies on top of the shelf 😀
made a basket with empty folders {for easy access later}, old center signs {if I ever use those again}, and our laminated letters I plan to hang each week along the top of the room as we talk/learn about each new letter

2:20ish Kids began to wake up from naps so they got their snack and juice cups and picked out one of the library movies to watch

3:00 RECESS

Since cousins and bigger neighborhood kids have been over to play, my kids have discovered Recess. They ask me all morning if they would get "recess". Maggie actually ask me last night when she was picking what shoes to wear; "Will we be doing recess?" I kicked them outside after their movie with 2 bottles of water to share. After about 5 seconds they were nonstop in and out the door asking to if recess was over. Yeah. It's HOT! I was still finishing ~~cleaning up my giant mess~~ organizing so of course I threatened to lock the door if they didn't stop opening it and let them know I'd call them in when "recess was over".

3:45 I set up the playdough center in the freshly cleaned and organized school room at the preschool table and "called the kids in from recess". After wiping down their adorably sweaty faces covered in chalk dust, I sent them in to play with playdough and big cups of water.

4:00 Matt came home and laughed that we were "still doing school". Sad ehh. I've been so disorganized that getting out the playdough center seems so structured it must be called school. LOL

4:30 I checked on the crockpot and realized the "stew meat" didn't quite look...done. CRAP

4:45 Matt makes an executive decision to get 1/2 price breakfast burritos for he and I while I shoved tater tots and fish sticks into the oven {over heated for quicker cooking time}

5:00

Kids start cleaning up the playdough center that was starting to migrate into every other room including the living room {Carpet}.
Two empty playdough tubs were thrown away becuase it was impossible to relocate the color that was supposed to return to it.
All the kids loaded up the "tool" basket and playdough tray.
J ~~wondered off~~ helped daddy set the table for dinner and waited in anticipation At the table for everyone else to finish cleaning up.
Mags wiped down the table.
I put the playdough back on the TOP shelf and swept.
Izzie helped sweep up the remains and through them away.

5:15 DINNER Yummy. The kids told lots of stories of "making and watching movies during recess" and I tried to sit. Breath. and Chew. 😉

5:45

We finished cleaning up dinner
loaded dishwasher
Matt and I put the mantel piece up that goes in the middle of the entertainment center
Matt {kinda} hung our new "Library Basket" in the school room where all of our "borrowed" books will be stored so we don't loose them from week to week & have to pay late fees.
I rearranged pictures and randomneess inside/on the entertainment center but still don't love it

6:00

started our "Bible Class". Also known as the newest "What's in The Bible" DVD {vol 8} we just found and opened for the kids.
I vacuumed up the playdough, wood scraps from the mantel projects, as well as snacks from days and days agoswept the odd lil wood floor trail around the living room and the entire dinning room/kitchen
I SAT down! Checked Facebook, email, and started writing this post.

I think not sitting as well as constantly moving leaving me no time for social media was good and helped me stay focused, accomplish lots more than normal, as well as stay more patience with my kids and what really needed to be done today.

Its also kinda dreaded but I realized how much cleaner and well run my house is when I plan. Even simple things like what activity my kids will do and for how long. Don't get me wrong; I think creative, thought-up-on-their-own play is greatly beneficial, but with fewer choices for them to sort through, there was so much less fighting, bickering, groaning, etc today. When ask about their day, they can tell their daddy exactly what they did. No more of this "played" nonsense. There were specifics, details, and joy in what they remembered. <3

6:30 The kids weren't as into "Bible Class" as we'd hoped and were tackling one another on the couch which turned into full contact wrestling over the entire living room and they added dress-up to the mix...ugg

6:45 Matt had to head up to the valley to train someone on the computer stuff and offered to take the kids. WINNING!

7:15 I'm wondering how much longer I have the quietness of my house with nothing but my thoughts, the humming of electronics, running refrigerator, and the therapeutic clicking of my fingers on the keyboard...

~~~

7:50 ...still now sign of them and we are supposed to be loading laundry, taking baths, brushing teeth, drying hair, going potty, taking/applying medicines, getting PJs & night time diapers on, and arguing with the kids about going to sleep...hmmm

We'll see what tomorrow holds 😉 Hope the peak into our day wasn't too mundane.

Filed Under: Cleaning, Decorating, Homemaker, Homeschool, Organizing, Parenting, Projects, The ones about the Rothacher Home

Living Room: Mantel {Settled In September}

September 3, 2013 by Jules 1 Comment

When working on the “collage wall” from yesterday, I decided I needed some other items to break up the crazy amount of frames/pictures as well as to display other items in a different way.

Today's project came about because I chose not to use this mirror from our bedroom set a while back. I was monstrous and I was afraid my growing littles were somehow going to knock off this thing and get smashed. {lil dramatic…I know} Really, it just kinda dated the furniture.

This mantel started as a, "what in the world can we use this ugly mirror that we're never going to use again" project.

I also recently bought a dresser for more storage and it came with a similar mirror piece on top. With these bad boys stacking up, I figured I should find something to do with them. Other than removing and framing the huge mirrors, I had to get real creative…AND get the hubs involved.

I intended on chopping off the bottom and top off these mirror/shelf pieces after removing the actual mirrors. After talking through it with my hubby I suggested we try prying trim pieces off the top so we could save the other parts {in tacked} for another project 😉 When those came off easy enough he decided to try tapping off the bottom part as well.
After removing the pieces I wanted, I went to town spray painting a couple coats of white on the trim while Matt hunted down some wire cutters to get rid of the jaunting nails protruding what will now be the top of the mantel.
{Here's what that looked like: Matt, with wire cutters in hand & wood on kitchen counter. Locates his nail of chose, places wire cutters around said nail, grips with both hands, turns head to the side, closes eyes tightly, snaps off nail only to hear it flying across the kitchen. Locate next nail and repeat.}
After all the nails were removed I took that big piece out and gave it a couple quick coats of paint.
When they were all dry, Matt used our friends nail gun to assemble the pieces, placing the trim pieces off what used to be the bottom of the mirror that would have sat flush on top of the dresser.
With these parts now together well, trim hanging downward to make the appearance of a thick mantel, I used wood puddy in the nail holes, giant holes where the weird decorative parts used to be, as well as the tiny joints between the boards. NORMALLY I'm a that's-good-enough kinda girl but since I had the puddy already from having to fill the gunshot holes in Big Betsy, I figured it would make this look that much more quality.
The puddy dried for about 30 minutes, I sanded it lightly and wiped it down before taking it back outside for the last 3 coats of white spray paint.

Now...how to hang it on the wall...

My hubs and his buddy took a while discussing what would be the best way to hang this on the wall. We didn't need something Huge but also didn't want it falling off the wall if we placed things actually on the mantel. lol
The final decision? We went retro, old school floating shelves were hung int his manor- building a box that would be mounted to the wall in which the mantel would slide over and then be nailed to.
For my mantel, they made the frame 3 foot by 7 inches. This would insure that we could screw the frame into at least 2 studs assuring a maximum hold.
My hubs screw the box frame onto the wall into 2 studs.
We then used a nail-gun to mount the faux mantel to the frame.
Now we are continually praying it doesn't fall off the wall in the middle of the night causing bed urination or unexpected heart attacks.

SEE, I got to play with the GUN! 😀

I hope this tutorial made sense. If not, ask away!

find other post in this series HERE

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

Living Room: Collage Wall {Settled In September}

September 2, 2013 by Jules 3 Comments

I love having pictures throughout my house. Most of the time, the things in my house at least have a practical purpose even if they happen to be cute. I want to live in my house. I don’t like the idea of being uncomfortable, especially in my home. I mean seriously, if you know me well, you know that I don’t own “real clothes”. I wear t-shirts and comfy shorts, pants or jeans, and flip-flops.

So when it comes to my home , I’m fairly practical…and cheap. Hehehe We try very hard to get the same age pictures of each of our children. Or at least close to. We did 3 and 6 {and possibly 9} months and then every year. With 3 children and one on the way, that’s a lot of pictures. We also tried to do a family picture once a year. We’re totally slacking on all of these. We haven’t had professional pictures taken in a year and half. Ya know, all this church planting and commuting business had us a little distracted from our photo sessions. We have MORE than enough snap shots in this time. My Facebook page is packed full of daily moments captured.

All this to say, in our old house, we had a huge hallway upstairs that you could see downstairs through the balcony opening thingy. I had tons of space to sprawl out the kiddos. In our new home, there’s not that perfect hallway for the “family portrait wall”. We do however have giant blank walls in our living room. A while back, I ask you guys on the as Jules is going Facebook page “How many pictures of your kids was too many in a public room?” Most of you said there’s never too many. I went with it!

It took me forever to decide how to display these piles of frames on my big wall. I was scared to make a catastrophe of awkward groups, one kid bunched together in a pile, too many of the same color near one another, and so on.

Finally, I just laid them out on the floor and played with them for an entire day. Staring at them, moving, adding and taking away other decorative items to break up the frames. THIS is what I finally came up with. Its a work in progress and still missing some pieces but this is at least a start & frames are laying around in piles 😀
To make sure I had them in the same placement as on the floor, I used THIS technique from Pinterest.

I flipped all the frames over so I could see the hooks they needed to be hanging from. I then used a long piece of wax paper to mark where that row of nails needed to be placed with a colored sharpy. {Sadly, I went through all kinds of other materials to mark the holes on but I couldn’t come up with anything else transparent and lightweight.}
After marking that row of hooks, I taped the wax paper to the wall at the height I wanted and made sure it was level. I started with the top row and worked my way down from the tallest row. I wanted to make sure they started near “Big Betsy” and weren’t crazy high on the wall so I measuring how high I wanted the bottom row off of "Big Betsy" and the mantel {to come} and then added the height for the next 2 rows.
I repeated this process with each row but using a different color marker for each row…because I’m cheap and didn’t want to use an entire roll of wax paper. Don’t forget to measure the distance from the the top nails to one on the next row to make sure they are spaced appropriately when you start putting up the next row of nails. Use a level both for hanging the wax paper with nail placements as well as after hanging each frame.

Here is the after pictures minus the mantel we were still working on as well as the fabric, quote, and picture for the frame where the glass broke in the move.
Hope you enjoyed day one of Settled In September. Come back the rest of this week to tour the rest of the living room. Over this month we’ll walk through the entire house.