as Jules is DIYing Archives - Page 25 of 45

Some Times a Mom Needs to Brag

September 28, 2012 by Jules 2 Comments

Some times a momma needs to brag to feel accomplished with her routine tasks. Just say'n...

My girls both went to Nanna's for a sleepover last night leaving me and the lil man to hunker down for the night after heading to Lowes to grab some lemon grass {fail} and mums. We got home and I put Jamin straight to bed, sleepy boy!

When he was asleep I headed straight for the van to grab my plants and get them in the pots on the front porch.

I spot cleaned the living room carpet.

"Watched" Friends while writing a guest blog post.

Wrote a Thoughtful Thursday post {before it wasn't Thursday anymore}

And worked on my new "Virtual Assistant" job's site {more info soon} all while eating too many {not even very good} no-bake cookies and avoiding writing my #healthymomseries post for the week.

This morning felt like I slept in even though it was 7 {like normal} when the J woke up.

I cheated and we ate cereal in the living room and he watched Veggie Tales {laughing, cheering, and dancing} while I wrote 1 & 1/2 post for my blog.

When he got bored of the movie I brought in his Little People and he played forever.

THEN, J picked a fight with me so I'd chase and wrestle him. All B.O.Y. misses his daddy.

At like 10am, he ASK to sit at the table in his boaster seat...so I fed him lunch. While he ate

I cleaned the kitchen
put away clean dishes
moved and started a new load of laundry
took out 2 bags of trash
checked the mail
loaded the dishwasher

When he was down for his nap @ 10:30, I frantically cleaned all 3 upstairs {NASTY} bathrooms in anticipation of the girls coming home.
{you know it's time to clean when pink stuff starts growing on your blue shower}

Showering, making beds, and working on tagging my consignment items has yet to be checked off the list...

Now I am working on a few more VA details and just found out the girls are coming home around noon.

OOoooo, I almost forgot, I need to eat lunch! See ya later!

Filed Under: Cleaning, Homemaker, Parenting, The ones about the Rothacher Home

DIY Cake Stands {Thoughtful Thursday}

September 27, 2012 by Jules 11 Comments

I love baking! But surprisingly I don't own a cake stand, of any kind. Hmm, how did that happen. Anyways. I'd seen tons of cute DIY cake stands on Pinterest and when this shower came up I thought it would be the perfect time to try out a custom made colorful cake stand and several other Pinterest inspired projects!

As always I looked at pictures online but I'm terrible at following directions so I winged it and did a little tweaking to work with what I had or could get easily. Here's what I came up with.

Supplies {enough for 1 cake stand- I ended up making 4}:

1 dollar tree pizza pan {preferably not warped}
1 dollar tree {short} glass candle stick holder
1 can of each desired color
Glue {E6000- great for glass!}

Directions:

Head to the local Dollar Tree {ya know, where everything is Uno Dollar!} and snatch up your suppies then shoot on over to where ever you buy your spray paint {I did Krylon from Wal-Mart because they had the colors I needed but pic your fav}
Peel off the wrapping from the pizza pan and pick a place to spray away. I prefer to do a light coat on the bottom of my project 1st so then I can concentrate on the most visible part. In this case, the TOP of the pan will be the bottom of the cake stand.

Next spray paint your candle stick holder. I did spray inside of the holder and then the bottom but the focus will be the outside since it will be glued on the pan and sitting on the bottom but I wanted maker sure the white wouldn't be transparent.

Place your pan on a flat surface, find the center of your pizza pan and glue your candle stick there. This is important so it balances your cake and won't tip over. I chose to put the smaller end of the holder on the pan. Then I balanced heavy books on top of the 'bottom' of the holder to assure the glue adhered well.

Vuala, Cake Stand!

If you liked this DIY Cake Stand Tutorial, pin it!

Filed Under: Homemaker, Projects, The Ones about Link-Ups, The ones about the Rothacher Home, The Ones about things Jules tried off Pinterest, Thoughtful Thursdays

Seasonal Decor

September 26, 2012 by Jules Leave a Comment

I love seasonal decorations! I love bright colors. I love bold. I'm a photo lover. But if you've been here long, you're like, "Duh. And??" So you would understand that I have found fun Spring and Summer items. Here is a picture of what my mantel looked like this spring and summer; minus the Easter or Valentines day items I added during those months. See, simple. And lots of PICTURES!

Even bright funky Christmas decor I love. Now Fall...Fall is hard. For years I've settled with the 'traditional' pumpkins, corn, wood, dead flowers, and country scarecrows just because I haven't found something that's me. This year I'm trying something a little different. COLOR! Something uncommon. A little something to add to the red, orange, yellow, and browns of fall. Here were some of my attempts with what I had:

Come over to the Homemaker's Challenge today and I'll show you what I finally came up with!

Filed Under: Decorating, Homemaker, The Ones about Homemaker's Challenge, The ones about the Rothacher Home

Tutu Table Skirt (Sugar & Spice Baby Shower) {Thoughtful Thursday}

September 20, 2012 by Jules 4 Comments

I told you last week I got to be apart of an awesome baby shower! The theme was "Sugar & Spice". We used hot pink and orange everywhere. It was so fun!!! I wanted to tell you about the fun tutu table skirt I got to make. I found the idea HERE on Pinterest. I wanted to show you how easy it was!

Supplies: {for a 12' round table}

6 yards of white tulle
3 yards of both orange and pink tulle
12 feet of white ribbon
table-cloth hooks
lighter
scissors
some sort of measuring tool

Directions:

measure & cut white tulle into 2 inch strips
measure, cut {quickly burn the end of the ribbon to prevent reveling}, & string up ribbon {easiest way I found to know tulle on}
loosely knot each strip evenly onto the ribbon {this takes a crazy amount of time}
space white tulle evenly across the entire ribbon
go through and group a few strips so there is even spaces available along the ribbon
cut the orange and pink tulle in 2 inch strips
loosely knot colored tulle evenly across the ribbon placing several strips together to make the color bolder
once all the strips are on the ribbon, move them around to even them out
when decorating for the shower {or whatever event you'd like to use the tutu for}, stretch the tutu around the table, using the table-cloth clips, hook the tutu evenly to the table
fluff, rearrange, cutesy up the skirt prior to the shindig {we also layered an orange-colored plastic table clothe under

Have you tried fun things off Pinterest? Do share!

Filed Under: Decorating, Homemaker, Parties, The Ones about Link-Ups, The ones about the Rothacher Home, The Ones about things Jules tried off Pinterest, Thoughtful Thursdays

Rrrrr

September 19, 2012 by Jules 7 Comments

You know that moment? The one where your kids are getting on your nerves. The one where you look like a crazy among what appears to be organization feeling completely unraveled. Unraveled by those adorable little faces. The adorable faces with that wicked evil heart inside.

I feel like every time I share something, some grandiose idea I have for making life simpler with 3 tinies I loose that battle. I organize that stank'n toy room at least 3 different ways and it's all gone down the crapper. Last week my girls got grounded from nearly 90% of their playroom. No Joke! The rule is: if you don't clean up your toys before bed, whatever is left out gets picked up my mom and dad and put into "the closet". Most of the time the grounding last a full week.

Last week sucked! The grounding backfired. The 3rd night of this continual pattern, exasperated, I said, "Do you want to be grounded from these toys too?" to which my middle child just replied, "Sure. I be grounded." Rrrrrrrr Are you Kidding ME!!??!!

Morning Charts: fail

My husband does breakfast with the kids so he just herds them downstairs for feeding. I can't add "check to make sure they do their morning chart before they go down" is just not fair.

Daily Schedule/Chart: fail

I don't have the time an energy to set this chart up nightly and monitor if she's following it. And then there's the whole "I wanted to play teacher/mamma" which means she just pulled the entire chart down through the cards to the wind.

One 4 One Theory: making my older 2 take one bit of thing they didn't like and get rewarded with a bite they did worked GREAT! #3...not so much.

Jamin is a terribly picky eater. I had no idea kids were born knowing the difference between junk food and healthy food. My older 2 didn't seem to discriminate. J-man, he knows! We've begun forcing food into his mouth because he won't spit it out but he won't put it in his won mouth. WEIRD!

Centers: {I was gonna write this post...maybe not} they keep them generally in the right places and we can find things easily 98% of the time but as for only playing in 1 center at a time using the "preschool method" has been a flop

Every morning, the kids head straight for the kitchen center. Who wouldn't!?! What's not to love about an entire kitchen set just your size with fun pretend food sets and miniature dishes? But that's been the extent of it. They drag it out and wonder off. Rrrrrr

My kiddos drag out {more like DUMP} all kinds of stuff. If they are looking for a dress-up item, they dump the bucket, get the 1 item and leave the rest in a pile on the floor. As I kids, I never understood why I had to "put it away before you got something else out". I mean, where's the imagination in that? I totally understand not wanting to play in just 1 center when so many coordinate.

If you're a "mamma" in the kitchen center then of course you need a baby from the baby center and to be dressed appropriately from the dress-up center and you might even want to read your baby a book from the reading center and then take them for a ride in a car from the riding center and while you're out for a drive you might as well stop at the grocery store which means you need to drag out Every Single Piece of the Kitchen Center and sprawl it around the playroom so you can shop around in aisles and then your room is so trashed that you just have to take your computer from the electronic center into the living room with your babies who have multiplied and then the baby gets hungry so you have to grab just a few food items from the mess-of-a-kitchen-center and then you need more baby items from the baby center to properly take care of your baby and....

"If you give a mouse a cookie" much!?!?!

On top of that, yesterday they were ungrounded from all those toys. Matt and I put them back into place, had a discussion about why they were grounded, and showed them once again where things were expected to be. Ya know, the "if you wanna keep it, take care of your junk" talk. We were gone most of the day yesterday so it all hit the fan again this morning. The girls had destroyed the kitchen. Thank goodness there weren't too many other center Everywhere; Yet- we caught it in time. I found them dancing around in cute dress-up items while playing instruments from the music center. I told them it was great they were having so much fun together and that I liked it! Then I ask them to clean up the kitchen stuff real quick so they wouldn't have a huge mess to clean up later. MELT DOWN. Long story {slightly} short{er}, Mags ended up telling me to just give away certain toys so she wouldn't have to deal with them. Rrrrrr

One thing I can't handle is a rude ungrateful child. I had to go into the laundry room and cry over piles of clothing I was sorting, generously provided by God. We Have So Much. Do I give it all away? Will the the experience teach them anything? How much really needs to go with us when we move? I don't want giving away things to be a punishment. I want it to be a wiliness out of the overflow of compassion in their hearts.

Sorry, today's rant doesn't have a real conclusion. I could easily Jesus juke this bad boy with a good story about me, the mom, not being diligent enough to train them how to put away toys or me being lazy with my quiet time just like they are with their toys clean up or me being ungrateful for the things given me. But nope. Maybe it's my self-righteousness eeking out or impatient but I got none of that today.

If you have a suggestion, I'm always up for them but please gently tell me about it. I might snap today if I'm overwhelmed with clever mom's who are doing it right.

My prayer today: That Patients, Thankfulness, & Generosity bred in my heart will overflow in front of the eyes of my babes so they may follow in step.