Curtains in my Kitchen!

My sister moved a few weeks ago. I mentioned this in my last post. When she moved, she and her husband ditched a ton of their stuff. Which means, I got a lot of their stuff.

One of the "stuff" I got was the curtains that were in their living room. They just happened to go perfectly in my kitchen.

This is the before shot:

This is what they looked like before I hemmed them. Yeah, way too long:

And the completely finished after:

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

I Knocked Through a Wall--Which Option Should I use to Fix It?

So, when we moved in, there was this little shelf in place:

 
When we were touring the house with the inspector, I was like "What's this weird hole/shelf here for?" And he was all like, "There used to be these types of phones that you had to plug into the wall. . ." I liked our inspector. He was sarcastic. I might have told that story before on the blog. It's a good story.

Anyway, it existed to set the phone on. Because there was only one phone jack and it was in the living room. That wall is between the kitchen and the living room.

But, it really annoyed me. It's not at eye level. Unless you are between the ages of five and eight. Considering that only three of the six people in our house qualify, I felt it needed to go.

(Also, woah, my kitchen has changed a lot since then!)

Rather than knock it out and fix the drywall, I thought--why not make this hole bigger? So, David and I worked on that.

And we got to this point. It hasn't changed in a while. Because we can't decide if this should have shelves or not have shelves, and if it has shelves what they should look like.

So, I used the magic of Photoshop to approximate what shelves would look like in different configurations.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Project Progress: Kitchen Update Week 11

This week is basically a quick post to show off the chairs I've finished so far. I've got five done. You can check out my first finished one here, along with the before pictures if you didn't catch the first post.

They look darling in my kitchen. Just what I pictured.

I cannot wait to get all six around the kitchen table! I have eight chairs, but two of them hang out in my craft room most of the time.

I love how they pick up the colors in the wall art. The navy bowl in the center was a wedding present, and the teal bowl in it was from my great-grandma and it looks charming as a center piece, particularly when filled with green apples.

I still really want to get new light fixtures and curtains. I have not a single curtain in my entire house. Luckily, there are nice blinds on most of the windows, but there is a horrible lack of window treatments.

And, I need to finish up my rag rug. I've been working on it, but like I said last week, that is taking much longer than I anticipated.

I also want vintage metal stools for the breakfast bar. I bought one and it's perfect, but I want three more, all different styles. I'm hoping I can figure out a way to get all the things that I want. I usually can. I'm very crafty (I mean this in the stealthy, cunning way this time) when I want something. And I want to finish this kitchen makeover and complete the whole vision of the thing.

On the other hand, I must not get too caught up in decorating fever. There are more important things. Hard to think what they are at the moment. Humm. . .

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Project Progress: Kitchen Update Week 10

This is one of those projects that you think is going to be a simple project, but is not a simple project, but is instead a very hard, very long project that only looks very simple. Yeah.

On the other hand, this project is 100% free. Not "free" as in "sometime in the past I bought this stuff and am now getting around to using it" free, but free as in "I did not pay a cent for the materials" free. Except for the thread. I did buy that.

My mom worked for a while for an swanky furniture/interior design shop and she brought home loads and loads of sample books, some of which she passed along to me.

So, a few weeks ago, I went through some of my books and took them apart and got all the dark greens and blues and cut them into rough strips and sewed them together and started braiding them to make a wide-striped rag rug for my kitchen. I'm going to have three bands of dark and three bands of light neutrals.


That's a total of 25 braided strips and 24 seams between them.

Some of the ones I haven't done, hanging out in my laundry basket:

I'm hand-stitching the braids together and that is what is taking me forever. It takes me 1.5 hours to do one seam, approximately.

No clue why I'm so incredibly slow, besides the fact that I really want it to stick together and some of this stuff is hard to sew through. Thimble on hand at all times. This is serious hand-sewing here.

I've done seven seams so far.

You can see I'm getting much better.

Some one please threaten to take away all my sugar and Dr. Pepper for a month if I even consider redoing that first one I did on the left that's all wonky. Please.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Project Progress: Kitchen Update Week 9

I know. I can't believe I'm still working on the kitchen. It seems like such a huge project. And I'm sorry to report that things at our house have not stopped breaking. One of the boys broke my tripod, which puts a wrench into the whole blogging thing, since I use it nearly daily to take pictures. I won't mention which boy it was, because he felt really bad about breaking it. So, that will have to be replaced soon too.

Luckily, it's not nearly as bad as replacing a dishwasher, which we have now done! So, yay, new dishwasher! It does great. Except, there is a leak under the sink in the line that goes to the dishwasher. So the water to the dishwasher has to be turned off until David can get to fixing the leak, and turned on when I want to do a load of dishes. Yeah, not too great.

David will fix it soon. David will fix it soon. David will fix it soon.

The home ownership gods are laughing at our rather eventful initiation passage.

Anyway, I finally went out and bought the primer, spray paint and clear vinyl I needed to recover my chairs. We got these chairs from an ad on KSL. For some reason, in Utah, KSL is the place where all the ads get put. It's a local news station. You can find some things on Craig's List, but KSL is where everyone goes. Anyway, we saw these chairs for $8 a pieces and bought 8 of them. I knew I could make them amazing.

Yeah, that's green metal and bright orange vinyl. Picture in our old basement apartment.

When we got there, the lady selling them said they were related to the people who ran the Provo Leatherby's, which sadly closed a while back, and that is where all the chairs came from. We loved Leatherby's. They still have a few Utah locations open. Anyway, when we were living in Provo while I was pregnant with Griffin, we used to walk to Leatherby's several times a month and eat there. They have good food and the most amazing ice cream EVER.

Once, I went to a Two Peas in a Bucket Utah gathering and we met at Leatherby's and I totally did a caramel "shot" which means I drank straight caramel out of a cup. It was yummy.

Anyway, it's pretty awesome that these were the chairs from Leatherby's.

So I took off the seats.

Lightly sanded the metal. Primed it.

Then David sprayed the charcoal metallic finish on for me, because we are discovering I'm not very patient with the spray paint when it comes to a big project like this.

Then I recovered the seat cushions. Added clear vinyl because have you met my kids? Well, probably not, but you've heard about them. They are not neat and tidy children and I want my seats to last more than 10 minutes.

I cannot even describe the process I went through to pick out this fabric. I could write a full-length novel on it. It would be the most boring novel ever, even worse then Ulysses by James Joyce, but maybe read by more people, and it could rival it in length. Anyway, when I found this fabric, I liked it a lot and thought it might work, so I called David to come check it out, and he liked it, so I bought it, and now I love it and can't image anything else. It's Modern Meadow by Joel Dewberry for Westminster Fibers.

Then I put the seat covers back on.

And I had one chair finished.

Only seven more chairs to go!

Linking Up Here:

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Tutorial: Tips for Arranging Knick Knacks

I really hope you all aren't sick of my kitchen.

I'm not yet. I still love walking in there. And get this: a few weeks ago, I took a cooking class. You might not believe me, but I am a decent cook. I just never did it, between all the bipolar stuff, I was never stable enough to cook. My focus was keeping my kids fed, clean and happy, and anything above that was fluff.

So, this class wasn't so much the basics of cooking, but how to get more whole grains and more veggies into your cooking.

Which came at a great time, because I've been feeling good enough to be in the kitchen, cooking dinners for my family. And we've been eating together, which the kids love to do. Sometimes I have major mommy guilt that we didn't do that too much before; they love eating at our new table, with everyone together. But, then I have to just get over it, and move on, and feel hopeful about the future, and eat my salad and delicious whole-grain chicken salad with homemade ranch, and smile, because life is good.

Anyway, what was the point of this post? Oh, yeah, kitchen is good. And I thought it might be fun to give you a few tips of how to pick, group and display knick knacks so that they look cohesive and not disjointed.

This is something I don't think comes naturally to me, so this is what I've learned so far. Plus, this way you can get a closer look at what is on my kitchen shelves.

So, I have a light fixture that comes down in the center of the shelves. It's so hard to get a good photo of it all together. I took a bunch and then tried to put them all together. My photoshop skillz weren't serving me that great this time and it's a bit wonky, but you get the idea.

Tip 1:
Color. Pick things that are tied together with color, and repeat throughout the display, adding in plenty of neutrals. These teapots, which came from my great-grandma, were the inspiration for the entire room. I'm not too picky about exact shade, but rather, tried to pick from these families.

You'll notice I gave a lot of leeway to the greens, with tones ranging from olive to leaf to much more blue undertones, but then kept my blues much more tight, sticking closely to teals and aquas. Same with the yellows--I tried to avoid any bright yellows, instead going with mustard and muted colors. I stuck in a hint of navy, which will go nicely with the fabric I choose.

If you're unsure of color, go with all neutrals, then pick one color and put pops of color throughout your display. It will look amazing every time.

Tip 2:
Numbers. For some reason, our eye likes to try to pair things up, so odd numbers will always look more interesting and will keep the eye moving. I'm pretty loose with my interpretation of this "rule" but it does help if I can't figure out why something isn't working.

Tip 3:
Scale. Varying heights and size within a group will always help the eye travel and make a display more appealing.

Tip 4:
White Space. Don't cram everything you can up there. We need breaks. Leave some empty space for your eye to rest.

Notice in the photo of everything together, there are definite groupings, with space between. It might have been a good idea to leave even a little bit more space, and I might play with that some more.

Tip 5:
Stack stuff. I really love stacking old books (or new ones) and putting something on top of them. Or stacking matchboxes and putting something on top of them. Or plates. Or bowls. Don't forget to stack.

Tip 6:
Repetition. If things are looking too crazy, go buy three of something and put them in a row. It immediately calms things down. These bamboo utensil holders were at the dollar store, and they cut down on the clutter factor instantly.

Tip 7:
Variation: Across a long space like these shelves, you want to make sure you have groups of busy things (like the shadow box spoons/bowl/matchboxes/insulators) followed by groups of not at all busy things, like the white pitcher. Play with it until you find what works. Sometimes it takes a while. This also goes for varying things like color, size, height, etc.

One thing I like to do if I'm not sure is to blur my eyes. If the shape is still fairly interesting and things aren't fuzzing right into each other, it's probably working ok.

Tip 8:
Mounting Tape is your friend. I bought a roll of mounting tape and it's been great for helping me with things like the plates. Once I was sure they were going to stay there for a while, I put a little strip so they would stay in place (they were already resting on the shelf itself) and not roll off. It also helped the frame the spoons were in from going crooked. Every time I walked by the dang spoons, they were crooked!

See, nice and straight now.

I am loving these floating shelves! It's great for displaying all my vintage knick knacks, but it brings in that modern flair I need to keep it from being too little old lady, ya know? And I think I'm getting down this arranging trinkets thing too.

Linking Up Here:

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Project Progress: Kitchen Update Week 8

This week, on Monday, my husband reminds me that his parents are going to be in town. We've been seriously spoiled in seeing them so much lately. They are two people I greatly admire, and I look up to them in so many ways.

So, I was all like, cool, can't wait to see them. The kids will be excited.

Then he starts wondering how the shade will be in our backyard at that time of day.

And I'm all like, Woah, buddy, back up. Because I missed something.

My husband comes from a family of eight. He's the 7th. Three of his older brothers live in Utah, and one even lives in our town. So, normally, family parties have been held at his brothers' houses, because there are a lot of family members, and we didn't use to have the square feet to handle more than two or three extra people. So, when he said they were going to be in town, I didn't think that meant, in town in our town, more specifically in our house.

Because, while I'm thrilled to show them our new house, my craft room looked like a bomb squad arrived too late to save a Micheal's. Craft crap was everywhere. Movement from one side of the room to other involved risking life and limb, and doing a complicated dance step, and a little butt wiggling. The butt wiggling is for fun.

When I was cleaning it, I misjudged a step and ended up stuck, with one foot in a box of fabric and nearly doing the splits, and calling for my mommy. She was there helping me clean, and she came and rescued me. I don't normally call for my mommy when in peril. I normally call for which ever flesh and blood person is closest to the peril. 

And that's just one room. I've made a lot of progress in our house, it's certainly livable, but there was a long list of things I would want to do before showing it off. Got a lot of them done, some will have to wait.

Don't you always love a good kick in the pants to get your house cleaned?

One of those things I got done was my kitchen gallery art.

I added some vinyl swirls.

And made the rest of the art and got it printed.

Just in time for the party on Wednesday.

Linking Up Here:

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.

Project Progress: Kitchen Update Week 7

I'm seeing the wisdom in having all the money you need for a makeover beforehand.

Our AC broke a little while ago. While we could cover the repairs and make it through just fine, it does mean my kitchen makeover is experiencing a little involuntary hiccuping (fun fact about me: I oink when I hiccup. I cannot make it stop, and it's loud. People think I'm faking. I'm not. Xander tells me to knock it off every time I oink. David thinks it's hilarious. I try to avoid public places when I get a case of the hiccups. I guess this is one more nail in the coffin of my dream of being thought of as Aubrey Hepburn's little sister. Damn).

So, this week I had to do something completely free. A little bit ago, Natalie gave me a roll of wallpaper she picked up at DI (a local thrift store) for something like two dollars. When she found it, she knew it had to come over to my house to live.

I'd been planning on doing a fun print of wrapping paper or some such thing for drawer liners. My liners were old, yucky contact paper that wasn't really cut to size very well. Not what I want to see when I open the drawers.

I don't think that picture reflects how bad there were. They weren't gross, just old and starting to crack a bit, and generally scuffed up with some stain splatters from my recent refinish. In other words, you probably wouldn't gag when you opened them, but it was worth taking some time to polish them up.

So, I peeled up what I could. I wasn't going to bother getting it all up, because the wallpaper was pretty thick. I did make sure that anything going up the sides of the drawers was removed and the peeled parts were mostly flush with the bottom of the drawer.

Then, I cut my wallpaper to size, and gave it a quick bath in the sink. This brought back a lot of childhood memories of "helping" my mom to hang wallpaper in our home. Lots and lots of wallpaper. She was super good at it. I'm actually secretly pleased to see wallpaper back in fashion, because it can be so beautiful in the right places with the right print.

My kitchen is currently a disaster area. I bought some new cooking gear for camping, and it exploded in my kitchen. Plus, I'm chronically unable to be neat perpetually while working on a project. Stuff just goes everywhere.

So, once I wet it, I put the even (read: side not cut with scissors) side against the side of the drawer. Then I used a washcloth to help it to the edges and corners.

Then I creased it and folded it over. Not too easy with the corners, but I managed. Then I peeled it up a little bit, enough to trim my crease with a pair of scissors. A little more smoothing later, and my drawer was lined.

When I was working on this drawer, there were a lot of people in my kitchen making themselves lunch. I love how David is close enough to come home most days. He's cutting the kids' sandwiches into dinosaur shapes there in the background.

I'm going to put a clear coat of Mod Podge on it to make it more durable. It's so cheerful when I open the drawers.

I love how they look all together.

After looking at that photo in Photoshop for a while, I just had to turn it upside down so the drawers look more like a cake.

I've started a new blog: Come follow my crafting adventures on my new blog. Find me at: creativeirony.com.