Home Projects: Closet Organization

I didn't finish organizing our front closet this weekend, which is a little embarrassing to admit because it's really not that big of a project. I did, however, pick up these baskets to put our hats, tennis balls, and other summer things in:


The green in the leaves matches the paint I'm going to use on the walls in the hallway and spare bedrooms, and they were half off. A perfect purchase.

Mondays are always busy for us, so this post is short. Maybe I'll find some time to finish the closet organization tonight. Maybe...

Embroidery Project Update

Know what I love? Lazy Friday nights. This afternoon I went to the gym and did some interval running and strength training. Then I ate a giant burrito for dinner. Oops.

As promised, here's an up-to-date picture of my project:


As you can see, I didn't make substantial progress over the last week, but I did finish what was left of the horn, the entire globe and part of the bike. I'm hoping to make some more progress tonight while we watch The Informant.

Tomorrow morning I have a brunch date, and then we're hanging out with our brother T in Rochester for the afternoon. I fully intend to bring both G and T to the TJ Maxx HomeGoods in Rochester to search for another throw pillow, but I'm not going to tell them we're going there until we're actually in Rochester. :)

I think we're going to the Como conservatory on Sunday to see what's in bloom. I'm excited!

My other plans for the weekend aren't very exciting. The change in weather and this post have motivated me to clean out our front closest and pack away our thickest winter jackets and a few other things that make it quite cluttered. In addition to clutter control, I'll probably dust the floor trim. Exciting, I know!

Home Projects: Basement Bathroom Inspriration

Remember earlier this week when I professed my love for TJ Maxx HomeGoods? While I was hunting for throw pillows, I also found some accessories for the basement bathroom. Two events over the past month made me realize that for as much as we dislike the bathroom, we needed to invest in some essential items to make it a more welcoming space. It can no longer be ignored.

#1: We had out of town guests take over our basement for a weekend, and I realized that we had nothing for them to use in that bathroom. We made do, but I had to spend a lot of time scrounging around for a makeshift bathmat, extra hand soap, and toiletries for the shower.

#2: Shortly after our friends left, I overheard my BIL yell at G: "G-d, G, you don't even have a hand towel in this bathroom" (this was also the moment I learned that you can hear just about everything taking place in the basement bathroom while you are in the upstairs bathroom).

Needless to say, I felt a little guilty. We might hate the basement bathroom and we might be two of the cheapest people you'll ever meet, but we also like to be hospitable. Something had to be done.

The bathroom accessories section at TJ Maxx was impressive, and included some high end brands like Ralph Lauren. I found two small bathmats in a really pretty shade of green-blue that were only $10, so I added them to my cart. We'll use on in front of the shower and one in front of the sink.


Having found the bathmats, I decided I should probably look for some towels to match the color. I found these:



I love the print and the colors. And by love, I mean I'm totally inspired to rip out every last tile and shred of wallpaper in an effort to make the bathroom functional and pretty. As a reminder, here are a few pictures of what our bathroom currently looks like:

You actually have to pass through this short hallway to get to the bathroom. In order to to turn on the bathroom light, you have to walk all the way into the bathroom and reach around in the dark until you find the switches. Very convenient, especially for guests who don't know the layout of the bathroom.

I'll be the first to admit this room is ugly, so don't pretend it has good qualities. There's only one...


...and that's the extra storage space we have due to the awkward placement of the water heater. A real door would be nice in that corner, don't you agree?


The duck shelf and organizer thing above the toilet were both "gifts" from the previous owners. We're selling them a our garage sale this June, so if you want them let me know and I'll put a hold sticker on them for you. Just kidding. I'm not even going to show you what's behind that skinny sliding door or what the shower looks like.

Here's a close up of our lovely new towels right next to the super awesome wallpaper border that features deer prancing through the wilderness:


I'm sure you're jealous and wishing you had a country woodlands hunting themed bathroom with a dingy dropped ceiling in your house. I bet you're even more jealous that you don't have towels and bathmats that look quite as awesome as part of the decor. Aren't the towels inspiring, though? The colors and prints are just lovely. They give me hope for this room - I can't wait until we renovate it!

Update on my embroidery project later today!

Ms. O-yee

I spent the last two days herding preschoolers, reminding them to keep their fingers out of their noses (and to wipe those boogers off their cheeks), gently encouraging them to reconsider whether or not the color brown is really called "pink," asking kids to keep their hands out of their pants and their shirts pulled down over their bellies, and praying their glitter and glue filled hands didn't touch my denim trousers.

Not only did my pants have glitter and glue on them, I also had really stink homemade play dough on my butt and probably every shade of marker imaginable on my legs. Preschoolers are cute, but they have no sense of boundaries and they frequently become distracted by almost anything and forget they need to maintain control of their arms. Ms. O-yee! Ms. O-yee! Jordan has a booger on face! Look, it's right there by his eyeball! This - and many other distracting statements - will invariably involve not only the child making the observation, but every other child within earshot, running over to examine said booger, arms flailing around, knocking things over, transferring glitter and glue to anything within arm's reach, as they struggle to get their face as close to the booger as possible. I also had a little girl come up to me, say Ms. O-yee, I think you're earrings are beautiful, only to discover she wasn't really complementing my earrings, she was just distracting my attention so she could wipe her dirty little hands on my pants. I know this because I asked her to stop using my pants as a towel, she gave me a little smirk that said "I fooled you."

Preschoolers.

And yes, the did call me Ms. O-yee. It probably didn't help that after introducing myself to the kids after I first arrived, the preschool teacher responded with (to the entire classroom): "Boy, that certainly is a strange, excuse me, different, last name, isn't it?" I told them they could call me Ms. K, but the teacher refused to allow that to happen, and so Ms. O-yee I was. It worked, and they were so cute when they said it. So cute.

Decorating Deal: Paisley Throw Pillow

Last Saturday morning, I mentioned that I still needed to find some throw pillows for our couch. On Saturday afternoon, I went to TJ Maxx HomeGoods with my MIL. I'm in love. The prices were amazing, and I definitely plan on visiting the store again. The sooner the better.

I found this paisley pillow that is comprised of the perfect colors for our living room:


It was half-off. It was meant to be.

The problem is that I only found one. I need two. I called another HomeGoods location on Saturday night to see if they had any in stock. I thought I could just give the woman the style number on the price tag and she'd be able to look it up in the store's computer system, but they apparently don't operate that way. She put me on hold for five minutes and searched their pillow stock. No luck. I felt pretty badly about making her search through the pillows, so I decided not to call any other stores. I didn't want to put anyone else through the same process.

I can't find them online, either, but I just know there has to be another sitting on a store shelf somewhere. If you find a Newport Layton Calista throw pillow, snatch it up and send it my way.

House Projects: Painting the Basement, Part 1

Disclaimer: These pictures are horrendous. We have one window in our basement and it is really challenging to get adequate light that creates pictures that are decent. Keep this in mind as you scroll down - they range from okay to horrible.

These are the paint swatches my MIL and I picked up over the weekend:


Bluish-grays are impossible to work with. Impossible. I know I constantly complain about paint, but I just cannot find a color that looks good in our basement.

The paint chip in the lower right hand corner of the picture - "Yarmouth Blue" - had so much potential. When I put it on the walls of our basement, however, it looked horrible. On the white walls it was way too dark (clockwise from upper right: sunset wheat - what was I thinking?!, Yarmouth, Mt. Rainier gray, and oatmeal):


We need a much lighter paint color. The room is rather big and while we want to make the room feel a little warmer, this particular bluish-gray was just way too dark to cover all of the basement walls. We did, however, think it might work on one section that is covered with wood paneling. The paneling is painted a really, really light mauve (at least I think it's mauve). It's ugly. When I added the Yarmouth blue, it turned into a horrendous shade of light blue. I added primer to the wall with the hope that it might change the color of the paint. THANK GOD FOR PRIMER.

Unfortunately, this is one of the horrible pictures, but it should give you an idea of the contrast:


This picture shows five things:

1. The wall on the north side of the basement was anything but white. Check out the difference between the primer and the original paint color. Anyone who doubted this wall wasn't white should now be convinced of that fact.
2. Our wall has obvious scuff marks that demand some TLC in the form of some wood caulk, a little sanding, and a fresh coat of paint. Those brown splotches at the top of the picture? Yeah, they're all over that wall.
3. Wet paint definitely reflects light.
4. Primer = Good.
5. I need to work on my photography skills.

Here's a closeup of the paint with primer - the Yarmouth in this picture is actually fairly accurate. The paint looked pretty much the same when it was fully dry.


G came home and agreed it will work for the paneled wall. Now we just have a find a lighter hue that we can use on the other three walls. I'm going to Hirshfield's before I go to the gym tonight and I'm hoping my favorite color consultant is working. It would make things much easier for me if she could just recommend a few options so I don't end up coming home with umpteen paint chips again.

Projects: The K Family's Coat of Arms

This is our couch and the lovely new pillows we picked up at PB:


I love the pillows, but I think the couch needs a few smaller throw pillows to give the space a more cohesive look. I'm really not sure that's the best word. What I mean is that I think it needs patterned pillows that contain the colors of the couch, the wall and a little bit of gold to tie it all together. Make sense?

Initially, all I could think about was this pillow (it doesn't exactly meet the aforementioned criteria, but is colorful and lovely)...

[source]

...which I have been in love with since I first saw it several years ago. Cat Studio's geography line is awesome, but it's also a little pricey for a decorative pillow. So, a few weeks ago I decided to attempt my own embroidered pillow. I'm that dumb.* I went to our local library and checked out the Reader's Digest Complete Guide to Embroidery Stitches, made a run to JoAnn's to buy floss, fabric and one of those round things you use to keep the working surface tight, and then got to work. Notice that I didn't buy a pattern. Oh no, I decided to make things even more complicated by designing my own. Keep in mind that when I started drawing my pattern I had not even practiced a single stitch.

You know what, though? I'm really enjoying it. I've only been stitching while watching the Olympics at night, so it's been a slow process, but I finally finished outlining the shapes and I've even filled in a couple of the objects (alright, most of one and all of another). Instead of doing a geography theme, I picked symbols that represent each of us: the letter K, a bicycle, a calculator (G's request because it "represents both math and computer science"), French horn, trumpet, tennis racket, globe and a book. Yes, we are nerds.

Here's the template I labored on for three hours two Saturdays ago:


The template itself was no small project. I searched Google for images of the items I wanted to include, printed them, simplified them, and then traced them with pencil onto a sheet of tissue paper. After tracing them with pencil, I went over them again with a thin Sharpie. I think the pattern turned out okay.

And here's the work in progress as of this morning:


I'm not going to lie. It took a long time to trace all of those shapes with black floss. I was a little too eager early on and spent a long time outlining the shapes, only to develop a minor case of wry neck. Since then, I've been good about spending only an hour on it most nights.

My fill stitches are far from exceptional, but they work. Unfortunately, they're loose enough that I'm not going to use the finished piece as a pillow, though. I fear it would unravel quickly, and that would be embarrassing. Instead I'm going to frame it and hang it somewhere. It's not perfect, but it's fun and I've been working hard on it. Plus, it's unique. If anything, it's unique.

This, of course, means I'm back at square one and I need to find throw pillows.

Have you ever taken on a big crafty project with no background experience? Tell me all about it. I can't be the only one!

*I should note that I have a problem with taking on large crafty projects that take on a life of their own and then sit in dark closets for long periods of time. And yet I keep finding more opportunities to start new projects.