Laundry room REVEAL!!!

It is finished. It is crisp, clean, bright, and lovely! I am so happy with how it turned out. It truely is amazing what a coat of paint can do.

This rich green color is Garden of Paradise from Valspar, and I am in love with it. I want to paint everything with it. Well, maybe not everything, but almost everything.

All in all, only a few projects in here. I painted the hanger for my boys' backpacks, we added a shelf in between the cabinets, and threw some paint on the walls.

The shelf is actually MDF that my husband and dad cut to size. It took two people because we don't have a table saw, just a circular saw, and it could have easily split the wood without the table saw. The hubs attached it to the cabinetry and I used my Oops Paint to match the cabinet.

Ok, so confession. When we moved into this house, it was all builder grade colors, and there was no paint leftover. The entire house was one of three colors: Beige, darker beige, and all the trim is a cream color. I went to Lowes to find some paint to work on my accent wall a few months back and found a cream color for $1. That's right friends, one WHOLE dollar. I have used it on several projects, but found out yesterday that it is the PERFECT match for our cabinets in the laundry room!!!!!! That MDF just blends right in now. SUPER SCORE!

Now the room is bright and cheery. It almost makes me want to go do laundry......

Lego placemats...

This lego party is coming up in exactly 1 month!!!!! I don't know who is more excited, me or Jansen!? Probably me at this point. No shame. I am glad I am able to do this for him (and for me).

Ok, so this is totally easy and it fuses two of my son's loves right now: legos and Star Wars. And these get to do double duty for the party and for at home. Is my kid the only 5 year old that spills EVERYTHING????

So simple: I printed off a few images off the internet that seemed to be my boys' favorite and pasted them to a piece of cardstock.

Then I just sandwiched the picture between two pieces of clear contact paper and trimmed the edges.

It took a little bit to get the bubbles and creases out but this only took a total of 10 minutes. More of these to come for the party table!

Couponchief.com

You have seen my Ode to Freecycle, Craigslist, and even Overstock.com, but today I sing the praises of another site: Couponchief.com.


I am an avid online shopper, primarily because everything I could ever want is right at my fingertips. Old Navy is my store of choice for most of my clothing, however, our closest store location is a 45 minute drive. So, this weekend, I found a few things online that I wanted to purchase for summer and began the checkout process.


Before I completed the checkout, I visited couponchief.com to find out if any discount codes or coupons were available. All I had to do was type "Old Navy" into the search field and a list of codes appeared on my screen. I quickly chose the code I wanted and saved 20% on my entire Old Navy order.


Couponchief.com provides codes for literally thousands of merchants! From furniture to flowers, gifts to accessories, they have it all! They provide step-by-step instructions on how to redeem your savings so it can't be any easier. And my favorite part is the comment feature. Couponchief provides a section beneath the codes for comments on effectiveness and ratings. You can even send coupons to your friends!


This site is amazing and I will definitely be using it before any of my online purchases.

Laundry room makeover part 2...

This cabinet door has 9 lives and so far we are on #4 with it.

Originally, these doors were on the bottom of corner shelving my mother gave me. Here they are removed from the shelving.

A few months back, I painted the trim black and added the crystal knobs...

Then when I decided to redo the laundry room, I painted the trim cream and the tin inside red...

The red was a bold choice, and the more I looked at it with my washer and dryer, the more it bugged me.

Today I slapped on some dark stain and dabbed bits of it off with a rag. THAT is how I saw it in my mind. It looks beyond perfect.

And if you noticed the darker green behind it, yes...we are in the process of painting the laundry room with color #2.

By tomorrow it should be dry, and my cabinet shelving should be hung. It's definitely coming along nicely!

Laundry room makeover...fail...

Ok, so I have done a couple of things to this tiny, awkward little laundry room. My plan is reds and greens with accents of cream.

So what was once this cabinet door....

is now a red and cream hanger for my boys' backpacks. (The cream is the same Oops Color I found for $1 that I used for my living room accent wall.)

This I am happy about.

Here is the unhappy part..... the green

As you can see, we went from the builder grade beige at the top, to a minty green from Lowes...Valspar. First let me say, I love me some Valspar paint. It is by far, my fave brand. This is totally user error. I got a free sample from Valspar (thank you, thank you, thank you) and chose what I thought was going to be the PERFECT shade of green.

Um, no.

It is actually not green enough. This would be a beautiful color in a nursery, but for the laundry room....it is a no-no.

This week, I will be making a trip to my local Lowes (shout out to Lowes for your awesome home supplies) to look at shelving and brackets for my cabinets. I am praying that someone will have made a shade of green that they are hating and leave it there for me to snatch up and run home with. Stay tuned for color #2.....

The day after....

Makes you really hungry right?!


Hope everyone had a beautiful and wonderful Easter. I know we sure did!

Kindergarten egg hunt

School activities for the rest of the year are going to keep me from crafting as much. But I wouldn't have it any other way. That's why I finally quit my job, to be as involved and active in my childrens' education as possible. I am blessed that I can do it....thank God and my husband every day.

Today was the kindergarten egg hunt and it was a blast. The parents got big trash bags full of eggs with each child's name on it and scattered them in a field across from the school. Each child had made a basket and was looking for 12 eggs with their names on them. It took about an hour but it was a huge success.

My Jansen was having so much fun. And P.S. His teacher made all the shirts that the kids were wearing! Isn't that awesome????

Have a hippity hoppity day, everyone!!!

Egg-stra cute yard decor...

The Spring yard update is finished! It is so crazy to watch how awful our flowerbeds look all winter long, but there is no way I am going to go out there every winter and pick all the weeds and junk. It is just a never ending battle. So we let it grow, and then do a big clean up once Spring arrives. Makes it so much easier to maintain.

Anyway, yesterday I posted pics of the finished product and was thinking about adding just a couple of things to make it Easter Special. My mom had these big eggs in her yard a couple of years back and wasn't going to use them. So I stole, er, borrowed them.

Now I remember the year that she had them, they rolled everywhere and would pop open. She taped them shut....but this year....

I weighed them down with a few extra landscaping rocks and now they don't move....so they don't pop open.

We have enough rocks to spare, but if we didn't....I would have weighed them down with bags of beans, lentils, rice etc.

We are ready for Easter!

BTW, please excuse the trash bags in the picture. It's not time to put out our big trash so there it sits....

A little landscaping and some computer glitches...

First of all, I am having some computer glitches that I am currently working on. Blogger is not allowing me to publish my posts from my computer or edit any of my drafts. I am having to type what I can into my computer and then post from my Blackberry, but in using it, won't allow me to add links to my posts.

Seriously, that is annoying and I am working on it today. There are some posts I found on other blogs that I would like to link to and this is driving me NUTS! Anyway....

It is definitely starting to look a little more like Spring at our house. I just wanted to share a few pictures of the yard as we get it cleaned up. I am thinking about adding a few things to it over the next couple of days, but for now, we think it is beautiful!!!!! Yay for Spring!!!!





By the way, can you see the little bird in that nest? For the last two weeks we have been watching this family of birds fly from our crepe myrtles to the porch ceiling fan, to the corner of our porch to build this nest. It is amazing to me that birds can make such a stable home in the CORNER of a building!!!! Spring is here for sure :)

Teacher Appreciation Ideas...

Teacher Appreciation Week is May 2-6!!!!

I am in charge of the school's Teacher Appreciation week this year. Last year we were able, through amazing parent participation, to serve all the faculty and staff lunch each day that week.

We had each grade sponsor a day, and then broke the dishes down by teacher within each grade. So for example: Monday-Mexican(4th grade) Tuesday-Italian(3rd grade) Wednesday-Salads(2nd grade) Thursday-Potluck(1st grade) Friday-Desserts(Kindergarten).

This year we are planning the same thing, plus a little Teacher of the Day time during the morning announcements. Each day, a teacher's name will be drawn and that teacher will then be the TEACHER OF THE DAY and will receive a $20 gift card.

Since I have two children in public school now, I have twice the fun putting together something for the teachers. Instead of giving gift cards, which is what I did last year...I wanted to do a little something for both of my childrens' teachers each day of the week.

After browzing the web and coming across this SITE (which is full of great ideas, not just teacher appreciation ideas....so go there NOW), I put together one small gift for each day.

If you only see 4 days worth and think to yourself, "She needs to go back to school...there are 5 school days and only 4 gifts..." I know. I made some goldfish tags that will be put on some goldfish bags. The store didn't have the flavor I wanted to buy in stock, so I have to wait. :)






All in all: inexpensive, easy to put together, and something each teacher can use. We are in a recession...remember :)

Fruits of our labor...

The kids and I have definitely been enjoying the fruits of our labor...specifically, the strawberries we picked on Friday. After freezing half of our loot, I saved some for fresh additions to breakfasts and then with the rest I made this delicious, dense pound cake, plus the most simple juicy strawberry glaze ever! Yes, that is my cake sitting on a paper plate...because that's how I roll. :) Both of my kids, including the Autistic picky eater have been devouring it all weekend long.

Traditional pound cake recipe:

• 2 c. flour


• 2 c. sugar


• 2 softened sticks of butter or margarine


• 1 tsp each-vanilla, almond, and lemon extract


• 5 eggs

Mix all ingredients together and pour into a greased bundt pan to bake at 350 degrees for 50 minutes.

Easy strawberry glaze:

• 1 pound of strawberries


• 1/2 c of sugar or Splenda


• 2 tsp vanilla extract

Mash approximately 3/4 of the strawberries in a bowl with the sweetener and vanilla. Slice remaining strawberries and mix in.

It's a good thing that we made it to the farm when we did, because today is the last day for picking. Short season, I am assuming. Shout out to Froberg's Farm!!!

Strawberry pickin'

Yesterday my friend, Angie and I took our kids on a 30 minute drive to a local farm to pick strawberries. I know that many of you out there in Blog-land live in areas that are rich in farms and farmers markets. We don't. We live on the Gulf Coast...rich in hurricanes, mosquitos, and humidity. Welcome to Texas! But anyway, the two of us kept commenting on how fun this was, not only for our kids, but for us as adults. The kids were running up and down all the rows trying to find the reddest, juiciest, most perfect strawberries to fill their buckets. Now I am working on the list of things we can do with all these gorgeous berries.

• This morning we had peanut butter toast and fresh strawberries


• I have a pound cake in the oven right now to be topped with a fresh strawberry glaze


• There is a tray full of strawberries in the freezer


• And I still have a bucket left waiting to be washed and planned for