A Little Chippy

Library Inspiration

2012-02-05T21:48:00.000-06:00

Source: google.com via Lynn on Pinterest

For some reason I have an inordinate amount of inspiration pictures of home libraries on my computer. (Okay I know the reason - my dream house would totally have a library in it.) Preferably with a couple of comfy chairs, a window seat, and built in desks for the kids to do their home work. And a ladder. Not that I've thought about it at all...

Source: houzz.com via Lynn on Pinterest

Source: google.com via Lynn on Pinterest

Parker's Room

2011-08-30T07:20:00.000-05:00

Finally poor Parker got upgraded from sleeping in the hallway to a real bedroom.

I think he likes it.

The stained glass is mine, from when I was little.

We kept the same green on the walls from when it was the girls' room, and just repainted the pink accent wall with chalkboard paint.

(quilt made for Parker by Chris's cousin, looks awesome in the room!)

And the freshly painted chalkboard wall.

After the chalkboard paint cures for 24 hours (or maybe 2 or 3 if you don't read the label - oops.) you take a piece of chalk the long way and cover the whole wall with chalk, then lightly wipe it off, so it's kind of dusty.

Then you give the kiddos some chalk and let them go to town.

*Warning - if you have even slight amounts of OCD, or just like your rooms to be clean, I guess, then a chalkboard wall is not for you. One red balloon took an entire piece of chalk, and most of it was on the floor, not the wall.

It's still kind of empty and bare, but I'm not going to put too much stuff on the walls at this point, since I know that by next summer we'll be moving him into a real bed, so the all the furniture is going to change anyway. All I really care about at this point is the fact that he is finally sleeping through the night - thank god!!!

New Baby

2011-07-16T10:07:00.000-05:00

I picked up this tie dye looking orchid at IKEA this week - it did have three flowers on it, but Parker ripped one off before we even left the store. I guess babies just don't appreciate the delicate beauty of orchids. That's okay, though, because I'm hoping that I'll be able to get it to re-bloom. We have some orchids at work that I got to re-bloom (once) so now I'm like an orchid expert.

My plan to keep it alive is as follows:

a. put it in a windowsill

b. have a tray filled with rocks and water under the pot

c. water it once a week with orchid food

This is probably not the official right way to care for an orchid, but it worked for me once, and it's a simple routine, so I'm going to try it again. I'm somewhat unsure about whether or not to cut off the stem after the flowers fade, so I think I'm just going to leave it, and see what happens.

Wish me luck!

New Pantry

2011-05-16T08:00:00.000-05:00

Finally it's done!

I think it turned out really well, although to be honest, I was so tired of this project that I really just shoved everything back in there without organizing it too much. But it's waaaay better than it was before. Everything is really easy to find, except for the fact that we got so used to having all our food in boxes in the entryway/dining room, that we still keep going in there to get stuff before we realize that our food is, in fact, actually in the pantry.

So my favorite things - the mason jars are awesome for storage (even Chris likes them). Having space for all my dishes and wine is also awesome.

And these IKEA wire shelves - I can't tell you how great they are. Especially the little wire baskets that slide in and out - perfect for storing onions and potatoes.

And to the left of the door, I stuck up this adhesive chalkboard, so when I realize that we're out of peanut butter (emergency!) I can write it down immediately so that I don't forget.

Pantry done.

On to the next project!

Operation Sanding

2011-05-15T09:38:00.000-05:00

It has taken for.ev.er. to sand the walls in the pantry. Evidently you're supposed to water down the joint compound before you apply it, otherwise it hardens into a concrete-like consistency.

Ooops.

Needless to say, I'm not supposed to mud anymore. Which is actually fine by me ;)

I think it turned out pretty good, though. I was going to do it in a dark gray/green color, but in the end I wussed out. (Plus we already had light gray paint, and I didn't want to sink any more money into this project.) Light gray it is.

So it's getting there! Although operation sanding has turned into operation dusting - BIG TIME.

Mudding

2011-04-30T23:03:00.000-05:00

Mud. Dope. Joint Compound.

Whatever you want to call it - it sucks.

I spent three nights last week with Parker in the Baby Bjorn after the girls went to sleep, mudding in the pantry. Not easy - especially when the baby is awake and desperately trying to get his hands IN said mud. And I did a pretty horrible job. We're going to have to sand off a TON of the stuff, which is even less fun.

I'm going to get it done this week, though, I swear!

Etsy Shop Giveaway

2011-04-20T23:03:00.000-05:00

It's taken me for.ev.er to figure out how to make these candles out of recycled wine bottles - but I've finally done it. (It's taken a lot of wine drinking to get here - a lot of bottles didn't make it during the learning process.) And after spending so much time perfecting how to do it - what else can I do but sell them? Enter my new etsy shop (Yay!) I haven't even had it open for a week yet, so I'm definitely still trying to get the hang of it, but so far it's been great. (If anyone out there has an etsy shop, and has any good pointers please let me know!)

And now I have a perfect excuse to go thrifting, too :)

My friend Wendy over at Ramblings from the Sunshine State just hit 200 followers on her blog (go Wendy!) and so I volunteered an item from my etsy shop for her to giveaway. Check it out here if you'd like to win a fabulous candle made by yours truly.

P.S. I promise not to be one of those blogs that every day has a post about what new items they've added to their etsy shop. I'll try to keep it down to every other day.

April...Snow?

2011-04-17T20:00:00.000-05:00

This is what the girls did yesterday morning. Yup - made a snowman. Gotta love spring in Minnesota.

Window Trim

2011-04-17T09:38:00.000-05:00

This is another post for my mom - who's looking to paint her window trim as well as her spiral stairs. Their house is an old lake house built in 1905, and still has a lot of these old fashioned paned windows. Currently their walls are painted a light beige color, the outer wood trim is oak, and the inner trim is a hunter green color straight from 1995.

I think that unless she wants to paint all of her trim white, she shouldn't go with white.

I think a black or a dark chocolate brown would look awesome.

Spiral Stairs

2011-04-14T07:42:00.000-05:00

These pictures are for my mom - she has a spiral staircase in her house (how cool, right?) and is trying to decide how she should paint it. All one color, or leave the steps wood colored? I think the top photo is my favorite, but it's not my house, so I don't get to pick :)

Vindicated

2011-04-12T21:55:00.000-05:00

When I proclaimed the back hallway "finished" this is how it looked. After living with it for a couple of months now, I can tell you that it's been really functional for such a small space. We have plenty of hooks for everyone, and Chris and I just hang our keys on them when we come in, too. The rug turned out to be a little small, so we went back to using a large carpet remnant, at least until muddy spring is over.

But every week or so I would do a search on Craigslist to try and find a slim bench to fit in the space. Which to be honest, is something Chris and I disagreed on - he kept saying that a bench wouldn't fit in such a narrow space - and I was determined that if I found a really skinny one that it would work. I found one I thought would work, and Chris prepared himself to give me loads of crap about how bad it looked.

Fifteen bucks later this is how it looks:

It fits perfectly. I had to touch up the white paint because it was in pretty rough shape, and I might restain the top at some point in the future, but other than that I think it looks pretty good.

I was using the bucket next to it for hats and mittens, but now that spring has FINALLY arrived we're starting to have fires in our little firebowl out back, so I put some wood in it. I think it's a little short for the space, so now my weekly Craigslist search will be "redwing crock" :)

But the best part? I got to hear the sweet, sweet words - "You were right."

April Randomness

2011-04-10T10:50:00.000-05:00

(via Martha Stewart Living)

Is it really April 10th already? I haven't even finished the pantry from last month, let alone started something new for this month.

But that's probably a good thing. The pantry ended up being more expensive than I thought it would be. It's not the shelves themselves, but those darn brackets that hold them up. They're about $3 a pop, and that definitely adds up when you need a lot.

(For the record we needed 35 of them for this project!)

So for April, I'm going to just try and finish some various projects around the house here. I'm good at starting projects, but not finishing them :) So on the list: the pantry, some touch-up paint, putting up some lights in the girls' room, etc. Because whatever room I do next is probably going to be a big one. It'll either be the kitchen or the upstairs bathroom, neither of which are going to be cheap or easy.

(Our 80's era bathroom)

(Our 80's era kitchen)

Add in the fact that I'm trying to start up an etsy shop, and Parker's gone mobile on me, and things are looking pretty hectic around here. But I can't complain, life is good!

Hundred Year Old Books

2011-04-08T09:58:00.001-05:00

Remember when I mentioned awhile ago that I had found a perfect home for that odd shelf that had previously been hanging out in my pantry, just taking up valuable real estate?

And that all I needed were some new books to fill it up?

Chris surprised me with these books the other day

(Sir Walter Scott)

Aren't the inscriptions killer?

Canning Jar Labels

2011-04-02T08:13:00.000-05:00

This project is pure procrastination on my part.
In my quest to organize the pantry, I've put a bunch of items into mason jars because #1 - They look pretty, #2 - They are cheap, and #3 - They really work great for items that come in bags. Bags are hard to organize, and once you open them they're never quite airtight anymore.

A lot of my dry goods and baking supplies seem to come in bags, so mason jars have fit the bill nicely. (Previously, when I tried to organize them they were put into leftover deli meat tupperware containers, which were not as airtight as mason jars, and ummm, not quite as pretty :)

At first I just wrote the name of the items in sharpie on the lid. Easy to do, and easy to change (just use rubbing alcohol to erase.) But the next project on my list is mudding the pantry walls, so I clearly needed some fancier jar labels to take up some more of my time.

Enter photoshop elements (which I've been meaning to learn how to use for at least a year) and a print of the Liberty of London fabric bins that I already have for the pantry, and I came up with these floral labels - I think they turned out pretty good for my first try...

(Blank Labels)

After I cut them out, I covered them in double sided laminate to protect them. (I imagine clear contact paper would work just as well for this purpose.) Then I just popped them inside the ring that fits over the metal lid - no glue necessary - they fit snugly in the ring when I remove it.

I did it this way so that the labels can be easily switched out, and all parts of the jars are still washable.

Industrial Shelving Knockoff

2011-03-13T05:00:00.001-05:00

Just thought I'd share this knock off industrial shelving. Some people in this house (who shall remain nameless) like to hate on IKEA, but these shelves - OMAR series - are nice. We have both the Container Store and the IKEA versions, and they are almost identical to one another. Except that one is five times the price of the other.

The Container Store - $159.89

IKEA - $34.99

If only...

2011-03-07T08:00:00.000-06:00

All I can say is that I wish I would have seen this pantry when I was looking for inspiration for our redo. I love everything about it - especially the baking cart that can just be wheeled out when it's time to bake - genius!

found here

A New Home for an Old Shelf

2011-03-06T09:13:00.000-06:00

Can you tell what these pictures have in common? It's this odd bottle rack that we found out in the garage when we bought our house. We've tried using it in just about every room in the house, and to be honest I've never really liked it anywhere. Its latest home was in the pantry, so for the past two weeks it's been sitting by the front door to go to Goodwill.

Until this weekend when I had the bright idea

to use it as a bookshelf in the family room.

I really like it here (and as a bonus now I have space for some new books I've had my eye on) I just have to decide if I want to leave it as is, or paint it white, or try and stain it a color closer to the wood in the end tables.

Stylish Blogger Award

2011-03-05T17:00:00.001-06:00

My blog was tagged recently by Lauren over at Whimsy Lane for the Stylish Blogger Award. (Thanks Lauren!) Which would probably be taken away if you could see me right now (think unbrushed hair, sweatpants, probably spit-up somewhere on me...Yep, just checked - that's an affirmative on the spit-up) Anyway, I'm supposed to share seven random things about myself, and then recommend fifteen good blogs. So here goes -

I was voted most laid-back in my high school class.

I started going gray at age twenty-two. (Thanks for those genes Dad!)
Btw, I'm currently 32.

My blood type is O neg. I never knew this until I was pregnant with Peyton, and learned that if you have negative blood - you have to get shots if your husband has a positive blood type (Thanks Chris!), and more shots if the babies have positive blood type too (Thanks all three babies!)
Do I need to mention that I don't like shots?

I love to read. Books. I'm not on the e-reader bandwagon yet. (As you can see by my bedroom bookshelves.) Which reminds me of some pet peeves I have lately such as, seeing people rip the covers off old books and tie them together in packets (stop torturing the books people!) and people that cover all of their books in brown book covers, or even weirder - face all their books with the spines facing in - how would you ever find the book you wanted to read? If you don't like to read - don't buy a bunch of books. I also find it a little odd when people arrange their books by color, but I'm willing to overlook that one :)

I work in an environmental laboratory.

This year with the addition of baby #3 - I've become the proud owner of a new minivan. So not cool. Even worse... I actually like it.

And this is me: (and baby Parker)

I have naturally curly hair, and so far, none of my kids got it :( I don't usually post pictures of the kiddos - that was one of Chris's requests when I started this blog, although it's really kind of hard since I happen to have the cutest kids on the planet.

In case you're wondering his other request was that I not talk about asbestos or mold, which is surprisingly also kind of difficult.

I tried to sit here and pick fifteen of my favorite blogs to list, but it was too hard!
Instead, I got motivated to do a little blog update, and put some of my favorite blog reads on my sidebar, so if you have a chance go check them out... and if I don't have it up but you'd like your blog added - just let me know - I'd be happy to!

More pantry organization

2011-03-04T14:30:00.000-06:00

(If I didn't have a pantry I would totally steal this idea - so cute)

I have been working on organizing the pantry this week -

Got some bigger metal shelves from IKEA to match the wine rack that I moved up out of the basement. Also put my little wine fridge in there, too. And put some stuff in mason jars. I still had some empty space on the shelves - so I went shopping at Costco. Problem solved.

I've been home on "vacation" with the kiddos all week, since my childcare (aka Grandma) is enjoying a much deserved week off in Florida.

I always have grand plans of how much I'm going to get done at home, but it never quite works out that way. I've spent most of my time cleaning the house - and it still looks about the same as it did when I started. I heard somewhere once that cleaning when you have kids is like shoveling before it's stopped snowing. And I find that to be quite accurate.

Got a new (red!) garbage can. My new plan is to have the garbage can out in the open, and keep the recycling bins in the pantry.

Still need to decide what to do with this wall - maybe some hanging baskets or something.

Maybe next weekend we'll get around to the whole mudding, sanding, and painting thing. Although I'm not in a huge hurry. I like the painting part, but the mudding and sanding? Not so much.

Most Returns Ever

2011-03-03T13:51:00.000-06:00

(Via Apartment Therapy)

The pantry has been so difficult!

I made Chris return the black shelves - then I decided to rearrange the adjustable shelves, and we ended up with one bracket, two shelves, and the three recycling bins to return. To Home Depot and Fleet Farm, respectively. So I returned the stuff to Home Depot then drove out to Fleet Farm, and realized that I forgot to return one shelf to Home Depot. So back I went. Then I went to Menards (way across town since the one by my house is being torn down right now) to try and find some better recycling bins, which they didn't have, but they did have cheap mason jars, so I bought some. But then that meant I had to go back to IKEA (oh didn't I mention I was there before?) to return the glass jars that I had bought there a few days ago. And on the way to IKEA I stopped at the Container Store to see if they had recycling bins, which they did, but after I got them home I decided I hated them, so tomorrow I'm going to have to go back and return them.

Incidentally, the cute little shelves with glass bins that I wanted from IKEA? They don't carry them any more.

(Via an old British IKEA catalog page)

And I still don't have any recycling bins. Obviously, this is going to be a two month project, but I'm okay with that.

Pantry Progress

2011-02-28T20:45:00.000-06:00

Started working on the pantry... so all my food ended up in boxes in the dining room.

So that we could rip out all the grody old shelves.

(Before)

(After)

Unfortunately, my ideas and Chris's ideas were not exactly the same. Notice the giant black industrial shelves? Not my idea.

And can you tell from the stripes where the old shelves were ripped out that this pantry must have been harvest gold during the seventies?

So Chris returned the black shelves, and got a smaller chrome unit which I think is much better.

Although to be honest I'm still not lovin it. Obviously we still have to mud and paint, which should make it look better. Maybe if I buy a bunch of baskets and try to organize stuff a little better, that might help. And probably I should come to terms with the fact that it's never going to look like this:

Also just because...

2011-02-22T21:58:00.001-06:00

(Unknown)

Just because.

2011-02-19T07:25:00.000-06:00

(jason loucas)

Pantry Inspiration (Part II)

2011-02-18T15:09:00.003-06:00

These are all pantries from the Elfa systems website. Love how organized they are...on the other hand they're a little bit hilarious - who's going to buy everything in their pantry so that the packaging colors match the paint color? "Sorry kids, mac n' cheese doesn't match my color scheme..." And evidently, every closet is not complete without a kitchen aid mixer... That is also color coordinated with the paint scheme :)

Pantry Details

2011-02-16T15:37:00.001-06:00

Some ideas I've been kicking around for the pantry -

(Set of Julie & Julia via Country Living)

pegboard racks?...

(unknown)

This one is a genius idea that I never would have come up with on my own. Put a shelf above the door as you walk in for items you don't use very often. Fondue anyone?

Built in canisters...

A butcher block counter.

(via Apartment Therapy)

And I was thinking maybe a gray or green color for the walls?

Pantry Inspiration

2011-02-08T21:53:00.000-06:00

(via Cottage Living)

When I first started googling walk in pantries these are the images that caught my eye. Obviously, I seem to have a thing for closets painted crazy colors.

(via Blueprint)

And chalkboard paint.

(Unknown)

And lots and lots of dishes :)

(via Eddie Ross)

Walk-in Pantry

2011-02-05T13:39:00.000-06:00

(via Cottage Living. Love the pantry - not the creepy white heads on the shelf above it.)

So, when we moved into our house I loved the fact that it had a walk-in pantry. It's rare to find that sort of thing in small 1950's ramblers like ours. (In fact it's not original to the house - it was added when the addition was put on in the 70's.) It's super nice to have because we don't have a lot of cabinet space, so we keep all of our food in there. And a lot of really random other stuff.

However, it's kind of an odd layout. Ok - really odd. There's no geometrical shape that you could call it - maybe a haploid pentagon? since it does have five walls, although not one of the angles where the walls meet is the same. The shelves that are in there now were obviously homemade, to fit the different angles, but they don't work super well because they're really deep, and spaced really far apart, so stuff just ends up getting piled up, and lost.

(You can see the pantry shape in the upper right hand corner. My drawing is not really to scale - it actually sticks out farther into the room than it looks like. Why they chose the shape they did, I'll never know.)

I want to gut the shelves, paint it, and put up new ones. (Actually, to be honest I want Chris to do all of those things, I just want to do the painting.) I've been collecting pictures of what I want it to look like, and frankly I can't believe I have so many. I'm going to do more than one post to fit them all in. So, sorry! I'm sure by the end of the month everyone who reads this will be sick of pantries, but part of the whole reason why I do this blog is to try to make this house work for a family of four five, and getting organized is a huge step in the right direction. Here's its current state :
(Please don't judge me on my food selection.)

(Looking straight in)

(To the right)

(To the left)

We'll see how far I actually get this month. To be honest I'm not feeling super motivated, and it's going to be a huge mess while it's going on, which motivates me even less. Right now I should be working on it, but I think I'm going to take a nap instead.

The Back Hallway

2011-02-04T08:32:00.003-06:00

The back hallway is finished for now - I added a few frames to the picture rail for the kiddos artwork, or actual pictures if I feel so inclined. Added to the new clock, a new rug, and the trimwork that I did all by MYSELF! and it's pretty much finished. I really, really wanted to go with a cool printed rug, but in the end I went with an el cheapo rug from Home Depot that can be thrown in the wash. I mean it is winter here in Minnesota, and we use this entrance everyday, so I kind of had to be practical. Which actually turned out to be a really good choice since the dog barfed on it the very same day that I brought it home :)

Here was how it started - just a long narrow hallway, with nowhere to put stuff.

I still need to find a bench, and there's some trimwork left to be done - but overall it's working pretty good for us. It'll never by a fancy "mudroom", but that's okay, it's just less room to clean, right?

Joining in with -

My New Clock

2011-01-29T05:45:00.000-06:00

(My new clock)

what I wanted:

a clock under $40

small, round, and black

high quality

(I'd had one before in the kitchen that was definitely not good quality, it was a cheap plastic POS, that made a super loud ticking noise, fell off the wall one day, and cracked into pieces.)

(My old clock)

online shopping with CSN:

CSN Stores is huge. Like way huge. I think when I found the clock category there were about 3000 of them. Which is good. I like a good selection, the hard part is just narrowing them down. Using search criteria it actually wasn't too bad - once I pared it down (black, round, wall mounted, under $40) there were probably under a hundred left to look at. I picked this one because it said the surround is metal, so I'm hoping it's a higher quality product. My one pet peeve about their site is that the default # of items per page is set at 24, and you can change it to 96, but every. single. time. you alter your search criteria it defaults back to 24, which is highly annoying.

(Back entry - please ignore the mess - just look at the clock.)

product:

Honestly I'm happy with it. The one thing I was worried about was quality -I didn't want a loud ticker - which you can't tell until you get a clock home and pop the battery in. Sitting in the family room and trying to relax to the sound of a giant ticking noise? - not so relaxing. But the only way that I can hear this one ticking is if I'm standing right underneath it, and the house is totally quiet. Which, with three kids, I don't have to worry about that ever happening :) So if you're in the market for a small black round wall mounted clock with big numbers that doesn't tick really loud - go here.

(And in case you hadn't guessed CSN gave me forty bucks for my product review.)

Mod Podge Clothespins

2011-01-23T07:09:00.005-06:00

These mod podge clothespins are really easy to make.

For someone who doesn't scrapbook, I have a ridiculous amount of scrapbook paper, so I cut that into thin strips using a cheap paper cutter. Then I brushed mod podge onto one side of the clothespin, stuck on the paper, then brushed another coat on top of the paper. Let that dry, then flip over and repeat.

My three year old and six year old also did this project with me, and it was a huge hit. I let them go to town, and they made a huge mess!, and were occupied with it all night! And that was just with the paper part - I think I'm going to get some bows and beads and stuff for them to add on (which they'll love) and then glue magnets or tacks on the back for them to hang their artwork with.

I, however, am using mine for my WT indoor clothesline :)

Actually I think it's pretty genius - it's a retractable clothesline attached in the closet that I can just pull out and hook up after the kids go outside to play - and then just reel back in when everything is dry.

Mudroom Progress

2011-01-21T10:07:00.009-06:00

(via Apartment Therapy)

Here's the progress that's been taking place in our "mudroom" over the past few weekends -

Two boards up (actually 3 if you count the trim piece on top) so that means I actually made 3 cuts with a power saw. Which freaks me out - I'm afraid I'm going to cut off my finger or something and then have to get all three kids in the car and drive them and my finger in a cooler on ice to the emergency room by myself since I usually only work on this project when Chris is out of town.

Anyhoo... Everything is going pretty well, except I read somewhere to put tape on the wall before you fill in cracks, then when you take it off you'll have a straight line - which worked well on the wood filler, except when I took the tape off it pulled off all the paint next to the boards (as you can see below) so now I'm going to have to patch and repaint the wall above and below each board. awesome.

Here's all the boards with nail holes filled and painted.

And here it is with all the hooks. I have to say I'm pretty proud of myself for this one!

Most of my inspiration photos showed trim like this with some beadboard paneling underneath it, but I'm not going to go that route. I feel the same way about paneling as I'm sure some people feel about wallpaper - sure it looks cool now, but it's a giant. pain. to remove. when it doesn't look cool anymore.

And I'm kind of rethinking my built in bench idea. Mounting it on the wall would be a space saver, but I have to admit I don't really want to put that many holes in the wall. I don't know if I even really want a bench anymore... except maybe one that looks like this?

(via The Lettered Cottage)

Actually Starting the Mudroom

2011-01-11T09:32:00.000-06:00

Here's what I've gotten done on the back entry. (I put the top hooks up just to see how they look, even though I'll have to take them down to add more trim.)
Do I know what I'm doing? No.

Am I going to keep going anyway? Yes.
Due to the fact that I don't know what I'm doing, coupled with the fact that the wall is not flat, will I be using approximately a pound of wood filler? Um, probably.

Starting the "Mudroom"

2011-01-10T10:25:00.002-06:00

Step one: Buy some trim and hooks to go on the wall. (and take a picture of them) Check.

Step two: Put the hooks in your junk drawer, and the trim in the back closet and do nothing for about four months. Check.

I really thought that I was going to have time for some little projects like this one while I was on maternity leave, but that was obviously not the case :)

But I am really going to get started on this now - with a little help from CSN stores - home to everything from a laptop messenger bag to locker room style benches. ...so I'll be doing a product review, coming up soon!

Mudroom Inspiration

2011-01-07T17:35:00.001-06:00

Here are some lovely mudroom pics that I'm going to use for inspiration for my mini-mudroom. The one above is gorgeous, and I'd copy the whole thing if I had room for it - but the bench would never fit. I do like the picture ledge, though.

I want to do two rows of hooks like the ones pictured below.

And the bench is going to be angled a little something like this:

Only I'd like to have it in a natural wood stain like the one below. And in this picture you can see bins under the bench, which I really like.

Here's a pic of my back entry so you can see the wall on the left is the one that I want to put all this stuff on. Except for the mirror - if I put a mirror up it will go on the wall next to the back door that you can't see in this picture. And I want a new back door, but that's not in the budget.

And here's my sweet drawing of how I want it to look. (No I was not an art major.)

Mudroom Envy

2011-01-04T08:10:00.006-06:00

(via Country Home)

I would seriously love to have a mudroom in our house. When I win the lottery I'm totally going to have a mudroom with a marble shower in it just to rinse off my dog. (See above) Some lucky 50's houses actually have mudrooms - usually a breezeway in between the garage and the house. Ours, however, does not. So all those really cool locker style mudrooms that I see in Pottery Barn are just not going to happen.

(via Pottery Barn)

I do have a plan, though. Our back entry has a maybe forty-some inch wide hallway so there is no room for anything more than, say about nine or ten inches deep, but I'd like to do a couple rows of hooks, a very narrow bench?, a mirror, and possibly bins underneath the bench.

The Girls' New Room

2011-01-03T08:00:00.002-06:00

Here's the girls' new room. I won't go into too much detail since it's basically the same as before, just in a little bit bigger room. The closet is twice as big, we were able to fit an old china hutch in for extra storage, and we hung flower canopies from Pottery Barn Kids. That, surprisingly enough have not been yanked out of the ceiling. Yet.

We got done at about 1:00 am on Christmas Eve (we had the girls camp out downstairs). They were super excited when they went in there in the morning - like pee in your pants excited - so all of our sneaky late night work was totally worth it.

I still have a few things to finish...

The top of the hutch is out in the garage - it needs to be painted white and attached.

Also the crystal looking knobs for the hutch are hella expensive ($5 a pop at Target - and I need twenty-four of them for this sucker) Soooo I'm trying to find some less expensive ones off ebay. Wish me luck with that.

The girls like to decorate with their artwork, so I need to add some bulletin boards. I like this fabric:

And I need to put up some kid height hooks for bathrobes and stuff. Maybe a few of these...

And just a little reminder of what this room looked like one short month ago as my husband's home office:

And what my dining room looked like for most of the month after we moved his stuff out of the office :)

Turquoise Girls' Room

2011-01-02T18:39:00.000-06:00

(Via Decorpad)

This is another girls room that I have had saved on my computer for awhile...

Starting Over

2010-12-14T18:11:00.000-06:00

(Via Potterybarn Kids)

So now that I finally finished the girls' room (see here) which is pretty much a miracle since I like to start projects and then let them sit for a while (years) while I procrastinate on finishing them, we are now moving the girls' room into the room next to them. Craziness, I know.

We've pretty much been playing musical chairs with this room for awhile now. First it was our master bedroom. Then it was the Peyton's room. Then it was a guest room. Then it was a guest room/Chris's office. Then it was just Chris's office. Now it's going to be the girls' room.

Guest bedroom?

Or office?

In case I haven't mentioned it before our problem here is that we have two small bedrooms on the main floor and one larger one in the basement. And in that we have to fit two adults, three kids, and one home office. So Chris has given up having an actual office (he's setting up in a corner of the basement now) the girls will have the big bedroom upstairs, Parker will have the smaller one (eventually), and we'll stay in the master downstairs.

Since we decided to do this, I thought we might as well make it a cool surprise, so we are attempting to have most of it done by Xmas for the girls. I'm not really going to add anything except for the cute flower canopies from PB Kids (see top of the post), and I'll have room for the bottom of an old hutch. (see below) So far I have painted. Around the spots that Chris needed to mud. At the exact time that I wanted to paint. You'd think by now that we'd have some good teamwork going on in regards to home improvement, but no such luck.

Anyway, in case you can't tell we painted it a very light green color. And I have gotten around to sanding and painting over the patches so it's coming along pretty well. Next up will be cleaning the floor. The fun just never ends...

Handmade Gift Exchange 2010

2010-12-13T16:23:00.000-06:00

I did a handmade gift exchange last year - at Craftaholics Anonymous - and it was so much fun that I did it again this year...

This is the lovely gift that Lisa made for me - I'm so impressed with her altered book, I can't imagine how much time went into making something this detailed - I never have the patience for these kind of projects, so I'm glad someone else made one for me!

She a;so included some handmade gift tags...

And even the card she wrote was lovely, Thanks Lisa!

Busy

2010-11-12T21:22:00.000-06:00

(Parker Lennon)

So, with this new little addition I've been busy with a whole lot of nothing. Just basically trying to keep my sanity. And shower every once in a while. (If I'm lucky.) Newborns are a boatload of work (not that that's news), and they never say thank you. (Okay I guess baby smiles count.)

And to everyone (including the Target cashier who asked me this morning) the answer to the question, "Is he sleeping through the night yet?" The answer is NO. And no, I don't know how often he gets up. And no I can't "sleep when the baby sleeps" (it's my third child, people!) And to the people who say, oh our baby slept through the night at two weeks... well just know that you're not my favorite person right now.

The only home improvement I've done is to hang up baby boy's "art" in his "nursery". It required five thumbtacks and only about five minutes, so it fit into my schedule nicely. Not that he ever sleeps in there. Don't get me wrong - he loves the mobile thingy - but unfortunately it has the opposite effect on him. He perks up immediately and laughs and kicks at it - but definitely does not get sleepy from it.

Cookbook Shelf

2010-08-29T17:00:00.007-05:00

I forgot that I didn't show what I did with the spice cupboard after I moved all my spices into their new home - so here it is holding all my cookbooks now. And I liked the look and convenience of it - so I actually took the door all the way off, and chucked it in the garbage. (I originally thought about adding more shelves and turning it into one of those wine cubby things, but honestly we already have more than enough wine storage in our house.)

And, on a side note, I have finally decided to paint the ugly wood 1980's kitchen cabinets white, which I'm not looking forward to, because from everything I hear, it's a boatload of work.

Headband Holder

2010-08-28T17:00:00.000-05:00

My organizing kick is still going strong.

This time I tackled the girls' hair stuff drawer. Here's what it looked like:

So I googled headband holders, and picked the instructions for the one I liked best. It's pretty simple actually. First you have to eat a whole canister of Quaker Oats - or in my case, get one from your coworker (thanks Kelly!)

Then I just covered the whole thing in wrapping paper and scotch tape, and glued a ribbon around the edge of the top to hide where it was all wrinkly. You could also do this with scrapbook paper, or with fabric and mod podge if you want to get all fancy.

Put the headbands on the outside, and put all their bows, barrettes, and binders inside. My own personal addition to this craft was to cut more ribbon and secure it to the inside of the lid, and use it to clip barrettes to.

And the final result:

The Nursery (aka the hallway)

2010-08-15T09:00:00.003-05:00

I was cruising along thinking I had a lot of time left before I had to get things set up for the new baby (last baby was nine days overdue before they finally induced me). But last week (at 34 weeks pregnant) I had some contractions, and the baby has fully dropped - definitely not labor yet - but that really kicked me into gear on getting things set up!

As I've mentioned before, we don't have a ton of room in our little 1950's house. Three bedrooms and they're all full. So, just like we did for our second, we're going to put number three in the hallway outside our bedroom in the basement. Then in about a year when she? or he? is sleeping through the night we'll figure out a more permanent solution.

The only problem is that in between then and now we had a situation that required us to remove the carpet from the stairs and most of the basement. I'll be honest - the carpet was really nasty anyway, and I was glad to be rid of it. But underneath wasn't very pretty and it took us quite awhile to save up enough to get the carpet installed, so we lived with it like this for longer than I care to admit:

Lovely green stairs

View from the stairs to the basement landing:
Bare subfloor, and two different kinds of ancient linoleum glued directly to the subfloor

Another angle of the same thing

But a few months back we took the plunge and had new carpet put in. And I painted the whole basement the same light gray color that we did upstairs - much better:

And here's how it looks now with most of the baby gear set up.

It all actually fit pretty well (it's a wide hallway) - and we didn't have to buy anything new. We already had the crib, crib bedding, glider, baskets, and armoire. Lots of storage for blankets and burp cloths in the baskets. Baby clothes will go in the armoire. (getting out the bins of baby clothes and washing and sorting them is on my to-do list) The only thing we didn't put down here is the changing table, since we're upstairs most of the time it's easier to have it up there instead.

Not a huge fabulous nursery by any means, but I think we did okay with the little corner that we had available.

The one thing I have left to do is hang the alphabet prints on the wall. These were the one new addition to the nursery - I just made them using some frames I already had and some scrapbook paper.

They are a little small for the wall, though, so I might get a big white empty frame to go around all three of them. And depending on what the baby is, the brown letters may get changed out for pink ones, but I guess I'll just have to wait and see!

Spices and Space Bags

2010-08-11T08:30:00.001-05:00

I reorganized my spices this past week - almost completely by accident. I was at The Container Store looking for some boxes (which I did not find) but I did find some inserts that fit into a drawer to hold all your spices.

Previously all our spices were in a tall skinny cabinet next to the microwave. Which was actually a pretty bad place for them - you could only see the front two or three spice jars, and were constantly having to empty out the whole entire thing to find what you needed. So I bought the new drawer inserts and got them home put all my spices in... and the drawer wouldn't shut. Evidently these are not made to fit any type of store bought spice container. Awesome.

So I went to the Bed Bath and Beyond that's a mile from my house to buy a bunch of generic spice containers....but they only had one. Then I had to go to the Bed Bath and Beyond that's more like fifteen miles away, which did have them.

And finally got the drawer organized.

And while I was at the second Bed Bath and Beyond somehow I got sucked into buying some Space Bags.

Perfect - because I had been looking for a good way to store our bulky down comforters during the summer. This set had 1 extra large and 2 large bags, which I was hoping would fit our 1 queen and our 2 twin size comforters. (They did fit.) And it was fun - here's what it looked like:

Not exactly flat as a pancake like the picture they show on the box, but it's now only about 2 inches thick , and fits right into the underbed storage boxes that we have.

Guilty Pleasure

2010-08-10T09:18:00.000-05:00

This week I had my husband pick me up a case of this stuff at Costco. It's ridiculously expensive for water - even at Costco. Is there a generic sparkling water I could be drinking instead? yup. Or couldn't I just be drinking tap water for free? Of course.

But I'm eight months pregnant, and it's hot and humid, and I'm sweaty and cranky, so I'm going to drink expensive water if I want to.

Plus I'm working on a craft that uses glass bottles - so technically it's more of an investment than a luxury ;)

The Girls' Room - Update

2010-08-05T21:19:00.003-05:00

Since I'm busy cleaning the girls' bedroom this week, I thought I'd give the update on how it looks right now. When I started it was okay, but it didn't really have any decoration, we had blankets over the windows to block the light during nap time, and the wall that you can't see on the right is painted barn red. (The old nursery colors were green and red.) It definitely needed some work:

So I found this nightstand and dresser on Craigslist, gave them a fresh coat of white paint, and updated the pulls with some paint as well. (I really wanted crystal pulls, but nobody makes them in a 5" width, and I didn't want to move the holes, so paint it was!) In the end they are so much better than the particleboard shelves that were in this spot before! (Although I cringe to think about the fact that I paid the same amount for those crappy particleboard shelves that I did for the dresser and nightstand. combined. which are solid wood. with cedar inserts. and will probably last forever :)

The antique bed frames were a gift from my mom (thanks mom!) which we set up on my two year old's birthday as a surprise - they were a huge hit, and made the transition to a big girl bed really somewhat easy. (That and a set of Dora sheets.) My original intention was to paint the beds white to match the dresser and nightstand, but now I'm not sure. I don't hate the way they look as is, but they are in kind of rough shape when you see them up close. Decisions, decisions.

Here's the red wall painted pink, with Peyton's bookshelf. We're actually overflowing with books (a good thing, right?) so I'm going to put some more shelves up over on Kendall's side as well, as soon as I have the time (and $) to stop by IKEA. (Also on the IKEA list is a lamp or some sconces for in between their beds.)

The balloon valances don't go up or down, but we added cordless blinds underneath that work great! Next to the window I had also planned to put some alphabet prints over each girls bed, but I put up the vintage metal butterflies and crystal candleholders, and am kind of digging those instead. Why spend the money on art when $4 in garage sale finds work just as well, right?

I also totally organized their closet, but I won't bore you with those pictures ;)

2010-08-03T23:00:00.002-05:00

I seriously considered tackling another room in our house this month, but after thinking about it for awhile, I decided to abandon home renovation for the month. I still have quite a few rooms to work on (which is amazing for such a small house), but seeing as how I'm about eight months pregnant, and feeling seriously large and uncomfortable, I honestly don't have the energy to tackle any kind of home improvement. So this month I'm just going to focus on cleaning and organizing the house. And setting up the "nursery" (aka - a corner in the basement). Maybe if I start nesting early, it will convince the baby to come early, too. (Yeah right.)

So, the first thing I'm going to do this month is set up a cleaning schedule. I'm too lazy to do this myself, so I found a website online that will email me a reminder every day of what I need to clean. And the nice part is that the whole house is broken down into five areas, and each week you focus on one area, so that by the end of the month your whole house should be pretty clean. (Supposedly. I've never actually done this for a whole month so I'm not sure if it actually works.)

Anyway, this week the focus area is the bedrooms (of which we have two - ours and the girls). The first task was pretty specific - to mop and vacuum the floors. But the website says that if your rooms are messy, you should just spend fifteen minutes picking up clutter instead - so that's what I did yesterday and today. We'll see how it looks by the end of the week...

Nice Rug

2010-07-27T18:22:00.000-05:00

So remember this rug that I was thinking about getting for the family room? I thought it would be perfect to go with my new white walls, since it had such a big white floral pattern all over it. It was only available online though, so I was sure to check the description, in case the color on my computer wasn't accurate. But the description was just as it looked: green, brown, and white. So I ordered it.

And here's the color. Green, brown, and tan. NOT white. You'll notice that I put a white item and a cream item next to it for comparison (just to make sure). Definitely tan. WTF Target? So now I have to figure out how to return it. Fabulous.

On a more positive note the winner of the giveaway was random generated number two - rubynreba - congrats!

Family Room Progress

2010-07-21T13:25:00.000-05:00

Before:

After:

Do I even need to say that this room isn't done yet? (They never are.) But this is where we're at right now, and I'm going to keep working on it for the rest of the month. On the to do list: we still need to hang the old windows that I bought, strip and stain the mantel, and buy a rug.

Am I happy with it? Heck, yeah. It's so much brighter than it used to be. Chris was totally right that we about painting the ceiling (even though it was a lot of work). It seems like the room is even bigger than it used to be. And the leather furniture - awesome. No more vacuuming dog hair off the furniture. And when the kids spill on it - spills just wipe off. It's like the difference between hardwood floors and carpet. No contest, especially when you have kids and pets.

Little things

2010-07-17T08:21:00.000-05:00

(via Atlanta Bartlett)

We've got the family room painted, and most of the furniture bought (I did finally decide on the coffee table - it only took me like a month to do it.) So, other than that I just have a few little things to put together. (Which always seem to take the longest!)

First up is cleaning out the fireplace - which I've already done (I scooped out a whole entire grocery bag full of ashes) and to switch the two burnt out candles I have in there with some type of plant. (Probably of the faux variety, considering my history with houseplants.)

Then I need to fix the lighting situation. Previously I had tan paper shades over the sconces on the wall, but they're getting pretty old, and don't really look too good with the new white walls. I also have to bust out the spray paint and re-paint the bases because someone forgot to cover them when using a power sprayer. ahem.

And maybe this is a totally weird idea, but I've always thought that there should be windows on either side of the fireplace (which is out of my budget) so I thought I'd buy some old windows off craigslist and just hang them on the wall. Stained glass would be really cool, but that's out of my budget, too. So for now it's just going to have to be some plain old windows.

And we don't need a rug in here, since it's already carpet, but I'd really like one. These are my top two choices right now (both from Target) so they are actually not that expensive. I'm just not sure if they're big enough (only 5x8).

MORE painting...

2010-06-03T21:54:00.000-05:00

Here's where we left off - and after another whole weekend in which the ceiling was not finished - Chris went and bought a power sprayer, and finished the room in about 3 hours. Totally worth it.

He also went and got some stinky kilz stainblocker, and fixed the bleed through areas. We're too lazy to fix the whole dartboard fiasco, though, so I'm just going to hang a picture up in that spot :)
Here's it is all white and bright:

So now the hard part is done, and all we have to do is put it together again. We *somewhat* agreed on some furniture - this couch and chair:

We also got some accent chairs, although I'm not too sure about them. They're polka dot. What can I say? We had two crabby kids with us, and the store was really busy, and I just picked the first thing that looked like it would work and get us the hell out of that store.

We still need a coffee table and some end tables - right now these are my front runners:

I'm leaning toward either the first or the last one, simply because I hate cleaning little kid fingerprints off glass :)

Furniture

2010-05-30T07:51:00.001-05:00

(via Country Living)

Next on the agenda for our family room is getting new furniture. We're going to move the furniture that we currently have down into the basement (which is sitting empty) and get something new. The only problem is agreeing on what to get. I want the family room to look like the photo above, Chris wants it to look like a page out of a Room and Board catalog, (see below).

(via Room and Board)

Obviously we're both living in a dream world seeing as how we have kids and a dog that sheds. Our house will never be that white, or that clean and uncluttered. So once we actually started thinking practically, we did both agree that we wanted leather instead of upholstery or slipcovers. The problem is that my idea of leather looks like this:

(via Apartment Therapy)

And Chris's looks like this:

(via Room & Board)

So we'll see what we end up with...probably something somewhere in between.

Fire starter

2010-05-28T15:55:00.004-05:00

Since we are lucky enough to have a wood-burning fireplace in our family room - I thought I'd do a craft this month on how to make homemade fire starters. Obviously, we're not having a whole lot of fires inside right now - but it's a great time of year to go for walks and pick up pinecones, and these fire starters can also be used in outdoor fire pits (instead of soaking the wood in lawn mower gasoline - yes, I'm talking to you my dear husband), or to take with for camping. As an added bonus, these can also be made entirely from recycled materials. I haven't tried making any yet, but my next door neighbor says that he's started a fire with one even in the pouring rain, so I'm definitely going to make some up before our next camping trip.

Decorative Pinecone Fire starters

1. Collect pinecones, and leftover wax from old unused candles

2. Melt wax in a double boiler (essential oils can be added at this point)

3. Tie a length of natural twine around the top of the pinecone, leaving the ends free

4. Holding on the the ends of the twine, dip the pinecones a few times to coat with wax, then place on wax paper to harden

5. After the wax has hardened, the pinecone can be brushed with Mod Podge and coated with various materials to produce a colored flame:

table salts = yellow flame

epsom salts = white flame

salt substitute = violet flame

borax = green flame

6. Once dry pinecones can be placed among kindling and lit

Recycled Cardboard Fire starters

1. Collect used egg cartons, dryer lint, and leftover wax from unused candles.

2. Melt wax in double boiler

3. While wax is melting fill the egg carton cups with dryer lint, set on top of waxed paper

4. Carefully pour the melted wax over the lint, filling each egg cup

5. Once hardened, an egg cup can be torn off, placed among kindling, and an edge of the cardboard used to ignite

Painting progress

2010-05-27T08:00:00.000-05:00

We worked on painting the family room some more last weekend. Slowly but surely we're getting there. Very slowly. Oh well. Here's where we started out the weekend - with two little walls partly primed.

At the end of a full day we had all the primer on the walls, and had gotten actual paint in most of the grooves. We had thought we would be totally done with this project at this point, but no.

So we traded on and off painting the next day, and got a little bit farther - paint on the walls and some primer on the ceiling.

I'm frustrated that it's taking so long, but it's definitely looking brighter in there. Although, there are a few areas that are going to need some extra attention. We bought a primer that specifically listed tannin blockers on it - but we're still having bleed through in some areas.

Also when you paint wood white - nail holes become really obvious. And evidently some previous homeowner had a dartboard up on this wall. (And wasn't very good at darts.)

Why I only made $5.75 at my garage sale...

2010-05-17T20:51:00.007-05:00

(via Atlanta Bartlett)

I know was supposed to be working on priming and painting the paneling in our family room white this weekend, but I slacked off entirely. It was too nice outside, so I played in the garden, and earlier in the weekend I was part of a four person garage sale. Which was...okay. I only made $32.75. And between the ad, and the stuff that I bought from the other people I ended up spending $27. So I netted a whopping $5.75 - woo hoo!

I did get some cool stuff, though:

First up - hands down the fanciest butter dish that I've ever seen. The lid flips open, and there's room for crushed ice under the glass dish. I still have to polish it - but I'm sure it'll shine up nicely - it's so cute!

Secondly, I went a little crazy for antique Ball canning jars.

I know, right - it's kind of a lot. And there's another box of them in the basement that I couldn't fit in the cabinet. And a couple sitting out on the mantel. But when I flipped them over I found two of them that had this on the bottom:

Which I thought were supposed to be rare (I had heard stories about superstitious people breaking them on purpose back in the day), but all the credible sites I found on the web seem to agree that it's just an urban legend. Oh well - they still look cool!

I'm linking this post up with Southern Hospitality's Today's Thrifty Treasures - everyone else has found such great stuff I just had to join in!

Woodwork

2010-05-14T12:16:00.000-05:00

(via The Lettered Cottage)

(via Better Homes and Gardens)

In my last inspiration post all the rooms had mantels and ceilings both painted white. That might be what I end up with, but I have to admit that I really love the look of these pictures with stained mantels and ceilings. And I think it would suit the style of our house much better.

But it would be sooo much more work. The mantel I could probably handle sanding down. But the ceiling? I can't even imagine how much work that would involve. (Although I'm sure sanding all that cedar would smell awesome.)

(via Remodelista)

(via Divine Design)

Priming

2010-05-09T19:00:00.000-05:00

We started priming the family room this weekend, and even though I knew it would be a lot of work - I think I still underestimated how hard it was going to be.

The boards are fit together in such a way that they have these deep (over 1/2 inch) grooves in between each of them that can't be reached with a roller - so they all have to be filled in by hand with a paintbrush.

And if you can see from this picture the cedar has a really rough surface, so it takes forever to get full coverage of the paint, and it's almost impossible to cut a straight line against the grain of the wood, so doing the top and bottom edges is a giant pain. So after an entire weekend, only one corner of the room is primed. (I'm crossing my fingers that I'll only have to do one coat of paint over it.)

And I still have this ginormous 12 foot tall wall to do -

Oh - and since I usually only have a little time here and there to work on it, I usually just cover my roller and brushes in plastic wrap, and keep them cold so I don't have to rinse them out every day. But guess who found my roller when I wasn't paying attention? And proceeded to go around the house "cleaning" with it? (It was my two year old - and she really did think she was helping me, so I couldn't get mad at her.)

So, I'm going to have to paint our front door -

But luckily, I should be able to just scrape the paint off the glass door once it dries...

And I was planning on painting my kitchen cabinets white anyway...

There are about five other walls around the main floor that got "cleaned" and I'll have to paint over. I guess I just have to be glad that she didn't get anything like the carpet or furniture!

Family Room Inspiration

2010-05-06T11:23:00.001-05:00

(via Atlanta Bartlett)

(via Canadian House and Home)

(via The Nest. Obviously a dining room - but the walls and ceiling are just like our family room.)

My campaign to have Chris agree to paint the family room consisted of me showing him pictures of white rooms in magazines, and asking him if he wouldn't like a nice bright room like the one in the picture. To which he would reply, "NO. We're not painting the wood." And I would say, "But it's basically ALREADY painted, this would just be a different color..." But it was a no go. Until one day I found this picture in a Pottery Barn catalog, and showed it to him. As you can see it's very similar to our room - planked walls and ceilings with beams, the couch on the left with windows behind it, and a stone fireplace in the middle of the wall next to it.

To my surprise, he liked it. His response basically was, "I like it. If you can make it look like this you can totally paint it." So either he really liked it, or he was just tired of me showing him pictures all the time - but either way I'm painting it :)

Family Room

2010-05-02T19:00:00.001-05:00

This month I want to tackle our family room.

(Yes, we've given up on trying to keep Belle off the furniture)

This is probably the room that we spend the most amount of time in - and the room that I've probably done the least amount of work in. Actually I've only done one improvement to this room - I changed out the lights when we first moved in. Other than that I've rearranged the furniture a zillion times and tried to find stuff that would look good on the mantle (and failed a zillion times).

Here's my problem with this room - it's an addition that was put on in the 70's, and they obviously were going for a rustic lodge feel, but the rest of our house is neither rustic nor lodge-like. The walls and ceiling are rough-cut red cedar (real wood) that's been pickled? whitewashed? kind of a beigey-tan color that matches none of the other woodwork in the house. And it's DARK. The room faces north, and only has one little window, so even during the day we have to have to have the lights on.

(The family room is the one at the very top left of the "blueprint")

I want this room to feel more light, bright, and airy - less dark, depressing, and cave-like. After a looong time trying to convince Chris to let me paint in there - he finally agreed. I know it's going to be a giant pain, but I think painting it a glossy white will really brighten it up. The one thing I'm having a hard time deciding on is the ceiling. Do I paint the ceiling too? Or just leave it? And the mantle - I think it might look weird if I paint it white - do I just leave it, or maybe try and sand it down somehow to a real wood color?

Closet Re-do

2010-04-30T15:26:00.001-05:00

The cleaning closet has finally been finished. It's actually been finished for awhile, I've just been lazy about posting it. Anyway, if you don't remember the how it looked here's a little reminder. A tiny little triangular closet filled with piles of junk.

It's hard to clean your house when you can't even get to your cleaning products :)

(Taking something out of the closet was kind of like playing Jenga.)

So to start with I took all the stuff out and then pulled out all the old shelves.

(Crap.)

(More crap.)

(Dirty old shelves - ish.)

Then Chris was nice enough to help me out with the new shelves. Basically, I drew him a picture of how I wanted the shelves to look, and he went and bought them, cut them to size, and put them up. (After he laughed at me for actually drawing a picture of my closet design.)
Here it is in all its glory:

I just wanted floor to ceiling shelves along the right wall (with a cutout space for my vacuum cleaner), and on the left side brooms and mops hanging flush against the wall.

And the final product:

Soooo much better.

It's hard to tell, but almost everything that was in here before went back in (except the coat rack), and I fit a ton more stuff in. All the paper towels and toilet paper and napkins were previously taking up space in my pantry - so it was great to get them out of there. And I took all the stuff out of the "junk drawer" in our kitchen, and put it into one of the new bins - which was great cause it freed up some extra space in our kitchen since we don't have a whole lot of storage in there. And I took all the cleaning products out from under our sink, and put them up in a bin where little kiddos can't get to them. And got all OCD and actually labeled what's in each of the bins.

Hopefully it'll inspire me to clean more often...

Cleaning with Vinegar

2010-04-28T21:59:00.000-05:00

(Eat Drink Chic downloadable labels)

I've recently discovered that vinegar is a great cleaning item. (I'm sure this probably isn't news to anyone else - but hey you never know.) Anyway, I've started buying it in big containers because it's so nice to have on hand. Mainly I've been using it because we have super hard water, and when my glasses get all white and cloudy - soaking them in vinegar overnight takes it all off. And I also use it to clean out our coffee maker. And recently I've tried using it to clean both the dishwasher and the microwave - which both seemed to work, and were pretty easy for a lazy cleaner like me. (For the microwave you just put a cup of vinegar/water in and heat until boiling, let it sit for a while until all the crusty food is loosened up, then just wipe the inside.)

I found a whole bunch of other tips here that I might try out - although some of them are kind of out there. It is interesting, though, that if you put an old tarnished penny in vinegar overnight it'll be all bright and shiny the next day. And I'm not sure why I know this - but Diet Coke will do the same thing. Makes me think maybe I should drink less Diet Coke.

Cleaning Closet Inspiration

2010-04-25T18:17:00.000-05:00

(Unknown)

When I went looking for inspiration photos before tackling the organization of my cleaning closet, I was pretty disappointed. There's not much out there that's realistic. (Picture a closet with a broom, a pair of gloves, and two or three color coordinated cleaning products. Yeah right.)

The two photos above were the best I could find. I like the picture of the pretty cleaning cabinet because I think it's a great idea if you don't have an actual closet to store cleaning products, and I think they actually fit a lot of stuff in there. (Even if they did take the time to decant all of their color coordinated cleaning products into glass jars. Who does that?)

And the photo directly above with the wire shelves is actually a lot like what I would like to accomplish - simple wire shelves with room for all of my stuff, plus bins of junk, and even a vacuum cleaner.

Whiteware

2010-04-18T07:10:00.000-05:00

Check out what I scored last weekend...

A boatload of white serving pieces that I didn't actually need :)

But, I only paid twenty-six bucks! For everything! And they're all brand new Target pieces.

I guess that's one advantage to living in the hometown of Target - I can stumble onto a sweet sample sale of some company who helped supply their ceramics (that have been discontinued or something) and get them for a steal because they need to get rid of their inventory.

It doesn't quite make up for our Minnesota winters, but it helps :)

And sorry I've been MIA for the last couple months, but I'm one of the lucky women who gets to spend her whole first trimester with her head over the toilet. The joys of pregnancy, right? But I'm getting back on my feet now, so I'm going to finish up some various projects around the house this month, and then jump into working on a new room in May.

Cleaning closet

2010-02-06T10:17:00.000-06:00

I'm having an insane urge to organize lately so I'm just going to go with it. I REALLY want to organize our walk-in pantry, but in order to do that I first have to organize our cleaning closet. Currently our cleaning closet contains some cleaning supplies, paint, an old coat tree, various gardening supplies, and lots of junk. The rest of my cleaning supplies are in the pantry (yuck right?) So, that's why I need to organize the cleaning closet first - so I can get all my supplies in there before I tackle the pantry.

Here's the current state of affairs:

The main problem is that this closet has a really small opening, and this part of the house has weird angles so the closet is actually triangular. Not really a functional shape. But I'm going to work with what I've got - hopefully if I just change the shelving around it'll work a little better.

Also congrats to Sara who won the candleholder giveaway - and thanks to everyone who entered!

Bedroom After

2010-02-01T20:07:00.002-06:00

There you have it folks - our master bedroom. I have to say that I think this is currently my favorite room in the house. Sometimes (okay a lot of times) I buy stuff and then I have to return it because it's ugly - but that's never happened with the things I put in this room. I love my paisley quilt, I love the art above the bed, and I LOVE my bookshelves. Isn't it great when that happens?

Giveaway!

2010-01-29T19:51:00.001-06:00

I love candles - and I love a pretty candleholder even more. And what better way to add some ambiance to a bedroom than with some nice glowing candlelight? Plus it hides things like unpainted doors, unfinished trim, and window seats that aren't completed :)

So in honor of master bedroom month here at A Little Chippy - I'd love to help someone with a little ambiance of their own! The staff over at CSN stores (they have everything from Mail boxes to Modern Decor) have generously offered to give one of my lovely readers a Kosta Boda Atoll candleholder in the color of their choice.

These are some seriously gorgeous pieces of glass. (We received a few Kosta Boda items as wedding gifts, and I love them.) And these candleholders come in fifteen different colors - red, green, turquoise, dark turquoise, blue, petrol, gray, white, yellow, vanilla, orange, pink, lilac, brown, and black. (You can see all the colors over at the AllModern site.)

So here's the drill:

Leave a comment and tell me what color you'd pick if you won, and you get one entry

If you are or become a follower, you get another entry

And if you blog about the giveaway, you get yet another entry

Contest will end in on Friday Feb 5th-

Thanks and good luck to everyone!

The quilt

2010-01-13T09:04:00.004-06:00

On my master bedroom to do list this month is finishing this quilt. I have no idea why I decided to start it - I didn't even google it - I just started cutting and went to town. Ahem, about eight years ago. Yep. Eight years. Before we even moved in to this house. I've worked on it occasionally, but never actually finished it.

It's not too bad, for a first effort. Looks okay from far away. But up close you can start to see that all my seams are off - the squares aren't really square.

And there are random holes where the seams have started to come apart.

I think I can patch up the holes and cover the seams up with ribbon. Except I sewed the backing on before I came to this realization. So now if I want to sew the ribbon, I have to first rip out all those seams. Then sew the ribbon on. Then re-sew all those seams.

Did I mention I don't have any patience for sewing? I don't.

But I would really like to get this done this month. Every good reading nook needs a throw blanket.

This is currently what the reading nook/window seat looks like right now - hopefully it'll look better soon. All it does right now is collect random piles of clothes :)

Reading Nooks

2010-01-07T08:00:00.000-06:00

(via Apartment Therapy)

(via House + Home)

(via Houzz)

Love reading nooks. All of these pictures make me drool. I can just picture spending a lazy sunday afternoon curled up in one of these spots, sipping hot cocoa and reading a great book.
(A girl can dream, right?)

So, I had to have a reading nook in our master bedroom. Which conveniently necessitated a whole wall of built in bookshelves along with it. Not surprisingly, however, I've been lazy and have not made a cushion for my reading nook/window seat in the *cough* three *cough* years since it has been in place.

(via Decorpad)

(via Decorpad)

I will be changing that this month, however. I have the fabric for the cushion already purchased. (Sage green velvet.) I just need to buy the actual cushion, and figure out how to sew a cover for it. I don't want to do anything complicated, otherwise I'll give up. So a zipper is out. I'm thinking maybe something along the lines of a fitted sheet, only with more seams. And then it'll still be washable. We'll see - wish me luck!

I heart purple

2010-01-03T16:32:00.000-06:00

(via Apartment Therapy)

If you read my blog you know that I love the color green. So when we were picking out the color to paint our master bedroom I couldn't pick green. Everything I buy is green, and it's a bit much if you fill up a green room with green stuff. So I wanted a color that would go with all the green stuff.
Sooo...I painted our bedroom purple. (Stay with me here.)

(via House + Home)

(via BHG)

I think a dark eggplant purple would have been really cool for a bedroom, but since ours is in the basement I think that would have made it feel too much like a cave. So we went with a very light purple. I love it. And Chris thinks it's gray, so he loves it too. Win-win, right?

(via House + Home)

(via Decorpad)

And since I'm on the subject of purple I just want to mention that I wandered into a kitchen store last weekend, and right smack in front of me was this display:

I'm not so sure about the lavender, but I think the eggplant color is awesome. I'll have to start saving my pennies for one of these :)

Master bedroom before

2010-01-01T15:26:00.000-06:00

This month I'm going to work on our master bedroom. We've done a ton of work on it - basically it has been gutted down to the studs, new lighting put in, new walls put up, and new flooring put down. I'm to the point now where I just have a few things left for it to be DONE. Gotta start out the new year with an easy room, right?

Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the room before we started redoing it. I did find a site, though, called Ugly House Photos that had a number of photos that looked eerily similar to ours.

Notice a theme? That's right. Our master bedroom had hot pink carpet. Lots of bright brass light fixtures from the 1980's. And ugly wallpaper. Broken baseboards that didn't work any more.
Fortunately no velvet Elvis wall hangings, though.

Handmade Gift Exchange

2009-12-28T18:22:00.005-06:00

As I mentioned in my last post I got an awesome gift during the handmade gift exchange I was in - but as anyone else who likes to craft knows - making a gift is almost better than getting one :) For anyone who's curious this is what I sent out.

Robin told me that she loves to read, and spends a lot of time boating - so I made her some nautical bookplates and a fishy bookmark complete with a bobber. I think they turned out pretty cute, but I guess I'm kind of biased...

I found both the images online at the Graphics Fairy, and printed them out on heavy cardstock. For the fish I just covered it with double sided laminate - then poked the bobber through the mouth. The bookplates got a little photo editing (so that they said Ex Libris and Robin on them) and then I ran them through my little manual Xyron machine, so that they ended up adhesive on the back side.

Gift Exchange

2009-12-27T09:56:00.000-06:00

I joined in the handmade gift exchange over at Craftaholics Anonymous earlier this month - and it was a blast! Danielle was so thoughtful to send me these headbands (she noticed from my blog that I have two girls) and they were a huge hit with them. Aren't they cute? Thanks Danielle!

Peppermint Patty

2009-12-22T10:04:00.002-06:00

Peppermint Patty

Ingredients:

½ oz. Peppermint schnapps
½ oz. Dark crème de cacao
1 oz. Heavy cream (half and half)

To mix a Peppermint Patty, fill a rocks glass with ice, add peppermint schnapps, dark crème de cacao and cream. Stir well and serve. You may garnish with a sprig of mint or a mini candy cane, or rim the glass with crushed peppermint candies.

Tinsel Bellini

2009-12-21T09:58:00.000-06:00

Tinsel Bellini

Ingredients:

2 oz HPNOTIQ

1 oz Limoncello

1 oz Champagne

Splash of lime juice

Rim the Champagne Flute with a light coat of sugar. Pour chilled HPNOTIQ, Limoncello and Champagne into the champagne flute. Add a splash of lime juice.

White Christmas

2009-12-20T09:18:00.001-06:00

White Christmas

Ingredients:

4 ounces eggnog (homemade or commercially prepared)

1/2 ounce white chocolate liqueur

1 ounce Southern Comfort

Mix all ingredients and serve straight up in a snifter.
Bonus points if you watch the movie White Christmas, while drinking a White Christmas.

The Poinsettia

2009-12-19T08:36:00.000-06:00

The Poinsettia

Ingredients:

Cranberry juice

Trader Joe's Almond Sparkling Wine

Frozen cranberries

Pour glass 3/4 full of sparkling wine, then add cranberry juice to fill. Garnish with frozen cranberries, rolled in sugar.

(*Side note: This recipe is from Kelly at Casa de Edgewood - who made these for our holiday party last year and they were AWESOME!)

5 Golden Rings

2009-12-18T09:17:00.001-06:00

5 Golden Rings

Ingredients:

1 oz Johnny Walker Gold
1 oz Godiva Dark
1 oz Godiva White

Shake and pour

Orange Mocha

2009-12-17T08:14:00.000-06:00

Hot Orange Mocha with Grand Marnier Whipped Cream

Ingredients:

1/2 cup chilled whipping cream
2 tablespoons brown sugar, divided
1 tablespoon Grand Marnier or other orange liqueur

2 oranges
4 cups whole milk
6 ounces bittersweet (not unsweetened) chocolate, chopped
3 tablespoons instant espresso powder
1 tablespoon unsweetened cocoa powder
Ground coffee beans (optional)

Whisk cream, 1 tablespoon sugar, and Grand Marnier in medium bowl to soft peaks; cover and chill. Using vegetable peeler, remove peel from oranges in strips; add strips to medium saucepan (reserve oranges for another use). Add milk; bring just to simmer over medium heat. Add chocolate, espresso powder, cocoa powder, and remaining 1 tablespoon sugar; bring just to simmer, whisking to melt chocolate. Strain. Ladle mocha into 4 mugs. Pour in a generous shot of Grand Marnier. Top with whipped cream and ground coffee beans, if desired.

(*Side note: This is a Bon Apetit recipe - which is why it's so freakin complicated. You could just as easily do this with some Swiss Miss. However, I do think that homemade cocoa is WAY better than premixed, so if you have the time, give it a try.)

Amaretto Kiss

2009-12-16T08:53:00.001-06:00

Amaretto Kiss

Ingredients:
2 cups cranberry juice cocktail
1 cup vodka
1/2 cup amaretto
3 tablespoons fresh orange juice*
Ice cubes
Clementines, peeled, separated into segments (optional)

Mix cranberry juice, vodka, amaretto, and orange juice in pitcher.

Cover and chill until ready to serve. It can be prepared 1 day ahead. Keep refrigerated.

To make 2 drinks, fill cocktail shaker with ice cubes. Pour in scant 1 cup vodka mixture.

Cover and shake vigorously. Strain into 2 Martini glasses. Garnish each with clementine segment, if desired. Repeat 3 times with ice cubes, remaining vodka mixture, and clementine segments.

*side note: I have sampled this cocktail (purely as research, mind you) and I can assure you that it is very delicious and goes down waaay easy ;)

Mulled Apple Cider

2009-12-15T20:10:00.002-06:00

Mulled Cider

Ingredients:

2 quarts apple cider*

1/4 cup packed brown sugar

1/8 tsp. ground ginger

1 orange (unpeeled)

2 cinnamon sticks

1 tsp. whole cloves

brandy

Combine cider, sugar, ginger and orange in slow cooker. Tie cinnamon and cloves in a small cheesecloth bag; add to crockpot. Cover and cook on LOW 2 to 4 hours. The entire house will smell great! Remove the bag of spices. In a mug put a shot of brandy, then fill with hot mix from cooker.

*Can also substitute cranberry juice for the cider above. Or red wine minus the brandy.

12 Days of Christmas

2009-12-14T15:41:00.003-06:00

I love Christmas and all that it entails - family, togetherness, giving, smittens, the birth of Jesus, and the spirit of the season. However, sometimes the holidays also come with an extra bonus - stress! So, as a charitable action I'll be giving you (and myself) the twelve days of christmas drinks.
Enjoy!
(responsibly, of course)

The Grinch

2 oz. Midori

1/2 oz. Lemon juice

1 tsp. Simple syrup

Mix all ingredients with ice in a shaker. Strain into a chilled martini glass, rimmed with red sugar. Garnish with a maraschino cherry. (To symbolize the grinch's changed heart!)

Red and Green

2009-12-13T22:21:00.001-06:00

I love red and green for Christmas. For me it's not Christmas without red and green all over the house. Plus that's what I already have, and I'm too cheap to buy all new decorations :)

Love these vintage Santa mugs and pitcher. Just a hint, though, if you have some of these too - don't put them in the dishwasher. We did put them in the dishwasher (by we of course I mean my husband) - and when we took the cup out... Santa had lost his face.

Anyway! On to better things.

Unlit.

And lit... with red and green lights, of course :)

Joining up today with Thrifty Decor Chick's Christmas Tree party, and the Nester's
Christmas Tour of Homes.

Winter Candles

2009-12-07T16:00:00.004-06:00

Ahhh, glitter. I love glitter, don't get me wrong, but it's not allowed in my house anymore. I think it all started when I worked part time in a craft store a few years ago. Tons of glittery ornaments and whatnot all over the place there, and inevitably you end up with some on your hands. Then at some point during your shift you touch your face. The glitter is now on your face. Forever. Just kidding, not forever, but seriously for a long time. You can try and wipe it off or wash it off, but the next time you look in the mirror it will still be there. And people will look at you funny because it's totally distracting when someone has glitter on their face.

Anyway...

My mom did this craft with my girls last week, and I loved it because it's sparkly - but it involves NO glitter. It's pretty easy there are only a few ingredients:
(Original instructions from Martha Stewart Living can be found here.)

a candle

Mod Podge

Epsom salt

Cover your candle in Mod Podge, then roll it around in a baking sheet that you've covered in Epsom salts. Let it dry and you're done.

My mom did not tell me if you could actually burn these or not, but the bottle of Mod Podge says non-flammable so I'm doing it anyway. What's the point of having cute candles if I can't burn them, right?

*Update - I did burn these and they were just fine :) Although the heat from the flame turned the salt kind of a dull white - so if you want them to stay sparkly I wouldn't burn them.

Dickens Village

2009-12-03T21:17:00.000-06:00

First decorations I put up this year - our Dickens village. Given to us by Chris's grandma. The kids helped me put it up - which is why all the farm animals are on top of the bank.

I'm not going to work on any specific room this month, I've decided to just post Christmassy stuff. If I do work on anything it'll just be little stuff that I haven't finished in rooms that I've already worked on. And to be honest the biggest item on our to do list is carpet in the basement - since it currently looks a little something like this:

If you're counting - that's cut up carpet, concrete, and two different types of ancient linoleum.

But it's not very exciting to write about calling Home Depot to come and measure so they can give us an estimate. Hence, my whole month of holiday cheer.

Not Done

2009-12-02T22:01:00.000-06:00

Well, I will say that the girls' room looks a lot better now than it did at the beginning of the month. It's still a mess, but at least we don't have blankets nailed over the windows anymore :)

The dresser and nightstand are all painted and clear coated - we just need to get the pulls done and then they'll be ready. We even got some really cute and girly floral rose scented drawer liners for them :)

And the other big news is that after searching and searching to find matching twin beds - to no avail - my mom has generously donated the antique twin beds from her guest bedroom to the girls. I think I'm going to paint them white to match the dressers, but not right away - I'll live with them as is for a little while just to be sure. (Some people are so sensitive about painting antiques.) Sorry for the bad pic - but you can at least see what the headboards look like:

Cute right? I probably could have gotten these in by now, but I actually wanted to wait. Our youngest will be turning two this next month, and I want to surprise her with a big girl bed for her birthday. (Complete with Dora sheets, of course.)

That does mean that we've also agreed to a trade - so my mom will be getting my guest bed in exchange. I'll be sorry to see it go - it is nice to have a place for guests to sleep that doesn't have to be blown up.

However, what you can't see in the photo above is that the guest room is also Chris's home office - all his work stuff is smushed over in the corner. So since it's a choice between something that gets used a few times a year vs. an area that Chris uses whenever he's home - I really think that getting rid of the guest bed is the best choice for us.

Hot/Cold Pak

2009-11-28T08:45:00.000-06:00

I love these things. (Also known as a rice sock.) Nothing new - they've been around forever. My mom used to make these with flannel fabric - we would microwave them and use them as a hot pak. Pretty handy to stick in the bottom of your bed before you go to sleep when it's fifteen below outside :) Then I saw another version where they were made with kid's fabric and used as a cold pak (for those inevitable boo boo's) and thought about making some myself.

Time went by and I procrastinated a lot.

But this month I'm working on kid's stuff so I finally busted out the sewing machine and stitched some together. The only thing I did different was to make two layers out of them. I always find that these tend to get kind of gross after awhile, and I wanted them to be washable. So, first I made a muslin square, filled it with rice, and sewed it shut. Then I made the outer layer like a pillow sham (lazy me didn't want to do buttons or velcro) so that I can just stuff the insert in there and take it out when I want to wash the case. Done.

And the girls loved them. At one point I found one of them banging her head against the wall, "so I have a boo boo to use my boo boo bag for, Mama!" she says to me. Nice. Anyway, here they are -

Diego for my youngest:

And rainbow for my oldest:

As an added bonus, I learned something new during this craft. If I have to go to the fabric store - which the kids hate are not fans of - I told them if they were on good behavior the whole time I'd let them each pick out a fabric of their very own. Worked pretty darn well. And all I bought them was a six inch piece - which tends to be about a dollar per kid. Definitely worth it in my opinion.

Pink

2009-11-22T21:24:00.001-06:00

I have been making progress on the girls' room, I promise. The dressers are going to be painted white. The only holdup on those is the dumb drawer pulls. I did not think one broken pull was going to be a big deal. Just buy some new ones, right? Except these drawer pulls are 5 3/4". And nobody makes pulls that size. NOBODY. And we already painted the drawers, so it's pretty much too late to fill them in and repaint them. I guess we could just glue the broken one back together and use them as is, but I kind of have my heart set on pink glass...

Also, the red wall is now pink. Martha Stewart Milk Glass Pink to be exact. My new way of picking out paint colors - put a bunch of chips up on the wall, and the one that looks white is the winner. Otherwise, they always turn out darker than I want. ALWAYS.

Then I got motivated to put up the girls' names on the wall (I've had them for a loooong time). First I tried them the way you see above - with both of them on the pink wall, but it looked weird without a plus between them.

(Side note: I put them up with the chewing gum sticky stuff instead of putting a bunch of holes in the wall, but evidently didn't stick them on hard enough. The next morning there was an E and a D that had fallen on Peyton while she was sleeping. Oops. Good thing she's my daughter - she slept right through it.)

My second try I think is a little better, with each on the wall that their beds will be on.

And I still have these cool 1950's brass metal butterflies that I painted white that l need to hang somewhere. I just don't know where, yet.

A Little Chippy

Library Inspiration

Parker's Room

New Baby

New Pantry

Operation Sanding

Mudding

Etsy Shop Giveaway

April...Snow?

Window Trim

Spiral Stairs

Vindicated

April Randomness

Hundred Year Old Books

Canning Jar Labels

Industrial Shelving Knockoff

If only...

A New Home for an Old Shelf

Stylish Blogger Award

More pantry organization

Most Returns Ever

Pantry Progress

Also just because...

Just because.

Pantry Inspiration (Part II)

Pantry Details

Pantry Inspiration

Walk-in Pantry

The Back Hallway

My New Clock

Mod Podge Clothespins

Mudroom Progress

Actually Starting the Mudroom

Starting the "Mudroom"

Mudroom Inspiration

Mudroom Envy

The Girls' New Room

Turquoise Girls' Room

Starting Over

Handmade Gift Exchange 2010

Busy

Cookbook Shelf

Headband Holder

The Nursery (aka the hallway)

Spices and Space Bags

Guilty Pleasure

The Girls' Room - Update

Nice Rug

Family Room Progress

Little things

MORE painting...

Furniture

(via Country Living)

Fire starter

Painting progress

Why I only made $5.75 at my garage sale...

Woodwork

Priming

Family Room Inspiration

Family Room

Closet Re-do

Cleaning with Vinegar

Cleaning Closet Inspiration

Whiteware

Cleaning closet

Bedroom After

Giveaway!

The quilt

Reading Nooks

I *heart* purple

Master bedroom before

Handmade Gift Exchange

Gift Exchange

Peppermint Patty

Tinsel Bellini

White Christmas

The Poinsettia

5 Golden Rings

Orange Mocha

Ingredients:

I heart purple