Hardware Swap

Sometimes I get this wild hair to do something and I have to do it rightthisminute.  Those wild hairs have really been rare since having kids but last week told a different story.  After seeing John and Sherry’s amazing kitchen renovation, we needed new hardware on our kitchen cabinets….okay, wanted…wanted knew hardware.  I loved how they placed knobs on their upper cabinets and coordinating handles on their lower and our kitchen was begging for it.

So, last week I plucked that wild hair and replaced all of our hardware with new, more modern handles on the bottom cabinets and coordinating knobs on the top.

Our old pulls weren’t bad and truth be told, they were actually pretty nice as seen in these old pictures:


But, they were definitely a little more traditional than the new bar pulls I bought and I thought adding modern pulls would make our refurbished kitchen look a little more modern; not like the old kitchen it is that we set new appliances in and painted cabinets to make it look new.

Old on the left; new on the right:

Replacing the lower cabinet hardware was easy peasy.  All I had to do was remove the old and install the new in the same holes.  The uppers were a different story.  I had to remove the old pulls, fill in the holes they left behind, drill new knob holes, and then screw in the new knobs.  On top of all that though, I figured it was high time I touched up the paint on our cabinets.  After almost five years, there were a few places where the paint was chipped just from normal, everyday use.  It was a simple fix though.  I just washed down all of the cabinets (something that also needed to be done) and used a small artists’ paint brush and leftover paint to paint right over those small chips. 

Once everything was painted, I got to work filling and drilling for the knobs.  To fill the holes in, I used Bondo (purchased on Amazon because it was cheaper there than at Lowe’s) after seeing Chelsea use it to repair her dining chairs.  The stuff is great and perfect if you’re like me and want immediate results.  It dries super quick!  I filled the holes, sanded them down, and had them covered in paint in under a half hour.  The one thing I didn’t do though was pay attention to detail.  I replaced all of the hardware in sections over four days time and everytime I had a chance to get to work, it was a small chunk of time while the kids were playing or Gianna was taking a cat nap.  So, I rushed and I shouldn’t have because there are places where I didn’t spend enough time sanding the Bondo so that it was completely flush with the door and other places where I should’ve went back and added more, like on this door:
Can you see those two small indentations right where the old pulls were installed?  *sigh*  Lesson learned:  Don’t rush through a project.  I’ll probably go back over and sand or re-fill the next time our cabinets need a touch-up and thanfully, the imperfections aren’t all that noticeable but the fact remains, they are there and I shouldn’t have rushed.  My OCD self will suffer everytime she sees them…

Anyway, lets get to the best part of this little project.  It will end up costing me a few bucks or even be FREE!  How?  Well, because we’re going to sell the old hardware for what we paid for the new – just under $25 for 23 pieces.  The old hardware is still sold at our local Lowe’s for $3 a pop and we bought the new at a fantastic price from the same place I bought the hardware for the kids’ play kitchen – eBay!  The knobs cost us 99 cents a piece and the pulls were $1.39 a piece – a fraction of what you’ll find them at in your local hardware store.  And, we can attest to their quality.  They’re heavy, brushed metal pieces of hardware that I’m sure will last just as long as the ones in-store. 
    


If you have a hankering to replace hardware (or if you didn’t before, maybe you do now!), we highly recommend these! 


Maybe it’s just me enjoying the change, but it kind of amazing how much of a difference hardware can make in a space.  We have original-to-the-house, ugly pulls on our master bath cabinets and I can’t wait to swap those out for these too.  Of course there’s a whole laundry list of updates we want to do in there eventually so you’ll have to stay tuned for those.  ;)

On another note relating to bathroom hardware, do you think it should match what’s in your kitchen?  I’ve seen lots of HGTV remodels where they install the same throughout the house.  Or is it better that it just coordinates?  Or maybe it doesn’t really matter at all and they can all be different and as long as they go with the rest of the decor in that particular room.  What say you fine readers?  I’m kind of asking because we were thinking of grabbing matching pulls for our bathroom, but in brass since a lot of the fixtures might be heading down the brass route.  Should we stick with the same or go different?  Of course this will all be happening months from now but it’s never too early to get a head start with plans, right?  :)

TGIF!

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P.S.  I’m sorry this isn’t more of a tutorial!  We’ve been slowly tackling a lot of boring things around here like hemming Anthony’s pants, fixing broken toys and books, and doing an entire house purge so I didn’t have a lot of time to document this whole process while it was happening.  Let me know if you have any questions and I’ll be sure to answer them!

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Painted Sneaks

Whew!  What a week, huh guys?  I’ve been staying away from social media and focusing all my nervous energy on doing things like swapping out our kitchen cabinet pulls with knobs, a very spontaneous decision, and letting the girls paint their new kicks. 

They both started complaining last week, while wearing their old sneakers, that their feet hurt.  Maybe it was because, when I checked out the situation, their toes were stuffed into their now-too-small sneaks and needed a tad more space.  (Seriously?  Didn’t I just buy those yesterday?!)  So, to Walmart we went where we grabbed the same sneakers as the ones they had that had lasted us several months.  You can’t beat the price at $5.67 each and really, they hold up so well!  I really loved these tennies too but they didn’t have them in the girls size at the store and I didn’t feel like waiting for them to be shipped so we went another route – plain white with a project in mind.

I had to push my fear of messes aside to set out all of my (very permanent) paints so that the girls could get their customization on.

First, I removed all of the shoelaces.
(And speaking of the shoelaces, the girls don’t know how to tie their laces yet so I’m thinking about grabbing some of these laces!  They look so cool and would make getting out the door without having to bend over (twice) so much easier!)

Then I stuffed the insides of the shoes with plastic bags so that paint didn’t get inside and also because they kept the sides from collapsing in while the girls painted.

I wrote in this instagram that I let the girls “go to town” on their new shoes and maybe that was a little misleading because I didn’t just hand over the paint and walk away.  I did a little bit of what’s called micro-managing.  :)  Gianna and Sebastian were both sawing logs so I had two free hands to help, clean-up, whatever.  Part of that micro-mamaging was only letting them do one color at a time.  They wanted “rainbow” shoes and we’re still working on the concept of color-combining.  They have a hard time understanding how you get brown when you mix ALL the colors instead of rainbow… 

I asked them to try not to get paint on the rubber soles.  I knew that the paint would end up peeling off of the rubber and so I just figured we could skip that part.  They did pretty good staying off the rubber and the little bits that they did paint, I could scratch right off.

I also told them that they could paint them however they wanted – stripes, polka dots, zebra, whatever.  And I told them that they could paint them differently than their sister was.  Haha!  They tend to start coloring differently and then, once they see how their sister is handling the crayon, they do the same.  I wanted their shoes to be totally different 1) because I was interested to see what each’s idea of painted shoes looked like and 2) so I could tell whose was whose without asking (even though I did mark their initials on the bottom soles just to be safe…not that they can’t share shoes but more so they won’t forget which they painted and fight over them ).

I thought about grabbing some NeverWet to spray them with so they’d stay cleaner longer but I haven’t had a chance to grab some.  By the time I do, their little feet will probably be begging for the next size up and since this paint-fest went so well, we might have to repeat it later.

Next time, maybe I’ll grab a pair of my own and join in!  Anybody else?  :)

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Quick Hair, Don’t Care

Over the past several years that I’ve been blogging, I’ve had several requests for a hair tutorial and I’ve always had intentions of obliging but whoa, let me tell you, it is hard to film anything with kids running around.  After a few more requests flowed in last week though, I just threw caution and perfectionism to the wind and set up my phone while I was doing my hair one morning.  My thought was that I’d throw up a quick video tutorial, nothing too eloquent, that showed the basics until I could invest more time in a better video.  The filming went great despite two interuptions by kids asking questions but when I went to upload, that’s when everything got a little wrangled.  I couldn’t figure out how to add text, how to compress the size, how to blah, blah, blah.  Suffice it to say, I spent wayyyyy more time than I had intended on this video and it still is pretty awful.  Haha!  But hopefully you get the gist. 

The original video was eight minutes long but the file was too big to do anything with or store in any of my available storage places so I ended up chopping it into pieces that come in at just under a minute.  To make up for the cuts, I figured (and hoped) some written details would suffice.

So, here goes.

If the video isn’t working here,  hop, skip, or jump over to YouTube to watch it.

Just some notes:

First and foremost, it is painfully evident that I have no talent in video editing.  Ahem…

From start to finish, it takes me about seven minutes to get my hair curled.  It’s never perfect and because it’s curly to begin with, it hides that imperfection pretty well…and some people would dub the look “beachy” so I’ll just lean on that justification.  If I’m going somewhere special, I spend a little more time on it so we’ll just say 15 minutes max.

After I wash my hair, I put a little bit of Garnier Fructis mousse in the bottom half and I blow dry my hair upside down, focusing on the roots, for about two minutes.  I can’t stand wet hair on my neck and back so this gets me to dry at the top, damp at the bottom status.  I usually wash it at night so by the time I’m ready to curl, it’s 100% dry.  Also, about the mousse, I’m kind of a mousse snob.  I don’t like mousse that leaves your hair super stiff and this stuff is the best at not stiffening for the price.  I do think blow-drying after applying helps keep things soft too. 

My hair isn’t thin but it’s definitely not thick.  At the thickness it is, I divide it into two layers for curling.  If your hair is thicker, you might want three layers.  Also, my hair is cut with several layers.  The way your hair is cut detemines how it will look curled…that’s probably obvious but I thought I’d mention it anyway.  :)

When curling, it’s key not to adjust your grip at the base of the section you’re holding.  Grab the hair and wrap.  The section of hair will twist as it’s being wrapped and you want that to happen! 

The iron I’m using in the video is this Hot Shot/Helen of Troy curling iron.  It is amazing and I’ve had it since college (10+ years).  I have it in the 1” size and a 2”.  I’m using the 1” in the video.  The link will take you to it at Sally Beauty Supply, where I bought mine.  If you become an email subscriber with them, you’ll probably be able to nab a coupon that would make it even more affordable than it already is!

This is my hair after three days:
In the summer with all the humidity down here, it usually looks a little crazier after three days but the hairs are faring pretty well in this gorgeous fall weather.

I only brush my hair after showering and that’s it.  And actually, this past summer I tried something new where I brush my hair with a wide-tooth comb while I’m washing conditioner out and that’s it.  When I’m done and while it’s still pretty soaking wet, I apply mousse and then I blow dry, upside-down, for the usual two minutes.  My curls stick together more and humidity doesn’t hamper them as much as it usually does.  You curly-haired girls should try it.  :)  Sometimes it looks great as-is and sometimes just adding a few wrapped-curls here and there adds a little more form.

I didn’t have time to tack this on at the end of the video (another reason why I need to make a better one) but I usually tease my hair at the roots when I’m done to add a little extra va-voom.  On normal days, I just grab a fine-tooth comb or a pick and go at it a little bit but if I’m going to a wedding or some other special occasion, I sprinkle in some Powder Play and then tease it.  My sister introduced me to this stuff a few years ago and it is A+.  It holds and a little goes a really long way so it lasts forever.

I’ve never went Live with Facebook but I was thinking maybe it’d be fun to run through the whole process on there one day?  Maybe?  Maybe not?  We’ll see how much courage I can gather and how much awkwardness I can ignore to try that…

Anyway, I know I’m no hair pro but I’ve gotten pretty good at making my hair look fairly decent in the very, very little amount of time that I have to do it.  If anything, I hope I prove that it’s possible to lose the bed head with very little time and effort.  ;)

Questions?  Leave them in the combox or email me! 

Adios!

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Trophy (Painting) Wife

Last week, I finally got around to throwing up a collage wall and making a lamp out of string lights in Sebastian’s room.  If you missed that post, go check it out.

A few of the things up on that wall are some trophies from Anthony’s years past – Little League baseball years past.  I asked him a few years ago if he’d allow me to spray paint them and I got a shocked face and a stern, are-you-crazy, “no”.  Then I tried again last week and, maybe since all these guys have been doing is chilling in Sebastian’s closet, I got a “sure”.  So, I took that affirmative and ran with it…straight outside…with a few cans of spray paint.

Have you a few old trophies laying around?  Maybe you’ve passed some by at your local thrift store?  Well, if so, here’s how to make them as exciting today as they once were.

Trophies are put together really simply.

Basically, they’re a bunch of pieces and parts stacked on top of eachother with a long, threaded rod down the middle and that rod is secured at the bottom with a nut.

Unscrew that nut and everything will just slide right off.

The super cool thing about Anthony’s trophies is that each base is marble, carrerra marble to be exact.  I know so because a tiny sticker on the back of each told me so.  So fancy, right?  Well, there’s no way I’m going to paint something that isn’t ugly in the first place.  So, I grabbed all the plastic to be painted and left the marble as-is.

I gave all of the pieces a good washing with some dish soap and a toothbrush before I painted them.  They were a tad dusty from being stored so long.  After they were dry, I took them outside and laid them all out on a big piece of posterboard that was headed for the trash.


Then I gave each piece a coat of spray primer.  Plastic tends to be pretty finicky when it comes to holding paint (ahem), so priming it first ups the chances of it really sticking.

I painted one side of each piece, let that side dry, and then turned everything over to paint the other side.

Two of the trophies I left just primed – the gray and white.  I wasn’t sure what color I wanted to go and the only actual color I have in my spray paint stash right now is yellow.

Once everything was nice and dry, I put the trophies back together the same way I took them apart – by stacking them in order over the rod and securing it all by putting that nut back on at the base.  Except, in putting them back together, I turned the marble bases around backwards so that the metal plate parts with all of the writing were facing the back and the fronts were just plain marble.  See?

(So I was thinking while I was putting these things back together, about how awesome it would be to grab a few marble-laden trophies from a thrift store, take them apart to remove the marble, and stack the marble pieces all together to make a lamp base.  You could put all the big pieces at the bottom and small at the top or you could stagger them so they’re all different.  Either way, it be a really cool and cheap way to get a marble lamp!  :D  )

Had I a longer shelf, I probably would’ve painted more trophies and maybe that’ll eventually happen anyway.  Until then though, I really love how these turned out.  It’s fun when you can redo and repurpose something but even more fun and special when it’s something of sentimental value that probably wouldn’t have been used much less displayed anyway.  :)


All thanks and gratitude to my trophy husband for being so good at baseball as a wee lad, for without his mad skills (and eventual reluctance to my painting idea), this post would probably never have been written.  :)

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House for Love

Or maybe it should be Bean In Six?  House in Love?  House for Six Beans?  Six Beans in One House that are having a giveaway?  Yes.  That works!  But, what I really mean is that Deme at House for Six and I have put our efforts together to bring you a fun giveaway from my shop, Bean In Love Studio.  If you don’t already follow along with Deme, you should.  If you like my blog, you’ll love hers even more.  She has an eye for beauty and every ‘after’ she debuts leaves me in awe because she throws things together that I would never have thought to throw together and gets decor perfection every time.

Right now, she’s doing a little make-over-ing in her master bedroom and she grabbed a lumbar pillow from my shop to waltz with her amazing headboard.  And, she just painted after getting her readers to weigh in on that tough decision.

Go see what color won out and which pillow is perched AND THEN, enter to win a pillow cover of your very own! 

High Strung

Last fall, I was strolling through the summer clearance section at our local Target when I stumbled upon the huge collection of string lighting they had clearanced.  We needed some string lights for our new screened-in patio, so I grabbed a few boxes of these, and then I grabbed a couple of boxes of these metal ones that I thought might be fun to hang elsewhere.  Later, I’d get this fun idea to make an unconventional lamp out of them.  And, if you konw me, you know I usually get these ideas in my brain and then execute months later.  This scenario is no different.

Here we are, a year later, in Sebastian’s room.  I started hanging the string lights last year I but never finished and haphazardly threw up a few things I wanted on the wall above his dresser.  Haphazdly because I just hung stuff on the nails that were still in the wall from when the girls inhabited his room and had a collage wall up there. 
I bought that little lamp for another project (I wanted to recreate this ceiling light…plans have changed though) and the first thing Sebastian does when he wakes up in the morning is turn it on.  Fine except it’s really light and wobbles all over the place when two-year old hands get ahold of it…it’s fallen more than once.  Long ramblings short, it was time.  He needed a new lamp and I wanted to spruce up that wall.

To figure out the placement of things I’d be hanging, I simply laid everything out on the floor of his room – moving and shaking until I had a set up that satisfied me.

Then I used my handy dandy picture-hanging tool to transfer everything from the floor to the wall.
And, I finally finished that unconventional lamp.

To make it, I used a shelf bracket (originally, I bought this one but Anthony told me it was too dangerous to use – the end could poke an eye out or stab a forehead.  I disagreed (and there may have been an eyeroll) but I love my husband so…), the string lights (I used two strands), and some screws and picture hangers.  In total, I spent $18 ($3 for the bracket at Dirt Cheap, $7.50 for each light strand, and pennies for the hardware).

Starting over by his window, I hung the end of one of the string lights by putting in a picture hanger and slipping the hook of the hanger through one of the cut-outs on the basket part of the light.
(Don’t worry, I made sure to hang the lights high enough so that certain someones woudn’t mistake the strand for a jungle gym…)

Then I strung the lights across the corner and over to the next wall where I used another picture hanger to hook the light up near the ceiling.  For the actual ‘lamp’ part, I first installed the shelf bracket.  As luck had it, our trusty stud finder found me a wall stud right where I wanted to hang the lamp so I penciled in the edges of it.
Had there not been a stud, I would’ve just had to use some drywall plugs to install the bracket.  The lights aren’t heavy at all but in case somebody went a’pullin’, I didn’t want any a’fallin’.  As it was, I simply installed it using the screws that came with it.  Oh, and I forgot to mention, I spray painted it black prior to all of this.  It seemed more “manly”.  ;)

Eventually I’m thinking I might repaint the string lights – the cord and baskets.  I didn’t have time to do that last week nor do I know what color to go for but the cool thing is that I can.  The decorative baskets over each bulb slip right off so it’d be easy to change their color.  When I first found these lights in the store, I envisioned the metal baskets gold or a gold ombre with a white cord.  That wouldn’t really fit in well in Sebastian’s room but you never know where they’ll end up later in life…

Last, I just grabbed the second set of string lights in one handful and set them on the hook of the shelf support so that they fell however.  I tried to hide the connectors as well as I could within the bunch so that they weren’t too obvious.  To make the whole thing work, the lights are connected to an extension cord that has an on/off switch on the cord itself.  It’s actually the one we use for our Christmas tree so I’ll have to grab another one (like this one) next month, especially since the additional outlets on it are a little too big and obvious.  For now though, it does the trick.



SO, after all that, I should let out a big cyber sigh and tell you that we’re not sure we like it.  I mean, we like it, it looks uber cool BUT it doesn’t give off a lot of light.  It’s more mood lighting than something you could read a book by and, since we read a lot of books in that chair there, I’m not sure if form will override function in this case.  If we decide to switch it out for something brighter, converting the other lamp that was in here prior to this string lamp to something that hangs might be a good option.  I’ll light you know what happens.  ;)

Anyway, I’ll wrap this up with a few more details and sources so you can be on your merry way. 

If you follow us on Instagram, you might’ve seen the story about that USA wall art in the corner over the mirror.  I found it last week at Dirt Cheap for $2 and planned on painting it because it had a big sharpie mark on the front.

Shown in an Insta-story, I started by spray priming it but didn’t go any further because I kinda liked the look of it as-is.  It has a wood texture to it (although I’m fairly certain it’s not wood) and so the thin coat of primer gave it a white-washed look.  Those of you who responded to the story like it too, so white-washed it stayed and over the mirror I hung it.  That mirror is a hand-me-down from years ago and the two (empty-for-now), big picture frames were yard sale finds I spruced up.

black and silver picture frames:  Dirt Cheap (they were in our $20 bargain buggy score)
print in the black frame:  Honeychild Forest
BE NOT AFRAID wall hanging:  Honeychild Forest ($35 with the above print on sale @zelieandco on Instagram)
canvas painting: done by my good friend, Jesse
’S’ initial:  consignment store (gift from my sister that my cousin painted)
white floating shelf:  Dirt Cheap ($3 for a set of four shelves)
The trophies were a super fun diy (Anthony finally let me paint his prized, childhood trophies!!!!) that I’ll spill more about later.  The clock was a wedding gift that we used for years until it quick working (yes, we tried changing the battery) and so I set it to the time of Sebastian’s birth and hung it up in here.


On his dresser are some of Anthony’s things – the Giants’ jersey figurine, another college trophy, a statue of St. Anthony - and a dracaena I potted in a Dollar Store vase.  I set all of Sebastian’s favorite books up there for quick grabbing – Runaway Bunny, The Little Blue Truck books (love these!), The Giving Tree, The Little Engine That Could, and some noisy books.  Also up there is The Dangerous Book for Boys, a mint condition, yard sale find.  It’s one I’ll probably move somewhere safer so it doesn’t get ruined because I can’t wait to read and use it with Seb when he gets older.  I LOVE this book!  It has lots of stories and activities in it; things like “How to So fun!  It reminds of something the little boys living in Downton Abbey world would read.  And, there’s The Daring Book for Girls that I will most definitely be getting the girls for Christmas!

I’ll be back later this week if all runs smoothly over here, to share how I spray painted Anthony’s trophies!  I love how they turned out!  Spray paint is a modern-day miracle worker, isn’t it?  Have you spray painted anything recently?  Nothing is safe in this house!  ;) 

I hope you have a fantastic Tuesday!

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Cuffergirls

It’s rare that I can begin a project and see it through to the end in one day but this past Tuesday, I did just that.  I’ve had some thigh-high womens’ socks in my “to sew” pile for a year now and finally got around to refashioning them into……boot cuffs for the littlebig girls.
(PS, grandma got the girls these boots I was all heart-eyed over and they are just as cute and deserving of that emoji in person.  So, in case you’re in the market for some toddler booties, I highly recommend these!  They’re linked towards the end of the post!)

It took me about ten minutes total to grab the socks,

cut each shaft into two equal lengths (which, by the way, leaves mama with a pair of crew cuts),

and serge the unfinished ends.
Don’t have a serger?  Just sew a zig-zag stitch around the ends.  No sewing machine?  Grab some matching thread and sew a quick whip stitch around the top edge.  Don’t worry about perfection.  Worn, they’re scrunched up anyway so no one will be able to critique your whipping.

When the air down here eventually dips below sweltering during the day (November, here’s looking at you), the girls will actually don them outside for longer than a two-minute photo sesh. 
jeans:  Carter’s clearance last year // similar
sweatshirt tunics:  Carter’s clearance last year // similar or this one would be so cute too
scarves:  diy // similar
boots:  Carter’s or Kohl’s
hats:  one gifted and one a hand-me-down // similar and similar
tire swing (in case you need a swing option that can hold two tots – we paid $30 for it so watch that price):  Amazon
slightly blurry pic:  juggling the camera with a baby on the hip
*some of the links above are affiliate links
 
Someone was not about to be left out of picture-taking…
…and one eager mama was not about to decline because, just look at that face.

Eat him up.

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