Five Favorites

Workout edition…

Which is comical since this mom is NO workout guru…not even close.  For the first year of my kids’ lives while I’m breastfeeding, any semi-intense cardio makes my milk supply drop like it’s hot so I get my arms toned by lifting babies and my legs toned by walking to the toilet after I hear “ALLL DONE MAMA!!” a thousand times.  My grandma gave me a step-counter and it’s still buried in my nightstand which is still full of stuff I put in there to move BUT before we moved, I wore it during a few average, stay-at-home mornings and no joke, I was up to 3600 steps by noon…in my own, small house.  Who needs a gym?  ;)

Anyway, I thought it’d be fun to write about something other than our mini-kitchen reno that’s going on at the moment so why not a Five Faves post?  It’s been awhile and I’m due to share some stuff I’ve come across that I genuinely like.

So…

DIY Pot Rack from Towel Bars

You say pot, I say rack…

pot…

pot…

YES!  That’s it!  Let’s get excited over here!  We are the proud owners of a neeeewwww pot rack!

Having a pot rack hanging on our kitchen wall wasn’t something either of us has ever desired.  But then enter small kitchen, very little lower cabinet space and oh, looky here, a big empty wall.

One Room Challenge–Week 3

Hey hey!  It’s week T H R E E of the
and over here, things are looking UP!!  No really, they are.  I got all of the upper cabinets painted this week and, oh my, it is CRAZY how much more light bounces through what I already thought was a fairly bright kitchen!

Check this out:

And then take a look at the same area pre-move:
The Almighty said it best with “Let there be light!”  Have you ever gone white in the kitchen (or any room really) and experienced the added light?  It’s great, right? 

I’ve written a few posts on how I paint cabinets in the past and time around the paint can wasn’t much different in the way of technique but I did use a new-to-us paint than I have in the past and got a little smarter as far as set-up goes.

One Room Challenge!!!

You’ll never know how excited I was when I found out that the One Room Challenge just started on April 4th!  If you don’t know what that is, check it out here.  Basically, you take on a room (entirely redo, refresh, remodel, whatever have ya) and you get six weeks to do it.  I’ve always seen it come up on Instagram and other blogs but I’ve been always the spectator and never the participant.  Not this year though!  I’ll be linking up and following along with other guest participants here! 

I’ve got until May 10th to take our kitchen from old to gold-winning and ironically, I started ripping down the wallpaper in our kitchen a week before I found out the challenge was happening so I’m right on time.  But *gulp* I’ll need every single one of those six weeks since I’m on a serious budget and I don’t have the luxury to just go out and buy what I need.  I’ve got to find it secondhand, on clearance, or on mega-sale…you know how I do.  Oh yeah, and I have four little kids running around. 

You might be wondering why I’m tackling a kitchen in a rental house.  Why waste time, energy, and money on something you’ll be leaving in a year or two?  Valid question.  Answer?  Because I love doing this stuff.  As a stay-at-home mom, daily life can get a little monotonous.  It’s a beautiful life and I’d have none other, but getting out my paint brush and planning decor is the equivalent to going out and getting my hair or nails done for me.  It’s self-care – getting to expand my diaper-changing and feeding horizons to project beauty onto the space that I’m changing diapers and feeding in.  I think it’s important to love the space you’re living in too so spending a little bit of money to make that happen here is well worth it, in my opinion. 

With that, here are the plans for the kitchen:
-take down the wallpaper
-paint the walls
-paint the cabinets and replace the hardware
-make a pendant to replace the light over the sink
-redo the fan shade
-repaint the rug (maybe?)
-hang a pot rack
-hang a spice rack over the stove
-install some sort of backsplash

The budget:  $150
Total spent so far:  $18

Here’s the a picture of the kitchen I ran in and took one day before we moved in: Too bad I didn’t think to actually step farther into the kitchen to get a picture.

Ikea Mackapar Hack

I’m baaaaack!!  But still not unpacked.  Ack.  It’s ok though because we’ve done a hack and hung a rack.  So hopefully you’ll give me a little slack. 

Ok, ok, I’ll stop before you feel like you wanna whack me.  ;)  The girls and I have been doing rhyming in homeschool…

Ahem…

We have a situation.  Our back door is our most used door and therefore, where we keep all of our most-used shoes…haphazardly (usually) set on this little shelf (previously a bookshelf in Sebastian’s old room).

It looked a mess because it was kind of a mess.  Our closets are small and lack space for lots of shoes plus I like the idea of shoes being near a door for easy access so this was our situation.  I feel like entry ways should always be clean and uncluttered since they’re the first things you walk into when you come home.  They could make or break a mood, ya know?  When ours is cluttered and messy, it really makes me happy to be home.  So inviting.  Like, welcome home to your peaceful abode…ooh!  Watch out for that little shoe!  *trip and an ankle twist*  Ok, so maybe I’m being a little too dramatic but really, first impressions do count, right?  That can somehow apply here.

Anyway, the wall next to the door was begging to be a functional one so we had to come up with something.