A Lighter & Brighter Laundry Room

Hi friend!  I kind of took an unintentional blogging break (but intentional social media break so I guess it just kind of follows?) over the holidays and so now here we are toe-deep into 2019!  To backtrack, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to you!  We stayed home this year (our usual has been to travel to family every year) and we just had a grand old time.  It was care-free, so very peaceful, and so good for us in preparing for the celebration of Jesus’ birth.  How was yours?  Did you travel?  It’s always a brave undertaking to travel during Christmas, right?  We did get a few things around the house done too – we painted our master bedroom and bathroom!  I’ll have more updates on them later but things are looking so much better!!

Today, I’m just going to jump right back into it and show youl what’s changed in our laundry room. 

Here’s what it looked like right before we moved in:

I took this picture in the afternoon, when the lighting is the darkest in here but even so, this room is bright for the first part of the morning and darker throughout the rest of the day.  We brought our own washer and dryer with us and the two that were left were pretty old and dirty so it was nice to get ours up and running again (our previous, temporary rental had a washer and dryer so we stored our beloved Frigidaires in the garage for that six months and I missed them dearly). 

Over-Dyed Rug–DIY

Happy belated Thanksgiving!!  I hope yours was a fun-filled, family/friend-filled, edible occasion!  We drove to my sister’s house in Florida and, while our time spent there was a blast, that seven-hour drive is always so F U N with kids.  ;)  But, I guess it’s like anything – pregnancy and labor, the job interview process, research papers, school in general – you have to waddle and labor, hop around the interview train, read, read, read, and study, study, study to get that baby/job/A+/graduate.  You feel me, right?  LIfe can’t be easy or we’d all be bored out of our minds.  So goes road trips.  The miles might be hard but getting to that destination is super sweet.

And, I don’t mind if I do swing it around but, painting a rug might carry the same sentiment.  Let me explain.  I told you I painted the rug in the kids’ room, right?  Well the process wasn’t necessarily a party but the result IS.

When my sister and her fam moved into their current house, the owners’ left behind this rug:
They had it under their dining room table and so it wasn’t the cleanest of all the rugs in the land.  Well, my sister didn’t want it but I thought maybe it had some dyeing/painting potential so after a visit last year, we wrapped it in plastic and hauled it home, roof-top style, all those seven hours.

It got stuck up in the attic until further notice and then we moved, twice, and to this current house it came, still wrapped in that same plastic.  We made progress though – we unwrapped it, laid it outside to shampoo the heck out of it, and then laid it in the kids’ room.  As is.  Not pretty.  But, it is super heavy (which made washing it a feat of CrossFit-sized proportions) and thick and I loved the idea of having a fun round rug in their room…emphasis on idea.

The One Room Challenge lit a flame under my rear to finally get it colored something else and well, if you’ve seen the reveal, you already know what color it turned out to be, but in case you need a reminder:

I’ve never turned a rug a whole different color before so I wasn’t positive how this was going to turn out – success or fail – but it looks exactly as I envisioned with that big ‘ole punch of color.

Here’s everything you need to know about how I painted our rug and how you can too.  You know how I do.  ;)

Gender-Neutral Kids’ Room Reveal!!!

The kids’ room is FINALLY done!  I won’t get into why I’m late again because maybe you already know but hey!  The kids’ room is a real kids’ room now – not a small brown box of a space.  It’s happy and fun and so, so cute.  And I can’t wait to show you but first, let’s trot down recollection ave because you can’t really appreciate where it is now without seeing where it was.  :)

When we moved into this house, we tried something new – we moved all four kids into one room together.  It’s by no means a big room (maybe 11’ x 11’) but, with them all in one room, all of their toys could then be tossed into the other spare bedroom in the house and get labeled “playroom”.  So, squeezing beds and a couple of dressers in wasn’t a big deal in a small room since toys didn’t have to fight for the space too.  Bunk beds were a crucial component but I’ll get to those later.

Here’s what their room looked like before we moved in:It was dark and ultra brown, just like every other room in the house.  This room doesn’t get a ton of light, especially in summer with the higher sun plus a tree stands almost right in front of the window and blocks a lot of light.  It’s great for sleeping though.  #halffull

After we moved in, those darker curtains went and the kids slept on an air mattress until we could build them some bunk beds (you can read more about those plans here).  A month in, we still hadn’t built those beds (le sigh for a busy life) but we were given a set from some good friends.  With that set plus a toddler mattress slipped underneath as a trundle for Sebastian and Gianna’s crib in the corner, the kids slept soundly for months.  Or did they?  Welllllll…kind of.  The thing about that bunk we were given was that it was big and awesome but there was only one side rail up top and it was low and the girls were afraid to even go up much less sleep up there lest they roll over and out.  So they shared the bottom twin.  Sound sleeping?  Questionable. 

(In the above pic, we had taken the rail off the top and not added the ladder so the adventerous two-year old didn’t go on a climbing spree as she’s highly apt to do.)

But then we got the deal of a lifetime (slight exaggeration…but only slight) on a new pair of bunks and finally, everybody had a bed.

That fact was fantastic, fine and dandy except our kids were still sleeping in a boring room and it didn’t have to be that way.  I wanted them to have a space that felt fun and that they loved retreating to.

So…

Tiny, Tiny Home

Hey friend!  So, uh, yeah.  I know.  I’m supposed to be revealing the kids’ room.  That’s what you should be reading right now.  But you’re not.  I gave a short explanation over on Instagram the other day but if you missed that, basically, I ordered something for their room a month ago, got an email it was shipped from Virginia (or at least that a shipping label had been created) on October 30th, and that still have not yet received it.  I know I could just go ahead and share the final result but that thing is going to be a part of a big piece of design in the room and I just can’t show the room without it.  Sorry!  Hopefully when I get the reveal up and can explain a little further, you’ll understand.  I’ve since ordered from another company (and just got a shipping notification yesterday!) after contacting the first company multiple times without a response.  SO, the silver lining in this little mess is that the new thing will be here by mid-week and a reveal will be up on the blog by week’s end.  Huzzah!  Look for it!

I know I missed the deadline for the big One Room Challenge reveal but I’m not too sad about it.  I wasn’t in it for recognition or blog fame so there’s nothing lost in the delay and only a cute kids room gained in a six-week motivational scoot to a finish line.

Enough about that though, how about this little house?!

I had been very casually hunting for a dollhouse for the girls for the past year or so and, while the four kids and I were traipsing through a local thrift store here at the end of the summer, our eyes beheld this little house and it’s fine $15 price tag.  It was in great condition besides being a little dusty and VERY heavy.  Phew!   

Oh, and a little too frilly.  I realize that someone once painted this sweet little thing for some little person they loved and you can tell that A LOT of love and elbow grease went into it.  But, all of that love came in the form of lots of scrolls and sponge paint and that’s just not my language.  So, I changed things up a little.

Spotted

I know you’re expecting an update on the kids’ room but…

uhhh…

I don’t have one.

I mean, I do but it’s their “new” rug and I kind of wanted to save that until the reveal week.  I painted their old rug and I want there to be some element of surprise in the final week and the color of that rug is going to be it.  :)  I was planning on sharing how I spiced up their ceiling fan this week but I ordered some stuff for it (three weeks ago) and those things still have not yet come.  My impatience is only slightly killing me. 

So, I’m going to skip over the kids’ room for week five of the One Room Challenge (but you can still click the link and check out everyone else’s rooms!) and show you what I found secondhand this week.  It’s another post in the “Spotted” series but this one involves a few different places vs. one store.

Gianna was in an especially cranky mood during this run so I didn’t catch prices because it was more of a see, shoot, and run type of thing but they’re all thrift store prices, which are usually fairly good down here…sometimes a little higher than other thrift stores I’ve been to in other places but still, much, much less than buying new and even consignment.  The point is to show you what you can find if you only go into a thrift store with an eye of potential.  ;)

First up, a local Goodwill. 

It’s no wonder this shower curtain caught my eye (I heart striped shower curtains v much):