Remodeling This Life

Melissa over at The Inspired Room has asked people to share their creative concelments. Since I am not at home, but at the cottage where there aren’t nearly as many flaws to cover up, I wasn’t sure what to share. Then I realized that the play area for the kids under the stairs is a creative concelment.

I didn’t even bother to tidy up before taking photos. That’s the point of the concealing, right? We get to just shut the curtains on the mess.

When the cottage was renovated a few years ago, this hardwood staircase was built. Underneath was just an open space that we considered putting a desk and chair for computing and such, but then realized it was a great place for the kids play stuff.

With the help of a couple tension rods and some homemade curtains out of fabric from IKEA, we were able to make the play area whimsical and fun while being able to hide the mess when necessary. And my daughter and son can go in there and play quietly if they want to. Everybody wins!

I have been on a memo, list-making, organizing rampage as of late. Too many last minute phone calls to doctors to check what time my appointment is and too many photos found strewn around the house that need to be hung.

I headed to target and picked up a 4 pack of cork board squares and used some fabric I had around the house and some upholstery tacks.

It also helps, but is not required, that you have a cute helper with a bossy pointer finger

Don’t forget, I am really lazy, not very crafty, but I like things to look pretty. I simply cut the fabric and wrapped the cork board with it and then attached the fabric with the tacks.

I made a couple of them - one for memos and notes in the kitchen and one for photos of the kiddos to hang in my bedroom. It seemed like a fun, decorative way to display things around here and it cost me $5!

I got a little crazy with the upholstery tacks and hammer yesterday. I was at Goodwill over the weekend and hit the jackpot. I walked out with a huge piece of beautiful fabric, a Seven for all Mankind Jeans skirt, a pair of Diesel Jeans shorts, new Stride Rite shoes for Monkey and a couple dresses (for me and her). Spent $29 and was so excited. I loved the fabric but wasn’t sure how far it would go and what I would do with it. I had in mind doing all the windows with mistreated valances in the dining room. Well, there wasn’t enough for all 3 windows for the standard length of a valance, but you know what? I am an unconventional girl and I don’t care if my valances aren’t the “proper” length. I dare anyone that comes visit me to take out a measuring tape and call me on it. Other than any of you. Please don’t. I might cry.

If I hadn’t been totally lazy and actually decided to *gasp* sew the valances, they would’ve been proper. But I am lazy and I am not at all a perfectionist so I grabbed my scissors, my hammer, my upholstery tacks and I got to mistreating. There was no tape, thread, hot glue involved. Just some folding, some tacks and a hammer.

Here is the fabric

And here is my hammer wielding helper

I paid $3 for the fabric and 97 cents for the tacks. And here is the end result

Then I decided while I was going crazy with the hammer and the kids were occupied smearing peanut butter all over the table, I would do something with my windows over my sink. I remembered that The Nester posted recently an idea to use napkins folded as triangles. So I tried that. I didn’t even iron them. I don’t iron. I don’t sew if I can help it. Can you believe I am a housewife?!

So I tacked those napkins up there and voila! 50 cent window treatments. I got the napkins at a yardsale and have an apron to match. Actually, I only used 4 napkins and I bought 6 of them plus the apron for 50 cents so if you carry the 2 and do a little long division you can figure out just how little these cost me. They’re not perfect, but oh, neither am I. We’ll get along quite fabulously, my window mistreatments and I.

The lovely and talented Angela over at Cottage Magpie is doing another color challenge and this time it’s for Color Yellow. Always one to enjoy playing along on these challenges, and hopeful that someday I may actually win one of her giveaways of fabulous finds around her home, I am going to share some yellow from my home. I tried to talk hubby into painting the house yellow this week just for the challenge, but he was kind of busy and didn’t get around to it. Shucks.

We do have some yellow walls inside our house though. My living room is Afternoon by Sherwin-Williams.

This is at my entryway

Hubby picked up that shelf for me last week and brought it home to surprise me. He knows how I love beadboard and red and it made me very giddy - even moreso because it was free!!

Here it is upclose with some yellowy stuff on it

My kitchen and dining room are also yellow - they’re actually Afternoon with a bunch of white mixed in. I really dislike the color but have been too lazy and indecisive to paint it over again.

A peek into the other side of the living room from the dining room.

In my living room, I have a few other yellow accessories.

My mom brought me two pillow covers home from her last trip to the south of France. They go so perfectly fabulously with my green couch and striped chair and are all cheerful.

Speaking of France, I also have another little section in my living room that is a little reminder of our France honeymoon.

That’s a photo of me standing on our balcony at the hotel we stayed at in Paris and a little Paris bucket that I got at Marshall’s LOL. You can’t see inside it, but it’s full of little kid toys. It’s my chic quick pick-up storage bin for tossing stuff in when we have visitors to keep them from tripping over megablocks. Aren’t I fabulously thoughtful?

Okay, one more and then I’ll be done. My 3 year old daughter and I painted terracotta planter pots a couple weeks ago for a fun project. Then planted marigolds in them.

As you can see, neither of us have artistic genes. They’re not pretty, but they were made with love In the pot on the right, my daughter is attempting to grow zinnias. Lots of them. We’ll see how that works out.

We had leftover marigolds and no more paint so we then planted the rest in plain pots.

Okay, that’s it. All the yellow I have for today. Don’t you feel all mellow and relaxed after seeing that all lovely and fabulous yellow?

If you want to join in, do your own yellow post and link back to Angela and tell her your post is up. The deadline is Sunday, she’ll be rounding them all up and doing her giveaway!

This is a guest post from Paid Twice at I’ve Paid For This Twice Already, where she shares her family’s journey out of debt and toward financial freedom by living frugally and embracing snowflaking. She’s been kind enough to offer some material while I’m out of commission for a couple of days. If you haven’t been to her site yet, please pop on over and visit her and consider subscribing to her RSS feed.

For Christmas, I received a beautiful handmade quilt that my mother-in-law purchased at a craft fair that goes perfectly with our playroom. It is yellow, blue, and green, with rust accents (the walls of our playroom are cornsilk yellow) and the cute cartoonish animals blend right in with the atmosphere we are trying to foster in that room. I immediately turned to my spouse and exclaimed “This will be perfect in the playroom!” and he agreed.

He thought I meant on the floor in the reading nook as a blanket. I meant on the wall.

To most of you, putting a quilt on a wall is not a foreign or crazy concept. But to my spouse, it was the weirdest thing I could have ever suggested. When we got home, I showed him the place on the wall I was going to hang the quilt, and he looked at me like I was crazy. “A quilt on a wall? Are you sure?”. But I was sure, and assured him it would be great. He didn’t look so convinced.

So what else was I to do but wait until he wasn’t around to protest, and hang the quilt on the wall myself. I’m no genius at decorating or home improvement, as indicated by my track record, so this isn’t about how to hang a quilt on a wall. I didn’t do it in the proper method - I simply used four small nails and tacked it onto the wall by its corners. (Try and suppress your groans and sighs of disbelief here ). But hang it I did.

When my spouse got home, it took him a moment to notice the change (I had to rearrange several other wall-hangings to put the quilt where I wanted it in the room) but once he did, he agreed that hanging the quilt on the wall was a good idea, and didn’t look anywhere near as weird as he thought it would. In fact, it didn’t look weird at all, it looked good and like it belonged there.

So the moral to my story is, if you have a decorating desire that your spouse isn’t quite on board with but you know will look fabulous - just wait until he or she isn’t home. They’ll thank you for it later, and hey, they didn’t have to do any of the work, so how much complaining can they really do?