It’s been a busy few days, and I just haven’t found a spare moment to blog. I guess I should be blogging about what all we’ve been doing, but I really need to be cleaning out dresser drawers since we sold our bedroom furniture.

Mmmm-hmmm. Sure did.

I love Craigslist.

My selling it almost brought us to one of these moments …

… but it’s all good, now.

Pregnancy hormones are FUN.

So are almost-three-year-olds.

I need a really really long nap.

ps – we went to the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia this weekend to scope out some stuff for the photowalk. I’ll post more about that later.

So remember how I said that we’re a family that doesn’t flip out over dirt and messes? Well, sometimes, it does bite you in the butt. Like when you have cream-colored chairs in your main eating area.

Side note: what do you call the area that’s NOT a formal dining room but not really a breakfast nook, either?

Anyway, my grandparents passed down this table and chair set to me when I moved into my first apartment … 10 years ago. Wow, I can’t believe that was 10 years ago. And it’s been my & our main eating table for that long.

The area doesn’t look like that anymore, though – there’s a light wood buffet on that wall under the painting, and the coat rack has been moved. And we’re going to replace that ugly brass light one of these days.

It’s a beautiful set (I love light wood), and I’m not going to replace it anytime soon. But the two chairs with off-white fabric were getting pretty yucky from spilled spaghetti and about 472 other different foods that never come out.

So I’ve been wanting to re-upholster them for a while, but it’s always been at the bottom of my “home improvement to-do list” – until I ended up with this fabric from Maine Cottage.

Now, I can’t let this post go by without telling you about the 90% discount I got on this fabric. I bought it at our local Garden Ridge and paid $5.99 for 2 yards. They have tables of 2-3 yard cuts of home dec fabrics for $5.99 – I’m assuming they’re just leftover cuts from furniture manufacturers. Finding anything good is like going to the thrift store, because you have to dig and dig and dig, but I’ve grabbed up a few cuts here and there just to have in my stash.

I was thinking about using this fabric in our bedroom, and I wanted to know if there were any coordinating fabrics from the designer. So, I looked up the designer that was printed on the selvedge and discovered that it was manufactured by Maine Cottage. And cost $50/yard! That’s a very average price for high-quality home dec fabrics, so I was shocked to find that I luckily grabbed it up for $3/yard.

I decided not to use it in our bedroom, because I don’t think polka dots is really the look I’m going for. Then I thought about the fact that the manufacturer uses it to cover furniture. And that’s when I decided to go ahead and use a little bit of it to re-upholster the [insert name of area here] chairs.

I didn’t do anything fancy – I just took off the cushions, covered the existing fabric with the new fabric, stapled it to the bottom of the cushion, and screwed them back onto the chair. Easy peasy!

I LOVE it!! I’m going to throw some lime green accents on the table and make it a fun little eating area. And then when I finally get around to painting our kitchen yellow, the fabric will still match perfectly.

The only thing I regret about this whole experience? Now, I want a lot more Maine Cottage fabric, but I can’t afford it!

There are two things you should know about our house …

1. I’m constantly changing things around. I’ve had my office in about 12 different locations since I moved into this house. I’m currently wishing I could put my desk in front of the window, even though I know that the late afternoon sun shines right in my eyes when I do that. Anyway, I change my mind a lot. I read that people with a lot of disposable income overhaul their interior design every 5 years. That sounds like Heaven to me.

2. We are not shy about dirt. Emma plays outside every day, the dogs practically live outside during the day, Emma jumps on the couch and chairs and bed with her shoes on, she eats snacks on the couch, we eat a lot of our meals in the living room (but we’re working on that), and we’re just generally not overly careful with our messiness. So while I would absolutely LOVE to have a white couch, I know that would never ever ever happen. And also? Our cushions end up on the floor at least once a day for optimal jumping from couch to floor.

All of that to say, I decided today that I wanted different throw pillows for our couch, and due to our nature as a not-going-to-have-President-Obama-sitting-on-our-couch-anytime-soon kind of family, they had to be washable.

But I’m not a fan of washing pillows, because 9 times out of 10, the washer gets imbalanced and slings water all over the laundry room.

Enter removable throw pillow covers!

I sketched something out in my handy dandy moleskine, and the rest was easy!

I just used some pretty green dandelion’ish home dec fabric I bought on sale a long time ago, and it took all of about 15 minutes to make it.

The back is just some white home dec material I bought for a project way back when I overestimated yardage like crazy. I thought it would be cool to do a contrasting stitch on the “hems” but then I remembered … I don’t sew straight! Oh well. At least it’s just for us.

I decided that I needed to use smaller measurements so it can be a more snug fit on the pillow, but other than that, I like how it turned out.

I made another one last night, and if I had more pillow forms, I’d make about 20 more.

Or maybe I’ll just make 20 more and put them in Etsy? Hmmm …

The best part is that I can take the cover off, throw it in the wash, iron it a little (oh, who am I kidding, I don’t iron) and then put it back on.

And then I can change them out every 2.5 months. Weeks. Whatever.

I’m here to say that we are making a lot of progress on the front room / playroom / home office remodel. It is taking fifty forevers due to a week of rain, the DAYS it has taken me to painstakingly paint my HUGE desk (one coat primer, two coats paint), and finding just the right accessories.

So … remember before?

You can see more painting/flooring only pictures here.

This week, we finished the flooring, installed the base molding, bought and hung a new curtain rod and curtains, bought a new floor lamp (since it is a formal sitting room in our house plan, there is no wiring for an overhead light, so we’re dependent on floor lamps), put up some vinyl wall art, and moved Emma’s toys back in.

Okay, imagine the desk top attached to the two trusses – that’s the only thing I have left to paint.

So much has changed already!!

Ken and I are both really loving how it turned out, and I just couldn’t be happier to have absolutely NO carpet downstairs. Our Roomba is in floor heaven.

I still have a lot on my to-do list, though …

* finish painting desktop and move office back in
* get pictures printed & framed to hang
* paint large bookshelf that will go in that back corner on the other side of the desk
* thrift/re-purpose small desk chair
* install crown molding
* install wooden blinds

I’m still not sure what art we’ll put in there. I don’t currently have anything that will go with the whole color scheme, so I’m thinking I’ll just get some pictures of Emma printed and hanged across that back wall. And then perhaps a vinyl mural of some sort behind my desk? I change my mind so many times, I’m afraid to go with permanent fixtures.

Now that I’ve spent all of this time and money in this room, Ken has decided to make himself a man-cave in the garage. Hey, as long as it’s a project that gets the garage cleaned out and organized enough for me to park in there, I’m all over it!

So I haven’t been online much the last few days, because we are finally tackling one of our biggest projects yet!

Office / Playroom

This room has been through many changes. First of all, it’s supposed to be a sitting room. But since we’re not 80 years old or living in the 1800′s, we decided that a sitting room was not really on our list of priorities.

Instead, we have turned it into an office / playroom.

But due to E’s allergies, she had a hard time sitting on the carpet without getting an itchy rash.

So we decided to put down laminate hardwood flooring. By the way, we use laminate flooring pretty much everywhere, because the only true hardwood in our house that’s in the front hall and dining room looks absolutely terrible after only 6 years. Gauges and scratches and tears. I’m sure there’s hardwood out there that can withstand daily use from a toddler and two dogs, but frankly, we can’t afford it. So far, laminate hardwood has really exceeded our expectations.

We’d also love to be more eco-friendly and use bamboo, but I’ve heard it’s really soft, and I can only imagine what it would look like after a few years.

We ended up finding a great deal on some flooring a couple of weeks ago, and that was that. I decided that since we were going to clear out the room to install flooring, I might as well paint the room. This is also the first room you see when you walk into our house, so it needed a little pick-me-up.

And a huge clean-up.

Picked out a color in record time and started painting on Saturday. The great thing was that I didn’t have to worry about spills since we were going to be ripping up the carpet later.

I went with a spring green – it’s actually called “sour lime” – and it’s fantastic! Bright, cheerful, peaceful. I’m really really happy with it.

I finished up the painting on Saturday night and we started working on the floor Sunday afternoon.

Out goes the nasty, stinky carpet — the very last piece of carpet downstairs!! *happy dance*

And in goes the hardwood.

Our little helper was right there the whole time. Right THERE. The WHOLE time. Talking. THE WHOLE TIME.

Can I paint?
[while I was on the ladder] I will climb up and save you!!
Can I paint?
Can I have your tea?
Did you do this? Great job, mommy!
Can I paint?

But we are far from done.

Still need to finish the last few strips of flooring, put down the base molding, put up the crown molding, put down the floor-to-floor transitional molding, paint my desk and bookcase, move everything back in, hang pictures/shelves/etc., hang curtains, and find a decent floor lamp that doesn’t break the bank but doesn’t look like crap.

Phew. I think I need a nap.

If you had to ask me one specific thing about photography or processing, what would it be?

I promise to get back to doing some “how’d you do that?” posts very soon!

I am currently working on moving our entire office/playroom into our dining room so that we can rip up the carpet, paint the room and install our new flooring.

Will also be painting my desk and the remaining bookshelf while we have it out of the room.

Also preparing for a garage sale in 2 weeks.

And that’s the stuff that’s not even on my to-do list!

Got a bug up my heiney about painting *something* but we really didn’t have the extra $$ to buy 2 gallons of paint for my current project (office / playroom) — so I took the leftover paint from Emma’s room and started painting the downstairs bathroom.

Wait, I guess it’s considered a half-bath when it’s just a toilet and sink, right?

Anyway, the before shot is pretty much like every other room in our house — homebuilder’s white, lol.

And after.

Mind you, there is natural light outside the bathroom while inside the bathroom is fluorescent, so it’s hard to get a grasp of the actual color. But it’s the same color as Emma’s room.

here is a better view of the color in natural light:

Aww, look at little just-toddling-around Emma!!

It was a 2-naptime project with just me painting, so it went pretty quickly, in spite of painting behind the toilet and trimming around all of the nooks and crannies. But I think it turned out great.

To finish it up, I’m going to get fluffy white rugs and a new soap dispenser to try to keep it as light as possible.

And we are now out of this paint, so no more rooms will be Olympic Royal Palm. ;)

I freak out about one specific thing on a daily basis …

laundry.

the clean stuff? it’s in piles
and laundry baskets
and stacks on the end of our bed

the dirty stuff? supposed to be in these beautiful laundry hampers on our balcony.
but it’s mostly in piles in our bathroom and laundry room
and the laundry room spills out into the kitchen, so we eat our breakfast, lunch and dinner NEXT TO PILES OF DIRTY LAUNDRY

I would take pictures, but honestly, I’m too lazy to get up and take pictures {which would explain how we get piles of laundry all over our house} but here’s an old picture which explains it quite well.

See? It’s been happening since June 16, 2008, which is when that picture was taken. Hasn’t changed at all since then. And frankly, it was probably like that on June 16th of every year since I moved out of my parent’s house.

Okay, it was like that when I was still living with my parents, too — mom would have to come into my room, put everything that was laying on the floor into big garbage bags, and put them in daddy’s shop before I would do anything about it.

So I could probably blame it on her. Say that I was so emotionally damaged from having my stuff practically thrown away that I don’t even know how to keep up with it, now. Yeah. Let’s go with that.

I mean, it is NOT that I am just lazy and hate doing laundry. No, that’s not it. See? I don’t need therapy – I can figure this stuff out on my own!

Anyway, I freak out daily about the fact that me and laundry? We are never ever EVER going to come to an agreement. I should just accept that and move on.

I keep telling myself, “One of these days, you’re going to catch up with your laundry. You’ll get it all washed, dried, folded and put away. And then it’ll be EASY to keep up with it. Then, you can do one load a day, fold it while you’re watching Oprah, and put it away during commercials. One day.”

But that day has not come. And even if it DID come, I’d probably end up forgetting the last load that was in the washer, leave it in there until it got stinky, re-wash the clothes, put them in the dryer, throw them into the oversized chair, and leave them until we had 7 more loads of dirty laundry piled up in various rooms around the house.

OR! I can get up right now, make 3 big piles – lights, darks, towels – and then start doing laundry. I could have all three loads finished today!!! I could put them all away tonight after Emma goes to bed, and tomorrow would be THE DAY THAT I DON’T HAVE TO DO LAUNDRY!

Or I could just keep reading blogs and drinking coffee and enjoy the peace and quiet that comes with Emma in preschool, Ken working upstairs, and clothes rotting away in piles all around our house.

Ahhhh … blessed silence ….

ps: Mom, please don’t show up with garbage bags. I really will do it soon!!

I am sure this idea is not original, but it’s something that I recently started doing with Emma’s toys, and it is working WELL for us!

I don’t feel like E has a TON of toys, but she prefers smaller toys, which are messier. I’m really trying to get a hold on clutter around here, so I decided to do the box system with her playroom toys.

I bought some clear boxes w/ lids at Dollar General for $1/each, and I have different toys in each box.

I waffled about labeling them, because I’m sure the contents will change over time – plus, they’re clear, so I can see what’s inside. For now, I think I’ll just leave them label-free.

So the rule is … one box at a time. She can make a huge mess with one box, but if she wants a different box, she has to clean up the first one.

She’s not into stuffed animals, and they’re easy to pick up, so they live in the blue and green canvas boxes. The remaining cubes in the shelving unit hold puzzles (we only keep 2 at a time in her playroom), coloring books, and reading books.

She also has a set of wooden blocks and a set of foam blocks that stay in the downstairs closet, which I cleaned out and re-organized a couple of weeks ago.

I am currently in the process of cleaning out the rest of her toys. I have a few boxes packed up for future baby, but there is some that she doesn’t like that I don’t care to keep.

Side note: she’s currently walking around with one of her baby dolls, patting baby’s back, and saying, “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay.” Awww.

I am also working to get this office / playroom cleaned out so that I can paint it. And possibly get hardwood put down if we can scrape up a little extra moolah. But that’s another post for another day.

I need to go tend to these piles of paperwork, now …