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Friday, July 31, 2009

My Bathroom Makeover

My hall bathroom was one of my least favorite spaces in our new house when we moved in a few months ago. It was supposed to be the kids' bathroom, but the bathtub had a shower door on it. Anyone with kids knows that shower doors on bathtubs and kids don't really go well together. It's really difficult to give a couple of toddlers a bath when there's a railing under your arms. It's just painful! So, the first order of business was getting rid of the shower doors. It wasn't really much of a loss, since there was already a shower rod there for a curtain. It just made no sense to have both and the doors were clearly the best choice to get rid of! The next thing I did was paint. Now, I'm by no means the world's best painter, or, as it turns out, even a good one. But at least it's not boring white anymore. Then I installed hooks for towels. The last owners didn't have any towel bars or rings in the bathroom, so that was something we really needed. Towel bars didn't make much sense with our little kids. I want to teach them how to put things away and it's really hard for a four year old to hang a towel on a towel bar, so hooks was our solution. Here's a couple of before and after photos for you. Pardon the children in the before picture. They had discovered I was taking pictures and decided to join in.

Before: Dark (hence the yucky lighting!), boring white, no towel storage and a yucky unexplainable laundry cart (which is what happens when hubby unpacks!)
After: pretty tan, no doors, towel storage galore (there's a towel ring next to the door too, but I didn't want a pic of my non-matching towel and yucky old person medicine cabinet!) and lots of light! Unfortunately, the random soap dispenser on the wall is more obvious, as is the old people hand rail...things to work on still!
Here are the towel hooks I added. Currently there's three since we have three kids, but I have more in case we have more kids. They're also double hooks in case I ever get bathrobes for them. (Dreams, right?)

Hooded Towels

Well, another project that I've done since we moved in was hooded towels for my kids. We love hooded towels over here, but they had outgrown the towels they were given when they were younger (or at least Bubs and Chubs have). It just seems pointless to wrap only the top half of the kid in a towel! Anyway, I took a bath towel and sewed half of a hand towel to the top half, lining up the middles of each. Then you sew the top part of the hand towel to itself. That didn't make much sense. Well, you fold it in half and then sew a seam, creating a hood. It's the easiest way to make a hooded towel! And here's how they turned out.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

Scentsy Giveaway

Can I tell you how much I wished my house smelled warm and inviting when you walked in the door? Oh, how I wish! On the other hand, with three small children and their various spills, it's not likely to happen in the near future. But with Scentsy I might be able to come a little bit closer! Over on Make it and Love it (click on the button to the right to visit the blog...here's a link to the giveaway post.) they're having a giveaway for a $30 gift certificate to Crystal's Scentsy shop! (Check the sidebar for a link to her shop as well!) Head on over and check it out.

Missing Camera!

Okay, I'm a little bummed. I might have to whip out my handy-dandy cell phone (a.k.a. crappy!) camera to take a picture of the nursing cover I made before I give it away as a gift tonight. Oh, well.

I figured this blog needed a picture on it, so here's an older project that my mom and I whipped up. The hubby was out of town on a business trip about this time last year and I decided to revamp the bedroom. So we made this lovely upholstered headboard for it. (BTW, if you're in the northern Utah area, there are a few Home Fabric stores that you ought to check out. Jo-Ann Fabrics wanted $14.99+ a yard for plain black fabric! I got it at Home Fabrics for $3.99 a yard! Wow!) And now that I'm looking at the picture, I'm wishing I had cleaned the lens of my camera before I took the picture. Oh, well. Life goes on! Without further ado...voila!

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

Lots of Projects!

Well, I figured my projects needed a home, as did the random people who were accessing my blog. I also wanted a blog to keep public to blog about random giveaways. So here we are. Hopefully I can get some pictures taken soon of some of the projects I've gotten done. I've done a lot since we moved into our house, so I figured I should make sure I've got most of those projects done and have pictures taken of them. Some of those projects to look forward to are: the bathroom (let's put it this way: I ripped out a shower door...almost completely by myself!), the bedroom (which isn't done yet, but it'll be a while before it gets painted), my daughter's room. Someday maybe we'll paint the kitchen cabinets and finish the laundry room and those will be put on here as well. In the meantime, I've been working on my sewing skills again and trying to do it without my mommy this time! It's amazing! Hopefully I'll find my camera quickly and take some pictures of some of the things I've done (before I give them away as gifts!). I hope that this will serve as a bit of a creative outlet for me, more than just the journaling that I do on our family blog, that I'd rather not have everyone read. Enjoy!