Master Bedroom Before

One this that I really have a desire for is an Adult bedroom. A room that I walk into and sigh with contentment. No toys on the floor, no moving stuff around on my nightstand so that I can set down a glass. I would really like everything to match. I have never lived in a house with any sort of matching furniture. Seriously.
SO today, I am going to show you what it looks like now, what I don't like about it and what my dreams are for it.

This is the view from the door. I actually just moved my bed here because I wanted it to be the centerpiece of the room. Before it was on the opposite wall and when you walked in you saw the piles of garage sales stuff. As you can see, the night stands are nothing alike. Franks is that little tiny plant table with an alarm clock and the charger for his FD pager. Mine is a $5 garage sale TV table. It has all sorts of stuff on it as I read in bed, paint my nails here, take out my contacts, make lists and so on. Now I know that you are all super envious of my stylin' comforter. Looks like it belongs in a hotel you say. Why that would be correct. Before the kids were born, I managed a hotel and this comforter was "ruined" by a guest. Ruined meaning several cigarette burns. So it was either going to the mission or an employee could take it. And since Frank and I were using a queen comforter on a king bed, I brought it home. Been on the bed for several years, for a while there was a un-declawed cat that slept on it and then there was a dog. Neither were very nice. To say that it needs to be replaced is a major understatement.

If you turn to your left, there is my dresser. We got it and the matching low one when my parents bought some farm land with a house on it. The woman who owned the house had been moved to a nursing home and her kids sold the house with most of the furniture included. The matching low one is in G's room and it will make it's way in here. I am thinking that they should be chippy distressed white.
Beside the dresser you see the mirrored closet doors that I CANNOT KEEP CLEAN!!!! There are smudges everywhere. All the bedrooms have these closet doors. Mine should be replace with these. Which may or may not need to be chipped up and distressed. The other wall is pretty much blank except for a wobbly dresser holding the TV and the aforementioned garage sale piles.
I am thinking that I want this room almost all white. I want white bedding, a white duvet (which I will make) White flowing curtains (that I will make), a bed skirt either a burlap or white flowing in either box pleats or ruffles (I will make this too). I want this style of lamp for each side of the bed.
Matching white chippy nightstands that suit both Frank & I. A farmhouse bed like this From KnockOffWood.com (I can also make this bed.)

Seriously, I don't think that it is too much to ask. Do you??

Fathers Day gift for my Daddy.

My Dad is vet of the Vietnam conflict. He runs and owns a 3 generation Dairy farm with his brother and nephew. To say that my dad is a proud American would be like saying that the surface of the sun is slight warm. But he is a very hard man to by gifts for. His fav gifts are a large container of cashews and several cans of smoked oysters. LOL
I saw this project in one of the Link partied that I peruse. And I loved it. I definitely wanted to make on for my home. We are atop a hill and get enough wind that a fabric Flag would be shredded quickly. But then I was also looking for a meaningful gift for my Dad. So that is what this turned into. Frank receives lots of orders of things on pallets so I knew that I could get a couple dropped off at the house.
To say that the pallets were not nearly as pretty as the one used by Sweet Something Designs is a major understatement. The ones I received had been used and reused for years. You could see the nail hole where wood had been taken from old pallets and reused to make this one. I was doubtful about it in the beginning but it turned out all the better.
First I took all the cross beams off of the pallet. I laid them all side by side and re-arranged them so that they complimented each other. I then turned them all up side down. I happened to have enough scraps from another project to make 3 braces across the back. If I hadn't, I would have just taken more wood from the pallet and sawed it to length. I applied wood glue and then nailed the braces on from behind just to hold things together while the glue dried. I actually started out with all the edges even but, I was getting hot and tired and the kids wanted dinner and nailing into a through 2 pieces of wood that have a good amount of glue between them was quite the job. So as you can see, the wood was all cattywampus.

The next morning I removed the nailed that I had put in from the back. I purposefully used nails that were way too long so that they would be easy to remove. Then I flipped it up to the right side. I then nailed each piece into the braces from the front. I used 1.5 inch nails with no heads. I nailed each piece 6 times. 2 per brace. Because the wood was warped, the glue didn't make good contact with each board and wasn't going to be enough to keep it secure.
Then I taped it off for the stripes. I measured the height and divided that by 13 to get the width of each stripe. Then I Googled "American Flag Measurements" I found a site that said the Star panel was .4 of the whole width. I wanted to make sure that it looked proportional.

I didn't have the deep red color that I wanted so I mixed some. I Googled "Mixing Frosting Colors" Weird I know. But I knew that there was a mixing guide to get almost any color in existence that had been put out by Wilton. I found it and it said to mix bright red with purple. I just want to add here that, as with frosting, it is better to mix more than you think you will need, because you will NEVER EVER be able to mix the exact same color again.
(just cause it is pretty)
Got it painted.



I was going to go over it lightly with a palm sander but honestly, the wood had so much character, there was nothing I could add by sanding it.
I mixed some burnt umber acrylic paint with water and put it on with a sponge brush then wiped it off doing small sections at a time and wiping with the grain of the wood. I let the kids help with this part of the painting because t
here was little that could be messed up.



The Finish just brings out all the character and texture in the wood, and that makes the whole thing in my opinion.

I loved it so much when it was done and the only reason I was able to give it away was the fact that I knew that Daddy would love it as much as I do. And he did.

What I did today... By Jess

So today, I was prepared to have the kids inside all day and to not be able to spray paint anything. We were supposed to have almost 90* temps and thunderstorms. However, today was nothing short of perfect.
I was sitting with my coffee sharing my mp3 with this beauty.

I can see the woman will grow into sometimes. And I can see the baby she was.
Frank got home and this ensued.

I saw a blog post somewhere about using spray bottles instead of water guns. My kids (Frank included) love water guns but they are expensive and tend to break quickly. And they are a pain to fill and don't hold much. So the other day at Dollar Tree I snagged 3 spray bottles. I could kiss whoever blogged about it. LOL

Gianna was right in there, not afraid of anything.

But Dominic took the safe route.

Then they moved onto this. and this
Frank just took off the training wheels the other day and Dom is riding like a pro. I have felt bad that we haven't gotten him riding on his own yet, but at the last house there was really no place to ride. The stroller was the one that we got when I was pregnant with Dominic. It has been used and abused and she loves it. She still loves to be pushed in it and loves to push her dolls and bears in it.

So we did the above, and there has been lots of cleaning, sunburning (yours truly), car washing, trampoline jumping, sidewalk chalk drawing, ice cream sandwich eating and generally loving the God given Goodness.

Hello Again

Forgive Followers for I have sinned. It has been 48 days since my last post. I have no excuse really, just kinda lost my blogging mojo. But I have about 8 projects swirling in my brain and cluttering up my craft area kitchen table. So I have decided that I am going to be blogging again. Not everyday, but often I think.
I don't have any great pics for you today but I do have an idea. That I totally stole from someone else. I am taking a new med that I have to take twice daily with food. And I can't take it as late as dinner time because it will keep me up. SO that means that I have to eat breakfast and lunch. And normally I don't eat until about 4 pm. I don't like buying cereal because if it is anything that the kids like, it is the only thing that they will eat until it is gone. I was making my own granola which is SOO good but incredibly caloric. So I have been making oatmeal. Which I often forget about on the stove and burn. But then I saw a recipe on 'Zaar for making oatmeal in a rice cooker, which I already have on the counter because I eat a ton of Jasmine Rice ** Just a note here. if you only eat generic white rice, you are missing out. Jasmine rice is a totally new level of rice. Crazy good.** But you can cook oatmeal in it too. Dump in 1 part oatmeal to 2 parts water and push the go button. Walk away for about 25 min and you have perfect oatmeal. Yummy.
So I should go do something so that I have something to show ya'll. Currently I am working on the following.
*magnetic chore charts for the kids
*Patriotic door wreath
*Flag banner for Fathers Day gift
*Family Rules Board
*Summer Dresses for Gia
And I really would like them all done for the family party that we are hosting on Sunday.
Oh and I need to clean the house up for said party. I also need to make homemade ice cream, a large salad, and deep dish apple pie.
~~Jess~~