Lamp Shade revamp

Sorry for the long pause! Between having an allergic reaction to medication that sent me to the ER (and a week recovery) and then having a 33 hour power outage and now I am battling a little head cold, I really haven't wanted to do much of anything. Today I hit my wall. I felt like if I didn't do something for me or creative I might pull some hair out. It took me a while to figure something I could do laying on the couch and not much work. In my last post I showed the lamp that I painted. I really liked it but I thought the lamp shade was too white. Tonight, while Jake listened to the BYU game (go cougars!) I did this!






I stitched a little flower design. I just got a sharp pencil and sketched the design I wanted and then I pulled out my cross stitching stuff, found some buttons and six hours later I had this beauty. I am really in love with it! What do you think?

DIY!

My sister Charlotte has gotten me into doing DIY (Do it yourself) projects. Reuse and re purpose. I am a bit addicted to it. I think it all started when she came out and re did my craft room. We hit the thrift stores and tried to use up what we had around the house. I now love going to thrift stores and seeing the potential in things. Here is my first real project. I was simple but so satisfing! I saw this lamp. It was for three dollars. I really liked the shape of thel lamp and that was about it. I slapped on some black paint and got a new lamp shade (the lamp shade was on clearance too!) and now I have an new lamp!


Before:


After!
I am thinking about the lamp shade. It is so plane. I think I might embroder some little design around the top and bottom edge. What do you think?

Bedroom Revamp!

Along with moving comes redecorating! I picked Phoebe's! I loved doing it. I am exhausted but it was so much fun! Here are some the photos. We are still waiting for her bed to arrive, so her room still looks a little off, but I love how everything else worked out.
This is her window and kitchen. I love those butterflies on her curtains!
This has been a long work in progress. I cut the princesses out months ago with my Cricut. I knew I wanted to hang them up, I just didn't know how. Moving to this house gave me a clean slate. The pink frame around the five princesses is actually the frame off of a cheep dorm mirror. I took the mirror apart, hung the glass in my room with different hardware and painted the white frame pink. It fit five of the six princesses perfectly! I will so happy to be able to reuse something. Belle is Phoebe's favorite princess so I found a frame at a thrift store for three dollars and painted it purple. I think it will look great framed above her bed.( When it actually arrives!) The small pink frames we already had, they were a natural wood, so I just slapped some paint on them too.
Up close of the Belle frame
Up close of the other five.
I am pretty stoked how this turned out. When my sister came out a few months ago and we decorated my craft room we had a couple of shelves left over. I painted them the same bubble gum pink and bought some L brackets at the hardware store of under a buck each. I painted them purple to help tie in the colors. Phoebe is starting to get quite a collection of American Girl Doll books and items. The three drawer dresser is full of her American Girl doll items. The doll case on the floor I made for her. It was fun, long and hard, but it is so cute. (That will be another post) Back to the shelves. Phoebe didn't like that her brother ( can you guess? Yep, Warren) could get to her books, so the bottom shelf is high enough that she can easily reach them. The top shelf holds her tea set. I got this set at a thrift store for fifteen dollars. She loves it and I think it looks so great on the shelf. So that was my day, painting, and hanging and reliving my childhood! I hope you enjoy it. Now this weekend I get to work on the boys room. I am cooking up so ideas! Photos to come later.

MOLD

As many of you might have heard, we have moved. We are still in the same area, just a different house. Why have moved? Mold. Lovely, mold. And a lot of it I might add. After three years of complaining about a water damaged wall, they finally came and took care of it. Well as they started ripping, they kept ripping and kept ripping until they had uncovered a 12 section of rotting wall and mold! I was so ticked! They ripped it out with the kids and I in the house and we immediately started getting a burning sore throat. We contacted the housing people and they had the nerve to tell me that it was fine to live in. Ha! Over my dead body. Jake's boss was so mad when he saw what condition of the house. It is nice to have someone on our side! The next day we had keys to a different house. It is the exact same layout as our old one. It made the move a lot easier. We have been blessed to have so many great friends come over and help up move. We had it done in three days. Not bad! Now we just have to finish unpacking everything here! Enjoy the photos!

This is where they started. And they kept going...

After they pulled in moldy insulation out they found that the outside wall was soft. So soft in some areas you could push your finger straight through the wall.


More yucky wall


That is me, being brave. I wiped my hand on a small area and pulled of mold.
It was the entire stinkin wall! 12 feet total. It was on the bottom of the carpet and the two by fours were rotting away!
The smell was horrible! I had a had time breathing

This part is my favorite. These boards were so rotted out that you could use your finger nail and pull hunks of them out. Even I could tell that this was a HUGE project to tackle and I was not planning on living in the house while they did it. That is when I called Jake home from work.


What makes it even better is that they said that sealing it in with a spray paint was going to fix it. Ha! How stupid do I look? They honestly thought that we would want to keep living in that house. Not on your life, buddy! So once we talked to all the right people they said they would hold off on any fixing of the house till we had moved out and then a great job duct taping plastic over the wall. It was such a high quality job that it fell down every day, until they just stopped coming over to tape it back up. Nothing like breathing in all that crap!

Now we are in our new house. All major items are put in the right place. We still have my craft room to do and to hang shelves and photos. Give me a week and I think I will have it together. My goal is to have it done before Jake leaves on a business trip in a couple of weeks. That way I can just play in the evening, once the kids go to bed. We'll see how that really goes!

If you would like our new address, please email me at sariahenglish@gmail.co and I will send it your way! Have a wonderful and healthy day!

First Day of school!

The has arrived and I am happy to say I did NOT cry! We started school today. Phoebe is on her way to a wonderful first grade year and Kimball got to do his Kindergarten orientation today. It was only for an hour, so he is already home. Warren has been asking were Phoebe is and that he misses her. I am glad this week Kimball is home. It wont be so hard on him.








Phoebe and her friend from last year, Molly. They are in the same class again. Yippie!
This Phoebe at her new desk. She almost started to cry but I quickly pointed out her friends from last year and she started to feel more comfortable.

This is Kimball in the Terrific Turtle line. They got to tour the school holding on to the rope. He did so great! I was so proud of him and how he behaved! What a great boy he is!This is Kimball sitting at the blue table and his teacher, Mrs. Moore.
The whole classroom.

New Couches!!

I am so thrilled about these couches. If any of you have been to my house in the last year you will know trashed my couches have become. It isn't that we treated them bad, they were just crappy couches. Jake bought our first couches as a college graduation present. I loved them, but we soon found out that they couldn't hold up to life with three kids. Every time I turned around there was another snag or a hole. We tired to patch and stitch whatever we could but it was like putting a band aide on a flesh wound. Then we got a dog. Oh that crazy dog, he tore up out couches! He went to town. I never have wanted to kill a dog so much in all my life! We bought some twin sheets to cover the seats. It was livable, but Jake and I both hated it. Finally, we found a great deal at Ashley Home Furnishings. I love it! It is a sectional but we have split up. It is also microfiber! I love it. I love the new color. It makes me want to redecorate my house. But I will wait.... maybe when get to new house! So please come on over and sit on my new couches!



I really like the couch pillows. The colors are great!
This is wear we had the love seat, now it has the "L" couch. Kimball thinks the chassis is his couch, because it fits him.
The big couch. One of our requirements for a couch is that we have to both be able to lay down on the couch at the same time. This passed. Very snugly!
Big room shot! Look how nice my house looks! Wish it would stay like that all the time!

Teacher gifts

I made these little buckets for Kimball and Phoebe's teachers. I found a great deal at the local thrift shop and each of the paint buckets were 50 cents! I had all the paper on hand and ended up borrowing my friends Locker Talk Cricut Cartridge. ( love this cartridge so much! I really hope Jake will buy it for me! HINT HINT HINT!) I filled the bucket with chocolate, chocolate and more chocolate. I labeled the bucket "Teacher Survival Kit" I would think that much chocolate would get them through the first month of school. LOL. I hope you enjoy them too. I wish I had all that chocolate right now.....