Happy Birthday to me!

Today is my 36th birthday so I'm celebrating by having a little birthday sale!  All day long, you can get 36% off anything in my shop with the coupon code:  HAPPYBIRTHDAY36

That's Happy!

Trophy Mom

Miles:  What are you doing with your hair?

Jeana:  Trying to make it look pretty.

Miles: Oh.  Then everyone will be sad.

Jeana:  Why will they be sad?

Miles:  Because then you will get a trophy.  A pretty hair trophy.

Jeana:  Oh.  And they'll be sad because they didn't get a trophy, too?

Miles:  No.  They'll be sad because they don't like your sweater.

Waking up to Autumn

The crazy thing about Northwest summers is that the weather is so different from the whole rest of the year.  When fall comes with its gray and drizzly skies it's like waking up from a magical dream.  You don't know where you are at first.  Yesterday I paced the house all day, unsure of what I was supposed to be doing.  Today I seem to have finally wiped the "sleep" from my eyes.  It's fall.   Time to get cozy.   I am supposed to drink tea.

That's Happy Update

Well, I'm happy to say that That's Happy is doing really well!

I've been listing new merchandise like crazy!  I have a bunch of these adorable Vintage Fisher Price Little People.

And even a few of their bigger accessories like this super cute family camper.    They've already been seeing a lot of love on etsy.  These are such fantastic toys!  I wish my kids were still into them.  They've all moved on to legos, legos, legos all the time.

I've also listed some new jewelry.  Remember my Candy Shoppe necklace?  I added some earrings!  They're so funny and cute.  I want to make some with Christmas colored sprinkles.  If you can't get away with wearing candy on ears at Christmas, when can you?

These next few pairs are some of my new favorites.  So simple and mod.  They are flat tear drop shapes cut from copper and coated with a layer of enamel on the front.  This teal pair sold within 10 minutes of me listing it.  But I'm definitely going to make more--they are so fun!

They are also really pretty in just plain copper.  The copper is aged so it has a really nice patina and low lustre.

Here they are again in a deep blackberry purple color.  I just love them!

The vintage side of my shop has been so fun!  I have a bunch of new treasures that I'm working on listing.  Taking photos and editing them takes the longest time.  But I'm really enjoying that part, too.

Look at this sweet little tea towel! It's meant to be embroidered but the drawn on picture is cute as is, too.

I found this 1978 calendar and was drawn to the rich colors.  Wouldn't it be so sweet to draw a heart around the birthday or anniversary of someone you know who was born or married in 1978 in Alaska?  I think it would also make a really fun throw pillow or tote bag.

 And then there are the scarves.  I had a small stash of Ruffle Scarves leftover from last Christmas.  I decided to discontinue them and then a friend from high school asked if I had any more.  I took pictures of what I had left and then decided since I already had the pictures I might as well list them in my shop.  You guys, I sold out within 24 hours!

I have enough fabric to make a few more scarves so that's what I'll be working on over the next couple of weeks.  They are really pretty and fun.  Now I'm thinking twice about discontinuing them!

I also made this lovely infinity scarf. I'm not planning on making a bunch of them but I found this fabric and it just seemed to say, "Make me into an infinity scarf." So I did.  The fabric came from a sweet friend who is moving and she let me rummage through her fantastic fabric collection last week.  I came away with a bunch of treasures so hopefully there will be some new sewn things in my shop this fall.

This change has been so good for me.  I am excited about creating again!  It truly is happy.

Hallway / Step Down / Nook / Weird Space

When we first moved into our house I painted this area a deep, chocolate brown.  It was a nice contrast with our kitchen color.

Aw, new carpet.  How quickly you came to look dirty and disgusting!

It stayed like this for a couple of years and then I added a gallery of white frames.

Which didn't work out as nicely as I thought.  I was constantly straightening frames and a couple fell off the wall after some especially boisterous boy activity.  The carpet started looked dingy and dirty and the white doors reflected the brown paint and then with the new dark floors I was just over the darkness of the whole space.  I needed color.   So I painted orange and white stripes.

This is such an awkward space to take pictures of.  I promise that it doesn't look like a crazy circus house in real life.

I love, love, love the orange stripes.  They are a soft orange, like cantaloupe or dreamsicles.   That ugly light fixture has got to go.  I'm just not sure what I want to replace it with yet.

I would really love to replace all the doors and doorknobs in our house.  Just saving money for that.  It's actually not too expensive of a project, although I know I will need help hanging the new doors.   We're also going to add trim all the away around the entrance to this little step down area.  It's hard to explain in these pictures.

Above is the door to the master bedroom.  To the left of the stripes is the laundry room.  So the trim would go on that corner there both on the stripey side and on the blue/green side where the laundry room is.  And then across the top because the ceiling is lower in the step down area.

And same thing for this side.  Trim on the stripey side and then trim on the kitchen wall and going across the top to make kind of a V-shaped doorway.  I'll show you when it's all done.   In the above picture the door leads to the craft room.  Also, you can see how I've added white switch plate covers but the switch and outlets are still almond.  Classy.   Those will all get changed out, too.

And now for the ugly part.  I ripped up the dirty carpet.

I'm going to continue the kitchen/laundry room floor down these steps and to the doors.  But first I have to fill all those holes in the concrete.  And I'm debating over whether to pour self leveling concrete and then lay the new floors over that.   Or to just put down a new wood sub-floor over the concrete and then put the new planks on that.  They both have pros and cons.

I'm thinking that the wood will go on the floor and the steps and I'll paint the risers white.  Oh yeah, I need to attach wood risers to the front of these concrete steps.

Tricky, tricky.  But it's going to look awesome when it's done!

So here's the plan of attack.

• Figure out the sub-floor.
• Lay new flooring.
• Install trim.
• Install new baseboards (throughout the whole house, except bedrooms)
• Replace doors and doorknobs
• Replace almond switches and outlets with white ones
• Replace ugly boob light with beautiful light that I haven't found yet.

Easy-peasy lemon squeezy, right?

Learning to Read

Miles is starting to recognize letters and so I've started teaching him what sounds each letter makes and giving him examples of words that start with the letters he knows.

Miles:  There's O!
Jeana:  Yes!  O for Oval.

Miles:  That's S!
Jeana:  Mmm-hmm.  S for Snake!

Miles:  What's this letter?
Jeana:  Oh, that's a number.  That's 8.
Miles:  Yes.  8 for snowman.

Mommy and Miles

I love Miles so much.  But after this first week of school with his brothers gone all day, my ears are a little tired from his constant chatter!

He often retells stories to me and he likes start with "You know what?"  

"You know what that guy said?"
"You know what cows like to eat for breakfast?"
"You know what I'm gonna be today?"

If I respond with a simple, "What?"  he thinks I haven't heard his question.  So our conversations go like this:

Miles:  You know what that guy said?
Jeana:  What?
Miles:  You know what that guy said?
Jeana:  What?
Miles:  DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT GUY SAID?
Jeana:  No.  What did he say?
Miles:  He said, "I like bacon."

I am learning to respond with a full sentence answer the first time.

Another thing that's amusing/annoying about talking to Miles is that he'll ask the same question 45 times in a row.   At our back to school night we had an ice cream social.  This was our conversation.

Miles:  Are we going to have ice cream?
Jeana:  Yes!
Miles:  Can we?
Jeana:  Yes.  I already said yes.
Miles:  Can we please?

So I've started a new thing I'm calling "Asked & Answered."  If Miles asks me a question repeatedly that I've already answered, I ask him, "Did I already answer your question?"  Usually he'll nod.  Then I'll confirm, "Asked and answered."  I don't even think it's that he wants me to change my mind...obviously not in the case of the ice cream.  But nonetheless I want him to know that I mean what I say and that my first answer will remain the answer until I say otherwise.  So far he's responding well.   Although, he likes to put his own spin on it.

Today he used the bathroom and called out, "Mom!  I'm done pooping!  I need help wiping!"

So I wiped his bottom and he declared, "Asked and answered!" 

Cozy Master Bedroom

This room used to be Noah and Toby's room.  A few years ago we decided to move all three boys into the same bedroom and it made sense for them to be in the biggest room.   At first we moved into the other small bedroom, which used to be the nursery and this room was basically a storage shed.  But I cleaned it all out and slowly started making this room beautiful.  The nursery became the craft room and this room became...this:

The giant wave canvas is from Ikea.  I loved it from the moment I saw it and Geary bought it for me as an anniversary gift.  I love how outrageously over-scale it is for this room.  Somehow the hugeness of it makes the room feel bigger.   On my monitor, the colors of the pillow and curtain aren't showing up as vibrant as they are in real life.  They are closer to the bright aqua color of the center of the wave.

See how the left side of the bamboo shades have light shining through them?  That's because there really is a window behind the shades on that side.  The other side is just wall.  But I wanted to have the bed centered on the window so I made the window "bigger."  In real life, the light shining through isn't as noticeable.

The ceilings slant in this room and our old tall bed wouldn't have fit.  We sold the bed frame on Craigslist and then had our mattress and box spring on the floor while I figured out what kind of bed frame would work best.

I ended up building the bed frame and headboard myself.  Well, the bed frame was one that I found on Craiglist but by the time I was done customizing it, I may as well have built it myself.  I sawed the legs down to make the bed lower, reinforced the supports, created a new center beam, and replaced the platform bed slats.  And I painted it a deep, espresso brown.

The headboard is made from a thick sheet of plywood that I cut to fit inside the bed frame.  I covered the top part with a camping mattress.  Tip:  Buying a $20 camping mattress pad is much less expensive than purchasing the same amount of foam from a craft store.  Even with a 50% off coupon.  Then I covered the foam with a layer of batting and then a layer of natural cotton.  I covered my own buttons and tufted the headboard and it is very comfortable!  I chose to have the headboard inside the bed frame because I wanted it to overlap our mattress by a couple of inches.  I used to always lose my pillows in the small space between our bed and the wall and this ensures that that never happens.

I also made the faux capiz shell chandelier.  It's made from embroidery hoops and wax paper circles.  The method I used was to iron three sheets of wax paper together to the get the thickness I wanted.  Then I used a circle punch to cut out 87 million(ish) circles.  I sewed the circles together and glued them to the inside rims of embroidery hoops.  Then I hung them all up with fishing line.  All the paper is far away from the lightbulbs so no fire hazards here. 

It's a chandelier made out of garbage!  And I think it's beautiful.  The soft glow is perfect and the faux shells flutter and swing and I just love it.

This little dresser holds all my shoes.

It's actually this one from Ikea. But when I assembled it I had Geary cut the sides down to get rid of the open shelf on top.  I also bought different, shorter legs from Ikea and attached them with wood glue.  They don't really hold the unit up, it's screwed to the wall.

Here's the picture again so you don't have to scroll back up.  I drilled holes in the drawer fronts for beautiful turquoise pulls from Anthropologie.

Aren't they pretty with my vintage blue perfume jar?  That mirror was a hand-me-down from Emily.  It used to be green but I spray painted it white.  The color of the drawer pulls and perfume jar in this photo is what color the curtains and bed pillow are in real life.  

Here's what's reflected in the mirror.  Our wedding vows are superimposed over the photographs.  There is a full length mirror on the back of our door.  The paint color is a custom mix of a bunch of paint we had leftover from other projects.  At first I was annoyed that the sheen came out glossy, but now I really like it.  It reflects light and just kind of feels right for this beachy bedroom.

I made our nightstands out of those cheap little cubbie boxes you can find at big box store.  I removed the tops of the cubbies and replaced them with stained wood.  They are tiny and perfect for holding bronze pharmacy lamps and our alarm clocks.  And books, of course!

You can kind of see my rubbish bin in the bottom left corner.  It's just a regular plastic bin from Target that I covered with sisal rope.  Oh, and you can really see here how the chandelier is not centered over the bed.  Oh well, you can't win them all!

Our bedroom is tiny, but we love the coziness and the whole feel of the room.  It's peaceful and quiet but still vibrant and full of life.   And someday I'll get around to ironing my duvet cover.  Yeah...probably not!

Thanks for taking my little bedroom tour!  I hope you enjoyed it as much I have enjoyed putting this room together and that it was worth the wait.

Powder Room

This the first time I've shown the inside of our little powder room.   There are no before pictures.  Just imagine a tiny white room with an ugly pinkish tan trim and a dingy white vanity with black plastic handles and and a mirror so small you couldn't even see your whole face in it.  Yeah...it was bad.

When we first moved in I got rid of that mirror lickety-split.  And when I painted the main bathroom I also painted this one the same color.  I also painted the vanity the same dark espresso color as the cabinets in the main bathroom.  And then this bathroom sat for years looking slightly less ugly but it was still very neglected.

Replacing the flooring in the back hallway/laundry room area is really what started this little makeover.  For a long time I wanted to add floating shelves like they have in this image I pinned (sadly, it's one of those annoying pins that leads to nowhere.)

But our house is really old (1890) and nothing is square.  I mean nothing.  And I knew getting perfectly aligned floating shelves with no seams was beyond my capabilities.

I also had a ton of artwork just laying around since taking it down from from our Linh{art} gallery in the step down/hallway/nook/weird space when I painted stripes on those walls.  (Pictures still to come!)

So one day I just started hanging pictures.  I decided not to over think it and just starting filling in spaces.  Most of the paintings are from my children.  It just tickles them to see their artwork framed and hanging on our walls around the house.  The "love" is from the giant spool of thread I had in my craft room/jewelry studio.  And there are a few framed cards from Geary with love notes inside that I don't want to lose.

When I got near the bottom of the wall toward the toilet I kept thinking that the box of tissue on the tank was a real eyesore.  And then I remembered this amazing whale tissue box I had seen on etsy.

Whale Tissue Holder from shopSparklyPony

I loved everything about it.  Except for the price.  $40 for a tissue holder is way out of my budget.  But then I remembered that I have a husband who has developed the skill of making wooden boxes!  So I had Geary build me a box.  And then I turned that box into my own whale tissue holder.

It makes me happy.   I'm thinking we should make a few more.

This bathroom is super tiny, as I mentioned before.  It was really difficult to get pictures of the vanity/sink part of the room.  I ended up just sticking my arm in the bathroom with the camera in my hand pressed up against the wall and taking a bunch of shots and hoping they would turn out.  Here's what I got.

The painted vanity.  I need to touch up that one area right by the edge of the sink.  And then probably put some kind of protective coating over the paint.  Six years later...

I would also love to get a new faucet.  You can't really tell in the picture but this faucet is old and kind of rusty and the finish is chipped and cracked in a few places.

A pretty soap dispenser would be nice, too.

I found a mirror at Ikea in the As-Is section about five years ago. It's just been leaning against the wall behind the sink since then.  The plan was to frame that mirror and hang it up.  But let's just be honest, if that hasn't happened in the last five years it's probably never going to happen.  No adult can see their head in the mirror.  My friend, Katy, suggested that I write on the wall something like, "You look fine.  Nothing in your teeth."  My friend Micah suggested that I have a sign saying, "Maximum Occupancy: 12" somewhere in the bathroom.  I like both ideas. :)

So, I'm on the hunt for a cool mirror that already comes with hanging hardware.  And don't tell Geary, but I kind of want to paint this room again.  I like the paint color in the main bathroom but in here it reads a little more yellow and sometimes peach-ish.  But really, the mirror is the main thing.  Once that's up on the wall I can declare this room done.

Laundry Room Update

Last time you saw our laundry room (in May, 2011) it looked like this:

And the floor looked like this:

About a year after those pictures were taken, our washing machine, which was pretty old, gave a clunk and a cough and stopped working.  I called a repair man to describe what happened and he pronounced our old machine dead.

But you know how God provides!  My mom called to tell me that she could help me with buying a new set because my Papa's house was being sold and she would have some extra money.  Such a gift!  I had to wait a few weeks until the house was closed on but in that time I was able to do laundry in a couple different places:

1.  The Laundromat.  This place was awesome because I could get ALL the laundry done in less than 90 minutes.  And it all got put away right away, too.  It was also awesome because I was able to watch the Summer Olympics on the TVs there.  We don't have cable and watching events online didn't always work out the way we had hoped.   The only bummer was that it cost about $20 each week to do our laundry.

2.   Becky's House.  My BFF was really generous and would let Miles and I (and sometimes Toby) invade her house for hours at a time.   She fed us, pulled out awesome toys for the boys to play with and watched movies and chatted with me about nothing and everything all while I used her washer and dryer.  Those were some great days.

One day while I was perusing Craigslist I found and immediately fell in love with a set of Kenmore front loaders.  And...they were orange. Orange!  I know, I know, who in the world would want an orange washer and dryer.  ME!   They were actually up in Seattle and my mom and her friend, Sandy, rented a trailer to bring them down to me.  

Now I have to back up a little bit.  When we very first moved into this house our kitchen, bathrooms, hallway, and laundry all had this sheet vinyl flooring. 

It was fine.  Neutral, basic.  But we almost immediately ripped a hole in the vinyl when we were trying to move our refrigerator.  For a quick fix we cut out a piece of vinyl from underneath the dryer and used that the patch the hole in the middle of kitchen.

So, since we were moving out the washer and dryer anyway and had a chance put new flooring down while the space was empty, and since I found flooring that matched the laminate I had put in our living and dining rooms, and it was on sale for only 74 cents per square foot, we decided to just go for it.

While my mom and Sandy were driving down from Seattle I was ripping up the old vinyl and laying down the new stuff.  Sandy and my mom arrived just as I had finished laying a big enough section for the washer and dryer to sit on.  

I hooked up the new front loaders and they worked perfectly!  I could not be happier with my orange washer and dryer.  But I also wasn't thinking about them that much because I still had the entire kitchen to finish to flooring.  And when the floor was all in we loved it!  But it did make our kitchen feel kind of dark. So I repainted the kitchen.  And then I repainted our little step down hallway/nook/weird space.  I'll have to show you updated pictures of those spaces, too.  Here's one taken on the day I finished the kitchen floor, before the new paint.

Phew!  That was a crazy tangent.  Sometimes following home improvement stories is like trying to follow a path through a plate of spaghetti.  So, back to the laundry room.  The new orange appliances are front loaders and they are a little bit deeper than our old set.  So we decided to stack them (with a stacking kit made especially for that) and then I found these two large cabinets on Craigslist for a song!   So now our laundry room looks like this:

And I know what you're thinking.  "Jeana, why in the world would you make your laundry room uglier?" Well, it's because sometimes you have to tear down in order to rebuild.  And sometimes the middle of a project makes no sense.  And because even though the reality is kind of ugly now, I can see the potential for beauty in my head.  Here's the plan:

• Add trim to the cabinet doors and drawer faces to give them more style.
• Build a washer and dryer surround so the entire unit looks like one built-in.
• Paint the whole thing white.
• Add beautiful cabinet hardware.

I have a couple other projects that are a higher priority than this one but I am really looking forward to getting this one done.  I think it will look so nice and function so well for our family.

In the meantime, we are definitely enjoying how much wider the hallway seems now that it's not full of a washer and dryer and laundry shelf.  And I love that our dirty laundry is literally not out in the open anymore.   

Ooh, and sneak peek of the orange stripes in the step down/hallway/nook/weird space!  More pictures coming soon.  (And you should probably assume that by "soon" I mean in about two years.  Just kidding.  Not really.  It always takes me so much longer that I think it will to complete a project.  Sigh.)