I love the look of ornate frames, but I VERY STRONGLY DISLIKE the typical aged-bronzey goldish finish. Case in point:
A bronze mirror, begging for a makeover.
However, it’s a super easy fix. Hint: it rhymes with “Schpray Schraint.”
Because our home has been utter chaos over the last week, I felt the need to assert some control over what I could. Ignited by that -AND- the need to do some spring cleaning, I tackled the rats’ nest that was my jewelry drawer. I didn’t want to spend any money, and use whatever I could find lying around, so I came up with this:
A wire hanger + binder clips = necklace storage
I’ve mentioned before that we moved into a 107 year old house last summer, right? Well, the family who lived there before did a renovation in the late 1990’s…and that’s where the house has stayed since. I’m hesitant to embark on any major updates since we’re planning to do some renovations and upgrades soon and I don’t want to make anything that will end up being ripped out in a couple of months, but there are a few things on the list that can become a project. Mostly because they irritate the hell out of me, but partly because they might end up being part of the new design. The biggest constraint is to keep the budget small…as in, miniscule. So this week’s project was a small one, but kind of fun because I got to whip out my paints and experiment….
Upgrade the Shade
Our kitchen is pretty dark and has one small window facing North. The roller shade on it fits well and does the job to give us privacy from the next door neighbors but it was NASTY. Decades of dirty dish water spray and kitchen gunk discolored it. Plus, it was a country-cottage style that I’m not terribly fond of. So, I decided to touch it up.
Years of grime and exposure yellowed the bottom half. There’s no explanation for the design, though.
Hey gang! I’m super-excited to have my first guest post on home decor! Kathy Joe is a blogger from the UK, and she reached out to me a couple of weeks ago about writing for my blog. She’s a funny gal with some great ideas, so please, enjoy her post!
A big hello to everyone! People call me Kathy Joe and they also call me as a decor fanatic. The reason is that I have come a long way with my passion to jazz up everything! I am extremely cheerful to be a guest here. Jennifer is a wonderful being for letting me do this. Please come visit me here.
Does your inner child cry out for a funky, welcoming and, let us be brutally honest here, childish bedroom? Do you reluctantly turn away from the soft furnishings and furniture in the children’s section, looking desultorily through the adult offerings with a glum resignation? If this sounds like you it is time to give your bedroom a guerrilla make-over dipping deep into your past likes and fancies! It is possible to make your bedroom look as though it has been created for a younger version of you without guests assuming they have stumbled into a real child’s room – which can be very awkward on a first proper date…
Polka Dots
Get dotty with your curtains! Polka dots are both cheerful and colourful, providing a subtle nod to childhood without being over the top, over-childish or sickeningly twee. Polka dot curtains can be made to measure for your bedroom, which means that you can choose exactly the right colour combinations to suit the rest of your décor.
Invest in a brightly coloured and gently clattering beaded curtain. Beaded curtains are usually used in place of a door, but they work well near the windows too. Having streams of beads flowing from the pelmet not only looks wonderful and sounds great (do make sure that you choose solid plastic beads as hollow or metal ones will make a dreadful noise with every passing breeze!) but will recall the many happy hours spent running your fingers through boxes of beads and buttons – oh, you know you did it, we all did!
Splurging in children’s curtains
Allow mythology a place in your décor scheme, either in the form of small ornaments or in the curtain fabric. While most girls outgrow their love of unrelenting pink by about the age of eight or nine, their love of unicorns and rainbows will last forever! (**Amen! ~Jen**) Splurge on some fabulous rainbow curtains to instantly boost and brighten the bedroom and your mood! For naive and chic children-themed curtains, my ultimate favorite place to grab them is Yorkshire Linen Co.
Quirky Curtain Rings
If you are a bit shy of hanging bright and jaunty curtains, or feel that they are too ‘young’ for your bedroom, why not brighten up your regular ‘grown-up’ curtains with some quirky and appealing curtain rings? Buy a couple of packs (you will find them online or at most home décor outlets) and set to work adding a subtle but cheerful touch of youth to your bedroom curtains! For kinky and interesting curtain tie backs, I am a huge fan of Tie Back and Trim.
Letter It All Out
Go back to grade school with some vibrant alphabet curtains! With the immense range of fabrics available today you will be able to choose the fabric carefully to achieve a quirky look rather than a babyish theme. You can even buy plain curtains and letter them yourself, placing the letters in a way that is attractive and appealing to you.
Funky Tie Backs
Again suitable for those who do not want to make too much of a child-like splash in the bedroom, tiebacks are discreet yet visible, allowing you to indulge in a trip down memory lane without being too obvious about it.
Think back to what made you feel happy and secure as a child, especially as regards to your bedroom and home. You are trying to capture the essence of childhood, secure, happy joie de vivre without retaining any of the immaturity of that time.
We bought our house last summer because it has some really lovely features. The hickory floors were clearly laid by hand with love. The cabinets are solid wood. The baseboards are gorgeous. And the family that rebuilt this home clearly loved it. I mean, they loved it A LOT. Like, a lot.
Our bathroom is a good example. 2 adults and 3 boys shared this room, and the vanity clearly received the tactile admiration of the whole family over and over and over again.
The badness is inspiring even worse puns.
I found this well-loved desk in Goodwill months ago. I grabbed it for $15, knowing it just needed a little TLC. It’s smaller than a regular desk, perfect for an elementary school-aged student (or a hall table until then…). I loved the shape and the little details (brass keyhole, pull-out writing surface), and wanted to retain some of the original character. So I decided instead of refinishing it like I did with the bench project, I decided to just restore it.
She was a little rough when I got her.
She had some great features, like a locking drawer and pull-out writing surface, but the wood was stained and dry and DIRTY.
For about 11 bucks and 2 hours, you can freshen up a room.
One of my favorite inexpensive makeovers to do for a room is to paint the switchplates. You know, the ugly, yellowing plastic covers for your plugs and light switches? I got this idea because when I touched up our basement, I found that we had like a THOUSAND different switchplates: aluminum, yellowing plastic, grayish plastic, whitish plastic. All of them were beat up and, well, hideous. Replacing all of them would have been pricey and unjustifiable to my husband, who, bless his heart, couldn’t care less about a little detail like that. I like the look of the oil-rubbed bronze, plus we have several light fixtures around the house in that finish. When I looked at buying new ones, the 2-plug covers and light switches were about $3 each, and the specialty multiple plug/light switch combos were $8 or more. Yeah, dumb to pay that much.
Some people like to rescue stray puppies, I rescue stray furniture. I see it on the street, “FREE” sign hanging limply to the side, waiting for a loving home. So I bring it home, I clean it up, feed it well, love it, and turn it into part of our family.
Because I tend to rescue LOTS of things, I received the edict from my husband not to rescue anything else until I’d rehabilitated what I’d already accumulated. That was incentive enough to get started.
A couple of weeks ago, my sister and I found this coffee table on the curb. It had cool lines, was in fine structural shape aside from the cracked marble top, and just needed some refinishing. So we hauled it home. I had a while to think about it, and when I pulled out the marble, it occurred to me to make an upholstered seat and turn it into a bench for the end of our bed.
A stray coffee table on the street becomes a beloved bench in our home.
I was trying to think of new names for my stuff…you know, the social media stuff. Committedgifts is indeed a terrible name, but the only one I could come up with that contained my business name, Committed, and no ridiculous Committed1357xxysz.com. Committed makes a lot of sense for who I am and what I do, but that name as a URL was snatched up some time in the early 90’s. So I’m kind of stuck with “committedgifts”…except.
Twitter and Instagram allow you to change your username. It took the usual brainstorming tricks & techniques to narrow down what my posts are all about. I realize I’m all over the place: fitness, gardening, DIY, kid activities, crafts, thrifting, food, travel. That much diversity is kinda bad in BlogLand, but it’s who I am. I’m addicted to projects.
I kind of suspected this, but it was confirmed when I overheard the cleaning ladies (yes, we have them come twice/month, which is the BEST investment for a marriage) saying, “She’s always working on SOMETHING.” The ‘She’ being ME. I start a TON of projects. You know how it goes–you get an idea to solve a problem. You get excited that the problem can go away. You shop, prep, maybe even start, then…another problem pops up requiring your attention.
For example, in addition to my freelance work, I have about 4 personal projects going at the same time (which I agree is cuckoo):
1) Maintain, Don’t Gain Holiday Challenge (I know you’ve been following along!)
2) Advent activities for the kiddo (a post to come when we’re done):
Use leftover poster board, Post-Its, stickers, and Sharpies.
3) 10-Minute Post-It
I take 10 minutes, and a Post-It to sketch out whatever’s on my mind. I post to Instagram and collect those sketches (and friends’ sketches) on a Pinterest board. This is more of a side project I started to get the cobwebs out. A whole large page seems to be a little intimidating, but limiting the size and amount of time seems to make me loosen up. #10MinutePostIt
I feel like this every day.
4) And of course, yesterday, I decided to paint the dining room and the socket covers so we look like we have a big girl house.
Nothing looks sweeter than a fresh coat of paint.
Oh yes, and there are still Christmas gifts for friends, our annual holiday card, and probably another organizing project lurking in the darkness…So. I had to admit it. As someone addicted to projects. I am Jen. And I’m a Projectaholic.
Now you can follow me on Instagram (@projectaholic) and Twitter (@projectaholic). And you can still like Committed on Facebook. 🙂
In Seattle city limits, plastic bags are ILLEGAL. You go to jail if you are caught smuggling those into a supermarket.
Not really. It’s just that stores aren’t allowed to use them any more. There’s no more “Paper or plastic, ma’am?” happening. It’s “Did you bring your bags today?” now. The choices for bagging your purchases are:
Mind you, this isn’t just for groceries. It’s for EVERY STORE. You wanna drop $300 on clothes? Better fork over a nickel for a paper shopping bag. Forget your bags at the checkout? Feel the disapproval and shame of your checker as they give you dirty looks and spitefully add the nickel tax to your purchase. (Honestly, I’d pay A DOLLAR to end the harassment that is associated with forgetting your shopping bags.)
It’s a little ridiculous, but honestly, I agree with getting rid of plastic bags. They’re handy, but overall evil. Don’t let me hop up on my soapbox about the Pacific Gyre, or Midway Island albatross population…
Regardless, the reusable shopping bags are a hassle. And they end up ALL. OVER. OUR. HOUSE.
Keeping it real:
The grocery bag monster hanging over a paper bag molehill.
The family who owned our house before us were OBSESSED with hanging hooks. They’re on all the doors (some doors have 2 racks), several walls, in the bathrooms…It’s a little odd, if you ask me. I thought it would be a handy spot for storing all these bags, but it just became a hanging bag monster hovering over a brown bag molehill in our closet. Annoying. A little dangerous. Inconvenient.
I hunted for a tall, not-too-deep basket at Goodwill, but came up short after a couple (ahem, 3) visits. At Ikea, I finally found this:
Knarra basket from Ikea. $14.99 for handy reusable bag storage.
It’s a little more than I wanted to spend, but hey, what price can you put on sanity?
The result? Paper AND reusable bags, living in harmony.
Can’t we all just get along?
Just fold in half and tuck it in. Or, just ball it up and cram it in (which is what I’m sure will be happening after our next shopping trip).
Do you use reusable shopping bags? How do you keep them from taking over your house?
Committed. 