The {Reclamation} Project: Part 1

I marvel at people who manage to maintain the public areas of their homes as {grown-up} spaces after having children. And I'm not just talking about the people who make unrealistic furniture choices (HOW can someone have a white couch with young kids in the house!?!?!? Or, even more alarming....pets...) ~ I'm talking about people who simply have things displayed in their home within reach of tiny hands. Such has not happened here with much success.

The tiny people just cannot seem to leave things alone. It's not always on purpose, granted, but the few decorative items I have in our living room frequently get knocked over in the course of their play. The {Keep Calm and Carry On} sign that sits on a display easel on our half wall has dented corners and a black small black smudge (no idea what caused that) from being knocked off the wall so many times. And it's not just limited to things within easy reach. There are finger smudges on the family portrait that hangs in the hallway. Keep in mind that a chair had to have been moved to the area for either of the tiny people to actually {reach} said portrait. And my favorite example? Here you go....

The tinier of the tiny people apparently took it upon herself to flip the personalized art work in her room {upside-down}. How exactly she managed to do this, I'm not entirely sure. My mother noticed it when she was here for a visit ~ I truly have {no clue} how long it was that way before she pointed it out to me.

So you can see why the majority of my decorating takes the form of hanging photographs or decorative ledges like the one from my last post (which, with the increasingly daring feats the tiny people are performing lately, is apparently no longer a safe option, either!). It's getting a little old...and now I'm on a mission to {reclaim} my home for the grown-ups. I had already moved all of the toys into the tiny people's bedrooms, so that's one battle down. Now onto the next thing....the living room...one corner at a time...

Clearly it's not finished ~ it just seems to need something more. I'm thinking maybe a table lamp ~ something to add a bit more height to the table and kind of tie it in more with the subway art on the wall. Any thoughts you have on what might work well there are appreciated! It's a {small} step, sure, but a step is a step!

(Tutorial on the frames ~ even though it's {so} easy you can probably all figure it out with no help from me! ~ coming soon!)

In Search of the Mojo

I apologize for my absence from blogland. Between the cold, blustery, monsoon-like weather and the arrival of the cold from {h-e-double-hockey-sticks} I have been suffering from a sad lack of motivation. I only have one teeny little project to share for all my time away...

I had seen this quote in a few different places & it was just {begging} to find a place in my home. So...off I went to the dollar store to find a frame so I could start the project.

The frame is an {off} size ~ it was originally meant to hold three 5x7s ~ so I had some figuring to do. I measured the opening, then opened a new blank file in photoshop using those dimensions. Creating the word art was pretty quick & easy ~ just a matter of choosing fonts & colors. Once that was done, I went to the Costco photo lab website and found the closest print size available that was {larger} than the size of the word art. I opened up another new blank file in the size of the print I'd be ordering, and used the paint bucket to turn the background grey. I then sharpened and flattened the word art, and moved it onto the grey background, so it looked like this....

I uploaded the finished file, ordered the print size I needed, and an hour later it was ready to go. All I had to do was trim off the grey part & pop it in the frame.

Less than $5! Not bad... I'm hoping that this little project will be the springboard for more projects. I so want my {mojo} back!

Told 'Ya...

This week I managed to go grocery shopping, take the tiny people to the library, get both tiny people to and from their respective schools on time and not leave either of them anywhere where they weren't supposed to be left. I also changed the sheets on all of the beds, kept the kitchen reasonably reasonable, vacuumed the living room 2-3 times, got the tiny people to clean their rooms, helped the Hubband keep up with his workload, watched ridiculous amounts of baseball and hockey....and completely {forgot} about anything laundry-related.

Don't believe me? Well, here we have Exhibit A: Our Laundry Chute.

When the Hubband, while waiting for the water to warm up so he could take a shower this morning, opened the linen closet to find it completely devoid of fresh towels....then grumbled his way to the basement and emerged moments later with a clean and folded {beach towel}....yeah, then I kinda knew it was worse than I thought.

See for all the {shockingly} idiotic and interesting home-improvement methods used by the previous owners of our home (my favorite example? drywall as a substitute for sub-flooring in the kitchen. can I get a WTH!?!?!) they did do one thing that I find to be {brilliant}. When they were having the basement finished, they had a closet built around the area where the laundry chute empties. (insert sound of singing angels here...) Smart, right? No one has to see our dirty clothes when they go downstairs ~ it's all hidden away behind a closet door....which is great, except for one small side-effect known as "out of sight, out of mind". Oops.

And now you all have photographic proof that I chose the title for this blog very wisely.