New kitchen decor!

The work on my kitchen continues! Here is my latest project. I thought this was going to be an easy project and it was except for the darn paint color!

I made this from a sign thingy I got at a garage sale for 50 cents. It said, Home Sweet Home on it. I realized I could peel off the wording. I then had to sand it a little. I tried painting on it, and the paint wouldn't really adhere. So Dan sprayed it with white primer. I then had some green paint that I tried to paint it with. It wasn't really adhering well again. So it sat for a few days, then Dan suggested that I just do a few coats of paint. Me-duh! Why didn't I think of that? I guess it takes an art teacher to make things happen. :) So I did a few coats ands the green was way too dark and not the right tone. I even tried mixing it with white and it still wasn't right. So I went to Joanns and got a couple different paints I thought would work. I tried one, and it was still too dark. I tried the other and it was too light. So I finally ended up mixing the two and finally was satisfied enough. I was getting tired of this whole project as well, at this point. :)

This is what the final green came out to be and I do like it a lot. I cut out some vinyl for the wording and the grapes were from Joanns for 59 cents each. So this only cost a few dollars to make! I love it. I've been wanting to put up La Cucina (the kitchen) for a while and now it's finally done!

The little art decor on the left is most likely going to be moved to a different wall and my next project that I'm working on is going to go in it's place. The wall on the left is going to be painted red soon. I think it's going to look really nice. I originally wanted to paint the wall with the window, but since there are red curtains there now, it would just look funny, and I don't feel like trying to find other curtains. Ironically, when we first painted the kitchen last summer, I suggested to Dan about painting the window wall red and he scoffed at me. Then, a few months ago, I brought up the idea of painting a wall red, and he was like, yeah, we should paint the wall with the window! Men...

Here are some aprons that my mom made for me and Anna for Mother's Day. She made them tie in the with Italian theme of my kitchen. Anna loves hers! She sees them and says, apron. on. mommy's. It's really cute.

Future cook.

Such a little cutie. It will be fun when she gets a little older and she can help me bake stuff and we can wear our aprons together.

More craftiness and some cute kids!

I hope everyone had a good Mother's Day. I did! I got to sleep in, Dan made me breakfast. We had cream cheese and strawberry stuffed french toast! It was pretty good. We're not big on gifts for holidays like these. Dan got me some chocolate covered raisins from Trader Joe's. I love chocolate covered raisins, so it was a good gift for me. Then, for dinner he made me Pizza alla Diavola. Which is basically the devil's pizza. I know, I know, what kind of husband makes devil's pizza for his wife on Mother's Day? :) It's basically pizza with a spicy sauce, cheese and salami. It was pretty good, but the salami was pretty salty and we were drinking water all that evening. Anna had a little bit of pizza, but apparently the salami got to her too because she woke up at midnight crying for water. I gave her her sippy cup, which was almost full and she drank the whole thing. Poor little girl, she must have been so thirsty!

Here are some cards I made for my mom, and mother-in-law for Mother's Day. It was nice to get back into a little bit of paper crafting. I've been focusing on my house so much lately, I haven't really done much scrapbooking.

Here is my newest kitchen creation and I absolutely LOVE it!!! I know it's pretty simple and not much to it, but for some reason, it just resonates with me. It was so ridiculously cheap to make. I got the frame for 25 cents at a garage sale last summer. I painted it black. I got the decor items at Joanns and I think they were around 59 cents each. I put scrapbook paper that I had and probably paid 20 cents for the whole sheet. Put them together and what have you got? (name that song) new kitchen decor! (for only $2.25).

I love how it fills this wall here and fits perfectly.

I'm working on two other kitchen decor items to put up. I'm hoping to have them done soon!

I am also proud to announce that after a year and a half after installing our master bathroom door, we finally have a doorknob to go along with it! Yeah, we're a little slow on the uptake around here. We finally bought the doorknob over a month ago. After weeks of bugging asking Dan to put it in, he finally did!

It's funny how a doorknob can make you happy. We also finally bought trim to go around the door and hopefully will have that done by this weekend. The only downside to having a doorknob and not a hole, is that Anna can't play with it anymore. She loved to look through it while we are on the other side and then we would bend down to look at her through it. She loved it. However, her new game is Hi!/Bye. So she opens the door and excitedly says hi! Then closes the door and says bye. Only to open it again and repeat the Hi! and Bye. Tons of fun for a toddler. :)

Here is Anna's friend Mikey Creel. I watched him and his brother while their mom subbed. I thought they looked so cute sitting on the stool together, eating their grapes. Anna was busy eating, so she wouldn't smile.

Getting my craft on!

I feel like it's been waaaaaay too long since I've really done crafty stuff. Well, the last few days that has changed!

Here are some finger puppets I made for Anna. They are really simple and not too hard to make. I got the idea from a blog I follow. As soon as I saw them, I knew I wanted to make them for Anna.

Here are my finger puppets.

Here is the lady's finger puppets. The blog is www.theidearoom.blogspot.com. She is actually selling the pattern for 18 of them for only $3. I'm going to buy the pattern. I'll admit that I didn't actually really enjoy making them, but I did like the end product. The only reason why I didn't enjoy it is because I was doing it by hand and wasn't sure how big to cut the different pieces. Plus, they are small pieces that you're working with and then trying to hot glue them...but I'm glad I made them. I think they'll be good distractions during church. :) Plus, the felt is so cheap at Joanns. It's 29 cents for an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet.

This next project, I've actually had done for a while. I bought these frames at IKEA over a year ago. They actually had mirrors in the middle. I took out the mirrors and covered the frames in cloth. I took me FOREVER to find cloth for all three. I had the material on the left and then had to find material that would match it. I'm not completely satisfied with the pattern on the right, but it works for now. I couldn't decide if I wanted to put pictures or something else in the middle. There are pictures of our wedding day for now.

The wall is a little lonely. I need to find something to go above it. I have something in mind, we'll see if I can find it.

Our closet door is broken, so I can't close it. It bugs me that it's open in this picture. :)

This project includes one of my new favorite friends-oil rubbed bronze spray paint! I love this stuff. I bought this soap dispenser for 99 cents at Goodwill. It was clean on the inside, so I don't know if it had been used or not. It was gold. The paper towel holder was silver. I decided I want to try and make my kitchen look as nice as possible. I had just a plastic bottle dispenser, with the logo on it. I decided I needed to up it a notch and get something nicer. The paper towel holder didn't match the kitchen at all, so I figured black would tie in better than silver. Isn't it awesome what a little spray paint can do?

I forgot to take a before shot.

Here, Anna and daddy are playing with dominoes. She loves them! When Dan first brought them out, he would set some up, then knock them down. She thought it was an accident and kept saying uh-oh or ootsie for oopsie!

Lately, Anna has had fun putting on shoes all by herself. Her favorite combo is the boot and sandal. :)

She's got spunk and personality in her style!

Anna and the backyard

Well, I got sick last week and it was no fun. I was congested, so it made my head hurt. I feel much better now, but I still have to blow my nose all the time. I'm just waiting for it to all go away.

So onto little miss Anna. Anna loves her sunglasses. She's so funny with them. She'll put them on and then push them up on her head, like an adult and just wears them. The other morning however, she put them on and kept them on while she at her breakfast. She's just too cool...

She also LOVES hats. She has about five or so that I keep in a drawer that she can access and loves to get them out and just put them on. I love this purple one. She put in on backwards herself! She was dancing around, so the picture is a little blurry.

Here, she has on one of Dan's hats.

Anna also likes to wear our clothes. She'll see something on the floor, pick it up and say on! on!

Here she has on Dan's work sweatshirt.

Garden/Backyard Update:

Almost two week ago, on Saturday, we made an all day work outside day. We got a lot done. Dan dug out two more tree stumps. Well, one of them wasn't actually a tree stump. We always thought it was kind of weird and wondered why it was in the backyard, like someone put it there on purpose. So Dan started digging and digging and digging and still hadn't reached the bottom. Finally, after 3 feet he did! Turns out it was an old phone pole. Why someone put it there, is a mystery to us.

Dan started digging...and digging...

Dan, hard at work digging.

He finally reached the bottom, THREE feet later!

Good 'ol phone pole.

We still need to get rid of it. We filled in the hole, but it's still there.

When it was in the ground, every once in a while I would sit Anna on it and she liked to sit on it. She saw it out of the ground and I told her it fell down. So now when she sees it, she says, down...down...

We expanded our garden. Dan decided to try planting straight in the ground, without doing a raised garden bed. We only have a few plants in there so far, but they seem to be doing well. Behind this makeshift garden (we're going to get some bricks and outline it with them, so it's not all ugly with old boards and stuff), there are about 8 corn plants growing in the ground. Corn is extremely hardy and is doing great! I'll have to get a closeup of them.

We also bought some lilac bushes and planted them against the back wall. I really, really wish we had done more work on the backyard last year, so we could be enjoying it more this year. But last year during the summer, we were painting and working on the inside of our house. One thing at a time, I guess. :)

We just need to get rid of those big, ugly tree stumps! They're not helping our yard look any better. :)

I lucked out!

So I get a call this morning from the nurse at my OB/GYN and apparently I have a urinary tract infection. Since I'm pregnant though, I don't feel the symptoms. How awesome is that??? Finally, a great perk while being pregnant! :) I've never had one of these before, but I know they can be painful. She wrote me a prescription for some antibiotics and I got it filled today. I take it for a week and then it should be gone. I'm just feeling so thankful and happy that I really lucked out in this department, because this is definitely something I would not enjoy.

*I think this is the shortest post I've ever done!

It's Garden Time!

The past weekend we put in a lot of time in our garden and backyard. Our adventure started Friday when we went to Home Depot to get dirt for the garden. We needed vermiculite and for some odd reason, they had it on an extremely high shelf and needed a ladder to get it down. Well, it took about 15-20 minutes for the employee to return with the ladder. Poor Anna was getting so restless in the cart. But we got what we needed, only to find it cheaper at a nearby nursery and will end up taking it back, along with some extra compost and peat moss. Ahh, such is life.

We had our first garden last year and made a 4'x4' raised bed. Dan wanted to extend and deepen our garden, so we added 3' and made it 1' deep, rather than 6 inches. Our soil consisted of three different components that had to be mixed-vermiculite, compost and peat moss. We had to mix equal parts on a tarp and then transfer it to the garden. It was kind of hard work, but nothing we couldn't handle. :)

So far we have lettuce, strawberries, tomatoes, corn and beans. The funny thing about this lettuce, is it's from last year. We didn't even do anything this year, it just started growing! And it's doing great!

We also decided to plant some fruit trees!

Here is our peach tree...

Here is our cherry tree...

Here is a view of both of them. We had to plant them in places that would get a lot of sun, so the placement may look kind of funny. Hopefully in 10 years it will be okay.

As you can see our backyard is dirt and weeds. Last year we had a few weeds, this year we have a gazillion!!! We even got rid of a lot of them and they just keep growing. I would love to just have dirt, rather than weeds and dirt. Sad, huh. Anyone want to donate to the Phelan's backyard fund? :)

And here are some really random things we dug up while trying to dig deep holes for the trees. Our house is almost 40 years old. Who knows what is buried in our yard! We found this plastic tubing. At first we thought it might have been part of a sprinkler system, but no it was just a random piece of tubing. Then we found two large concrete rock things. They aren't rocks, but concrete. Plus a brick. Huh...I have no explanation for this. But it's a good thing we found it, so when the cherry tree's roots grow, these won't be blocking them.

Here is a stump that my man Dan dug up, by himself.

Okay, I helped him lift it out of the hole, but he did everything else himself. We were going to plant a tree here, but then changed our minds. But the stump needed to go anyways. You can see in the right corner, there is another one that needs to go to.

It was a busy Saturday, but we got a lot done. We're seriously considering buying some sod and putting in grass in a small area by the patio. We have a lot of work to do in the backyard to make it look decent. So many things to do, so little money... :)

Wall Vinyl!

It's been too long since I last blogged!!! I'm feeling much better now, the morning sickness is all gone, and so I'm starting to feel more productive and have more of a desire to get things done. Something I've been wanting to do for months is put a vinyl quote above our bed. However, I didn't know what to put and whatever it was, Dan had to be okay with it. He hates cheesy sayings or rather the cliche' ones that are popular right now. So, I finally got on the ball and found one that both of us were okay with.

This is what I got. The original saying, said Love begins in a moment, grows over time, and lasts an eternity. Well, since I had to put on all the letters individually, I got lazy and decided to omit the grows over time. I also had a cartridge that would cut out the word love and forever, so it would be one piece instead of separate letters. So I decided to do forever, instead of eternity.

It looks kind of plain the the picture, but looks better in person. I was hoping to put some decorative swirls or something with it, but haven't found a style that looks good.

I still need to adjust the "love." It was really hard to put on straight and how I wanted it. Dan says the whole thing is slightly slanted upward. But since, it was such a pain to get it centered and where I wanted it, I think I'll just leave it for now. :)

I finally put up some frames I covered in cloth, but haven't taken pictures yet of them because I need to put something in the middle of them. So hopefully, soon those will be finished. I just want our room to be complete, but I've been slacking in that area. Well, and I need help hanging stuff up and deciding where stuff should go. But when Dan gets home, I forget and he has his own stuff going on. So one day, before we move out of this house, it will be done. :)