master bedroom ~ room reveal

Try not to die from the shock of it… I finally finished and photographed my master bedroom redo for you all…

Here is the desk / crafting space…

   

I got that wood crate with the tiny slots at a thrift store for about $5.  I finally found enough little supplies to fill it up!

   

Above I used jars for normal supplies like business cards (I rarely need to get at them) and rubber bands.  I had a lot of jars going on so (above right) I painted a couple white to break up the glass, and put pencils, stamps and erasers in them.  I also used an old folding wood ruler to stick my bills and small papers in.

I used a wood $40 desktop from Ikea which I stained and waxed, and $5 filing cabinets from state surplus as the desk towers; I added a coat of white primer and white gloss spray paint..  The schoolroom chair was also $1 at our first trip to state surplus.

    

To the side of the desk is a corner with a pretty dress form, a vintage ironing board I got for $5 at a yard sale I use as sewing machine and iron storage, and a neat old basket filled with my fabrics for projects to come.  I used the banner I made for my booth at the Dickens Fair to clip memories up on the wall…

    

That brings us around to the nightstands and bed…

         

I got the (above left) media cart for $5 at a yard sale.  The one on the right came from a local lady that sells antiques from her barn; I added a coat of white spray paint.  I made the silhouettes (middle) a while back, and recently painted their frames and hung them above the bed to help balance out the off-centered placement of the bed in front of the window.  I love this little spot now.

The dressers are crammed on the other side of the room…

 

I like this collection of things I love… cool vintage cameras and some of my photos, jars, I <3 globes / want to travel, there’s my favorite shot of my little ones, some vintage fabric and a fish bowl full of postcards from our family trips.

     

Above is the fish my grandma got me that was “so ugly she knew I would like it” when I was a teenager.  Still true today, that guy always finds a spot in my world!

Then we have the wood wall that I painted…

I primed the wall with oil based primer, since it had a semi-gloss finish on it.  Then I painted each board a different color, using interior latex sample jars picked out on a whim.  Then I used a brown glaze.  Glaze is a product that you wipe on, allow to get tacky (couple minutes) and then wipe off, allowing however much pigment you want to stay on the wall.  I did a board at a time, ragging it on, and then ragging it off, then going to the next board.

Then I stained some pre-cut shelving from Home Depot, and put up my hardware store special shelves.  The shelving was inspired by AshleyAnne’s. 

Some thrifted and yard-sale goodies here… an old red phone from a yard sale, nick-nacks that hubby gave me before we were married, his dad’s marble collection from when he was a boy, and some neat thrifted and gifted tins.

The photos in those jars are my babies; Mark (at 4 mos.) on left and Susie (at 7 mos.) on the right.

The above plant is fake from Ikea… the ONLY fake plants I have found that I like.  They have a couple other versions you can see in this post.

     

Above right is a trunk purchased from a craft store.  It had a dark finish, I added one coat of Annie Sloan’s Chalk Paint, sanded a little, and wiped on a coat of clear was.  Just wanted to show you the one-coat goodness!  =)

Lastly, my little gallery wall…

I made this with a free map download online and used Picnik to add the text…

This is the pin that inspired it (a really neat hand painted version I didn’t have the patience for).  I printed this right off my inkjet printer – I did that for the art clipped inside one of my wall crates at the top of this post, too… it really does turn out pretty good. 

 

I am so excited to have a room that is actually finished!  Many of you who know me know that I rarely finish a room completely before I move onto some other space or random project!  Now my room is the first thing I clean, so that I always have that “sanctuary” to go back to throughout the day. 

Gotta go do chores and errands!  Godbless!

critters

last night our roommate and I had to leave for Bible class before Ty got home from work.  When we got home from class at 9:30 pm, the girls all came running out and exclaimed that Ty got them a surprise and it was “so awesome”.  We were already scared of what it may be, and then they added, “but you have to be careful – they have rabies.”  Excellent.

It was these little guys…

Baby squirrels; none of which appeared to have rabies.  Ty said they fell out of a tree he had cut down at work, and their mom “died”, their dad “abandoned them” and one of their siblings met an untimely death by one of his co-workers.  I am skeptical of the first two scenarios, but glad these two didn’t meet the ill fate of their sibling.  Still, I was not excited to care for these fellas at this time in my crazy life!  Looking online they didn’t seem to be in dehydrated condition yet.  We gave them some water.  There were many pictures out there of baby squirrels fed kitten or puppy formula (widely available) vs. baby squirrels fed the not-widely-available stuff they actually need… the difference was enough to load them up this morning and take them to someone qualified and equipped to ensure their survival.

Marilyn got to help me take them to their new friends…

After we took the critters in, we went through their brief nature walk and learned about habitat and what wild animals need to survive and I explained that they needed to live in the wild and PAWS would help them get healthy so they could go back to their natural habitat.

 

Oh, and did I mention the squirrels were loaded with fleas?  Yeah, I couldn’t stop itching last night after we rigged up a Ziploc bag full of warm water to warm them up and then situated them safely in the chicken coop under a heat lamp (protected from the chickens).  I had to put my clothes straight in the washer and get in the shower and wash the creepy crawlies off me!  Sick! 

So the little fellas are on their way to rehabilitation.  We went to this PAWS location in Lynwood which has a wildlife center.  The girls are excited because they will send us a postcard letting us know the outcome of our little friends.  Since they were healthy, we hope to get a postcard stating they were successfully relocated into the wild!

 

Tangent: This all reminds me of my dad bringing home a baby raccoon when I was little.  My mom and I had to feed it and when it eventually seemed to want to kill us, we finally told him he had to feed it himself or we were giving it to someone who knew what to do with it.  At that time there was a little rescue facility in our hometown, which I am sure he liked better than we skittish people who didn’t know what we were doing.  Though my dad did have a pet adult raccoon when he was young.

What kinds of wild critters have y’all raised or rescued?

Resurrection Day

Well, this year I meant to stop calling it Easter and start calling it Resurrection Day, but I failed.  I did a lot of explaining to the kids what Resurrection Day is all about.  We made nests with eggs one day and I kept trying to trick them and tell them we made nests for Easter, and they would correct me that Easter was about Jesus rising from the tomb, but that nests were fun for springtime.  But the “Resurrection Day” switch did not happen this year. 

Well egg hunts are fun for spring too!  One year we did it in the snow (can’t find a post on that – I guess it was before I had this blog!).  Last year it was in our yard.  This year it was Grandma Debbie’s woods.  That was highly inconvenient for my photography, I might add… I had the telephoto lens on and ready to go, and then went outside and realized it was in the tiny little patch of  woods.  So not only could I not open up my aperture as much as my 35mm, but I also couldn’t zoom out far enough at times in the cramped woods.  Lesson learned: research the egg hunting environment and prepare accordingly before it is too late.

My camera issues certainly didn’t stop the kids from having loads of fun…

 

Oh yeah, and the sunlight wasn’t the “golden hour” I had envisioned.  The sun hadn’t quite set yet and the direct sunlight was super harsh, as seen above where half of Susie is lost! 

Mark and miss Morgan took off down a steep bank I wasn’t about to traverse in my dress and flip flops, so I followed Susie the other way.  She and her helper photographer found one egg in a tough hiding spot…

I was a good mom and helped her after snapping a few more photos of her struggling.

She kept right at it, finding more eggs others had rushed by…

Susie hunted until she was sure they were all found and then emerged from the woods victorious, purse full of goodies held proud.  Lucky we had that purse in the car; I always forget to bring baskets!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Grandma Debbie and my sister in law Shelby always have creative goodies inside their eggs.  From coins to candy to little oranges!  At our egg hunts in the snow at Grandma Sue’s we have always had some small toys in the eggs.  I love these ideas because I don’t love when my kids are on sugar highs!

Did you notice Susie’s egg hunting attire included these?

They were a gift from Leah, and I have been saving them until she fits them this summer when they won’t get ruined by our rainy and muddy weather.  They still don’t completely fit but they were a fun addition to her Resurrection Day outfit.  All the teenage girls at church were jealous!  =)

After a lovely meal and the egg hunt, the FIL (father in law) made us some excellent German Pancakes…

 

He sliced them up like pie and we added Bavarian Cream, strawberries and whipped cream… oh man!   I wolfed it down too fast to get a picture.

On the way home, we topped off the festivities with a random stop to take a picture with Tow Mater…

He was parked at a local tavern, and we had to go and check him out again.  I still don’t know if Mark believes this Mater is real.  We had to look inside and confirm that he does indeed have a steering wheel and a real human does have to drive him.  It’s a treat to have this work of art in our small town!

So is anyone else trying to call it Resurrection Day?  It’s kind of back to the whole “Happy Holidays” vs. “Merry Christmas” issue, but for me, it is silly to call it Easter (after a pagan God) which induces imagery of candy, chicks, eggs and passed out sugared up kids… at least for me it does.  Why not call it what it is supposed to be?  A day or rejoicing over the RESURRECTION of our Lord and Savior.  Because without that resurrection, He would NOT be my Lord and Savior.  He would be just like all the other religious leaders and teachers through time who have brought teaching for a time and then died.  Jesus died, yes, to sacrifice His perfect life to pay for our wretched ones, then rose from the tomb!  He is alive and will be active in your life, saving you from destruction, if you just “…declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord,” and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”  Romans 10:9.

Godbless! 

just a quick hello

Sunday and yesterday  were so sunny, we were out getting our vitamin D several times.  While we played outside I remarkably remembered to grab my camera!  Here is one of the cute shots I captured of Susie…

I love that boots-perpetually-on-the-wrong-feet-girl!  With 5 kids under 9 and a teenager in the house, getting outside is such a necessary thing for sanity.  I bet moms and dads in other parts of the country where weather is always mild don’t even realize that.  In the Pacific Northwest, we do. 

Have you guys heard of Picnik?  Picnik is an online photo editing website which is offered free until April 19th, when it is officially handed over to Google, the new owners.  I don’t know if it will still be free then.  But it has allowed me to be able to make minor edits and add text to photos while I am using a borrowed computer with no Photoshop.  But I still violently miss Photoshop – it is abundantly more versatile and specific.  But I will say that my shots have gotten much better SOOC (straight-out-of-camera) by necessity during this time!!  

Anyway, I used Picnik to create the above photo with the “60’s” effect and added some text. 

Then I created this cropped version and added the effect called “lomo-ish”…

 

Some people are picky about coloring in photos being realistic all the time.  This “lomo” filter is named for the images created by a camera made by a certain company, named LOMO.  The camera created images having this feel which we now consider sort of retro or vintage.  This effect is very vibrant and obviously Susie’s hair is not dyed orange in real life, but it is a fun style to be creative with.  I like that it captures the sunny feel of the day.  You can read about what “lomo” is here on wiki, and there is a link to a gallery of lomo photos at the bottom. 

Today… back to the rain.  I hear we are having the 3rd rainiest spring ever recorded in the area.  I am going to have to look at this photo every day to cheer me up! 

 

Oh yeah, I have no WIWW tomorrow because I am so lame, I wore all repeat outfits this past week.  And I mean all repeat outfits that I have shared with you since I started WIWW several weeks ago – I told you it was lame.  Oh well, back on the wagon next week!

I’ll try to pop in tomorrow with something else!

 

Godbless!