Thursday Things I Love! (Powdered Sugar)

If you remember, my husband has a corn allergy. The only powdered sugar that I could find was made of sugar and cornstarch. Thus, for a little over a year, I've been grinding sugar in a coffee grinder and mixing it with potato starch. It's a tedious process. But I did it because I truly believed that ALL powdered sugar had cornstarch in it.

I stand corrected. And I am SO happy to stand corrected.

Whole Foods, bless them, has made a powdered sugar out of cane sugar and tapioca starch! It is all organic and it is GRRRRRRRRREAT!

Bring on the Christmas sugar cookies! I'm back in the baking swing of things!

NYR #19, Cushions for Church

My mom works with the children at her church. They recently moved to a new building and my mom bought some gliders and a rocker for the nursery rooms. They were in great condition but the cushions were a bit... um... outdated?
What? You can't see them?

See? Surprisingly enough, the church wasn't going for the faded brown roses look in their new nursery.

There we go! Much better!

My mom decided to forego the back cushion on these in favor of a blue pillow. But since I didn't make that, I took it off for the pictures.

Again, this dingy pink wasn't going to work with the church's yellow and blue color scheme.

Again, much better.

Searching for a Tree Skirt

Every year at Christmastime, I search for the perfect Christmas Tree skirt. But the perfect one continues to elude me so every year we end up with the same old Christmas tablecloth bunched around the bottom of our tree. It's festive enough. But I'm looking for Fixfabulous!
This year I am starting the search early and if I can't find the right one, I think I'm going to break down and sew my own. I'm not looking for anything flashy or Santa-fied. That's why this one from xmastreeskirts4u appeals to me. But white? Can I trust my two year old to keep that clean? Can I trust myself to keep that clean?

This silver one from Frontgate is gorgeous but lacks a bit of the traditional Christmas feel. Where is the red and green guys?

Of course Pottery Barn has a beautiful option. I just love the crewel snowflakes. But $129.00?! Seriously? And this green reads a little too "apple" to me. Sigh. I'm thinking I've gotta get started on being Christmas Craftastic and make my own....

What does your Christmas tree skirt look like? Can you recommend a great source that I haven't found yet? Leave a comment and let me know!

Fix Can Fix

Although I am the one with the Design Fix blog, my husband Fix is the true fix-it man in our house. While I do light interior design fixes, he handles the hard stuff.

Like nasty rotting baseboards in our bathroom.

He ripped out the nasty old stuff, replaced it with nice new white trim and caulked it all REALLY well to prevent this wood from ending up damp and gross and mildewy too. Now our bathroom looks BEAUTIFUL!
For the record, he didn't do it on his own. Rock sat right at his side and used the screwdriver to work on the floor grate.

They shared a lot of trade secrets. Thank you Fix - I'd be lost (and mildewy) without you!

NYR #18, Lamp Makeover

The seeds of all these recent projects began so long ago. This one started at Model Home Interiors a few weeks after we moved into our house. We didn't like their color, but we loved their shape and the fact that these puppies are all made of real wood. We always planned to paint them. But two years later they weren't done.

Meanwhile, Rock knocked this one over so it had a nice crack at the bottom and a large paint gouge (can you see it?) midway up the side.

This picture better captures the before color. It was fine enough but didn't work with our room. Especially not with the new paint color. So, in the process of painting the room, we also repainted our lamps!

Again, no pictures of the painting process. But for those who care, first we repaired the bases (turns out they were both cracked). Then we applied three coats of primer with a small foam roller and a foam brush. For some reason I did the first coat extra light so it hardly counts -- normal painters could get away with two coats.
Then we bought a quart of the same Muslin White paint we used on the Living Room Art but this time used a semi-gloss finish. Turned out nice, no?

Then a few nights later my husband realized that the shade was sitting crooked on the top of one of the lamps. He tried to bend the bulb base just a bit to straighten it out. But he is a man of great strength and his gentle tug broke it right off. Then when we were trying to fix it, I dropped the base and cracked it again. Brilliant. We are waiting on replacement parts to arrive in the mail and then we'll fix the electrical work, repair the base (and repaint it?) and have her up and running. Again. Sigh.

Thursday Things I Love! (Living Room Lamps)

The Home Depot's current slogan is "More saving. More doing." I don't know about you, but this perfectly describes our HD experience as of late.

First, we found the perfect wall lamps for our bedroom at the perfect price. And then, while in the midst of painting the living room, I went to HD to pick up a few supplies and found the perfect lamps for the side tables in our living room.
Just like the white in the artwork, the white on these lamps really pops against the new paint color.

I love the gourd shape and the ribbing texture.

Even my cute handyman thought thinks they are great. Thanks once again Home Depot!

NYR #17, Painting the Living Room

When we first moved into our house, we painted Rock's room (above) and Fix's study (not pictured).

Then, we slowly moved on to the dining room...
And a focal wall in the master bedroom.

But one room, the living room, has remained unpainted. When I was spending a lot of time nursing Rock in this room, I often found myself dreaming of painting the walls and imagining which color would work the best.

But long after Rock was weaned, the walls remained white, blah and boring. Our living room was lacking life!
That is, until I found CLAPBOARD GRAY - the perfect gray that somehow conveys warmth even though it has undertones of blue and green!

So we set to work preparing the room for a paint makeover! Our walls were a mess (thanks to previous owners and my carelessness) so it took a LONG time to get them ready to paint.

This is my I've-been-prepping-the-walls-for-two-whole-days-face (y0u can also see the beginning of my baby bump). Then, with lots of help from my dad and my husband, I applied two coats of primer to really cover all the patching we had done...

Then with two coats of low-VOC Clapboard Gray paint, the living room was transformed!

The color is light so it's hard to capture on film. Or at least it's hard for an amateur photographer to capture on film...

But it makes a big difference in the space. I'll explain the broken lamp in a future post!
The new paint job really brings the room together - it even makes the penny jar look good!

It might appear 'white' to you, but if you look closely at the top of this picture you can see the difference between the walls and the ceiling.

The best part is, it's DONE! YAY! 17 NYR's down, 8 to go!
p.s. You may have noticed (or not!) that we didn't rehang the old curtains in the newly painted room. Neither of us were very crazy about them so we decided to find something new. I'll keep you posted (pun intended) on what we pick.

NYR#16, Living Room Art

Shortly after we moved into our current house, I found some artwork at TJMaxx to put behind out living room sofa.

While I loved the style of these three metal pieces, after awhile I started to wish that they were the same color.And thankfully the scrolly parts were screwed on to the square parts so I just flipped them over and took them off to give them a new look.

To do this I sanded them down...

And painted them. I have no pictures of the painting process as that happened while my camera was being repaired (again). But if you must know, I did two coats of a spray primer and then used the paint tester pictured above (only 2 FL OZ. was plenty for this project) and a sponge brush to apply two coats of paint.
I was very pleased with the results.

But it wasn't until we painted the living room (that's NYR #17 to be posted tomorrow) that they really popped.

With the busy fabric below, I think the new paint cuts down on the visual clutter and makes the artwork even better. YAY!

Thursday Things I Love! (Mr. Clean Erasers)

These things work wonders on walls to erase all the tiny hand prints, scrapes, marks and spots. Can't recommend them highly enough.