Fingerprints on the Fridge…

Before MC and I purchased our shiny new stainless steel fridge, I asked the sales guy point blank:  Is this fridge going to show fingerprints all over it?  Because that will simply drive my brain batty…

And that sales guy looked me right in the eyes…

And lied.  LIED!  Won’t show fingerprints, my hiney!  It’s entirely possible that my refrigerator is actually a fingerprint magnet and can collect fingerprints from children who aren’t even in the same room with it!

But that doesn’t even come close to the aggravation resulting from the next problem I had with my shiny metal behemoth.  Ohhhhh, no.  Not even close.  My fridge’s next problem? 

Rust. 

{Rust. On a ‘stainless’ steel fridge.  I kid you not…}

I’m still not entirely sure how it happened, but I was now the owner of a rusty, fingerprinty, stainless steel fridge.

{People, I cannot make this stuff up...}

For about a week, I literally did not make eye contact with my fridge.  My brain simply couldn’t handle the double abomination of fingerprints and rust.  But, reluctantly I concluded that ignoring the fridge did not, in fact, take care of my rust/fingerprint problem and I would actively have to do something in order to fix it.

So I went to the place where all solutions exist: the Internets.  And the Internets gave me several different options.

Option number 1: Vinegar and salt.  I’m not sure what chemical processes are going on with vinegar and salt, but I had used it to get rust out of a shirt once, so it was my first choice.  And it failed miserably.  Undeterred, I moved on to:

Option number 2:  Lemon juice and baking soda.  When I mixed the two, they fizzed like hydrogen peroxide poured over an open wound and I was immediately impressed.  After playing with the foamy mixture for a minute, I gently rubbed it over the rust spots:

{Success!}

ACK!!! It worked!  I still can’t believe it worked, but who am I to question the knowledge of the Internets?  Instead, I will sit back and admire my now non-rusty refrigerator and pretend that it is not still covered in fingerprints.  

{Before and After}

Do you have stainless steel appliances?  What do you use to clean them off… and does it get rid of the fingerprints???

Spray Paint Makes It Better…

Ah! Sweet spray paint, is there nothing you can't fix?

And by fix, I mean cover with your spray paint goodness…

Bitty B's smoky yellow ceiling fan? Now a crisp clean white. {Thank you spray paint!}

My shiny brass fireplace surround? Hidden behind a beautiful sheen of oil rubbed bronze.  {Thank you spray paint!}  

I'm not sure what the original color on my floor vent was, but it too is covered by oil rubbed bronze. {Thank you spray paint!}

I could go on and on, but instead I will share with you the story of my front porch.  When we last saw my front porch, it was lookin’ a little sad. 

Sad and Blah.  And messy.

But I had a vision:  A vision of a {clean} bright space that would welcome instead of causing my neighbors to raise their collective eyebrows at the crazy mess that was my front porch.

I decided to tackle the table first. 

Hmm.  Due to high humidity the day I disassembled the table, I had to quickly wipe the condensation off the lens of my camera and quickly take another picture before it fogged back over.

I removed all the legs and gave them a coat of Krylon’s white primer.  Had I thought about it, I would have lightly sanded them first, but as usual I rushed straight in with the paint. 

Because I have no patience, that’s why.

I then tried to remove the glass from the tabletop.  When it was clear that the two pieces were NOT going to part easily, I decided to tape newspaper to the tabletop and just spray away. 

But before I could do that, the wind ripped my newspaper OFF the tabletop.  I briefly thought about going inside to find more, but the humidity had water-logged my brain and I started spraying away without the newspaper protecting the glass. 

I was on a roll, people.  Newspaper be darned!

Plus, I couldn’t wait to see the color I picked out for the table in all it’s spray painted glory.

So with my Krylon Satin Jade spray paint, I went to town on my primed table.  After it dried, I pieced it back together, used Windex and a glass scraper to clean the paint off the glass and reveled in my bright new front porch:

I picked Jade because it reminded me of the color of the 1950’s metal patio sets that my neighbors had when I was growing up in rural Indiana. 

Don’t know what I’m talking about?  Well, here ya go: 

{source}

{I think every elderly relative had a set of these on their porch… : ) }

My new Jade table definitely brightens up the corner of my front porch.  And a quick coat of Kryon’s white took care of the funky silver planter.  This leaves me with just one question:

What color do I paint the chairs?  ; )

Well, what do you think?

Nifty Banana Holder…

I was at a friend’s house recently and saw something that I knew I wanted.  It was… wait for it… a banana holder.  I know.  It’s the little things that make me happy. 

Now, it’s important to note that I already own a banana holder.  Years ago I got tired of the bottom of my bananas getting all brown and bruised, and I headed over to Target and bought this:

      

Way back when I bought the banana holder, it matched all the blonde wood cabinets in my house. I also had no problem letting it take up space as I had so much countertop realty that I could have parked a small VW bug on my counters.  Okay, I’m exaggerating, (just a little bit) but those countertops did seem to stretch on forever. 

Since moving to our new home in Minnesota a few years ago, my little banana holder no longer matched anything in my kitchen.  If you’ve read this post, you know how much I like things to coordinate.  And so, every time I pulled it out of the cupboard, I would glare menacingly at it while trying to figure out how to make it go with the rest of my kitchen.  Not to mention it was taking up valuable space on my much smaller countertop area.   After two years in this house, I realized my options were to either buy a new, smaller banana holder, or spray paint the one I had. 

And then I saw the coolest thing.  While at my friends house, I saw that her bananas were hanging  suspended from under her cabinets.  A quick peek confirmed that, yep, the banana hook was simply screwed into the bottom of the cupboard. 

I went home inspired, and searched my house for a little hangy hook to hang my bananas from.  Realizing I didn’t have what I needed in the house, I wrote down ‘banana hangy hook’ on my Home Depot list and then went to take a ‘before’ picture of my banana holder from Target. 

It was then that I saw that the hook on the banana holder was just screwed into the holder.  After making sure that the screw was not longer than the thickness of the bottom of the cabinet (did that make any sense?), I screwed the hook into a hole that was already in the bottom of my cabinet.

 

Please ignore the red paint smudge on the bottom edge of the cabinet.  I’ll fix it later, promise. ; )

I think the previous owners of our house must have had a whole array of things hanging from the bottom of these cabinets, based on how many holes I found.  If you don’t happen to have any handy predrilled holes in the bottom of your cabinets, it should still be pretty easy to just screw the hook in, or drill a smaller sized hole for the hook to go into.

IMPORTANT:  Before trying to drill/screw anything into the cabinets, make sure the screw is not going to go all the way through the bottom of the cabinet and make an appearance on the inside.  I will not be held responsible for pokey things sticking out of the top of the bottom shelf. ; )

I love my new banana hanger.  You don’t know how happy I am that:

1. I don’t have to look at the old mismatched banana hanger

2. I don’t have to store the banana hanger when not in use and

3.  I didn’t have to spend any money. 

Woot!  That’s a good day, people. : )

 

My Digital Frame Gets a Makeover…

Some years back, a great friend gave me an awesome gift:  A digital picture frame. 

My digital frame is like a greatest hits of my family;  it’s filled with an ever changing assortment of general  photo awesomeness.  T Bub’s baseball team winning last year’s ‘World Series’, Lovely L’s talent show performance, Bitty in her soccer uniform, dwarfed by all the other players…  

Awhile back I had moved the frame into the kitchen and although I loved it in it’s new spot, something kept bugging me.  That something was called, ‘This frame does not match the current décor in this room’. 

I tried really hard to ignore my brain’s constant attempts to make me notice the frame and FIX IT, ‘CAUSE IT’S DRIVING ME CRAZY.  And although I was on the verge of going batty from leaving the frame where it was, I couldn’t see any way to change its appearance to bring it in line with the pseudo French provincial feel going on in my kitchen.

Sometimes inspiration hits me and sometimes it’s a complete miss.  This time it hit me while I was at *drum roll, please*… The Dollar Store.  Yes, I see the mock look of shock and surprise on your face.  No, I won’t be changing the name of this blog to Kadbury Is… At The Dollar Store.  At least not any time soon.  Unless… The Dollar Store wants to sponsor my blog and then I can quit my day job.*

*I can’t actually quit my day job, since it pretty much consists of parenting. 

The Dollar Store has a whole picture frame section and right there next to the frames were mats that go in the frames.  My brain did a quick spin cycle and Bang!  What if I covered the digital frame with a mat???  I wasn’t sure what size my digital frame was, so I grabbed two sizes:  8”x10” and 4”x6”. 

Turned out I needed them both.  Since the size of the screen was smaller, I needed the 4”x6”, but the black plastic was really wide and I needed the 8x10 to cover the whole area.  I taped the 4”x6” bit onto the 8”x10” mat and was momentarily stuck again. 

How can I attach the mat to the digital frame?  My first thought after duct tape was hot glue gun, but I wasn’t thrilled with either of those options.  How about sticky Velcro?  Yep, that worked:

I stuck both side of the sticky Velcro to the digital frame, then lined up the taped-together mats to the digital frame and stuck them on.  Now that the mat was attached to the front of the digital frame, all I needed to do was find a picture frame that was more in keeping with the colors of my kitchen:

The gold picture frame is attached to the mat instead of the original back of the frame and the whole thing is held up by the stand that is on the back of the digital frame. 

 

Now the only problem I have in my kitchen is my cooking…

{Mmmm!  Apple flavored cookie blob things!}

Linked up to these funtabulous girls ~ Go check them out!

Skip To My Lou                       Tip Junkie                        The DIY Showoff                  Mad In Crafts

Sumo’s Sweet Stuff                 Sugar Bee Crafts              Making The World Cuter      

The Stories Of A 2 Z                Shabby Nest                        Tatertots and Jello

 Centsational Girl

Picture This...

There’s a walkway from the front door into the rest of my house that was just kinda blah. I put some pictures up on the main blank wall, but it still didn’t do it for me. I wanted more.

Then, while looking for ideas to work into T Bub’s room, I saw this at Thrifty Decor Chick .

I knew right where I wanted it to go. Nice!

Lemme tell you, this was my first time working with a miter box and the results were… less than spectacular. Cutting that moulding out was not an easy task. But that’s a story for another time, people.

Today I’m going to show you how I took three cabinet knobs from the Home Depot (Three knobs for three bucks. It was like shopping at the Dollar Store!) and turned them into picture hangy knob thingys. Geez, there’s gotta be a better name than that. ; )

If you have a toddler, this is where you can start singing Special Agent Oso’s ‘Three special steps’. Because it’s stuck in my head, I thought I’d share with you and now you’ll be singing it too. You’re welcome.

Step one: Turn the knob upside down and using epoxy or a glue gun, squeeze glue into the opening where the screw would go.

Step two: Place the head end of the screw in the glue. Make sure the screw is in there straight before the glue hardens.

Step three: Let dry. Now you can just screw your knob into the wall. I used the glue gun to attach the ribbon to the back of the picture frame and simply hung up the pictures.

For stability and safety when hanging bigger or heavier frames, I would hang them the traditional way first, then add the knobs and ribbon (so the frame isn't really hanging from the knobs).

How easy was that? Those knobs can be found just about anywhere, so pick out some that match your décor and go to town!

Progression of a Bathroom…

Our house was in need of some serious help when we bought it. With some love and lots of elbow grease, the Master Chef and I have turned this once abandoned (it stood empty for about two years) house into a place we’re proud to call home*.

*I have to honest here. MC's mom, dad, sister S and brother M did a ton of work in our house.

Like every other room in our house, the bathrooms were 1. wallpapered and 2. disgusting.

They were scary, nasty, does this toilet actually flush cause there’s so much built up stuff coating the inside and outside… just plain icky. Let’s start with a before picture, shall we?

I am saddened that you all won’t get a chance to see the before of the toilet. The Master Chef had to almost immediately install a new one. You know, so we could use it.

All three bathrooms had these thick ceramic towel racks and t.p. holders. They weren’t horrible, but they were pretty dated. Like the wallpaper. Nothing says late 80’s early 90’s like neon splash, baby.

And now for the new:

The wallpaper is gone and replaced by a soft sage green. I gave it a very subtle faux effect because I like the depth it creates, and it doesn’t look heavily sponged on there. I painted all the trim white (buh bye dark walnut. I banish you back to the 70’s) and MC installed a new sink and fixtures.

The bathroom light fixtures were a huge pain. They hang from the ceiling instead of being wall mounted, and I couldn’t find anything to hang in there that didn’t look like a dining room chandelier. But then, I found Sarah’s blog and discovered… Oil Rubbed Bronze. I took the brass light fixture that was hanging in the kids bathroom and went on a spray paint bonanza; it was awesome. That baby went from shiny brassy to refined oil rubbed bronze and now hangs proudly in my downstairs bathroom. It may be a tiny little half-bath, but I love it!

I'm linking up with Sarah's Before and After party!

Lampshade Redo…

This yellow lampshade in Bitty's room was starting to get on my last nerve. It just didn't go with the rest of her room.

It was like this bright glaring beacon, that every time I went in there shouted, 'HEY! LOOKIT ME! SUNSHINE YELLOW! NICE, EH? HEY! THERE'S NO OTHER YELLOW IN HERE, DIDJA NOTICE THAT? JUST ME!'

It was driving me batty, I tell ya.

I had already told you how I went looking for new lamps/lampshades and fell in love with these. But at $99 I was going to have to pass.

It was while I was at Goodwill searching out a t-shirt to glue gun a shamrock onto that I found the lamp that I had been eyeballing at Target. It was almost exactly the same but $15 cheaper.

 

Sa-weet!

 

Clutching my prize, I gleefully ran out of Goodwill and then I realized... I still have a YELLOW lampshade.

DOH!

Right next door to the Goodwill in my town is... Wait for it... The DOLLAR STORE! And they have those fake flowers like the ones on the Pottery Barn lampshade! I was almost giddy as I drove home with my Goodwill lamp and 6 bunches of Dollar Store roses.

 

Now, onto the good stuff.

The yellow lampshade was easy to disassemble; the yellow accordion bit was just glued onto the outside of the lampshade. I briefly thought of painting or cleaning it up, but my urge to start attaching the flowers was too great.

 

 

I used a small screwdriver (really small, like a glasses screwdriver) to poke a hole in the lampshade. After pulling the flower head off the stem, I poked the green part into the hole. I randomly put flowers all over until the entire lampshade was covered.

 

 

Now, this next part is optional.  Why, you may ask?  Well, you’ll only need to do this next bit if you’re as completely off-your-rocker persnickety as I am. 

 

Once the lampshade was on the lamp in Bitty’s room, those green bits on the inside of the lampshade were only visible if you were standing directly overhead of the lamp and looking down. 

 

Meaning, they were not visible at all from any place in her room.  But I knew they were there.

 

Here's what I did: I snipped all the green bits on the inside so they were as flush as I could get them with the inside of the lampshade. To keep them in, I glue gunned them. Using the closest color I could find, I painted over the glue and green things.

 

For some reason, it felt absurdly like putting calamine lotion on bug bites.

Goodwill lamp = $4.99

Dollar Store flowers = $6.00

No yellow in Bitty's room = Priceless

 

I'm linking up with Tatertots and Jello and Thrifty Décor Chick! Enjoy more fabulousness there!

Lampshade Redo…

This yellow lampshade in Bitty's room was starting to get on my last nerve. It just didn't go with the rest of her room.

It was like this bright glaring beacon, that every time I went in there shouted, 'HEY! LOOKIT ME! SUNSHINE YELLOW! NICE, EH? HEY! THERE'S NO OTHER YELLOW IN HERE, DIDJA NOTICE THAT? JUST ME!'

 

It was driving me batty, I tell ya.

I had already told you how I went looking for new lamps/lampshades and fell in love with these. But at $99 I was going to have to pass.

It was while I was at Goodwill searching out a t-shirt to glue gun a shamrock onto that I found the lamp that I had been eyeballing at Target. It was almost exactly the same but $15 cheaper.

Sa-weet!

Clutching my prize, I gleefully ran out of Goodwill and then I realized... I still have a YELLOW lampshade.

DOH!

Right next door to the Goodwill in my town is... Wait for it... The DOLLAR STORE! And they have those fake flowers like the ones on the Pottery Barn lampshade! I was almost giddy as I drove home with my Goodwill lamp and 6 bunches of Dollar Store roses.

Now, onto the good stuff.

The yellow lampshade was easy to disassemble; the yellow accordion bit was just glued onto the outside of the lampshade. I briefly thought of painting or cleaning it up, but my urge to start attaching the flowers was too great.

I used a small screwdriver (really small, like a glasses screwdriver) to poke a hole in the lampshade. After pulling the flower head off the stem, I poked the green part into the hole. I randomly put flowers all over until the entire lampshade was covered.

 

Now, this next part is optional. Why, you may ask? Well, you'll only need to do this next bit if you're as completely off- your- rocker persnickety as I am.

Once the lampshade was on the lamp in Bitty's room, those green bits on the inside of the lampshade were only visible if you were standing directly overhead of the lamp and looking down. Meaning, they were not visible at all from any place in her room.

But I knew they were there. So they had to go.

Here's what I did: I snipped all the green bits on the inside so they were as flush as I could get them with the inside of the lampshade. To keep them in, I glue gunned them. Using the closest color I could find, I painted over the glue and green things.

For some reason, it felt absurdly like putting calamine lotion on bug bites.

  

Goodwill lamp = $4.99

Dollar Store flowers = $6.00

No yellow in Bitty's room = Priceless

  

Tatertots and Jello

Designer Garden