The problem: kitchen cabinet and drawer pulls are so pointy that they are constantly bruising my shins, catching on pajama pants, belt loops when leaning against the counter, giving my child “owies”… and some forty cent thrifted, mild-mannered drawer pulls are ugly brass and a wood that does not match my cabinets. Solution: Rustoleum hammered finish spraypaint. Happy metal color, textured finish hides the wood grain and makes them look like they were supposed to be this way all along.

The problem – I want to repaint every single room in my house, which has not been painted in years and years and was done poorly the last time it was given attention, but I can’t afford that much paint mixed up just to my liking. The solution: stalk Sherwin Williams’ mistints until I find something I like (you have to ask to see them at my store)… I got lucky and found the rare five gallon bucket of white interior eggshell on my first attempt. Cost of painting the bathroom, bedroom, and livingroom a fresh white? Five dollars. Time it will take to find something like the colors I want for Hazel’s room and the kitchen? Who knows.

The problem: there is never a problem when she has a brush in her hand. Painting is her bliss.

Also paint related, Sally Beauty Supply let me exchange my new bottle of Papaya Punch because it had been opened and gotten goopy somewhere along the line. I was very surprised. Not as surprised as the time Walmart allowed my grandpa to return a watermelon that he had already cut open, and a generic version of Post Toasties that he had tried and deemed “not fit to eat”… but still. Consumer win. Thanks, Sally.

Listening: Simon & Garfunkel

…but I do not always like to sew. Or, more accurately, I do not always have the time, should be doing other things instead, have a toddler who is not occupied enough to allow a hot iron anywhere in her immediate radius, etc. On those days, no-sew fabric projects are where it’s at!

$3.00 vintage folding chair – a little WD-40, some added padding, and fresh new fabric (and a fifty-cent apple tablecloth of perfection – thank you goodwill.)

Various scrap fabric, leftovers, and a vintage shirt popped into “circles” (much to Hazel’s delight) and arranged on the wall. I think I’ll be adding to this – delicious color combo!

Perfect for spraypainting. Right now I’m daydreaming about way back in November, because sweet sufferin’ Jesus, is it cold outside today. Sixteen is good for a lot of things (Molly Ringwald and Ryan Adams come to mind), but sixteen degrees? No thank you. I think it was also this cold when I wrestled two tiny tables from the dumpster by my cousin’s old apartment into my car. That was last year. I finally painted them a few weeks ago. Red and robin’s egg blue – boingboingboing!!!

(and then I pilfered some photo frames from my parents’ basement.)

Hazel’s current loves, because why not? This book – every.single.night. This album – she runs to her bedroom to start it over every time it ends. Peanut butter toast. Harvesting ornaments from the Christmas tree for her own use (I found a bunch crammed among a silo full of crayons when I cleaned up her toys last night.) Sparkly pipe cleaners. The Floppinberg family. Snowglobes – she calls them “heavies”, but it comes out “harveys”, so if she’s asking you desperately for a “harvey”, she wants a snowglobe…and she wants it to play music. She has two, and she by far prefers the Morgantown snowglobe that plays Country Roads :) And the current love of her life… the focus of her songs and daydreaming… her hopeful request when she knows she’s about to be allowed to watch a cartoon… her alpha, her omega, her one and only… the one who keeps showing up in thrifted books, the Target dollar bins, Christmas stickers at the grocery store, in the form of awesome chunky chipboard pieces in the scrapbooking aisle at Michael’s…

“Snoopy dog?? Snoopy dog?? Pease Mama, Snoopy dog?? Chayey Bwown???”

Actual progress was made today, friends! Actual physical construction progress on The Kitchen! We didn’t touch the fridge or painting or any little details, but took apart this and this and reconstructed them into the main body of the kitchen. Both from the ReStore, remember. The nightstand and the bookshelves will both be used almost completely to make the oven, sink / range, two sets of side shelves, and a backsplash topped with a wee ledge. I am so freaking excited that we can salvage almost every scrap of those white shelves and make them into something – I didn’t expect that to happen, and thought we’d just be cutting the sections of side shelf that we needed and junking the rest.

The top of the nightstand is really thick, and when the “sink” fit into the first cut attempted I think the whole Cheat River Valley could hear us yelling excitedly and taking turns giggling while we just stood and admired and “aww”ed. This is going to be one damn cute play kitchen.

A good day. Now that Walt has lent us hours and hours and hours of his serious carpentry skills (if you look at the below photos and think “wow, it looks like he did most of the work”, you’d be right), Mikey and I can tackle a bunch of the other stuff. More photos to come. More bouncing off the walls to be done.

Sometime shortly after we moved home last November I started noticing that Hazel played with her toys more if they were organized. I couldn’t just keep everything jumbled in a couple of open bins – she would ignore them unless all the blocks were together, yada yada (surely this is surprising no one – she is my child in SOME ways.) I started scouring goodwill and other places for some low shelves that were deep enough to work well for toys and found nothing. I suppose I could have built something but I would have just gotten very angry in the process, which was not a good thing to do during Shining Time up on this mountain. So after christmas when things were way on sale, I bought a set of these shelves in white and some fabric bins for them on the cheap.

I don’t even know how long I stood in target looking at them and feeling disgusted with what I was about to do, both because I was buying something I knew I could probably EVENTUALLY find used or make with some effort, AND they were boring. But whatever – I bought them.

And then I bought some spraypaint. And scrapbooking paper. And these wee adorable frames from the dollar bins and Michael’s. And ribbon. And I spent way too long obsessing over all of it. And I went home joyful about my big box-store purchases.

A week later we had an astounding thaw, and so one night after dark I put the garage door up, assembled the shelves, and started spraypainting them right at the edge of the rain pouring from the sky. The light was pitiful down there, and I didn’t even think about it, I just went to town with my petrol blue destashed from Erin, and had another new can waiting on deck. After about ten minutes of bliss I realized that some of the paint was beading up. I almost lost my mind. I left the whole thing in the garage and didn’t touch it again until… two days ago.

In the meantime I picked up a can of plastic primer for the cheap plastic-ey veneer – totally ingenious – and sanded off all of the bad paint. (Dear mouse sander, I love you forever.) Second paint attempt went on like a dream, I wrapped some ribbon around the bins, drew some labels and covered them in contact paper, then popped the (painted-to-match) mini frames on top. After the spraypaint was dry I cut the scrapbooking paper to fit the four cube openings that had backs, and after Hazel went to bed… I organized. Organizing might be more fun than spray painting. I just don’t know.

Either way – Hazel’s boring target toy shelves are no longer boring. And I only had one fit of anger.

That’s right, friends. I refinished these dressers one.year.ago. and now I’m blogging about them. I knew we’d get rid of all of our cheap Ikea furniture when we left Canada, simply to have less stuff to drag back across the border, so last summer I pilfered these from my parents (thanks, parents). I refinished them during visits home and left them in storage at their house (thanks, parents) until we moved to the 433 in November, when they brought them over to us (…thanks…parents).

I’ve been telling myself since November that eventually I’ll have a day of good light in our cornerofthehouse bedroom for photographing, but it ain’t going to happen. So, here you go:

My dresser, which is actually currently being shared with Mikey. THIS is why I keep getting rid of clothes.

Hazel’s dresser, formerly my mom’s dresser, formerly my grandma’s dresser – I had to strip a LOT of layers of paint off of this cutie. Somewhere, I can’t even begin to remember where, I blogged about my longing for these mint-green glass drawer pulls from Anthropologie to add the finishing touch to her pretty red paint. Shortly afterwards they were gifted to Hazel by sweet sweet sweet Molly. They are delicious and I love them and I love Molly.

Old news. The end.

I took the lint shaver to Andy today. She’s as smooth as new. But still… pretty dirty. I have vowed to hold off on a bath until after we go camping for a week.

After months of scouring the ReStore, every Goodwill in my path, various other thrift shops, no less than 50 yardsales and innumerable trash drivebys, I finally found the perfect piece of furniture to revamp into a tiny kitchen for Hazel’s second birthday in October. A tiny kitchen that I’m hoping will be almost entirely thrifted/repurposed/handmade, with some ideas stolen from this retro pottery barn kitchen and a few other places (I hate it when a company like pottery barn gets something so damn perfect!) I have been finding little details for months, I have fabrics picked out and felt food planned (and crocheted food hopes using this book from VD), I have a piece of furniture to make into a tiny fridge, but I’ve been missing the main component – the sink and stove. I looked at this piece at least three times before realizing how perfect it actually is. As soon as the lightbulb came on (while standing in line at the post office) I drove back to the ReStore, strapped Hazel onto my back, wrestled this puppy into the front seat of my car and brought it home. And then spread out a few of my favorite little details to photograph and feel like I’m actually accomplishing something other than spending money and shoving things in a box and daydreaming.

nightstand = $15.00 @ the Habitat for Humanity ReStore
faucet = $5.00 @ the ReStore
mixing bowls = $.50 each at Goodwill
tiny bamboo utensils = $.25 each in chinatown
tiny wooden mixing spoon = $.25 in chinatown
egg whisk = $1.00 at a yardsale
most perfect plates = $.99 each at Target (and I kind of want four more, but even though this line of picnicey stuff is still out the tiny polkadotted plates are gone in every store I check – please grab some for me if you see them!)

A week of sewing: five pairs of shorts for Hazel, a mei tai for she and Alice, and three toddler art aprons for three kids just entering toddlerdom. Well, almost three. I need about five more inches of brown thread – the third will get finished up after next week, since I’m vacating this house on Friday afternoon so Mikey can write his second comprehensive exam in peace and then take off in our car to a few-day conference.

(New year’s resolution week 20: these are upcycled from goodwill-bound pants of Maggie’s and a shirt of mine.)

I also picked up the first component of Hazel’s kitchen today. By “picked up” I mean it’s in Walt’s van, waiting for Mikey to go get it when Hazel’s carseat has been relocated to my mom’s car and there’s space in the back seat. Excitement: barely contained. Barely.

Listening: The Freight Hoppers
(I am) Reading: The Poisonwood Bible
(Hazel is) Reading: Fox in Socks (More like I’m reading it, forty times a day – when the beetles fight these battles in a bottle with their paddles and the bottle’s on a poodle and the poodle’s eating noodles… <— I think I mutter this in my sleep.)
Working on: wedding jewelry; baptism gifts

Ever found yourself standing over your trash can holding something you’re about to toss and think to yourself, “surely SOMEONE can make something out of this”?

Put it here ——————> Trash it Forward. New blog, brainchild of the Etsy forums. A little more reliable than craigslist or freecycle because things are offered up with crafters in mind, a little more fun than the landfill, and a good way to get rid of things if you’re from a small place with no established upcycling programs. It also keeps us from angering people who sell bottle caps and Altoids tins and stuff like that on Etsy by listing our trash for pennies because we really just want to give it all away.

We make trash, you pay postage for us to mail it to you, you make stuff out of it. Good, right?