Simply DIY 2

With about four weeks to go until we meet our little one, we finally have our nursery just about finished !  It's painted, furniture is put together, shelves are up, most of the decor is up, and the drawers are just about stocked with clothes and diapers.  Since we didn't find out the sex, it's fairly gender neutral.  I figured I can add some pops of purple if its a girl and leave it how it is if it's a boy.  Here's a little picture tour : The curtains came to me as a revelation.  I couldn't, for the life of me, settle on a pair of curtains !  I looked at IKEA, Target, Wal-Mart, and the internet and just couldn't find anything that fit the room. I was thinking of purchasing a fabric from IKEA, but fully making the curtains was a little intimidating for me (I made my bedroom curtains from scratch and I felt like it took me foooorreevverr to make them and vowed I would never do it again).  Then, one day as I wal...

Last week I was looking at my shoes in their respective shoe boxes and decided that it looked too disorderly: It was time for some reorganizing.  Some of my shoes were already in  plastic shoe boxes  from Target, so I figured I'd keep them all the same.   I went to Target and purchased a few more shoe boxes (about $2.50 each) and anxiously awaited my Christmas gift exchange with my friend Mary Rae who purchased the rest!  I really like the purple latch on the sides, but you can find simple and cheaper ones at the dollar store. Source Even though the shoe boxes are clear, I wanted a way to label the front of each box.  I'll be looking at the boxes head on and not from the side, so it makes more sense to be able to read a description of the shoe than to pull each box down until I find the one I need.   I remembered the self-stick chalkboard sheets that I used to make a  chalkboard frame  back in October and figured I could use ...

I just can't help myself - I like love to hang baskets .  I like the simple look of it.  I like how practical baskets can be.  When we first moved in to our house, I stuck this little basket on the inside of our closet to hold random things - keys, gloves, etc.  It eventually became a holding place for our my sandals and flip flops: The current basket is obviously WAY to small to hold the shoes (Did I mention I like shoes too !).  The basket has a little hoop on the top which is hanging on a picture hanger.   The shoes were too heavy and they were starting to make the basket fall to the floor. Either I get rid of the shoes, or get a larger basket - I'm sure we all know the answer to that dilemma.   So I started thinking about what I could do to hang a bigger basket - more nails, Command hooks, etc.  Then I thought about my  bathroom baskets  and this random IKEA towel rod I had lying around.  BINGO...

So I have this Love-Hate relationship with curtains.  I love how they can make a room look put together and homey, but I hate putting up the curtain rods.  There is just so much tedious measuring and what-not....but I finally found the PERFECT curtains to go into our dining room that made all that work worth it. Even though we have a pretty decent sized window in the dining room, we don't get a lot of natural light in the room because of the angle of our house, the fact that we only have one window, and our neighbor has a pretty big tree to the side.  So I didn't want real dark curtains or ones that would block the little light that we have.  Here's the dining room window before: I've been on the lookout for curtains since we painted the dining room in November.  I love my blue-gray color and wasn't sure what would look good.  I didn't buy anything until I knew exactly what I wanted.  I knew that I wanted a double rod so I could have white cur...

I loved the  pantry  update so much that I decided to do under the kitchen sink.  This was a much needed update, as the old liner was peeling and it was starting to smell a bit musty.  It needed a good cleaning out/organizing anyways. So I got my trusty Target shelf liner, pulled off the old stuff, and got to work.  Pulling off the liner was easy - I just grabbed where it was peeling and pulled at an angle.  Once it was out, I gave the bottom a good scrub down.  I just used some Green Works all-purpose cleaner to wipe it down.  Then I measured the bottom and then cut two pieces. When I got to the pipe area, I just took a knife and cut around the round part at the bottom of the pipes. The two pieces are slightly overlapped in the middle, but you can't even tell because the pattern is so tiny.  I also picked up a stackable shelf from Target to put some of the cleaning materials on.  I like to use as much vertical space as possi...

The previous owners of our house had lined all of the shelves in the house - the pantry, cabinets, drawers, and even the linen closet.  As soon as we moved, I replaced the kitchen cabinets and drawers with some plain white liner.  I didn't get around to the pantry until now.  I was tired of the "kettle-themed" paper and wanted something a little more upbeat. I searched the internet for some patterns and I found  this  one: So off to Target I went, purchased two rolls, and came back home to start my little project.  First, I took everything out of the pantry and wiped it down with some cleaner.  I made sure that any little crumbs were gone and that the shelves were clean.  It looks like there was some previous water damage- maybe that's why they were lined, but it seems to be just water spots and no deterioration of the actual shelf, so I let it go. There were directions on the rolls tho help make putting on the liner easier. ...