Play Time

This arctic winter weather is making us all a bit stir crazy. When I was asked last week to lend a creative hand to a project, I jumped at the opportunity. 

The Second Thought is a thrift store operated by Heritage Christian Services in East Rochester. Their profits go toward their mission efforts in Guatemala. When I need a break at work, I take a quick stroll downstairs to see what is new in the store. They have wonderful bargains and each day offers new treasures. Their prices are reasonable and I have purchased more than a few furniture items to rehab over the last year. On more than one occasion I have begged the manager to hire me to be the store's repurposer and bring in higher sales. Oh what fun that would be!!

Well last Friday she asked me to take this table home and work some magic. She offered no deadline and no parameters. Just make it pretty and bring it back. Anything I want??? Ohhh, this is gonna be fun!It was in rough shape for sure. I actually think it may have been a handmade table. I have since learned more about it's history. It was purchased at a garage sale in the early 70's and after a little one had two stitches-causing encounters with it the family relegated it to the attic for 20 years. 

 

I immediately had ideas swirling in my head for the flat surface. I had been wanting to try my hand at some French Typography and this table was the perfect piece to experiment on. It was on the store floor for $5 so I figured it could only get better.  First I sanded down the top to remove the finish and get a smooth surface to work on. Then I used a graphic from The Graphic Fairy. She has great tutorials on her site for transferring the graphics. I went with enlarging the image, printing it on copy paper and using graphite tracing paper. It took a bit of time but was not difficult. I was actually very impressed with how well the graphite paper worked. It left a sharp image behind that I then painted with some acrylic paint from Martha Stewart. Once the paint was dry I sanded it back a bit so it didn't look so freshly painted. Then I put two coats of Minwax's Antique Walnut Polyshades followed by two coats of paste wax. The rest of the table got a coat of Annie Sloan Old White paint, some distressing and a treatment of clear and dark wax. All the supplies I used were things I had on hand except for the graphite paper which was only a few dollars at Michaels.

Check her out now...

This was so fun to work on and Anna was so excited to see it brought back to life! It now has a $50 price tag and is waiting to go to a new home to enjoy for many more years. Let's just hope it won't be causing anyone any stitches in its future. I was tempted to buy it myself, it is the perfect size for our small living room. I hope it brings in a few more dollars for a good cause.

Cabin Bedroom Make Over

As promised, I am back today with some pictures of Josh's room. The quilt that I bought has great colors in it and reminded me of a cabin. As soon as I saw the quilt my mind went to some great Pinterest posts on creating a wood wall. I knew Josh would totally go for a cabin like feel in his room. I wish we had remembered to take before pictures but this is as close as it gets.

The room was painted white and there wasn't much interesting going on in there. Add to that the general messiness that is normal for a 17 year old young man and the before picture probably would have been hideous. I knew a tan color was the ticket and after looking at gads of paint samples I ended up with the same color we painted our living room, Bennington Gray by Benjamin Moore in a satin finish. Greg painted 2 coats on the walls. It already looked so much better and we hadn't even gotten to the good stuff yet.

The local paint store has a back section of the store filled with mis-tints and discontinued paints and stains. I picked up several different colors of stain for $1 a can. I spent one evening staining the boards a variety of colors in preparation to do the wall. 

Here is Kaleb helping to put the wall up. He did most of the cutting on the chop saw too. Man training as Greg calls it.

We started at the top of the wall so we would be sure to have a full board along the top and then worked our way down. The boards were originally 8' long and we cut them down to various lengths to give it a random look.A nail gun definitely made this job easier. As it was this wall took about 4-5 hours to complete, I can only imagine how long it would take if we had to nail them in by hand.

We all stood back and marveled at the final look. Then we patted each other on the backs, lol.

I took the blinds down and gave them a good cleaning as well as the windows. The brown valances still worked so they went back up. The dresser was put into place. Notice the lamp, it was a woodshop project Josh did 2 years ago and fits nicely I think.

We thought we would let Josh pick out some wall art or decorations so the room still has a bit to go.

What do you think?? Josh was surprised when he got home and I think he likes it. It was a lot to absorb after a 7 hour car ride home.

Since this isn't our house I was a bit concerned about doing this wall but it can be a) removed or b) painted over if the next folks don't like it.

I am reminded that a little paint can change the whole look of a space. Next is Kaleb's room. We are scouring Pinterest for inspiration. 

Singing the Blues...

Yesterday Josh returned home after a month long stay at Jon and Gail’s place in Massachusetts. Jon offered Josh a job working with him in his flooring business. Josh is no stranger to long summer trips away from home and now that he is 17 he has dreams of buying himself a truck some day. He jumped at the chance to help Jon and put some money into savings. The last month flew by and we are glad he is home again. Face time on the iPods every few days made him feel not-so-absent from us.  He worked hard and learned a lot, got to go to Fenway to see the Red Sox play (and win!), went kayaking and so much more. We are grateful he had the opportunity. And more than a little jealous that he made it to Fenway before the rest of us.

Anyway, last week while browsing TJ Maxx I spotted a quilt that I thought would be great in Josh’s room; it was full of rustic colored stripes. That quilt set an entire room remodel into motion. Tell me I am not the only one that does crazy things like that?! The room was begging for something and the quilt was just the catalyst to make it happen. Having a deadline helped too. Greg, Kaleb and I worked hard for 5 days to pull it all together before Josh came home. I will post pictures tomorrow of how it all turned out.

One big part of the remodel was a dresser make over. I purchased this dresser a couple of months ago at a thrift store for $50. As you can see by the photo, it sat so long it became another work surface in the garage.

The dresser is made of pine and although it looked a little dated, it was in great shape.  It had signs of a quality piece… drawer dusters, dovetail joints and wheels hidden underneath for easier moving. The brass acorn shaped pulls were cool but I knew I wouldn’t be keeping them on this piece. It sat in the garage for 2 months because I wasn’t sure what direction to go with it in terms of paint color.  Once we decided to remodel Josh’s room, I used the quilt to dictate my color choice…Annie Sloan’s Napoleonic Blue.

Now she is singing the blues, but in a good way.

I knew this dresser had potential but it turned out better than I had hoped.

Because of the pine and possible bleed through with the knotty areas, the whole dresser got a coat of Zinsser shellac. I also gave the insides of the drawers a coating of shellac just to freshen things up. The dresser then got 2 coats of Annie Sloan’s Napoleonic Blue chalk paint. After a coat of clear wax I distressed the piece and then did a final coat of dark wax. Greg drilled holes in the drawers to accommodate the new nickel colored bin pulls I bought.

Things I learned:

-Shellac inside the drawers is a good thing and I will probably do that again on other projects

-I {heart} bin pulls

-I now know how the Karate Kid felt doing all that waxing, lol. I got some blisters and sore arms from this project.

-dark wax is a lot less scary over dark paint

The dresser looks great in Josh’s room but I did give him the option of going back to his old dresser if he wanted. I think the blue one is staying.

Cereal Taste Test 2013

I seriously don't know where the year went since our last post. Much has certainly transpired. I guess we were so busy living the craziness that we didn't have time to blog about it. Perhaps some day we will blog about moving, selling our house, resigning jobs, starting in new schools and jobs and various other "are you crazy?" events that we have experienced lately. Honestly, it is all too overwhelming to think about, let alone blog about. So, for now just know we are well. Greg is once again away for school, his last session...praise the Lord!
The boys and I sat down for a cereal taste test and got a laugh when we realized that was the theme of our last post. Must be the time of year companies release new cereals, who knew?! And it means January must be a really slow month with not much to do, lol.
Companies usually make great coupons available when new products are released and this time was no exception. All the General Mills cereals we tested were free after sale and coupon. The Kellogg's were between .60-1.00 a box.
Because inquiring taste buds want to know, here are the results from our new cereal taste test...again we rated them on a scale of 1-10, 10 being best.

Scooby Doo scored 4, 5, 9

Cinnamon Jacks scored 6, 7, 7

Mini Wheats Crunch scored 4, 5, 6

Fiber One Chocolate scored 6, 9, 9

Honey Nut Cheerios Medley scored 7, 7, 9

Peanut Butter Toast Crunch scored 7, 7, 9

Fiber One wins this round. To be fair, I am not really a big cereal fan. The mood has to strike just right for me to eat cereal but the boys practically live on the stuff so they balance me out. My personal fav was the new Honey Nut Cheerios but you can tell by the scores that none of them was a complete bust. That is a good thing since we have a big stash of free/cheap cereal that will be getting us through the winter.

Now that your life is complete with the aforementioned information, we promise to post again before the next release of new cereals hits the store shelves.

Mmmm....Cereal

After more than 6 months of silence here on the family blog, this will seem like an odd post but we have to start somewhere. I hope to catch you up but I have learned to not make promises I may not be able to keep.

One of the things keeping me busy is couponing and trying to do magic with the family food budget. It is a game to see how many food/household/cleaning/toiletry items I can get for the least amount of money out of pocket. Today was a good day at the grocery store. Here is a photo of some of the things we purchased.

Yes, those are 20 boxes of cereal. On http://www.coupons.com/  there are several .75 coupons for new cereals from General Mills. They happen to be on sale this week at Tops for 2.50 a box so after doubling the coupons, they are only $1 a box. That is a stock up price in our house since the 3 guys are rather addicted to cereal. Tops also had 8oz POM juice for $1 a bottle, free after $1 coupons in today's paper (as well as some a few weeks ago and some on-line). I also purchased 14 Hot Pockets Snackers, .50 each (free after $1/2 internet printable coupons) and 4 yogurt packs for lunches.

Total retail of my shopping trip today $142.60 (gulp!!)

Total paid $24.60

83% savings 

I also earned another .40/per gallon off our gas by using so many coupons. We are up to $1.10 off a gallon so far.

I average between 50%-65% off most trips so this was indeed a good day.

Greg left today for another round of classes in Charlotte so the boys and I had a taste test of the 3 new cereals by GM. 

On a scale of 1-10...

Frosted Toast Crunch scored a 5, 7, 7

Dulce de Leche Cheerios scored a 6, 5, 5

Mulitgrain Cheerios with Peanut Butter scored all 8's!

None of them horrible, which is good since we have several boxes of each, lol. The Multigrain Cheerios with PB was by far the favorite. Not a strong PB taste and a nice crunch.

With a new year ahead of us, it is a good time to set some savings goals. I will be trying to tighten our food budget by another $25-$50 a week in the months ahead. I think I can...

Mark the Calendar!

I am posting 2 days in a row! My dad would always say "mark the calendar" whenever we did something remarkable. Sadly, it was usually something like taking out the trash without reminders, lol.

Yesterday I told you about my little shopping obsession. I am not sure you can call it "shopping" if I don't spend money, or very little money. Not only am I saving lots of money and filling up the pantry but there is plenty of man training going on too. The boys are helping me clip and organize my coupons and I take them along occasionally so they can see the pay-off. They have become tough critics lately. If I spend more than $5 out of pocket they call me a slacker!

If you know anything at all about Greg and the boys, then you know they LOVE cereal. We go through some serious cereal and at $4-$5 a box, it could quickly put us in the poor house. When I find a good deal I stock up. This is part of our stash at the moment....

Yep, 30 boxes! None more than $1/box. I give it a month, maybe less, before it is all eaten.

This basket of snacks was completely free. Somehow they taste better than usual ;).

Over the last month I have stocked up a years worth of dish washer detergent, loads of body wash, deodorant, toothpaste and shampoo. Most of it free. You can't be brand picky if you want the best deals. Lucky for me, Greg and the boys eat or use just about anything.

This is my freebie basket I told you about. It is time to empty it out so I can start again.

It is a bit time consuming but so worth it. The lessons the boys are learning are priceless. Kaleb asked me the other day why I give stuff away rather than sell it to make money. We had a great conversation about using our gifts/talents/resources to bless others. We have taught them to tithe but giving goes beyond that. And giving isn't just about $.

We have gotten some good laughs from talking about the trunk of treasures I will gather for them when they go off to college. I hope I am that mom that other boys in the dorm love because of all the cool care packages.

Their only complaint is that they can't score these kinds of deals at Dick's or Gander Mountain.

Until next time...

Best of Intentions

I wish there was a direct line from my mind to this blog! I have "written" some pretty incredible stuff these last two months, too bad it never materialized so you could read it! I would tell you I am getting to it but then I would just be heaping guilt onto myself every time I think about what I didn't do.

So, here are some random things from our house...

**Greg has come and gone to session #2 of doctoral work in Charlotte. A trip to the ER (while out of town) turned up a very large, impassible kidney stone. He has now had 2 "surgical" procedures and has one more to go. He is a real trooper!

**Josh is anxiously waiting to find out if he will be accepted to the Student Conservation Association for this coming summer. If he is, he will be gone for a month long trip to who knows where, doing who knows what with who knows who. We're still thinking it's a good thing.

**Kaleb is now a hockey player. YIKES! I never thought I would see that day. He will be playing on the school's modified team and because ice time is so precious around these parts his practices won't start until mid March and games will be April-June. You know what that means? I get to freeze my butt off even in the summer, lol!

**My job is going well, but with a new governor who know if I will have a job for long. I am all for cutting spending, reducing our governmental overhead, balancing our state budget, cutting waste. I just hope I am not the "waste".

**Watching the news and reading the papers makes me depressed. Gas is going up, wars are breaking out everywhere, people are out of work, things cost more but incomes are shrinking. What is a girl to do? Especially when so much of it seems beyond my control. Well, pray for one. Second...coupon. I have become a bit obsessive of late with shopping sales, clipping coupons, looking for ways to save. I am all about free these days... free shampoo, free toothpaste, free food. This is one thing you may hear more about from me. If I can't keep the prices from rising and I can't make my income go up, then I will work the system to squeeze out what I can. The cool thing is that I have gotten so many free, or nearly free, items lately that I am giving the excess to others. I have a freebie basket on the counter and when it gets full it goes with me to work to share with my co-workers or the food pantry at church. Maybe someone else will be less crunched as a result. There are a few blogs that post great information on making the most of sales, check them out if you'd like.

http://www.commonsensewithmoney.com/

http://moneysavingmom.com/

http://www.couponsforyourfamily.com/

http://www.givemeneither.com/

**The dog is still a pain

**I am sick, no, make that SICK of winter! Greg and the boys do not share my sentiment.

**I miss my old friends more that anyone will ever know. There is a part of me that feels dead and I know it is due to the lack of girl time. That makes me so sad.

**Our oven is messed up so I can't even make cookies to feed my depression, lol.

**God is still God and He is still good!

That's all for now, the boys and I have gotta run to church.