Design on a Dime

I am so NOT Nate Berkus or Candice Olson, but I do watch HGTV with a lust that makes me want to buy a home and decorate it, even in this dying economy.

I have been living with garage sale furniture and hand me downs for so long and have been itching for new beautiful furniture to dwell among. Dark woods, Asian influences, Global textiles... ...yum...

But I have toddlers. TWIN toddlers. And a five year old who is careful, but not always clean.

And so we go on living with second hand things, vinyl couches that can be easily wiped, and a dining room table that already have marks and dings on it, cabinets bought at garage sales because they are big and lockable. We haven't even used coffee tables and end tables with lamps on them since the twins were born because they just knock anything to the floor and climb and jump off of them.

But when we moved into our most recent rental house, and I brought (okay, when my hubby and his burly helpers brought) the white vinyl couches into the starkly white painted living room, and set them down on the cement-grey floor, I asked my landlord if I could paint the walls some cheerful color.

He said no.

This particular landlord rocks, but he still said no.

So I made a vow. I made a vow that I would take this one room, and make a plan. A design scheme. Anything that didn't go nicely with the design scheme would move OUT of the room, and I would buy new things that ALL MATCHED NICELY together! At least for this one room.

I have been entranced lately by that aqua blue/chocolate brown design scheme you see just everywhere lately. So, even though I tend to love warm colors, I went with it.

Here are a before and after video, so you can pretend you are watching HGTV.

Okay, its not THAT good, but it ain't bad! Sorry the videos are kind of dark. We don't have a lot of light in there. The colors aren't very vibrant either, so its a bit hard to see the real difference, but you will get the idea.

(Honey, don't watch this at work, it will just embarrass me in front of your co-workers. Thanks, sweetie!) <--- Note to the Hubby.

Before the re-design:

And the "After":

Green Week

Last week was "Green Week" at Noah's school. They spent a lot of time teaching the kids about the environment, recycling, saving water and electricity, keeping our air and water clean. Most every day he came home with a new tip for us like it was some great revalation!

Noah: Mom! Mom!

Mama: What, baby?

Noah: (Imagine his arms waving emphatically!) You know those lightbulbs?? The ones that look like a spiral?? You know those??

Mama: Yeah, honey, what about them?

Noah: (really, REALLY excited!) If you get those lightbulbs? ...and you put them in your lamps? ...someone will totally give you lots and lots of MONEY!!

Mama: WHOA!! Who??

(beat)

Noah: ... i dunno.

I had to sit him down and explain again about how the electric company makes us pay money for each bit of electricity we use, and how those spiral lightbulbs use less electricity. We then went on a little hunt around the house to see which lamps had those bulbs and which didn't.

To celebrate Green Week, Noah and I made a hat out of only recyclable materials!! The base was a milk jug, and on top of that was a styrofoam mushroom holder in which we stuck pieces of soda-12-pack boxes to look like hair. No hat is complete without eyeballs, right? So we used toilet paper rolls with pieces of cookie box cardboard glued to the ends, and purple granola box cardboard for the pupils. Noah liked that we made it look like a crazy monster.

Pretty great, eh? Ironically, those materials can no longer be recycled because the hat is so cool, we can't just dump it in the bin, now.

...sigh...

Over at Mommy Blogs Toronto, they are having a challenge to get rid of all those plastic grocery bags you have stored up in your kitchen cupboards. And to stop using them completely!

We have been working on this, buying a few reusable canvas bags which we keep in the car we usually take to the grocery. But I still have a stash (smaller,but a stash nonetheless) of plastic bags we get because I sometimes take the other car, forget to bring the reusable ones into the store, or we sometimes buy more food than we have bags for.

I could use some more reuseable bags! That way I could keep some in each car, and have enough for those big loads. That is why I am including this beautiful photo of one of my lovely trash cans. At Mommy Blogs Toronto, if I take a photo that shows how I deal with those plastic shopping bags I still have, I have a chance to WIN some really funky and cool reusable bags.

Yes, I spent ten minutes colorbalancing and framing a picture of my bathroom trashcan. I even placed it in attractive lighting!

So, here is how I am working the stash down... we use them in the bathroom trash cans so emptying the trash is a little neater and less yucky!

Keep your fingers crossed for me to win some new bags, courtesy of the lovely ladies at Green Mom Finds.

And The Winners Are...

What a fun bloggy giveaway that was!

I tell ya, after just starting to make jewelry, its worth it to have a giveaway just so you can be swamped with compliments about how lovely your work is and how talented you are! I may just keep this up every few months just to keep my spirits high!!

But who won, you ask??

The winners were chosen by the number generator at random.org. And our first winner was #68, Sara at Be Thrifty Like Us, who has a wonderful blog dedicated to helping you save money. She shares tips on being frugal and spending money wisely. Its also a good place to learn about sales and great deals on shopping. Sara had first pick and chose the brown/silver/mustard colored earrings.

Our second winner was #139, Heather, over at a sweet little blog dedicated to her daughter, Eliza Valentine. Perfect for this time of year, right? Apparently, the happy couple found out they were pregnant on Valentine's Day (so sweet!) and decided to name their child after the day. Heather was really happy to get the burgundy and black earrings, which were the ones she was hoping for!

So everyone is happy!

I am happy too! Over on the blog, Mommy Brain, I won a copy of the book, "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" by Alexander McCall Smith, a highly praised book about a woman detective living in Botswana.

And I also won a another great looking book, the Toddler's Busy Book, with 365 activities for one-and-a-half to three-year-olds using things found around the home! This should be a boon for me, because the twins need more stimulating play activities and sometimes I am just stumped, and find myself doing the same activities over and over. This giveaway was from Melissa over at Organized Chaos. She is a SAHM living in Canada currently studying to be a Post Partum Doula.

If you are looking to blow a little MORE time reading blogs, go check these fine ladies out! And be back in about 3 months for the spring Bloggy Giveaway Carnival!

Did I Mention, "Thank God for Day Camp?"

Thank God for day camp.

I love my son, but thank God for day camp!

Noah has been home since before Christmas for winter break. Hanging out with Noah and doing five-year-old stuff is great. Hanging around with twin toddlers and doing toddler stuff is great. Hanging around with all THREE, who want to do different types of things than each other, especially when the latter wants to destroy whatever the former is doing and both need to stay on opposite sides of the baby gate to keep tantrums and toys pelted head-ward to a minimum, and especially when both said age groups need to be with their Mama at all times or screaming ensues…

That’s kinda hard.

So, thank God for day camp.

Noah is off to winter day camp starting Monday morning, along with his best friend Cooper. There will be bowling and crafts and sack lunches. And I will go back to caring for one age group during the day…

…sigh…

But we have been keeping busy, building Rube Goldberg machines when Daddy is home to help, having scavenger hunts, decorating cookies and practicing our reading. Okay, his reading. I hardly ever read.

I could use some practice…

One of the fun projects we did is candle making! We gave Noah a chemistry set for Christmas and one of the projects was how to make a candle.

He LOVED it!


Daddy did the set up, cutting off soda can tops and melting wax on the stove. Noah did the dipping back and forth between the hot wax and the cold water.

At one point, we thought it might be safer to work with the hot wax away from the stove, on the dining room table.

We were wrong.

Do you know how fast candle wax turns hard when it hits a cold, cold floor? It's surprisingly fast!

But we put our brand new Christmas gift cards to good use, scraping all that wax up so we could re-melt it again.

You know... back at the dangerous stove.

The finished product didn’t look much like the candles you see in the store, or the one they showed in the instruction booklet. It looked more like a pile of pink poo.

But it worked!

And Noah was very proud of it.

He got to do the inaugural lighting. After all his practice with 36 Hanukkah candles, he knew what he was doing… he even started saying, “Baruch Atah Adonai…”

He was very proud.

So proud that he blew it out and lit it about 37 more times.

It was a good winter break. I miss having him around sometimes. But after the constant refrain of “What can I do next??” and the babies screaming bloody murder wondering when THEY get Mommy next, I am looking forward to day camp.

Thank God for day camp!