Archives for June 2009

Crystal Light Challenge, Day 8

9 June 2009 by

Okay. I need to ‘fess up.

I’ve had two bad nights in a row as far as sleeping goes.

So today? I was in full-on, full-out coffee and Diet Coke form. I probably should have tried to take a nap, but there wasn’t really room in the day – so I relied on caffeine to get me through.

And now? At the end of day? I am so stinkin’ thirsty. Which is a dead-giveaway that I didn’t get nearly what I needed today in terms of hydration.

I’ll be back on the wagon tomorrow – and I’m going to try the Crystal Light Peach Tea, I think.

I’m all daredevilish like that. :-)

See y’all tomorrow!

Filed Under: Rambling

So I Painted My Kitchen Cabinets, Part Two

9 June 2009 by

Before I bore you to crashing new lows with pictures of how I put up some window treatments in my kitchen without sewing a single stitch, I feel like I need to say something.

I still haven’t watched the most recent episode of The Bachelorette. I know. I KNOW.

So, since I haven’t seen it, I haven’t blogged about it. Some sweet friends spent the night with us Monday, and we ate good Mexican food and painted canvases (oh yes we did) and played spades and ate strawberry cake. It just didn’t seem right to interrupt all the fun to watchThe Bachelorette and then have to listen to Tanner P. talk about Jillian’s feet.

Any. way.

A few of y’all have emailed me with cabinet-painting questions, and considering that I have painted kitchen cabinets one whole time in my life, I don’t know that I’m your best resource. But as far as my personal experience: no, I didn’t sand the doors. Well, that’s not entirely true. I sanded one of them, hated the mess it made all over my countertops, decided that sanding would make my life miserable since it would essentially shut down my kitchen for a full day and the people around here are real funny in that they expect to eat and stuff, so I didn’t sand. I also didn’t take the doors off before I painted because the hinges had already been painted, so it wasn’t like I could restore them to their original glory. I just painted over them again. I also didn’t paint my shelves because they didn’t really need it.

Another also: since our house is about 35 years old, our cabinets are real-live wood, and I think that’s one reason the painting was pretty easy. Maybe. I don’t know. Maybe laminate is easier. I don’t know. Why am I giving advice? I’m an amateur. Don’t listen to me.

I have some issues with confidence.

After I finished painting the cabinets, I decided to recover my chairs in the fabric I showed you a couple of days ago. You know. This stuff.

So I recovered the chairs and really liked the results but felt a little sad that you couldn’t see the fabric as soon as you walked in the kitchen. It seemed like the fabric needed to be on the windows, but how in the world could I do that because I’m not a very strong seamstress, and by that I mean that while yes, I could sew on a button for you, you wouldn’t necessarily want for me to do that. Because of how horrid it would look after I was finished and all.

But.

Saturday afternoon Melanie reminded me of a post of The Nester’s where she documented how she made window treatments in her sister’s kitchen. So I re-read it. And I thought about my fabric. And I decided that if I could just figure out the right places to fold it, I could do something similar.

The Nester uses upholstery tacks when she does no-sew window treatments, and while I did have some upholstery tacks, I was working by myself and couldn’t seem to keep the fabric in the right place AND nail in the tack. So I used clear push pins like you’d use on a bulletin board (obviously I am very, very fancy). I’ll go back at some point and replace the push pins with upholstery tacks, but for now they’re fine. You can barely see them.

I made a practice treatment on our garage door – I just cut about a yard of fabric, then folded it and folded it until the part of the pattern that I wanted to show was showing AND until I figured out what length worked best on our window panes. This part of the process probably took me 30 or 45 minutes – there was lots of folding and refolding and pushpinning and whathaveyou – but once I figured out a little system, it was easy breezy from there on out (Nester’s instructions are way more specific and helpful, by the way).

And here’s the almost-final result, except for the part where I replace the push pins with upholstery tacks and make a few little daily adjustments because I am an obsessive adjuster and also quite annoying.

This is in the little office off of the kitchen, only now it’s totally even because you’d better know I spent some quality time getting everything JUST SO Sunday afternoon.

And this is in the actual kitchen, only now the one on the far right is a little bit shorter so that it matches up better with the others. The big window in the center actually has two separate window treatments – I just tried to pin them so they’d look like one big thing.

(Yes, I know the animal print on the table doesn’t match. I’ll cross that bridge in a couple of days or maybe sometime in 2012.)

Best part?

TOTALLY FREE.

Zero dollars and zero cents.

And on top of that, the kitchen feels so much warmer and cozier and betterer. I can’t even tell you how much more “finished” it feels. Makes me smile every single time I walk in there – maybe even moreso because the fabric was Aunt Roxie’s and I just know she’d be so tickled that I’m getting to enjoy it every single day.

Here’s the thing: if you can fold fabric and use a thumbtack, you can TOTALLY do this. Oh yes ma’am you can. It may not be perfect, but it’ll be bright and crisp and colorful and cheerful. And that is always delightful.

The end.

Filed Under: Rambling

Crystal Light Challenge, Day 6

9 June 2009 by

Yesterday I really tried to up my water intake. And while yes, I did have a couple of Diet Cokes and a couple of glasses of Crystal Light during the day, I only drank water from supper until I went to sleep.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Feel free to applaud.

One thing I’ve really started to wonder about myself over the last week is WHY I crave Diet Cokes like I do. Is it habit? Caffeine? Fizz? Comfort? I think the first three probably have something to do with it, but I think it’s that last thing – comfort – that really keeps me in the DC clutches.

It’s a hard habit to break, y’all.

Filed Under: Rambling

So I Painted My Kitchen Cabinets, Part One

8 June 2009 by

Every once in awhile I’ll get a big idea, and then about ten minutes into implementing said idea I’ll wonder what in the sam hill I’ve gotten myself into.

That’s pretty much exactly what happened when I started painting my kitchen cabinets.

But I have to say – now that it’s all said and done – that it really wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. It was sort of fun, actually. I think I’m just obsessive enough that I enjoy taking on a big project and then resolving over and over again that THE BIG PROJECT WILL NOT BEAT ME, OH NO IT WILL NOT. I WILL WIN.

Now before I get too far gone in this little decorating tale, I probably should explain why I decided to paint my kitchen cabinets, which led to re-working all of my accessories in my kitchen, which led to crafting some new curtains for my kitchen, which led to BIG HAPPY SMILEY JOY at the changes in our kitchen / breakfast room area.

(Sidenote: I feel like I need to tell my friend Bubba – who is a deeply gifted interior designer – that he might want to run from his computer before he sees what I have wrought.)

(Bubba, there is a lot of color on the horizon. You know how I love color. And I also know that you love me enough to forgive me of my color-related trespasses, amen.)

First of all, my kitchen cabinets looked like this before I got started.

They weren’t too bad – just outdated and pretty beaten up. Creme-colored paint on the cabinet frames and white doors. Paint rubbed off in spots. Stainless and white hardware. Very 80s. And given my love for bursts of color, the cabinets felt a little bit blah.

I mean, have you noticed my blog colors? Not exactly subtle.

So.

When we moved in this house the walls in the kitchen looked fine, but they weren’t a color I would have picked: a deep blue called Swamp Willow. However, since the paint job was pretty stinkin’ awesome, there was no way I was going to paint over it – especially since it’s one of those textured Ralph Lauren deals – until the paint started to fall off or the color blue made my eyes bleed, whichever came first.

Much to my surprise, the color has actually grown on me over the last two and a half years. I especially love the way the leaves outside my kitchen windows pop against the blue walls. And about a year ago, I told my husband that I might want to paint the kitchen cabinets a really light – but sort of smoky – green. He smiled and sighed – his usual response when I start to get the new project glaze in my eyes since new projects tend to turn me into AN OBSESSIVE FORCE THE LIKES OF WHICH YOU HAVE NEVER KNOWN.

Anyhoo, last week there were two separate things that finally prompted me to take the paint-the-kitchen-cabinets plunge.

The first one was this painting that I showed to you a few posts ago.

Blues and greens. Oh, I do love them together.

The second one was that my cousin Paige reminded me of some fabric that I got from my mama when she and Daddy moved to a new house about four years ago.


Mama had about ten yards of it, and I thought it was ever-so-kicky and fun. I didn’t know what I wanted to do with it, but I figured at some point I’d find the perfect spot for it. It belonged to my Aunt Roxie, and according to Mama, the fabric is about fifty years old. I adore it.

The painting and the fabric were just the inspiration I needed. I went to the Sherwin-Williams (I joined their Preferred Customer club and got 15% off my paint since it wasn’t on sale), decided on a color, then came home and got-to-paintin’.

Here is where I will pause and offer three cabinet painting tips that I learned during this process (or as Jillian would say: PRO-cess).

1) Spend ten more dollars and buy really good paint because it will make the job so much easier. I bought Sherwin Williams’ Pro Classic semi-gloss, and it was a DREAM to work with. Worth every penny.

2) Don’t assume that you have to run out and buy all new kitchen cabinet hardware. I used Rustoleum Hammered spray paint in brown, and it transformed my hardware for about $5.

Seriously. I started with this:

And ended with this:

FIVE DOLLARS, PEOPLE.

3) Read The Nester’s cabinet painting tutorial.

Okay – I believe I’ve rambled enough. So I will show you the shiny “new” cabinets. Just keep in mind that I’m having a devil of a time getting pictures of the cabinets where they still don’t look white – the green is pretty light, and it’s not showing up quite like it does in real life. Therefore comma some of these pictures are a little dark because I took them without a flash, oh thank you.

But nevertheless.

One unexpected bonus is that late in the afternoon the cabinets take on a completely different shade – the green darkens and starts to look just a wee bit blue-green. For whatever reason. And I do enjoy it.

By the way, there was one day last week when I decided that I was insane for painting my cabinets anything other than white or beige. But then I picked up the little man from Vacation Bible School, and he gave me two crafts he’d made.

The first thing was a bracelet, which I eventually tied to one of my cabinets as a reminder of my unexpected color confirmation:

The second thing was a cross he painted:

Blue and green definitely seemed to be the theme. So I decided that maybe I was on the right color track after all. And regardless of the color, there’s something to be said for having cabinets that are clean and fresh and crisp. It’s a welcome change of pace around here.

As soon as I can get my pictures together – and if you can muster the will to read after surviving this epistle – I’ll show y’all the curtains I “made” for our breakfast room without sewing a single stitch (thanks, Nester!).

Have a great Monday, everybody.

Filed Under: Decorating

Crystal Light Challenge, Day 5

7 June 2009 by

I probably haven’t made this clear, but I’m not just trying to cut back on Diet Coke (have I mentioned that I loooooove Diet Coke?) so that I can drink more Crystal Light. I’m cutting back on Diet Coke in the hopes that I’ll drink more water. And I have been. I’ve been drinking a good bit more water, in fact. But when I’m craving flavor beyond a wedge of lemon in my ice water, Crystal Light is a delightful little treat.

How much water would you say that y’all drink a day? And if you’re a dedicated water drinker, do you have any tips for how the rest of us can incorporate more water into our beverage routine, so to speak?

Filed Under: Rambling

Crystal Light Challenge – Day Four

4 June 2009 by

Thursday, June 4, 2009

I don’t know why, but today I’ve been craving sweets like crazy. About three different times I thought about making a pan of brownies and then eating them ALL BY MYSELF with a spoon. Straight from the pan. Do not pass go.

However, right now it’s 9:46pm, and so far I’ve managed to resist the lure of the chocolate. Surprisingly, Crystal Light is what has helped me fight the craving. Last night I made a big pitcher of Crystal Light strawberry/orange/banana before I went to bed, and it has been a lifesaver today. It tastes like a special treat when you drink it, and it’s helped me fight off the sweet cravings.

There’s been some good discussion going on today over at the BlogHer Water Way Challenge group – check it out if you get a chance!

Filed Under: Rambling
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