Workin Hard for No Money

Well...very little money at least! I decided to get off the lazy train and attempt to get my hair bow "business" back on track! Go check out my page, and like it....so I feel important and stuff!

Mah shnazzy new page on the facebookz:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/A-Pop-of-Pretty-Bowtique/630982806930368

In other news....I've almost finished painting the living room! I'm loving the colors! Pics soon!

I realize I always promise pics, and then I forget....the truth is I suck at life when it comes to technology so I have no clue how to add pics to the blog when I'm on the ipad! I will learn, I promise....right after I learn how to use my sewing machine....

Bathroom Time!

I finally finished painting the hallway and the trim in the hallway, I got one wall of photos finished, and Dave's birthday present shadow box hung on the wall (pics coming soon!) and I also repainted the walls and trim in Kenzi's room, rearranged, added, and removed some of the wall art in her room. SO, now we to start on the room I'm really excited about...the hall bathroom! 

Now, this is a home improvement on a budget (a tiiiiiight budget, y'all) so nothing spectacular will be happening, but it will be much nicer than the hot mess it is currently. (I'll take before pics, I just haven't yet!) 

Here is what's going down in there:

Wall Color: Valspar, Tranquility

Flooring: Vinyl Tiles

Mirror:

Lighting:

Shower Curtain and Hooks:

Faucet:

Accessories:

 

Well, there it is! We'll pick up towels and such from our favorite store, Tar-Jay...I'm thinking grey white? Maybe stripes...or CHEVRON! :) What about art work...any ideas?

A List

The game plan:

Our house needs a lot of love, and possibly a miracle or two. I can’t function well without detailed lists so here is what  have currently, and trust me it will change frequently!

The room list goes in order of how we plan to update:

Laundry Room:

Stack the washer and dryer

New Flooring

Paint

Add storage

Hallway:

Paint

Frame and hang Pics from Russia

Finish Shadow Box

Kenzi’s Room:

Paint

Rearrange furniture

Replace carpet

Hall Bathroom:

Paint

Replace flooring

Replace mirror

Replace light fixture

Replace faucet

New towels

New shower curtain

Boys Room:

Touch up paint

Replace carpet

Once I finish everything on this list, I’ll move on to other areas of the house, but we’re going to do these “smaller” projects first, while saving for the bigger stuff, with the grand finale being a complete bathroom remodel in our master bath. I’m so not looking forward to that!

Laundry Room Redo

So, since the last time I posted, I have been a busy little bee! (Which is my excuse for not posting!) We decided to sell the pedestals that we purchased with out washer and dryer so we could stack them to save space in our itty bitty laundry closet. 

The issue with the pedestals was the fact that we couldn't store anything in them! Our laundry closet is so small, the pedestal drawers would hit the door frame when they were opened about 2 inches, which made storing anything in them impossible. So, we figured if we stacked the washer and dryer, we could put a cabinet in our laundry closet, a shorter shelf, some storage baskets, and BOOM...storage heaven!

I didn't take a before picture...but lets just say that the laundry area has been my secret shame for a while. It was pretty gross.

Here is a photo diary of how this re-do went down!

Step One: Funky Paint! We went with the bottom one, honey dew

Step Two: Get rid of the *nasty* sheet of fake wood flooring

Step Three: Stack the washer and dryer!

Step Four: Refrain from using lots of four letter words when everything goes wrong

I don't have a picture of myself beating my head into the wall, so I will just tell the tale. We got the washer and dryer stacked, and realized that the dryer cord and the aluminum coil vent thingy (you like how techincal I'm becoming?!) were both too short. So, I had to leave my washer/dryer sitting like this all day until Dave got home from work with my cord and coil. Ok, that's handled, let's get this bad boy in the closet! Well, after an hour of snapping at each other and using all our strength to move that beast just a liiiiiiittle more so we could shut the closet doors, we finally had it in there! But...

The water wasn't turned on. Ha! (Note: When this happened in real life, there was no ha...but I did almost ugly cry...)

Scoot it back out, mess up the floor tiles doing so, fix the tiles, turn on the water, scoot it back in....VICTORY!

Aren't those cords and hoses PRETTY! Yeah I know, but I got that covered...we'll hide them!

Step Five: Make things pretty in there!

I bought a $35 closetmaid cabinet at Tar-jay, threw that together in like 30 minutes, and put it in the closet. I also picked up a couple of cute bins while I was at Target, and I found a couple cute wicker baskets at Good Will! The shelf is from Lowe's and I covered it with pretty blue Contact paper. Yay! It's done!

And that, my dears, is how you pretty up a laundry closet. Total cost:

Stacking Kit for washer/dryer: $25

New electrical cord: $7 (with hubby's discount)

Dryer vent thingy (lol): $10 (with hubby's discount)

Paint: $10

Floor tiles: $10

Metal piece that bridges hall flooring with laundry closet flooring: $8

Shelf: $10

Cabinet: $35

Baskets: $20

Grand total: $135

What happens when I run errands with my husband...

This morning I woke up with a plan. I made a list even! I needed to run to the store to pick up shelf liner, or at least peak around at what I could get without having to wait for shipping.

I came home with *two* lab mix puppies....

And no shelf liner.

Meet Molly and George.

So what's with the blog name?

Hairbows and home reno? Um. Random much? Well, yesterday I explained a little bit about part two of the blog name. Remember this post about my ugly house? Anyhoo...that takes care of the home reno part. As far as the hair bows go, that's a bit of a story so here goes.

I was a boy mom for 8 1/2 years when my husband and I decided to adopt a sweet little princess from Vladivostok, Russia. Isn't she adorable!

We chose a special needs adoption, older child adoption, and international adoption, because we wanted to give a kid a shot at a good life who otherwise might be overlooked forever. I guess I shouldn't classify our adoption as an older child adoption. McKenzie was two when we first found her, and three when she came home but due to being in an orphanage setting her whole life, and having Down syndrome, as well as a very bad heart, she is extremely tiny for her age. She just turned four last month and she wears 18-24 month size clothes. She's an incredibly awesome, incredibly inspiring little girl and I'm so honored to be her mom!

Ok, so back to the hairbow thang...well, it turns out that adopting a kiddo from Russia is crazy expensive and I needed to figure out a way to raise some money quick! Everytime I went out I would see little girls with super cute hair bows and one day I thought to myself "hmmm...I could make those and sell them!" So...I did!

I started off with simple designs and branched out from there, making bows in all colors, for all holidays, with different themes, etc. I was so fun and it kept my mind off of all the W-A-I-T-I-N-G involved in adoption, and between direct sales, custom orders, online auctions, and craft shows, I managed to raise TEN THOUSAND DOLLARS for our adoption, just from bows!

FINALLY in November of last year, my little girl came home! Due to all of her medical needs (open heart surgery, later she'll need surgery for an umbilical hernia, she'll need her jaw expanded because of dental issues, she's going to need her tonsils and adnoids removes, and every 10-15 years she's going to need pulmonary valve replacements...then there is the catch up work due to be in an institutional setting for 3 1/2 years and having DS so physical therapy, speech therapy, occupational therapy, etc are a must) I figured I should keep making bows and helping my husband bring home the bacon to get our little girl to where she needs to be!

Production has slowed down considerably come to a grinding halt. Who knew having 3 kids was so time consuming?! Geez! ;) But I'm trying to get back into the swing of things. I'm kind of re-inventing my little "business"...new name, new sales approach, all that jazz...so I'm excited to see where it goes! Right now I have a facebook page where I'll keep peeps up to date on what I'm making, where I'm selling it (online, at a craft show, etc), and I'll be hosting giveaways and offering deals every now and then for my followers. (Oooo "my followers"...that makes me found super important...and SCARY! lol)

You can find my hair bow haven here on facebook so give it a "like" and make me a happy girl! :)

And just because they're cute...here are a few more pics of my littles. <3

My adorable 3 year old, Jack

The sweetest little boy in the world, my 10 year old, Dylan

In the Beginning...

My husband I bought our house nearly five years ago when we relocated to Tennessee from Chicago where we were both born and raised. It was the first time in my life I had ever lived in a "real house" (i.e...not an apartment) because I was raised in the city, but David spent a good portion of his childhood living in a "real house" because he was raised in the suburbs, but as an adult he was an apartment dweller as well.

I say all that to say this: we had absolutely no business being homeowners. We didn't know how to landscape, how to keep plants alive, how to fix *anything*, how to paint properly...the list is endless. We are still completely clueless, but the point is that now we are at least trying to make our house look presentable!

Another fact about our house: it's ugly.

No seriously. It's so ugly. We bought it with our naive hopes of "fixing it up", because "how hard can it be" and "we watch HGTV so pssssh...we got this!"

Um. No. We did not, in fact, have this. At all.

So here we are, 5 years later, with next to nothing having been done to our house...even though we've gotten REALLY good at filling it! (I'm looking at you McKenzie, Jack, and Max the Dog!) We moved in with one son, and now we have two sons, a daughter, and a fur baby that is bigger than most of our kids!

We're finally committed to making our house a home, even if it's not the trendiest, not the prettiest, it will reflect what we love, and it will be ours, and we're excited to get started!

Enjoy the ride. :)

PS.. Below you can see the changes we've made to the exterior of the house: painting the porch and shutters white, new front door, cheap-o Walmart bricks to surround the ugly dying tree...more cheap-o Walmart edger stones surrounding the totally unlandscaped front of our house... Opinions?!