Playroom Painting Progress

I've been busy at work painting the playroom. I spent a weekend taping and trimming at night, then rolled one night a few days later after Little One went to bed. When Hubby and I were fixing up our previous house, we had a painting system down pat. I trimmed and he came behind me and rolled. We would crank up the music and chat for hours while we worked. It is such a sweet memory, and I am really missing my painting partner while working on the playroom. But, dissertations don't write themselves, so my man was in the office slaving away on his PhD. Proud of him and can't wait until the spring when he's done and we can paint together again.

Here's a little phone picture preview...

Left: Picked out the colors! Right: Taping off the trim + big mess. :)

All trimmed and ready to roll! 

I still need to touch up the blue (and take pictures!), then this weekend we're going to tape off the stripes for the accent wall together. My brain explodes at the thought of doing that by myself. Let's just say, it would look awful if I tried to figure out the stripes without my brain husband. Then, all I'll have left is painting the stripes! Exciting times for our playroom walls! :)

Southwestern Chicken Pie

My Instagram photo :)

(Photo from Pillsbury website.)

I've been totally bored with our normal menu. So, off to search Pinterest, right?! Ha! I saw this recipe from Pillsbury and had to try it out. I made it exactly like the recipe said, except I didn't brush the crust with egg and sprinkle parsley on top. All that extra work and dishes was just not worth a shiny, decorated crust. ;) The pie turned out super yummy and is definitely a keeper! Try it out! Recipe here!

Honey BBQ

One of my favorite meals is pulled pork sandwiches! My friend Heather taught me how to do pulled pork in the Crock Pot. It's super easy and makes a ton, which means we have enough leftovers for a couple days. Love getting an occasional break in the kitchen, don't you?

A few months ago, I made pulled pork, but didn't realize until dinnertime that we were out of barbecue sauce. I quickly looked up recipes for barbecue sauce and found this Honey Barbecue Sauce on Tasty Kitchen. It is SO good! I make it every time I do pulled pork now! I'm a sucker for a good, sweet barbecue sauce!

Heather's Crock Pot Pulled Pork 

Pork Tenderloin or Boston Butt (I always get boneless)

1/4 cup water

Salt & Pepper

Barbecue Sauce 

Place pork in Crock Pot  Pour in water and salt and pepper the roast. Cover and cook on high for 1 hour, then on low for 7-9 hours. Take pork out and shred with fork. Pour grease out of Crock Pot and discard. Return shredded pork to the Crock Pot and stir in your favorite barbecue sauce. Cook on high for 20 minutes, or until hot. Enjoy by itself or on a bun! 

Honey Barbecue Sauce

I make a double batch for pulled pork.

1 cup ketchup

1/2 cup honey

1/2 cup brown sugar (I usually use dark, but either will work)

1 t. Worcestershire sauce

1 t. apple cider vinegar

1 t. salt

1/2 t. garlic powder

1/2 t. pepper

Add all ingredients to a sauce pan and stir over medium heat with a whisk until brown sugar and honey have melted and the sauce just starts to bubble. Remove from heat. Enjoy! Recipe credit here. 

Linking up to The Larson Lingo's Crock-tober! Check out all the other yummy Crock Pot recipes, especially Mel's Chicken Parmesan! Looks amazing! 

Playroom Redo--Part 1

One of the rooms that has been driving me nuts since we moved in was the playroom. I felt like it was always a mess and it was a bit bland for a play room. We had purchased some baskets for toys, but it still felt really disorganized. I wanted to get it organized and spice it up a bit to make a fun room for the Little One! Here's a couple horrible quality before pictures of the playroom. I really need a wide angle lens...
We love this nice built in unit! It packs a ton of storage! I really don't like the red desk top, though. It's just not my style.

Here you can sort of see the windows and the curtains the previous owner left. They're nice, but again, not my style. 

Toys line the walls. 

I had such a hard time taking pics of this room without a wide angle lens. I may just use my phone next time. I think I was holding the camera above my head to get the shot below. Oh brother. But you get the jest. 

Part one of our little makeover was organizing. We usually rotate the toys so Little One doesn't get bored with them, but since moving, we had kind of slacked off on that. For those of you wondering, we don't have a complicated system or anything. We mainly rotate the big toys and a basket or two of little toys. We don't have enough space to have all of his toys out at one time, plus when there's too many toys out at once, he gets overwhelmed and just carries the toys around and doesn't play with anything. Silly kid! So one rotation may look like just putting the ball blower, toy vacuum, and the basket of blocks away and bringing out a different large toy like the shopping cart and one of the baskets of cars. I usually swap out a few of the stuffed animals, too. His train set stays out all the time, though. ;)

Now, back to the organizing...I dumped all the toys out of the baskets and put the ones that he hasn't played with in a while in the guest room. Then, I organized the remaining toys by type into the baskets and got them all put back on the shelves.
Here's a bunch of the smaller toys. The bigger ones didn't even make it into the picture. Crazytown.

After. Not that impressive, but it's a start!

After the toys were taken care of, I took everything out of the cabinets and organized it all into plastic baskets I had on hand. Yes, more baskets left over from my classroom! When I ever go back to teaching and need the baskets back, my house is going to fall apart! Haha! :) I'm not crazy about how the baskets look through the glass, but they were free so I stuck with it. I'm thinking of putting up a cute fabric behind the glass panes to hide the contents of the cabinets.

Last but not least, I just tried to neaten up the bookshelf area. I'm having the worst time getting the bookshelf to not look like a mess. The books are more spread out then I'd like because the shelves bow when they are full of books. Any suggestions on making bookshelves look neater and prettier?


Here's our plans for the rest of the room:

-Organize the closet and make room for toys. We would like to store the toys that we rotate in this closet instead of lugging them to the spare bedroom.

-Paint the walls. I have big plans for a striped accent wall. :)

-Take off the door. It is in the way and we never use it.

-Paint the countertop or replace it.

-Hang fun artwork.

-Hang frames to put Little One's artwork in.

-New curtains or blinds.

-Purchase a rug.

-Build a long bench with storage cubbies. I really want to get an Ikea Expedit for this, but we don't have Ikea in town and by the time you drive hours to get there and hours back, we might as well just build one ourselves. Frown. We SO need an Ikea here.

Stay tuned--I've been busy painting! Will share pics soon!

Things I'm Digging!

Time for a fun list of things I'm totally digging right now...

1.) Pam's Cheesecake. The crust is made of Fudge Striped Cookies, butter, and sugar. 'Nuff said. 

2.) Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Lattes. Have I mentioned how much I love Fall?!

3.) Ped Egg. I'm really late jumping on this bandwagon, but really, it's great! 

4.) Pampered Chef Cutlery. I recently became a Pampered Chef consultant and got the 5" Utility Knife and it is the jamalama! It seriously sliced through a pineapple like butter. I couldn't believe it!

5.) EOS Lip Balm Sphere. Love the shape! 

All Sorted Out

As I mentioned earlier, I'm trying to go through the house and take it from just moved in to organized bliss. I tackled the laundry closet last weekend and put the finishing touches on this week.

Here's the unsightly before picture. As you can see, when I unpacked, I just randomly placed things on the shelves. It had gotten really out of control and was becoming impossible to easily get what I was looking for without something falling on my head.

(Sorry for the awful pictures...laundry closet in a hallway with no natural light=very difficult to photograph!)

I emptied the shelves, wiped them all down, then laid shelf liner. I love the LifeLiner clear shelf liners. They are ribbed on the bottom to help them not slide all over the place and the top is smooth and easy to wipe down. Then, I sorted through the cleaners and got rid of/relocated anything I didn't use.

Once the shelf liner was down and I'd purged, I shopped my pile of plastic organizers and baskets that I've collected over years of teaching and from our old house. I decided to go with basic, plastic baskets because it's a laundry closet and things are bound to get dirty..er, linty?... after a while. The plastic baskets are nice and easy to wipe down.

Now the fun part...putting it all back! I made one basket for cleaners, one for rags + the iron, and one for trash bags and Clorox wipes. I stored all our bulk items on the very top shelf, out of the way. You'll also notice I added a basket to the top of the washer for dirty rags. I was just plopping them on top of the dryer until I could do a load of rags, but let's face it...having bleach rags next to all of our clothes just didn't seem like a good idea. ;) I'm not 100% happy with the way the basket is working out because it slides to the side when the washer is going, but until I think of something else, it'll have to do. Any ideas?

Hubby hung a wire rack on the wall for my most frequently used cleaners and underneath that we put the plastic bag organizer.

On the opposite wall, the previous owners had installed (and graciously left behind!) a hanging organizer that I put all my mops and brooms on. I slid the ironing board next to the hanging organizer, to the right of the picture.

The previous owner had painted the walls this happy shade of green. I hung up my "Suds" wall decoration as my finishing touch. Done! Whew!

Fall Decor Wrap Up + Link Party Favorites

I have to say, all my fall decor was really easy this year! Here's a quick recap on the diy projects.

First off was the burlap runner with burlap napkin rings. I simply bought a roll of burlap at Michaels and cut it in half lengthwise to use as a runner. Then, I cut strips from the leftover burlap and hot glued them to make napkin rings and stuck a leaf inside for a fall touch.

 My favorite fall project this year was my leaf wreath. All I did was take a $2.99 grapevine wreath and attach a $3.50 pack of preserved leaves. The leaves came in a package of several long stems. I cut the stems apart to get about 8-10" sections and tucked and glued them onto the wreath. I tried to go all in one direction and added single leaves here and there to fill it out. I went back around with the glue gun and added more glue to get the leaves really secure. 

 My last projects were for the fireplace. I still had gobs of leftover burlap, so I tied strips of it to my candles using raffia and attached a leaf. For the bunting, I cut 6 triangles out of my leftover burlap. My roll of burlap was actually seamed on the edges, so I made sure to make the seamed edge the top part of each triangle. Once my triangles were cut out, I hot glued some skinny twine my friend generously gave me to the top of each triangle, making the glued side the back. Then, I mixed a tiny bit of white acrylic paint with some black acrylic paint to get a nice matte, charcoal color. I placed a piece of paper under each burlap triangle and painted the letters and leaves onto the triangles. I'm impatient and couldn't wait for it to dry before I hung it up. Haha.

I have a couple more little fall touches around the house like this pumpkin I scored at Target in the dollar spot (although it was $2.50) and dressed it up with some leaves

and this basket I found at Michaels to hold our napkins, salt and pepper shakers, and a fall candle on our breakfast nook table.

I'm happy with my projects for this year and am already stewing over projects for next year! Have you all been keeping up with the Happy Fall Y'all link parties? Here are a few of my favorites so far:

I love The Lettered Cottage's fall mantel!!! The colors are so pretty and I'm totally digging that leaf garland!

I loved The Pink Postcard's fall tablescape! Warm and cozy, yet neutral. This is my inspiration for my table next year, and I have hydrangea bushes to do it with! Woot!

I also really liked Our Family Journey's turquoise pumpkins and those adorable vases on the windowsill!

 One more favorite of mine was Life is a Party's neutral door decorations. I love the doormat and the planter!

Can you tell I've been digging the more neutral displays? Next year, I really want to go more neutral and play with white in my fall decor. Happy Fall Everyone!

Linking up with Thrify Decor Chick for the last day of the It's Fall Y'all link party!