school’s out for the summer…almost

Posted on 2013/05/19 by daisyeyes

Now that I have the roaring head banging song in your head, I present to you our summer plans. I do a great job of making it look like I have it all together and this summer is no different. This is the last week of school and so I’m hurriedly trying to paste all my last minute ideas together so that next Tuesday (because Monday is a holiday) we are ready and going.

One thing we will do this week is have a “yes” day. I implemented this day as the first and last day of any vacation that we have. It’s a no holds bar kind of day where you can cram your head with as much technology and anything else (within reason) because after that we are on a schedule.

Last year we had this crazy magnet thing that I had come up with. While we kind of held it together in the beginning, it pretty much all fell apart after a few weeks. It was a little bit too lax and the follow through wasn’t happening.

After spending Christmas vacation with one child who seriously needs some sort of schedule and me realizing that I am going to have to still work on the shop this summer, I knew we would have to have some sort of framework.

So this is what I came up with. A loose schedule filled with assigned days for things and different themed hours in our house. One thing I know that could easily overtake us is technology, so we are going to be very rigorous on this one. Both of my kids are getting to the age where if they are bored they want a screen. Not gonna happen this summer. We also have this Apologia science book that we’ve been talking about doing for at least 2 years and I swear we are going to do some of it this summer. So this is the lay of the land.

1. We have a family calendar hanging up that we will mark off the days as we go. This gives everyone a heads up for what is coming up that is planned for.
2. We have assigned days for things: Monday mornings we will have a chore time. They will be assigned one weekly chore that they will do on Monday mornings. Wednesdays is movie afternoon. Hopefully this helps with the “I want to watch a movie” whines. Friday mornings we will hit the library.
3. We will be unplugged between 8:30 and 1:00. No questions asked. I’m also trying to get rid of the t.v. as soon as you wake up habit. If they do wake up before 8:30, then PBS is totally fine, but if you wake up later than that….too bad.
4. We will have a loose structure to our day: breakfast, school time, work time for me with play time for them, lunch and then the tech hour. During this hour they are free to have whatever screen they desire: Ipod, Ipad, computer, Leapster, Wii…whatever. And then quiet hour. My hope is to have 30 minutes of reading time for all of us and then 30 minutes of quiet time in their rooms. This is more for my sanity than theirs! Then we will hit the pool
5. Obviously there are days where this won’t happen and to be honest we only have 4 weeks this summer that are totally open (we go to school year round so we have a pretty short summer). But these weeks we are “down” I hope will be pretty routine.

The second thing I did was our bucket list. I have a bunch of things I’ve pinned on my Summer2013 board and many of these ideas came from there. The idea for the mock chemistry board came from here.

I did ours a little differently and color coded the post it notes for free activities (pink), those that involve money (yellow), those that involve planning (blue) and a couple of open spots (green).

I have a tendency to be too structured and then never follow through, so I tried really hard to make this whole thing be a system of guidelines for us. Giving us all space for summer life to happen, but also a little roadmap for those of us that crave that sort of thing.

master bathroom BEFORE

Posted on 2013/04/01 by daisyeyes

I’ve got a big project ready to go this week (well actually this month or maybe the next couple of months!). Our master bathroom has bugged me to no end since we moved into this house almost 3 years ago. But it’s been on the back burner for a while as I wanted to get so many other places painted first.

We have a pretty nice cabinet and countertop in there, but I’m not crazy about the natural color so I’m planning on painting it a glossy white-ish color. I’ve found a few good tutorials via Pinterest.

I have a budget of about $200 to get this job done. Pretty small, but for the most part I’m doing the biggest changes with paint.

The walls right now are this weirdo greenish-white-brown color and I’m planning on painting the bathroom a sort of neutral creamy color.

The floor is horrific. Sticky tiles stuck to lovely hardwood. Smart people. The plan is to paint the wood a brownish-grey. I’ve gone back and forth on trying out a stencil, but I think the room is too small. This is a scaled down version of what I would love to do the floors in our bedroom and what we hope to for sure do in the kitchen down the road.

The toilet is blue. Enough said. We are replacing it. This will be the bulk of our budget, but the blue toilet has to go. The tub is blue too, but alas there isn’t much we can do about that right now besides hiding it behind a shower curtain.

Speaking of shower curtain this cheapy one has to go and I am replacing it with this awesome crazy quilt top that my great aunt made. It’s amazing and it’s the reason why I’m going pretty neutral with this space.

My overall desire is to do sort of a vintage modern look. The shower curtain rod and the rod for the big window will be galvanized piping like this

Source: hometalk.com via aimee on Pinterest

And I plan on hanging a simple white tablecloth remnant or tea towels or even just some white muslin in the window. Something plain, but pretty.

I would love to make something like this to set on the counter

Source: flickr.com via aimee on Pinterest

And get some cool doorknobs for hanging towels on

Source: modernvintagesoul.blogspot.com via aimee on Pinterest

We have this long angled wall in the corner that I would love to find a cool window to hang there

Source: Uploaded by user via aimee on Pinterest

That’s about it for now. The plan this week is to finishing sanding all the spackled holes and get to painting the walls. Then I hope to clean and prime the cabinet doors so that by the next paycheck we can get some paint for the cabinet!

fantastic fridays {nov 9)

Posted on 2012/11/09 by daisyeyes

Hello friends! Time for another weekly wrap up of some great finds from around the web this week.
If you didn’t catch yesterdays post, I’m hosting a give away…check out this link for more info! Entries end tonight at midnight.

great FABRIC: More goodness coming from the Fall Quilt Market. Monaluna has a super great line coming out early next year called Modern Home. I really love the vintage looking appliances. If only it wasn’t so dang expensive!

to whet your APPETITE: Earlier this week I posted a recipe for the best baked pumpkin oatmeal ever. Kinda thinking it might be on the menu again this weekend! It was that yummy.

be NEAT (as in organized): Love, love this idea of using a tool caddy that goes over a bucket for storing art supplies!

a TUTORIAL to do: Totally loving this idea of using galvanized plumbing supplies for curtain rods. Check out this tutorial for everything you need!

becoming more AWARE: Ann Voskamp has a great freebie for a lovely Thankfulness Tree.

something to SEW: Sew Liberated has some really awesome patterns coming out in the next year! Check them out!

to TRIM my house with: I’m trying to come up with some new ways to decorate my banister besides fake garland. I’ve pinned a couple of options. Love this one with embroidery hoops and burlap “ribbon, I also love these white flowers with ornaments hanging in between the rods, and even just hanging a simple banner.

ILLUSTRATION to stitch: I really don’t need another project for my needle right now, but I do love this vintage looking Christmas tree. It would be a beautiful embroidery!

CUTE: Sweet, sweet embroideries at this site. And the guinea pig…adorable!

Have a happy weekend!!!

And don’t forget about the give away!!!

emerson tunic tutorial review

Posted on 2012/10/14 by daisyeyes

Here lately I feel like my personal sewing has really gone by the wayside as life has overtaken me. Any time I spend down in the basement studio is spent on etsy projects and while that is good and I’m beyond grateful for it, I feel like creatively I’m not being stretched.
Therefore I have instigated a Wednesday and Sunday creative space. I volunteer at my kiddos school on Wednesday mornings, which gives me about 2 hours in the afternoon when I’m done before I have to pick them up. Instead of letting that time be spent idling with so many other goofy things, spent working on my shop or even just home management stuff I’m holding myself to using this time to work on all those projects I have stacked up and unfinished in the studio.

First up was this tutorial by luvinthemommyhood. I saw this emerson tunic on Pinterest a while back and I’ve had this adorable doggie fabric for at least a year. I felt like this would be a great fun yard to use for this little shirt. A little bit of purple flower scrap fabric for the casings and voila…a new shirt. (that my daughter refuses to wear…Lord help me when she is 13, therefore it’s been lovingly given off to another sweet friend’s little chickadee).

I did alter a couple of things from the tutorial. I decided to trim out the sleeves with the corresponding bias trim used on the neckline. I didn’t do the strip of buttons down the back, partly due to time (and laziness) and partly due to the fact that I knew it would bother my daughter (which became a mute point because she won’t wear it anyway).

For the neckline, I ended up just making some bias trim and sending some tiny elastic in through it for the casing.

Overall, this is a super cute and easy pattern. I will admit the directions weren’t all that easy to follow and there were a few things I just had to figure out (such as how to do the sleeves which I figured out I did wrong when they disappeared up the side hem!). But if you have a sewing background at all, this is a pretty easy pattern to whip up in a couple of hours that lends itself to do many different variations.

blog things…

Posted on 2012/09/25 by daisyeyes

If you subscribe to this blog via a reader (thank you by the way), head on over to the actual site and check out my new facebook and pinterest buttons over there on the right side. I designed and embroidered these and I’m super proud of myself. Any time an idea that forms in my head and comes out perfectly I could jump up and down.

Another new item on the blog is the list page. I’m hoping to keep a manageable run of lists of ideas or things that I’m hoping to do. Check it out and see what I’m working on and if I’ve actually finished anything on the list!

And finally, October is 31 days of…month. Last year I got a little too ambitious and posted a new project every day that I had seen around Pinterest or the web. This year, much simpler. My goal is to share a new embroidery stitch every day, either through photographs or a short video and in the end create a cool sampler of 31 embroidery stitches.

So head on to the store, grab a few needles and some floss and stitch along with me!

before & after {boys closet redo}

Posted on 2012/06/16 by daisyeyes

We live in a house built in the 50′s which means, while we do have a great amount of storage in our house, the closets in the kid’s bedrooms are teeny-tiny. One of my 2012 decorating goals was to redo their closets. When I saw this pin on Pinterest I knew that this is what I wanted to do.

(The original post can be found here at i heart organizing)

Source: iheartorganizing.blogspot.com via aimee on Pinterest

Here is my son’s closet before:

Oh. my. goodness. Horrible. Stacked up junk on the top (which was nasty dust covered when I did the demo), clothes that were stacked on shelves off to the left side (and hard to get to) and just one rod for clothes.

Here is his closet AFTER:

We used an expedit shelf just like the example on pinterest, the boy got to pick out a closet color (um, green.) and then we put together a shelf on the top using some leftover shelving we had and then bought a dowel rod for the bottom. All together this closet probably cost us around $90.

And I’m in heaven. Can’t wait to get going on closet number 2 for the girl.

before & after {tulle table}

Posted on 2012/06/09 by daisyeyes

The inspiration:

Source: Uploaded by user via aimee on Pinterest

The supplies:

4-5 yards of tulle
thread
hot glue
a small table
lots and lots and lots of patience

The process:

Use your sewing machine to sew 2-3 basting lines of stitching. Then gather the tulle. Try not to cuss every time the thread breaks and you have to start over again. Then hot glue along the line of basting threads onto the table. Again, try not to cuss when you continue to burn the tips of your fingers and you have 18 layers of hot glue stuck to them. Then go to the store to buy more tulle to make a third layer because one layer just wasn’t enough to cover all the mistakes you made. Then add a pink ribbon over all your mistakes.

The result:

One very pink and very girly little table
and one very happy little girl who now thinks it’s the perfect place for her imaginary unicorn to sleep. She is currently making “furniture” for the said unicorn and I’m staying downstairs for fear of what she is really doing!

fantastic friday {june 8}

Posted on 2012/06/08 by daisyeyes

On Fridays I recap some fantastic finds from around the world wide web.

Happy Weekend!

great FABRIC: I’m headed to one of my favorite towns and favorite fabric stores this weekend. If you are ever around Nashville, TN you have to stop and visit Textile Fabrics. Their selection is amazing!

to whet your APPETITE: This has a few crazy ingredients, but this vegan buster bar sure does look yummy!

be NATURAL and NEAT (as in organized): Love this box covered with the spines of books. Would be really cool in our basement bookshelf!

a TUTORIAL to do: I’m got a stack of knits I want to tackle sewing this summer and this racerback dress using a t-shirt is really calling my name.

AWESOME embroidery: I’m hoping to stitch this necklace pattern on a tee for my chick sometime this summer.

something to SEW: I am really wanting to buy this badminton skort and top pattern from Oliver + S for some back to school clothes

to TRIM my house with: This resurfaced table is just awesome.

INSPIRATIONAL: I’m headed to Nashville to hear this woman. I can’t wait.

CUTE: I love the idea of using fingerprints to create a one of a kind keepsake. So many ways to go with this.

introducing summer 2012

Posted on 2012/05/23 by daisyeyes

I gave a little hint at some of our summer plans earlier this week and also shared my summer 2012 pinterest board.
This morning I decided to get all blog official and made a little button
Introducing my summer 2012 series:

In an effort to give myself a little accountability with posting and being on the computer, I’ve made a little plan. Here are some of the things you can look forward to in the coming weeks:

Once a week I will post a general glimpse at some fun things we have been doing. Think rainy/hot day-inside fun ideas, summer schoolish things, art school, outside fun and even some planning for our beach road trip.

The weekends will be devoted to sharing some before-after projects I hope to do. The first up is redoing the kid’s closet using Ikea’s expedit shelves. The other project I hope to do is prepping and wallpapering our stair treads. The biggest project will be the painting and redoing of the exterior of our house. This will be the biggest before and after!

Thursday Threads will continue, but in addition to posting some embroidery, I hope to share some of the sewing projects I have on my list to do while my shop is on vacation. I’ve got a line of patterns to try out, some ottomans to cover, chair cushions to cover and a host of tutorials. Not to mention some mock-ups for new things coming to etsy in July.

And of course I’ll continue Fantastic Fridays. Hopefully there will be a June and July Martha of the Month thrown in there too!

Whew! It’s day one of our summer break…off we go!

summer 2012 {the plan}

Posted on 2012/05/21 by daisyeyes

My son has one more day of school left and I’ve got one more week of working the shop before summer vacation begins around here. I’ve got great plans, but the top plan is to be flexible yet organized! We are changing up a few things in the running of our household and also planning on doing a little bit of light summer schooling around here too. This is the planning week and hopefully over the coarse of the next 7 weeks of our summer I will be able to share with you some of the fun things we did!

First up in the area of summer schooling:

My hope is to lightly do an artist of the week, using this book as our guide. In our weekly library trips I hope to grab a handful of books on that artist to have in our house while we are studying.
Both my kids have completely outgrown those lovely 2 hours naps, but we are instigating a mandatory 30 minute reading time and a 30 minute play in your room quiet time. The rooster is working towards a backpack and a backpacking trip with his father at the end of the summer (more on his reading challenge in another post) so he has a stack of 12 books he has to work through.
The chick is entering Kindergarten, so we will continue working through all the Kindergarten sight words and also continue working through Explode the Code (my most favorite phonics books of all times!). I’m still not 100% sure what the Rooster is going to focus on. More than likely we will do some hard work on memorizing multiplication facts and some other grammar/writing maintenance things. We will also take at least weekly library trips (spending one of our one hour quiet times at the library) and also enjoying all the special summer stuff the library will be hosting.

Second up in the area of home maintenance:

We are changing up our chore & responsibility chart. I’ll go more into this in another post when it’s all complete. I pretty much used much of the ideas from this example and created one to fit with our family. The essential idea is that there are things we do as a family that are responsibilities and there are things we can do that are extra (aka contributions) that we can earn money for (we are using the word “commission” versus allowance). We will have a weekly payday on Sunday and the kid’s will be responsible for keeping a daily time sheet.

The other big change are the technology cards. My kids get about an hour of “free” tv time during the day. Typically Wild Kratts & the Electric Company in the afternoon while I’m cooking dinner. These cards are for those times when they are “bored” and are looking for something to do. They will each get a card every Sunday and each punch is worth 45 minutes. They won’t get a new card until the following Sunday, so if they use it up before then, they are basically unplugged until they get another one. These cards cover using the iPad, using the computer, watching a show on tv/netflix or playing the Wii.

Those are the two biggest areas of structure in our summer. Honestly, the reason I’m putting the shop on vacation is so that I can have fun with them this summer. We have a pool and a park across the street, a fabulous library within 5 minutes and the mountains within 30. I want to be with them this summer in a way I just haven’t let myself before. Enter the Pinterest summer board.

I’ve created a board on Pinterest with links to all sorts of things that have peaked my interest for this summer and another board for all those things we actually do.

If you haven’t subscribed to daisyeyes yet, this might just be the best time! I hope to show as many pictures and ideas as possible of our summer. Sort of a journal of summer 2012.

I hope you follow along!