My $2.34 laundry room makeover

Sew, I loved my new 'sew' sign sew much (see below) that I decided I sew had to have another one.  ;)

Only this one says 'Wash', to go above the washer/dryer.  While I was at it, I figured I might as well take this whole creativity blitz a step further and just makeover the whole darn laundry/sewing room while I was in there.  I needed some cheeriness, and that turned out to be just what the doctor ordered.  Without further ado (and, with apologies for the sub-par photo quality)...

First, the awful(ly embarrassing) BEFORE shots:

Aaaannnndddd.... the AFTER: 

 

 This room truly is a multipurpose room.  Our back door is the one with the red curtains, and it gets a pretty fair share of foot traffic.  This is not only our laundry and ironing room, but our mudroom, sewing room, storage room, kitchen extension (our 2nd fridge is in here), coat room, and bottled water central (we can't drink the water on campus -- it's horrifically icky, so we go through a LOT of bottled water). 

  

The bones of this room are terrible -- ugly wood cupboards, 80's linoleum, and busted, yellowing walls with crooked switch plates.  My decorating challenge is (always) that I can't paint the walls or anything attached (like, the awful cupboards), or change the flooring or do anything remotely permanent.

The photos don't show it but I hung bulletin boards down the side of the refrigerator in there, and hung vintage prints of 50's housewives giving laundry tips on them for another touch of cuteness.  Best of all, the only thing I bought for this room was the $2.34 tension rod that I hung the brown curtain across (it's peeking just to the left of the "s-e-w" signs and hides a massive shelving area which stores my fabric and sewing supplies and other house miscellany).  The red polka dot containers in the sewing area house my sewing notions (and were made from used-up coffee cans and wrapping paper).  I already had the shelving and stuff on hand.  Yay!

Ok, I know... waaaaaaay too excited about a laundry room, but a girl's gotta get excited about the little things, amiright? 

Weird lighting, I know... sorry.  The sign says 'sew'.  Every room in this house has fluorescent overhead lighting, including the bedroom (yuk!  Hellooooo migraines), so I compensated with a little table lamp.  Not so great for photo-taking, but much easier on my poor aching head.  Does anyone else get migraines from fluorescent lights?  No?  Just me then...

Well, that's it for my little laundry room.  Next is my the master bedroom (which I'm aiming to do for less than $20 and that's a MAJOR job... so wish me luck!).  So far, I've stuck to my "do something creative every day" project and its felt GREAT.  I think I underestimated the value of creative work in my daily life.  Good on the endorphins, methinks!

Thanks for stopping in!

Have fun and get smitten...

S-E-W Cute!

I started my self-challenge (see previous post) off on a good note, by making these wall letters to hang in my laundry/sewing room.  I wanted the individual letters but they were too spendy since my laundry room is supposed to be a $0 makeover.

Super easy project, which could have been even easier.  I just used some thin canvas boards that I had on hand, (which I think you can buy for under $1 a piece) and printed the letters out on regular paper.  I then used an X-acto knife to cut out the letters, trace them onto the boards, then filled them in with Sharpie and freehanded the "stitching" around the letters with a yellow-orange permanent marker.  It would have been even easier using the Cricut for the stencils or even using vinyl (which I plan to do for a matching set that says "WASH" for the laundry area, just to speed it up a tad).  Then I stuck some sticky tabs to the back to hang, and voila!  Cute!

The Cure for What Ails Me

Here's the thing.

My current life circumstances and, as much as I hate to admit it, my own negative attitude, have had me in a pretty deep slump lately.  I'm feeling rather caged in and penned up, straightjacket style, of late.  Because I tend to be a "life is what you make it" person, this helpless feeling of not being able to change things for myself (at least not with my dignity intact) is adding fuel to the woe-is-me fire. 

If there's anything I hate, its a pouter.  I can't stand when people whine and gripe about their life and do nothing to change it, and here I am griping it up with the best of 'em.

So.

"If you don't like something, change it.  If you can't change it, change the way you look at it."

Right.

I'm committing to take action, over the next several months, to change the way I look at things.  There are a few major players in the misery game for me.  One is a lack of opportunity/time/space to be creative and the other is, as silly as it sounds, living in an ugly house.  Since I spend approximately 99% of my life inside my house (working, living, teaching, parenting, etc.), it's been a real battle to have to do all that living amongst fluorescent lighting in every room, obnoxious floral print couches, and 80's swag curtains.  That's something I can't change.  Really, living here comes with the territory of our work out here, and I'm pretty limited in the amount of creative freedom I have when it comes to this house and its contents.  However, there are things I can do, and the back of the house (our "apartment"), which consists of 2 bedrooms and a bathroom, is basically mine to do with what I please (as long as I don't wish to paint or wallpaper or do anything else permanent-ish).  The kids room is pretty decked out already, but I'm realizing how much I need a peaceful sanctuary from the chaos that comes alongside this kind of work.  Also, I know that little changes can make a big difference, and a sprucing up here and ruffled pillow there will give me a reason to smile, at least for a moment.

Anyway... my project... I am promising you, oh elusive and possibly nonexistant reader of this here blog, to undertake something creative every day.  And I don't mean daydreaming or thinking, but actual hands-on making or doing.  I am not going to limit myself to decorating -- I've lots of writing ideas piling up in my brain, so that will count, too, but I am going to make creativity a priority in my life, again, if for no other reason than the happy distraction it will serve for me.

I will try, as often as possible, to share my results and tread back into the blog world again, where I can find some inspiration and companionship in this creative journey.

But be easy on me.  Carving out time to pee alone is a monumental task on most days around here, so there will be days when I blow it.  Still, even if its 5 minutes at a time, I purpose to do whatever I can to beautify this home, one day at a time, and express my oh-so-tortured creative brain.  Deal?

Now, to get the kiddos set up with an assignment and begin to tackle my laundry room.  Photos to come...

In Which I Pout and Whine

I miss Oregon.

I miss my family and my church back "at home".

I miss freedom and quiet mornings.  I miss time to read blogs and comment on blogs and post on my own blog.  I miss Etsy.

I miss garage sales, thrift shops, and flea markets.  I miss having a house and making a home and making a living.

I miss writing, crafting, painting, updating and re-purposing.

At the moment, I'd like to repurpose my life.  If only I could do that with just some sandpaper and a can of aqua spray paint.  Red hair dye is the best I got, but it's sat in my bathroom for 7 weeks now waiting for the time to apply it.  Hmph.

Homeschool, here we come... right back where we started from...

In 6 days, we'll be homeschoolers again.  This is very exciting for a mama that is missing one-on-one time with her babies something awful.  The curriculum is purchased and the lesson plans are made, and I'm thrilled to be starting the new year off this way.  It'll make our days off much smoother, too, since we won't have a school schedule to work around and we'll be able to travel a bit farther from home.  Yippee! (Remind me of this excitement when I'm beating my head against the wall trying to teach geometry.  Eek.) 

How was Christmas, y'all?  (Remember, I'm a Texan now.  Kind of.)

Ours was good... glad the chaos is ending, to be honest.  Decorations will be coming down tomorrow, and that will be the end of that.  Ahem.  As much as I hate snow, it was weird to spend Christmas in a t-shirt.  A windstorm Christmas just isn't quite as magical as a white one.

I'm still homesick.  Terribly.  This is made worse by a really incredible job offer Mr. Smitten received back up in Oregon (home for us).  He said no... against his every desire... and now we're fighting the "Are we really supposed to be here?" demons that are creeping up constantly.  As if the holidays weren't stressful enough, around every stressful circumstance is doubt of whether we're really in the right place, even when we don't feel like it.  I know God knows what He is doing though, and its a good thing, because I don't have a clue.  I guess that all remains to be continued.

I'm grateful, though, that a new year is upon us and one with more family time.  Helloooo homeschool!

Embarrassment of Riches

I wish I was better about posting.  So much is going on, but by the time I get the time and motivation to sit down and post about it, it all seems irrelevant.

It's been one of the hardest weeks of my life.  Holidays at a children's home are nothing short of chaotic, due to a combination of emotional upheaval and other instabilities in the childrens' lives and the absolute outpouring of love, support, and gifts from so many that support our kids.  While the second part is absolutely a blessing, the mixed love/disappointment/anxiety cycle that swirls around can create a pretty odd sort of phenomena in a place like this.  Bunches of kids/teens around this place are in major trouble for behavior, breaking out, sex and drugs and the like.  One of the boys in our house was discharged from the home for further care after multiple suicide threats/attempts, and my heart is broken over it.  The stress level has been on red alert for some time now and I'm absolutely exhausted.  As someone jokingly said, "Send help, the inmates are taking over the asylum."

Perhaps the hardest part about all this was the necessary transition from absolute mayhem to peace and love and good tidings of comfort and joy -- 'tis the season, right?  We celebrated our on-campus Christmas yesterday.  Our house alone received more than a truckload of gifts (literally and actually).  Yesterday, I stamped 97 thank-you notes, and that only covers about half of it.  Its an embarrassment of riches, really.  And its not that I'm not grateful.  The people that assisted with the absolute outpouring of love on these kids are the real angels that make all of what we do here possible to change the course of these kids lives.  To us its only an iPod or a new football or tricycle, but for the kids here, these things represent normalcy and comfort and moving forward. 

All that said, I'm so glad its over.

We had our personal kids do their gifts with the others so that the real Christmas, this year, can be about Christ and love and family and not about gifts.  This is a relief, and I'm glad there's a week between now and then to recharge.  Tomorrow we'll be headed to a camp/ranch a few hours away with a handful of kids for a 4-day retreat of hiking, fishing, fellowship, and, hopefully, rest.  I'm looking very forward to this trip -- a chance to get away and see some new scenery before Christmas and then, the end of the year.

My husband is taking the boys to a real NFL game when they get back from break (they go visit a family member or sponsor during the holidays whenever possible), which he's jazzed about, but I've got my own big news for 2011 -- we'll be a homeschooling family again then, and I'm very excited.

Lots of people think I'm crazy -- my plate's pretty full with 8 kids and a million other houseparent responsibilities, but my kids need and want this, and, honestly, I do too.  My kids have begun to slip into the blur of the daily grind around here, and I need more time and connection with them for all our sakes.  While I know homeschooling 2-1/2 kids every day (one of them is only 2) isn't going to do much for my busy schedule, I hope it will help with my priorities.  I'm excited about this, but also hoping I haven't really bitten off more than I can chew.  Guess we'll see.

Sorry for the endless rambling -- an attempt, I guess, at keeping track of this life that feels like its just whizzing right on by.

Merry Christmas to you all....

Back to My Regularly-Scheduled Programming

Well, after my Thanksgiving pout-fest (see last post), I wound up having a pretty decent (and gratitude-filled) day.  We had 10 days "off duty", which creates a really weird dynamic, sending the kids somewhere else for several days, with other houseparents.  It was the first days off we've had since we arrived, and was much needed, but we didn't do much besides veg in front of the TV and such.  Now we're back though, and the kids are all hyped up on Christmas treats and excitement, so there is lots of energy in the air over at our place!

Christmas season is in full swing here, which is pretty exciting.  I enjoy doing the big-family thing, especially at this time of year, so its fun to have people to share that with.  A pretty lazy day lies in wait for me, which I think I'll start by making cake pops for the first time.  I've seen 'em all over blog-land and they're just way too cute to pass up!  I found a great recipe here, so I'll give it a shot and let y'all know how they come out!

Hope your weekend is going well.  What big plans do you have?