My Bathroom - Before and After Rag Painting

It's finally finished!! And I am SOOOO happy! Honestly, I think my bathroom suddenly became classy overnight! So you will know what I mean here is the before picture.

I removed a cabinet that was DESPERATELY needed but it was blocking the light and making it very cramped and dark.

The existing paint was a cream color but it was in flat paint and showing dirt terribly and just needed painted.

I took a dark brown paint and slapped it on paying special attention to the corners and edges of the walls because you really want painted edges.

Then you take a bucket of water and wet your rag - I just used an old hand towel I had - to the point of wetness that you would be using to wipe down your counters or something - just NOT drippy! And don't worry about changing your water - it doesn't matter if it's dirty. You may want to wear plastic gloves or at least take off your rings - because they will get grossly covered in paint - like mine did. 

Right after slapping the paint on, use bouncing/swirling motions to blend the paint and cover the wall. By playing with it you can tell how to make it look good. It was WAY easier than I thought it would be!! I have always been intimidated by painting techniques but trust me this was EASY!

Here is what it looked like before and after paint - doesn't it look AMAZING??? I think so! 

Before and After Pics so you can compare! 

I bought an etagere for above the toilet to replace the cabinet for storage - it actually helps a TON! 

A closer picture of the painting technique! 

Oh and another tip that I wish I knew - Paint tape paint tape paint tape! Trust me - painting with a rag is a LOT harder to keep contained and now I'll need to paint my ceiling because the rag kept getting the ceiling - no biggie just would have been nice to know :0) 

Have you done this paint technique before?

In HIS Grip, 
               




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Saving Money: Ditch Decor

Now before you get all upset about my title let me explain! I'm not talking about THROWING AWAY your decor! I'm talking about decorating your home - FROM THE DITCH! Yes it's true. Have you ever noticed how beautiful the ditches are in the country? I live in town but we are surrounded by miles of countryside and I noticed some BEAUTIFUL cattails growing in our Illinois ditches. So I talked my hubbie (FINALLY!) into pulling over and helping me cut some - he's such a sweetheart! 

I brought them home and trimmed them up - bugs like to chew on the ends so I just snipped them at an angle to hide the ratty edges and ta-da! Love em! 

These will actually dry like this in your house if you don't put them in water - which is what I want them to do. HOWEVER. Once they are dry after a week or two- you want to SPRAY them and coat them with polyurethane or some other type of sealer - I've even heard that hairspray will work. If you do not do this - the MOMENT you start to see any seeds puffing out - it's time to get rid of them. They will "explode" and release tons of FLUFF all over your house. Not a fun time. 

There are lots of beautiful flowers to be found in the ditches - my sister loved these flowers and the morning of her wedding her entire bridal party went out and picked TONS of flowers from the ditches and we used them for her bouquets and church decorations. Scared me TO DEATH it might rain on our parade and we would have NO flowers but it was beautiful and turned out perfectly - it suited my sister completely to do this for her wedding and saved a TON of money too! I wish I had a picture of our bouquets but unfortunately right now, I don't. 

By the way - be choosy in which ditches you grab these treasures from - if there are TONS of flowers it could be that someone planted a wildflower assortment there and wants to KEEP them there. And please don't pick anything from in front of someone's property. Stick to the ditches in front of fields in the country. You don't want to get in trouble for trespassing! 

Oh and by the way - if I were to BUY these cattails from Hobby Lobby and have a fake arrangement like this - it would have cost me $180 since ONE cattail costs $20 normal price. Who knew?

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Trash to School Desk!

I wanted school desks. I had no school desks. I had a table and that was fine but they weren't school desks. So I found some! I found two small tables that were left in the parsonage. I ALMOST threw them away but found random places to stick them so they would be useful. I'm SOOO glad I kept them!

BEFORE!!! 

They had been painted quite a lot so I did some research about paint stripping and it seemed to not be too daunting so I tackled them with paint stripper.

I slapped the stuff on and watched it do this! I was impressed - this should be easy! 

HA HA HA!!! Let me tell you - this was NOT easy! I scraped it off and it wasn't coming off. This stuff was ridiculous! After slathering on 3 layers of paint stripper and 4 chemical burns - this stuff eats through plastic gloves! I gave up and called a friend with a sander. I sanded that puppy down. Why I did not do that in the first place - heaven knows. God probably decided He would teach me a thing or two about patience and persistence. I don't think I got the persistence lesson though. To all who consider using paint stripper - think again and you will be glad you did. 

Here it is after being sanded (see the paint is STILL not all the way off!) and I started priming. 

AFTER! 

Here is the finished project! I was pretty pleased with how it came out and now it is no longer a trash possibility but it can be used for a desk for my schoolroom or if I find actual desks, I have a spot picked out in my hallway for this small table! 

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Organization: Homeschool Room

Right now, the ONLY clean room in my house is: MY SCHOOLROOM!!! Does this ever happen to you? I worked really hard on my schoolroom last week to get it ready for the first days of school and the rest of the house fell into disrepair. Sigh. 

BUT! I am in love with our room! And I just HAVE to show it off with you and give you my ideas on decorating CHEAPLY but creatively!

I hung twine on the walls and paper-clipped the ABC cards from the curriculum I'm using across the top of the two walls you can see here. The posters were very exciting because on Amazon they cost about $5 a piece and I was NOT excited about that so I contemplated making my own but wasn't really excited about that either but then DOLLAR TREE came to my rescue and they had 2 for $1! They are pretty good except they have a baseball hat for the letter "C" which is a little confusing for little people - but oh well it's fifty cents! I also hung twine across the walls above my kids' desks so they could attach their artwork or other accomplishment papers with clothes pins - they thought these were AWESOME and proceeded to fill them up right away! 

As you can see, my desk and my chair on wheels is in between my kids two desks and it works great going from one desk to the other and back - AND I can do my own thing when they are doing worksheets on their own. I also was able to show them a science Youtube video yesterday which was a really fun addition to the curriculum. 

Emily even has her little nook all figured out by my bookcase which has paper, books, and puzzles - makes it easy to have all of that in here if I decide to use them in my teaching. Oh and have to tell you about the "Tell Me About Today" calendar in the corner - it was FIFTY CENTS!!! Yes, at a thrift shop! I was jumping UP and DOWN about that one! These babies run anywhere from $40 and up!  

What do you think? Do you have any thrifty ideas for decorating a schoolroom? 

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4th of July Decorating and Giveaway Winner

About a year ago my husband commented about how he really liked how his mom decorated for the different holidays. He liked how it was always changing. So I made a commitment to decorate for the holidays. So I've been picking things up here and there but the biggest thing I've been trying to do is making things for very little money. This time I really impressed myself because I spent NOTHING on this project! Hooray! I had all of these things and they came together really nicely! What do you think?

I had a grapevine wreath that I dissected because it was ugly and needed serious help. Then I cut strips of fabric and wrapped them around. I made the round things by straight sewing and pulling them tight - I have no clue what they are called but that's what I did! I didn't have any wooden stars like I wanted so I cut stars out of cardboard and then cut fabric stars to cover the cardboard. All in all I think its pretty cute and now I have my first Fourth of July decoration! I'll make something more next year! 

Drumroll please. . . . . . 

Random.org has chosen: 

Erica Lyon! 

Hooray! She will be receiving this from Chris at The Sycamore Tree 

Don't forget - if you LOVE the items he has for sale just EMAIL him your order INSTEAD of adding it to your cart on his site and mention StringerMama and you will get 10% off your entire order!! Hooray! And if you don't see something you like, keep checking because he is always adding something new! He's added a TON of stuff even in the last week so check it out again! 

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Come Tour Aimee's Room!

Sooo. . . Time for another tour! And a how to paint a princess castle on your daughter's wall! I'm definitely NOT a professional painter by ANY means soooo I cheated - A LOT! But that's okay because I love the finished product and so does Aimee! What I did was an image search for a castle silhouette and I copied and enlarged and maybe a little bit of editing to make it the size and shape that I wanted. Then I printed it out on a transparency and used the old school projector from our church. You could use a regular projector and a computer but this was what we had available. Then I outlined it - first I made sure it wasn't an evil pencil that would refuse to come off the wall or soak thru the paint. See this post to see why I did that! This actually probably took me about 30 minutes - in mommy time about an hour! That's with interruptions!  Then I grabbed my bucket of white trim paint that was leftover from my kids trim in their rooms and a few sponge brushes, a regular paintbrush, and the small paintbrush from my kids' watercolor set. As I said I am NOT a professional painter and this project would have probably been a little easier if I had spent the money for acrylic paint and actual painters brushes but I was all about only putting time into this project and NO money! So considering the only thing I had to purchase was the transparency screens - I picked a box of those up at a garage sale for 0.50 cents - I'm golden! Considering that you can go to a site like this one and  pick one up similar for $45.00. I'm pretty happy with what I accomplished. Anywho. . . I just painted in the lines with the sponge brush around the edges and the regular brush for the big sections of the castle. All of the detail painting I used the watercolor brush which was HARD! Probably why people use a little better brushes for their painting! The painting itself probably took me about 1 1/2 hours which in mommy times about 6 hours since all of my kiddos kept wanting to help. Except Emily she just wanted mom to hold her! All in all, here is my little princess with her castle. And she is HAPPY. Which makes mom happy! Happy that she LOVES it and happy it's OVER! Yay! 

And of course, we decided to give the castle more of a prominent place in the girls' room so we rearranged the furniture and here is the rest of their room! 

  

And if you missed the post on making a dollhouse which is pictured below - check it out! It's one of my favorite projects! 

And have to show you Emily's bed - isn't it sweet! She hasn't slept in it yet because the girls room is upstairs and that's a long way away for numerous nightly feedings but she'll get there someday! 

Oh and I almost forgot, I am going to be stenciling butterflies along the wall in random spots in their room too but that may have to wait for another day! 

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