Creating a Basketball Mural

Well, surprise! We’re having a baby! And we couldn’t be more excited. But that has meant some major changes around here in the past couple months. As you can see in my floor plan post, we have three fairly small bedrooms on the main floor and it has worked out great for us for the past 3 years. But with baby #4 on the way, there just wasn’t enough space any more. So we are switching things up. The oldest two boys are moving downstairs to a fun new room (that I can’t wait to share) and our third son is moving into the larger bedroom (Bedroom 1 on the floor plan) so we can prepare his nursery for the new baby.
 
So let me tell you a little about this third son, Nash. He is 2 and he loves basketball. With a passion. At 18 months, we would go to my younger brother or nieces basketball games and he would sit on my lap and watch the whole thing. While his older brothers were running up and down the aisles and needing distractions in the form of snacks and my phone, he was enthralled. So when we asked him recently what he wanted in his new room, of course his answer was ba-ball. Now, I’m not usually one to dive into a theme-y type room but really, how can I resist that request?

Here is how the room started out.


Actually, the sad thing is that this picture was taken more than two years ago and really it hadn’t changed. I still hadn’t made those headboards I had planned and there was almost nothing on the walls. There was, however, quite a bit of damage (it’s amazing what two little boys can do to some walls in two years!). So our first order of business was clearing things out and getting a fresh start. We bought new bunk beds for the older boys and so we were able to just leave one of the beds in here. We disassembled the other one and stored it in the storage room. It will come in handy in a couple years when this baby is ready to graduate from his/her crib.

Once we had all the walls patched up, I gave everything another coat of paint. I touched up the caulking, baseboards, window molding, door and walls. I told you, my kids are hard on this poor house!

And then the fun began. I have to preface this next part by saying that I am not artistic. Seriously, the first time Landon asked me to draw a cow for him, he laughed at it. He was two. So when I say that if I can do it, anyone can, I’m not joking.

First, I got the idea from this pin on Pinterest. But obviously baseball would not work here so I used a cute little t-shirt from Children’s Place as my inspiration.

Please excuse the wrinkles. I may or may not have pulled it straight from the laundry pile to take a picture for reference as I was working.

I started by making my outline. That part was fairly easy. I picked a center point and taped a piece of string to the wall. Instead of drawing it out right away, I just used some painters tape to get a general idea of size and location. I just kept playing around with it until I liked it. Here’s what I ended up with.

Then I used a pencil to actually draw an outline. And then came the fun part. I sketched in the other lines of the basketball. It wasn’t too hard but I definitely had to redo a few lines. For the record, a magic eraser is your friend when trying to remove pencil marks from walls. Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of this part; the lines were too light to show up.

Next I used a sample pot of paint left over from another project to paint over those lines. This was the first draft.

I was happy to see that it wasn’t totally skewed but it was also looking pretty rough so I started doing another coat. I just used a cheap foam brush. But, as you can see, the edges were still pretty rough so I went over some of those places with a smaller artists brush.

It did take a few hours but it wasn’t too bad. I just turned on some music after the kids were in bed and went to work. And here is the finished product.

Obviously, there is still a lot of work to be done in this space but we have one happy little guy to have a place just for him. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to chip away at it.

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A bird’s eye view–Main floor

I put together a floor plan of our main floor, just to give you an idea of what we are dealing with. To put things in perspective, our home is around 1200 sq ft so the rooms aren’t huge but it is just perfect for us right now! While we did renovate the entire main floor, we made hardly any modifications to the original floor plan. The first thing we did was to open things up in the kitchen/stairway area. This technically didn’t change the footprint of the walls but we were able to get the flow we wanted by opening things up a little. We also put in a wall that had been removed at some point between the Master bedroom and Bedroom 1. I’ll go into more detail on both of those in a later post. So without further delay, welcome to our home! I’ll try to get some before and current pictures up soon but I wanted to have this as a reference point. Next up will be the basement!

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Trial and Error: A floor plan story

Prepare yourselves for a gripping tale! Let me set the stage for you. When we bought our house, we spent the first two months renovating it, while living 30 minutes away in my parents’ basement apartment. It was nice, since we went quite a while without having a bathroom in our new house and even longer without a kitchen. But then my parents’ well started giving them trouble and there was suddenly no running water. So we started staying at our new house and hurried to finish up the little jobs so we could move our furniture in. And even though I had been thinking about it for months, when the time came, I still had no idea how we would arrange our furniture in our new living room. You see, it is a little bit of a difficult room. At least we originally thought it was. Here is the 19’x12’ space we had to work with.

It doesn’t look like much but it proved to be a little difficult with two different openings and an off center window. We also wanted to incorporate as much seating as possible along with a piano. We tried a few different configurations the night we moved in, but I soon began to get some dirty looks from my husband and brother-in-law when I started to suggest we try the piano on ‘that other wall.’ So we settled on what seemed to be the best option at the time and there it stayed for over a year.

It was ok but didn’t work great because: a) the couches were pretty close together in real life, b) there was a ton of wasted space in front of the piano, and c) I love my piano, but didn’t really want it to be the focal point when you walk in our front door.

So I thought and thought over a new solution and finally about a year and a half later, I decided enough was enough and it was time to figure it out. So my husband and I started moving things around. The only thing I was really sure of was that I wanted the piano just to the right of the window (where you see the loveseat above). Other than that, we just moved couches and chairs around for a while until things seemed to fit. And this is what we settled on.

The desk was a bit of an afterthought. Once we got everything else arranged, we had a big, empty space in that corner. I also had the problem of nowhere to work on my laptop. So this has been a perfect solution. I love when everything functions well! The whole layout just seems cozier and way more conducive to conversation. Of course this room is far from done. Still on the list is end tables, an ottoman or pouf, a new rug, possibly repaint, and change up the pillow covers. One day…

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Bringing back plastic

We are budgeters. I have a thing for spreadsheets and numbers. Every day I open up that my beloved spreadsheet and enter things in and recalculate things and just bask in the order of it. The nerd in me really loves that it is one thing in life that is just numbers and equations. That part is easy (almost). But you know the hard part about budgeting, the part that everyone hates – actually sticking to it. Bleh.

We’ve tried many things over the years. For a long time we just used our credit cards (paid off every month of course) and bought what we needed to buy. We checked in on the budget every week or so to make sure we were on track. But sometimes it was the end of the month, and the end of the money, but we just needed something. So we went ahead and bought it anyways. Now normally, this would put someone in debt really fast, but my husband earned strictly commission for years and would receive compensation in a few large lump sums over the course of the year so we almost always had a bunch of money in our bank account. Somehow we always made things work until we got paid again.

Then my husband got a “real” job. The kind that deposits a predetermined amount in our bank account every month. The kind that actually helped us to realize that we really needed to actually manage our money. Around that time, I jumped on the Dave Ramsey bandwagon. We didn’t have debt but I knew our budgeting could be a lot better. So I began to withdraw cash and put it in envelopes. It worked pretty good for me. It definitely was a lot harder for me to let go of cash than to just swipe my card but there were a few huge issues for us.

The first is that my husband doesn’t like cash. For him, cash feels like “extra,” since that was the way we had kind of always treated it. With our previous ‘card-swiping’ system, cash always came out of our budget when with withdrew it so it was basically our blow money. If he had cash in his wallet, then it was slowly dwindled away on snacks or treats or who knows what else. We recognized that right away and so he started leaving the cash at home. But then we kept running into other issues. Like how he would pay for something if I asked him to stop at the store on the way home. Or if he needed to get some supplies for his class after school (he’s a teacher). So then he would end up using his credit card and when he got home we’d take out the cash and put it another envelope to be deposited back into our bank account to balance everything out. It was a pain.

But the other issue that really bothered me was that it was hard for us to both be on the same page. Jeff is really great at the big picture stuff. I work better with the little everyday details. So while we talk about our budget in general terms, he trusts me to do the math and figure out all the specifics. The problem with that was that it would often come down to him saying we needed something and me being the downer, always saying we can’t afford it. Because I knew exactly how much money I had left in my wallet but he had no idea. All in all, cash was just not working!

But lest you think that this is just a sad tale, have hope. There’s a happy ending! After a couple months of struggling with cash to make it work (Everyone says that cash is so easy! What’s wrong with us??), my husband suggested that we go back to using our credit cards. I was super hesitant and expressed that while that solved concern #1, it did nothing to alleviate concern #2 and even brought up another concern (being able to see at all times what was left in our budget).

And then my smarty of a husband said, “there must be an app for that.” And he was right. I quickly downloaded a budget app (this is the one we use) and it has literally changed our life. We fill our “envelopes” in our app twice a month and now both of us can use our smartphones and see at all times exactly how much money we have left at any given time. All we have to do is enter each transaction as it happens, which takes about 30 seconds. I know there will be those that disagree (I know this is practically blasphemy to the Dave Ramsey fans out there) but this solution has helped us big time!

So the moral of the story? Don’t give up! Just because one person (even if they are a finance guru!) claims that their method is the best, or only way, you don’t have to do it if it doesn’t work for you. Keep trying until you figure out something that does!

**Just for the record, I do still think the cash system is awesome and can be really useful for lots of people, especially people wanting to drastically change their spending habits. So if you are thinking of trying it, please do! And if you already use it and love it, carry on!

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Cheap Family Fun: Fly a kite!

We’re on a budget. Like a one-income-family, working-on-a-masters-degree budget. In many ways we are very blessed. We own a home, my husband has a secure job, we have no debt (other than our mortgage). But after financially horrific May (we spent over $2000 on car repairs and to buy a new lawnmower. Yikes!) we realized our savings account was seriously lacking. So priority number one for us right now is to build up that savings, which unfortunately does not leave us much for the “family expenses” category. So this summer we are looking for inexpensive ways to have fun together.

Last Saturday we didn’t have much going on. We enjoyed a lazy morning (it’s good to have those every once in a while!) but by the afternoon, we were going a little stir crazy. We talked about going swimming but the pool in our town in closed for renovations this year. And driving to the city (45 min away) not only equals more in gas, but usually leads to eating out and going to Costco and overall spending more money that we should.

So we settled for a walk to the park. We loaded the boys up in the wagon and walked down to a park that’s a few blocks away. Halfway there, I remembered a kite that I had purchased on clearance at the end of season last year. I ran back home to grab it and it turned out to be some of the best 50 cents I’ve ever spent. The boys had so much fun with it!

I’m always amazed at the benefits of thinking outside the box. Taking a trek into the city would have cost us upwards of $50. Flying a kite at the park down the street cost us a whopping 50 cents. And truthfully, it was way more fun!

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Living room gallery wall

It took me a really long time to get stuff on the walls of our house. It was partly due to the fact that we were more worried about things like flooring and kitchen cabinets and windows and doors and bathrooms and trim. And then once we finished that stuff, I was just way too big and pregnant and tired to even care. But things are finally starting to happen. The one big thing that I’ve had in mind the whole time for this house is a gallery wall. And not just any gallery wall, a massive one! I have always hated the fact that I take tons of pictures but they just end up stuck on the computer. I also really wanted to showcase not just the most recent pictures, but my favorites from over the years. And so from all of that, you get this!


I wanted to use color pictures so I chose white frames to let the photographs shine. Most of the frames are thrifted and spray-painted white. The pictures are an assortment of the last seven and a half year. It was actually pretty difficult choosing pictures. I could have included a hundred more! Overall I’m fairly happy with how it turned out. There are still a few more things I would like to tweak though. But that’s one thing I love about this wall – it can constantly change and evolve with us.

One thing I’d like to try is to eliminate all of the mats in the frames. I almost think there is a little too much white going on so I may try some enlarged pictures and see how I like it. I’m also not sure of a couple of my frames up there. The one on the top right is always crooked and some of them are not in too great shape or a very different white color. I’ll keep you updated as I move things around.

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DIY Growth Chart

This is one of those projects that seemed to carry on and on forever. Actually it didn’t just seem like it, it was more than two years from the time I bought the materials until it was actually hanging on our wall.
I love the idea of recording our kids’ heights but I had a few criteria when designing mine:
- I wanted to be able to move it around if needed
-I wanted to be able to record each child’s height separately
- I wanted some form with all that function
I started out with three pieces of pine tongue-in-groove paneling from Home Depot. This style had two small panels on one side and one large one on the back. After acclimating in our garage for a few months (totally not a needed step, just my way of saying I procrastinated a whole lot!), I first cut them to length (about 5') and then I glued them together with wood glue. I flipped the middle piece around so that instead of two skinny panels, it had one wide one. I cut off the tongue piece on the right with my circular saw but I left the groove on the left, in case we have more than four children and I want to add another piece of paneling.
Then it was primed and painted white – just some leftover semi-gloss that I had on hand. Now, I know this next part could be done a lot more easily with vinyl but I am not a patient person and I just wanted to get this done so I used a bit of a different technique. I overlapped two pieces of painters tape on a scrap piece of 2x4. Then I printed off the words in the font and size I wanted and taped it over the tape. Then it was just a matter of tracing around the letters with my exacto knife, making sure I was getting all the way through the paper and the tape. After that it was just a matter of peeling off the tape and sticking it to my already painted board. It is definitely not perfect but it worked good enough for me!

Once I filled in all of my stencils with a light grey paint (I just mixed a little bit of black acrylic craft paint into the white semi-gloss), I did the same thing with the numbers and filled them in with a darker grey paint.


Then it was just a matter of adding the measurement lines and I was done!


But by this time, we were about ready to list our house so I didn’t hang it up at the time. Then we moved and renovated and everything else that last year entailed. When we pulled it our at our new house, the paint had been scratched up and it wasn’t looking too hot so it still didn’t get hung up. So then finally this weekend I found a spot for it and figured out how to hang it up. Then it just took a little bit of touch up paint and it looks awesome! You might notice that I still have to add another name to the top but I’m giving myself a little time since that boy is still a few months away from being able to stand on his own!

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