The past 5 days I have been obsessing about cleaning up my house - to the point where I'm like DANG! If I was pregnant I would definitely be NESTING. Hee hee!
When I say "cleaning" -- I don't mean cleaning in the sense of making it clean. What I mean is making it nicer, neater, more of a HOME than a house.
I have PLENTY, and I mean so so many areas that could definitely qualify for the "Room of Shame" award. LOL. I suppose that's too harsh of a word, shame, so we'll tag them as "Room of Embarrassed".
Sound better?
When I see my house with the eyes of someone else walking in who has not been here before...
Ouch. It's cringe time.
And since I don't especially like cringing at the thought of my home, I've finally decided to do something about it.
Six years ago (yes, SIX years, folks. How embarrassing!!!!) we got a nice tax refund and I was pregnant and due in 2 months - nesting, much? I hired my SIL's to paint my ENTIRE interior house. Seriously.
Girls room I painted a fun purple/pink.
Boys room, blue. Main living area - light olive green, some walls khaki (love this combo still!). Main bathroom half blue/half yellow.
My room - an absolutely ATROCIOUS (omg it is SO ugly) sage green with burgundy on the bottom.
Most of the colors I chose were nice, and would have LOOKED NICE if I had finished what I was planning! But then I had a baby, and you know how that goes. Four children ages 5 & under doesn't exactly make for a motivated mommy. So seriously, my walls in THREE rooms are still painted half on top and half on the bottom with no distinction in the middle. No wall border, moulding, or anything. And since there is nothing to tie those colors together, they look really strange. Especially my bedroom. But you know how it goes when you're super busy and trying to just EXIST and maintain; things that are not necessary to live, go unnoticed after a while.
My new interest is also partly due to the thought of the kids going back to school too - I will have four full timers in school this year. For the past TWO years in a row, I have had a Kinder which means I had to drive to the school 3x each day, 5 days a week, for 10 months. Fun, fun times. =)
I'll still have three littles at home each day, but just taking out that one interruption is going to be divine! You know how it is when you have to drop a project or cleaning or whatever, to pack all the kids up and leave. Even if it's just for 10-15 minutes, it really chops up your day and can leave you disoriented, out of your groove, and 9x out of 10, the project is left until the next day.
So back to the original reason why I am writing today.
When I get interested in something, I will research it to DEATH -- all my spare time is spent learning about it, how to do it, the results, different ideas, etc. Then I go after it with the tenacity of a bulldog and don't stop until I get the results I want.
I can totally see that in the weight loss/health arena......I've tweaked things and hundreds of hours training and learning until finally I've learned what *my* body responds to and have the blueprint that works for me. Now I don't really need to worry about it - I've gotten the results I wanted through much trial and error, blood, sweat, and discouragement. But I did it!(okay well mostly, still working on that baby tummy flab but it took me seven babies to get there which is let's see....63 months to get there so...)
I've been bummed for a very long time about my house, wishing I could make it look adorable and beautiful but I just never could figure out HOW.
I knew obviously that we don't have the money to go get an interior designer to tell me what to do, and also to BUY the things she would suggest, anyways. Like custom curtains? Pppphhtt! Yeah right. Plus, with 7 kids? Yikes! Don't want to spend mucho $$ anyways, just to have it get ruined.
(DS 2 got ahold of the green food coloring the other day. Woohoo! How FUN to SQUIRT it on the cream colored couch (suggestion: don't buy that color with kids no matter HOW pretty it is and HOW cheap it is) and on the CREAM colored carpet and on the wall. I have no idea how to get it out because when you wash it, it smears BIGtime!)
So....blogs! I LOVE LOVE LOVE blogs. You can find blogs for just about everything you are interested in. People who have "gone before you" so to speak, tried this or that. And there are always those who are willing to do tutorials with pictures, detailed instructions, etc. REAL people. Who make mistakes and tell you not to do that particular thing, lol! Not some pat article that makes it sound like they know everything.
My new obsession is DIY and interior design blogs. I especially love the before/after "parties" where everyone posts links to their current projects and rooms they have completed. Complete with how-to's! I love it!
I'll be posting some before/afters on here as I do them, and if this sticks (sometimes my obsessions don't, lol) then I might start a new blog about it.
I'm especially excited about moulding and battan walls. I have always loved the look, especially around the ceiling. Wished I had the money to hire a contractor to do it for me. Wished that DH would do it for me. But he has so much going on. I just don't know HOW to do it, it seems so complicated and you need like a special expensive saw, have to measure all these things, etc.
Then I saw this post from a blog I am already learning to love! WOW I could not contain my excitement and I can't WAIT to try it!!!! I'll let you know how it goes - my thought is to do the ceiling moulding in my living room, and in my bedroom too. I would have it in my whole house if I could!
The other thing I LOVE for the girls' room is the battan walls. I just love the look and this is totally something I can do.
My whole house needs repainted - I read that after 2 years you need to repaint because the color fades, etc. It's been 6 years for my house. But anyway, in the girls room I'm probably going to be doing a pink & brown theme. I'm thinking to paint the walls a softer pink than is in there now, (it's like true bubblegum pink now)with the white batten on the bottom. I am so stoked about painting - it's a relatively inexpensive way to really brighten and change a home!
My room is going to be an Italian/Old World theme with fresh sunny yellow walls - what a change that is going to be from the current colors! It's pretty dark in there right now. This is the picture I am getting color inspiration from - love the yellows, reds, pinks, greens, and the strong lines of the black iron.
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