Our Kitchen Remodel: Phase 2

I'm so excited!! Phase 2 of our kitchen remodel is done~whoo hoo!! Some of you may remember last year when we moved in and completed Phase 1. Remember that prison-cell-gray paint on the walls, the ugly dark cabinets with the dr's-office-plain hardware? Ugh. I sure do. And I'm happy to say that's all g.o.n.e.!

Of course, we painted the walls right away with a bright, cheery red~which I love, still. But the room was still dark-ish and dated looking. So painting the cabinets was the obvious, frugal choice. I decided to go white, then I realized I have white counter tops (duh) and those just wouldn't look good with white cabinets. So, then a stroke of brilliance struck me. I had started seeing (on blogs, Pinterest, in magazines, etc.) some kitchens that had upper cabinets painted differently from the lower cabinets--and I loved that! And that's what I decided must happen: white on the uppers, black on the lowers.

Now my mom, sister, and hubby weren't nearly as convinced as I was, but I could visualize it and in my mind it looked great. I'm so glad my hubby trusts my instincts. "Go with the gut", I always say. It never steers me wrong (and that's on many levels). But I digress. And off we went to buy black and white paint.

Can I just say, I L.O.V.E. these cabinets?! I do!! They turned out so pretty, my hubby did an amazing job painting them all. It wasn't even as big of a mess as I was afraid it would be.

Here are some "after" shots for you:

Oh--and did I tell you that Vince surprised me last month by having a new kitchen sink faucet installed while we were on vacation? It's nice and tall and I can actually fit a stock pot under it!

We also changed the hardware to a nice oil rubbed bronze. Also, instead of having to purchase all new hinges we spray painted them with oil rubbed bronze spray paint (we love that stuff!!). They turned out great!

Just a couple of "before" pics to make you cringe:

And a quick shot from the Phase 1 where you can see how the red walls looked with the stained cabinets--better, but not great.

Next up: Phase 3! Oh, yeah! We've still got some stuff to do before the holidays!!

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The Making of an Egyptian Death Mask

We are learning all about the ancient world this year with Story of the World I and loving it! We've been learning a lot about Egypt, of course, which is completely fascinating. Most recently we have studied the New Kingdom of Egypt, which includes the story of King Tut. So we decided making an Egyptian death mask in the style of King Tut's would be a fun project. First since it was too cold at the time to paper mache in the garage (it probably would have frozen instead of dried-ha) and it was too messy to do it in the house, we decided to pick up a couple of cheap craft masks at Hobby Lobby. Next we cut out cardboard shapes to complete the shape of the death mask, attaching them with hot glue. Vince even put a little detail on the *beard* with the hot glue per The Princess' request. Then the kiddos started to paint them with this metallic gold tempera paint. It worked okay for the cardboard, but would not coat the plastic of the mask. We thought maybe a second coat ...

Door Hanger Chore Charts

My kids have had a chore chart for a while. It's one of those magnetic boards and they share it. However, it's not by their rooms and often they (and I) forget to update it. Plus it's a little bulky. When I saw the concept of a door hanger chore chart on Pinterest, I loved it! It was compact, right there were the kiddos could see it coming out and going into their rooms, and it costs almost nothing to make. I headed over to one of my favorite stores: Hobby Lobby, of course. They have these little wooden door hangers for .79. I also grabbed a couple of packets of decorative buttons for $1.99 each. I already had the clothes pins and the paint so those cost me nothing. I began by painting the door hangers (I used tempera paints because that's what I had). Then I grabbed a fine point Sharpie and the clothes pins and started writing chores on them, making sure to write them correctly so they will ...

Making Notebooks

Recently I tried out a new craft idea~and it was SO much fun!! And extremely frugal, too. That's always a bonus, right? So here we go: 1. Take your basic composition notebook (purchased at the back-to-school sales for .99 each). 2. Go to your craft supplies and get your Mod Podge ready, along with a good paintbrush. 3. Look through all those scrapbook papers you've been randomly collecting and choose some. 3. After choosing your paper for the cover of your book and trimming it to fit, start *painting* the cover with the glue. Next, give the back of your paper a good coat of glue, too. (I left the binding uncovered so that I could use a contrasting paper there later on). 4. Glue it on! Remember to smooth out any air bubbles under the paper. 5. Flip the cover open and make a few cuts on the corners so that they will fold over nice and neat, then add a little more glue to the edges of the inside cover and a little more to the paper edges. 6. Fold them over and press...

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