How I'm Attempting to Keep my House Spotless

I have no idea what has gotten into me lately, but I am turning into my mother.  The clutter started to drive me nuts.  Pretty soon I will be pulling a "Busie" aka my grandma.  I will be leaving sticky notes on doors and drawers about how they operate.  I started off with organizing my bathroom with dollar store baskets.  It was like heaven.  I also found some cheap, under the counter, bathroom storage drawers at TJMaxx. Its amazing that I don't have to throw junk around while searching in the bottomless pit of bathroom drawers for my mascara in the morning.  If you haven't done this yet, do it.  It will change your life!

The other thing I started was after looking at other similar documents online, I created my "Busie Cleaning Schedule".  This is my attempt at making my house look professionally cleaned while having two hellions...ok angels...running around.  I broke it down by room, and added what I should be doing weekly and daily.  If I'm working a 12 hr day obviously that may not happen, but hey my husband seems a lot happier!

Here is what mine ended up looking like.  I also attached some links if you would like to print a copy for yourself.  Have fun cleaning :)

Cleaning Schedule pg1
Cleaning Schedule pg 2

Different Wooden Sign Techniques

Since I enjoyed making the wooden sign for our bedroom so much, I decided to jump into this hobby head first.  I asked Mike to not get rid of any of the scraps from our barn building project, and took apart an old entertainment stand for supplies. 

The first thing I tried was making something to hang on our front door for fall.  I found a wooden pumpkin sign at Joann's for about $10.  After researching the PVPP method, I painted it white first.  Then I used my silhouette software to make a Moroccan pattern with the duplicate function.  After cutting my stencil I placed it on the wooden pumpkin.  I then paint over the whole thing with orange paint.  In order to prevent the paint from peeling when I removed the vinyl, I quickly removed it before the paint could dry.  I then took a wooden "W" I found at Joanns, and after painting it white, I hot glued it to the middle of my sign. 

Ta da!  Switching up the wreath on my front door.

Next project coming up, a welcome sign for my front porch.

DIY Home Decor: Wooden Signs

If you happened to marry a man like I did, who is loathe to spend money on anything.  You have to think of creative ways to decorate your house.  Instead of spending over a hundred dollars in store, I spent around $20 putting this together with the help of my Cameo Silhouette (oh and my husband).

I started off going to a local hardware store, where I bought some 1x6's.  I also picked up some Rust-oleam Kona stain since I read other blogs raving about it.  Mike said we already had some polyurethane, so I didn't have to buy any of that.  I completed this project over about a week.  I wanted to make sure the stain and paints were dry, and I have two young toddlers.....so yeah.

Step one, choose your wood.  (insert snarky comment here).

Step 2: Stain.  I used one of Mike's old shirts, and I also wore plastic gloves since I knew this would get messy. 

Step 3: Polyurethane.  I used a small foam roller once the stain was completely dry the next day.

Step 4:  Attach your boards together.  We ended up using small wooden shims and lots of screws thanks to my husband's drill.  I've also read that using metal braces will help lighten the load of the sign.  Ta Da.

Step 5:  Decide on what you want on your sign.  Thanks to some awesome J14 mamas, I narrowed down my choices to decide on "together is our favorite place to be".  I used my Cameo Silhouette to make the stencils.  So you can learn from my mistakes, if you are going to use contact paper, spray some extra adhesive to it.  Otherwise it will not stick.  You can see the that "together" isn't as neat as the other words.  After that fail and before finding the spray adhesive trick, I switched to using some 631 I had laying around. 

**Another learn from my mistake moment.  Use make up sponges and dab the paint on.  Don't try and brush it on.  I pulled the vinyl off while the pain was still wet.  The smaller pieces inside the letters I waited till it was dry so I didn't smudge anything.

My final product:

I felt like it was too plain with just the words like I had planned, so I added a flourish design in the bottom left.  Besides the cost savings, I really enjoyed making this.