This Chicks Life

Who Doesn't Want a Little Sparkle in Their Life?

2012-02-12T20:29:00.002-06:00

Hey there chickies! First off, I am simply overwhelmed with the response I received from last weeks post! It was amazing how many people stopped by both here and through Pinterest! I am so excited to see everyone and hear everyone’s comments. Thank you!

Now for todays regularly scheduled programming!

Here shortly I will be sharing with you all The Girls bedroom make over, which if I do say so myself, is pretty awesome. But for now I’m going to share with you guys a little sneak peak into it. This is just something I thought of last week and I used things I had on hand so it didn’t cost me anything but made a HUGE impact on her room! Wanna see?

Plain old boring light switch cover...

To a lightswitch cover perfect for the Diva in all of us!

Its so sparkly, We love it!

And aside from being a little messy, like all good glitter projects usually are, it was very simple to do!

This is what I started out with.

Now dont be hatin on my top of the line Modge Podge now. You too can have your very own! Here's a little bonus post within a post if you need the directions. Take a clean empty baby food jar, or any other type of glass jar. Fill halfway with regular Elmers type glue and halfway with water. Put the lid on, shake and done! Dont forget your custom label either, made of freezer tape and a Sharpie.

Annnnd, were back!

Remove your faceplate from the wall (be sure to put the screws in a safe place so you don't lose them) and paint it with your modge podge.

Now you may notice that I am using a tray for this project. If you've been with me for a little bit you know the consequences of an unprotected work surface...Argh, I still get upset with myself over it. Protect your work surface chickies. Protect. Your. Work. Surface.J

Now sprinkle you faceplate with the glitter.

Proceed to get it all over the place.

Wait FOR. EH. VOR! (name that movie)

I would reccomend you wait overnight to let this dry completely!

Then spray with a clear enamel to keep the glitter from flaking off. I used 3 coats, with about an hour of dry time between each.

Now once dry you need to reattach it to the wall. When you do this your screws will still be plain old glitter free. This is of course, not exceptable.

Just pour out a little glitter

and dip your brush in your modge podge very lightly and then dip it in the glitter and brush on to the screws.

And then your done!

The Girl thinks it cool, I think its cool, The Man only barely shook his head at me when I told him what I was doing, it was free, and it added a ton of pizazz to The Girls Room. Total win chickies!

I've seen others who have changed their light switch covers with things like scrap book paper, gem stones and even the ever useful Sharpies. There is so many great ideas out there! Have you done anything to yours? It's such a simple project and I cant wait to do some more in my home.

Until next week chickies!

A New Pair of Shades

2012-02-05T14:45:00.000-06:00

So I've seen these floating around blogland for awhile now and I've been wanting to do it since I saw the first picture. But I've been scared cause I didn't want to mess it up and have to go spend money on something just because I've ruined a perfectly good, working shade. But I finally got up the courage to do it and I gotta admit, I am so happy I did! It may not be perfect but I think it turned out great! And it was a lot easier than I thought it would be too!

This is what I started with. Just a simple drum shade covered in a type of burlap fabric.

And I just took some of my favorite Bible verses and sayings and a Sharpie and went to town. The shade has a line where the fabric meets so I used it as a starting point and then basically just wrote it all out like it was a piece of paper. When I got to the fabric line I would just start at the beginning again and go around till I met the fabric line again.

I ended up liking it so much that I figured I would do something to another lamp we had. But I didn't think writing would look as good on the other one as it did on this one. It was bell shaped and was a lighter type of fabric.

And then I just free handed some swirlies on the inside of the shade. On the other shade whenever the lamp is on you can't really see all of the writing. I wanted this one to be opposite and only show up when the lamp was turned on.

The writing on the other shade was pretty easy but this was even easier than that!

You can't tell in the picture how well it shows up because I suck at taking pictures but trust me, it looks awesome all lit up!

What do ya'll think? I love them so don't tell me if you hate them :)

And the best part? They didnt cost me a dime. I used shades I already had a marker. That's it! Instant upgrade for zero cost! Plus I learned not to trust myself a little more as well. I didn't think I owuld be able to do a good enough job for this, and while it may not be as good as other peoples it still came out pretty darn good, atleast to me!

See you chickies next week!

Hair Stuff Storage

2012-01-30T19:59:00.001-06:00

Hey chickies!

Running a little late this week so I’ve got a real simple, fun project for ya! It’s an oldie but goodie!

Turn this….

Into this!

All you need is an empty oatmeal container, an empty paper towel tube and a roll of Color Duck Tape. And some scissors of course.

The Girl loves zebra patterns so I picked up a roll of Zebra printed Duct Tape from good ole Wally World for about $3.50.

And all I did was wrap strips of tape around the container and the roll to cover them completely. I allso added a couple of scrapbook stickers I had laying around to the container. She keeps her hair brush and other accessories inside the oatmeal container and her pony tail holders around the paper towel roll. I also took two roughly 6” pieces of tape and put them sticky side together to create something she could put her bobby pins and clips on. She keeps this inside of the oatmeal container. Now, if your smarter than I am you will know to cut about an inch or so off of the paper towel roll before you tape it so that it will fit inside the oatmeal container as well!

Really simple upgrade that saves a lot of headache and counter top! The Girl knows where everything is and I’m not upset about the crap ton of hair stuff all over the place!

My Favorite Room in the House!!!

2012-01-22T00:23:00.000-06:00

Okay this may be weird to some but my absolute favorite room in my house is my bathroom! We are lucky in the fact that our home has 3 bathrooms. One downstairs that is the kids/guest bathroom. The master bedroom bath which is my husbands and the hall bath which is mine and the guests bathroom. My bathroom has been remodeled twice in the 6 years we’ve been here. The first one, about a year after we moved in, was more of a necessity because what was there HAD TO GO!

The bathroom was painted an awful dark shiny blue, had a baby blue porcelain sink, toilet and bath tub. And let us not forget the bright brass/mirrored sliding shower doors and peeling linoleum floor!

These pictures were taken the second time we toured the house.

We replaced the toilet, sink and bathtub about a year after we moved in. We used some tile that we had bought a couple of years before from a warehouse closing so that remodel only cost us the price of the tub, sink and toilet really. Unfortunately I don’t really have any pictures of the bathroom in this stage except a few that we took right before we started the next remodel. Since the walls and flooring were tiled before we had to tear it all down to studs and sub floor.

And finally, we got to the point where we could afford to do what we wanted to it and make it MINE! And to give credit where credit is due The Man did both of the remodels himself! Have I ever told you guys how awesome it is to be married to this guy? Cause it is!

The shower curtain and towels came from Wal Mart but for the most part all of the decorations came from yard sales, The Dollar Tree and local thrift stores or were things I already had on hand.

This is the tile we used, luckily they were on clearance so we got a really great deal on them!

The mirror was the original that came with the house but The Man made a frame for it.

Oh and this lovely vanity? The Man built it! Yep! We had looked at ordering one but because the opening was a weird size they were really hard to find. And of course the ones we did find were ridiculous in pricing! I think the best price we could really find ws about $2,000! There was no way we could or would pay that! So The Man, being the awesome guy he is, said "I can build it". So we got a custom vanity for about $450! And $200 of that was the counter top that we bought and cut down to size. And my favorite part?

It's like a secret drawer! I freaking love it! I hated all the wasted space in most vanities and this way we are getting as much storage as we possibly can.

So there it is! What do ya'll think? I was really second guessing myself and what I had envisioned once we got that yellow on the walls but now that it's all together I think it came out amazing!

Until next time!

Modge Podge Plates

2012-01-14T20:15:00.000-06:00

First of all I've got to tell you guys thank you! I am so excited that you have all come and visited my site and that I've got new followers! It's so exciting to have you all along with my journey!

Now I know that this projects been done over and over before across Blog Land but that’s okay. It’s a classic and I wanted to show you guys my version and how I made do with what I had on hand. And though it did take me a little bit longer than if I would have had a nice little vinyl machine I think it came out just fine, and it didn’t cost me a dime!

Basically all I did was print off what I wanted my plates to say then cut them out and modge podged them to the plate. I used a little a pair of manicurist scissors to cut out all the small words and a mixture of Elmers glue and water to modge podge them to the plate. And be warned, your hand will resemble a claw by the time your done cutting J But it only took me about 30 minutes so it really wasn’t that bad!

Hope you guys like it and I will see you all next week!

Hidden Jewelry Box

2012-01-08T19:10:00.000-06:00

Today I’m going to show you guys something that I literally did nothing with except come up with the idea! And even though he did all the work this project is something that I easily could have done myself so if I can do it you definitely will be able to do it yourself! Or just grab a cute guy and ask him pretty please and if your lucky he will be happy to show off his mad-manly skills J

I’ve had this picture frame thingy for a couple of years now so if its something I’ve owned for more than 6 months, in my eyes, it’s free! However because I am lazy I never took the price sticker off the back so I am able to tell you guys that I got this at GW for $8.93. However, if I hadn’t had something on hand to use I probably would have done some kind of subway art like this for the front.

We also had to purchase a little cabinet magnetic latch thingy-ma-jig for about $4. And some brown paint which cost us about $3 (we just got a sample size since we knew we wouldn’t be needing very much). Everything else, the hinges, twine, pegs, and wood that was used for the sides and back, we had on hand. So total cost of project was around $15, or in my eyes $7 J And it is worth every penny! This is so much nicer and easier to use then the dresser drawer I originally had all my jewelry in. The necklaces would get all tangled up and most of the time for me it wasn’t even worth wearing because it would take time to untangle when all I wanted to do was grab something and run out the door! Again, I’m pretty lazy!

Basically this is a really simple project. You measure your box, cut the sides for it and glue them together and then nail them for extra security. The sides of my box are about 1 ¾ for a total of about 2 ½ all together including the frame off the wall. The backing was just a piece of ¾ inch board that was glued and nailed to the sides to make an open top box.

He then painted the whole thing inside and out. He used a primer on it first because the wood was pretty gross. Then I believe he used 3 coats of the brown.

Now the pegs were probably the ‘hardest’ part of the whole project. I say that only because, and I quote “they were a pain in the butt to get to sit right”. He took a drill bit and drilled halfway though the back where he wanted the pegs to be. He then put some wood glue in the holes he created and pushed the pegs in. Doesn’t sound hard to me really but who knows. Let me know if you have any troubles with it. I think that The Man was just getting frustrated at this point with me asking him ‘Is it done yet?’ J

Okay so then he attached the frame to the box with the little hinges, which are just small piano type hinges.

And then the latch. Very simple really, put the big magnetic part on first to the inside side of the box then attach the little plate to the backside of the frame

He then stapled 2 short pieces of twine to the inside sides of the box for my dangly earrings to hang on.

And then, now brace yourselves people, he attached it to the wall! We actually had a couple of heavy duty picture hangers on hand so he used them to attach the top to the wall. But he also put a big screw through the bottom into the wall to keep the whole thing from pulling away from the wall when I opened it.

So there you have it! I can’t express to you how much I love it! It’s so nice to be able to see what you have and to be able to just grab want you want. And no lie, I am really happy with my hubby for doing this for me. Did he do it just to be nice or just to shut me up? I choose to believe the former! After 10 years of marriage you learn not to look a gift horse in the mouth! So thank you hunny, if you ever read this J

The Girls New Digs

2012-01-04T20:48:00.000-06:00

WARNING: I am super excited about this project so its a little long. Just hang in there with me till the end and it'll be worth it. I promise :)

As I’ve said before I grew up in a house full of boys. So needless to say I was a little bit of a tomboy. But the one thing I did always want was Barbie stuff! My best friend had a ton of Barbie stuff and we would play for hours with it all! And I’ve always dreamed of my daughter having a nice big Barbie house and all the accessories to go with it! However, I have never been able to actually bring myself to pay for one. So what’s a chick to do? Make her own of course!

Update: I have finally found the blog where I origanally saw this. Here it is. Go check it out, it's very awesome! http://unslumpingyourself.blogspot.com/2011/07/project-barbie-house.html

I saw this online one day and unfortunately I can not find it again. If you know where it’s from please let me know so I can give her the proper credit!

I put out feelers for this type of TV stand and within a week a friend had found me one at a thrift store for $10. I started by spray painting the edges and poles white.

I then cut up a black bathroom rug that we had and never used for the bathroom and bedroom carpet. I attached the pieces to the stand with a heavy duty stapler. These were the easiest floors to do by far!

I got 4-12x12 stick on tiles from Lowes for about $1 each for the dining room and kitchen. I had to cut a couple up to make them cover the whole floor of the stand and let me tell ya, the stickiness of these tiles are nas-tay. I used regular scissors to cut them and it was a very sticky, gooey, yucky job! But it sure did turn out nice and was totally worth it!

The bathroom and patio ‘tiles’ didn’t cost me a dime! Can you tell what their made of? Know those little counter top paper samples at the hardware store? Yeah buddy! I grabbed a handful of 2 different colors, cut them to squares and glued them on with some hot glue. Took a little time but it was very easy.

And that was pretty much it for the doll house itself so far. I plan to put 'walls' in for the kitchen, bathroom and dining room (you can see the foam board behind the house that I plan on using for te walls) and a backing for the whole thing but for now this works fine! And it only cost me about $15. And it really only cost me like $5 cause my awesome friend bought the stand for me!

But I did go shopping for the accessories! The Girl got this for Christmas and we purchased some things new. I made some stuff and everything else was bought used at thrift stores and yard sales and repurposed. I'll break that all down for you with the pictures.

The Kitchen

I made the stove out of a Pop Tart box and some white contact paper and what not. Same with the cabinets. We plan to use the checkered cloth from the couch to make curtains for the doors of the cabinets and we need to remove the stickers from the 'pantry'. Which is kind of locker type thing that apparently came with lip gloss and hair stuff but for 50¢ I didnt care what it was. It went with the rest of the house really well and its metal and it holds her broom and vaccum! Score!

The Living Room

This still has alot of stuff we want to add to it but so far we like it! I made the checkered couch from some old foam and fabric. Same with the pillows. I got the hutch for 50¢, the white couch and chair were given to me from my sis-in-law and were originally the same brown as the hutch but I just took some spray paint to them so they matched the outher couch. The coffe table I actually got from a thrift store for $1 and it was a watch box. I also got the little table at a thrift store and I made a 'tv' out an old silver picture frame. Pretty simple but it came together nice I think!

The Bedroom

The bed I made out of some foam and fabric. The dresser is some box thing with drawers I got for 25¢ and the closet was given to me by a friend. We still need to actually attach the curtains to the inside of it as right now they are just hanging over the doors :)

The Dining Room

This room was the easiest by far! We purchased the table and chairs new and the cabinet thing was given to me by another of my sis-in-laws. It was origanally a baby pink but once again I just got out the white spray paint to make it match a little better.

The Patio

This was pretty easy as well! We purchashed the grill new and I got the little stone bench and copper pot at the thrift store for I believe 50¢ each. The shrubbery is actually a tree from those little Christmas towns I got on clearance for 25¢ and I just stuck it in the pot!
The Bathroom

For some reason this is my favorite room. Maybe because in real life my bathroom is my favorite room in my house? Hmmm.... Anyways! The tub was bought new and the sink and toilet were given to me by the same sis-in-law who gave me the couch and chair. I made the rug out of zebra duct tape and the shelf was actually a cardboard box from a bracelet I had gotten years ago. I glued some pieces of cardboard inside it to make shelves and the legs are actually a plastic straw I cut up and glued to the box and another piece of cardboard. And of course I spray painted the whole thing white! It holds all the little bottles and things that came with the bathtub perfectly!

The Garage

Okay, I'm a liar! THIS was the easiest room to do cause I didnt do a dang thing to it! Is it really considered a room? Don't answer that! The bottom of the stand holds a couple of cars and a scooter perfectly!

That's it! Still here? Oh good! Since you stuck with me I'll show you the whole thing!

Is'nt she pretty? I am so proud of her! We still have a few things left to do and a ton of other little things that me and The Girl want to do together, like books, a computer and a lounge chair for the patio. And I'm not gonna lie, I'm looking forward more to creating things with her than I am in the actual product. I forsee many many hours ahead of us working and playing on this thing! I can't wait!

Chocolate Gravy and Fried Oats

2011-11-22T20:41:00.000-06:00

A little back story…

My 3 younger brothers and I were basically raised by our grandpa. And as his first grandchild and the only girl out of the 6 grand kids I was his baby. To this day my brothers still tease me about all the times the 4 of us would be fighting and I’d hit one of them and when they’d go to hit me back grandpa would yell at them and not me! J

My grandpa was pretty old fashioned and thought that women did the housework and kids and men were in charge of everything else. So even though I was his baby I was the one that was expected to cook all of our meals. Wait, have I mentioned that there were 8 of us living in our house? 7 big boys and men and little ole’ me. At the time I didn’t always like it but now I’m pretty happy I did cause I got to learn a lot of our family recipes. Every Saturday morning he and I would make a huge pot of either rice, oatmeal or our favorite Chocolate Gravy and Fried Oats. And of course there was no recipe, just a handful of this, a pinch of that and a dash of this. But lucky for you guys I’ve come up with a recipe that matches the Chocolate Gravy and Fried Oats pretty closely! Even when I follow the recipe I still always end up throwing in an extra pinch of this and that so feel free to tweak it however you’d like.

Ingredients:

Gravy:

2 Tbsp. cocoa

4 Tbsp. flour

9 Tbsp. sugar

Water

Oats:

¾ cup butter

½ cup sugar

3 cups quick oats

Directions:

-In a saucepan mix gravy ingredients. Add enough water to fill the pan about half way.

-Stir until desired consistency. Add more water if needed.

-Heat on medium high heat and whisk to keep the gravy smooth.

-In a skillet melt the butter than pour in the oats.

-Sprinkle with sugar until oats are toasted and brown.

-Serve with gravy poured over the oats.

-Enjoy!

I hope you guys like it! Diet food it is not but by golly it’s yummy! Plus everytime I make it I get warm fuzzies and remember my grandpa and how blessed we were to have him in our lives! Who knows? Maybe this could give you and your family warm fuzzies one day too!

Rock Pot Holder

2011-11-07T12:54:00.000-06:00

Well hello hello everyone! Hope you all had a fantastic Halloween!

Recently on Pinterest I came across this and thought “how easy and cute this would be for my kitchen”. And I was right! It was super simple and only cost me 50¢! Yay! However, there was a minor mishap that I will get into later that about made me bawl but after a mini panic attack and a raid of my kids Halloween candy for some chocolate I feel much better about it.

Here is what I managed. Of course the Martha picture is much better than mine but I am okay with it J

This is what I used. A bunch of rocks from around my house, the inner circle of a quilting hoop, an old mouse pad (didn’t have an extra one at home so went to a local thrift store and got one for 50¢), scissors and some Quick Grip glue.

I tore off the blue top of the pad and traced the hoop onto the pad.

I then of course cut it out and laid some rocks around the edge.

I glued that first circle down then just kept filling in and gluing down until it was all filled in.

Simple see! And now I have a pretty pot holder to use instead of all the old nasty burnt ones I’ve had for 10 years. I am definitely going to be making more. And maybe there is some rock placemats somewhere in my future?

Oh yeah baby!

Now for the panic inducing reason!

Ahhhh! Holy crap! The glue seeped through the mouse pad and ate the finish off my beautiful kitchen table!!! I flipped out but luckily The Man didn’t. So after the panic attack and after the candy raid we figured that we can sand the rough places down a bit and refinish the spot and it should be good as new. And if not, like The Man says, it will be covered with a placemat anyways. And I am going to keep telling myself that so I don’t freak. Is it bad that just typing this and looking at the picture again makes my heart rate pick up? So the moral of the story? Protect your work surface!!!

Halloween Mobile

2011-10-22T22:11:00.000-05:00

Just so ya know, I’m the cool aunt. K? I’ll fight all my sister-in-laws for that title and I’ll win! So recently when the local schools were closed for teacher day I thought I would be awesome and watch 3 of my nieces plus my girl. I’d let them stay overnight, stay up late and do cool fun aunt things with them. Umm, I’m not doing that again for awhile. 10, 9, 7 and 6 year old girls DO. NOT. STOP!!! We talked about everything from how to properly raise your hand in school to what color their future braces were gonna be to their favorite nail polish. Needless to say, The Man locked himself away for the entire night and by 10 o’clock mean aunt was rearing her ugly head. Anywho, one of the reasons I’m the cool aunt is because I craft with them. I had a whole list of outside activities planned but the crappy weather put an end to that. So I had to come up with something else on the fly. So I went on to Pinterest to ~~escape~~ research and found this. And cause I’m cool like that I figured I could make it better. Of course all the girls decided to make jewelry instead so I ended up doing this with just my kiddo’s a couple nights later. Here’s what we came up with.

I started with some scraps of black and white poster paper, some black yarn, a couple of straight-ish sticks from the yard, tape, scissors and a black marker. Ignore the glue and pretend the scissors and marker are in the picture. J

Then I just free handed some bats and ghosts on to the scraps. You could also use things like spiders, cats, etc if you want.

I then cut all of them out,

and erased all of my pencil marks.

I trimmed my sticks to roughly the same size and tied them together with a piece of yarn, about 18 inches apart.

I laid my cutouts to where I thought they looked good,

and tied yarn at those positions on the sticks at various lengths.

Then I simply taped the cutouts to the yarn and drew faces on the ghosts.

I attached it to the ceiling with another piece of yarn and was done!

Super scary right? Yeah not so much but it was fun to make and super easy AND didn’t cost a dime! Yay!

Welcome to This Chicks Life!

2011-10-17T01:54:00.000-05:00

Welcome to my blog! I’m so excited you found me! I thought for my first official post I would tell you a little bit about myself, my family and my life. I am a 27 year old mom of 2 and have been married to their wonderful daddy for over 10 years. We live in a great little Mid Western town and have been in our home for almost 6 years. I started this blog with the encouragement of some really great friends in order to keep track of all the randomness that runs through my head. I love being a Christian, a wife, a mommy, crafting, designing, cooking, organizing, reading, music, and so on and so on! There’s not a whole lot I really don’t like actually. So where this blog goes is anyone’s guess! I hope you enjoy the journey with this ordinary chick trying to live and extraordinary life!

The Man

The Girl

The Boy