70's Home Reno - Sneak Peek

Good Morning! It's Friday already. This week went fast. I wanted to show a couple of pictures of the remodel. iPhone pictures, of course. I have to cleanup and stage each room before taking blog worthy pictures, but I couldn't wait to give a sneak peek.

We went with white and pale grey color palette for this house. We have honey oak and beige all over our old home and they are so not my colors. But the house was new and it was our first house so we couldn't dare to change anything. This home gave us a perfect blank slate to pick the colors I wanted. Most people that walk in say you painted all walls white, but it's not white. It's grey. I will list the paint colors used as I share each room. Have a great weekend.

70's Home Reno - The Before

Its been over a year and half  we closed on our new OLD house and I am starting my renovation posts now. It was a looooong renovation that is yet to be finished. But it is far better than where we started.

Here is how it looked when we bought it.

Living Room

Dining room with mirrored wall and a pocket door leading to Kitchen.

View from front door. Glad that the living room has high ceilings. makes a good first impression on the otherwise low ceiling old house.

Spacious Kitchen

Family Room

Master bedroom

Master Bath with a pocket door to toilet & shower. No door from bedroom to the vanity area.

Upstairs hallway to Bonus room/ Den. Wallpaper!!

HUGE Den.

Upstairs hallway to 3 more bedrooms and a full bath

A deep pool that occupies the entire backyard. 

We had to deal with new electrical panel, new airducts, replacing windows, removal of wallpaper and stucco (not popcorn) ceiling, I know who does that for inside the house?

It was hell through the first few months of renovation, especially being the first time for us.

We waited for it to finish, expecting it might take 2-3 months. 5 months in and it seemed like never ending so when we felt it came to a livable state we moved in. The very first day we moved in we had a toilet overflow that forced us to gut and redo the only bath (powder room actually) we remodeled before moving in. We pulled through and managed to get some smaller projects completed while living in. I will share some latest pictures in next post.

Halloween Treats - Another Glow in the Dark gift idea

Ok, I know Halloween is long gone and we are headed towards Thanksgiving, but I only finished this project at 11.08 PM on Thursday night for the Halloween party at school on Friday, followed by weekend full of family fun, Trick or Treating and rushing into the week, this is the soonest I could post about these. But hey, the whole point of this blog is documenting pretty and important things, so sooner or later, it had to be posted.

You remember the glow in the dark sticks I sent out for school friends last year?

Well, I do not like to give out candy to the little ones, even though they would eat all they can get. But I wanted to give them something that they like to use. The glow in the dark idea struck in my head that I brainstormed a lot on what else I could do similar. We were at a birthday party where the mom got kids bracelet kits. It was easy snap plastic bracelet rings with some lettered pony beads. I thought a glow in the dark version of it would be great, but I did not find lettered pony beads (with big hole to fit in the bracelet rings) that glowed in dark. So I went with colorful elastic threads. Here is the outcome.

You can't see it well, but I wrote 'I GLOW IN DARK' with flourescent pen ont he card I attached bracelet to. Just to let them know.

Surprisingly, I found all the supplies at Walmart. Yup, couldn't get them all at Micheals or Jo Ann, but Walmart came through at the last minute. Can you believe those adorable pouches are from Walmart too?

I am just so happy that this year's treats were also so colorful and useful for kids. All the compliments from Moms and Teachers was delicious-whipped-frosting on the cake.

Medicine Organization

Every home has some medications, for seasonal illnesses, pain, personal health conditions, supplements, something or the other. Where do you store them? Do you really store any of them in medicine cabinets in bathroom? I always had this question. Does anybody really store medicines in medicine cabinets in their bathrooms? I personally don't like it. It is a humid place, not ideal for medications. Plus, how do we take them in bathroom? If we don't why should we store them in there? If we don't store them in there why are they called medicine cabinets? Anyway, I store them in linen closet.

When it was just the two of us, we had very minimal supply. So I stored them in a craft store photo box. Then the kid came along and our supply grew. I added another box, but it still wasn't enough. Some of them were placed next to the boxes in the closet. When we moved to this house 5 months ago we put them all in a small cardboard box and they stayed there for past 5 months. Kid was sick 6 times in past 5 months, we used up and bought more and added to the box, but did not figure out how to keep them organized. Did not take time to do it I guess.

I was actually planning to conquer under the kitchen sink after referring to Jen's post @ iHeartOrganizing that I pinned back in July. I made a list of items to buy from The Container Store and part of it was Clear Shoe Box. I was hoping to use a wider box to hold more items so I also purchased the Clear Shirt & Accessory Drawer with divider set. 

After coming home I realized our plumbing was blocking it a tab bit, I couldn't shut the cabinet door. So I had to use the smaller Shoe box. But a light bulb went off in my head and BOOM! this happened.

The dividers worked perfectly to group items by purpose. I finally broken the packaging of my almost 2 years old brand new label machine and labelled the sections. I grouped and named according to what works for our family. I left couple of them for miscellaneous items. 

Slide the drawer in and its all neatly organized.

Now I don't have to dig through adult medication to find the children's tylenol or fish for the thermometer when my daughter gets sick in the middle of the night.

Since the larger bottle didn't fit in the drawer and all those big bottles are supplements, I put them all in a basket and kept on kitchen counter so we can see and remember to take them.

So what didn't work for one area in the home worked like a charm for another. These Clear drawer boxes are so versatile and have a clean and modern look. Only complaint I have with this organization project is that I couldn't place this box in upper linen cabinets since these are 14 inches deep. It's ok, I will store them in lower cabinets. Over all I am very happy with it. Thanks to Jen for inspiration for my Under Kitchen Sink organization which led to this. For under kitchen sink, I literally copied her ideas because they were awesome. I will show that area soon. Have a good rest of the week.

Home Tour - Our First Home

We moved out of our beloved first home few months ago. From the perfect house in not-so-perfect-for-us location to completely-ugly-total-fixer-upper house in the most-perfect-for-us location. While we have been trying to make it livable and lovable, I look back to the pictures of our old home from time to time. I admit, our family is totally enjoying the short commutes and extra family time, but first home is first home, right? It's special. More so for us since it was in super pristine state when we bought it and all I did was accessorize it to make it look better. I don't have a post that shows each room of the house so here are some pictures for you.

My beloved plum/purple front door

Foyer

Dining Area

Living Room

Kitchen

Family Room

Family room - patio door to Backyard

Kitchen - view from Family Room

Guest bedroom

Girl's Nursery

2nd Bathroom

Master Bedroom

Master Bathroom

Side Yard

Back yard

Back yard

Back yard

 My heart is heavy now! Miss that home, so many memories!

Have a good weekend everyone. I hope to start showing our new-old house and what we have been doing for past 8 months pretty soon.

Baby Shower Printable for Girl - Guess Baby's Birthday

It's been a long time I posted anything here. We moved and things haven't settle down yet, so I took a long break from blogging. Hopefully I will start back up and show you a lot of things I am planning in the new abode.

Past weekend we planned a quick shower for a friend who is due with her 2nd baby soon. We only had 3-4 days to plan and prepare so we didn't do a lot, just ordered take out food, decorated a little, played baby shower games and had lot of fun. I realized the spontaneous get-togethers are quite fun since we don't stress so much about the arrangements. We used what we had on hand mostly for decorations. I did make a girly diaper cake and a little printable, oh did I say our friend is having a girl? So yeah, it was super girly, everything pink and gray with a little touch of yellow. I would have gone with other pastels than pink if she was having a 2nd girl but her first one was a boy so I knew she could handle some pink. Or a lot of it. Here is a quick look of that pinky pink diaper cake, sorry for the poor picture quality.

About the printable, it is a game that all guests will guess when the baby will be born. Obviously there is no winning during the shower, but mom can save it as a keepsake. I tried to find free printable for this online but I couldn't, so I made one. I thought I would share it so anyone looking for free printables for a last minute shower could use it. Since this is a monthly printable, I made for each month for the rest of the year. I will try to make some boy versions and post them soon.

Hope you like them. Please leave a note in the comments if you used these so I know that they are actually being used.