Delicious Recipes to Keep my Family of Four Happy and Full
One of the things we wanted in our basement was a bar area for people to gather around. At all of our parties, people always end up in the kitchen around the island so we wanted a similar space downstairs…just without the stove and oven.
Mathlete just finished framing the bar area and marking it so the plumbers will know everything is going to go. Let’s take a look. In this picture, I am pretty much leaning up against the bathroom “wall” looking towards to the bar.
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I know I haven’t posted awhile on what is happening in the basement {the last update was here}. Mathlete has been doing a bunch of work down there though.
Yep, that is a bathroom! Awesome, right?!
Let’s back up a little though. The last time you saw it, that space looked more like this
After talking to the plumber, we decided that it would be best to move some of the existing roughed in plumbing around.
In this picture, I am essentially standing where the toilet will eventually go and straight ahead will be the tub. Speaking of tubs, here is ours!
Opposite from the tub will be a vanity and toilet.
There are two doors…one in from the hallway and one into the bedroom.
Now, we have to schedule the plumber to come in a do a little more work in there. Lots of progress.
© 2012 Just Us Four. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
“People” say that you either cling to the ways of your childhood/family or you run completely in the opposite direction. I like to think that I recognized the amazing and wonderful pieces of my childhood and my parents and take those with me everywhere. Certain things, though, I will admit that I run from as fast as possible. Want an example?
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We’ve been super busy in the house…especially the kitchen! {Warning: All this stuff has been happening at night so the pics are less than stellar. I am still learning!)
Our newest update comes in the form of some swanky new lighting. We have a mixture of recessed lights, pendants over the island and a fixture over the breakfast nook. The recessed lights are great but the others needed some attention.
Let’s start with the island. The existing lights had a frosted globe to them where the frosted part was actually coming off!
It didn’t help that they were hung way too low so lots of food debris made them pretty yucky too.
We started by removing those lights and attaching the new pendants.The crazy builders of our house though didn’t make it so easy for us. They had a square junction box where a round one should be.
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We’ve been incredibly busy putting our house back together after Christmas! I always like to try and start the new year with everything organized and in its proper home. That has meant a ton of trips to Target and other stores for some supplies.
We’ve also been working on our Master Bedroom (finally!) so I thought I would share with you the semi-official plan for the space.
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| [West Elm], [Benjamin Moore], [Pottery Barn], [Etsy], [Joann] |
We finally picked a bed and chose the Valencia Sleigh Bed and matching bedside tables. We’re going to paint the rooms Hale Navy by Benjamin Moore so we wanted to keep the bedding light and airy. The pintucked bedding from West Elm really fits the bill for that. Our drapes will be made from the P Kaufman Linked fabric. Add some throw pillows and we’re pretty much done. All we need are some lamps and those are still in the selection process.
So, where are we with this plan?
The bed is in and set up in our room. We’ll pick up the bedside tables this week because they finally made it into the store.
I’ve had the bedding for awhile but am keeping it in the closet until all the painting it done.
As for painting…the sample is painted on the wall and we are aiming for actually doing some painting this coming weekend! YAY!
Anyone have any lamp suggestions? I’d love to see them.
© 2012 Just Us Four. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Sadly, we aren’t talking about an upcoming trip to Australia today. We are talking about Mathlete and his planning bug. What is he planning you ask? His current focus (his only focus?) right now has been on planning our future basement renovation. Right now, our basement is home to a bunch of our junk, my crafting area (no, Mathlete, those are not redundant items) and maybe some random bugs. Hopefully, by this time next year, that will be a thing of the past.
I have been complaining to sharing with my mom the ongoing planning of this basement project. It isn’t that I am not excited about having a finished basement because I definitely am. Right now, it is in the stage where I can’t picture it and it is mostly talk about electrical, plumbing and drywall. You didn’t fall asleep there, did you?
Enter Floor Planner which allows you to create 2D and 3D floorplans to help people like me get excited about what is to come in a given space. Obviously, I left all the fun design stuff to Mathlete and just waited for the finished plan to land in my inbox {I did hold the tape measure for the measuring portion of this project}. Want to take a look at our current {stage 1} draft plan?
First, in 2D
Now, in super fabulous 3D
As you can see, the plan for the basement to have storage, a theater area, a wet bar, bedroom and bathroom. Where will my craft stuff be relocated to? It is a little difficult to tell but the bedroom we’ve designed is HUGE. So, my craft stuff will reside in there.
Once I got a picture of how it will look in my mind, I started planning different elements. My first focus was the bar area. I’ll share my plans with you for that space in an upcoming post!
Have you ever done a basement remodel? Any tips to share?
© 2012 Just Us Four. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Awhile back, I purchased some white cubes from West Elm knowing they would eventually live in my guest room between the two windows. Each time I went to hang them on the wall though, something stopped me because they just looked a little too plain for the space.
What’s a girl to do with plain cubes? That question plagued me for months weeks. At first, I thought spray paint would be the answer (you know I love my spray paint!) but never fell in love with the idea. H was hanging out with me one day while I folded laundry (guest bed = laundry central) and thought the cubes were toys for (now) Toddler E. She was adament that he wouldn’t want to play with them though because they didn’t have anything on them to look at. She was right…they were boring because there wasn’t anything on them. I didn’t have stuff to put on top of them which is why I had been so hesitant to put them up. That girl is brilliant (at 4!) I tell you.
Mathlete’s solution was to just find a few knick knacks and set them top. I wasn’t interested in that though. I love me some knick knacks but not for this particular thing. I whisked my little craft genius to Michaels and we picked up some paint and stencils.
I waited until naptime so I wouldn’t have any little helpers around (H loves to paint!). My hand isn’t so steady to begin with…blame it on the caffeine…so any distraction would probably prove disastorous for this little project. Baby asleep: check. H having quiet time: check. Time to stencil.
In went the paint into a bowl and I got out my little foam stamper
A little foam stamping and some touch-up brushing later and I had
The bedding in the guest room has some leaves and branches on it so I really wanted to try and tie into that.
Now, I will just add these to the every growing pile of things that need to be hung on the wall in that room! One day…
© 2012 Just Us Four. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
We recently inherited a lot of furniture from some of Mathlete’s relatives. One of the neatest items is a corner chair. Yes, a chair specifically made for the corner. Cool, huh?
It obviously needed some work to fit into our house a little better so I kept my eye on it for a makeover. Right now, she’s a lot like Jennifer Gray when she is shy and awkward Baby.
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This was more of a “try something I learned” on Pinterest sort of thing but I still thought I would share the results.
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| [You’re Too Crafty] |
We have hardwood floors that run from our foyer all the way to and throughout the kitchen. In my dreamworld, we actually have hardwood floors throughout our entire main level…someday…
We have rugs that sit at our front door and the door that leads in from the garage to try and catch the dirt, water, etc. that attaches itself to our shoes. Sometimes we even get the gift of a little bunny poop on our shoes but, these days, it has been a lot of water thanks to the constant rain. No, I don’t live in Seattle but recently it has felt like it.
Right now, the rugs being on the hardwood lead to
Yeah, I’ve eaten it just a few times on those rugs. My plan had been to just pick up two rug pads and shove them underneath. Pinterest convinced me there was an even easier (and cheaper!) solution though.
I grabbed my supplies: the rug (duh!) and some silicone caulk.
I squeezed three separate lines of caulk onto the back of my rugs. Then, I left them there (upside down) for a few hours to dry.
Once dry, the (now) non-slip rugs went right back into their places. A quick $3 fix and, now, I don’t have to worry about breaking a hip leg every time I walk through my front door. I’m sure my insurance company appreciates that!
Linking to the Pinterest Challenge on Bower Power, Young House Love and House of Earnest.
© 2012 Just Us Four. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Our house is finally (mostly) decorated for Halloween. I found so many awesome ideas around the web but didn’t find much time to actually do them. Let’s take a look at what I did manage to complete though!
Lanterns – I posted about creating lanterns for the front porch here and here. They are now in their rightful home and ready for Halloween night. Real candles = only going to be lit for one evening because I’m super cheap.
Spider Wreath – Liz and I had a cradat and made this little jewel for my front door.
Mummy – I jumped on the make your own mummy bandwagon which I first saw here.
Ghosts – Scored these ghosts at my goodwill trip from forever ago for only $.96!
Boo – I pulled together some quick and easy B-O-O letters to add to my hay bale outside and shared the creation here.
Candy Corn Filled Votive Holders – The dollar store to my rescue again. Some $1 vases and candles combined with candy corn. Perfect addition to my little table display.
Dead Pirate – Our yard has always been a refuge for bunnies but it seems a dead pirate has taken up residence in my front lawn now. I’ll let him stay though because it is pretty neat to watch his heart beat at night.
and he brought his own tombstone along.
So, there are the basics of our Halloween decorations. We have a few other items not shown (hanging mummy, purple lights on the porch and some spiderwebbing) because they look much better at night. My photography skills are limited enough that darkness would just completely shut them down.
Now, the top 5 things I wanted to do but time didn’t…always next year right?!
Did you get all of your decorations completed? Have a list as long (or longer) than mine that are still in the to be completed pile?
© 2012 Just Us Four. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.