Hey Working Mom, Rock On!!!

I have seen multiple blog posts being shared on Facebook lately about the stay at home moms and I am here to cheer on the working mom!!! That working mom may work 5 hours a week or 40 plus hours a week, but she still has to be the chauffer, chef, bookkeeper, maid, house keeper, nurse, teacher.....the list goes on and on.

Every woman has a different purpose to why she works outside of the home. Some woman work for their family’s financial well being, or a single mom who has to provide for herself and her children. While other mothers choose to work because it would drive her crazy being home everyday or she works just because she loves what she does. There are also tons of other reasons why a woman works. Nonetheless, the working mom works at her job and still has to do all of what the stay at home mom does, not that I am saying the stay at home mom's job isn't important, all I am saying is let's give some credit and recognition to the working mom!!

There is alot of emotions that goes along with being a working mom. Society is hard on the working mom, making her feel like a "bad" mom for not staying home and providing one on one care for her children like in the olden days. The working mom is also feeling pulled in a million directions with the demand of work, but also caring for the demands of her children and spouse, and a house that needs to be cleaned, homework to be done, laundry to be washed, supper to be cooked the second she walks in the door after a long day at work. Or the morning she sends her semi sick kid with a low grade fever to daycare or school hoping the Motrin doesn't wear off as she doesn't have any more sick days, or has a really important meeting that day, but is feeling extremely guilty because she could not stay home with her sick child.

Day in and day out, I witness the craziness of the working mom's life. I not only experience this in my own life, but most importantly observe this in the mom's of my business. The working mom is what drives my business. I am a daycare provider. I care for children while their parents go to work. I, however, am very fortunate (in my opinion), I get the best of both worlds. I get to be a part of the workforce, but I also get to spend my days with my own children all while doing something I love. I provide childcare in a separate house from our own home; it helps divide my "work" and family life. And I am not writing this to get a pat on the back for being a working mom, I am writing this to give a shout out to my fellow working mom's who don't get enough credit for what they do!

I am going to wrap this up, as I am writing this during my break while the kids relax during naptime, and as the working mom is probably reading this on her break at work, or the few minutes she has at the end of the day as she is about falling asleep, or to the stay at home mom who is reading this while her children are yelling for her demanding her attention. I am not writing this to debate whether the working mom versus the stay at home mom has a harder or more important job, they both are doing what they feel is best for their own family, and are both doing awesome at what they do!!

But hey working mom, rock on!!!!
--Andrea

P.S. Yes, I am a college graduate with a Bachelors of Science degree in Business Administration. BUT I am not an English major or a writer by any means, so I am sure I have some run-on sentences and many more grammatical errors for all you Grammar Nazis that are reading this. However, I am just a typical mom who makes mistakes and is not perfect.

Our Entryway

I think Spring is beginning to be in our near future! This winter has been a cold one, and now here comes the mud. Speaking of mud, our entryway got a good cleaning this past weekend. We don't have a 'mudroom' per say, but our entryway is the catch all to our house. Unfortunately, it is the same room that we enter from the garage and the same room that our front door opens up to when our guests walk in. Having 5 people's shoes, coats, backpacks and everything else it can be a nightmare to keep clean.

I would LOVE to have a fancy dancy entryway/mudroom that had one of these babies in it!! With a cubbie for every person, it would make this momma happy!!

(link)

But for now we make due with what we have. I put a couple nails on the sides of an old antique cabinet to hang coats and snow pants up on, and in the inside of the cabinet it holds our shoes.

Last year about this time we freshened up the whole inside of the house with a new paint job. The walls going up the stairs were gross, and that is putting it nicely, they were dirty, disgusting!

Can't believe I showed that picture, but it was over 10 years of wear and tear, soooo they got this paint job! I walk out of our bedroom every morning to this view.

The walls look TONS better. Our entryway is in the basement and you walk up stairs to our main level. This is the view when you walk in and look up.

This is the view of when you look straight forward when you walk in our front door.

We have a bathroom, laundry room and our master bedroom down stairs. The door on the left is the bathroom and the laundry is straight ahead. This is what the front door looks like, coming from the laundry room.

Some people perhaps wouldn't like a basement bedroom, but we love it. It is a very large room and we have an awesome walk in closet. Our room also has a very large window so it doesn't feel like we are in a basement.

These photo's are looking down from upstairs.

These are photo's when just getting to the top of the stairs.

I showed you our living room shelves.

It is crazy how a little paint can completely give a space a face lift! Along with a pop of color, notice I have a brown, orange and blue wall all in the same room. It may not be everyone's style, but I love color and going all neutral would be way to boring for me to handle. Maybe someday, but for now I will enjoy my touches of neutral with my pops of color.

Until next time,
Andrea

Bristyn's Room and Alphabet Wall

Christmas is upon us. I have been trying to declutter my house in an attempt to make room for all the new toys the girls get for Christmas. My latest project..Bristyn's room! I love how it has all come together. It originally was our middle daughter Neely's room, but when we did our house project we moved Neely into our old master bedroom and put Bristyn into Neely's old room.

My inspiration came from the alphabet walls that I seen all over Pinterest (link to my`Kiddos' pinterest board). I also searched Pinterest for a grey wall color. I painted the room a while back, and have slowly added the finishing details. It isn't perfect, but it is simple and cute.

 

The room needed a paint job and I wanted a nuetral base. I also wanted to use bright colors in wall decor to add color to the room. So off I went to Pinterest land to find the perfect inspirational pictures.

Love the grey walls and alphabet wall

Nice and bright!

Love the grey walls and pops of color



I love how it turned out! I bought all the letters at Hobby Lobby. I just randomly spray painted them orange, pink, green and blue. I used Command Strips to hang all the letters. After a couple months they are all still hanging up there great, and luckily Bristyn doesn't mess with them :) 

This is the corner of her room where her closet is. I now need to search Pinterest for some organizational ideas for her closet. 

I love how her mirror turned out! I made it out of scrap wood I found at my parent's house. Funny story, so....one day after work I stopped over at my parent's house to drop something off, and in the fire pit there was a bunch of scrap cut up wood. I was like SCORE!!!! So I loaded it into the back of my suburban. I get back into the car to go home and my oldest daughter is really concerned, which I found odd. She asked me if I had asked Papa for the wood, I replied with no it is just junk wood that he isn't going to use. She was than concerned that I was stealing the wood, I just laughed and reassured her it was fine. Soooo, next day I was talking to my mom on the phone and I was telling her how excited I was for finding that scrap wood at their house to go with the square mirror she had picked up for me at Hobby Lobby. I than proceeded to tell her about Keyauna's concern about me stealing the wood. She proceeded to tell me a story about how all my girls and Papa had got all this scrap wood for the fire pit to have a camp fire one night when they stay over night. My mom also had pictures to go along with the story. I felt bad for taking the wood, but there was more wood, and plus it had started to get super cold at night, so fire pit would have to wait until Spring anyways. So now we have a funny story behind the mirror. 

I just randomly cut the wood at different lengths. I just screwed all the pieces of wood together and I spray painted it after I assembled it. I could have painted the pieces before I screwed the mirror frame together, but I wanted to make sure all the colors were separated, so I just taped off each strip of wood and quick spray painted it according to which color I wanted. I also stained a few of the sticks of wood with Minwax Dark Walnut stain so it would blend nicely with the wooden top of her changing table.

My father-in-law painted and stained this old dresser for me. It has a nice wood top and the rest is distressed. It is so handy as her changing table and it doubles as a dresser.

For her curtains I just used flat sheets from Walmart. They were cheap and long enough. I love how they flow. They are also make a bold statement when you walk into her room.

Bristyn is our third child and after our first two children never sleeping in their crib, we opted for a pack-n-play this time around. The pack-n-play may not be the most design savvy option, but it is practical and functional and most importantly she sleeps like champ in it!! She is now 1 1/2 years old so within the next year or so I am guessing she will be ready for a big girl bed, so we can get a comforter and bed accessories to match her decor.

 Just some more quick pictures of her alphabet wall

~Andrea

Living Room Update and Shelf Styling

Hello! It has only been well over a year since I have posted. In the past year we had baby girl number 3 in May 2012. We named her Bristyn Kay...she is now going on 18 months!! Meanwhile, our 3 bedroom house become wayyyy to small! So we turned it into a 4 bedroom home. We converted our basement family room and office (junk room) into a master bedroom and walk in closet. Now all our girls each have their own rooms and we haven't regretted losing a family room. My husband lost his man cave though :( but it was the extra space we needed to make our home more fuctional.

So with the whole living room swap we brought our basement couch upstairs to our main living area. It isn't the style of couch I would of necessarily bought for the space, but it has ended up working out perfect! My husband and I each get a rocking chair that reclines and the girls have room to sit also...and the darker brown is way better color to keep clean verses our white couch we used to have.

 

Our current set up in our living room

 

 

If you can't tell...I LOVE color! My husband helped me build those ledge shelves. They were Pinterest inspired.

 

 

http://www.shanty-2-chic.com/2012/01/20-shelves-anyone-can-build.html

 

 



She used different sized wood for her shelves. We used 1"x2" for the front lip, 1"x6" for the bottom, and 1"x3" for the back part. Mine are 9ft long. I stained them using Minwax Dark Walnut.We also did screw in the bottom just for extra support versus only using nails.

 

After about six months of them being empty or with random decor on them, I finally got them decorated.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We will start at the top left of the shelves with the vases and the circle print. I got those all free from co-hosting a Signature Home party. I usally am not a huge "circle" fan, but I love the colors in that print.

 

 

 

On the far right of the top shelf is my Gustad sign. Once again I got the idea from www.shanty-2-chic.com. I actually made a Family version originally like this one below.

 

http://www.shanty-2-chic.com/2012/03/diy-wooden-family-sign.html

 

 

Some friends and I get together about every 6ish weeks and we have Pinterest parties. We each host and pick a project and this was my project....it only took me forever to pre-fabricate all 7 signs, so all the ladies had to do was screw in the bolts! But it was fun and totally well worth all the effort! At the party one of the ladies said it would of been fun to have done our last names...and soooo I made another one and did our last name!

 

 

It adds a nice personal touch to our home. Next is the bottom shelf. On the left is just an old antique ceiling tin that I painted green and used magnets to attach a picture to it. I don't have a close up picture of that. Next is the round red wood shim mirror.

 

 

All the mirror is made out of is plywood cut in a circle...with large wood shims glued on top of the plywood, cut off the raw edges with a jig saw, painted it red and added a table mirror from Hobby Lobby.

 I love how it turned out! This below piece is from Pier 1.

 



It is the perfect size and it pulls all the colors together. I also got the multicolored pillow on the couch from Pier 1.

 

Overall, I am pleased with how the whole space turned out. I am excited to post the other changes we have made throughout the house. At the end of the day, it is a happy space to relax in.

 

 

 

--Andrea

 









Under the Sink Organization

It has been over two month since I have posted. I was hoping to make a post every week or at least every other week or at the bare minimum once a month...but oh well. Anywho, everytime I went to get my cleaning products or throw some trash away the mess under my kitchen sink was DISGUSTING!!! But I have ignored it for so long, but finally I decided I needed to do something about it. I don't know if deciding to clean it was from complete annoyance and disgust or nesting instinct, as I am going on nine months pregnant. Whichever it was I am thankful I decided to take on that mess!

Before--I even emptied it out a little.

All that stuff by the sink and on the floor was also under there.

I completely emptied and trashed what was old/out of date and there was tons of empty cleaning containers. I don't know why I felt the need to keep those at one time in my life, but now they are in the garbage.

Yikes! It is embarrassing posting these pictures! That pink stuff in the top picture was really ooey-gooey, perhaps it was spilt dish soap...I don't know. So I took my putty knife and scaped it across the surface and cleaned up the surface the best I could. There had been a small water leak under there one time so the board was damanged and bubbled/flaking. Next, I gathered up my supplies.


-#6 peel n' stick tiles
-tube of all-purpose adhesive
-caulk gun

 Since under the sink was not a completely smooth surface I decided to get some all purpose adhesive to make sure the tiles would stay in place. I applied it to the back of the each tile--I applied a thin bead about 2 inches from the sides all the way around tile and then made and "X" in the middle of the tile with it. I then just layed them down. I started in the front corner and worked my way to the left. When I got to the pipes I just made a notch in the tile. Next, I went to the back corner and I measured the area remaining and then I used a razor blade to score the tile to the appropriate size.

To lay the tile took literally a few minutes. I didn't set a timer, but it took way more time to empty out the area and prep the surface. I didn't allow any dry time for the tile before putting everything back in, it has held up regardless.

I am completely happy with the transformation!! The tiles leave an easy to clean surface. This project costed: $2.24 for the adhesive (I already had the caulk gun) and $.92 for each tile (I used #6) projects grand total was $7.76. I actually could of went much cheaper on the tile, but I liked the color and texture of these, so I paid the extra few cents per square foot :) I got the tile at Lowe's Item #208426 12x12 Terraza Terracotta.