HOW TO GET THEM TO START RENOVATING YOUNG!

Pin It Well, you force them naturally!


So today my husband and I are FINALLY getting around to getting the radiant floor layed down in our master bath.  We have been living without a floor and toilet in there for months and frankly, it's getting really old.  Not to mention that winter is just around the corner and I don't want to be cutting tile in the snow.

In order to get the radiant floor power cord to the power source, we had to drill a hole in the floor right beside the jacuzzi tub and then another hole underneath and inside the "guts" of the tub.  Now our dilemma was this.....how to we fish the cord through one hole, down into the subfloor and up out of the other hole?

Simple!  We make our five year old granddaughter Kaydance do it!!

Papa John:  Kaydance we need your help in here.
Kaydance:  What do you need?
Jaye:  Well, we need for you to stick your hand down into this hole to get the cord and pull it through the holes for us.


You could hear the crickets chirp from the stunned silence......And the look on her face was priceless.

Kaydance:  You're kidding right?
Jaye:  No, Kaydance - you need to do this for us.
Kaydance:  But I don't want to do that Papa John.
Papa John: Too bad, you have to.
Kaydance:  I'm scared to put my hand down there.
Papa John:  Kaydance, there is nothing down there that is going to hurt you. Please just do it.


Kaydance reluctantly gets down on her hands and knees and sticks her head in the tub frame.

Apologizing now for the blurry pictures!

Papa John:  Kaydance, you really need to get your head all the way in there.
Kaydance:  But, I keep bumping my head.
Jaye:  You'll be fine.
Kaydance:  But the wood is hurting my arm.
Jaye:  I'll put a towel down for you.

Papa John:  Okay, Kaydance try again.

Kaydance gingerly sticks her hand in the hole.


Kaydance:  I can't reach it Papa John.
Papa John:  Well, stick your entire arm in there.

Again....silence from the five year old.

Jaye:  Come on, girly - you've almost got it.

Kaydance:  I've got it!!!!!!
Jaye:  Yay, Kaydance - good job!
Papa John:  Thank you Kaydance - you were awesome!

Now is that face of a happy future DIY'er, or not???

I'll remind her of her help this winter when she steps out of that bathtub onto a nice warm tiled floor!

I can't WAIT to get her started on the wetsaw!!!

Anyone else commandeer a five year old to help on a project?  Are there child labor laws regarding kindergarden DIY'ing?

• 
• 

Blog Gadgets

COPY CAT PROJECT FOR A LAZY GIRL!

Pin It I make no bones about how lazy I tend to be.  Don't get me wrong - I can outwork even the best of them but if I can find a way to do something easier, I will.  Does that make me lazy or resourceful?  You be the judge...

I love, love, LOVE really organic type decor for my home.  Anytime I can call on Mother Nature to help, the happier I am.  I have been seeing these twig candle holders all over blogland and have always wanted to make some.


This version is from www.funhomethings.com.  Adorable!


This one is from Rustic Crafts and Chic Decor.  Sounds like my kind of blogsite, huh!

Both of these are so awesome and probably a breeze to make.

Here's my dilemma.....

Me and a hot glue gun????  Not BFF's!!!  Anytime I can get out of using mine, the happier I always am.  I'm kind of like the "Chevy Chase" of DIY.  If an accident is gonna happen, it's gonna happen to me!  And I don't particularly care for blisters on my fingers.

So here's my lazy  resourceful girls version...

Before you go saying "that doesn't look any different", check out the next photo...

Yep, that's a rubber band.  I just put a rubber band around my candle holder from the dollar store and started slipping my twigs underneath it to hold them on.  No glue gun involved!!!

Then I just wrapped some twine around the rubber band to disguise my laziness craftiness and then used the ends of the twine to  tie a few silk leaves and a "sugared" acorn I had laying around, on to the candle holder.   

Seriously, could that get ANY easier????

I'm almost embarrassed.

And cheap, too!  Twigs....free; candle holder...$1.00; rubber band, silk leaves and acorn....already had.  Probably the only expensive thing I used were those $85 pair of pruners I used to cut my twigs....  Hey, somethings you just can't go cheap on.....

• 
• 

Blog Gadgets

HOW TO CUT TILE LIKE A PRO!

Pin It

Or at least trick your friends and family into thinking you can!

I first learned to tile about fifteen years ago when, as a single mom, I won a bid on a HUD home in San Antonio.  Naturally, being a HUD home, it was a disaster inside and naturally being a single mom, hiring someone to do the work wasn't an option.  So I bought a video (VCR, no less!) from Home Depot and sat down to watch.  At the end, I thought to myself - how flipping hard can it be!

Keep Reading!!!

• 
• 

Blog Gadgets

LIGHTED FALL PORCH DECORATION

Pin It

This is a really nice fall project that I did years ago for my front porch.   Although it's not technically a Halloween project I still have it on the porch for the trick or treaters. People know to look for it every year.  You could certainly do Halloween themed cut-outs rather than the fall leaves and geometric shapes I did.

Keep Reading!!!

• 
• 

Blog Gadgets

CREEPING ME OUT!!

Pin It As a gardener, snakes don't usually bother me.  They are so good for your garden that I try not to discourage their visits, however I don't invite them either.  Sometimes they just "are" and I work hard not to let it get to me.

HOWEVER......

this project really creeped me out!

Let's have a look, shall we? 

Keep Reading!!!

• 
• 

Blog Gadgets

TIME TO LIGHTEN UP!

Pin It In an effort to lighten or brighten up what I believe to be a very dark, dungeon like family room, I decided I'd start by painting our coffee table.  A dear friend gave me this old table years ago.  She knew I loved it then and I still do.  When I got it, it was one of those "rustico" coffee tables that was unfinished pine with heavy metal hinges and a heavy base.  This baby is really solid.  I immediately painted it espresso because at the time, I felt the need to paint EVERYTHING in my house espresso.  Not sure what triggered that.  I drink plenty of coffee.

Here is a before picture. Or maybe it's an after picture AFTER I received it from Laura and AFTER I espresso-ized it...

I was definitely going for a shabby look mainly because I had no choice - every kiddo that ran through that room banged it with bicycles, cars, trucks, dolls, etc.  It took a licking but kept on ticking!  Which is probably why I decided to go with this look when I wanted to lighten things up...

Keep Reading!!!

• 
• 

Blog Gadgets

A FUNCTIONAL SPACE!

Pin It For about four years now we've lived in this nice big house.  We went big because our house in PA was teeny and even though at the time it was just the husband and myself, we were severely cramped.  So we vowed that when we made it back to CO we'd go big.  And go big we did!  When we bought the house it was approximately 2700 square feet with an unfinished basement.  Shortly after moving in, we finished out the basement and added another two bedrooms, a full bathroom and a media room.  The house is now a five bedroom, four bath house with approximately 3700 square feet of living space.  I'm spouting numbers because it's important to note that for about the past eighteen months to two years, a thousand square feet (give or take a hundred or so) was completely unusable at one point or another.  And that did not include the basement which my son was occupying at the time.  So basically we were down to about 1700 square feet of usable, functional space.  Back to being cramped!

But not any more!!

We went from this...

We had already ripped out the carpet at this point.  The oak hardwood entry was still in place but not for long!

Keep Reading!!!

• 
• 

Blog Gadgets