Spring Cleaning: My Bathroom

Seriously, its basically the middle of February already. I am already behind on so many things so I feel that, maybe, just maybe, if I organize all of my crap again room by room, drawer by drawer, I can catch up on a bunch of unfinished projects simultaneously. I started with my bathroom because its very small and manageable and there wasn't too much to be done. Mostly cleaning up hair. I shed like a small breed of dog. I sometimes contemplate shaving my head or going with dreadlocks so I can have a rest from sweeping and vacuuming. First, I snapped a few before shots. So you can see what a filthy animal I am…

(please forgive the lousy photos as I am still without a proper camera.)

as you can see, things are just meh. Rather sloppy too if you ask me but not that bad over all.

I sorted through all my extra products and organized my mini sizes for travel in this pink box

Then I went through all my hair goodies and paired that down a bit. 

I got this sick vintage 90's caboodle at Goodwill for one doll hair. I love it and it holds all my makeup that I don't use everyday.  

then I just put everything back a little neater and got a better basket for holding all the products. I don't like having them all over the counter and on display. That is not relaxing to me. 

I also went ahead and picked up a fresh shower curtain. I got this one with a pretty lime green leaf pattern at Target on sale for $7.00

Tidied up here, put away ugly product containers…

I straightened the shelves and again put away excess products. I hate unsightly packaging. I use jars to house my lady tools and such. I think its a much cleaner look with out losing any convenience or function. 

 Miss Poodle forever <3

It looks soooo much better just by doing that little bit. On top of all the organizing and tidying I also cleaned the tub/shower, wiped the counters, shelves, and mirror, scrubbed the toilet, wiped the baseboards, vacuumed, and mopped. I also wiped out the inside of the cabinets when I rearranged everything so the entire bathroom got a deep cleaning as well as a little spruce. It feels good to check the first room of the Spring Cleaning list. I think next I'm going to tackle my bedroom. Thanks for reading :)

Kirsten

DIY: Table Remix

Hello. I'm back. Quite a hiatus I know. As usual I will ignore it and just go about showing you a cool project :) So my auntie likes to give me pretties for my apartment that she no longer has use for…like this Ethan Allen table. Unfortunately it had an accident involving nail polish remover, a cotton ball, and a napkin and lets just leave it at that. Obvi, I don't want to scrap this table. It's Ethan Allen first of all and it's the perfect size/height. I came up with the idea to just paint over top my faux pas as a solution and I used a hand carved stamp purchased from Etsy to create a cutesy pattern. I have to say, it looks much better and I def salvaged it for now but I have a few ideas to tweak it further. Like, I feel it needs more cherries and I'd like to "shabby-chic" it with some sand paper and use a wax on the top to stain it a bit. My mom even threw out the intriguing suggestion of painting the base a high gloss cherry red. idk. I will update this post later on but until then here is how I got the table to point A. 

A. Acquire busted piece of adored furniture and supplies.

B. Paint over bonehead mistake and use tape so you don't make it worse. 

C. Stamp, Stamp, Stamp.

D. Let it dry and then stack your crap back on it!

Thanks for reading!

Life Update

It was my birthday. I celebrated. It was swell.

My camera is busted. I will hopefully have a new one in a few weeks. This has been a major bummer for me though. 

my insomnia is back and I get the feeling its looking for revenge or something. I haven't been sleeping much at all these days. I have sadly watched the sunrise too many times. I have been coping by doing a lot of work from the couch. My view looks a lot like this these days...

I also got around to painting this cruddy ol' dresser. Now its a pretty new dresser. I'm not fully done arranging things in my room but I'm happy its finally painted and for the extra storage. 

before...

after...

While I was in the project spirit I managed to complete a few Pinterest projects. I always feel super bad ass if I actually get around to doing one of the things I pinned because lets be honest do any of us really have the time?

I had these cheap Ikea end tables laying around and I had seen a few chalkboard projects on Pinterest, one being a coffee table and so I coated the tops of these with chalk board paint. Now they have gone to live at my friends' coffee shop.

While I had the chalkboard paint out I painted a few wine bottles like these I saw on Pinterest 

I also tried filling my scentsy warmer with Downy unstopables and 

it worked and made my whole apartment smell like fresh laundry. Thank you Pinterest!

My mom and I decided to have yet another garage sale so I spent a good chunk of time going through all of my stuff one more time. I pulled out a good chunk and got it marked, bagged, and transported to my mom's garage already. I am getting less sentimental about things as I get older. I used to save every little scrap of paper but pretty soon I'm going to have like four things left. Not including my shoes of course. 

<3 K

Purse Makeover DIY

This is my most favorite lime green purse. As you can see from the before photo the straps had seen better days. The rest of the bag is fine I just loved this purse so much I literally wore the straps off. I didn't want to get rid of it so I decided to add new, less-destructable, handles.

SUPPLIES:

Split rings (like a key chain), bolt cutter, beaded chain, and of course a battered purse. 

DIRECTIONS:

1) Use your bolt cutter to cut the chain to your desired length. I purchased 3ft of beaded chain from the hardware store. If you don't have a bolt cutter you can usually ask a store employee to cut it into two pieces for you. 

2) Remove your old straps and add the split rings. My bag already had some convenient metal rings to hook mine onto. Depending on your bag and how your handles were attached you might have some too or fabric loops of some sort. Split rings are great because you can pull them apart and slide them onto pretty much anything and they are sturdy. If there are none and your straps were sewn directly to the bag, I recommend trimming the straps down but leaving enough to create your own loop with a few simple stitches.

3) Add your chain and its ready to wear!

Hooray! My purse is pretty again!

Thanks for stopping by! <3 Kirstie

Apartment Drama

Yeah so my apartment flooded. It totally sucked. There a was a leak that I was totally clueless about in my hall closet. It had been slowly dripping and rendering the carpet completely sodden. I didn't notice it until one afternoon I was walking back to my bedroom to change and -squoosh!- stepped in a puddle. It was rather jarring I have to admit. At first I thought my bunny Sammy had an accident but after I begrudgingly got a rag and the Nature's Miracle to clean it up I realized it was less of a puddle and more of a small pond. Definitely not rabbit sized. So after two and half weeks of dealing with the property management, getting my ceiling ripped out and replaced, having a HUGE hole in my floor, and several other headache inducing scenarios, I finally got a brand new pretty tile floor yay!

I'm so loving it. My Mom scored the giant braided rug for a mere $50 bucks. I love how perfectly it coordinates. The new tile makes it look so much brighter and cleaner and the rug helps keep it cozy. So even though I had a three week long headache I'm kind of glad the flood happened because it resulted in this prettiness. 

Home Tour: My Kitsch-en

So as I mentioned before I recently moved back to my hometown Ocala, Fl and I found a cheerful little apartment near downtown and I just love it. Since the summer I've been spending time personalizing the space and making it feel like Home with all my vintage treasures. The kitchen was an especially tricky space to make cute because it is really dark and it just has one dingy ceiling light and one icky fluorescent light bulb over the sink and absolutely zero natural light. Here is what the before looked like. 

Bleh. As you can see it was a dark tunnel. I love a galley style kitchen but not all dark and dreary. I knew I would have to get creative with ways to make it brighter since I couldn't very well engineer an entire new lighting scheme with under cabinet LED lights which would be totally fab but definitely not doable. 

So I went with the next best choice. PAINT! You can't go wrong with paint. I learned that from years of watching my mother decorate. Want to brighten a room or make it look bigger or make an old piece of furniture new again? Just paint. I knew by painting those cabinets white the whole room would be instantly brighter. So here is the after...

So much better! The walls are a soft shade of pink called Bunny's Nose which is perfect for a rabbit lady's kitchen and the cabinets are an off white called Vanilla Tan. I also used chalkboard paint for the back splash and hung my fabric clouds from my old apartment back up for more color and whimsy. 

I really love it. I just need to cook more now. I am still the queen of take out. Plus I still might yarn bomb my fridge handle but other than that I think it turned out pretty kawaii.

<3 K