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Category: Pinterest

  • The BEST Shower Cleaner in the WORLD!

    Yes, I am that excited about this, that I used caps!

    I hate cleaning the shower.  I always have.  We went with a solid marble shower when we built the house in hopes that would be easier to clean.  It is.  But I still hate doing it!  My cleaning routine is as follows:

    • Mold builds up in the caulk lines
    • The floor turns a weird orange color
    • Time to clean
    • Spray the caulk with the strongest mold and mildew cleaner
    • Sprinkle with Comet, let it sit for an hour
    • Scrub off the chunks (or until my elbows fall off)
    • Forget the soap scum on the walls, it is white like the marble

    I know…it is gross.  Just keeping it real.

    Pinterest is FILLED with cleaning “miracles” most of which I am skeptical about.  I made the laundry detergent which I have been really happy with.  The few other things I have tried…not so happy with.  When I stumbled across this shower cleaner and people swore up and down that it worked, well I had to try it out myself.

    The main ingredients are extra strength vinegar (pickling vinegar), dawn dish soap and a spray bottle.  The vinegar is what does the trick.  The dish soap just adds thickness to it.  Some suggested using cornstarch or flour to thicken it up…I tried it and it does not work as well.  Stick with the Dawn.

    Heat up the vinegar until it is almost boiling (about 4 minutes in my microwave for 3 cups). CAUTION: The smell is STRONG! Don’t inhale it or you will burn your nose/lungs! Mix in about 2T of dawn, or just enough to thicken it up. Put it in the spray bottle and spray on the shower. I let it sit for about 15 minutes.

    OH.MY.WORD.

    It worked!

    The 1 inch thick layer of soap scum wiped off fairly easily! I was so giddy with excitement, I got out the scrub brush and with a few strokes, the shower was clean! This picture does not do it justice. (And since I did not believe it would really work I did not take a before picture.)  You can see the window reflection on the wall and the water drops.  That WAS a layer of soap scum!

    *This will not do anything about the mold and mildew though.  I guess I will have to keep bleach on hand for that.

  • Laundry Room Makeover (sort of)

    This project comes from the Ana-White website.  Our laundry room is a nice size with the washer, dryer and a full sized fridge.  On a typical day, it looks like this (just keeping it real):

    So I set to work in the garage and had the girls help paint. We built 2 boxes to hold 3 baskets for the laundry.

    And now the laundry room typically looks like this:

    I was able to get the stuff off of the washer and dryer and put them on shelves. Not to mention it just looks nicer than the laundry bags.  I have bigger plans for the room, but for now this has helped a TON!

  • Not quite a Pinterest project but deserves to be one

    One of the first things I did on my new job since I would be traveling was invest in a better carry-on bag.  I did not opt for Samsonite, TravelPro, Hartmann or some other several-hundred-dollar bag, but got a Swiss bag at Target.

    I have learned that I am not the only one with that bag.

    And the Swiss emblem fell off.

    So I got out the puff paints this morning and this is what I came up with.

  • Pinterest Project #3- Bathroom Remodel

    *Dimensions and cost break down at the end.

    If you follow me on Pinterest (and if you don’t you should!), you probably saw me pin this.  Everybody has the same ugly master bath, and now we all have the same pretty master bath…thanks to Pinterest.  (I am not the only person that did this…you check out my friend Paul who also did this to his bathroom.)  I had intended to surprise Wade but, I only got half-way through before he started seeing I was up to something.  But…in the end, he did help a little to get everything in place.

    I build the shelves first the weekend before.  It took me about 4 hours to build these and then they got 2 coats of paint.

    The shelves were a guessing game.* I messed up a few things (like the bottom seam and I could not find the regular wood filler until AFTER I had filled the holes with the dark stuff!). But they turned out pretty good for not having any plans to go by!

    Friday, I cut all of the trim pieces for the mirror, which took about 2 hours and another trip back to HD because I cut a piece wrong. Those were painted and left to dry overnight.

    With those out of the way, this weekend, I tackled the bathroom itself. I did end up asking Wade what color he wanted the bathroom painted. I already had an idea in mind, but he told me “Andes mint green.” Um….NO. We went with the color I had in mind-gray.* (To give him credit–he did pick out the lights. He is the one that LOATHED the light we had and I was not super picky about them.)

    I started by taking down one light fixture, painting, hanging the new one, then doing the same for the next one. As that was drying, I painted the rest of the room. That took the LONGEST. I started at 7am (and minus swapping out the lights which probably took an hour), I was finished painting by 4pm.

    Next we glued the trim pieces to the mirror using Gorilla Glue. Most people use Liquid Nails…either will work. Gorilla Glue dries in about 30 minutes. We did have to hold the pieces in place for several minutes before taping them to the mirror just to make sure they stayed.

    Once the mirror was trimmed out, we added a finishing piece to the top. I will mention that Wade is so tall he does have to bend down a little or it chops the top of his head off. Oh well.

    Up until this point the shelves had been sitting there, so now we actually screwed the shelves to the wall. THIS IS THE ONLY THING HOLDING THE MIRROR IN PLACE (and a caulk line at the top of the mirror). Some builders glue the mirror, we just had 3 clips in place.*

    That’s it! I am certainly pleased with how it turned out! We still have some decorating around our tub area, but that is for another weekend.

    BEFORE:

    AFTER:

    *Things I would change:

    • The gray we picked out has a lot of purple in it (esp with the new florescent energy lights). I would have liked more of a slate gray.
    • I would have made the shelves about 6-8 inches taller, or maybe even gone to the top of the angle on the ceiling.
    • With taller shelves, I could have extended the top trim piece up some and put a screw in it through the wall to hold the mirror in place AND it would have given Wade some more room to look.
    • I would had made the trim on the top of the shelves flush with the wall. (pic below)

    And if you do this, make sure you paint the back of the trim pieces because they will show up in the mirror!

    Now for the important things.

    COST TOTAL- $140
    Shelves: 2- 1x8x6- $12, 1- 1x2x8- $3, base trim- $4, crown trim- $11
    Mirror frame- 28 feet of base trim- $21
    Mirror top- 7 feet- $11
    Paint- $26
    Lights- $60

    DIMENSIONS
    Shelves- 46″H x 16″W x 10″D
    Mirror trim- 39 1/4″ (top and bottom), 36″ (sides)

  • Pinterest Project #2- Homemade Laundry Detergent

    Yes, I am slightly addicted.

    Today I decided to make homemade laundry detergent and dish washing detergent (which I did not get one thing…so that will be a later post).

    WHY did I decide to do this (was the first thing Wade asked when he walked in the door)? No, it is not about saving the environment and being all granola. Although I would enjoy that, it would be impossible in my right-winged conservative house. It was about saving money.

    I am not ashamed to admit Wade and I are Tide snobs. It makes our clothes smell SOOOOOO good. But after months of experimenting we found that the added Febreeze makes us both itchy, so we went on a laundry detergent hunt. We have been using Gain, and it is ok, but nothing like Tide. But whatever we choose, it is still pretty expensive. We pay around $17-20 a container that lasts about 40 loads. (Roughly 6-8 loads a week means we are buying it every 5 weeks.)

    In comes Pinterest with all of its crafty goodness! Here is the original link:

    Being Creative

    Yes, I followed it exactly and am hoping I can go 9 months without buying laundry detergent!

    Cost breakdown from Walmart (about $25…but that includes a $10 container):
    Container- $9.97
    1 4 lb 12 oz box Borax (2.15 kg or 76 oz)- $3.38
    1 4 lb box Arm & Hammer Baking Soda (1.81 kg)- $2.08
    1 box Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda 55 oz (3 lb 7 oz)- $3.24
    3 bars of Fels-naptha soap, found in the detergent isle- $2.91
    2 small containers of store brand oxyclean (try to get about 3.5 lbs total (1.58 kg))- $3.92

    Initial thoughts…so far I have done 4 loads of laundry with it (about 2 tablespoons per load). Our clothes come out smelling…clean not overly fragranced. I can’t tell about stains yet, I have 2 girls that don’t get too messy. I am not a fan of powders, I don’t think they work as well, but so far I am pleased. I tried first putting the powder in the water then adding the clothes, I also tried mixing a small cup with water and 2T of powder and then lastly I put the powder directly on the clothes. It all seemed to work the same. I will update in a few months and let you know how much I use before I have to get new detergent!

  • Pinterest Project #1- Crayon Art

    Here is my first Pinterest project.

    There are several floating around Pinterest, so I decided to kinda do my own thing. I had a canvas that I no longer wanted, so I painted over it with white acrylic paint (only because I did not have any Gesso).

    I used a box of 64 crayons and took all the browns and skin colors out. (I did not take out the army green and I wish I had.) I took the wrappers off by slicing each one with an exacto and slipped right off. Then I cut off the point and cut them in 1/2 so they were about 1.5″ long. *I would make them 0.5-0.75″ long if I were doing this again. They were too long! There was too much wax to melt.

    I wanted to make sure I had enough crayons (notice I used both pieces of the colors to double the amount I had) and laid them on the sketched heart.

    Next, I glued them down with hot glue. The thing to keep in mind is that as the crayons melt, the hot glue shape will be left so I did my best to make sure it looked even.

    Then came the fun part! (Make sure you do this on a drop cloth because the crayons drop off the canvas and make a mess!) I used a combination of my embossing gun and hair dryer. I started with the embossing gun heating the crayons enough so that I could tilt the canvas and the colors dripped. I made sure that I let the running colors dry before tilting the canvas another direction for the next color.

    Next came the hair dryer. It has to be on high fan, high heat in order to work. Because of the high fan, the drips are not as controlled. You can see how I manipulated the canvas to try and get the look I wanted.

    It got to the point that it became a big puddle of wax…not what I was looking for. So I spent some more time, remelting the puddles and letting them drip off the canvas. I really wanted the crayons pretty much gone.

    NOT loving this at all. 🙁 I just keep working on blowing more wax off.

    And it started working!  The key is to get the wax flowing in streams and not to mess those streams up.  Then let it cool, and move on to the next stream.  When a large portion gets hot (which happens very easily), it muddies them all together.

    Final product.  (And a shout out to Stacey for taking some GREAT pictures!  My 6yo is going to put me out of my photography business!)