My Top 5 Viewed Posts of Home

It is amazing how fast a year can go by and I think 2010, by far, has gone by the quickest of all!  Of course, my dad tells me the older I get the faster it will go, which is somewhat concerning! :-)

As a little recap of my blog, I figured I would share my 5 most viewed posts for the this year.

#5 Family Room Renovation is Complete! Pierre and I are lucky to have my dad, our personal handy man, living just 2 miles away!

#4 Warm Apple Crisp For a Cold, Crisp Fall Day There are so many amazing cookbooks and food shows out there that when I find a recipe my family likes, I just have to share it.  This recipe not only is delicious, but I love that my kids love to help make it too!

Family Room Renovation Complete!

I am excited to report that our family room renovation is complete!  Over the past week, we cleaned out our family room, which was a main area for toys, repainted the room, hung chair rail and installed custom built bookshelves and a TV stand built by my dad.

Over the past week, my kids toys have been dispersed all over the house and furniture has been moved to other rooms.  I have found that when you renovate, your house apparently has to get more cluttered and chaotic before returning to normal.  Today my dad finished up a few little things and I am ready to restore order!  I need to get the curtains back up, fill the shelves and find some wall art to spruce up the room.

I am so lucky to have such a talented dad who was willing to give up every spare moment of his time to build this for us.  He started the project while he was working full-time in Washington, DC and only home in NH on the weekends.  Seeing how great the room came out, now I am ready to move on to the next project.  I am thinking renovating the kitchen, but my husband is convinced we should have a sports room in our basement, though he has tried to convince me of that by saying it would be a great playroom for the kids.  Hmmm . . .

Joey's Disney-Pixar Cars Room

Paint Colors - Bone White & Three Cheers for Pooh

We decided to redecorate Joey's room with his favorite Disney characters from the Disney Pixar Cars movie.  It is amazing how well he knows the cars ~ their numbers, name, etc.  He first saw Cars when he was two and now it has become his most favorite of all Disney movies.  We started collecting the die cast cars for him and I believe he may have just about every car in the collection, and I am not kidding.  There are only a few that I know he doesn't have.  At this point, I am not sure who is more obsessed with finding all of them ~ Joey, my mom or me!  Of course, once we think we have them all, Cars 2 will be out in theaters and we will be starting the collecting all over again!  He had such an interest in these cars that I actually used them to teach him colors and numbers.  People thought I was crazy to buy him all 8 or 9 Ramones, but there is one in every color of the rainbow!  Same with the Piston Cup racers ~ I used these to teach him his numbers. 

Wall Clings from Lowe's

Because of his love of all the cars in this movie, it was only natural to create a Cars room for him.  Since I have been without a paycheck for the last four years, I had to be a little creative in what we were going to do because we are on a strict budget.  My dad had already installed chair rail in this room, since it was actually a Disney princess nursery and we were changing over from pink and white to red and tan.  A few years ago, I found on the clearance rack at Lowe's the wall clings of all the Radiator Springs characters and signs from the movie.  We found a Cars comforter on clearance at K-Mart's online store.

Comforter from K-Mart.com

For the paint, we only use Benjamin Moore paint.  But Home Depot, who carries the Disney specific colors, does not carry Benjamin Moore.  So, I took some of the Mickey Ear paint samples (these are also good for scrapbooking by the way) and brought them to my local hardware store.  Now the red we chose was called "Three Cheers for Pooh."  They scanned the sample and were able to match the color perfectly.  We already knew for the "tan" color that we would be using Bone White, a Benjamin Moore color we have used in other rooms. 

Snotrod, Wingo, DJ and Boost made with my Cricut

The room came out great, but it was missing a few things.  First we need to find fabric for a valance.  Luckily, my mom is a sewer, so she is going to make it for us.  The problem is I saw the perfect fabric at WalMart and didn't buy it because I wasn't sure how much I needed and when I went back to buy it, they didn't have anymore, story of my life.  So, now I am searching for something new, though I don't seem to be able to find anything I like.  The other thing the room needed was a few more characters.  I couldn't find many of the characters that Joey liked and the ones I could find were just too expensive, so I decided I would make them.  So I took out my Cricut Disney/Pixar Cars cartridge (by the way, I found this in the clearance section for $19 at WalMart) and went to work.  Joey requested Boost, Wingo, DJ and Snotrod.  They came out pretty nice and I think people wouldn't even know they were homemade, unless you looked really closely!  Joey has now put in a request for Mac, Chick Hicks and The King.  We'll see how those come out!

Here are the characters I created hanging up over the window - no valance yet though!

Edited: I posted in October 2010, an update - Joey's Cars Room is FINALLY Complete! which includes photos of the valance my mom made.

Handy Mommy to the Rescue

Since being a stay at home mom, I find that I have really taught myself how to do many things around the house.  Today I taught myself how to remove my kitchen faucet and replace it with one I found on clearance at Lowe's.

Now I will give you a little background.  We had a house built in 2006 by some people that I will just say are incompetent.  I could go into a full tirade on this but will save my energy.  Our house is structurally perfect, but there are many little things that were done in a cheap and quick way.  Luckily, my dad lives two miles away and is our handy man.  Well, our kitchen faucet has been dripping for about a week.  It is to the point that when I try to go to sleep I can hear it and then obsess on it, resulting in little sleep.  Yesterday, I decided I had enough of the dripping!  I watched my son get onto the bus and off to school, I loaded the girls into the car and we headed over to Lowe's in search of a new faucet.  I was excited to see they had several on clearance and one I really liked.  The girls agreed that it was the one, with Emily claiming that she liked that it was sparkly and Hayley said she liked the "squirter."  So we paid for our faucet and made our way home. 

After picking Joey up from school and making the kids lunch, I decided I was going to attempt to replace the faucet myself.  I am an A type personality, so I read the directions thoroughly, grabbed all the necessary tools and went to work.  Within one minute, my three trusty helpers decided that helping me was more important than eating lunch.  Since I want all my kids to learn they can do things themselves, I decided to let them help.  After some arguing over whose job it would be to hold the flashlight, Emily won out (though I was hoping for Joey, my oldest).  Joey and Hayley then decided they needed their own tools and made their way to Joey's Little Tikes tool bench and gathered a pair of plyers, a screwdriver and the hammer. 

Let's just say the hardest part was trying to figure out how to get the old faucet out.  This was only difficult because with "all my plumbing" exerience I decided it must come off from the top.  For those of you attempting this in the future, it comes off from under the sink, which makes perfect sense after seeing how it is installed. I used the installation directions and worked backwards to finally remove the old one.  From there it was quick and easy.

One funny little thing did happen with the kids.  As I was unscrewing the pipes and such from underneath, I was laying on my back under the sink, little bits of dust and such fell into my eyes.  I told the kids I need some goggles and started to make my way to the basement to find some.  Emily said she would get me some.  Within 30 seconds, she came back with a pair of Disney Princess swimming goggles and put them on me.  They were uncomfortable to say the least, but I wasn't going to tell Emily that since she was so proud to have had such a great idea.  In the end, they worked perfect and nothing else fell into my eyes. 

It was actually much easier than I thought and it was fun to have the kids help me out!  Now I am searching the house for other projects to do.  My dad is out of town, but I just think he may be impressed I attempted it myself when he returns!