86'n It

This weekend I tackled some little things off of My To Do list. 
I painted the bathroom radiator & repaired and painted the kitchen window.

Sorry this quality is bad. I'l try to fix it and re-upload, but I'm working on a deadline today.

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And a during. What? You don't paint with a baby strapped to you?

Mina is proving to be a very different baby than Franca. Or more honestly stated: my life with an infant is much different than it was with Franca.

With Franca I had a real 3 month maternity leave that I dedicated to getting her on a real routine. She was a very easy baby. Predictable. Alert. Calm.

With Mina, I have no maternity leave. I'm still working, plus minding an almost 3 year old and trying to get a house ready to sell. Not so much dedication to an infant routine. ;(

That's why I'm really looking forward to next week. I'm going to have some toddler-free downtime. While I should dedicate this to Mina, I've also planned to tackle some of the other To Do's because that's just how I roll.
On the list is:

• stain floor patches in dining room, back porch, kitchen, and back doors.
• stain back doors.
• stain & install kitchen base & door trim.

I'd love to also paint the parlor ceiling from orange to white as recommended by Realtor (sheds a tear), but that might be too much to ask of myself.

Wish me luck!

We have been bad parents about keeping Franca's baby book up-to-date and sadly, Mina doesn't even have a baby book! (yet.)

I did have a collection of Mina's baby keepsakes thrown on top of her dresser and was feeling like I need to get/make some sort of container before they all got lost.

I saw this keepsake box/baby book and really loved it, but not the $55 price tag. I felt like I needed to do something a little more personal, so I decided to  make one myself.

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Franca and I left a sleeping Mina at home with Marc and headed off to AC Moore.
I bought:

• Wood Box $10 w/ 40% off = $6.00
• Martha Stewart gift tags $2.80
• MS mini cards and envelopes $2.80
• MS flower embellishments $3.50
• Scrapbook paper $1.20

So we met with a Realtor yesterday to get advice on selling the house. It was super informative, pretty motivating and a little scary. (More info on why we are selling here.)

The informative was the projects she thinks we should/shouldn't do. It cut a couple of big ones out. (No new front porch railings & not fixing front wall.) She said yes to painting parlor ceiling (boo), and yes to the kitchen wood wall. I've updated our "To Do" list and as it stands we have 21 of 40 items completed. Some of these are pretty small, and those I'm going to tackle. Then we will both take on the larger and miscellaneous items.

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1. Back Porch Exterior Trim
2. Stain Dining Room Floor patches
3. Patch & Paint Kitchen Window
4. Stain Back Porch Floor patches & doors
5. Paint Parlor Ceiling
6. Fix Hallway Broken Window Pane
7. Paint Upstairs Bathroom Radiator Cover
8. Install Back Porch Ceiling Fan/Light

1. Kitchen Cabinet Surround (finish)
2. Front Gutter Downspouts (finish)
3. Downstairs Bathroom
4. Parlor Outlet Cover
5. Dining Room/Kitchen Wood wall (door casings, built-in cabinet)
6. Kitchen Base Trim
7. Vent Hood
8. Front Porch Floor & Ceiling
9. Front Yard Wall & Walk Fix
10. Clean Up Landscaping
11. Clean Off Roof

So this room still needs some touch-ups (including a radiator front cover), but because I'm trying to get some posts lined up for after baby, I'm going to do a reveal anyway.  Here goes:

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Sure it is a little cluttered, but it is a playroom ~350 days of the year!  Franca loves it.  She is a little confused though.  If I tell her to go get something in "the playroom" I can see the gears turning until she realizes I mean "the junk room".  Sad, but true.  Poor girl.  Living her first three years in renovation chaos.
 Here is some hook art that my Grandmother did.  Amazing right?  Imagine how long that took her!

Here is a brief tutorial on how I made the DIY Drop Cloth Stencil Canvas.

This idea of using rigid insulation instead of stretching a traditional canvas has been all over the interwebs, so it is nothing I came up with.  It seemed easy and quick.  Plus, we had 2 big sheets of leftover rigid downstairs.  After researching that there is in fact NO formaldehyde in the sheets, I decided it was a go.

I swear I had a piece of canvas drop cloth leftover from the DIY nursery curtains, but I could not find it to save my life.  Thus, this project cost me $7.99 worth of a 5x5' drop cloth from Lowes instead of being free. Good thing about this is this drop cloth has a bit of a pink/blue tinge to it that actually ties in the wall & crib wood color.  Happy accident!


While I knew I wanted a canvas with a stencil, I was at a loss for what stencil design.  Luckily at the time Marc and Franca were in NYC and Marc kept going on and on about how cool the old Delancey Street subway signs were.  Since this nursery already had a NYC-ish "theme" (cringe), I googled the sign and loved it too.

Typography nerds, that's us!


This also lead us to Mina's middle name.  We started a place/geography tradition with Franca's middle name (which is Catalina after the Santa Catalina Mountains in Tucson - where we met).  We had been searching and searching for a similar middle name from a place we had lived.  Nothing was right and while Delancey isn't the most beautiful street in NYC, it seemed to just fit.





Ok, now that I look at this photo, it is going to drive me crazy that these two canvases are mounted at different heights.  Le Sigh.

Confession: Shortly after this was taken, the canvas fell.  I had researched how people hung their DIY canvases.  Several just used the 3M Command strips, others duct tape/wall hanger combo.  I tried both and they didn't work for this canvas and this wall.  Ugh.

It's pretty important that something hanging over a crib be secure, so I decided to fasten it all mechanically, no tape or adhesives. I used two normal wall hangers (the OOK ones) with braided picture wire secured to the canvas/insulation with a wire hoop thru the side and back. In retrospect, I would have installed these loops before I did the canvas covering, but meh, hindsight... Important thing is this thing is not going anywhere now!