After all the work this house took, the closets were way down on the list for improvements. When we moved in, I just put our stuff in there and  ignored the rest. For some reason, right before Christmas I got motivated to spruce up the master bedroom closet. It took me one day,  some left over paint and peel and stick tiles. Cost aprox. $30

BEFORE

AFTER

Sorry I haven't posted for a while~

I forgot to post these pumpkin patch pictures we went with the homeschool group. Below is a picture of my mom and my two older boys dressed up in their suits. We are getting ready to go on a cruise and the boys were showing Grandma their fancy dinner attire. They look so grown up. Grandma said they were strutting around like peacocks!

Me and son #3.

This  House Make-Over post is for all of you who don't think you have the time or the money to fix up your house. This "kitchen cupboard painting project" was done in one day, with one adult (me!), 8 children (ages 4-13) and for less than 100 bucks!  See, you have no more excuses not to get started on that project you've been putting off.  

Need more information on how to do your next project? CLICK to see lots of great "How To" home improvement videos.

I didn't mind the stain on the cupboards too much but in many places the wood had water damage or the stain was worn off, so to make them nice again, it would have taken ALOT of sanding. Since we plan to do a major kithchen remodel (when we get enough $$ saved for it) down the road, I only wanted to spend minimal amount of money and time making this kitchen look better. Painting the cupboards was the solution. Of course those GIANT knobs from the 60s era had to go!!

Step #1:  Take down the cupboards. Even though it takes more work than painting while still attached, it's just  too hard to not get paint on the hinges, which looks awful.

Stiep #2 Remove hinges and screws: We had the daunting task of removing  total of 360 tiny screws.This is where the 8 children came in! Pictured above is the "hardware crew".  Three kids at a time would work for about 20 minutes and then I would rotate a new group of kids to spend 20 minutes, until all hardware was off the cupboards.

Step #3 Lightly Sand: While the hardware removal was going on INSIDE, the sandpaper crew was working OUTSIDE. You will notice that even my four year old was sanding. This job was perfect for the little ones as it just had to be lightly sanded or as I told them, "scratch it up kids!". 

Step #4 Prime and Paint:  I used less than a half-gallon of KilZ primer (water base) and a little more than half-gallon of creamy white, semi-gloss paint. Primer dries very quickly which meant by the time I finished with all the cupboards I was ready to paint. Yes, the children even helped with this. While I don't have the pictures to prove it, I do have the paint stains now permenantly on my cement. Oh, well... Tip! Before allowing children to paint, double up on the plastic covering!

Step #5 Reattach hinges & knobs: The knobs were the cheapest I could possibly find and actually were the bulk of the total cost to do this project (I already had the paint sitting around). To stain them, I had one of the kids dip each one in a bucket of stain and then let dry. IF I had decided to replace the hinges this project would have cost double (or more!). Since my hinges were covered in dirt and grime, I soaked them in TSP/water solution while we painted. We scrubbed them a little and they came out shiny and clean.

A few days later, I ended up priming/painting over that ugly wallpaper. Did you know you can paint over wallpaper? When we remodel the kitchen down the road, we will put in new drywall, so painting it seemed the best choice for now.

The end result is a brighter, cleaner looking kitchen. An inexpensive, quick fix to hold us off until we do a ktichen remodel. Now, what to do about those pink countertops...any suggestions (cheap and fast of course)???

I've been at the Grocery Game now for about three weeks and boy is it paying off! My cupboards are more full than ever....and I spent half the money! Last night, my sister (one of my grocery game partners) and I spent an hour and a half, planning our "game". We went to the store and what a thrill! I bought $350 worth of groceries for $100. This included things like half and half, 24 lbs. of Tillamook cheese, an 18 lb. Turkey, 12 boxes of chex's cereal, 25 lbs. of flour, 3 bags of chocolate chips, 2 gallons of milk, 10 lbs. of potatoes, artichoke hearts, 4 cans of evaporated milk and a few other things I can't think of right now.

You can seriously save a lot of money doing this, IF you are willing to spend some time planning it out. It makes going to the store FUN! My sister and I feel like we are going on a scavenger hunt when we go shopping now.  Saving the money is just the added bonus to the "game".

To learn more go to my partner, Dena's Blog, she is the Grocery Queen and has all the links.

                                      My children are no strangers to hard work. They've ripped off roofs, laid carpet, sod, and linoleum floors not to mention have painted more walls than most do in a lifetime....all before they're even old enough to drive! So, when the leaves started falling, my kids grabbed their rakes and hit the neighborhood. In the past week their "raking business" has brought in over $300!! They have so much "work" they've needed to recruit the help of their cousins (girls in the picts below). Yesterday (Saturday) these little entrepauners raked for 8 hours! Of course they came back home for small breaks and food but otherwise, they did it the whole day.

As I see my children pulling their wagon filled with rakes and boxes of trash bags, I wonder why they're the only kids doing this? Our neighborhood is filled with able bodied boys and girls that could also be raking for money. Is this because children today are just lazy? Or, is it because money is handed to them "for free" (by their parents) so why work for it? If we could go back in time forty plus years, I'd bet this neighborhood would be filled with kids competing for raking jobs...but sadly that isn't the case. Hopefully, this isn't an indication of what our future adults will be like in regards to hard work.

There I am with a big old grin on my face as I watched the dollar$ come off the total!!!

Dad and son- Prepping the food before going on air.

My husband is on the right, the man on the left is his assistant.

Eating the food on the air...actually I think it's commercial break but they do eat whatever he makes on the air and talk about it.

They did a few shots of cooking the food outside as well.

I just realized that I don't have many photos of our dining room make-over. This room cost us around $400 which includes refinishing the floor (we did ourselves) paint and a light fixture that I bought off of Ebay and installed myself.

One of the last ugly bits to go on the outside of our house is the porch! We really didn't notice it unitl we painted, added grass and the new windows, then suddenly we couldn't stand it! The total cost for this was just under 100 bucks and took aprox. 8 hours of work spread over two days. There was a beautiful wood floor hiding under all that ugly paint.

***If you want great ideas on making fabulous bedrooms go to RemodelingMySpace.com....I love the bold colors! They also have several How to Videos, CLICK HERE for many do-it-yourself projects!*

Whenever I need to get a good estimate on a project I use this nifty online tool...The Cost Estimator. CLICK HERE!

We finally have grass in our front yard! We actually put it in a few weeks ago but I forgot to post the picts. Rolling out the sod (instant grass!)  was the easy part. Getting the lawn ready with a rototiller, leveling it, killing the weeds and taking out the dirt clods was the hard part. I am so glad to have grass! No more tracking in all that dirt into the house.  The cost  for a 1200 SF lawn (front lawn only) was just under $400....well worth it.

The night before the grass was delivered I got a hairbrained idea to line the walkway with bricks. So  I jumped in my car and off I went to Walmart for some bricks. These bricks cost around $25 and took me about 3 hours to put in.  I finished up under the moonlight but I got it done just in time; so glad I did as it's a nice effect for very little money. It was also a great way to incorporate more of the dark red.

Some flowers we have in the front yard...I call them "clown flowers"

Here are some pictures of a homeschool convention we recently went to in Portland, Oregon.  There was someone that stopped by our booth that frequents my blog...I'm sorry I missed you! The kids were practically running the booth by themselves the second day...they sure are learning young! The funniest comment I heard from a previous Times Tales customer was, "Times Tales saved my marriage!" When I asked her how in the world that would be possible she said  her husband was so frustrated that their son couldn't learn his times tables, he was ready to have her (his wife) stop homeschooling! Well, you know the rest of the story. It's so great to hear face to face feedback. :)

I recently wrote an article on chores for the A to Z Homes Cool website. You can read the article by clicking below.

Does getting your kids to do their chores, feel like an uphill battle? How many times do you end up doing the work yourself because it's just easier?.....CLICK to Read more!

Well, the 100 year old windows with the wavey glass are gone...so sad, NOT REALLY! Since we moved into this fixer-upper, one of the top things on my wish list was to get new windows. It took the glass guys 2 and a half days to replace all 29 windows. I can feel the difference inside already! It's much more quiet (we don't hear the cars drive by) and I don't feel a breeze blowing through my house.

Well, the painting is finally done! The total cost was around $1,300.00 (thousands less than hiring prof. painters) as we hired a guy my husband works with to spray it and we did most of the prep and about 1/3 of the painting. We  were also very fortunate to have saved 42% on all our paint. We just had our house re-appraised and the value increase $75,000 more than what we bought it for 8 months ago...now that's sweat equity!!! Well, not all of it, we have invested about $12,000 into it as well.

For the past several weeks we've been working on the OUTSIDE of our house. First, we rented a pressure washer and sprayed all the grime and loose paint off. Then we stripped half of the window trims down to bare wood (using a heat gun) and had to replace a bunch that were too rotten to even paint. Then, we were finally ready (after 3 weeks of prep work) to paint. We hired a guy dh works with to help with spraying the house using  a paint gun and he did much of the high stuff. All in all I painted about 1/3 of the house myself and he did the other 2/3. We saved alot of money (thousands of dollars in fact) by hiring this guy, doing it ourselves and we got our paint at Sherwin Williams at a 42% discount through special discount from dh's work! Our big, ugly, pink house has been a pink eyesore for as long as people can remember,  as it is one of the oldest homes in our town and I can't tell you how many people stopped their car to say how nice it looks now and thanked me for changing it!! I will post somemore pictures of the final result next! end  result next!

Another wonderful illustration by Inflatable Studios...CLICK to see more of his cartoons!

The 5-4 ruling said the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act that Congress passed...CLICK TO READ ARTICLE