Damn Squirrels

These squirrells will not leave my garden and flowers alone. I wanted to deal with them a different way but my husband doesnt agree .  So ill try this for now, feeding them instead of getting rid of em...squirrel corn got mine at Home Depot

Intex pools

Bought a intex 18x48 pool last year. what a pain! probably better off with a real pool considering the time and money we have spent on it .  after much research i found what comes with the pool will do you no good at all to keep the pool clean. tricks that i found useful.

A. PUMP____  too small for the pool
B. FILTER____ too cheap, doesnt catch small particles (algae , etc)
     Solution- Apply a small amount of DE (handfull) to skimmer. 
                  - Attach a filter sock to skimmer/blower or knee highs, believe it or not they work!

Below is a pic of a knee high on the blower. It was black the next day, clearing up my dead alga and cloudy water. Looks funny but works

C. VACUUM- the bags dont work well.
     solution- attach another hose instead of the bag.
                  - attach 1 or two knee highs with an elastic instead of the bag

Summertime

Thank you to my husband, brother and maybe a couple others i may be forgetting. My son finally gets to swing on his new set  from Toys R us . centennial wood gym set

Office designs

Today I decorated the walls of my office and a coworkers!  Ya I totally xmas tree shopped it! $2.99 wall stick ons :) or whatever you call em

Food! hmm

My New Phase,,,,,just picked up some Dole Fruit crisp this week. Jackpot!  At 150 calories, this is my new breakfast . Also a great snack for the kids. Warm it up and its delish!

When kids are sick

The most affective cough syrup I have found is Children's Mucinex. It works better than anything I have ever used. It doesnt just cover the cough, it clears it up!

Truly Heartbreaking

Massachusetts of Emergency flood and we got hit pretty hard . At least six inches in our basement. 

 

Day 1 and 2 we spent pumping the water out. After that the smell was so bad the only thing we could do was rip everything out to prevent mold from starting. I then learned that bleach does not kill Mold after reading many articles. We bought Moldex and started demolishing. After the carpet was out I scrubbed the Dricore subfloor with Borax to try and save it. Borax is known to kill mold.  We are currently using 3 dehumidifiers and three fans.The bead-board was ripped off walls and the drywall was cut about 12 inches above the water line. 

 

more updates to follow......

Picture Frame Art

Think outside the box with picture frames. Here is one of many things that you can do with them.
what you need:

silk flower
frame
ribbon

This cost me about $2 to make

The doorknobs have got to go!

So here i am sitting on my couch just looking at my room.  ugh , do i seriously have brass doorknobs! Well the more I thought about it the  more it bothered me. I have alot of them on my first floor alone. I knew right away i wanted oil brushed bronze. well I checked ebay and they are fairly priced but to buy that many, well i shouldnt. So i started thinking Spray paint. hmm.  I researched online and found a few sites where people did use it on brass but I couldnt find doorknobs. so here it goes...

     I picked up some Krylon Brushed Oil Bronze spray paint and Ruddy Brown primer spray at Walmart.  The brushed oil bronze did look really dark so i wasnt sure how it would come out.  Here's what I used

 '

  So i took off my doorknobs and all the hardware and brought them to a well vented place. sprayed primer waited about ten minutes and then i sprayed the bronze. After they were dry I noticed it did look a bit dark so i lightly and quickly sprayed the brown primer over all of them in a very small amount and that gave it just what i wanted.

 Enjoy

Repainting chairs

     So i found 4 bar stools for the basement about a year ago with the intentions on painting them sports themed.  Of course New England teams that is. Right before the holiday i decided it was finally time to get going on the project.  Heres what I did.  Hit the nearby Home depot and picked up some supplies.  A decent paintbrush, I would recommend a slanted edge brush for the spindles/legs. Upon searching for some colors in their sports color section then realized i really dont need much paint at all. So i went with the Glidden testers (below) and got the three colors that I needed for the Patriots chair. I then picked up some gripper grey primer because I was using red. Red is a very difficult color and requires many coats to achieve its true color.

      This chair is finished so before I started painting I roughed up the chair a bit with some sand paper.  Next start by priming. I only primed where my red paint was going but, thats me being lazy so its entirely up to you. After painting the chair let it dry for for at least 24 hrs. I bought a decal from a local store and here it is ...

                    

what my blog is mainly about

Starting a blog that will journey through some creative ideas I have used and will be using throughout my home.  Things that I have researched or created on my own.  I will also be concentrating on the things that are helping me with my fast paced family life such as easy meals, gardening, entertaining etc.  The obstacles, details and the end results of them.  to be continued.......