The Bar That Got Iggy

It's just so fancy now.



And I couldn't be happier to be finished with this never ending project, or more thrilled with how it turned out! I tend to talk too much, so I'm going to throw out the absolutely fab after picture, before I start the rambling wordy part of this post. Feast your eyes on this baby:

I know! Can you even believe that it's the same piece of furniture?

Last week I shared the O'verlays that I painted to match the bar. O'verlays can be used by themselves on any piece of furniture but I wanted to add a mirror, because who doesn't love a good piece of mirrored furniture? I had two mirrors cut at a local glass shop. I brought the O'verlay in with me and asked them to cut it to almost the same dimensions. The mirror was 1/8 inch smaller on each side, but I'll give you the details on that later.

I was super nervous to actually glue the mirror down, because getting things to be straight or even is not a strong point of mine. I decided to make a really big paper template to use. I just taped a bunch of sheets of paper together to make it the same size as one of the doors of the bar. I marked where the knobs go, and then measured where I wanted the mirror to go.

I held it up and used a level to make sure everything was straight, and then cut out where the mirror would be. I was left with a very thin strip of paper that I taped onto the door. I realize there is probably a lot of better ways to make sure you are attaching something straight, but I found this the easiest thing for me.

I attached the mirror using a heavy duty mirror adhesive and a caulk gun.

I then attached the O'verlay to the mirror using a clear silicone adhesive. The reflection of the back of the O'verlay shows in the mirror, which is why I had painted the back, and why it's important to use a clear adhesive.

Once the O'verlay was centered there was a slight overhang, because the mirror was cut just a drop smaller.

I used paintable white caulk to fill the gap. I know, so many (smelly) adhesives for one project. Make sure you are working in a well ventilated area and wear gloves!  Once it was dry painted it gray like the rest of the bar. This gave the bar a more seamless look as opposed to hey, I glued a bunch of things on top if and lets call it a day.

When the final paint touch ups (I did some parts of the door also which is why in the above picture the colors look a little wonky) were done it was time to put this baby back together. Oh happy day!

I am loving this corner of furniture makeovers! The bar really complements the breakfront. The time put into this piece was so worth it. I have a completely different piece of furniture for what it would cost in just shipping fees to buy something new.

Does anyone have any major summer projects on the horizon? Let me know below! I can't believe I have such a big project done, and it's not even July yet. But then again, I did kind of start this thing ten months ago.

If you want to read about this transformation from the beginning, here are the links.

A Tale of Two (ok, one) Paint Chips
This is What a Really Awesome Husband Looks Like
Airing Your Dirty...
That Terrible Middle Stage
Not Quite There Yet
Overly Smitten with O'verlays

Cookies and Crayons for Two

We're in that time between school and camp where some parents go crazy, and I get excited to have everyone home with me. Is that weird? I just like hanging with them.

After spending the majority of yesterday in bathing suits outside, we spent the last few hours of sunshine in our teeny kitchen entertaining ourselves. The first thing on our agenda was baking cookies. Baking is a great activity to do with your kids, I just don't like having the goodies around after, because then I end up eating them. I experimented with all of the different cookies in a mug recipe, but honestly, they were just gross. I then stumbled upon a recipe which makes only two cookies, and after trying it out, let me tell you, they are a real winner. The recipe is from No. 2 Pencil and it's actually by the woman who brought us the cookie in a mug.

Start off by preheating your oven to 350 degrees, and line a baking sheet with parchment paper. Then soften two tablespoons of butter until just beginning to get melty and blend with two firmly packed tablespoons of dark brown sugar, 1 tablespoon granulated sugar, a pinch of kosher salt, and 1/4 teaspoon pure vanilla extract.

Add an egg yolk, 1/4 teaspoon baking soda, and 1/4 cup all purpose flour and mix well.

Add three heaping tablespoons of chocolate chips. Take a 30 second break as your kids try to eat all of the chocolate chips. Then mix it all up.

Form the cookies into two balls (make sure they are the same size so no one accuses the other of having the bigger one) and place on baking sheet several inches apart.

Bake for 8-10 minutes until edges are golden brown. (I did it for 10 minutes and they were extremely soft and the kids ended up eating them with a spoon.) The original instructions say when you take them out of the oven, bang it down on the counter so the cookies deflate and get a lovely wrinkled appearance. I do it and nothing happens, but people live a little and bang those cookies anyway. 

Take half a minute to torture your kids and get a picture of them, when really all they want to be doing is eating those cookies.  

These make really big cookies, so you can probably get four out of them, and just bake them for a little shorter. I love how we had this great activity to do together, but there are no unhealthy leftovers sitting around tempting me.

When we finished our cookie activity we moved onto a little project I've wanted to do for a long time. This is something that is not new at all, but I wanted to give it a go, so we made shaped melted crayons. You know what I'm talking about, it's when you take all your old bits of crayons, and melt them together in a mold, and get a new fun crayon shape. We have a huge bag of crayons that gets dumped out every time someone is coloring. Now we have six fun flowers to keep track of instead. No complaints here.

I put out labeled plates and let Moshe and Lily sort the colors. 

We decided to mix the purple and pink crayons together, so Lily can have all her favorite colors in one place.

After you have your colors sorted you need to get all the wrappers off the crayons. After going through the plate of red crayons, I was highly annoyed it was such a pain in the you know what. I consulted la google and was told to soak the crayons to make the wrappers come off easier. Genius. I don't recommend doing this with a fresh mani.

When the wrappers are all off, chop the crayons and fill up whatever mold you are using. I used a silicone muffin pan. I think it's ruined and wouldn't use it for food anymore, so I'm donating it to the play kitchen. Keep that in mind, don't use your really good pans.

Bake at 250 degrees for around 15 minutes, or until the crayons are melted. After it's out of the oven, I put it into the freezer to help it harden. Pop out the crayons, and viola! New art supplies. I love the way the different colors show.

Anyone here doing anything fun with their kids? It seems like school has been out forever, even though it has only been a week, but I am loving it!

Mini Conversations

...Or conversations with the Minis. Because they are a pretty funny pair.

Passing me her yogurt to scape down the sides:

Lily: "You find me some more?"

***

After adding a little Anna figurine to our princess collection:

Moshe: "Can we get Elsa for Lily too?"

Me: "I can't find Elsa in the store."

Moshe: "All of the stores? What about Home Depot?" 

***

Walking by pigeons: 

Lily: "Scuse me chickens!!"

Father's Day

Last night I went to a late movie with a friend. I drove her back home and double parked (bad idea #1), turned the car off (bad idea #2), and turned on the hazards (bad idea #3). We ended up talking and before we knew it, it was 2 am. My friend went in to her home, and I started tried to start the car. In case you were counting, three bad ideas and you strike out. The battery was dead and the car wasn't going anywhere. If I had been in a parking spot I could have left it and dealt with the situation in the morning, but this was something that needed immediate attention. 

I called Daniel.

And I freaked out. And he was calm. 

He told me to walk home (I was just up the block) and he would come out and take care of everything. 

And that is exactly what he did. 

He could have been upset, he could have been annoyed at me for doing something stupid, but he wasn't. He sat out with the car and waited for AAA to come and give him a jump. He came back in at 4 am. 

I'm so thankful to be married to a wonderful man who is also a wonderful father. He treats the kids like he treats me. Moshe and Lily are extremely lucky to call him their father.  

Happy Father's Day to all!

Overly Smitten with O'verlays

Heeeey peeps, we're back to real time updates on the never ending bar project.

The last we left it, I had a very grey box that kind of resembled a large filing cabinet. {Sad faces.} I let it sit like that for awhile while I gathered supplies (and also because let's be real, it takes me forever to get things done). I do have to admit that the whole boxy grey thing started to grow on me the longer it sat. I'm feeling pretty good about how this will all turn out in the end.

I have a vision in my head of what I hope the bar looks like when I am (finally) done with it. When I first came up with the idea, I was nervous to attempt it, since it would involve using saws, and other tools I have never used before. Everyone has a level of DIY they are comfortable with, and while I figured I would give it a try, I wasn't exactly looking forward to building what I needed. And then I remembered O'verlays.

In the back of my head I knew about O'verlays, but I never looked into them. I'm so glad it popped into my brain to go check them out. O'verlays is a genius website where you can order decorative fretwork panels to customize your Ikea furniture, because not everyone wants their Swedish purchases to look the same, right? They have a bunch of different designs in the common sizes of Ikea furniture. Luckily for me, the design that I wanted to use, was one of the patterns they sell. I made paper templates of the sizes they offered, but since the bar is not an Ikea purchase, none of the options were really working. O'verlays does custom orders, and that's what I ended up doing. I told them the style and size that I needed, and not too long later it arrived at my door. The O'verlays are very light, but don't feel flimsy. You paint them, and then attach it to your furniture, and boom, upgrade. And now, Beyonce is stuck in my head.

Ok, Here's part of the plan:

My goal for the week is to finish painting them, so I can hopefully attach them to the bar next week. I set everything up and got my first coat on Monday  night:

This is the point where I say I really regret using high gloss paint. In my head I thought it would leave a very shiny looking surface. After I started painting the bar I realized you need to use enamel for that. The imperfections of the furniture is not well disguised now. The paint also seems tackier than semi gloss, which may be why the O'verlays looked like this yesterday:

You see in the corner, how the paint is sticking out? When I lifted the O'verlay off the table, it took the paint that got on the plastic drop cloth with it. It was a little annoyance that was easily fixed by gently sanding everything down with 220 grit sandpaper. Then it was onto the second coat. I didn't want another sticky paint situation, so I put my tuna hoarding tendencies to good use, and placed a few cans under each piece so it wouldn't sit directly on the plastic.

I used a small paintbrush stolen from the kid's craft supplies. It took about an hour of painting the first night, because I had to get in my painting groove. It was another hour yesterday because I needed to sand first. Each night that I painted the actual bar, it also took around an hour and it's kind of crazy how it took me the same amount of time to paint an entire piece of furniture, as it took to paint two small O'verlays. Even though you won't see the back of the O'verlays, I want to paint them too. I'm waiting for the second coat to really dry and cure first, because it would just suck if the front got ruined while I was painting the back. The crazy humidity is really not helping my paint drying (or anyone's hair, I'm sure).

So I'm sitting around waiting for paint to dry, and I hope by the end the weekend the second coat will be done and it will be on to the next step! But first, let me take a selfie I have to do another Lowe's run.

What you are up to on the sticky humid week? (Or maybe it's perfect weather where you live?) Let me know below!

On Rainy Days, Window Shopping, and Giant Disco Elephants

Today started off like any other Monday that I didn't have to go into work. My brain got all excited at the prospect of not dealing with a case of the Mondays/relaxing/getting my home in order/having a lovely little girl day with Lily. I'm going to ruin my little fantasy by telling myself right now, that none of that actually happens on days off. By midday Lily and I were more than a little stir crazy, and because of the rain, couldn't cure the crazies by going to the park. So we did what any other person in our position would do: Go to Homegoods. (Target is obviously just as good an option but today Homegoods was our drug of choice.)

I rationalized this little Homegoods excursion by saying I was going to look for photo albums. One (ok, I) can never have too many photo albums. After snatching up every album they had (not such a great haul, only three this time) I continued on happily window shopping. Homegoods is really the best place to go to design rooms in your head around all the fun finds in the aisles. When Lily and I were ready to go, we rounded the corner to pay and then we saw this:

My jaw hit the floor.

And here it is from another angle:

Whaaaaat??

Yes people, for a mere $4,000, you too can have a giant disco elephant in your home.

A Homegoods employee happened to pass me and I said, "I'm sorry is someone really going to buy that?"

"Of course! Do you want to?"

No kind Homegoods lady, I do not.

I understand that home decor is all about personal taste. If you love it go for it. After I wrote my little taxidermy post  I had a lot of people ask me if I was serious. It's just really hard for me to wrap my head around having a giant disco elephant in a home. When I got home I searched my best friend, Pinterest for room inspiration featuring large elephants. I figured I would find some amazing room that would totally make me see how having a giant elephant makes sense. Nothing. I then went to my second best friend, Google, because Pinterest obviously didn't want to play. Again, nada.

I love elephants. There are a great design element. There are adorable elephant nurseries out there. There are amazing (small) elephant figurines to be had. There are great gift ideas that have elephants, (like a ring holder which I also saw in Homegoods today) out there. And then there are the giant disco kind. Can you imagine sitting in your living room and telling your guests, "Oh don't mind him, he's just the giant 800 pound elephant in the room."

So please, if you have a chic elephant  who is hanging our in your home, let me know below! I would love to hear about it.

Before I go, here's one more picture from today's trip. The Boo was obviously feeling left out with the elephant getting all the attention and asked me to take a picture of her too. And right before I took it, she leaned down to her doll and said, "Smile Jasmine!"

Man, I love that kid.