F&F Home Tour Dirty Laundry

What's more depressing than endless laundry?  Endless time spent in a horrible laundry room!

The Laundry Room Before

Laundry Room Before

And After

Laundry Room After

The wall color was an impulse buy.  Gotta love the Lowes mis-tint shelf!  I got a gallon of high quality, low odor paint for $5!  I really like how much it brightens the space.  The art hanging over the kids' pegs was a watercolor I painted in high school.  We have a lot more transforming going on in this room but its not ready for the full reveal yet.  :)

Next Stop:  F&F House Tour Kids' Quarters

Back to the F&F House Tour

Feathers and Fingerprints House Tour Kitchen and Dining Room

The F&F kitchen and dining room are the only rooms in the entire house that haven't been painted.  The truth is I've never been able to decide on a color!  

<3  I just put chalkboard labels on these containers.   <3

F&F House Tour Dirty Laundry

Inside the Feathers and Fingerprints House Tour!

Welcome inside!  Our house has an open floor plan, which I absolutely love.  I did not, however, love the old tile and uneven paint job.

Before

The Dirty Work

After

Updated Front Hall!

On to the Kitchen and Dining Room

Feathers and Fingerprints House Tour!

Welcome to my house tour!  I love seeing where other bloggers live and all of the creative things they've done.  My husband and I bought our house about five years ago.  Since then we have been busy fixing it up and making it our own.  I dug out all of the old pictures from the first year we lived here and it amazes me how much it has changed!

This is probably one of the first pics I took of the house.  Not the best quality, I know.

Our first spring in the house we did some minor landscaping.  To the right of the porch was grass.  We dug out the grass, added the rock border, and planted a tree.  That tree didn't survive and has been replaced with another tree.  We planted a row of day lilies all the way across the front.  They have turned out to be the perfect flowers for my brown thumb.  On the left of the porch was railroad ties.  We replaced them with rock and new mulch.  Ahhhh.  I love spring.  This picture is from a few years ago.

It didn't take long before we had to replace the rotting porch posts.  They were literally crumbling.

I'm very happy with the end result!

Come on inside!

Or, head out back and see the making of the swing set!

Do you like green eggs and ham?

Would you like them in a house?

Would you like them with a mouse?

Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!

I am so excited to celebrate Read Across America Day tomorrow!  Here is a sneak peek at what I've got planned.  Shhhh, don't tell the kids! {wink}

Monkey is taking green "eggs" for her class snack tomorrow.  Six of them are part blue and part green jell-o.  It took too long doing multi-colored eggs so the rest are all green.  Monkey is VERY excited to eat green eggs!  She told me over and over that she will eat them in a house, and with a mouse, and she does like green eggs!  (Can you guess what her favorite bedtime story is?)

Green Eggs and Ham Jello Eggs

Lil Bean gets orange eggs and red Sneech belly stars.  I hope the orange and red are more appealing to the 1 and 2 year old crowd.  

Jello Eggs and Stars

This is the mold I made the eggs with.  I need to order another one or two!  They can be purchased at the Kraft Store for only $3.50!

My kiddos at school will be getting flat jell-o jiggler eggs.  I wanted to make them the 3D version, but with one mold it wasn't happenin'.  They'll be so excited to have a surprise snack!

Dr. Seuss Day wouldn't be complete without Thing 1 and Thing 2!  These are the shirts Monkey and Bean will wear tomorrow.  Amanda and I made them for Halloween (knowing full well they would be worn again on March 2!)  They are silk-screened thanks to a tutorial at Modge Podge Rocks.  And of course the girls will be wearing crazy socks.  Its Dr. Seuss Day, I mean come on.  

And here's my shirt.  Amanda and I were Thing 1 and Thing 2 for our school Halloween Parade.  I dug out the headband we made (if only I knew where the girls' made it off to...) and whipped up a fun tulle and bead bracelet.  I think the google search to find the right bracelet idea took longer than actually making it! I found a great tutorial here.  I made one for Amanda too.  I'll surprise her with it in the morning! {giggle}

I hope you have something special planned for Read Across America!  Remember:


"You're never too old, 
Too wacky, too wild,
To pick up a book,
And read to a child."


Update:
Here is a picture of Amanda and I in our shirts!  Dr. Seuss Day was a great success!  The little kids weren't so sure about the jell-o eggs, but my class loved the surprise!

Happy Birthday Ryan!

Today is my husband's birthday!  

This morning to celebrate Monkey and Lil Bean helped me bake a cake.  Turns out they are excellent pan greasers! We made two 8" chocolate cakes.

Monkey is wearing her apron that I showed you in a previous post here.

The cake is in the oven!  While baking, we made a peanut butter filling.  You can find the recipe here. 

I used my cake leveler to even out both cakes.  Then I loaded on the peanut butter filling.  Can you tell I used crunchy peanut butter?  

OK, so maybe too much filling...

Topped with chocolate icing and all the candles I could find.  We can pretend he's only 21.  ;)

Happy Birthday Daddy!

I'm adding this peanut butter recipe to my collection.  It was so yummy I'll definitely make it again!

By the way, the balloon wreath was a project Amanda and I worked on a few months ago.  You can find a great tutorial over at How Does She.

Have a wonderful evening!

Sweet on Volunteers

Every year we have a volunteer appreciation luncheon at school.  This year the theme was "We are sweet on Volunteers."  All of the teachers chip in for door prizes for the volunteers that come.  I knew I was going to make a cookie bouquet to go with the theme.  Who doesn't like cookies?  But as I was wandering through Hobby Lobby looking for a cute basket or tray to put them in I saw very cool chalkboard flowerpots.  However, they were $20 for a small pot.  I'm cheap.  So I got a can of chalkboard spray paint and a $3 pot instead.

I took the pot into the garage and gave it two coats of paint, allowing time to dry in between coats.  As the paint dried I got busy making sugar cookie dough and marshmallow fondant.  I used the same cookie cutters on the cookies and fondant.  The cookies rose just enough to make them the perfect fit.  I also tried to put the fondant cut-outs on the cookies while they were still hot.  OK, so I didn't really know what I was doing but it all came together alright!  This was my third time ever making marshmallow fondant.  I had forgotten what a challenge it can be!

After the cookies cooled I used decorating gel to decorate.  I chose this gel because I'm lazy and didn't want to get out all of my icing bags and tips.  And I didn't want to make icing.  Or clean it up.  Plus, the little gel tubes are super easy to use.  Rookie mistake!  Gel doesn't harden all the way.

The final product turned out alright!  I stuffed some crumpled up paper under the cookies, but the weight of the cookies was enough that you couldn't see too many of them anyway.  I spread out the decorated cookies on the top to keep the gel from getting smashed.  It was a hit and one lucky volunteer was thrilled to get cookies!

How do you show your appreciation?