Dry Brushing Video Tutorial

Remember the Dry Brushed Antique Dresser I shared a couple of months ago? 

While I was working on it I was also working on it's shorter, longer sibling. I restained the top and painted the body that same week but decided I would make a video tutorial of the dry brushing process when I had a spare moment. Well I finally had a spare moment yesterday ;)

I posted the video on YouTube and put a link to it down below for you to click on. Let me know in the comments if it's not working or anything please! :)

Also a disclaimer: This is my first video tutorial. I was nervous. :) The more times I saw/heard it while I was editing the more I wanted to forget the whole thing and throw it away! Hearing your own nervous voice for an hour straight isn't the funnest way to spend an evening ;) But my whole reason for making it was to be helpful to one person out there who is nervous about trying dry brushing and my hope is that that one person will find it and feel more confident :)

So here goes nothing.....

Link to Dry Brushing Video Tutorial


**Please excuse the kids talking and laughing in the 
background....my house is never quiet :)**





Linking up to:
Silver Pennies
Nifty Thrifty Things

Taking Back Control

(2 days before diagnosed, last day of 1st grade)

Last week my 7 year old son, Casey, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. It came basically out of nowhere. After a month of on again off again drinking & peeing spurts I decided let's just take him in to be checked. Sure I was sick to my stomach that morning waiting for our appointment, but I kept telling myself to stop being silly, that I'd be embarrassed afterwards for asking some family members to pray before we went in...

And that's when diabetes took over. 

After being diagnosed we were sent straight to urgent care being told we were lucky he was healthy enough to not need a 2 day hospital stay as most children do. We spent the rest of the day there getting insulin, IV drips, blood tests, and lots of information.

We left with a nauseous, tired little boy, a bag full of samples and leaflets and our heads spinning. Don't get me wrong, they did a wonderful job helping Casey and us through the whole ordeal. There's just only so much information one brain can take in in a 5 hour period, especially when that brain is still trying to cope with a new diagnosis.

It's 6 days later. My house and my life feel like they have been taken over by this disease. Leaving the house takes 3x as long as I double check I have enough alcohol swabs, lancets, pen needles, and test strips. Planning lunch causes me to break out in a sweat, I need to know how much he is going to eat exactly, how many carbs will be in that meal and what his blood sugar is before he gets started. Then plug it all into a formula that decides how much insulin to give him 10 minutes before he eats. 

My house is a mess of papers and empty boxes and books and half put away groceries. My week has been about surviving from one meal to the next. I feel like our whole summer bucket list is a thing of the past. How am I going to plan a trip to Six Flags Great America when just packing a lunch stresses me out? How am I going to take my daughter for our special mommy/daughter day to the American Girl Store when I'm the only one who knows how to take care of Casey?

NO.

I'm taking back control.

Starting with my mind set. I will stop looking at my friends' pictures on Facebook and feeling sorry for myself. I will stop feeling like our life is over. I will get this mess around me cleaned up so that our house feels normal again. We will accomplish every single goal on that summer bucket list and we will enjoy it that much more because we will know that diabetes won't get in the way of our life. 

I heard this on the radio yesterday,

"God doesn't always call on the qualified. Sometimes he qualifies the called."

We may not always feel qualified to do the things God calls us to do, but with His help we are more than able. Can I get an AMEN???!!!

Summer Bucket List

4 & 1/2 more school days until summer break! I'm a little excited, can you tell? I worked a lot this year and felt super busy all the time. I like to stay busy and have a full calendar, but this year was a bit too much.

Without any planning on my part it turns out I won't be babysitting this summer. I'll miss the extra smiles and hugs but they'll be back come September, so I'm going to take advantage of this down time :)

On Memorial day me and my 7 year old, Casey, sat in the garage and talked out a list of all the things we want to do this summer. I realized that I definitely needed to write it all down to make sure it stayed fresh in our minds and didn't get put on the back burner by other distractions.

So where better to write it than on our kitchen wall where it will remind us every morning during breakfast?!

I plan on keeping it up all summer and crossing things off as they happen. And definitely adding to it as we think of more fun things to do together! 

This is my last summer with my kids before they both start attending school 5 days a week :( I will still get Lainey back by lunch time every day though :) 

Time sure does fly, but as long as I can look back and say "we had fun and didn't let busy schedules keep us from being together and making memories" than I will be okay with it. I want to enjoy every minute of this season of my life so that when the next season comes I will be ready to enjoy it.

A Surprise 65th Luau

My May Goals had a bit of a theme to them this month. Obviously, it was the outside of our house. You probably just figured it's the beginning of Spring/Summer and Heidi just wants to start the season by finishing all of the outdoor work, right? Well there was another reason. A secret reason. 

My mother in law and us kids were throwing my father in law a surprise 65th birthday party, in our yard!!

When it comes to the yard Scott is a bit of a perfectionist....to say the least. So for weeks we worked HARD finishing up landscaping and the deck and the playset and cleaning the garage and on and on....

The pool deck is 100% done and I've already written my review of Deck Restore but I wanted to wait until the pool is open and blue again before taking my beauty shots :) The playset only got one coat of solid stain and scattered storms have been going on for over a week keeping me from finishing. But it looked nice enough for the party and I'm excited to finish it up soon.

I'll be sharing the "Summer Fun Bucket List" my son, Casey, and I made tomorrow, but for now here's some pics of the Luau we had in our yard and garage on Saturday :)

As you can see from our attire we had unseasonably cold weather for our luau....I'm very bad luck when it comes to weather. If you want nice weather, don't let me be a part of the planning. Now you know! ;)

Painting the Front Door

This month is flying by. We've been working our tails off on all of our May Goals but aren't quite ready to show off the results. Except for one, the front door!!

I'm so relieved to finally have it done and everyone in the neighborhood loves the color! :)

Here again is the before:

We ordered the door unpainted so that is actually primer on it. I wanted to take my time picking out a new color scheme for the front of our house and also it saved us money to order it unpainted ;)

I'm SO glad that I took my time with this decision. If I had painted the front door last summer it would have been tan or green. Those are my safe colors. Blue is definitely not a color I have used much while decorating this house or our last house.

But I've been trying to change things up and step outside my color comfort zone, and I'm so glad I did! Also, I looked up and down my street at all of my neighbor's doors and noticed a lot of black, white, green and tan. I wanted my house to stand out and a beautiful blue door will definitely help!

This color is called Blue Suede and is a Martha Stewart color from Home Depot. I had them mix it for me in an outdoor Glidden paint in semi gloss. I used only a brush to paint the door and it only needed 2 coats. An hour in the morning and an hour in the afternoon and I was done!

I ordered some house numbers for the door too.

Our house actually has no house numbers and our mailbox is at the street along with our neighbor's. I've had many confused pizza delivery men at my door over the years and am glad to finally help everyone out!

I ordered these vinyl numbers from a great Etsy shop called WelcomingWalls. Candi had them made and shipped to me in less than a week, and for only $9! I couldn't be happier with my front door now! :)

Improving My Front Entrance

I finally painted the front door!

The inside of it :)

As soon as I finished writing my May goals last week I decided I was going with that blue color for my front door, and I wanted to get started immediately. But unfortunately the weather didn't cooperate with that plan. It turned rainy and cold and I wasn't able to do a darn thing outside all weekend :(

But this week is looking promising!! I decided that if I couldn't paint the outside of the door I'd at least do the inside of it this past weekend. Here's how it looked before.

Please, try not to be overwhelmed by how beautiful it is. Okay, now that you've recovered I'll tell you about it. I got a 4 panel door in an effort to be different because all of the houses around here have 6 panel doors. I would have loved to have a window at the top but windows made it more expensive and we really do get plenty of light in the living room.

 That wood door to the right of it is our coat closet. It's the last door on this floor of the house that needs to be replaced. It's not a very big closet, but just the fact that I have a coat closet makes me very happy. Living without one for the first 4 years of our marriage drove me crazy.

I painted the door in Behr's Ultra Bright White which is what we used on all of the trim and wainscoting in our house. First I taped off the hardware, hinges and rubber weatherizer thing at the bottom.

I trimmed it out with a brush but once I got to this point I decided I wasn't taking out a roller and pan just for this. So I finished the whole thing with my brush. I've done 2 coats and I should probably do 2 more but it looks good enough for now ;)

Better, right? Now just that last door....

Our Florida Vacation and May Goals

Hey guys! So in my last post when I told you how April completely got away from me I was dying to say, "But we're going away to Florida this Saturday, Hallelujah!!!!" But announcing to the world that we're going out of town didn't seem like the best idea ;) 

We had a wonderful time on Anna Maria Island with Scott's parents. While we were there I got to play with my camera a little :)

I was really excited to get some great family shots so that my new camera felt like something for the whole family instead of just for my blog.

When we left Chicago it still felt like winter, but when we got home it was suddenly Spring!! Our flowers and bushes had suddenly bloomed all of the trees had buds and even leaves, the yard was lush and green and nicely mowed thanks to a wonderful neighbor! So that brings me to my goals for the month of May.

This month in addition to working on some furniture I would like to focus on the outside of our house.

First up the deck:

We worked long and hard on it last Spring but never finished. I'll give you a review of how the Deck Restore is working out for us and also we'll be painting all of the lower lattice white.

Next up our playset:

Last Spring we power washed it which removed most of the old finish but then we never finished it by reapplying a new finish. I think it's going to be the same color as the deck but the jury is still out on that one.

Last but not least the front door:

We had a new door installed a year and a half ago and to save on cost we decided to paint it ourselves. It just hasn't happened yet! That color swatch on the door is Blue Suede by Martha Stewart. The jury is still out on that one too.

So there you go! A long list and it's already the 8th today!! Thankfully these are goals that Scott feels strongly about too, so there's a better chance that they'll actually get done ;)