The Handy Homeowner Girl

My house is finally clean!

The stack of papers I had scheduled to scan and shred this week are scanned and shredded. The laundry (including all the guest bedding, all the dog bedding, and all the dog toys!) is finished! Carpets and floors are vacuumed and steam cleaned. Fabrics are febreezed. Piles have been gone through and put away. Clothes have been donated (though that’s also still a work in progress – I haven’t touched the closet yet!).

Whew. I’m exhausted.

Particularly since I’ve been working full-time and it’s been a busy work-week too, so all of this has been post-work. I need a nap.

But although I don’t always love the process of cleaning (I did try to make it more fun by blasting some music this time), I do love the feeling of sitting down on the couch with a clean home around me.

Let’s see how long it lasts before my pups wreak their messy havoc around them. I may be responsible for the piles of stuff, but this week has had more than it’s share of muddy footprints, dried drool, toy stuffing strewn everywhere, and stinky breath!

At any rate, I wanted to share with you some recommended reading tonight (er, tomorrow, since most of you are likely sleeping already!). Here are some of my favorite bloggers:

• Between the Two – this is my mom’s blog, but I think you’ll enjoy reading her posts, which cover daily life of being married to an Englishman (my dad), and having two basset hounds, two grandchildren, and even two houses, between their main home and their future retirement home.
• Mommy Musings – this is my sister’s blog, where she talks about her life as a stay at home mom to two adorable girls (my nieces) and wife to her cop hubby. Always a great read!
• Lindy in the Kitchen - written by my sister’s best friend, Linda’s blog focuses on retro cooking – she’s got some fabulous recipes, and, being Italian, was raised to cook expertly!
• The Pioneer Woman – Ree Drummond’s blog is a can’t miss. I started reading it a few years ago when a friend mentioned that she also had a basset hound (Charlie). She’s since added Walter the basset, and her blog focuses on life on a ranch in the midwest, where she raises and homeschools her four kids, and in the past couple of years, has developed and written two cookbooks, a children’s book, a biography of her love story with her husband, and filmed her Food Network cooking show. She is truly hilarious.
• Organized Home – want to get organized? The Organized Home has some great tips. And subscribing will constantly make you feel guilty remind you to get to work on your own home!
• The Lettered Cottage – Layla and Kevin make me want to be a better home decorator and do-it-myself-er. They have a BEAUTIFUL home that they’ve been renovating themselves, in a very modern/country/Pottery Barn-esque way.  It’s truly fabulous, and they have some great how-to’s in there as well as before and after’s of their home (and others).  They’ve just finished wrapping the pilot for their very own HGTV show, and I can’t wait to see it!
• tumbledweeds – written by a friend of mine from college, this is one of the most beautiful blogs I read. She writes about the journey of motherhood from a Christian perspective (I’ll note that while I’m fairly spiritual, I’m not particularly religious, but I just love her posts), and she gets you thinking and reminds you to have grace and find beauty in your life. It’s one of those blogs that when I see she has a new post, I stop whatever I’m doing to read it.
• Brocante Home – Alison May’s blog focuses on vintage housekeeping. It’s a favorite of my mom’s, who got me hooked on reading it. Not everything in here is for me, but she is funny and quirky, and her guides on de-cluttering, housekeeping, and more are some of the best I’ve seen.

So that’s my recommended reading for this week – make sure to subscribe to these blogs in your readers (or “follow” them if you’re a Blogger user – my mom is constantly looking to grow her followers!). I will try to post my Pinterest pins from this week (I have so many great Daniel Craig pictures to choose from!), but I have a good friend from high school arriving tomorrow (hence the whirlwind cleanse) and you may just see me on Sunday night instead!

Okay, so you’ll have to bear with me this week because I have a LOT of pins. I just found a lot of good things worth sharing this week!

Isn’t this beautiful?? It’s a bookstore in Paris. I just love it.

I couldn’t resist this little face!

Did you see the Glee engagement? This part was so sad, but I know how she feels!

This is apparently a great way to clean the stove grates – I’m always trying to get these clean, so I’m going to try it out!

Doesn’t this salad look gorgeous? I love a good salad!

I get choked up every time I read this – from Harry Potter. A great tat for someday, though probably not on the back of my neck!

Oh, how I wish my garden looked like this!

It arrived today!! I had a cup of coffee after dinner!! Prepare for over-caffeinated posts!!

This is such a beautiful backyard. I don’t love the columns and the chandelier (or the chairs and table for that matter), but I love an outdoor fireplace, and the pergola, and all the plants!

I’m just going to have to do this with one of my sweaters. I do have red felt lying around….

I chuckle every time I read this. I mean, seriously, if I woke up and Channing Tatum said we were married? Okay, great!

I just love doorways. I pinned a bunch this week, and love to photograph them myself as well!

If you haven’t watched Kristen Bell talk about her boyfriend bringing her a sloth for her birthday (just to visit, not to stay), you MUST watch this. It is hilarious, and even though I’ve been a big Kristen Bell fan for a while, I love her a little more after this!

What a great idea! Though I’d have to find some other kind of can to use since I don’t eat tuna…

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And your weekly Daniel picture! Can’t wait for Skyfall to come out!!

This is a great app for us handy homeowners – it allows you to save your measurements in the house to your iPhone or iPad.  I haven’t downloaded it yet, but I will be!

Although it would be totally impractical for me (my dogs are short, but they’re not THAT short, and they only have so much willpower when it comes to not snagging things off the coffee table), I just love this idea.

True story.

I also love this. Can you sense a theme? I mean, how can you not love the “underground” drawer pulls! Ack!

I should try this idea too – I put the pot lids in my new hutch, and it’s fine for now, since I don’t use many lids, but it takes up a lot of space, and it’s a hassle.

And, since I missed a post on Tuesday, thanks to my migraines, I thought I’d give you a little bonus post tonight.  I wanted to share some of the crafts I was working on during December, which I couldn’t post about then, since they were all gifts!

A crocheted bracelet

This bracelet is identical to one I made for a friend, but this is the one I made for myself – I never realized I could crochet with wire until recently, and I LOVE the results.  I need to get working on some more of these, so that I can put them in my Etsy shop!

Okay, so you know I’m obsessed with Pinterest, but I don’t spend all my time just pinning potential projects – sometimes, I actually do them! I found this cowl pattern on Pinterest, and since I get a bit bored with my typical crocheting, I decided to give it a try, and love the results.  The pattern itself is a bit of a pain, but it looks so beautiful when it’s done that I made one as a gift for my sister, another as a gift for a friend, and this one for myself! This one was crocheted with my left index finger stuck in the air, because it was just after I’d injured it!

A portrait necklace

Very carefully, I used the exacto knife to create this necklace for my mom – it’s silhouettes of my sisters and I, along with her two granddaughters. It took a few tries to get the sizing right, but I was happy with the way it came out in the end, and so was my mom!

Display basset

I’ve always wanted to get my sister a British flag knit hat, and when I found a pattern to crochet one, I knew I needed to make it for her.  So I did, and used Ollie to model it!

That’s some of my recent crafting, though I’m wishing I took far more photos of the things I made this Christmas! Lately, I’m working on some more crocheted cowls for Etsy and I promise to photograph some things this weekend so that I can get them up there!

I have mentioned before that I’m a big believer in fixing what bugs you about your house.  Sometimes, it’s easy to get used to just dealing with those little annoying things, but after a while, those annoying things can all bond together and create a general unease that you can’t identify.

So I try to fix the things that bug me when I realize it.

Today, I fixed two of those things.

Yesterday, I was tired (big surprise, I wake up every day feeling like I’ve pulled an all-nighter) and I lazed around a bit, until I got sick of myself and decided to really clean the first floor of the house. I was a bit stressed out about something, so this was a really good remedy for that too. I moved furniture, vacuumed baseboards, and steam cleaned the floor. And that’s when it hit me…

It drives me CRAZY that the dogs leave dirty footprints on the floor that build up until I want to tear my hair out. No matter what mat I keep by the back door, no matter how many times I wipe their feet with a towel, it inevitably happens – there’s a lot of dirt in the yard, and the little guy loves to find it. Plus, it rains a lot here.

People always suggest that taking off your shoes when you come into a house is a good way to keep the dirt outside.  Yes, that’s true.

Unless you have dogs. In particular, basset hounds with huge feet.

So it occurred to me…I could put a rug down in the kitchen!

It would warm up the space (I have old insulation under the house, so the floors are cold – I know, I know, it’s something I need to fix from underneath, but I’m just not there yet) and it would show dirt less than the floor do.

Originally, my plan was to take the rug from my office to use in the kitchen. That was yet another thing bugging me that I dealt with last week – the rug in there constantly shifts and moves because it’s on top of carpet, and my desk chair always pushes it around.  It drives me NUTS to be constantly fixing it, so I finally took it up.

My secondary plan for that rug is to stick it on the deck – it’s an indoor/outdoor rug.  I thought I might put it in the kitchen, but I wasn’t thrilled about it not being softer. But then I was in Walmart earlier (they really do have some good things, but I was actually there to pick up dog food, since they’re the only ones that carry huge bags of Nutrish) and saw a deep red shag-type rug. I thought it would go perfectly in the black and white (and soon to be grey-walled) kitchen, so I got that along with my rubber matting and I was set.

So tonight, when my pups came in from the rainy outside, they left one paw print on the floor which I wiped up with the feet towel, and then, nothing! Problem solved.

The other issue I’ve been having is with one of my vacuums. I know, it’s ridiculous that I have more than one.  I actually have four.  One is a heavy duty carpet vacuum that my sister gave me when she moved into a house with a central vac – that stays upstairs because it’s too heavy to truck up and down the stairs.  I also have a pet spot steam cleaner vacuum that I got after the puppy arrived, for the obvious reasons.

Downstairs, I have my steam cleaner for the floor – it was originally supposed to be the sole first floor vacuum, but the vacuum part actually doesn’t work that well, so I end up vacuuming first, then using the steam cleaner – but it’s worth it, because it also has a function to suck up the water. I love it.

And finally, the floor vacuum.  This was the one bugging me – I got it three years ago when I moved in, so I guess it’s done it’s job (it was only $50 after all), and while it still does a decent job, I can’t turn it off.

No, seriously.

Unless I unplug it, it’s just on.  That gets kind of annoying.

Now, these are clearly first world problems. They’re not keeping me up at night.  However, they are problems I can control, and as I said, I believe in fixing what bugs me – then I have the energy to deal with everything else. So I picked up a new vacuum today too – it’s got a lovely little carpet attachment, among others (which means I can properly clean the downstairs rugs, instead of running the floor steam vac over them), and it’s also got a smaller floor attachment that allows me to get under things like chairs and sideboards.  I used to it vacuum the new rug tonight, which was shedding everywhere, and I was in love.

Now I’ve got to get motivated to clean upstairs as thoroughly as downstairs.  Because the piles of things I’m stashing everywhere are really starting to bug me!

What are some of your pet peeves?