A Hybrid I Can Afford

Sorry for those of you who were hoping this post was about cars! It's not. This post is about...

 
These!!

The lovely Ree Drummond, aka The Pioneer Woman, calls them spreads and describes them as an inside out chocolate chip cookie. Well, whether its my location or my amateur technique, I'd say they are the missing link between cookies and cake. And who can say no to that? All I can say people is that I like these so much that I had to cook them an extra 6 1/2 minutes because I kept opening the oven door to check on them.

Two hints if you try to make these. First, make sure you grease your cookie sheet. Second, seriously only use half a bag of chocolate chips. See those ones up there? Those had a whole bag because I thought I knew better. And because I find them especially delicious to munch on straight from the fridge, I lost out on the gentle crackle of the chocolate layer. It's now a big hard chocolate cement layer. :(

The recipe can be found here. And if you've never perused The Pioneer Woman site you are missing out! I highly encourage you to try out a few of her other recipes. I am particularly partial to the desserts, for some reason...

To-Do List: The Bathroom

My initial explanation of my renovation plans was a bit short-sighted. A hundred dollars doesn't get you that far and certainly comes nowhere near replacing the lovely pink fixtures we have in our bathroom. So I suppose a more accurate explanation is that I plan on doing as much to a room as I can for under $100.00, and then doing the normal person thing and saving up for the rest.

I think we've already established that my $100.00 bathroom makeover wasn't anywhere near the most impressive thing in blogland. Um, the biggest change came from a $27.00 can of paint. Ditz. You'll notice that most of the following To-Do List would have been done by now if I'd been a little smarter about budgeting. Live. And learn.

So as far as the actual bathroom goes, I'd sort of love to separate things into a double vanity etc, but I can't figure out if that would be too "Master Bath"-y. Oh, I forgot to mention--this is our giant main bathroom that would be the one guests use as well. The other bathroom is really just a shower with a sink and a toilet inside. Just wait, I'm not kidding. But I'm too scared to make the investment and take the plunge on that right now--although I'd take any input on having double sinks/mirrors/vanities in such a central bath!

Here's the To-Do List without the double vanity conundrum. The green bits are ways I am going to do this without breaking my budget rules as hard-core as I could be.

1. Frame Out the Mirror. I think think think that I am going to have enough trim left over from the laundry room to do this! Wahoo! And all because I had to change up a really silly plan I had from my laundry room cabinets. See? Nothing ever goes "totally" wrong this early into a renovation. Technically this will be free if I can do it! But just for you guys, I'll estimate out what it costs if I get 'er done.

2. Replace the Lights. To be honest, I have no idea if I want to do this or not. Some days I love em, some days I think they're severely outdated. And the third one always throws me off. So this will definitely wait until I have a concrete plan or see something amazing that I HAVE to put in there. And then I'll try and do it for a teensy fraction of the cost! Waiting until you know what you want for-ev-er is KEY to saving money when you renovate. You don't want to just throw something up there and then buy another set of lights three months later. Trust me!

3. Speaking of lights, Remove the Heat Lamp. There's one in the shower that I don't think you quite see in the pictures (it's flush with our AWESOME ceiling rafters). It gets super hot and makes everything red when you turn it on. Ick. I'll probably do this as soon as I find a can light on clearance someplace.

4. Countertop. Once upon a time I was clicking through pictures on HGTV and saw this countertop that I think was slate, but it had a very natural wavy texture to it that I LOVED. Now I can't find that picture, of course. I just expect it to be expensive, and of course want to decide how many sinks and vanities before I splurge. If I get around to it sooner than I want to spend the money, I'm just going to try painting it to look like a dark grey or black granite.

5. Fixtures. They're pink, and I'm definitely in the market for a new toilet and sink. Perusing the hardware store rejects is my ritual when I go into town now. Because honestly, I will fix a darn chip or three if that sucker is white. :)

6. Tub/Surround. Instead of getting a new tub or Re-Bathing ours, I think I'm just going to tile up the from and top of the tub, as well as up the walls after I tear down the puke yellow marble swirl surround that is in there now. This is where the clearance section comes in handy--you can almost always find tile there (especially at Menards, where they clearance out some pretty nice stuff!), and the best part is that even if it's plain white it will be the perfect upgrade!

7. Almost forgot--I need towel rings! I just ooh'd and aah'd at a few over on Decor Steals but opted against it when I found out they were only a foot wide. Totally not enough for my big wall where they're going. I might take a page out of Shelley @ House of Smith's book and try out her wall treatment, I'm just afraid it won't be "adult" enough for us.

P.S. Keep your fingers crossed...hoping to link up to Kate's Christmas Craft party by Tuesday!

The Bathroom--An After Story

I have a confession. It may be a horrible confession. It's certainly a confession that limits my decorating severely.

I. Hate. Yellow.

This is not an age-old vendetta by any means, and I'm sure in 5 or 10 years I may swoon over a pale canary for a guest room or something. However, our old house had a screaming sunflower theme that I never changed. It was vivid yellow, with sunflower trim, and came complete with a lot of sunflower decor, towels, and pot holders.

Then we found this house. This house, my dear friends, had a slightly paler version of this yellow in the kitchen, the bathroom, and the laundry room (hopefully within the next week you'll get to see the before and after of the laundry room, but I think it's going to lose a lot of its shock value if you see the before first). I almost died. But then I remembered that this house is huge, has an awesome yard, and TWO bathrooms (one of my requirements when we moved). So I moved on.

I'm going to go ahead and admit to you right this second that I don't have a before shot. This is because I didn't realize that nobody would care about my shiny new bathroom because they didn't see the before. Unfortunately we don't even have before shots of that particular room from its sale because it was never photographed by the real estate company. It had some horrendous blue carpeting that was in the process of being torn out the entire time it was on the market.

And so, without further ado, here is my after:

As you can see, it's purdy! One of the things I really love about this (giant) bathroom is that it's one of the brightest rooms in the house. Apparently light in our little boxed-in ranch is a precious commodity. Another thing I've ended up loving is the blue-ness of it. This is MUCH bluer than the paint chip and it was pretty overwhelming initially, but now I think it looks very clean with the white trim.

Here's the cost breakdown so far:

$27.00 -- 1 can of Valspar in "Sigh" blue

$2.50 -- Clearanced basket from Michael's

$6.00 -- White Towels from the Dollar Tree

$9.00 -- Marked down picture from Kohl's

$30.00 -- Shower Curtain (Bed, Bath, & Beyond)
$31.99 -- Hamper (Bed, Bath & Beyond) w/ 20% Coupon

Total: $106.49

This was before my $100.00 resolution, but I don't think that's too bad for not having anything for this bathroom. It's just that now that I've done a bit more reading (is there a Blogaholic's Anon?), I think I could have done the shower curtain for about $7.00 and probably been a bit more creative with the hamper space for less than it cost. I think this just makes me more determined to stick to my per-room budget and see what amazing things I can do for less than a hundred bucks.

In the next post I'll detail a few of the plans I have for finishing up this room (in the long term), as well as my Super Secret Attack Plan to get it done for less.

Thanksgiving

I wanted to extend all of you a Happy Thanksgiving. I have a lot of blessings in my life to be thankful for!

However, around this time of year I find that Thanksgiving becomes a lot more about restraint with me. Sure, that $120.00 clock I love is on sale for $80.00. But should a mid-sized wall clock ever be $80.00?

So yes, I am rather begrudgingly admitting that I am doing a lot of shopping between today and tomorrow. However, I am not going to buy things just because they are on sale. And my little secret? I do my Christmas shopping throughout the year so that my Christmas Club money from the bank can be used for a little splurge for me.

Join me tomorrow (hopefully) for my first Before & After!

A New Bloggity Blog

I recently abandoned my other blogs in cyberspace because I hit a serious conundrum. My first blog, The Vignette, was a rambly sort of thing that 90% of the time I wasn't even that interested in re-reading. The only things of merit there were my gift ideas and book reviews. The second blog, From Scratch, began to chronicle our adventures in home renovation. The bathroom posts have been imported here and the others will find their way as I make them more complete.

So what was the issue? Um, well, I'm a woman. A woman who shops for people who stink to get gifts for, a woman who reads, a woman who is trying to renovate her home mostly solo...but there was so much more!  I cook! And I clean! And I have too many a wonderful bevy of four-legged children! But I felt that I couldn't really post about any of that on my other blogs. So here we are. Some days my posts will be about house projects, some about craft projects, cooking, pets...Hopefully I won't lose many of you on the days I write about things you aren't interested in, but my hope is that many of you share the same "too many pairs of shoes to fill" lifestyle and will be able to relate and get some good out of my ideas!

Stay tuned...