Do It Yourself

I tend to be a "do it yourself" kind of girl.  Not the "You should have your own show on HGTV! That is so cute how you did that!" kind of girl, but the "I don't have time to wait around for someone else to assemble/hang/move/etc this so I'll just do it myself" kind of girl.


Don't get me wrong, my husband is perfectly capable of helping out and doing this sort of task for me, but I tend to grow impatient waiting for his help and it's much easier to just do it myself. I'm sure part of this stems from when he was deployed and I didn't really have anyone home to help me. The kids were 3, 2 and 5mos when he left so they weren't much help. Yes, my dad and mom live next door, but again, I would be stuck waiting for someone else's schedule to open up and fit me in. That queen-sized waterbed and pine cabinet wouldn't move themselves to the basement. That bookshelf wasn't going to move to the other room all by itself. So rather than waiting for help, I did it myself.


These past weeks have been full of little projects. After getting a second shoe cubby for our entryway, I decided I needed hooks for the kids' coats and backpacks above them. So I bought some and put them up. Then I decided it would be nice to fill the space between the ceiling and the hooks with a dry erase/magnet board/cork board/calendar organizer I found, so I put that up as well. The final touch to that wall was to move the kids' school pictures to either side of the board. It seems off-balance for my symmetrically-oriented brain since Daisy isn't in school yet and I don't have an 8x10 of her, but I am forcing myself to be okay with it. Eventually I may have her draw a self-portrait to hang in a frame in her "space" until she starts kindergarten, but for now it's going to be okay.

Wall above the shoe cubbies

Since there are no vehicle repairs to suck up our federal refund this year, we are going to be finishing our bedroom. We need to install the pine ceiling and the laminate flooring, add trim and window treatments and we're set! Yesterday we went to IKEA which is one of my all-time favorite stores. We don't get to the cities very often so we decided to go ahead and purchase a shelf, chair and ottoman for our room while we were there. These were my projects for today.

Projects 1 and 2: The Chair and Ottoman

Finished! Total time: 45min

Project 3: The Shelf (not pictured-the wicker boxes)

Finished! Total time: 45min

My favorite comment of the day was from Brady: "Mom, is that your new shelf?  And you did it all by yourself?  That's awesome!  It's really cool that you can do that by yourself."


My fourth project for the day: Write and post this blog while enjoying my new chair an ottoman. :)  Done.