As a mom, homeowner and blogger, one of my favorite things to do is browse the home improvement, how to and décor projects completed by other mom bloggers. There are some very talented mom bloggers/home improvers out there! I’ve found some board and batten projects completed by other mom bloggers that I’d love to complete in my home – I’ll have to keep you updated on my progress on replicating these projects at my house! These projects completed by some of my favorite mom bloggers are completely awesome, so I thought I’d share them with you all! Simple DIY Board and Batten When it Continue reading...
Readers’ Favorite MomHomeGuide Posts
MomHomeGuide.com has been up and running for a few months now, so I thought I'd share with you some of readers' favorite posts! As a mom, I've been obsessed with how to turn my home's unfinished basement into a useable space for my kids to play in, and it seems that a lot of moms and parents have the same concern, because the posts I've written about how to fix up a basement on the cheap are the website's most popular stories! Mudrooms are also a favorite topic with moms -- we need an organized space to stash our family's shoes and coats without cramping our home's style! I'm still working Continue reading...
Organizing the Garage
Yesterday, with Hurricane Sandy approaching New Jersey, my husband and I managed to clean out the garage enough so we were actually able to park both of our cars in our two-car garage. Getting the cars in our garage is a major accomplishment, since this is the first time we’ve parked both cars in the garage since we moved in more than nine years ago. In the garage is so much stuff – boxes of stuff for storage, bikes, ladders, a lawn mower and plenty of recreational items like beach umbrellas, folding chairs and athletic equipment. We were able to make space in the garage by stuffing lots Continue reading...
Organization Spree: The Kitchen
I've been on an organizing kick lately. This year, I've blogged frequently about how I'd like to create a fun, but clean basement playroom for my kids. (Check out my posts on my plans for fixing up our unfinished basement on the cheap). My kids currently have a play space in our unfinished basement, but the toys are stored in open storage, which makes the basement playroom space look messy. Plus, since the basement is unfinished, the only color in the space (besides the toys) is the drab gray of the basement floors and walls. I like what the folks at mom blog, My Blessed Home, did for Continue reading...
Updated Entry Hall
I should be working on a freelance story I have this week, but the mess in my home’s itsy-bitsy entry hall has just been irking me! My home is almost entirely filled with carpeting. (I would LOVE wood floors, but I know I will never have those, unless I won a home makeover contest or something.) Wood floors are just so beautiful and are much easier to clean! I hate vacuuming and tend to destroy my vacuum cleaners! So in my house, we take our shoes off before coming into the house to keep the carpets clean. I wasn’t used to it at first, but now I like taking my shoes off when entering a Continue reading...
Keeping the Stove Clean
If there’s one thing that drives me crazy about my kitchen, it is how there are spaces between the stove and the countertop. The spaces are just big enough to allow particles of food and spices to slip between the cracks, making it difficult to keep the kitchen clean. I cringe to think about what’s probably accumulated between the stove and my home’s kitchen cabinets! (I am afraid I’ll rip the laminate flooring in my kitchen or cause worse damage if I try to move the stove to clean behind it.) I’ve thought about caulking the space, and have kept a large cutting board over one of the Continue reading...
Sprucing Up a Storage Shed
With the weather so nice the other day, I decided to get some much needed home improvement work done. I posted way back in June about how I planned to get several DIY projects completed, including staining a weathered wood ramp that leads to our outdoor storage shed. My husband and I had the ramp for the backyard shed installed more than a year ago, and unfortunately, we never got around to staining and weather protecting the wood. So with the kids back in school, and the weather bright and sunny, I decided to tackle that project last week. I started out by purchasing a gallon of Continue reading...
Shade Garden Complete For Now
Thanks to my setback, where I accidentally sliced through a Verizon cable while preparing my side yard's shade garden, it took me longer than I expected to complete a new shade garden for my home. The garden is nearly complete now, except for a small patch that I've left exposed, without a covering of red garden stone, because I am still waiting for Verizon to come in, take out the temporary cable that they installed, and bury a new permanent cable . But, I am happy with what I've been able to complete so far. I've lined my shade garden with a red gravel, and have planted the bed Continue reading...
Day 3: A Setback and a Learning Curve
Progress on my home's new shade garden is slow and sure -- with only a few days left to my daughters' summer vacation before school starts, I've been squeezing in as many hours in with my kids as I can. Well, progress on the garden was going well, until I made a major mistake late last week. Many of us have heard the warning to "call before you dig" before setting a spade or any other type of shovel into the earth at one's home. I learned that lesson the hard way late last week when my spade sliced a Verizon wire. Even though I was only digging about 6 inches into the earth to remove the Continue reading...
Day 2: Planting a Shade Garden
Despite the light drizzle here in Central New Jersey, I managed to plant three boxwoods and my two perrenials (lilyturf varegata) in my newly dug shade garden. I am happy with the progress I'm making so far! I still have a lot to do. I'd like to mix in topsoil to my garden (I already mixed in a little when I planted the boxwoods and perrenials), add some small red gravel, and perhaps add some edging like these red brick pavers: My kids don't feel like going shopping today because of the rain, but I think we'll hit the garden store later today anyway! Continue reading...