I Like Pole Jobs Better! (Pendant Lights)

I am a big fan of poles....when it comes to pendant lighting that is. What did you think I was talking about? Shame. Now that we have that taken care of I can share with you my latest pole job (I hear you snickering like a 13 year old school girl!). I know the jokes are lame, but it's all good....Honestly, when we were looking at lights I did tell Mr. SS "I think I like pole jobs better".....without even thinking....out loud in the middle of a home improvement store. Yep. I did that.

Ok, so lets get down to business.... this is the pendant situation we had in the kitchen upon moving in.

Two little orangey-yellow glass pendants hanging from the black canopies on the ceiling by black cords. They were okay if thats your thing. Its not my thing. And there were a few reasons that I wanted to change them out:

1. The one of the right had a big crack in the top. If you bumped it, a piece of glass would fall out.

2. They didn't put out a whole lot of light. 

3. I couldn't put an LED or CFL in there without it being seen.

So I started looking at lights mostly to satisfy criteria #2, because I like a lot of light.Then I found these beauties on Pottery Barn's website. 

(image from HERE)

I had a coupon and then they ran a sale.....and then a pair of them became mine. And they are BEAUTIFUL. WAY WAY nicer in person than this picture even makes them look. I absolutely loved them. I even bought an extra in case we ever broke one. I mean I knew these were gonna be the lights for me, errr I mean our kitchen. We finally got around to putting one up. Around that time, I had heart issues that wouldn't allow me to put my hands over my head for very long....so only that one pendant got put up and we lived with two different pendants in the kitchen for 4 months! Yes, 4 months! Can you believe type-A me let this happen!? The audacity! No, really it was just probably just a lack of time and sleep. 

Either way, those 4 months taught me....those were not the pendants for me either. Obviously if my type-A self can leave two different pendants up and not even be motivated enough to put up the other one, something isn't right. So I studied the Pottery Barn one. 

Did I like the glass? Yes. Beautiful. 

Did I like the metal color? Yep, its a shiny,sparklyish DEEP brown/black.

Did it clean well? Yep, you really didn't notice the dust & such as bad as I thought you would.

Did it have options? Yep, I could use the fad-dish Edison bulbs, colored bulbs, etc

Could I change the length? Yep, a bunch extra length was shoved in the canopy

So studying the fixture itself didn't help. I then started looking at other pendants from various internet sources trying to find a common theme in those I liked.... Thats when I realized I liked poles. Yup, I do. They are thick, sturdy, have a solid appearance in the air, add a visual element, and hang uber straight (if your ceilings are straight). That was the problem....I wanted poles in the kitchen rather than cords! 

So I started searching and wouldn't you know Home Depot came through for me. I found these lights which are made by the Home Depot brand Home Decorators:

(picture from HERE)

We went to the local Home Depot and checked the display out they had of it.

Was it on a pole? Yep

Would it clean well? Yep

Would it match? Yep, looks just like the appliances

Could you change the length? Yep, came with 5 twelve-inchers and 2 six-inchers

Could I use whatever type bulb? Yep, it had a glass diffuser!!!!

So, 2 of them became mine and looky at the pretties in my kitchen:

I love them!!! Loved them so much that we put BOTH pendants up one right after the other. Here's my assessment of them in the 2 weeks we've had them up. First of all, they were probably the easiest lights to install that we've ever done...and I've changed out a lot of lights. Secondly, the pictures do not do them justice. They are GORGEOUS in person. Very industrial yet modern and traditional all at the same time. The only slightly negative thing I have to say is that once hung, the diffusers are hard to get on. Not impossible, but just not easy, peasy....but since I put CFL's in them I won't have to open the diffuser but every few years or so. Lastly, they put off a soft, bright light that is perfect for kitchen pendants.The lights themselves are not on in this picture....why?? I have no clue...I just took it because I was so happy to love them.

btw...I am not sponsored by Home Depot. I was not given these by Home Depot. Home Depot has no clue at all that Simply Sarah even exists....I was just excited about my lights. BUT Home Depot if you read this and want to see more of your goodies featured here....well, I would not be opposed to this! ha! :)

Pin Ups- Carpeting Cleaning

My baby brother had 3 life changing events last week. Here's how his week went:

Sunday-  He graduated college (as valedictorian!) and sang at his graduation.

Friday- He bought a house, moved some items into said house, and had his wedding rehearsal and rehearsal dinner.

Saturday- He got married and left on his honeymoon.

What does that have to do with carpet cleanings you might ask? Or Pin ups for that matter. Well, you see his new house needed the carpets cleaned. There was a rush of things going on right before closing and the house never got thoroughly cleaned. Well, since they were off on their honeymoon and family was going to start moving things in for them, I decided to clean their carpets for them. I have a carpet cleaner that I used religiously at our old house. LOVE IT. Highly recommend it. In case you wanna get your own this is what I have, the Hoover SteamVac with Clean Surge.

Yep, it's a mini miracle worker on light colored carpets...and thats just what my brother and his bride had. Very light cream colored carpets. You can use whatever type solution in the Hoover SteamVac that you want and normally I use the Hoover brand carpet cleaning solutions that I pick up for around $10-$12 at Lowes, and that stuff would last me forever. Well, I didn't have enough left to do their whole house, so I stopped by Lowes and all they had was this stuff in the red bottle. I figured it would work just as well.

The next day, I went to take everything over there and I realized I didn't have any carpet spot treatment. I didn't feel like stopping by the store, so instead I turned to pinterest. To a pin up, I had made, where  I had read about people using homemade cleaners that changed their whole lives....well ok, maybe their whole lives is a bit of exaggeration...anyhow, I found this pin with this really horrible looking "Before" picture (You can see the picture and their recipe HERE) with a really good looking "After" picture and decided to give it a try.

I based my "recipe" off theirs with a bit of alterations. 

Here's what I did:

2 Cups of Water

2 Tbsps of White Vinegar

1 Tbsp of Dawn Direct (it's the only clear detergent I had)

I poured all that into an empty spray bottle I had. I then gently tilted the bottle around to mix everything without creating bubbles. Now it was ready to go....

Here's the carpets before we started out:

We started by first vacuuming the carpets with our Dyson. If you don't have a Dyson, you don't have fun vacuuming. We have the Dyson DC24 Compact Vacuum. I love it. I don't think it's available anymore though.

Next, DH went around and spray all the really dark spots with our homemade carpet solution. Some of the spots that had caked on gunk we scrubbed with fancy microfiber washcloths old cut up undershirts of DHs.

I then loaded up cleaning solution into my trusty Hoover and went at it. Some of the really bad spots, I used the Power Surge button on....which means the machine releases extra cleaning solution in those spots. I don't know if all machines have that but this one does. For normal use though, you just hold a trigger on the handle and push forward. Then release the handle trigger and pull the machine backwards and it will start sucking the water and solution back up. What that machine with suck up will be NASTY. NAS-TAY, I tell you. You will not believe what all will come out of your carpets. Anyhow, I went over the carpets twice since we weren't sure just how long they had been dirty.

And here's the before and afters:

 

I'd say the combo of the homemade solution and the Hoover SteamVac worked some magic on these carpets. Would I use the homemade cleaner again? Yup, in a pinch I definitely would. You had to scrub a bit more than if you had used Spot Shot, but overall it worked really well....and was cheap! Would I use the Hoover SteamVac again....you bet....thats like the 50th time I've used that sucker and each time I am amazed by the results.

 

Martha Stewart and Holes (Family Tree Artwork)

Until Martha Stewart went to jail, she was my home decor hero. After she went to jail, I no longer had a sliver of respect for her who am I kidding she's still fabulous when it comes to the home front. She does need to stay out of the finance side of things and avoid insider trading and all other illegal activity, but other than that she's golden. I mean when people say the name Martha Stewart they think about trading pillows not trading stock, so I think she's done a good job in repairing her damaged reputation. I mean she had a pretty big hole to fill, and she inspired me to fill a big hole of my own. (That was a pretty nice transition from Martha to holes, wasn't it!?)

Remember, the big hole in the entry way wall? I think it's made to hang a fancy picture. It also has an outlet in the middle of the hole so that you can illuminate said fancy picture with it's own light. There's even a separate wall switch for that outlet. You can see the fancy picture hole with the outlet on the left hand side of the picture below. 

When we were having the house painted, the original plan was to fill this hole in with drywall. Then I was gonna hang my big Pottery Barn Inspired Numbers Artwork there. The fancy picture hole is 4 foot by 4 foot, 1 inch (yes, they never get it just right do they?) and my painting is 4 feet wide, so it didn't look right inside the hole. Then when it came time to actually filling in the hole, I chickened. My lovely mother-in-law had been telling me all along, "I would NEVER fill that in. I would put a mirror in it with a little table in front of that with flowers on it." Well, I already had a table and flowers in the entryway....and I am too cheap to change the table and too sentimental to change the flowers (they're our wedding centerpiece). But apparently her words about filling in the hole did stick and I couldn't do it. I listened and left the hole. Now I had to fill it.

Then a few weeks ago, my DIY bestie, Gabby and I paid the local Habitat to Humanity ReStore a visit. We found a Lenny's Sub Shop sign, lots of hazmat suits, some church columns, a lot of dirty commodes (If you're not  from the South, a commode is a toilet) and a Red Lobster fisherman. Yes, a life size fisherman and he's creepy and pretty dirty considering when you remove the fisherman's net then he has his hands in a sexual position. It's wrong on so many levels, but true. The ReStore, however, rocks and we will totally be visiting there every chance we get. We did find this beauty in there along with the dirty fisherman.

(apologies for the bad pic...I got lazy, took this at night, and didn't care enough to photoshop.)

A 3 foot by 3 foot  picture with a great frame and a neutral matting. Check out the original price tag.

(again apologies for the bad pic...I got lazy, took this at night & upside down, and didn't care enough to photoshop.)

Crazy price, huh!? Real smart people pay that price too. I paid $25. The actual picture itself did not matter, because I was gonna do away with it anyhow. I like my artwork to mean something and to be made by me (generally). So this is where Martha comes back in the picture. On Martha Stewart Living, I had seen an idea and template for a family tree. I took this idea and came up with my own family tree in photoshop. Here's a close up of how it turned out:

The middle circle is me and the hubs. The second circle is our parents. The third ring is our grandparents. The fourth circle is our great-grandparents. The fifth is our great-great grandparents, and the sixth is our great-great-great grandparents. Husbands and Wives have a dotted line between them. I think it's groovy, ingenious, and no one can have one just like mine. 

Here's a few details of where and how everything came into being:

- The frame is from ReStore for $25.

- I made the family tree in photoshop.   

- Staples printed it as a 2 foot by 2 foot engineering print that cost by $3.59 tax and all.

- I filled in a few scratches on the frame with a brown crayon and you'd never know unless you read it here.

And here's a look at my entryway with my fancy picture hole filled with artwork inspired by Martha. 

I also gotta give a shout out to my hubs for his mad picture hangin' skillz. How center is that square inside a sqaure!? Also this thing isn't moving. It's probably about 30 lbs, but is hanging on two 50 lb mirror hangers that are both in studs. I could swing from it.....well, not really. I am over 100 lbs, but you get the point.

TUESDAY LINKY PARTIES

Coastal Charms- Nifty Thrifty Tuesdays
New Nostalgia's- Anti Procrastination Tuesday
Lady Bug Blessings- Handmade Tuesdays
SugarBeeCrafts- Take a Look Tuesdays

If you have a dog, please read.... If you don't, please pass this post along to someone who does.

I was doing so good this year. Blogging at least once a week, and most of the time cranking out 2-3 pieces a week. I was crafting it up too. Then we had a scare and the blog and crafting went the wayside. 

So if you've been reading my blog for hardly anytime at all, you'll know that DH and I have Sophie, a sweet and spunky Bichon Frise. Soph is young 6 years old (in human years). We have had her since she was 9 weeks old. She is such a fun pup and is ALWAYS so excited to see us when we get home. She does a "happy dance" for us everytime we go somewhere and come back. This pup is so full of spunk and spirit and nothing gets her down. NOTHING! Not even a trip and overnight stay at the Emergency Vet and then additional follow-up tests by her regular vet. 

Here's what happened....

On the first Sunday night in March, I hear DH hollar "drop it! Sophie, I said drop it!" Normally, Sophie obeys pretty well....especially for me, but for DH she gets testy. On this occasion though, him telling her to "drop it" was a little too late. 

So lets back up a little... I left my purse in the butler's pantry after coming home from church. He kindly placed it on the floor by my side of the bed. I did not have my purse zipped. Sophie got into my purse and snatched a pack of gum. When DH told her to drop it, she did drop the package, but not before swallow some of the contents. When I found this out, I went into panic mode. I ran to the computer and googled the pack of gum to find out the contents. When I read the contents, my heart sank. The gum did indeed contain an ingredient, I had heard could be deadly to canines, called Xylitol.

Xylitol is a sugar alcohol used as a sugar substitute in gum, candies, and baking. It is safe for human consumption but can be fatal to canines. Depends on how much Xylitol is in the sugar free gum, but as little as 2 pieces can kill a 20 lb pooch the size of my beloved Sophie.

DH at first thought I was being dramatic and overreacting because he had never heard of this Xylitol issue with dogs. He called the Emergency Vet while I grabbed Sophie, her collar, her leash, my purse and shoes and got in the car. He came running with his shoes and told me, "They said we need to get there as soon as possible. This can be life or death."  

They were at the front waiting on us when we got there. We made it there about 20 minutes after she ate possibly 1-3 pieces. Within 2 minutes, they had gotten her to throw up a wrapper and some gum. I won't get into all the details but here's a little of how the rest of the night went. They basically told us that it was a good thing that we got there in under 30 minutes and that she did in fact throw up. But that because Xylitol is an alcohol it is absorbed into the blood stream almost immediately, so time would only tell how much damage it did. They told us to expect her blood sugar levels to start dropping and that her liver could be irreparably damaged within 24 hours. I cried. I cried some more. DH cried. I cried some more. She's my girl, ya know. That's my baby. I could've prevented this. And what if she never came home with me? What if I never got to see her happy dance again? All this and more crushed my heart....and still is. I am tearing up typing this as I can still feel the pain. 

They started her on glucose fluids and monitored her levels. They took blood every 2 hours. Around 2 am her blood sugar lowered, but before morning had rebounded. Her liver never showed signs of damage.  After being all night at the emergency vet, they told us that her levels were stable and we should take her to her regular vet when they opened. 

They left her IV in. The whole way from the ER vet to her regular vet, you'd never know what they pup had been through. She was her same crazy self...with the IV in! I had to hold her down to keep her from ripping the IV out. The regular vet kept her another 5 hours...and her blood sugar levels remained steady and her liver function showed fine. 

I am thankful to my merciful heavenly Father for saving my sweet girl for me. I know the day will one day come, but I wasn't ready it yet. I love her so much. As my mom told me that night, "God knows you love her and He cares about your Sophie because He cares about you." I know He saved her just for me and I am SO thankful. 

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE make everyone you know of aware of the fact that sugar-free gum, candies, and food can be deadly to dogs. I hope that this message will help save someone else's pups life. 

I will leave you with a pic I took of my sweet smiling girl after we got home with her that Monday. Her poor little legs were all bruised and bloodied from the IV and blood samples.....but she is still HAPPY....and she is still HERE with me which makes her mama happy. :)

Love her!

Christmas in February!

For Christmas my parents gave us a gift certificate to Pottery Barn. They gave it to us with the intentions of us buying chairs for the dining room. I kinda ruined that plan....oops!. More to come on that later, but I am sorry 'bout that mom!!! Anyhow, Pottery Barn definitely gets loads of flattery from me in the form of imitation. I LOVE me some Pottery Barn. But I also love to take ideas and concepts from their catalogs and change them up. Make them my own. Put my own spin on it.....ok, ok you get the point. I like to be Sarah plain and simple, but with some unique twists thrown in. Kinda like the HOME sign I made that was inspired by Pottery Barn. But some Pottery Barn things just can't be made by me, so I am always stalking their outlet stores for the next treasure to take home. 

Well, DH & I happened to drop by the other night and low and behold we found a bargain! Remember, I posted during our 3 month progress & when we were hiding blue holes I posted the following picture of only 2 barstools.

Well, obviously that bar is made for 3 barstools, but I've just been too cheap to buy them all at once. I've been patiently impatiently waiting for them to come into the outlet store. And BAM, the other night they had one marked almost 67% off and you got an extra 15% off one item for their President's Day sale!! That made it almost 73% off. AND we had that gift certificate from my parents!!! WHOO-hoo! Christmas in February, people! We swiped it up and then crammed it into the backseat of the car.  And we didn't even use 1/4 of the gift certificate to buy it! 

It's crazy how much better 3 looks than 2. Or maybe I am just so thrilled to have picked up all 3 barstools for the price of 1!!

Hiding Blue Holes

That awesome title pulled you right in didn't it? I mean who doesn't want to read about Blue Holes??? Anyhow, back on topic....

So I played a little trick when I posted our 3 month progress on the kitchen/hearth room area (see post here) when I showed you this overview picture of the whole kitchen area:

And then I also showed you this closeup of the wall by the laundry room:

You can call me sneaky if you want...but I prefer to think that you enjoyed the beauty of my wonderful kitchen (yes, this is boastful. I love my kitchen) so much that you missed the gaping blue hole in the wall. Yes there was a hole in the wall. Go back up to the first picture above and look on the right side of the picture in between the laundry room pocket door and the quad light plate switch. See the light blue on the wall??? Yes, that was a blue hole up til a few days ago. And yes, in the 2nd picture above I purposefully cropped the picture in a strategic manner where you did not see it. Yes, bad blogger...but its my blog and I can do that if it makes me happy.

When we bought the house there was the huge metal telephone jack on the wall. If you wanna see an example look HERE. Well, I thought we could just drop the jack down in the wall and then drywall over it before the kitchen got painted. Well no plan goes right at first....and that idea didn't fly. Once we took the jack apart we realize this jack was tied to other telephone lines in the house. So if we disconnected this one, some others could go out. Additionally, if we drywalled it in and then we had telephone line issues we'd have to open the wall up to look at it.

Then life got in the way of house progress and the house got painted, but the blue hole stayed a blue hole with a buncha wires in it. Then I sent my wonderful DH to Home Depot for something else and he found these cool and cheap plastic plates made by Carlon while he was there. Now the website says they are not paintable, but on the package it says they are.

So we took the middle part of the jack off where the wires are connected....technical, right? I know, I should've been an engineer. Anyhow, once we unscrewed the metal jack plate behind it was a plastic piece that held all the wires. We left all the wires intact and just put that plastic thing and the wires inside the blue hole (again, i know this sounds all technical..heehee). Then I took the Home Depot plastic plate that DH found and painted it and screwed rigged it to the wall. The hole is slightly to large for the screws to actually go in the holes, so I put glue on the screws and then shoved it on the wall. So far, so good. It's hanging on tight. I painted it using our Sherwin Williams wall paint and a foam brush. Here's what it looks like now.

Yep, much much much less noticeable than before. One day I will probably hang a picture over it or work it into a collage of frames, but for now you really don't even notice it... And its much better than a blue hole. Well, most things are better than holes...ewww, get your mind out of the gutter. I was talking about holes in house walls.

DIY Clothesline Frame- My 1st Ana White Plan

You guys are probably all familiar with Ana White, right? You know the beautiful DIY girl from Alaska who so sweetly shared her furniture plans on her blog...and then what seemed like overnight has turned into a world famous sensation and now has a book....and is totally awesome..and is building a momplex (mothers duplex) for her MIL and mother...you know her right? Well, I have fallen prey to this girls-can-build-stuff craze. And guess what??? It's fun! I mean I guess that makes sense though....I love all things crafty and creative...so why not making stuff from wood. 

Ana's website and plans are beginner friendly. I started by going to the plan catalog on her website and sorting by starter and beginner projects. I looked through them all before deciding on Clothesline Frame. You can download the PDF of the plans from HERE. Ana apparently made and used this plan on her book tour. Her book tour didn't bring her anywhere near me (boo!), so I am glad this plan was also on her site.

And here's my finished product:

LOVE it! There's no need for me to go into detail about how I made it, because you can just snag the PDF plans right off Ana's site. But here's the changes I made:
#1- I did not use furring strips. I used whitewood. The whitewood is about $1 more than furrings strips at  my blue store. I do not know the orange stores prices. I chose white wood over the furring strips because all of blue's furring strips had rounded edges. I wanted crisp edges. Plus the white wood had more interesting character.

#2- My Kreg Jig was set to 1/2" setting and I used 1" pocket hole screws

#3- I didn't use any wood glue. Its a picture frame so the screws I thought were more than plenty hold.
#4- I sanded, stained with Minwax Dark Walnut, and then used Minwax finishing wax. 
#5- I used medium sized jute rather than twine. I liked the look of it better. I found it at Wally World....along with the mini clothespins.

I plan on adding sawtooth hangers to the back to hang it. I also plan on adding "wall bumpers" to keep it from scratching my walls when I change out the pictures. I will take an updated picture once I hang it. 

Linking Up to the following parties:

MONDAY LINKY PARTIES
Keeping It Simple- Motivate Me Mondays 
Craft-o-Maniac Mondays
DIYShowoff- That DIY Party

TUESDAY LINKY PARTIES

Coastal Charms- Nifty Thrifty Tuesdays
New Nostalgia's- Anti Procrastination Tuesday
Lady Bug Blessings- Handmade Tuesdays
SugarBeeCrafts- Take a Look Tuesdays
WEDNESDAY LINKY PARTIES
Sew Much Ado- We Did It Wednesdays
Sugar and Dots- What I Whipped Up Wednesdays
Savvy Southern Style- Wow Us Wednesdays  
FRIDAY LINKY PARTIES
Shabby Nest's- Frugal Fridays
Chic on a Shoestring- Flaunt It Fridays