The Dairmans

Hi.

My name is Kathy Dairman.

It has been over a year since my last blog post.

I used to be really good about updating my blog.

Then facebook happened.

People might tell you facebook is a waste of time, or might even go as far as to call it the devil. They aren't using it correctly. I have re-connected (actually face-to-face) with many old friends via facebook. I can also run into people at the store and feel like it hasn't been 15 years since I saw them. No need to act like I don't recognize them, worried that they won't know who I am... if you've never done that you are weird. Not me.

And, most recently, pinterest.

Sucks hours from my life. Literally hours. The thing I love about pinterest though... is NOT when this happens:

That actually causes sheer panic
I do like that it starts with "Ugh"... that's funny.

However, when it is working, I can actually save things that I plan to do in a very organized way. Sort of my very own to-do-list if you will. One thing I found on pinterest that I NEEDED to do was this:

(click the picture to go to the link)

See how easy that was to find???

So... back to the reason for this EPIC post
I posted a picture, on facebook, of the TV trays I upcycled this weekend.

Some of you wanted to see how I did it with spray paint.

Here is what I started with:

If you have ever eaten at my house you know we use these often. We have a gigantic couch in our living room. We do not have a gigantic kitchen table. You also can't see the TV from the kitchen table. My brother and my dad are not fans of that when they are eating burgers at my house.

Also my children eat their breakfast every morning on these trays.

They were ugly and boring.
First I cleaned them. Really well. They were sticky, gooey, and gross.
Then I flipped them over and began spraying them with white primer.

I ran out of primer here:

As you can see in the picture, I had another project going too, so I didn't underestimate THAT badly. LOL

Insert Hubby's trip #1 to Home Depot here

(love you babe!)

I missed taking pictures of the next few steps. We will blame the heat. It was HOT out there!!

After the underneath dried, I turned them over and primed the tops, then repeated the two step process with white.
Next I put them on a table and put garbage bags over the legs and sprayed the tops green.

Then I started taping. I did not have a plan. Not a good one anyway. Just winged it. I've never done a chevron pattern before. It was a learning experience. It's okay to laugh at it. I did too. I realized it was going to be REALLY crooked and could have started over, but didn't. Who needs perfect?

To create the chevron pattern I criss crossed the tape all over the table first, then marked the areas to save and used an exacto knife to cut of the unneeded portions.

Can you see where I removed tape that I wasn't supposed to?
Awesome!!

Next I sprayed it with brown.

Insert Hubby's #2 Home Depot trip here

Mine looked red. I wish I would've taken a picture of the cap and the actual color. Not cool.

So, I sprayed them again... with the new awesome brown brown.

Here they are (moved to the patio) after I pulled the tape off.

I sprayed the whole tops with a poly to protect them from my children.

And here they were the next morning.
Good enough to eat off of.

Thursday, July 8, 2010

From door knobs to more knobs...

A couple of weeks ago I spray painted the door handles on all of the downstairs doors. They have held up pretty well, considering I didn't sand any of them first...which I WILL do with the ones upstairs that to the kids rooms...and the other projects I have in mind.

So, I decided to take off the knobs in my kitchen and do the same thing. Here they are before. Sorry about the bad picture quality...I still haven't read the manual for this camera.

The whole enchilada (before)...

Some close-ups of the uglies (with some awesome reflective flashes and shadows)

Let's pretend the cabinet doors themselves to not need a complete make-over too. I do not have the time, nor energy to deal with that yet. Yes, I know it is not THAT bad of a job to take off the fronts, sand everything down and re-finish it all, BUUUT my staircase banister and rails all along the loft are the same color. I can't do one without doing all of it. It makes me really tired just thinking about sanding all those rails. Ughh!!

Okay, back on track.

First I took off all the handles.

Except the ones that were super glued in...That's right folks, I said super glued. Why someone would do that...I have no idea. So, I improvised and, after a good scrubbing down with soap and water, started priming.Joe took this whole door off, because the screw was so threaded it was the only way, without breaking anything. :)And here they are back on, with a no more shiny brass.

So, what do you think? Better?

Every time I open a cupboard door I wonder why I didn't do this sooner.

4th of July Cake

When I saw this cake at Make It and Love It

I knew I wanted to do it. I was pretty unsure about it though. I had never made a multi-layered cake before.

Really?

Nope. Never. Never even tried.

But look at the inside!!

It's an American flag!! Seriously. Had to try it, but as I mentioned, I was scared. Since we had plans to spend the 4th of July weekend up north with some friends I decided to make a practice cake first. The directions the post were REALLY good and I got through it all without any "oops" moments at all!!

Here are my layers cooling off after baking them. You can't really tell by the picture, but the blue looked green. I was sure I mixed it blue...baking it can't really turn it to green can it?

Well, I guess we'll see, right?

(look at those hideous, golden drawer handles, and obnoxious gold and white knobs on my cabinets!...we'll talk about that later)

And here she is all layered up, according to the directions

I decided on stars, because, well they just seemed a little bit more patriotic to me and I already had the cookie cutters. :)

And here is my "practice cake" in all it's glory

I did not take any pictures of the "real" cake I made in Payson, but it looked pretty much exactly the same.

I'm so proud. :D

Oh, and it tasted good too!

Thursday, June 24, 2010

Paper Flowers

UPDATE:
I finally found the blog where I learned how to make these flowers!

Have you seen these flowers on a purse, in someones hair, on a shirt, on shoes, on rings, or just to dress up a cork board lately? Me too. I finally watched a tutorial on how to make them. SUPER easy!! Here are the first two flowers I made ~~at work~~ when I had a second.

I have a plan to make about 50 more of them with WAY cuter paper (not the only color I could find at work). Can you guess what I'm going to do with them?

I have a lot of plans for things lately.

The CSI project will do that to a girl.

Seriously.

If you don't want to have a whole bunch of things in a bag, hiding behind your couch, with high expectations of greatness, you should not visit that site.

Seriously.

One thing I am not going to be doing is painting my kitchen counters to look like marble. I have limits, but DANG...that's pretty impressive!!

Hopefully my (seriously neglected) blog will soon be updated with more DIY, crafty, thrifty projects to help make my house a home...and a WHOLE bunch of pictures of my SUPER cute kids!

Speaking of which...check out Lacy!!

Friday, June 18, 2010

Doorknobs

Now that ~~my softball season~~ winning state is over, and I have ~~all the free time in the world~~ a couple extra minutes, I have started some projects around the house that have been bothering me. As soon as I saw this doorknob makeover I knew I needed to give it a shot.

See what I mean?

When we first moved in we thought we would replace all of the doorknobs, but then we priced it. A 4 bedroom, 2 1/2 bathroom house has a LOT of doorknobs!! Before we went to Germany I took off three, painted them and put them back up. I wanted to make sure they would hold up before I did all the extra work.

They held up perfectly, so here we go...all the rest of the knobs from the main floor

. Check out how I stuck the screws in the box. When I did the first 3 knobs I held them in my fingers to spray the tips. This worked MUCH better. :)

Primer

Aren't they sooo much better now?

Go ahead, scroll back to that first picture...yep, same door. I did all of them with one can of primer and one can of spray paint. Awesome...and thrifty! :D

I have a plan for more spray painting this weekend. Joe is a little bit less skeptical about what I want to do now that he has seen how great the doorknobs turned out. I guess we'll see if it turns out good enough to post.

Friday, April 30, 2010

Holy Hannah!!!

I stink!! As I read THIS post I thought, oh crap...I did that too, so I did a little bit of searching and found THIS post from February 2009. I stink!! I promised I would sent out your prize within a year. Shame on me!

So, attention Jill, Taylor & Tawna...I have made you something. You may love it or you may hate it. Please tell me you love it either way.

Taylor and Tawna we need to figure out how I can get yours to you, so leave me a comment and we can work that out...regular old snail mail will not work, unless you want it shattered. :)

Jill - we're good...I'll bring yours to you.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Some cute pictures (and me)

I am WAY behind in posting.

I always say that.

I have a million pictures to sort through from Easter (aka Lacy's birthday) to post, but in the meantime, if you want to see what went on at my house on Easter please see Erica's post.

And if you want to see the super sweet, kinda scary, awesome candle we used on Lacy's Easter/Birthday cake please see Erica's other post.

As a matter of fact, Erica just got a brand new camera, so you might just want to delete my blog and add hers to your list instead. :D

Here are some pictures Erica didn't take...

My beautiful, blue eyed baby girl...who is 2 YEARS OLD NOW!!!

And won't stop running to take a picture

good one!

Talon lost his first tooth!!!

My dog Sandy is still alive and kicking, even after eating all of the kids Easter candy while we were in CA, including an entire chocolate Easter Bunny. We will call her ninja dog.

I finally had enough guts to let Jen cut off my nasty hair

Here it is curly

Monday, March 29, 2010

Another "Are you serious?" moment...

When my cell phone and wallet got stolen off my desk at my old office, the guy left my purse behind. I thought that was so he could get a head start and use my credit cards before I realized what he had taken (which totally worked BTW). But now, I think it was because I do not carry this purse:

Which, apparently, retails for $3,495.00!!! Seriously?! A trip for 5 to Germany, or a purse, or a CAR. Seriously, people seriously. If you own this purse, please contact me. We need to talk about what better ways I can spend YOUR money. ;-)

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Talon is 6!!!

Talon got an entire week of birthday celebrations...as it should be. :) First, he got to take doughnuts to school for his class, and for kids corner on his REAL birthday. Then, he got to share a cake with Sydney, Aunt Erica, Uncle Mick and Patty at my parent's house two days later. Thanks for sending me the pics mom, since I forgot my dang camera.

Good times!!

Then, he had ANOTHER birthday celebration at his other grandparent's house the next night!! (Yep, we brought the leftover cake from the night before) :-)

So happy!!

Talon chose the "underwater" Happy Birthday song. You use your finger on your lips to make it sound like you're under water while singing. Hailey and daddy are doing it, Lacy is completely confused by it, and Talon is LOVING it!

And, of course, he was totally spoiled by the Dairman's...again.

Talon chose to have his "friends" party at Peter Piper...what a shocker.

Just look at that cute 6 year old. :)

Lacy could stay on this ride for DAYS. Seriously DAYS!!

Check out how much fun she is having...for like the bizzillionth time....even Ava got in on the action, and loved it.

Nasty pizza time!!!!!

(sorry it's gotta be the 2nd worse pizza on the planet, right...anything for the birthday boy)

Cake Time!!!!

And...the underwater song again. Lacy is STILL confused by it, and is wondering why she had to get off that ride to come for this!

Haha it looks like Talon and Tyler are kissing.

You can always tell who's gift he is opening. This one is from Sydney...obviously!!

Can you tell who this one is from?? I ♥ it!!! I seriously can't look at this picture without smiling. I just love how happy it makes the kids when they pick out the perfect gift. :)