J Cooper Photography

You know I am big fan of cheap junk.  I just cannot seem to dive into the world of “real” furniture…as in…furniture that does not come from TJ MAXX, Super Discount Warehouses, Flea Markets, Craigslist, garage sales or the trash   I  get the Pottery Barn catalog EVERY month and pour over it.  And I’m not knocking anyone for ordering their amazing stuff.  But I think I actually prefer the chipped up, painted, spackled together furniture I have (or maybe I just tell myself that because I’m too cheap to lay down the big cash for something nice?!?)

Our master bedroom is low on the priority right now.  We plunked down our bed on moving day and I haven’t thought much about the room since.  We stole our bedroom dressers for the living room and just stuffed all of our unmentionables in plastic tubs in the closet.  A few months ago I started scouring the cornfields for a “nice” dresser.  Let me rephrase that.  I started looking for a dresser that I could get for under $50.00.  Have you browsed a furniture store lately for bedroom dressers?  SHOCKING.  I had no idea.  Really, I didn’t.  Thanks very much…but I think I’ll hang on to my life savings a bit longer!

I gave up scouring the Lincoln Craigslist listings because no one would answer my emails (I am NOT having good luck in this crazy town!)  Then I turned my attention to Omaha and found this beauty.  I forgot to take a “before” picture but here it is all laid out and ready for some help.

It met most of my criteria.  I wanted a  LONG double wide dresser.  And I wanted it cheap

I didn’t really care about the finish as I knew I would end up painting it.  I took a different approach on this piece than I have used before and I liked the results…so here you go!

1.  Wiped/cleaned the pieces with a rag and denatured alcohol

2.  Filled surface scratches and knicks with spackle

3.  Primed with Sherwin Williams Adhesion Primer

4.  Painted 2 coats of satin latex acrylic paint (on the larger areas I used a small foam roller and then laid it off with a brush for consistency)

5.  Sanded the edges using 150 grit sand paper

6.  Stained with walnut stain…wiped on and then wiped off immediately leaving a light coat behind in the grooves

7.  Seal with polyurethane.  I didn’t do this because I was lazy…but I would recommend it!

She’s purty, huh?

Now maybe I will tackle our bedroom sometime in the next year.  It’s really not that bad…but I’d like to change the wall color and paint the trim and fireplace a nice crisp white

So that little project sat in my garage for a few months….and it felt really good to get it wrapped up!  I debated the hardware…but in the end…just kept the drawer pulls and coordinated some other knobs for the center drawers (there were a few missing).   I may update it again down the road with something really great.  But for now…I went the cheap (free) route.  And I’m just thrilled to have a new home for my undies!

Have you been painting anything lately??

1.  This is proving to be a handy little way to dump the pictures each week off my phone!

2.  I must confess that I actually took very few pictures this week.  Most of these came from Mr. P and were texted to me while I was at C4C in Atlanta.

3.  When the plane landed Sunday afternoon in Omaha, the pilot came over the intercom and said “Welcome to reality!”  I can’t even begin to tell you what a treat the weekend at Created for Care was for me.  I’ll share some thoughts as soon as I can collect them.

4.  My first afternoon in Atlanta…Mr. P texted me this pretty sweet picture of Super Sam after a 5 hour nap.  Wow.  Glad I was gone for that waking of the dead!

5.  One of the highlights of my weekend was spending time with a couple of very special AGCI adoption mamas.  These gals walked the journey right beside me and I value their friendship more than I can express in words.  Unfortunately, all I have as a momento of our time together is this frightening blurry picture with weird lighting that makes us all look like we have scarecrow noses?!?

6.  A few weeks ago I dressed up my kitchen chalkboard with a little Easter inspired banner.   I used only supplies I had on hand so it was a FREEBIE project…love those!  I had picked up the glitter letters at TJ Maxx and tucked them away for a fun project.  That is a great place to search for random crafting supplies on the cheap!   I had the paper already (although I did end up switching out the background paper after I took the supply photo).  And the jute string is always a handy thing to keep around the house.  I am generally not good at tutorials….but surely you can figure this one out on your own.   I just used a glue stick to layer the paper…I went with rectangular banners as I think the triangles are SO yesterday (or maybe I was just too lazy to measure out triangles).  Then I used my glue gun to attach the sparkly letters.   I hole punched the corners and slipped through the rope (I did tie knots behind each hole to prevent my letters from getting jumbled up).  Hey…that was almost a tutorial!

7.  I’m looking for a good Easter-ish scripture for my chalkboard if you have a favorite?!?!

8.  The Beast has grown!  She is getting fluffier (and better behaved) by the day.  We might actually survive this thing.  The kids are smitten with her about 1o% of the day.  And then I spend the rest of the time dealing with her myself and trying to talk the kids into playing with her

9.  If you check out the background of the above picture…you’ll see that we are SO close to finishing up the family room!  Can I get a “woot woot??”

10.  I’ve got a fun little project to share soon with these bad boys.  Any guesses?

That’s all for tonight!  I am paying for my Weekend ‘O Fun with a ridiculous head cold thanks to the elderly woman who sat next to me on the plane and coughed up her lungs!

HAPPY TUESDAY!!

Well if all went well, I am at the Created 4 Care retreat!  But I had to schedule a quick post to document a bit of SPRING popping up all over the Cooper abode.  When you purchase a house in November (especially a vacant house that hasn’t been recently maintained) you never know WHAT will pop up from the ground come spring.  It was obvious the previous owners were avid gardeners.  Now we’ll have to try to keep all of their gardens alive…not an easy task!!

It has been fun to watch all sort of plants bud and spring up from the ground.  Our crocus were out for THREE days before they decided it was already too hot and shriveled up and died – HA!

Did I mention we have a waterfall?  We have a waterfall (Lord, help me).  It is currently filled with all the squirty bath toys and sticks from a couple of toddler boys.  Wow…this year’s yard work could be interesting!

Now I’m just praying a April Nebraska snow storm won’t kill all our GREEN!!!

My 3 year old loves all things electronic.  We are not a hugely electronic family.  We have ONE tv that lives in the basement and it doesn’t have cable.  The boys watch a movie on the ipad from time to time (when Daddy doesn’t have it at work) and the kids play the Wii.   But I think they are largely…unplugged.  Over Spring Break the electronic usage was unfiltered and my kiddos had free reign on a plethora of electronic devices.

I think it is safe to say someone is in withdrawal.

I guess when the going gets rough…a blank wall and a remote built from waffle blocks is better than nothing.

He even invited me to play a riveting game of  “Knock ‘em Down Robots” with him.  Fun times!

On a side note:  I’m packing it up and heading to Atlanta for the March Created 4 Care retreat!  PLEASE stop me and say “HI” if you will be there!  And say a prayer for Mr. P who will be hunkered down with all the kiddos this weekend while he tries to install our base boards!

1.  Wow.  Two weeks in a row.  I think I deserve some sort of blogging award for that.  I’m not known to have a whole lot of “stick-to-it-ness”  so the fact that I’ve remembered to post two Tuesdays in a row is somewhat monumentary!

2.  I don’t think monumentary is really a word (as evidenced by that annoying squiggly red line that appears under half of my text).  But it should be, shouldn’t it?

3.  From this point forward I think all 10 on Tuesday posts should be “phone style”.  Mostly because my editing software is downstairs and I am too lazy to move to another computer.  And my phone is right here next to me.

4.  Sometimes there is a little nameless person among us who likes to steal my phone.  He likes Angry Birds and he is also apparently an aspiring photographer.  Hours later I find hundreds of random photos on my phone like the following.  Quite artistic

{I call this “Spilled Milk”}

and this one {My Life as a Dog}

and this one {Stinker Pants}….oh, shoot…..I gave away the culprit

4.   Sometimes when your brother has the stomach flu…you MUST get out of the house.  What better way to do it than to have a date night with Daddy while Mommy cleans up the mess?  Fun for them (not so fun for me).  Then to really rub it in…they send their lactose intolerant mom pictures of themselves inhaling the Molten Lava Chocolate Bliss Sundae.  Thanks girls.

5.  There was one moment during Spring Break while our guests were here that all of the bigger kids ran outside to play.  It got strangely quiet for a moment.  Then I realized I had NO idea where Danny had gone.  I began calling frantically for him and running through each room.  No worries.  He had found a quiet spot and was quite content  A borrowed ipad and his binky.  Heaven.

6.  That’s a great idea Daddy!  Spin the girls until they vomit.  Even better yet…stick the BABY in the middle!

7.  Before I forget….I HAVE ENOUGH TEA TOWELS!!  {Sorry to yell!}  You all just knocked that one right outta the park.  I threw that out there without thinking I’d have much success…but locate the towels you did!  And plenty of them!  THANKS for the personal shopping at its finest!!  But no more please

8.  The family room is coming along nicely.  Mr. P is finishing up the last row of flooring as we speak.  Not much left in that room to do other than paint the baseboards and nail them back in place.  Oh. Happy. Day.

9.  Little shoppers either make my grocery run REALLY fun or REALLY awful.  Yesterday was a fun day.  Yesterday we had donuts for lunch and cookies for dessert.  Hey.  Sometimes you have to break the rules.  Anyways….Sam is on the Miracle Goldfish Diet…so donuts can’t be much worse, right?

10.  I need to chose pendant light for over our island pronto.  I’m leaning towards these schoolhouse lights from Home Depot.  But I’ve also seen some cool oil rubbed bronze pendants that could fit the bill.  Any suggestions?  Do you have a reasonable light fixture you are crushing right now?  It needs to give off substantial light.  In other words…it can’t be all mascara and lip gloss.  I need some real beauty (and brains) in there too.  Send me some links.  Our main floor is getting dangerously close to being “mostly done”.  If you could see our bathroom right now you would laugh at that statement!

HAPPY TUESDAY FRIENDS!

What was the best part of your day??

We’ve been waiting for these for over a month and we’re hoping that they will make a BIG difference for our little man.

Now that he is upright so much more…cruising around the furniture (even transferring from one piece to the next – hurrah!}…we realized that his foot placement is all wrong.  Higher tone on one side of his body is causing some issues with his stance.  His chubby little feet are crashing in towards the center and rocked too far back on his heels.  For him, that means that standing up straight is about as difficult as standing still in a water born row boat.  Not an easy task!  He is also prone to tip toe-ing on his left foot which is a big no-no in the Land of Successful Walkers.   We had him fitted for braces over a month ago and then sat back to wait for them to arrive.  They had to be custom made for him.  And you wouldn’t even believe how much those tiny pieces of plastic cost…even if I told you!  But, we feel so fortunate to be in place where we have insurance to help (after we met that ghastly deductible – ouch!)  And we would do ANYTHING to make this little man successful

He’s not a huge fan just yet.  In fact, this week he’s spent more time crawling than standing.  But today we practiced walking and holding hands and he was all about the clapping for himself and yelling “YEAH!!”

He’s a cute little booger, isn’t he?  {pardon the drop cloth…it’s a war zone around here!}

Praying these braces give him the support and confidence he needs to get moving for good!  Come on Danny Boy…we know you can do it!

One hour and 17 minutes and Spring Break is officially over.

It started with a visit from The Writer and her girls.   Then we squeezed in a quick case of the stomach flu before our next guests arrived.  A dear friend from Kansas City made the trek to the cornfields to welcome us to our new home.  My four plus her three…in a house under construction…chaos!  But it was so much fun!   We’ve had the most glorious weather here (I promise not to rant) all week so we were able to squeeze in numerous trips to the park and picnics on the deck.  After our friends left, the men got to business installing the wood floors in the family room.  We are about 1 1/2 rows short of a completed job!   Throw in another round of upset stomachs (this time mine…darn those 8 french fries I ate for dinner that kept me up sick all night!) and we’ve had a well rounded Spring Break!

I’m a bit sad to announce that I do not have plans to “open shop” here in Nebraska this year.  I simply have too much at stake right now at home to really devote to my photography business.  That’s not to say I won’t move forward with it sometime in the future (near or far) but for right now…my kids need my undivided attention.  I’ve got a little one we need to get WALKING!!

I begged my friend to let me take her kids out for a stroll with my camera.  It had been too long!  They are such perfect little models and were striking the most adorable poses all on their own.  Have you ever met 3rd grade boys who actually LIKE getting their pictures taken?

Tomorrow…back to reality.  Rain, rain, rain…and appointments for FOUR kiddos at the dentist.  Should be painful!

Hope you had a fantastic week!

1.  It has been awhile since I’ve done a 10 on Tuesday and I’m feeling a bit rusty.  So, I am utilizing #1 to get the show on the road without having to think of anything creative to say.

2.  It is Spring Break.  We commenced Spring Break nice and early on Monday morning with puke.  Down the stairs and in his bed.  That was NOT my idea of how to best start Spring Break.  Not only were all the kids home…but we had painters painting our family room trim at 8:00 am.  So I did what any self respecting John and Kate Plus 8 fan would do….I made a towel bed for Sam in the laundry room and told him not to come out until he stopped throwing up.  Worked like a charm

3.  Last week I spent roughly $14,000 on baby gates of varying assortments to try to contain The Beast (totally didn’t work).

4.  We warmed up Spring Break by a visit from The Writer.  She came for a bit of shopping with her 3 tweenies and it was entirely too much fun.  And although The Beast doesn’t particularly love her play pen…my kids and their cousin found it to be quite the perfect party pad.

5.  Is anyone heading to the March Created 4 Care retreat in Atlanta?  After the January retreat I knew I needed to be a part of the upcoming March conference…so I am volunteering my time to help out.  Really excited to see what God is going to do for all the women attending!  This weekend my little Chai lover felt the need to give a shout out to all my new C4C peeps!

6.  I am on the HUNT for 2 more of these tea towels from TUESDAY MORNING.  If you live near one of their stores and plan to shop there this week….would you check out the dish towel aisle for me?  I have a special project brewing  The towels are $7.99 a piece and I will gladly paypal you the funds plus shipping!  Muchas Gracias!!

7.  The Beast was actually this small when the girls picked her out from the litter.  Now she is a peeing, pooping, chewing machine.  Although we are still all hopelessly smitten with her.  When you are an adorable white fur ball you get a free pass on pooping on my shag rug (at least a few times).   Mr. P texted me this photo right before I boarded the plane home from C4C in January with the message “I think this is the one”.

8.  I was worried our little crawler wouldn’t be thrilled with the invasion…but he’s smitten too.

9.   We are making good progress on the family room.   This week we had the trim and built-ins painted, we painted the walls, we installed the bead board, and we ripped out the carpet (Hasta LaVista olive green berber).   This weekend the men folk are planning to tackle the wood floors.  If you are one to cringe at the thought of painting wood….or worse yet…painting BRICK…LOOK AWAY NOW!

9.  Can we get a collective “AHHHHHHHHH….much better”??

10.  I am generally annoyed by people who insistently talk about the weather.  Weather conversations bore me.  And yet people go on and on and on discussing the weather, debating the weather…predicting the weather.  But PEOPLE…I gotta say this a couple of times.  It was EIGHTY DEGREES in March in Nebraska.  8-0.  As in eighty-freakishly-warm-degrees in the mid of winter.  My kids were sweating in their cut offs and begging for the sprinkler.  I still have snow pants hanging to dry in my laundry room.  I can’t believe I am still discussing this.  But tomorrow it is supposed to be EIGHTY TWO…and Thursday EIGHTY….and Friday…EIGHTY.  I think I may have died and gone to heaven.  And now I’ll stop with the weather tangent and wrap this up.

11.  This is an extra because #1 was a bit of a crock.

Early this morning as we were readying for church…a little certain someone was missing.  Things were awfully quiet and I almost missed him as I dashed through the upstairs looking for a little stray body to haul to the car.  A few nights ago we moved his train table into his bedroom.  I was worried he’d play all night and miss his much needed naps.  But he’s stayed put in bed and has really enjoyed having his own little spot in his room just for him (where little brother’s hands can’t reach!)  I took the risk of being late to church and ran back downstairs for my camera before he even saw me.  The moment was just too sweet to let it pass by.

He adores all things Thomas the Train.  He knows every engine and freight car…the color…the number…and what kind of “face” they make in each book.  He tells the story in whispery voices while he plays.  It will definitely melt the heart of any mommy of boys.

Three has been a year full of a lot of changes for this little guy.  It’s been a year of ups and downs for him…and today was an especially down day.  So it’s good to remember these moments…to tuck them away in a special place where I can call them out.  Like when he’s crying that I cut his chicken too small….or that his brother is looking at him the wrong way…or that his shoes can’t tie themselves.

These little moments of quiet are like pure gold.

Just an early morning.  A boy and his trains.  {and a sentimental mommy}.

That was probably kind of an evil trick I did yesterday.  Our family HAS grown.  But no…we are not “adopting” again quite yet in the sense that most of you were likely hoping to hear about.  The idea is still bouncing around in our hearts daily but God has not given us a green light yet.  So we are waiting patiently.   And in the meantime…continuing to grow!

But we HAVE adopted a new little Cooper!  Let me introduce the newest princess in our family!!

We are in the throes of potty training, chewing, and general other cuteness.  She is just an adorable little fur ball and the kids are smitten of course.   And she’s quite musical as you can see…so she fits right into the family!

And don’t worry…you’ll be one of the first to hear when we start making plans to bring home the next Cooper!