DIY - Pocketful of Joules

Brit + Co: Homemakers DIY Fun

I’ve mentioned before how much I love Brit + Co, as well as Brit herself. So, it was only natural that I was super excited to have a Brit Homemakers DIY get together with some of my favorite ladies over the weekend.

As part of the awesomeness surrounding Brit’s new book, Homemakers, they sent members of the Brit Co-op the ultimate DIY Starter Kit (featuring products from Scotch).

They weren’t messing around when they called it the ULTIMATE kit… each kit contained: magic tape, double sided tape, precision scissors, precision utility knife, super glue, quick drying tacky glue, a glue stick, three rolls of washi tape, patterned duct tape, needle nose pliers, wire cutters, gold metallic paint pen, black permanent marker, a sewing kit, cloth tape measure, single hole punch and red baker’s twine. I also received a stack of blue cardstock in my hostess kit.

As much as I love my girlfriends, due to my crazy work schedule, family stuff and life in general it is super hard to get together as much as I’d like to. So, I’m always happy when I have the opportunity to have them over for a fun project. Saturday worked out great for a brunch since the boys were at soccer and we had orange juice moscato fizz drinks, doughnut holes, some yummy croissants and tropical fruit salad. And yes, Travis and Jack inhaled the remaining doughnut holes as soon as they got home.

Using the kits, our project was to make banners with the contents and we all had a great time making something personalized for each of our homes:

I made a “spring” banner to go on our fireplace… Spring IS coming soon, right?!

As a totally unexpected surprise, my friend Annie gifted me with the hot-off-the-presses Homemakers book!

If you want one too, you can find them on the Brit + Co website (for some extra fun gifts that come with them) or on Amazon.com for a paperback edition or one for your kindle

So a big thank you to Kendall, Jessie, Annie and Bryna for making my Saturday awesome! And additional thank you’s to Brit, Brit + Co and Scotch Products for providing everything we needed for a great time. And now I can’t wait to curl up with my new Homemakers book and make more stuff with my cool DIY box o’ fun.

Disclosure: Brit + Co provided me with the Brit Kits for free. I was not required to review the kits or even write a blog post about the party. Pocketful of Joules is a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com.

Learning from Pinterest: Boots + Jeans

I was always a bootcut jeans girl, so figuring out how to wear boots with my jeans was pretty darn easy. Put on jeans + stick boots under jeans = done. Easy peasy.

Over the past year, I’ve started liking more of the straight and skinny jeans styles. In the summer, it’s pretty easy to style them with Toms, flats or sandals… but once the weather started getting cold I was kind of at a loss.

Most of my jeans weren’t super tight at the ankles, so shoving them into the tops of my boots looked kind of odd to me. If I rolled them up, that looked kind of weird too. I know that other people seemed to figure this out easily, so I’m not really sure what my issue was.

So I did what every lady does in 2014… I checked Pinterest. You can check out my Wearing Jeans + Boots board here.

It seemed like there were three main ways of dealing with things:
1. Shoving the pants inside the boot.
2. Cuffing the jeans above the boot.
3. Wearing boot socks.

In the name of science, I decided to try them all out. I mean, I might as well do the work so you don’t have to, right?

Here are the pants I was working with: Kayla Skinny Jeans in Red (from this Stitch Fix post), Kate Spade Broom St Grey Denim Skinny Jeans (Nordstrom Rack), Kut from the Cloth Toothpick Skinny Jeans (Nordstrom Rack), and Kensie Sophia Distressed Jeans (from this Stitch Fix post).

I picked these four pairs of pants because they get the most wear out of my closet. The Kensie jeans are pretty tight at the ankle, which makes them easier to manipulate into boots, but the others are more of a straight bottom which can make things awkward.

Here are my favorite boots that I’ll be using to try each style:

A. Naturalizer Jovana boot – a pretty typical knee-high version.
B. Nine West short boot – a bit shorter, which can make them hard to style.
C. Cole Haan Air Tantivy boot – a medium height, which can be awkward.
D. Frye Wyatt Disk short boot – more of a “bootie” look.

Why yes, that is a pair of FRYES in my boot list! After I lucked out in Austin last week I went ahead and clicked ‘buy it now’ on a pair I was stalking on eBay. They go for $350 new, but I got them for $99! YAY for being patient and stalking shoes online!

Style #1: Shoving the pants inside the boot.
So when I first thought of how to throw on a pair of boots with skinny jeans, I figured I’d just shove those bad boys in there. In order to keep them inside the boots, there are a few Pinterest tips that can help: you can do a small roll of your jeans and then shove that into the boot, you can tuck your jeans into your short socks, or you can buy little straps that connect to your jean cuffs and go under your foot to hold them tight.

So this style seems to depend on the pants and the boot height. For the first picture it’s working with the mid-height Cole Haan boots, but looks a little stumpy. I think that the higher knee-high boots would look much more flattering. The grey jeans are not very tight at the bottom, so they look a bit sloppy stuffed into the Fryes. As for the distressed jeans and grey Nine West boots, this is how I typically wear them. Since they are pretty fitted at the ankle, it’s easy to stuff them inside the boot.

Style #2: Cuffing the jeans above the boot.
It seems that many people deal with the weird shoving the jeans in the boot issue by cuffing their jeans above their boots, showing off either skin or cute socks. Here’s an example pin with socks and one without socks.

Ok, the red jeans are a mess. They are just too baggy to cuff above the boot and it looks pretty ridiculous. I’m also not loving the dark blue jeans cuffed — it’s not terrible and I’d probably leave the house like this, but something about the bulkiness of the cuff isn’t doing it for me. The only one that’s really working for me is the skinny distressed jeans. I actually like the look of the cuff with a pair of neutral socks peeking out.

Style #3: Wearing boot socks.
Apparently boot socks are all the rage and you can totally buy them at department stores, specialty stores and on etsy. Or, you can make your own using thrift store sweaters or old socks. I bought a couple $3 sweaters from my local Goodwill to try this out myself.

Now this is a style I can totally get behind, because it seems to work well with my tall boots and my medium-height boots. All I did was take a couple sweaters and cut the sleeves off! The boot socks do double duty of keeping my legs extra warm and also looking pretty darn cute. I’m thinking a sparkly sweater cuff could look snazzy peeking out for the holidays. Or, you could sew on a pretty button or pin on a jeweled broach. A little tip, when you’re buying thrift sweaters to use… go for a medium or a large. Both of the ones I bought were size small and I think the cream pair would look better if they weren’t stretched so tight.

I’m really glad I tried this little exercise because it helped me figure out how to mix and match boots and pants from my own closet, without going on a shopping spree for jeans with tighter ankles. So, get used to seeing me in lots of jeans and boots this winter!

Am I the only one who had issues with the whole boots and jeans combo? Did you find my examples helpful at all? Do you have a boots + jeans tip I should try?

A Bathroom Mini Disaster: Ignoring it Didn’t Work

You know how sometimes you see something and you think, “OH CRAP… that’s going to be a pain in my butt” so you ignore it for a while?

Well, don’t do that when it comes to bathroom leaking stuff.
Really. Don’t.

One day while scrub-a-dub-dub-ing in the shower, I looked up and saw that the area of paint right above the shower insert was kind of bubbling. I don’t know if this is the first day it happened, or the fact that I actually had my contacts in and could SEE that made me notice it.

I was about to leave for a work conference the next day though, so I figured I’d just ignore it and deal with it when I came back. But I was busy when I got back too. And then, I tried to convince myself that it wasn’t really THAT big of a deal and I should probably just NOT wear my contacts while taking a shower.

That also helps with shower cleaning impulses. FYI.

So, I ignored it.
For a couple months.

I had almost convinced myself that the bubbling was because the fan wasn’t working properly and there was just a bit too much moisture in the room. No big deal. The wall wasn’t spongy at all, so it’s not like water was seeping into it.

Then, one day while cleaning the shower I reached up and pressed my pointer finger into the wall. And it felt like soggy bread.

Crap.
NOW, I have to do something about it!

So I did something. I called my dad in a panic and he came over that night. {For those who don’t know or forgot, my dad builds and renovates houses for a living, so he’s kind of the perfect dad to call in these circumstances.}

Upon entering my shower, my dad stuck his hand into the wall and ripped out a big chunk of soggy drywall. Yup, with his BARE HANDS. It was like superman all up in the joint.

After ripping away the wall, he could tell that the shower head was leaking and spraying right at the bubbly wall. Luckily, the spray was quite light so it didn’t completely drench the inside of the entire wall and make mold. He continued ripping pieces out until it was firm again, and then ripped a little more just to make sure. He also used his razor blade to scrap away any damp paint and drywall around the entire top and side of the shower insert where the water was pooling and dripping off.

At this point, we jumped in my truck for a quickie trip to Home Depot to buy: a new shower head and shower head arm, Teflon tape, a piece of drywall, and spackle. All in all, it was right about $60.

When we got back home, Superdad replaced the old leaky shower head arm with a new one that didn’t leak (the Teflon tape was used to make sure it was totally watertight). He then used his razor to cut the wall into straight edges so he could insert the new piece of drywall.

After nailing the new piece of drywall into place, he applied three coats of quickset spackle. He was like a spackling machine getting it up there so much smoother than I could ever hope to do. At this point it was past 10:00 at night and my dad tagged out to go home (and sleep so he could wake up bright and early the next day to go work some more). THANK YOU DAD! {Not that he reads my blog, but my mom will probably tell him I wrote about him…}

I let the spackle dry completely for a few days and then went in to do a super light sanding with a sanding block I had sitting around. Once the wall was as smooth as possible, I applied a coat of Kilz primer over all the newly spackled parts. I also used some nail filler to quickly fill any extra nail holes (and sanded and primed those areas too), since I had the supplies out.

I actually had about 3/4 can of gray semi-gloss paint left over from our kitchen, so I didn’t bother buying anything else and did two coats on the whole bathroom.

I let it dry for a few hours and returned everything back to its proper place. I wouldn’t say it’s a big REVEAL makeover moment, but at least there are no longer any leaks! Also, I think the gray looks pretty with my snazzy West Elm shower curtain.

If I would have just dealt with the issue when it first appeared, we probably could have replaced a much smaller area of drywall instead of ripping out a huge hole and scraping along the entire top and side of the shower insert. We also got really lucky that a ton of mold wasn’t inside the wall when we opened it up.

Learn from my mistakes, don’t ignore bathroom leaking issues!

We were without a master bathroom shower for about a week and Jack was NOT pleased that our stuff was junking up his bathtub. He even told me that “Momma really needs to clean” a couple times. So yeah, that’s always nice.

Am I the only one who thought ignoring the problem was a great plan of attack? Have you ever ripped out chunks of a wall with your bare hands? Do you have a Superdad? If so feel free to share adorable dad stories in the comments so I can get all teary-eyed and go “Awww!”