idea, THANKS again for your inspiration

I found solar lights at Walmart that were pretty much the same size as the top of a canning jar. I bought a box of a dozen clear generic canning jars at Walmart. And I bought bags of flat florist gems at the dollar store.

I removed the cylinder with the ground spike from the solar light and put a thin line of clear silicone caulk around the outside of the jar ring then put the light on top. After the caulk dried attach flat florist gems around the jar ring and around the little edge at the bottom of the clear shade of the solar light. Then I threw in about 50 florist gems inside the jar for stability outside along my wall. I wanted to use red gems but they didn't have any. Next trip to the Dollar Store :)

I have had a dirty little secret!Everyone always tells me how clean my house is. It's not really. Not since I've had kids. You've seen those cute little signs, Excuse the mess, we are busy making memories or Excuse the mess, we live here? Well that's not really my style. In fact, my house is nothing like the clean it used to be before the kids. I've grown more accustomed to the mess, but so many little things tend to get over looked these days. Many people have exciting goals like running a marathon or skydiving (and I may have just become the biggest loser because I just googled Common goals people have, because I couldn't come up with 2 good ideas), you know what I've always wanted? To put my house on the market and have the ad say, "Mrs. Clean lives here". I'm not kidding, I actually told my realtor I wanted that on my add. She said, your house will sell itself. OK, she was right, but I really wanted that at the time. One thing I've been over-looking lately is my kitchen cabinets. I'm home cleaning today and thought, maybe today's the day to get that grease off the cabinets. Now keep in mind, these are just the cabinets over the stove, and grease is always building up on these cabinets. I wipe down my cabinets frequently, since they are white and show any dirt, but I do tend to "overlook" these top cabinets because I never could seem to get the grime off with much success. I have those god-awful therma-foil and for lack of a better term the surface is "pockey". That means there is a little texture that allows dirt and grease to accumulate. The picture shows best how greasy these cabinets were. I've tried many products before, but today I decided to go for some simple soft scrub and a warm dish rag. I love the lemon scent and use this for a lot of my cleaning. I poured it on my dishcloth and just rubbed it on the grease, and just like that, all of the grease and grime came off. I've tried many other cleaners and de-greasers and seriously never got such great results with barely any elbow grease at all. I might suggest if you are working over your head that you wear some protective eyewear, because trust me when I say, you don't want your break from cleaning to involve trying to get soap out of your eye! Just sayin. Check out the before and afters. It's really pretty amazing!

oak-trimmed laminate kitchens that for some inexplicable reason were so popular in the 1980s. When I finally bit the bullet and decided to re-do the kitchen, I wanted to create something that was appropriate to the house and found my inspiration in a 1959 ad for a Hotpoint kitchen. It was both practical (tiled walls) and handsome, with a great punch of color from a tiled accent wall containing the turquoise (!) wall oven. While I ultimately decided a wall oven wouldn't work for me, and I went for the durability of stainless (the salt in the air is tough on things here at the beach), I think I've ended up the with a kitchen that honors the inspiration, and my home's history.

out- of- zone shrubs & flowers to grow in Shickshinny? Love your post" finds"!

needed to make changes to make it a happy space that worked for us. I turned to my friend, my paintbrush, to make inexpensive changes to the things that bothered me the most. I'm always amazed at the power of paint, but never more so than in #MyKitchen. (see more after pics on my blog)

hidden behind the curtain on the right, and cabinets with a small countertop for folding laundry are on the left where a coat closet used to be. The argyle wall is paint, not wallpaper. :)