Quantcast

Bower Power

· 77 Comments

Diversion

Uncategorized

Sometimes when I am uber stressed and have a million things on my to-do list, I end up working on something that is ridiculous and can not possibly benefit me at that moment or help relieve the pressure of everything.  That something is called a diversion.

This was my recent something:

It’s a little kid’s round plastic picnic table.  And the previous owners/sitters/decorators were apparently named Paul, Lashaun and Praise.  And also apparent is their penchant for marker art. 

With a house in shambles, this was my outlet.  this was my not-on-the-to-do-list-item (but one that I’ll spend two hours scrubbing anyway).  this was my diversion from the chaos.

I ended up going through two Magic Erasers, half a bottle of Arm & Hammer bathroom cleaner and three scoops of OxyClean to get it looking good enough for my lil’ Breezy. 

There are still some shadows of the one-eyed lady, the angry cloud from Mario Brothers, the snail and what can only be described as a large red-outlined turd…but that just means that it won’t break my heart when one day Will takes to this thing with his Crayola.

The best part about the table?  It was FAH-REE!  Zilch, zero, nada.  Although it did probably cost me any pride points that I would have possibly had from my new neighbors.  I seriously need a shirt that just says I heart Curbin’.  It would clear up the awkward silence when I finally meet them. 

Have you guys picked any trash lately?  Or spent serious time on something completely ridiculous lately?  Or perhaps you just want to confess your love for Magic Erasers?  What is your recent diversion?  Let’s follow Paul’s & Lashaun’s & Praises’ lead and write it down here 🙂

0 Shares

Comments

  1. Katie,
    You did an AMAZING job cleaning that kids’ play table! I’m sure Will will enjoy it and have fun “decorating” it with his own creative drawings. Oh, and I love, love, love magic erasers! I use them to get scuffs/marks off walls, clean grout, stubborn stains, practically anything. They might be the. best. invention. ever (second to bacon of course)! 😉

  2. I can’t believe how much came off with just Magic Erasers! Wow! You know… if those last faint marks that won’t come off start to bother you, you can just buy a can of Krylon fushion paint for plastics. Would make it look brand new and you can choose a darker color so future mishaps won’t be noticeable. I saw someone redo a pink plastic playhouse with it (made it for a boy and used boy colors) and it looked amazing.

  3. I have been reading your blog for some time now, so sorry that I haven’t commented or introduced myself. I live in Fl with my huzzy and teach Kindergarten. I love reading about your life adventures and rEaL stories! I don’t even remember how I discovered your blog but it quickly became hard to resist the quirky and honest approach you take on writing/sharing.

    Anywho, I too have a problem with what you call curbin’… Recently, a neighbor called and told me about some curb goods down the road, LOL, yes my neighbors know about my…hobby. Well if it wasn’t an answer to prayer, there was a round pedestal table screaming “I want to live with you!!!” We had been eyeing one from IKEA but continued to wait for a SALE. We will have to fix the feet of the table and paint it but all in all a total SCORE! Love the shirt idea!

    Thanks for being an inspiration!

  4. My husband and I found a rocking chair on the side of the road that just needed some tlc. One of the arms had come out of the back support, and it took my husband mere minutes to fix it. Now all it needs is some sanding and painting!

  5. Fabulous job on the table, Katie! I, too, love Magic Erasers. They can make anything look like new. Oh, and I am right there with you on the diversion thing. There are a million things on my to-do list but I will always pick that one task to focus on that just so happens to not be on the list. 🙂

  6. I recently started reading your blog but I’m going to have to stop doing so while I’m at work, it’s hard to keep my moments of uh..not working.. under wraps when I bust out laughing (what can I say – you had me at “red-outlined turd”). 🙂

  7. OK, here’s when you’ll absolutely LOVE that table. When you have a dinner party with your friends and their kids and there aren’t enough high chairs and boosters to go around. Then, you pull that table down from the playroom into the dining rm and the kids eat there! They love it, and better yet, put a shower curtain liner underneath to protect your floors and for easy cleanup. Easy peasy!
    Lauren B.

  8. I’m definitely guilty of focusing on the least important thing when I have 100 more important things on my To-Do list. Whether it’s at work or at home, it never fails!

  11. I’m defnitely a magic eraser fan, especially with 2 boys. It would be cool to paint the table with Krylon spray paint, that sticks to anything.

  14. Great job on the curb treasure, Katie — what perseverance!

    Oh, man! I love me some Magic Erasers — those things rock!! (And they should seriously be sponsoring your blog for all the amazing free press you just gave them. Just saying. 😉 )

  15. The table looks so good!! I would have thought it was new! And I just discovered those magic erasers and can’t believe I didn’t have them in my life before now. It’s nice to see that your neighbors kids are really into love by the many times they wrote it. I am sure they will love playing with little Will.

  16. The first thing I said a minute ago when I saw the cleaned table was “Oh my gosh-you gotta be kidding me!” hahahaha. Wow–you got that clean. I looooooove magic erasers. Whoever invented them, I’d like to give them a big hug. haha.

  17. I know all about diversions! My husband usually comes in and says something about how off-task I am and asks if I think that’s the best way to spend my time, then it hits me that I’m not doing what I desperately NEED to be doing. The table cleaned up well!

  18. Impressive! I am with some other commenters – I can’t believe you had the patience, I would have just painted it! Actually, who am I kidding, I would have taken one look, thought, “Too much work” and kept on walkin’ . . . guess I better keep reading your blog and hope some of your vision and ambition rubs off 🙂

  20. Just wanted to let you know, that Rubbing Alcohol takes off magic marker pretty easily as well. And much cheaper than magic erasers!

    Looks sooo much better though!

  21. The table looks GREAT! One tip I learned for that plastic funriture/toys is a light mist of Pledge or whatever brand of furniture polish after I cleaned it up. Gived it a nice shiny, newer looking finish. Love reading your blog!

  23. I’m a closet curber myself. People look at me like I’m nuts, but I’ve scored some awesome stuff from the trash! I just pulled a small coffee table from an apartment dumpster that I drive by on my way home and I plan on covering the top with batting and fabric to make it a bench for extra seating. I’ve also brought home an entry way table, a headboard, a floor lamp, and some fold-up beach chairs. The beach chairs lasted a long time…until my MIL was sitting in one during a summer visit (we live in FL and go to the beach often) and fell through the seat when the fabric finally gave out. LOL!

  26. I’ve recently discovered your blog….and after a bit of archive reading, I am a huge fan! Also, I’m in Jersey so I’m sending some Jersey love your way!

    Anywho- love magic erasers but I love curbing even more! We had bulk pickup days every couple months and my mom and I would drive around to see if there was anything good out. Sometimes we got lucky!
    Nothing good lately 🙁

    thanks for the inspiration!

  27. Katie, I love your blog. I think very similarly to you and love reading someone else who is as zany and fun and thoughtful as I (like to think I) am!

    Could you, sometime, maybe do a how-to post on your white couch cleaning process? I know you wash the slipcover with bleach, but do you pre-treat, pour the bleach right on the spot to focus or add it to the machine’s slot for bleach in the cycle, bleach-pen the spots as they happen and wait for a convenient time to wash the next day, etc? Before we invest in our own in a few months, I’m trying to prepare myself.

    As someone who recently moved into a foreclosure, I appreciate the amount of work ahead of you. Good luck! We are being crazy and trying to do as much as possible as soon as possible, but that’s also because we hope to grow our family within a year and want all the big projects out of the way while we still only have one munchkin to trade-off and keep at bay from tools, wet paint, and the not-yet-fenced drop-off at the back of our yard!

    Best of luck to you, and I can’t wait to see what you do whenever you do it to the house!

  28. Random question…have you ever shared how you reupholstered those green chairs you have? I’m super curious about the process!!!

  29. When I saw that table yesterday, I thought you were going to have to paint it to get all that beautiful art off so that Will can start with a clean slate. I can’t believe how awesome it looks now!

    Our dresser (along with many other things in our house) is curb picked. It’s awesome. Solid wood. Big. No mice were living in it either. It has one chunk missing from the front corner, but once I figure out what I want to do with it (in terms of refinishing) I think I can fix that.

    I also just wanted to say that you have an AWESOME blog Katie. I love reading about your life (or what little you decide to share with us). Will is adorable, your Boyfriend is quite the piece of bacon, and your house is amazing. I got my first negative comment on my blog yesterday. It’s not a big blog, I really just write it for the sake of my family who are all back in Michigan (we’re in Oklahoma now). But I have gotten a few readers who I have never met, and one of them left me a pretty crappy comment under “Anonymous.” I’ve always despised the rude/nasty/mean comments on your blog, wondering why someone would take the time to construct something so negative, just to ruin someone elses day. But not until last night did I really understand how it must feel for you to get these comments. It’s not fun. It ruins your night. It makes you want to stop writing, or cry, or make your blog private.

    So I am just here thanking you so much for sharing your world with us. I love spending just a few minutes everyday with the Bowers, so please keep it up. And remember to breath & do projects like this when the move gets stressful! It keeps you sane! Thanks so much Katie!

  31. I used a Magic Eraser to take the pencil marks off my wall (from making the grid wall) and I was surprised how fast they just fall apart and disappear! Made me feel like I should be wearing gloves while using it…

  32. i found an awesome, very sturdy, large coffee table in my neighbors trash last week. The great part, the garbage men watched me take it!! I smiled and waved, they laughed. Priceless.

  33. I adore trash picking. It must be a time-release inherited trait, because my mom used to embarrass us to DEATH by hitting the brakes on trash day. But now that my little gene is flowing, I have rescued some great stuff from dumpsters and curbs. College campuses are the best!

    As far as your little treasure, congrats! It looks great. Try hand sanitizer to banish the one-eyed lady. The alcohol in it takes sharpie off wood, glass, plastic, floors, counters, etc. so a little magic marker should be no problem. And the lovely gooey gel keeps it from evaporating too fast. Just schmear, let sit a few minutes, and wipe off with a rag or paper towel. Magic goo! Do you think a name like that would sell? I bet I could market it as marker remover for 10x the price! Then I could buy my own bacon, um, hog farm….

  34. I have a small curbin’ problem that I’ve apparently passed down to my kids. During our walk to school one day this week, my eight year old, Brynn, spotted a chair with great curvy lines. She said, “Mom, do you think that chair is headed to the dump? Nate (as in Berkus) would take it and make it nice again. You’ve got to get it on your way home!” How could I resist? So, with the dog leash in one hand and a busted-up but full-of-potential chair in the other hand, I made my way home. Brynn was stoked to see it when she got home from school and is looking forward to fixing it up with me soon. Forget pedicures. This is our kind of mother-daughter bonding!

  35. That’s incredible! And far better than my procrastination of choice – mindless shoveling of food into my mouth! 😉

  37. WOW! I wouldn’t have even thought of cleaning that setting, I was waiting to see some fancy schmancy painting job. Great work Katie! And..this is not simply a diversion, it is also an ACHIEVEMENT. A little, all done at once job, that gets finished & makes you smile. That’s why you diverted. In your (what you think of as) little time of chaos, this was one job that you wanted to do someday, that is now completed & you feel better for it. It’s what helps you get re-energised to get back on track with those bigger jobs that may not get finished all at one time. I also heart Magic Erasers. And, yes I too was surprised the first time I used one how it got all mushed up & degraded, but totally worth it because it got the pencil markings off the wall left by my precious 18mth old!

  38. I so wish I could jump on the Magic Eraser bandwagon, but my recent attempts to banish scuff marks from my walls with them resulted in only slightly faded scuff marks, and ugly white “scrub” marks on my walls from the erasers! Am I doing something wrong, or do you guys think it’s because I tried this trick on flat paint? I’m about to just paint over the messed up sections and throw away my Magic Erasers!

    The table looks great though Katie!

  39. I LOVE getting stuff on the curb. We (actually mostly the husband) made a desk out of wood we salvaged from and old bed on the curb. I also found an old wicker trunk, and the most recent was a set of 6 black wrought iron plant stands. Not sure what I’m doing with them yet, but I couldn’t just leave them there!

  40. Wow! I wouldn’t have had the patience to clean that. I probably would have just covered it with the Krylon plastic spray paint.

  41. We’re “curbers” too! So fun what you can find for free!

    Great job on the table! It’s going to be so useful to have that kiddie table for Will and friends!

    I also love Magic Erasers! They must have been invented by parents! 🙂 They are awesome for little artists that get carried away on the wrong mediums!

    ~ Ali

  42. Hi I recently stumbled upon your blog and I love it! Your new home is simply beautiful! Your blog entry today provided me with a great big smile- thanks. I love your descriptions of the art work -they made me laugh. I thought you were going to spray paint the table some cool pattern – wowsa- what hard work you put into that project. You rock! I adore that you include photos in your blog of the moving while working on getting your new casa organized – it helps to know we are all in the same boat. We all have days the house looks great, and we all have days (and for some of us like me – MORE days) the house is more truly LIVED in. Great blog! Keep up the great work!

  43. I’ve had the same problem on my flat paint covered walls. I read somewhere that the Magic Erasers ruin the finish of the flat paint (if that makes sense?!) so I’ve stopped using them. It’s really frustrating.

  45. Love the immediate gratification of cleaning! It’s my way of having control in the chaos. Free-ness is also very heart warming 😉

  46. Good job on the clean-up. And don’t sweat it! Yes, life can be hectic but don’t forget how blessed you are. For real!! You get to be at home with your baby, and your husband gets to work from home too. That is my dream! Beautiful house, beautiful family… keep on smiling, Katie Bower! Life is beautiful!! 🙂

  47. Well, you can’t beat free! I salvaged a mid-century rattan sectional out of my mom’s neighbor’s dumpster when they were remodeling. It needed a good cleaning and new lacquer as well as new cushions, which I’m doing myself. We live in a college town and every spring when the students are moving out there are plenty of treasures to be had. It’s amazing what students will throw away. A lot of times we will pick perfectly usable items up and take them to Goodwill just so they don’t end up in the landfill.

  48. I love dumpster diving! Who doesn’t! 🙂 This is a testament to the power of Magic Erasers…because of them I have developed a cleaning crush on Mr. Clean. Love him.

  49. That may be the strangest trio of names I’ve ever heard, so I’d say they’re hardly in any place to judge your dumpster diving. 🙂

    Last fall, I spent no fewer than 40 hours collecting seeds from our impatiens. No, I’m not kidding. Most people don’t even know they have seeds that can be collected. Or maybe it’s just that most people are not lunatics like me. But hey, hopefully I’ll have LOTS of little impatiens this year. 🙂

  50. While I don’t dumpster dive/curb shop, I love to put out stuff for others and watch as people stop and check it out or pick it up. Sometimes my husband and I bet on how long it will take to be picked up. Haha! So while you may be thinking your neighbors are going to judge you, they may actually enjoy watching their unused items go to someone who can use them.

  52. I really thought you were going to paint that little table. I guess a little elbow grease does go a long way.

    I totally feel your pain on the move. We just made a move in January from a metroplex to my home town. When we moved to the metroplex we had a big ol’ moving van and movers. We still had some stress with two different closings in two different towns and coordinating with the moving van, but it was a pretty smooth move. This last move we used our future home (a building my dad built for a photography business) as a storage area. We did just what you did. Every time we came to visit we jam-packed the Rav4 and the Jeep and dropped it off at the “studio”. We still needed a 20 ft enclosed trailer and a 10 ft trailer to move the big stuff. Can we say simplify? No-obviously WE cant. ha. Now we are faced with renovations to bring the business building up to residential code before we can move in and purging stuff from a 1761 sq ft home to fit a 1,000 sq ft home.

    But, like you guys, we are just extremely grateful for a place to live, a good family to lease our other home to, and just love and happiness in general. CONGRATULATIONS on your beautiful new home! And by the way, sometimes having no plan is the best plan! Best wishes!

  53. I never would have guessed that you could get that marker off of the table! Great job! I thought maybe you were going to paint over it with chalk-board paint or something.

  54. I Love magic erasers!!! They work like a charm. When you first showed us this picture I never thought you would scrub all that marker off, I was actually anticipating a spray paint project. By the way I love picking up other peoples trash off the curb my hubby just shakes his head.

  55. If Will gets one more ear infection run, don’t walk, to get him some ear tubes. They will change his life!

    Hang in there!

  56. The magic eraser is my favorite – I just didn’t know it could accomplish that. I was sure you were going to have to spray paint it.

    Great new background and header. Was that another diversion?

  57. Cute header 🙂

    I’m a big trash picker ~ something which my husband is NOT fond of. However, he IS fond of the money I save when I find discarded, perfectly good lamps and fix them up, rather than spending lots of $$$ on new ones!

    The table looks great ~ well done! 🙂

  58. Nice job! I picked up a round ottoman off the curb of one of my neighbors…ha! before anyone else did. It’s in great shape but I wiped it down with antibacterial wipes and now it’s in my bathroom..you can see it in my bathroom post. We are doing good for the environment 🙂

  59. I have to say that your blog is my favorite that I have come across. This project sounds exactly like something I would do, instead of more “important” things haha. I definitely need to try those magic erasers, they seem awesome!

  60. Magic Erasers do take the finish off of paint if you’re not careful! I’m not sure if it says this on the box, but It’s not recommend for flat paint. I have eggshelf finish paint with 2 or 3 coats, and they have worked wonders on getting crayon marks off my walls!

  62. Diversions are wonderful things…and I totally think they help us keep our sanity by making us feel in control of at least something! Kudos to you, the table looks great!

  64. Congrats on the FREE table Danni – and I’m glad you came outta the woodwork to say hi…I love meeting new readers!
    xo – kb

  68. I have not and here’s why…reupholstering is a case by case kinda thing…and MANY people have touched on the subject online. If you google “reupholster wingback” you will get lots of info on how to do it…and if I did a post, I would be up to my eyeballs in explaining something without any photos and without any real reupholstering knowledge. Everything I learned, I got it from Google.
    xo – kb

  69. Aww thanks Mallory. Anon is the Joker to my Batman…he and I are really going to be best friends one day 🙂
    xo – kb

  71. I love that you are already training your kids Hillary…it is something I hope to pass on to my kids one day too. Right after I teach them how to fry bacon. and burp the alphabet.
    xo – kb

  74. Good job on the table

    I´ve used toothpaste to clean pen and marker “art” from walls and furniture, just a little bit in a cloth and rub gentle in circular motion, then wipe the toothpaste away when stain is gone 🙂

    My mom told me that trick 🙂

    Looking forward to reading more posts from your blog, you are a true inspiration

  75. Katie, I admit, I did not have faith in you that your “find” was worth pulling over, but I was WRONG!!! It looks great!! My mom is a major packrat and pulled a kids’ table out of her garage recently and offered it to us to use for my two year old son. I took it bc I would have felt bad saying no, but after I cleaned it up and put it in our family room, turns out he loves it!! And what? How much did I spend? Oh right, FREE!!!! 🙂

  76. Wow it came up great – although did you say you got this from the house you moved into? Probably not a good idea broadcasting the kids names (esp. as they are pretty unique) when you are going to do some posts on their foreclosed house and how much stuff you have to do to it. Are you worried about the old owners stumbling across your take down of their old place?

  77. Sophy – I picked this from the trash of a neighbor….I have no idea what you mean…but I think this may have confused you. I didn’t get this from the house we moved into….
    xo – kb

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Get the latest via email!