When we were kids, my mom would give us a shoelace and we would tie a roll of toilet paper through it and hang it on our necks. It was like the badge of allergies. I thought it was the badge of dorkiness. Hi friends from school…see this roll of toilet around my neck?…it’s because I have so much mucus flowing from the holes in my face that I need to have bathroom toiletries at the closest location! Yes. I was a winner. It did work though. There was never a chance for my nose to do the dreaded drip-into-the-mouth-while-playing thing.
I was like a lot of folks out there…I had mild allergies. I think that is why I am excited to talk about this topic today. 3M Filtrete Filters has asked me to talk about living healthier and this is what I chose….tips on how you can battle the dreaded allergies in your home.
- Check the Weather & Sport Shades
This year we had ridiculous pollen levels. I actually saw trees in the wind that looked like the branches were dropping pollen like snow. It was unbelievable. Checking local pollen levels before stepping outside can help you decide whether that trip to the local gardening center or playing outside is a good idea or you should stick to the indoor activities. Click here to check the pollen in your area. Oh and I hear that if levels are high, sporting your sunglasses are one really easy way to keep some of those airborne allergens out of your eyes.
- Change out your air filters regularly
This is the quickest and easiest way to ward off pollen inside your home. It’s recommended to change your air filters every three to six months for the best results. We just changed ours and it was a sleeve of dust, dirt, pollen and tons of what I am sure would send me into a sneezing fit.
- Strengthen your immune system
Working out your immune system is easier than you think. It’s recommended to reduce your stress, eat antioxidants, take your vitamins, eat herbs like garlic, gingseng, butterbur and probiotics, sleep on a regular schedule, and workout in the afternoons (preferably inside when pollen counts are high). Also, keeping your pets out of your bed at night (they bring in allergens when outside!) taking frequent showers and eating local honey can all help.
- Stock your Allergies First Aid Kit
There are tons of great ways to tackle allergies and keep them at bay. I stock ours with loads of soft tissues, a Neti-pot, saline spray, eye drops, eucalyptus oil, a cool mist steam machine, green tea, and Baby Vicks Vapor Rub. I also keep my Vitamin C drops in there to suck on to boost immunities.
Of course, if you have really bad allergies, you should check with your health care provider to get professional help. What’s your first line of allergy defense? Any special tricks that I should know about?
This is a sponsored post brought to you by Filtrete Brand filters from 3M. Filtrete Filters help create a healthy home and healthier indoor air by capturing airborne dust, allergens, bacteria, and viruses. If mold spores, pollen, pet dander, smog and smoke are criminals, Filtrete filters are the crime fighters. These filters also capture ODORS! AHH! Replace yours today to fight your allergies and make your house smell good at the same time!
I named our newest kitchen addition in honor of Kristen Bell. It just fits.
Rewind a bit…about two years…to our old house. Wait. Keep rewinding. Go about twenty five years or so. I was in Jersey. With my parents. Obviously…because I would be only four years old (wink wink!). And we lived in a really rural part of Jersey…where the state gets it’s nickname of The Garden State…and my mom would be slaving over a dinner for all four of us kids and it would finally be ready. But of course, we kids were dirting around making mud pies and digging booby traps in the woods. (yes, ‘dirting around’ is now officially the term I use for kids playing outside…appropriate, no?!). So in order for us to hear her, she would open the door and ring a bell. It’s clang would reverberate through the trees and bring us children running. My mom was like the Pied Piper…except she was the Belled Bella.
Now fast forward to three years ago…I had picked up this bell at Home Goods, hoping and praying that I could find a spot to put it so that I too could have a dinner bell to ring and my kiddos could come runnin’.
Fast forward to about two years ago…I pack up the dinner bell I had bought and never put up…and moved it to our new house…where I placed it in a to-do box.
Well, you can imagine my excitement when about a month ago, I rediscovered it and was finally able to install it. Basically I was at 11 on the happy scale.
Now the Kristen Bell reference. Have you seen her sloth story on Ellen? Click here if you haven’t.
Basically I love her for that. That’s like me…crying at everything…except I’m nowhere near as cute when I cry. I’m a snotty ugly mess. But the point is, this bell is that for me. It’s my sloth.
And Will loves it too. He asks every night if he can ring it….and then shouts “IT’S DINNAH TIME! C’MON EHBODY!”
Thank goodness he is a too short to reach it without a boost…because we would be eating dinner ALL THE TIME.
Do you have something like that? Something special you’ve been waiting for? Waiting to have in your life and you just get weirdly excited about it? Your own sloth? Or perhaps you can relate to the whole bought-it-moved-it thing? Or you just had a dinner bell every night? I’m like Pavlov’s dog…you ring one, I gotta eat.
Sorry I’ve been MIA folks. The boys were sick. And it seems like life pretty much morphs into a world of hot shower rooms, medicine administering, soothing cries and trying to squeeze every second out of those restful moments. I’m thankful for them because it means I have two boys…but I’ll also be thankful for when those moments are over and we can all breathe a sigh of relief scented with Vicks vapor rub. Now on to the real meat of this thing….
This is our dining room. Well. This is our dining room before we hung up our sentimental spots artwork. You know…the one where I misspelled Riviera. Dang photoshop and its lack of spell check. Not that I would use it…but still…dang photoshop. Seriously…I can be such an airhead. But you already know that or you should if you’ve read this blog for long enough.
Back to the point. Our dining room. It used to look like this:
A while back, we dreamed about painting the trim white (see that photoshopped photo below?!). Just saying “painting the trim white” is like a boost of fresh air and a headache all in one. We love having white trim…we just don’t like painting it…by hand. After painting Will’s room trim by hand and then spraying the office and kitchen trim, we realized spraying is WAY easier. As in WAY.
So one day while Jeremy was at work and the boys were napping (it was a miracle of miracles to have them both down at the same time), I decided to take the room from this….
to this…
I was sweating like a husky in the bahamas. That’s a lot more muscle than I’m usually exerting.
But everytime I looked around the room, the creamy tan trimwork was taunting me. It was enough motivation in of itself to get the room cleared.
When we spray, won’t we have to repaint?
Well, me…I’m so glad I asked that. Yes. We will need to repaint. The overspray will definitely muss up the walls. But I hid a secret from you. The secret is that the walls were already mussed. Apparently my spelling skills are up there with my mixing paint skills.
Way back in the day, when we used oops paint to cover up the RED! paint (yes the color shouted at any passerbyers), I made a fatal error. I bought the bucket of oops paint, had the folks behind the paint counter spin & shake it, and took it home. My mom told me that I should mix it again with a stir stick. Being the daughter I am, I didn’t listen. So after the first two coats were complete, I poured the remainder of paint out in the pan (along with some white clumps that affected the color)…and proceeded to roll patchy places all over the room. Go ahead mom. Say it. You totally told me so.
Most of it was not noticable in photos….especially when I hung up artwork and such. In real life though, it stood out. It bothered me every.day. But the oops color was still better than the RED! so I left it and moved on to other rooms.
So repainting the walls was a must. Repainting the walls and trim…both big musts. When Jeremy got home, he asked what was happening. I told him that we were gonna repaint the dining room. He then asked if we were spraying the trim. Why yes. yes..you are 
He was actually really happy. He loves a fancy dining room.
The rest of the room got shifted into the foyer and the reading room. Just keeping it real…
Over the course of the next two days, I Frogtaped and papered the room within an inch of it’s life. I pushed aside all urges to email/blog/shower/clean/cook and spent every second I could in here. Which leads me to my next point…I need a day. I have decided that I need one day a week where I have an hour or two without the boys. The weekends are awesome for family time and I love being a stay-at-home mom….but if I had just ONE HOUR of a mommy’s helper or babysitter or whatever they call them, I feel like it could be ultra productive. At least I could have a moment of sanity.
Sherry told me about the awesome couple-day-a-week preschool program that Clara is in….maybe I could find something like that. Or do a mothers-morning out. All something to think about. This motherhood thing is hard to know what is right for your kid and what is right for you and to find balance.
Sooo…back to the dining room….the whole thing was ready for paint. Click here for my method for perfectly taped and protected hardwoods.
We also left a surprise for Jeremy on the floor.
My gosh they are too cute. Seriously. It is probably just me and my hormones…but they are just so adorable, right?! Like perfectly iced little cupcakes…just begging for a snuggle. Not that anyone snuggles cupcakes.
Weston…aka the man of my dreams….he was perfecting the shading on his waistline. That funny eyebrow gets me. every. time.
The floors were ready and the doorways got plastic wrapped. These giant sheets of plastic are available at Lowe’s. They are 9×12 I believe and they are 3 for about $3. They are REALLY thin though so you have to be careful not to rip them when hanging them up.
The next two days Jeremy did all the spraying. He said he really enjoys it. It’s the only kind of painting that he does like. Probably because it is FAST. He was done with the entire room AND clean up of the sprayer in thirty minutes each day.
We have the Graco TrueCoat Plus sprayer…I know you’ll ask
And he did two coats. That’s it.
The other area that was calling for a coat of white paint was the ceiling. All the ceilings here are tan. ergh.
So Jeremy rolled while I cut in. We used bright white ceiling paint. It’s flat and covers a lot with one coat.
We decided to paint both levels of the tray ceiling. We considered making the lower level a different color again…but in the end, we just wanted it to be all white. We just felt that this was a darker room and needed more light…especially if we planned a darker wall color.
See how different the white is from the cream?
And the previous wall color even looks different now that it’s against white instead of that Nicole-Kidman’s-skin-color.
Next up? PAINTING! I am so so excited to show you all the wall color. It’s killing me a little just to have to wait to upload the photos. I MIGHT DIE.
spoiler alert…we already bought the table for in this room too! AHHH! Since we were able to save a little in the kitchen, we decided that the extra moolah could be used for a new table. Unfortunately it’s not in there quite yet because we didn’t have a truck to haul it down from Chattanooga…so for now we have a different table in here (that’s actually quite cute for a smaller dinner table). I can’t wait to share both the place-holder table and then when we get the big one, share the one we’ve DROOLED OVER.
Okayokayokay. I’m off to our playdate and then back to getting the house ready for guests.
p.s. This is a sponsored post brought to you by FrogTape. The opinions and spelling mistakes are completely my own based on my experience.
