Hi all, it’s time to share what we accomplished during our weekend at the Alma Project, and I’m so excited about this space!  We started with this room which is dedicated to the kids but was acting more like a storage space than a playroom, and in need of practical kid friendly solutions.  Over the course of three days, the team took this room from totally drab to completely fab!   We had to work with the existing navy carpet and ceiling, but every thing else was fair game so we started with a fresh coat of paint on the walls on Friday (painted baseboards too) and then installed all the elements from the design plan on Saturday and Sunday.

A month ago, Cristin and I got on the phone together to brainstorm ideas to reinvent this space.  It had to be a gender neutral playroom to serve kids ages 2 to 10, and we wanted to make it as inspiring as we could within our budget of $1,000.  We started with the giant wall map in shades of blue and green, then found a modern wavy stripe for the curtains, and I sourced everything else after that, with various online purchases and trips to IKEA, Target, etc.

All of the families who reside share a bedroom (mom plus kids in one room, up to four families in this home) so there was a real need for a community space for kids to be inspired to create and play.  The kids playroom sits right off the kitchen and is also a place for parents to relax and interact with their little ones.

Here’s a look at the room before we began:

And how it now looks after our three day makeover:

Wow, right?   So fresh, so fun, so filled with color! Here’s the grand tour of the new kids playroom at our Alma Project. 

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Hello all, hope you enjoyed your weekend!  Like we’ve been planning for months, we spent ours at our house we adopted this year, transforming the playroom and doing a lot of other painting and sprucing too.  I’ve mentioned before that this project is near and dear to our hearts, it’s the opportunity to give back and use our talents and we feel a calling to do this. 

We started the weekend knowing all the community spaces were in need of a fresh coat of paint.  In search of a great neutral, we started by trying out samples on the wall.  Notice my ultra scientific method of marking the first initial of the paint color swatches :)  We all agreed that the middle one was best, which was ‘Sand White’ by Glidden. 

Glidden generously donated all the paint for this project – we went through four gallons and a quart of green for the back of some bookcases, thank you so much Glidden for your donation!

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Hey everyone, hope you all had a fantastic weekend!  We did a lot of demo in the hall bathroom and reworked the cabinet vanity too, can’t wait to show you!  Now for my exciting announcement… it’s something so important to me and that’s the adoption of a second house for our Alma Project !!

Regular readers may recall how we adopted our first home last year and asI mentioned earlier this year, we really wanted to adopt a second home, in fact we want to adopt a new home every year. So we did!  This one is bigger than our first and has different problems, but we’re very excited to get started.

I can’t think of any better way to bring new readers up to speed on this project than a quote from last year’s initial announcement that we were starting this charitable project, so here it is.

“Whenever someone asks me where I see myself in five years, the first answer that I give is ‘fixing up spaces for those who really need it, not those who can afford it’. I feel in my heart that I want to spend part of my time giving back some of what’s been given to me. The mantra I have heard over and over in my head for months now is ‘there are real people with real needs who need real solutions.’ I talked it over with my hub, and we came to an agreement that we were going to reach out into our own community and find somewhere to help.

We called the Committee on the Shelterless (or COTS) to offer our services, and as with all non-profits, they welcome all the help they can get. We gave them some information, and told them what we had to offer. They ran a background check, and a week later, we adopted a house. The Alma House.

Historically, the act of almsgiving is a material donation to the needy. ‘Alma’ in Spanish means ‘spirit’ or ‘soul’. The name of the street where our first adopted house is located is Alma Drive. We deemed it a sign, and The Alma Project was born.

The Alma Project is the transformation of a fixer upper house into a comfortable functional home for women who desperately need it. Living inside the Alma House are single mothers, previously homeless, who reside for free on the condition that they are learning skills, stabilizing their lives, attending counseling, and remain drug and alcohol free. These mothers are saving their money from their part time jobs and raising their children as best as they can. They have no time or money to fix up this house. They are real women with real needs who need real solutions.”

So friends, I’m excited to share with you the second house and projects we will be taking on this year.  We donate all of our time, but we raise the money to do these projects with help from readers, friends, and donations from home improvement stores.

Allow me to introduce you to our Alma House #2.

It’s a four bedroom home that houses four families – 4 moms and up to 8 children under one roof.

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Hey everyone ~ what a fabulous weekend we had!  It was a great party Saturday night with many of our friends and family in attendance.  We all gathered in the living room around the piano and sang carols with a loud rendition of the Twelve Days of Christmas that included everyone at the party ~ it’s the highlight and an annual tradition.  We spent Sunday in San Francisco at the Dickens Fair (ever been? very fun!) and touring Union Square with the big tree right in the center all lit up for the season.  Here’s another tour of San Francisco at Christmas you might enjoy . . .

As you all know, the mister and I adopted a house earlier this year (see this post on origin of the Alma Project) and we’ve spend the year fixing up the house when we had a spare weekend thanks to donations from so many of you.  On Friday, we stopped by to surprise the families with a Christmas tree and some other holiday decorations.

Becky from Vinyl Crafts kindly donated this inspirational subway art for the wall and a fresh wreath and poinsettias brought some Christmas cheer to the kitchen nook.

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