Birthday Wreaths

I love birthdays! I really, really love them. Especially, when we're celebrating my girls birthdays. I get a kick out of planning the parties and am always looking for new ways to make their birthday special. Miss Monkey is celebrating her 5th birthday this month so we've officially started our new tradition of birthday wreaths!

I always have some kind of wreath on my front doors and have been wanting something birthday related for awhile now. I'd purchased this plastic netting at a local home decor store a year or two ago and didn't have any idea what I'd use it for until I found these awesome plastic balloons at Hobby Lobby. The birthday wreath idea was born!

Aren't the balloons just neat? I love them so much I'm trying to figure out what else I can use them for!

When I was telling a good friend about my plan to make birthday wreaths, she suggested that I put the girls age on the wreath. Genius! I bought a plain number 5 at Hobby Lobby and Modge Podged scrapbook paper on it to make it pretty. I'll switch out the number accordingly as each birthday comes.

I'm going to make a smaller version of the wreath for my side door and post a tutorial soon. Hooray for birthdays!

Pumpkin Pillows!

Last year at one of my favorite home decor boutiques I bought the most adorable pumpkin pillow. I loved it! This year, I wanted more than the one, but the $25 price tag (for the small one) stopped me short! Mine turned out just as cute, and I did the whole bunch for about $15.

What you need:

• Fabric for the body of the pumpkin - I used home decor fabric remnants that I got for super cheap at the fabric and craft store. I used a half yard cut for the largest pumpkin, the smallest was about a quarter yard.
• Fabric for the pumpkin stem - small scraps work great for this
• Fiber-fill
• Fabric scraps for bean bag - color doesn't matter
• Rice or beans - for the bean bag
• Coordinating fabric or ribbon for the bows around the stem

Here's what you do:

• Cut two squares out of your body fabric roughly the size you'll want your finished pillow to be. The sides don't have to be straight, so just make a rough square shape.
• To create the pleat, find the center of your square by folding it in half and marking it with a straight pin. Now, make an accordion fold on the left side, making sure the folded edge hits your center. Pin in place.

• Do the same on the right side. You'll end up with something that looks like this:
  

• Stitch over the pleat to hold it in place. Repeat the process on the second square of body fabric. Set aside.

• Out of a coordinating fabric, create your stem. I cut my stems approximately 3" wide by 4" long. With the right sides together, sew around three sides of the stem, leaving the bottom open.

• Turn the stem right side out and stuff with fiber-fill.
• Take one square of your body fabric and place it on your work area, right side up. Pin your stem to the body fabric and then place the second body piece and place it on top (right sides together). Pin in place.

• Leaving an opening at the bottom, sew the 3 pieces together. Stitch in a rough pumpkin (oval or circular shape). You'll have something that looks like this:

• Trim the excess fabric:
  

• Turn your pumpkin right side out. Stuff with fiber-fill and set aside.
  
• To help the pumpkins stand, you'll need to create a bean bag. Taking your fabric scraps, cut a rectangle or a square that is slightly smaller than the length of your finished pumpkin. Leaving an opening to fill it, sew around the edges.

• Fill with rice or beans and then sew the opening shut.
• Place bean bag inside the pumpkin and hand stitch the opening shut.
• For the bows around the stems I took a length of fabric about 3" wide and sewed down the long end. Once sewn, I turned it inside out and then sewed the two ends closed, making a long ribbon out of the fabric. Of course, a cute ribbon would work just as well!

Enjoy creating your very own pumpkin patch!

Redesign - Hall Table

Another post with yucky photos. Yippee! I tried to get better photos, really I did. Three times I took photos and edited, and they were all about the same. This table is located in my hallway and there aren't any windows that are super close. Add that to the fact that we've got the typical, small hall light and sunscreens on our windows (which is an absolute necessity here) and you've got a recipe for poor photos (even with my big flash). Alas, I tried. You'll still get the idea, though!

So, I've been wanting to do small updates around here (though hubby and I differ on what would constitute "small"), so this is one of the simple updates I started with. This table gets largely ignored - because it's in the hall. What was on the table worked, but not well.

The before:


The after:



The after is just some small, simple changes. We've got tall ceilings here and there is a large barn star hanging above this table. So, the items that were on it before were a little small in scale for that large star (you can see part of the star in the last photo). This new grouping is much better in scale.

The only thing I didn't have in my house prior to this weekend was the lamp. Everything else came from somewhere within my house. That came from a model home sale I went to this weekend. I'd seen signs for them before, but had never stopped. I didn't know what I was missing! Anyway, the lamp I bought for the living room but didn't like it once I got it in there. It works great in the hallway, however! Since the lamp is so tall, I needed something tall to balance it out. So, down came the chicken from atop my laundry room cabinets. A small, gold photo frame from my bedroom and two hardcover books to elevate the other frame and I was done!


The end result is much better and doesn't make the table look as if it were an afterthought. I've wanted to put a different piece of furniture in this niche for awhile (like maybe a small armoire), but I've not been able to find the right piece. I had it in my mind that this would make a cute potting bench for my garden. Now that I've updated the accessories on the table, I'm liking it so much more. If the table ends up sticking around, I think I might finally give it a new coat of paint.

(Want to know a little secret? There is no electrical outlet anywhere near this table, so the lamp is purely decorative. One day I'll get an electrician out here to fix that! In the meantime, the lamp will just have to look fabulous off) :)

A couple of months ago I posed about a menu board I'd made for my kitchen using a tile, some adhesive vinyl and my Cricut machine. You can see that post here. Since I'm not one to just leave things be, especially when I get the craft bug, I made another one! Seriously, I will never be done tweaking my home decor stuff.

This one is even easier than the last. I found this super cute frame and loved it, so I decided that it would be perfect. It's a 5x7 frame. I found a piece of scrapbook paper that I loved and cut it to 5x7. In MS Word, I typed out the word "Menu" and the days of the week in a font I liked and printed it out on a piece of regular paper. Then, using removable adhesive (Hermafix Tabs work great for this!), I attached the scrapbook paper over the printed words and ran it through the printer again. Then I popped it into the frame. The glass works just like a white board, so you write on it with a dry erase marker and wipe off to clean.

Happy menu planning!

The Painted Crown

Taylor is a princess! She'd been wanting more things that were "princessey" (is that a word?) to decorate her room, so a crown above her bed seemed to be just the thing.

First, I went the route of those metal canopy things that the green checkered fabric (you can see it above) would hang from. Then I saw the price of those things in the children/home decor boutiques! My stars, those suckers are expensive! Seriously, I don't think I saw one cheaper than $300!

Above her headboard were the words "follow your dreams" that I cut out on my Cricut machine. It was cute, but the pink on her apple green walls became a shocking pink and I was never really happy with it. So, since the crown canopy thing was out, I decided to take down the vinyl letters and paint a crown.

(I'm going to take a break now and apologize for the photos. We've got a sunscreen on Taylor's window so it's always a bit dark since it faces North. It's screwed on, or I would have taken it off for the photos. Though they don't look it, her walls are a light green color. Continuing on...)

I love the way it turned out:



Want to make one yourself? You can! (Really, it just takes a bit of time). There are two ways to go about it. The first is to free-hand draw the crown on the wall.

You're freaking out now, aren't you?

That's what I did, but I totally get that not every one can do that. If you are one of those people, you'll need an overhead machine. I think that you can check those out from the library.

You'll trace the outline of the crown (or draw it for those of you artsy fartsy types) on the wall using chalk. Why chalk? Because if you mess up, it's really easy to remove it without a trace. Just make sure that you work from left to right if you are right handed, or from right to left if you are left handed, so you don't smudge what you drew.


Once you've got the chalk outline the way you like you can outline it with paint. I love those little paint sample cans that stores are offering now. You know, the tiny one's that let you try the paint on the wall before you buy it. Those little cans of paint are perfect for projects like this!

Don't worry if you can still see a bit of the chalk outline after you've outlined it with paint. Once the whole thing is done and dry, you can use a damp cloth to remove any chalk remnants.


As you're tracing the chalk outline with the paint, you should have something that looks like what is in the photos.

This is what it will look like when it's completely outlined with the paint:

Once you've got it outlined, fill it in!

If you are feeling particularly creative, you can use paint to give it dimension. How, you say? You'll need 2 colors - a light color and a dark color. You can use white and brown (or black), or you can use two different shades of the color you made the main crown in. Since my crown was pink, I used a light pink (it was almost white), and a mauve color.

The general rule of thumb is that if the sun was shining on it, you'll add the light color to the areas that the sun would touch. You'll add the darker color to areas where there would be a shadow.

Confused? You'll add the light color to the top parts, dark colors to the bottom.

You can see how I added the light and dark colors in the photo below.

Since it's a crown, and crowns should have jewels, I used a regular hot glue gun to attach rhinestones to the crown. I'm thinking now it needs more because you can never have too much bling, right? :)

I think I might add Taylor's name in the main section of the crown, too. What do you think?

Taylor's First Big Girl Room

I was going through pictures the other day, looking for a picture of a particular wipe case when I came across these photos of Taylor's first big girl room. We don't like in this house anymore, so while her current room has the same feel as this one, it's still a bit different. For some reason, I've never liked her current room as much as I do this one. I'm not sure why, but I think in some way it's because I wasn't quite ready to move out of our old house and have never felt that same connection with this house as I did with the old house. Who knows?

The dresser I found at an "antique" store. I put antique in quotes because that's what they called themselves, but I don't think anything in that store was old enough to be called antique. It wasn't the dresser that I wanted - they started a sale that day and someone got there minutes before I did and bought *the* dresser. I still mourn the loss of that dresser - it had cabriole legs and such a pretty shape. This dresser was option number two. I purchased it with the intent on painting it. You can't really see the detail in these pictures, so I'll do another post on it soon.

The hat lamp I adore, and it came from Ebay. I added the ribbon. The hat came adorned with some kind of tulle and fake flower atrocity. Blech!

The purses that are hanging on the wall in the first picture that are holding, well, purses were a collaboration between me and my dad. I drew the shapes, he cut and sanded the wood, and I painted. I adore these little purses - they just scream Taylor to me (she is such a purse girl!). One of these days I'll put some of these in my store.

The bookcase in the picture below runs the entire wall. It turns into a window seat and then goes back to a tall bookcase on the other side of the window. It's all one unit and all built in. I designed it, and then had a company build it for us. I love the functionality of it - it has an incredible amount of storage, but the footprint is small (it's about 14" wide), so it doesn't make the room feel smaller. I liked it so much that when we moved, it was the first thing I contracted to have done.

I spent a good deal of the day yesterday cleaning and organizing Taylor's current bedroom, and Megan's is on tap today. Once they are somewhat presentable, I'll photograph them and post them soon.

Father's Day Gift

I do such a good job of coming up with thoughtful, handmade gifts for my Mom, MIL and Grandmother, but I'm sorely lacking when it comes to doing the same for my Dad, FIL and Grandfather. So, this is what I came up with for my grandfather for Father's Day. I knew he'd love to have a picture of the girls on his desk, but wanted to do something different than just a framed picture. So off I went to Home Depot for a tile.

You'll need:

• A tile (I used a tumbled marble 6 x 6 tile)
• Modge Podge (NOT the kind made for paper)
• Cricut Vinyl and a Cricut machine
• Or, rub ons (If you don't have a Cricut machine)
• a small easel to display it

Here's how I did it:

• I purchased a tumbled marble 6 x 6 tile from Home Depot
• In Paint, I opened the photograph I wanted and re sized it down to approx. 3 x 5 or so. Then I printed it on regular paper to double check the size of the photo against the size of my tile to make sure it fit the way I wanted.
• Next, I taped a piece of white tissue paper over the printed image. I then ran the sheet of paper with the tissue paper overlay back through the printer, printing the photograph onto the tissue paper.
  

• I carefully peeled the tissue paper off of the printer paper, being careful not to tear it. Then, using scissors, I cut it to the size I wanted to adhere to the tile.
• Using a foam brush, paint a thin layer of Modge Podge directly onto the tile
• Put the tissue paper with the image right side up onto the tile. You'll have to be careful about placement as you lay the image down, because the tissue paper is so thin that you won't get a chance to reposition it without tearing it.
• Smooth down the tissue paper.
• Using the foam brush, paint a thin layer of Modge Podge over the tissue paper to seal it.
• Wait for it to dry.
• For the lettering and the embellishment, I used my Cricut machine and Cricut Vinyl. The lettering was done with the "Plantin Schoolbook" cartridge and the embellishment was done with the "Accent Essentials" cartridge. If you don't have a Cricut machine, then rub on letters that are found in the scrapbook section of your local craft store would also work.
• Place it on an easel to display. You could also glue ribbons to the back of the tile that you could use to hang it.

Voila! An easy and cute gift!

Knife Block Re-do!

Since I've got the itch to redecorate, I started in the kitchen. Nothing major so far, but I've updated the merchandising on my counters a bit and I'm much happier with what I've got going on now. (another post on that to come!).

Once I got everything placed where I wanted it on the counters, I knew I had to do something about my knife block. It's pretty necessary - I cook every night, so it gets a lot of use. That said, it has to stay on my counters, but I'm not digging the look of it. There's nothing really wrong with it, but it could be so much better! So out came the paint.

Here is the before:



And, here is the after:



So much cuter, isn't it? It took a couple of steps to get it to this point, but it was still a quick and easy process. Here's how I did it:
1. Sand the entire block to get the old varnish off. Wipe dust off with a damp cloth. Let dry.
2. Once it's dry, paint with a base coat. I used white on mine. Let dry.
3. Once dry, paint with a crackle medium, following the instructions on the can. I used a crackle medium by Behr that I got for around $10 at the Home Depot. Let dry.
4. Paint with a top coat, following the instructions on the crackle medium can. For my top coat, I used an off white/light tan color. Let dry. (are you seeing a trend here?)
5. Apply an antiquing glaze around the edges to give it an aged look (I used American Accents Distressed Ivory Antiquing Top Coat)
6. To get the monogram I used MS Word. I printed out the letter in the size I wanted on regular paper. I then went to a window and put the paper up with the printed size against the glass. Then I used a pencil to trace the image onto the back side of the paper. I then taped the letter onto my block, printed side out and traced around it. This will create a pencil version of the letter on the block. Then, I painted in the letter with craft paint.
7. Apply clear coat to seal it.

Now, I should say that since the knifes will be used on food that you should use paint that is non-toxic. I didn't check that (though I know I should have), but I didn't paint the inside of the knife slots - just the exterior of the block. But still - check just to be safe.

I just love the finished product!

I'm getting the itch to redecorate!

We've lived in this house a little over three years now. Seems like during our marriage, we moved every three years or so to a new home. This is our "forever" home, so we're not going anywhere! Problem is, it's been 3 years, so I'm ready for a change!

My husband is not overly thrilled that I'm ready to redecorate. He's good with things staying the same. I'm not! There are plenty of things in this house that I've not been satisfied with for quite awhile, so I'm going to focus there first. I went to school for a degree in Interior Design, so I know exactly what I want. Problem is getting my wallet to agree to it! But, I'm a bargain shopper at heart, so I'm up for the frugal challenge.

The first three rooms on my list (and, they are biggies!) are the Master Bedroom, the Kitchen (it's begging me for new back splashes!) and the Den.

I was going to take pictures of these rooms to post today, but then I realized that I'd better pick up a bit first. So, watch for the before pictures soon!

Happy Feet!

When Taylor was about 6 weeks old I took her to a paint your own pottery place and created a plate that had her footprints on it. I love it so much that I kept going back and making more. It made for easy presents for my husband - he just had to give me a gift certificate and I was thrilled! Taylor's feet are getting too big to fit on the plates, so now we've moved on to her hands. Since Megan's feet still fit, I'm adding to her foot plate collection. I've got them displayed on a soffit in my dining room and I love seeing them all lined up. It's such a fun way to see how much the girls have grown and looking at them never fails to make me smile! I've officially run out of room here, but I'm not done with my feet plates yet! I've got a new row started in my bedroom. I just adore my rows of little feet!

My favorite Christmas Decorations from this year

This was my favorite part of my Christmas decorations this year. It was easily seen from my living room and was directly over the doorway to my den. It was a new decoration this year and I loved it! Two of the wreaths are candle rings, the other is a small wreath. They are hanging from 3M Command Hooks (one of the most wonderful inventions!). The words I made on my Cricut machine using brown Cricut vinyl. I know it's late for Christmas decorations, but I figured if I posted it here, I'd be able to find it to recreate it next year!

The Painted Garden

Not that long ago it was time to change the nursery to a big girl room for my youngest daughter. When the transition was complete, I was happy with the result, but one of the walls needed some pizazz. A store here had some flowers painted all over their walls, complete with rhinestones, and I thought the idea was fabulous. So, I adapted it a bit and painted a border on the wall. I used the little paint samples that they sell so you can test out a color before buying a gallon to paint the flowers. I did the flowers free-hand, but you could certainly use templates or stencils. I got rhinestones in several different colors and shapes and attached them with hot glue. Right now they are stuck fast to the wall, so hopefully, I won't need to remove them anytime soon!


It turned out really cute (though, I think I'm going to go back and add some more detail with a small pen) and Megan loves it! The wall is directly across from the window, so when the sun hits the wall just right, her room sparkles!

Our own art gallery

There is no shortage of masterpieces that are created in our house and our old method of displaying them just wasn't cutting it. So, I created our own art gallery in the hallway. It was so easy to do and the girls love being able to change out their creations themselves. This is how you can create your own art gallery, too!

1. Pick out 3-4 different colors of paint (I used those small samples of wall paint that you can get at home improvement stores.

2. Paint solid color rectangles on the wall. Since creations can be made with the paper in portrait or landscape configuration, make sure you don't make them all the same direction. Make the rectangles larger than the size of paper that will be hanging in them so it will act like a painted "frame" around the picture once it's hanging. I did mine all by hand, but if the looseness of that will get your blood pressure going, use a level and a ruler to make the lines perfectly straight.

3. Paint swirls, stripes or polka dots on the rectangles so that they'll look fabulous even if there isn't a picture hanging on them. Use your imagination and have fun!

4. Head to the office supply store and pick up some binder clips or bulldog clips to hold the artwork. (I found my fancy clips at Staples). I put half of a Velcro dot on the clip and the other half on the wall. That way, the girls can pull the clips down easily to change out their artwork and then hang them back up again.

Have wings, Fly high!

My youngest has a grouping of butterflies, a dragonfly and a fairy in the corner of her bedroom that she just loves. Lately, she's become very interested in having wings and flying high up to the clouds. Since her butterflies weren't in the clouds, we decided to add some!

To do the same, you'll need about 3 yards of tulle. We used two different colors (blue and white), so we used 6 total yards of tulle. I cut the width of tulle in half, since off the bolt it's too wide and put the two different colors together. To attach the tulle clouds to the ceiling I just used white push pins. Every 12" to 18" I'd add another pin, and I just continued around. To make it easier, you could cut your tulle into a couple of different sections (like 1.5" yard lengths). After you've got the tulle up all you have to do is fluff!