Summer Projects

Being a teacher, I value my summers off!  I cringe when I have to make doctor appointments or do a workshop for school - I mean, that is taking up precious summer time!  Between catching up on all my shows that were sitting on the DVR from the school year, visiting family, welcoming visitors, shopping, etc - I managed to squeeze in a few projects this summer.  I really thought I would get more done with my time, but I just couldn't drag myself off the couch some days! And I did NOT feel guilty once.
I added a few new pretties to the collection.

I had been eyeing this pouf at Target for months - finally on clearance so I snagged it!

Added some beauties to my M wall. If you are ever in the Austin area check this store out.

Kitchen rug (I painted the kitchen cabinets and my old one just didn't go - you understand right?).  I swear Murphy can find his way into a picture no matter what - he loves the attention.

Goodwill frames spray painted and hung to fill up a large blank wall and old plastic mirror framed with some old fence wood.  This is in my guest room that is a revolving door - one guest in one guest out.

My big project this summer was painting the kitchen cabinets.  I will post about those soon, I need to take some new pictures of  my fresh paint job!  I love how they turned out - but now I need a new back splash...subway tile here we come...

A Master in the Making (Part 2)

In the past months I have been able to scratch a few more things off the the master bedroom list.  Hubby and I made a headboard for our bed.

We took a sheet of plywood and covered it with quilt batting and then the fabric of our choice.  We used a staple gun to hold everything together.  It is nice and simple.  I really like the pop of color that it adds to the bedroom.  Not to mention it adds some cushion to the back of my head while reading at night!

My doodle, Murphy, would not budge while I was trying to take pictures of our bedding.  Why should he?  He rules this house anyways.  I originally had all white bedding (which is still my favorite, but with dogs...), but recently purchased this mustard yellow quilt and shams while shopping in Fredericksburg, Texas.  It is a lot lighter for summer and I am obsessed with mustard yellow.  The grey bed skirt can really go with whatever comforter I decide to use because I usually stick to solids with the bedding color.  And my (apparently Murphy's too..) blanket with the pom poms is from a local store here in town that we found hidden behind some furniture while searching for the right color.

Mint - another one of my favorite colors.  Hubby and I remodeled this dresser a couple of years ago during our apartment living.  I couldn't paint walls, so I painted furniture!  It was originally a dark wood with no pulls.  I collected the pulls over time and this was the perfect piece for them. 

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Doors have been painted black...and need a good cleaning apparently..

Looks like I will never be using the new blanket if I have to fight Murphy and Rosie for it!

Here is an updated list of to do's for the the master:

-paint -crown molding -flooring -new electrical plugs and covers -bedding -area rug -head board -bench/chairs at end of bed -closet doors/handles -paint french doors black -curtains on french doors -hide TV cords -vanity
We are ticking right along as we can afford it.  I want my next purchase to be a large rug that I can sink my toes into while walking around in the room.  Solid, pattern, color?  What do you think?
With the summer off from work - I have started painting my kitchen cabinets.  You can look back here for my mood board on the kitchen.  I will post before and progress pictures soon.

New pillows, New paint!

We have got some new little friends in the house.  And by friends, I mean, new accessories. I have been working on some small projects around the house, while we are saving money for some larger ones.

Recently, my grandfather gifted me with my grandmother's 1960's Singer sewing machine.  She looks like new and works like it too.  After a few evenings of reading over the manual (almost throwing in the towel) and lessons from my mother in law - I have some new throw pillows for the couch!

I must tell you that the new elephant pillow - I picked her up at Pier 1 on clearance.

I am addicted, people! I picked a simple first project, so that I could have instant gratification.  It worked.  One couch is full of new pillows, while the other one looks "blah" now.  I must push on and sew some new pillows for it - darn...not!

I used 18x18 inch pillow inserts and created a simple envelope closure for the back of the pillow.  I like to be able to take the pillow covers off and throw them in the wash when needed.

Guests are in and out constantly at our new house (welcomed of course)! We are trying to fix up the guest room so our friends and family feel comfortable.  We received an old piano bench that was going to serve as a luggage bench at the foot of the bed in our guest room.  It was definitely in need of some TLC and it came to the right place!

I sanded her down to begin with, then spray painted the whole thing white.  After several light coats and some dry time, I taped off the bottom of each leg.  I used metallic gold spray paint on each leg to add a little pop.  A little more dry time...then some polyurethane spray to top it off.  Our "new" piano bench got two thumbs up from Hubby's parents on their last visit. Hubby and I love tackling big projects - but I also love these little projects that I can do on my own while he is at work.  Sewing machine here I come.

House of Turquoise

While red is a wonderful color and looks great on many things, my front door is not one of them.  YES, many homes look so charming with a red front door - again, not mine. Guess what? When we bought our home - red door!  Not only did it not look good with the original color of the house, it did not look good with our re-painted house.  When we were house searching I already knew I wanted a turquoise front door.  I was not sure of the shade, but it was going to be turquoise.  I walked up to every door with my eyes squinting, trying to see if I could picture the color change on the door.  We didn't really have that long of a home search before we landed on ours.  Walking up to it - the door color would be changed along with the house color.  So - no worries there.

I thought I had a better "before" picture of the red door, but in all the move and rush of painting - this is as good as it gets.  The bottom right picture is the color of red that was on the outside of the door. A few months down the road after the purchase, when we began to paint the outside of the house - we had a little "snafu" if you will.  I will save you from this story - until another time of course.  Lets just say I was completely re-thinking my whole color scheme including my beloved turquoise door!  Hubby fixed everything (as usual..blah) and I got my door!

We do have a glass storm door that is not pictured.  I have considered removing it (eye sore), but the dogs love it so much when we have the door open because they can look outside and enjoy harass the people and animals that walk by all day! We have plans to paint our porch tile grey.  We will use the outdoor porch paint that we purchased for our striped floors in the craft room.  We had it matched to the outside of the house because we knew we would not use the whole gallon inside.   Don't ya'll just love our gold mail slot?  Yes, that is really how we get our mail!  I have a basket inside to catch everything.

I loved the "after" so much that we decided to paint our side door by the garage.

And our back doors. The dark grey and white trim on our house makes these doors POP! The front door is still red on the inside.  I cannot decide what color to paint it.  Take a look at our living room and give me some help! White, light grey, dark grey, turquoise?  Keep it red? HELP! Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Painting our Vinyl Floors

As promised - a little DIY info on painting our vinyl mud room (turned craft room) floors!  Also, a little eye candy for ya - Rosie Posie in all her glory.  As I mentioned in my last post - we were the proud owners of a brown vinyl or linoleum floor - I'm not really sure of the difference.  Our brown floors were faded to a lovely shade of green right by all the doors - compliments of the sun.  These floors didn't really bother me when we moved in - I knew I would be ripping them out eventually.  Well 9 months later, they were receiving an eye roll every time I walked through the room.  Determined to figure out a temporary fix - I went to Pinterest.  This and this really inspired me to give painting our floors a try.  I figured that if we messed it up too bad, we could get to covering them with new flooring at some point.  

We purchased two colors of porch paint and primer to do the job.  We matched our grey paint to the outside of our house so that we can use the same gallon to re-paint our front porch tile.  After a good cleaning, we covered the entire floor in one coat of primer.

We then (after barely letting it dry because I am impatient) covered the entire floor in one coat of our white porch paint.  We let it dry over night...torture for me, and put another coat of white the next evening.  

After both coats of white paint dried, we measured off 8 inch stripes and laid them with painter's tape. This was the tedious part, but having Hubby help me really made a difference.  Measuring and numbers make me sweat and throw things occasionally.  We painted every other stripe with our grey porch paint.  Let it dry ANOTHER night..ahhh...and then finished up with coat #2 of grey paint. I did have a little bit of grey paint bleed under the tape.  Not enough for me to go back over anything though.  Several of the tutorials I looked at said that after you lay the tape, to go over it again completely with white paint.  It sets the tape really well.  Of course I did not do that, because we know why (time, time, time).

Overall, we are thrilled with how the floors turned out.  The craft room is a high traffic area and the paint has held up very well so far.  I have been cleaning it with my Swiffer Wet Jet and the results are great.  If not anything, we have a great temporary fix until money starts growing on trees!  

We have considered looking into staining the concrete that is underneath one day down the road.  Anyone have any experience (good or bad) with DIYing that? Let me know in the comments!

Craft Room Progress

The craft room is under way!  In the back of our house (leading out to the backyard) we have another add on room that we really consider a mud room.  It has 3 great doors that have windows top to bottom.  They let in great light.  The room also came with a built in cabinet and counter top.  Since we moved in, the counter top has really only housed Hubby's tools and projects (pretty much an eye sore).  Let's be real.

One day, while standing in the room with my thinking cap on - I decided this was to be my craft room.  I consider myself a crafty person and figured Hubby would like all my crafty things in one spot.  Brilliant.  With built in cabinets already in place - this would be the perfect spot to get messy.

I like to be inspired when working on a project or writing a post.  Nice, pretty, creative things around me usually help!  YES, this room is still in progress, but so far - we have painted of course (this room was an interesting shade of green), we added a solid cedar shelf above the cabinets, I painted the cork board, and we cut out some chicken wire. Still left to do - more storage, shelves for printer and  printer accessories,  I have my eye on some Nate Berkus accessories for the desk.  Also, in time I would like to have this counter top magically turn into a butcher block (maybe when we redo the kitchen).

Painting this floor dramatically changed the look of the room.  Before - the floor was a brown vinyl that looked like tile. HIDEOUS.  It was faded to green from the doors never having window treatments on them.  Hubby and I considered many options before painting.  All those options totally busted the budget we had set for this room.  While browsing Pinterest, I came across several pins about painting the floor.  Showed it to Hubby - we were painting the next night.  I plan to post a tutorial about painting the floor, so if you are interested in that - come back to me soon!

The turquoise stools were originally brown and in my parents' kitchen until they built their second home and finally upgraded.  They sat in the attic for several years until Hubby and I moved into our second apartment and had a bar that needed some bar stools.  Mom and Dad - your stools made another move and live on (with a little face lift)! 

Tripp is making his debut and loving every minute of it.  He is very photogenic, don't ya think?

DIY Delicate Rings

Another DIY, man I'm feelin' crafty!  My good friend and fellow blogger, Abby came to visit this weekend and we concluded our weekend with some Pinterest projects.  We came across a TON of good tutorials on making some little delicate, dainty rings and we decided to tackle the project.  These little babies almost didn't come to be: fingers+thin wire+small stones+VERY tacky glue = patience overload (which I CANNOT handle).  I never thought I had big hands or fingers, but geeze after doing this project I feel like I have dinosaur hands!! But, do not fear, we pushed through and actually got into a good groove after throwing the first few across the room.  We also ended up pretty much making it up as we went (sometimes that is when the best projects form) and got what we got...AWESOME new jewelry.

Materials:

- 22 gauge wire

-16 gauge wire (thick)

-E-600 glue

-wire cutters, needle nose pliers (if you have jewelry making tools then use those!)

-stones of any color and size

*all items were purchased at Michael's and Hobby Lobby

1. To create the actual ring - cut about 2 inches of the 16 gauge (thicker) wire.  Then cut about 2-3 inches of the 22 gauge (thin) wire. 

2. I used a crayola marker to create the mold for the ring.  After making a circle with it- just mold it to fit whichever finger you want it on. Using the pliers I clamped the ends of the wire around each other so they would not poke.

3. The stones that I used had a tiny hole in each of them, which ended up coming in handy.  I slid the thin wire through the hole.

4. After the wire was through the hole, I then created the pattern I wanted on top of the stone.  I created an "X" in the stone pictured.  You can really get creative with this if you desire! Make sure to leave enough wire on each side to attach the stone to the ring.

5.  After some trial and error of creative patterns - start with one end and wrap it around the ring that was created.

6. Pull nice and tight and wrap the other end around the rest of the ring.

7. And there you have it - a new ring...or 10!

8.  I also created some rings without wrapping the wire around the actual band (this actually happened BEFORE I figured out that I could just make the wire longer and wrap it around the band).  I made my pattern and just tucked the wire under the stone, dabbed some glue and attached it to the band.  I leaned the ring up against the wall to let it dry.

9.  The left ring is with glue and the right ring is the wrapped wire.  I really like how they both turned out - personal preference I guess (and if you are impatient and cannot stand waiting for the glue to dry you have another choice)!

Considering the nature of my blog - OF COURSE these will reside on the vanity that Hubby built me in our master bedroom.  The vanity will be introduced shortly once I have found the perfect light to hang over it!  For right now - the vanity is housing my nail polish and headband collection.  Not to mention a few Birchbox samples scattered about.

Don't forget to head over to my good friend Abby's blog and get some fabulous fashion tips!

DIY Side Tables

After posting my Movie Room Inspiration and receiving our couches - I have turned it into high gear in the decorating department.  I was licking my lips and rubbing my hands together as those couches were being moved in.  The wheels were turning and Hubby was tightening his hands on the wallet.  We immediately went to Target to get the Threshold side tables I had my eye on.  Well, OF COURSE they did not have them in-store.  That is okay - I am just as good of an online shopper.  Since we struck out with the tables, we took a peek at the rugs.  I had actually been eyeing this rug for outside by the pool, but it is the size we needed in the movie room, surprisingly soft,  and it was on sale - score and SOLD! Before I could even ask if we could get it, Hubby had pulled it off the shelf and had it on top of his shoulder - that was a good sign, so I went with it. As we were walking out of the store Hubby let me know that he had two old wooden stools at work that were going to the thrown out - would I want them? UM DUH. I can always do something with those.  Before we made it to the car we had decided we were going to make our own side tables for the movie room - with the stools!  Wheels turning I tell you!

Materials:
- white spray paint
-metallic gold spray paint
-Polyurethane clear coat
-sand paper
-circular saw (any type would get the job done)

1. We  Hubby used a circular saw and cut all four legs to the height we wanted (we measured another table in our living room to get the correct height)

2. Using a sander, we sanded all four legs, top and bottom of stool to get a good surface for the paint to adhere to

3. We actually spray painted the whole stool white first (Hubby thought I wanted the whole thing white and just the bottom of the legs dipped in gold) then we taped around the legs so we would not get gold all over the white and went to town with the gold paint

4. Ta- da! Removed tape and sprayed two coats of Polyurethane on top for a glossy finish (and to prevent water rings)

Now, I know it is not my Threshold table I originally wanted - but I am happy with it! The other stool is in the workshop awaiting sanding. She will join her long lost twin soon enough.

The movie room is making it's transformation as we speak and I am excited to show you the final product hopefully soon!

A Dining Room for Two (for now)

Hubby and I were super excited when we bought this home with a space specifically designated as a dining room.  We have been living in one bedroom apartments where we could barely fit our folding table with four chairs.  And by four chairs I mean - two chairs out with two more in the closet that only got pulled out when company was over.  Now we can easily seat 6 chairs around our table with room for more! Oh the little things in life!

But first we needed a dining room table!  I had in mind exactly what I wanted - wooden farm table. Have you ever searched for a large wooden farm table?? EXPENSIVE!!!  Hubby always says that my eyes go to the most expensive thing in the store..me? Never. Deny, Deny, Deny.   We had to come up with plan B.

There he is - Hubby - new birthday present to help with the table!

Okay Plan B - make our own.  We LOVE to DIY so this was no problem, especially because we had 2 large pieces of our actual wall lying around in the garage.  Our house has cedar plank walls under the sheetrock. Nice and sturdy (and you can ALWAYS find a stud when hanging something!) and beautiful!  At some point before we owned the house, parts of the wall had been taken out and were preserved in our garage.  We (...Hubby) cleaned them up and nailed them together - added the legs, stained it, and TADAAAA! I am sure he will argue that is was NOT that easy - but hey it was THAT easy to watch!

My parents gifted us with our beautiful green chairs from World Market (similar here).  I have a temporary plan for our folding chairs that we have placed around the table right now. I will post when those are complete!  I am searching for the perfect chairs to complete that table - I cannot decide.  I go back and forth between having Hubby build a bench for one side or not  - I like the look, but not sure how practical it is (with no back on the bench). Plentyyyy of time to decide.

This dining room was another room in our house that did not have crown molding, but had the space between the sheetrock that needed to be covered up.  We added that and painted the walls - same color as the living room.

I LOVE our old french doors that go to the master bedroom.  I had a plan all along to re-paint them and decided on black.  I like how bold the doors are now.  A real feature to the room.  They really stand out as you open the front door and enter the house.  Our next step is to add some privacy to the master bedroom.  Our thoughts are to "frost" the glass in the doors or add curtains on the bedroom side of the doors.  I am leaning towards curtains because sometimes I really like that you can view the master as you walk by the doors (only when it is clean of course). If we added curtains I could push them open when I want and close them when things are scary in there.

Our dining room for two is perfect for us right now and there is plenty of room for a (cough cough) high chair (cough cough) .....someday!