Mini Wreaths for every Season!

Plumbers insulation, not just for plumbing. Or insulation. They make perfect wreaths! And for much cheaper than the styrofoam wreath rings at craft stores. For Thanksgiving I wrapped some awesome green burlap ribbon around the pipe insulation and added some flowers I had from an old wreath I didn't like anymore. For Christmas I got some red ribbon, white flowers from the dollar store and a sprig of cranberries from Micheals. I need ideas on a "rest-of-the-year" wreath for my old window!

Christmas Decor!

Christmas is my favorite time of year! I love decorating. I love lights. I love an excuse to bake cookies. This year I tried my best to tone down the colors in my living room and go for more of a Pottery Barn look. One new addition is my Noel sign inspired completely by this post that has been all over Pinterest:

I also painted this deer with sweet red glitter craft paint. Thanks Martha Stewart!

Printable Silhouette here.

Here are a few more decorations from this year:

Decorative Crate - Christmas Edition

My aforementioned crate has had a Christmas Makeover! Just a few sticks and pine cones from your (or in my case, your friend's) backyard, string lights, dollar store ornaments and ribbon & voila!

Super Classy Mini Pumpkins

My fall decorating style is changing from "Cheap Orange" and "Can't afford full priced items" to a somewhat more adult deco style. It took a lot of self control to not put out ALL of the random decorations out, but I went with a more subtle look this year.  Anyway, I had a bunch of these terrible dollar store mini pumpkins from last year and instead of throwing them away I decided to reuse them somehow. I painted them tan and beige, a la Pottery Barn. Then I added a little light blue so it matches my hallway tables. Super easy way to turn cheap into chic!

Side Table Redo

A few months ago I had my very first yard sale. It was so exciting! I didn't sell all of the junk but I was so happy to get rid of our old coffee table & side tables. I was keeping them in the office and aside from totally hating them (glass tops are so 90s) they were also just taking up too much space. So naturally, after selling the table to clear space, I bought a side table to refinish and put in their place. This table cost $10.50 at Goodwill. $10.50!! I really had no choice, I HAD to get it.

I got a little excited and forgot to take the before picture and started painting. The hardware used is the original, it really didn't even need to be changed. To be honest, I hardly sanded it. One reason is that I hate sanding. That's actually the only reason. Sometimes wood stain bleeds through light colored paint (like this awesome off-white) but I knew I'd be doing two coats so I wasn't too worried about it. Of course once it was painted I had to sand the corners and edges to make it look old. I think it looks fabulous!

Gallery Wall. Doggy Style.

Frame hoarding. It's happens suddenly and without warning. For me, it happened during the planning stages of my first gallery wall. I now have more frames than I have available wall space for. Anyway, here it is! As you can probably tell, I have Australian Shepherds. I had painted the two paintings of my dogs a while ago but didn't really know how to display them. (Yes-I'm a crazy dog lady). Then my craftiest friend suggested a gallery wall for my craft room! I found all the frames at thrift stores. I painted the black ones and the light gold one. Then I painted one of the mats the same light gold. Love!

Hallway

I've wanted a hallway entrance table for the longest time, so a while ago I decided to wing it a little bit and see what happens. I got this old tv stand type cabinet from Goodwill for about 5 bucks, took the doors off of it and repainted it. I forgot to take a  before picture but here is the after:

Ok, I know what you're thinking...that's a bookcase, not an entry table. Trust me, it took me a while to get used to the idea, but it fits the space perfectly! I really couldn't get a bigger/longer table in there anyway. Right?! It didn't have a back so I just used some super durable cardboard and painted the chevron stripes on it.

I love my burlap frames!

After a few months I had the itch to refinish something else and got that 3-tier table from goodwill for a few bucks. I didn't really have high hopes for it but it turned out really cute in the hallway. The main thing I did differently with the 3-tier table is I took a really old paintbrush and lightly brushed the edges with white paint to make it look vintage-y. It works better than sanding the paint if you don't want the wood color to come through. I wanted it to look overly done, if that makes sense.

Framed picture of Barney, of course.

Crates

I've been seeing these decorative crates at Home Goods and really wanted one, so I decided to try and make one. I admit, I had no idea what I would use this crate for. This did not help my case when my husband asked me what I was doing with all the random wood all over my craft room. Anyway, here's the final product:

I made the 4 frames first, then glued them to the 4 posts and reinforced them with nails. I knew I wouldn't be using them for anything heavy duty, but if I were I'd probably use screws instead.

I went with light blue to go along with my sort-of-beachy decor. I added handles with some jute rope. I figure I could just switch it out for every season! I also ended up making a second crate a few days ago, this one is a little bigger and right now I'm storing my blankets and throws in it:

I love them! And since I had the wood just laying around from my pops, it pretty much only cost me the sweet blue paint.

Elephants

Elephants are my favorite animals. You probably could have guessed by the giant elephant in my blog header. Anyway, so my dad always has these random pieces of wood all over his garage:

Every time I visit, I gladly take a bunch of them off his hands and create things with them. One of the first things I made was this elephant painting. This was back when animal silhouettes were all over Pinterest.

I want to point out that my husband argued with me about the sunshine background. He claimed I had the colors backward and the dark orange should have been on top and light yellow on the bottom. "Realistically", he said. I think that would have looked ridiculous! I stand by my decisions.

aand again....

Ok, so I'm giving it ONE more try.

I'm going through and realizing that I've completed so many projects in the last year and I could actually start this blog again and actually have stuff to post! You see, for a while there I let work get in the way of my crafts and didn't have time to do anything else but work. Then I decided to work part time...WAY better! Ok, so right now I'm unemployed but that's not the point. Anyway, I'm going to post all my crafts from this year and then the ones I'm currently working on.  To start things off, here is a picture of Barney helping me cut burlap for my frames project. Enjoy!

Laundry Room Makeover

I finally finished my laundry room makeover. More like I finally finished One Tree Hill and had nothing else lined up. Here are the before pictures:

Before

It literally was all white. At first I thought starting a laundry room makeover would mean that I was a super boring old lady. Like the laundry room was the only space I cared about! The truth is, it really bothered me how boring it was. Once I accepted the fact that I needed my laundry room to be more than what it was, I threw myself into my work. At first I was going to do a chevron accent wall (the wall opposite the washer and dryer) but to be honest, drawing chevron stripes is incredibly difficult and requires the use of math which I didn't think was necessary for a laundry room wall. So I went with stripes. They took a lot of time to draw out and measure, and they're still kind of crooked but you can't really tell.

 

  The color was a little darker than I imagined but I do like it. I found the safety pin at HobbyLobby.com and couldn't resist. The letter D is mainly to cover the giant dryer plug, I'll probably find something else to put there. Also I changed the colors on my laundry sign. It really needed to be softened up a little. The whole idea started with the need for a "counter", without spending too much money on an actual counter. The plywood came from Lowes, they even cut it for me. It took two coats of wood stain because I didn't sand it well enough the first time. I was going to mount it to the wall but I just put down some dollar store grip shelf liner under it and it totally works. Better Homes Magazine anyone?

Laundry.

I decided to give my laundry room a little makeover. It's taking a bit longer than I thought, I blame Netflix for sucking me into another show with 9 seasons that I must watch in a month or less. I did, however, manage to whip up this sign in between seasons of One Tree Hill. I found this post on Pinterest and pretty much copied her colors exactly. I traced the letters and everything, since the last time I tried to make a sign and free hand the letters, it was an epic fail. It ended up feeling a little "military" to me...I guess we will see how it looks once it's up.

Birds.

This was my project for the weekend. I love these birds, there's something very romantic about them :)

My Blog, Revamped.

I decided to give the blogging thing another try. We'll see how it goes this time. It's going to be a mix of my crafting efforts, photography efforts, and anything else I can think of. It will be largely influenced by Pinterest, so I'm sure there will be more fails than wins.