Love letter art

This was one of the projects I finished last week but didn't post it on time. Shocker.

Have I mentioned how amazing my husband is? And it's not the absence that has made me fond of him. He's funny, charming, tall, dark and ruggedly handsome. He's smart, speaks 3 languages, is a mechanical engineer, and flies blackhawks for the army. Don't ask why he chose me, because I have no idea. It must have been the buttermilk fried chicken I made for him that coincidentally, my mother also used to woo my father with.

Anyways, my husband sent me a love letter in Portuguese the other day. I am not as amazing as him in the language department The only one I speak is English and some days it barely qualifies. So I printed out his letter onto vinyl, painted some canvases black and spent the remainder of the night trying to get the letters to stick to the canvas. Which those of you that have tried already know, didn't work very well. A pair of tweezers and some spray lacquer later and I had personalized art.

Now every time I look at it, I'll be reminded that there is someone out there who is probably way too good for me, but loves me anyways.

Well, hell.

If I can't be on time for church, can anyone really expect me to be on time to post projects? Here's another project that I didn't finish on time. White ruffle lamp shades. I saw this somewhere in blog land and tried to find it again, but gave up after 3 hours and 1 migraine. Here's pretty much step by step instructions.

I started by serging one side of strips of fabric and then doing a loose stitch on the other side so it could be gathered. I hot glued them onto a generic lamp shade one layer at a time.

I hot glued double fold bias tape to cover the unfinished edges at the top.

That's pretty much it in a nutshell. Not too difficult. If you don't have a serger, unfinished edges would look cute too or you can just roll and hem the bottom. I think my sister used an old bedskirt that was already hemmed to make hers.

Sorry about the super high quality pictures. My children seem to have misplaced my camera. Probably in a toilet somewhere. I better find that before Wednesday!

Better late than never

So I had a couple hiccups in my bench project. I spent more than I wanted to on the supplies and so I sat looking angrily at them, not wanting to start the project. And it's a good thing too. Because a woman in Scottsdale put an ad on craigslist for an upholstered bench that had the exact legs I wanted. And some hot legs they were. Except it was upholstered in pink chenille. So I returned the unused supplies and paid a nice lady 40 bucks and saved myself way more time.

All I had to do at that point was reupholster it in the stripe. I bought some muslin fabric at Hobby Lobby and textile medium at Michaels. I'd never used a medium before and didn't know it really worked. But it was super easy. Two parts paint to one part medium. When I use regular paint it leaves the fabric hard and plastic feeling. The medium made it soft and washable. (side note: the paint leaks through the fabric so put plastic or something underneath it. My poor kitchen island had a bad case of stripes...)

I started by mixing the medium with the paint and taping off the stripes. Blue painters tape works the best when painting on fabric. When those were dry I threw it in the wash and it came out this nice washed out vintage looking linen.

I pinned the fabric inside out on the corners and sewed them. I didn't do anything to the legs, just stapled the fabric to the bottom. I ended up spending around $45 total as opposed to Pottery barns $399. And it looks pretty dang close to the original.

Tomorrow I'll have two postings for you and a few more pictures of the bench. (Update on my husband for those who care: he is back in the states and will be home on Wednesday night. Yahooooo!)

Day two

This night stand project actually took me about 10 minutes from start to finish, no joke. I measured the night stand and cut the molding a little bit bigger. Then I used a nail gun to finish nail the boards to the table base. I didn't use glue or caulking in case I wanted to reuse the boards some other time and the table base was the color I already wanted so no painting was necessary.



Tomorrow I'll be attempting to make this pottery barn bench for the end of the bed. At hopefully a very small fraction of the price.

5 projects in 5 days...

My husband is getting home from a year deployment at the end of this week. The question most commonly asked is "How did you get through it without going crazy". Well... the truth is... I didn't. I am crazy. But that's not because the deployment. But I made the time pass more quickly by doing tons of projects around the house.

We bought a brand new house a couple weeks before he left. With white walls everywhere I looked, I almost had to surgically remove a paintbrush from my hand after the first couple months. Then it was on to the furniture. I arranged, rearranged, and arranged again. It keeps my stuff from getting old. I guess boring's a better word than old since most my stuff is, in fact, very old. To quote my husband "If it can't give our kids lock jaw or lead poisoning, you won't like it."

Since he's coming home at the end of the week I spent half the night panicking about everything I had wanted to get done but haven't yet. I figured if I wrote it on the blog, it would motivate me to actually finish my list. So I'm doing 5 projects in 5 days. On the 6th day is a massive deep cleaning since my windows and baseboards haven't been cleaned... ever.... and the 7th day is Sunday. The day of rest. So that worked out.

My first project is one I finished at the end of last week but took FOREVER. I purchased a beautiful orange crushed velvet headboard on craigslist because I loved the shape. I used the extra fabric from my kitchen chair's project and went to town. I also covered 37, yes that's right, 37 buttons. And then my fingers went on strike. I don't have a before picture unfortunately but I'm sure you can imagine it. Here's the after shots.

Tomorrow I'll be attempting to make a night stand out of these pieces of molding and a table base.

Mirror, mirror...

I've been drooling over the giant walls of mirrors that have been popping up all over the decorating world lately. So when I had first dibs the day before on the stuff at our barn sale, I went kinda crazy. I had three of these mirrors before but I got my favorite, the big one in the middle, and the one all the way to the left at the sale. This wall was always a little awkward for me because it doesn't go all the way to the top. I debated hanging windows from the ceiling to fill in the space but never followed through. Maybe someday...



For now this will have to do. If you want this look but don't have antique mirrors to do it with, you can find a tutorial here about how to make a new mirror look aged. I haven't tried it yet, but it seems like it would work. If you do try it, let us know the results!

Remember my Texas trip?

I realized today that I never posted pictures of the fun things I bought when I was in Texas visiting my friend Katie. The flea market in Canton was everything I expected and more. A LOT more. So much more that it was overwhelming and tiring. There were SO many people and booths and stuff for sale. We were there two days, and like one of our readers said, we still didn't see everything. And I'm a fast shopper. Much unlike our mother who could spend an hour at the thrift store when us girls are done after 5 minutes.

Anyways, back to the junk. I honestly bought more than this even but I've forgotten what came from where so here's some of the things. Oh, I also bought some designer fabric that I used to upholster that cream colored headboard with. My friend Jaymie inherited it as a birthday/moving into a new house/yay, she's leaving! present. Just kiddin Jaymie!

We found these cool key holes and made necklaces out of them.

An accordion style mirror that attaches to the wall.(Funny story, it kinda swings if it's pulled out all the way and extends all the way into the shower. Which is convenient if I ever needed to shave my face. Anyways, I was taking a shower and one of my kids must have come in and pulled it out and when I turned around, the mirror was facing me and it scared the CRAP out of me)

And here's the sign I was waiting to get in the mail. I LOVED this and debated about buying it for 2 days because I knew it wouldn't fit in my luggage. I finally did when we were on our way out and decided I'll pay out the toe for shipping except it wasn't that bad. From Texas to Phoenix it was around $12.

I posted this clock before. And no, it's not exactly the same time as the last time I took a picture. Clocks around here are more decorative than functional. Which makes getting to church on time fun.

I got this fun wood crate. It took up most of my luggage space but I loved it. (Who am I kidding, I love all the stuff I got)

If you want to find locker basket for cheap, I recommend going to Canton. I got these to help organize my craft corner. It's still under construction, I'll post more pictures when I'm done.

I put this fun vintage reading poster in my boys room. It pretty much sums up their personalities.

If I lived in Texas, I would be in serious trouble. They had really cool antique iron beds, furniture, and other pieces that there's no way I could get home. Anyone up for a 16 hour road trip in a u-haul?