projects

Repainting/redecorating a room a month?

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We have been in our house for over 5 years, we built this house, I may have said this before, it is a huge process in life and with it comes pride…and lessons, some you learn in the process others you learn while living with all the decisions you made while building.

I specifically asked our builder when we got to the painting stage to PLEASE, puh-lease not paint our walls in a flat paint, this is builder code and I understand it hides any imperfections in the drywall, but seriously we were not going to return the house?!?! Anyway what did they paint the walls in? Flat paint. WE have 4 kids, 2 at the time, and a dog that weighs as much as I do. Are you getting a visual on how my walls might look, now imagine trying to wash those flat paint wall. NOT awesome!

Needless to say we are in the market for having an entire house repaint in a semi gloss or at least a sheen that handprints, splatters, slobber (dog…I think), food, milk,….you get the idea can be washed off and not leave a greasy looking mark behind.

So, I am hoping that we can accomplish one room per month, and since my mind is in creative-room-revamp-Pinterest overdrive I thought I might share some of the befores and afters, and also what the reality of said schedule may become with this crazy house:)

We decided to start with Raiven’s room, it was at one point a home office, and I had painted it a blue/gray color that I liked but, it is rather dark and not working so well for an almost 8 year old girl.

This was taken at night, but you can see the wall is dark, I am thinking about a nice light white color and having one wall with some metallic vertical stripes. I also want to get more photos up on her wall. She has an Isaac Mizrahi peony bed set with bright pinks so I am going to fit more pink into her room and pull come other colors out of the flowers to add color with the walls being more white

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Valentines’ Day Heart Crayon Craft

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This is such a fun and easy craft to do with all ages.  These are great to give as little Valentines’ tokens or to make and bring into your child’s school, they are also really cute to fill a vase with and then put flowers in.

Anyway, this is very easy and does not require reaaly strict instructions.

You will need: Crayons, heart shape pan/muffin pan,  a cooling rack and patience

First gather all your broken crayons, these work best, but if you need to buy some that is fine also, you will just need to break then to fit in the pan.  We divided them into colors that I thought most fit the Valentines’ theme, pink, red, white, but a heart crayon can be any color you choose.

Heat your oven to about 200, this is again not a strict temp, it needs to be warm enough to melt the wax, but not hot enough to cook  it.

Peel all the paper off your crayons, here is where the patience is needed this can take a bit.

Break your crayons into pieces that will fit into your pan.  Put the pan into the oven, check in about 3-5 minutes, this will all depend on the size of your heart pan and then number of crayons that fit in each space.

Once all the wax has melted and congealed (love that word;) we found it was best to pop the pan on a cooling rack into the fridge to let the was reharden, and they popped right out quite easily for the most part.

Then grab some paper and try them out, or give them away or do whatever your little heart desires:)

Thrift Store Sewing/Craft Finds

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Recent thrift store goodies that I am thrilled to fully organize and start making some
fun little projects with.

I found the three of these plastic bags full of random sizes of neatly folded fabrics, perhaps someones quilting cast aways?  I was really drawn to some of the vintage looking prints, each bag was $2.99 plus I am sure I had a 20% off coupon from a previous donation.

These look like some great colors for Halloween!

My hubby found this little treasure box at the SAlvation ARmy for $7.99, I have yet to get through all of the treasures that are in there…can you see the needles for 30 cents…so cool, I am thinking this was from an estate, it has a bunch of name patches and random lace ends, bra hooks, zippers, can’t wait to get through all of it;

It is like a golden treasure box of sewing/crafting booty….arrgh;)

And look at these pinking shears, man they are sharp and give you a perfect zig zag edge great for the pennants that are so popular right now:

I hope to have some fun things to show you from all these goodies in the near future!

White plastic globe birdfeeder upcycle

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I am having trouble fitting all the pinterest ideas that inspire me into the short 24 hours per day, unless I go without sleep some will just probably never get done.

However, there was this amazing chicken house that was pinned, which led me to Karens’s blog: The Art of Doing Stuff , where I saw these:

From The Art of Doing Stuff

I knew this was a doable project and the next time I was at Savers I scored one of these orbs.

The orbs in the picture above are glass, and on her blog Karen shows what can happen if one slips out of your hands while crafting one of these, I lucked out and got a plastic one.  With 4 young ones around the house I knew a glass orb did not stand a chance.

So you will need, a plastic orb and some sort of strong string, we used twine:

You can see this is not going to be a  spendy feeder so if some hoodlum decides to snag your bird feeder some night, it won’t be a huge loss, except for the birds:

Take your plastic orb and drill 2 holes across from each other on the top third of the orb:

Next take your string, twine, rope or what you are using and string it through the two holes you just drilled, you can ties these in a knot and hang it from your tree.

Tie the string in your preferred knot and hand from a tree limb….also pretty important to fill with birdseed, which you can see we need to put on the list.

Total cost: $1.99 since we had the twin already, who know how much the bird seed will cost, but you can factor that in.

Total time, about 5 minutes.

Renewed floral chairs.

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The narrow farmhouse table I made here via some slight modifications from Anna White’s amazing website was in desperate need of some chairs.  Luckily I had a set of chairs that I has snagged from an estate sale for $10…for teh pair, I thought this was such a great price.  then I got them home and they just did not fit anywhere.   I have had them for sale at 2 maybe three garage sales and even moved them from one house to another.

Perservenece….or maybe just an inability to let a good thing go for fear of wanting it again someday has won this battle, I recovered these chairs with some cushion and fabric from Hobby Lobby and am totally in love!!

I am sad that I can’t find a before picture to increase the wow factor, I am sure I will find one in the archives at some point, anyway here are the chairs:

County Fair Submissions

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We do not belong to 4H, nor or we farmers in the sense that we rely on our bounty for profit.  However, we are a creative bunch that likes to get our hands dirty in the earth and create projects, and what better way to celebrate these than to participate in the county fair.

I know we all have memories from childhood, the midway rides the animals, and cotton candy on a stick.  I just love the fair, I am a cowgirl at  heart.  Every year we take the kids to look at the animals and get a milkshake from the diary trailer.

Now that the kids are a little older we have started a new tradition of entering projects garden grown goodies.

The 3 older kids entered their Lego projects and were given participation ribbons.

Santanna’s Project and her ribbon.

Raiven’s project and her ribbon.

The little girls also entered onions and kohlrabis:

Santanna’s first place kohlrabis.

Avalon’s 3rd place red onions.

Solomon entered red mulberry jam and won first place.  I am so proud of him, he spend at lest 4 hours harvesting the berries from a tree in my mom’s back yard, then he rinsed them, took the stems, off and followed a no cook freezer jam recipe.

I entered the growth chart into an adult woodworking hobby category, I was very pleased to receive a second place ribbon.

The kids take from this experience a pride in participation.  They were very gracious about each others winnings and were already buzzing about what to make next year, taking inspiration from so many wonderful other projects on display.

We did also earn $4.50 in prize money, just enough for one more milkshake…or Tom Thumb donuts….mmmmmm, fair food!

It is such fun participating in the fair and it always seem to come and go so quickly.  Can’t wait until next year!!

There’s a new Godfrogger in our yard…

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Found this little frog chilling on the shelf at Saver’s and picked him up for $2.99 is he not the most chill frog you have ever seen? Plus there are daisies around him, I suppose you could argue they are water lilies but daisies are my favorite, so I am sticking with daisies.

Anyway I envisioned him as a metallic green color, lurking somewhere around our yard. Here is his new coat, I love the color, I think I want him to blend a bit more.  So now I am not sure this color is a keeper. Should he get a new coat?
What color would you paint him?

 

 

Almost done..Corner Fireplace

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What took the longest on this fireplace project was not the work, but the decision making. We cruised along through the framing and even the stone was an easy choice.  We freecycled the mantle our of a tree that had fallen  at the end of the street, we really llove the natural look of it, but are not sure if we want to leave it “raw, or add some color?

Hubby wanted to have a hearth, I think he is envisioning that cheery Christmas card photo in front of this beauty. This is where we hit a major stall. Since we added this hearth we cannot figure out what to put there, stone won’t work, we can’t find a tile, granite or marble that we like with the stone and wood, plus I don’t think we want to add any more types of material to this project.

We decided on the tile in the picture…it is a bit dark but we think it works best :

 

We really love the way it is turning out we jsut have to finish the hearth and do something with the matle…stay tuned!

Farmhouse Table….New Kids Desk

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one thing I love about all the wonderful people blogging out there is that there is no shortage of amazing inspiration and the generosity of the same people sharing the how-to’s for said inspirations.  Once again I fell victim to a must create over at Anna White’s Site.  This narrow farmhouse table here, sent me into the garage once again to recreate the table.  I even had a place for it!!  Under the windows in the office, a perfect place for the kids to do homework and e near Jon and I when we are working in the office.

We made the legs out of reclaimed pallet wood, the top we bought the top and side boards.  I sanded the crap out of the top to make it look as much like a solid piece as possible.

I stained the top and put 3 clear coats over the stain.

I painted the legs white, then I distressed the paint with a hand sander.

I did a top coat of Trewax mahogany wood wax.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Markers, colored pencils, a small light, plain paper, lilacs and lillies out the window, bring your imagination to this table and put it on the paper kids:

I do have chairs for the table that are in teh process of being reinvented…I will add a post about them when they are home….but here are a few more shots of the table:

Growth Chart…Done!!

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Let me just say that as often as I think…oh I can do that….often it takes a lot more work to  make something than a person would think.  I am proud to say that from start to finish RAiven and I completed this DIY growth chart by ourselves.  I posted about our start here and yes just the girls with our power tools, oil based stains, paint, brushes and girls abilities completed this project.

I had the board in the garage from another project,  I bought a vinyl tree decal from Target, but thought it was too heavy so I painted an outline round the vinyl, then we stained the whole board in our chosen green stain.  after the stain had set but not completely dried we peeled the stickers off.

Then we added the numbers and lattering….we distressed the stain and hand painting a bit and then did an all over clear coat.

To hand it I did the pop tab hangers, I saw this on pinterest and thought it was a great way to reuse and the price was perfect…free!

So now we have it hung on the wall and everyone measured!!

The black splotch is where I took out our last name..it does not really look like that.

I have updates coming on the fireplace and the garden plot.  Plus I am working on a narrow farmhouse table inspired by Anna White , so I will post pictures when I am done.