Pretty Ruffle Wreath

Attention!  Messy project ahead!!

I know I've been a little slow on my postings here lately, but I've not had time to do anything but the basics of keeping my family and myself alive and healthy! I picked up a job that I am really enjoying and it's taking a lot more of my time, thus keeping me from doing all of the creative things that I would normally be doing around the house - which may or may not being making my husband happy ;)  He gets a little overwhelmed when I change things all the time! Haha!

One of the things I've done lately is updating the wreaths on my front door.  They turned out a little more Christmas-y than Fall-ish, but that's alright. That's one less thing I have to worry about in the coming months, right?

Fun, right?  Here's a brief how-to on these babies.  

What you need:  

wreath forms - I used the straw kind with the plastic wrap around them.  

fabric to wrap your wreaths

an old magazine

glue

glitter

straight pins or hot glue

Cut your fabric into strips about 3 or 4 inches wide.  It goes a lot farther that way!  Then wrap it around your wreath forms. Easy peasy.

Now, grab your old magazine and trace a variety of circles.  I used 3 sizes.  I traced a cd, a can of tuna, and free handed a smaller size.   Cut them out!  Cut out lots so you can fill in and decide which ones have the best colors as your going along.  Trust me, it's no fun to stop in the middle of your groove and cut out more circles because you decided that you didn't cut out any pretty circles! Ugh.  

With circles cut and wreath handy, roll the edge of one of your circles in a pile of glue.  I used white school glue. 

Then roll the glued edge in your glitter.

Your pretty circle! 

Now pinch in the center and manipulate the paper circle until it's a shape that you enjoy...

grab a straight pin and stick it in! You can stick it in from underneath, in the center, or whatever suits your fancy.  I did both.

Continue the same process with each ruffle, filling in and fluffing up the spaces. 

 Fun! Fun! 

A disclaimer is this, that since it IS paper, I would not hang it out where it is going to be in any kind of direct weather.  Some rain probably wouldn't be good for it.  We are getting into a wet season, and I'm not sure how the dew is going to treat my paper, but I'm risking it since my front porch is very covered and rarely gets wet. 

I hope you enjoy them as much as I do!

Trash to Treasure?

Sorry I've been a little M.I.A. these days.   I've got a lot of projects going on and I'm working more and it's keeping me very busy!  Although....I seem to find time to waste get inspired on the website Pinterest. Love it! Obviously!  I've been pining my little heart out for a week or two now! 


Slowly but surely I am getting around to a fancy new kitchen.  By 'new' I mean painting cabinets, building a kitchen island from a free dresser, yadda yadda yadda.    We've been able to update a couple of our appliances, and instead of buying cream that we had, I bought the chrome look- which I love, but the other pieces we have, i.e. the stove and the trash compactor, are still dated and off white.  I am all for mismatching things, but this isn't exactly working for me.  So how am I going to fix this?  Look-y here!

Ugly trash compactor: (Nevermind the ugly kitchen cabinets.  That's my next big project!) 

One acrylic faux pressed tin back-splash piece later and...see all of these cuts?  It should have taken only 3.   I did 6.  Apparently I don't do well subtracting and dividing fractions. 

The new and improved trash compactor!  I'll probably jazz up the little top part of it eventually.  My Silhouette is begging to be used ;)  

Just imagine how great it's going to look with cabinets that have a fresh coat of paint!  I've got to get started on that! 

No Squeeze Headband!

I have short hair.  I love accessories.  I love to mix the two.

Clips are great!  Bobby pins are great!  Scarves are, well, 'eh.'  I don't love how they make the back of my short hair stick out funny - maybe I'm crazy - okay, I probably am.  I wear them when I spike up my hair all over to cover up that goofiness.

However.

Ever since my car wreck a few years ago, I have a really hard time wearing headbands!  Headbands squeeze my brain!  They give me annoying headaches. And there are so many amazing, beautiful, creative headbands out there these days! I'm so bummed out.  It limits my creative accessorizing to my head.

Until I solved my problem!  I realized that I need to make my own headband, bypassing the pressure points that cause me so much trouble.

Here's round number one!  I'm pretty excited about it!

Ps - I get a hair cut next week!  I'm so shaggy!

Guestroom Dogwood Tree

Ugh.  I am so sick.  So incredibly sick.  I am a mom - I'm not supposed to get sick...right? I've been stuck in my bed for two days!  It's been terrible!

But onto other, more exciting things...

I painted another tree last week in my aunt's guestroom.  This time it was a dogwood tree.  It is one of my favorite trees and  I enjoyed painting it very much!  Dogwoods are a sign of life after a long winter and they make me think of my grandma :) She loves them and has one that desperately needs cut down because of termite damage, but can't bring herself to cut it - one more season of bloom, maybe.  I can't blame her. It's huge and it's pink.  Beautiful.

Anyways, my aunt wanted a white dogwood, so I painted this white dogwood on a light blue wall.  I like it a lot, but I don't love that the blooms don't pop off the wall as much as I wanted them too.  Oh well.  She's happy, I'm happy.

Here's how it went!

ps - sorry about the sideways pictures.  I don't know what the deal is and I wish I could rotate them!

Finial Fun!

 I wish I could remember where I came across this idea. Just know that it's not original to me and I'd love to give credit where it's due...but can't!  I usually bookmark stuff like this, but didn't this time...sorry!

**Found it!!  I got the inspiration HERE**

Anyways, here's how I turned four tennis balls into curtain rod finials! 

Hello Wilson! 

Sorry to do this to you, but...

Slice an 'X' into it!

I used probably and 8-9 inch square of interior decor fabric that matched the bottom of my curtains.  (Enough to wrap around it completely and tuck snugly into the center.) As I was going this, I decided that a pencil, a crochet hook, a Barbie leg, anything would have felt better doing this than my thumb.  It hurt after the first ball, but I was way too into what I was doing to get up and get a useful tool for the project! 

You should end up with a lovely little ball like this! 

Take the above ball and stick it onto your curtain rod!  

Yay!  No more curtains slipping off the ends!

My curtain rod in my living room is a piece of conduit pipe - it cost me just a few dollars and fits perfectly above my 9 ft wide window!  If I were to purchase an actual curtain rod, I'd be spending WAY too much money on one that size that I probably wouldn't like that well anyway because I'm hanging decked out shower curtains that I got a great deal on and added fabric to the bottom for length but that's another post, so why when I'm on a thrifty-roll would I blow it on a boring rod? 

*deep breath in* 

Eventually I'll paint the rod so it's not so silver in my earthy room....

(I hate this picture.  It's late and the lighting is terrible.  Maybe I'll post a better one tomorrow.)

  

Ooopsy - Spring! Sorry about your timing...

So, I was in a funk this spring and never posted about my Spring Blossom tree!  Now, I've moved onto summer without sharing with you my pretty tree at all...so here's some pictures!

Here's the links again to the other seasons:
Fall Leaves Tree
Winter Snowball Tree
Summer Apple Tree

And here's a brief how-to...I'm not a teacher by nature and don't do this sort of thing well!

Don't sit under the apple tree...

With anyone else but me...
I am WAY behind on my seasonal hall tree!  But I finally got it up-to-date by grabbing my cousin who was in from out of town to help me.  She is an aspiring artist, so I could totally trust her and she did great!  I cut out all the pieces, made the starch concoction, gave her a brief how-to and let her do it!
Here's how it turned out :)

I think it's really cute, very happy, and will last me through most of the fall! Yay for apple trees!

Here's the links to my
Winter Snowball tree
Fall Leaves tree

I just realized I never posted my Spring Blossom tree - well...stay tuned!

Finished dresser turned kitchen island!

Wahoo!!!  It's finished!!

And it cost me less than $100!!

Here's the link to the before pictures and a few along the way, so that I don't overwhelm the post :) 

I am so pleased with how it turned out!  After weeks of deciding on the kind of top that I wanted and then deciding that it was WAY out of my price range, I put my head together with a wonderful man from church who is  a carpenter and this is what we came up with!  I love it!  It is pine, so it's a little soft, but I've polyeurothaned it at least 5 times and let it cure for several days before attaching it, and it seems to be just fine! Yippee!!

A close up of the front with my mis-matched knobs!  I am repeating this sort of thing with my kitchen cabinets that I hope to start painting very soon :)

After some thought, we decided to make the top several inches wider than the island itself because it would have been a tight squeeze on the backside to fit two people. Conveniently, I now have room for a towel rack tucked away on the underside.

I added some cute gingerbread supports to help the backside of the top, and a washable 'tile' board since the kids (and hubby) will be eating there and probably kicking it and getting it dirty.  Not that I see a need to, but I could use dry erase markers on it, so that might be fun :)  My DH put casters on it, so it can roll if I need it to!  They lock, thankfully, because Levi enjoys pushing it around. 

Here it is! All that's left is finding a couple of inexpensive counter stools!  I have to finish this project as inexpensively as I can - it's a game, ya know?
I think it's happy in my kitchen :)  I know I am :)

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