Easy Wreath

My Mom had this wreath in her goodwill pile this past weekend. I've been wanting a wreath for our back porch for a while now...so I snatched it in hopes that I could make it come to life....

In the midst of spraying a dozen other things white over the weekend this wreath got caught up in the paint. It was surprisingly really easy to spray. Only took about two coats on each side and she was done.

 I tried to get creative and think of something fun for Christmas I could do with it...like add ornaments or Christmas ribbon. So far, all I've come up with is this burlap ribbon. I made it from burlap I bought at Lowe's. Did you know that you can buy burlap at Lowe's? Well you can. It's in the garden section. It comes in a roll and is great because it has edges that are seamed together - which is great for projects like this.

At least with just simple burlap I can keep it up after Christmas...here's to a very easy project!

Cane Chair

This past weekend I finally got around to updating the cane chair I scored at a yard sale a month or so back. Remember...I talked about it here and here. Here's the before shot...

I decided that tearing down the fabric since it had all those tacks would be more work than I wanted to put in to it. So I did the lazy thing and just went straight to the spray paint....

It took several coats of the Krylon Dual Paint and Primer in One to get this bad boy to go white.

 Then I ran out to JoAnns and bought discount fabric that semi-matched my living room and started re-covering the seat. I was about half way finished when I realized tearing off the old fabric to use as a pattern would have been about six bajillion times easier. Live and Learn.

 I'm loving the newest addition that also provides additional seating. Gotta love functional pieces.

Not bad for $12.00....

 I even made a fun pillow with the leftover fabric. Which almost ended in me throwing my sewing machine out the window. Literally. Why is it every time I break that thing out I want to slam it in the wall??

 We have a fun weekend planned...so happy it's Friday!

Filling Empty Walls...

Literally, the morning before our Going Away Shin Dig I whipped up some wall art to fill the empty space that was left when we took down our Christmas Card Display. We had six of these Record Album Wall Mount Frames in our attic from Talon's college years...I've never thrown them out..which is extremely un like me. I throw EVERYTHING away...I guess I could see their potential. I took the old album covers out of the attic and gave all of them a good scrubbing (they have been in the attic for almost 3 years!). Once they were scrubbed I tossed them with a couple of good coats of Gold Paint....I thought we might have a problem with coverage since the frames are metal but nope....

Since the frames are kind of an awkward size I had to go to Michel's and purchase frame matting and cut custom mats for the frames...with coupons I was only out about 9 bucks. They are extremely easy to cut...we did the same thing in our hallway here. 

Once the mattes were cut I centered all of the photos with the help of Talon's math skills...

Then I begged Talon to hang them for me so they wouldn't end up a crooked mess....

I am in love with the gold frames...

My favorite part are the photos. They are all photos Talon and I took while visiting Yellowstone two summers ago...

Nothing special was done to the pictures...just simply had them printed...gotta love 2 dollar art.

I'm pretty happy with the final product...even though I'm already considering purchasing additional frames to fill up the wall a little bit more....

Thanks gosh we got rid of some of that empty wall space...we have lots more to go!

Office Shelves.

After my Office Re-Do I posted about on Friday. We were left with a big blank wall in the office due to furniture rearranging craziness. I really love open shelves but new that we did not have much money in the ol'budget to buy any. So, here is my very cheap solution....see that would laying around on the floor....

It's old wood my Dad had laying around his shop. I tell you that man has everything. After we pulled out a couple of the best pieces we cut them all to the desired size. They all had tons of age and character...which made them perfect for our abode....

 We didn't do anything else to them....just cut measured and Tal hung them evenly on the wall....

I have the hardest time with wall art...I think it is because I like to change stuff up so much that I do not like to do anything very permanent. I love these shelves. #1. Because I could move them to any room in my house and they would look awesome. #2. I can change the art/pictures/accessories out on them at any time.

 Like right now it looks like this...but I already semi-hate it and I am sure it will be different next week... 

I guess it will always give me something to do. Anybody else getting crazy with old wood? This is a great inexpensive shelving solution. I also could easily paint the wood if I ever thought I wanted a not so barn yard look...right now I am really loving the rustic feel. Happy Monday!

Office Re-Do

Remember when not to long ago I painted this stencil wall in my office? Well, I decided I wanted to paint over it. I'm the queen of doing things more than once. It's very strange. 

 It's not that I didn't like the stenciled wall paper. It was more the color of the room. It was a lot darker than all of the other rooms in our house. The stencil also had a TON of imperfections since I did the entire thing by hand. You couldn't see them unless you got close up - but I noticed them every time I walked in the room.

First I chose a new paint color. I set out to find a lighter color gray that would flow better with the entire house. Both of the below paint swatches are Martha Stewart. We went for the top one. Bedford Gray. I can't remember the name of the lighter color on bottom. 

After the room was painted. It was not easy painting over the stencil. Stung a little bit. Even though I had plans to replace it with something very similar. After searching the internet I ordered a stencil from Royal Studio Designs. I actually ordered one that was too small at first and had to send it back. So, if you are thinking about doing a full wall make sure to order a large stencil. Once I got the right one in the mail (they ship really quickly) I was able to get started. This is when I only thought I had a few hours of stenciling ahead of me....

A day and half later....

And compared to the hand stencil....it was a breeze. But really...it was hard. Like I wanted to quit on several occasions and just paint the wall gray again. The ceiling and edges were most definitely the hardest part. I never got the hang of it and honestly never want to. I have no more stencil plans in my future:)

My main goal was accomplished. It lighted the room up and now it flows much better with the rest of the house.

The professional stencil eliminated a lot of errors...making the finished product look much more seamless.

The change isn't that dramatic. Just a little bit lighter with a different pattern. Another suggestion I would give if you are thinking about venturing in to stenciling would be to choose a base paint color that is not that different from your stencil color. It took a lot of pressing with the paint roller to cover the white paint over the gray. So, what do you guys think about the change? Did you know that after I painted this room...I had painted every single room in our house in 2011 (including bathrooms). And then stenciled the same wall twice. Does that make me crazy?

Custom Kitchen Cabinets

So, by now I am sure you get the point that we were on a mission to make our kitchen more functional and organized during our time off. We customized our pantry {more about that here} and customized our kitchen drawers {more about that here}. The next and last item on our agenda was to make an easy to access space for our pots and pans. Up until now they were crammed in to the back of a corner cabinet and you were likely to be injured if you attempted to get one out. After much searching on the Internet we really loved the fancy pull out drawers that a lot of the high end kitchens have. Which got Talon's wheels to spinning and the idea of making our own custom pull out drawers evolved....

This is a bottom cabinet and used to hold unnecessary kitchen items {ex: crock pot - could totally be re-located to a less easier to reach location since we do not use it on a daily basis}. So, it was a prime candidate for the mini-makeover.

This is how Talon said we did it {my portion was all moral support}: We measured the cabinet opening and determined the location of the trays. We then glued and tacked in some support risers for the slides {which we purchased at Home Depot} to be screwed into. We then had to determine the height that the slide needed to be, leveled it, then screwed them in {this had to be done for both sides and both drawers}. Up next it was time to build the drawers themselves. We measured the distance between the slides to determine the drawer width. The MDF that we were using was cut down to the appropriate width. We also had to cut strips that equal the depth that we wanted the drawers to be. Once everything was glued and nailed together all we had to do was mount them on the slides.

This has by far been the greatest thing we have done in our kitchen. It's no longer a fight to get a pot or a pan for cooking. We simply open the cabinet and pull out a drawer. The slides that we used allow the trays to extend all the way out of the cabinet making it even easier to grab things from the back. That wraps up our kitchen organization/customization craziness but we are already brewing other ideas for the future!  

Pantry Makeover

Talon and I had 10 full days off of work. It was glorious! Of course, several of those days were filled with Christmas activities but I had a big plans for the others....

Yep,a Christmas vacation 'to do' list. Have I mentioned that I have no idea how to relax? Literally, I can't sit still. If I do, I go straight to sleep. Lucky for me...Tal was on board for the majority of the list. In case you have trouble reading here is a quick run down. 1. Pantry {More about that in a minute} 2. Go to Movies {Had to have fun stuff to look forward to! Plus we never do this because it is SO darn expensive.} 3. Clean Oven {The inside of course. Just one of those things we never get around to doing}. 4. Wash Duvet {Easy task. I love to check things off a list} 5. Organize Attic {Not so easy task but was a great time to do it since we would be putting up Christmas decor} 6. Starbucks Date {So fun} 7. Clothes Shopping {This was for Tal - I have no problem making time to clothes shop for myself:)} 8. Paint Office {More on that later} 9. Stencil Office {More on that later} 10. Fish Scale Art {More on that later} 11. Ping Pong {Nothing better than a little competition to spice the week up} 12. Drawer Organization {Again, more on this later in the week}How's that for a Christmas Vacation? It was SO much fun though. Talon and I love doing projects together...nothing better than quality time spent covered in dust and paint:) So, first on the list was our pantry. Not to long ago we built a custom spice rack for the back of our pantry door. More about that here. It has been so wonderful that we wanted to do some more updates in the ol' pantry. See those ugly wire shelves....

We wanted to get rid of them and that is what we planned on doing. Here is how....First up, removing all of the wire shelves and hardware. We plan to craigslist them to cover some of the cost of the new shelves.  

Once done, we were left with lots and lots of holes to deal with. 

We used Spackling to patch all of the holes. It's purple when you apply and turns white once ready to be sanded down. Making it very easy to use.

After the holes were patched I gave it a nice coat of paint to pretty it up. Luckily, I was already painting the office (remember that was on our to do list too) and the color was only a hair darker than what our kitchen is so I was able to use that and it blends very nicely!  Once all the prep work was done we were ready to tackle the big stuff...the shelves themselves. We purchased and sanded pine plywood ($26, 4x8 sheet), 6ft 1x6 select pine for facing and 3 1x2 select pine for the shelving cleats. Once we found the studs in the pantry we then determined appropriate shelf depth. We then cut the cleats to the appropriate length. Pre-drilled and countersinked the cleats to the pantry wall with 3" drywall screws. The pantry shelves were cut out of the sanded pine plywood to the appropriate depth and width and nailed in place with a nail gun. 

We then measured and ripped down 1x6s to the appropriate width for the facing. They were then nailed in place with the nail gun. All seams were caulked and wood filler was used on the joints. Allowed to dry and then it was all sanded....

After a fresh coat of white paint....they were ready to hold all of our daily necessities!

No more falling through the cracks of the wire shelf. We can utilize the entire space and it glorious!

We've been collecting storage containers from IKEA to help organize this space.The labels are hand written so they can be removed and modified easily depending on what is being stored in each piece.

Is it weird that when anyone comes over I want to scream "look how awesome our pantry is!"??? Yep, we love it that much. Between the spice rack and all the added shelf space it's perfect!

Total cost for this pantry makeover (shelves only) was around $50.00 (excluding things we already had like paint, wood filler, nails and the fact that we only had to use 1/2 the sheet of plywood). We think it was well worth the time and money spent since the pantry is something we utilize every single day. Anything to make life a little easier!

Glass Lamp

Getting so close to Christmas I can hardly stand it!! So excited for all of the festivities. However, there's still a day of work left. Let's make that go faster by looking at our updated lamp....

That's what it looked like when my mom and I picked it up at a yard sale a few months back. I've seen this glass lamp style everywhere over the past few months.

Although this one wasn't exactly a looker at first I had high hopes that we could dress it up with a can of spray paint.

I was able to pull the whole thing apart (kinda) via a bolt on the bottom.

I cleaned it up really good and taped off the important stuff so that spray paint would not touch it.

1 can of Oil Rubbed Bronze later....

It didn't turn out to shabby at all and I have to admit I had my doubts.

I picked up the lamp shade at Target. I think it's a tad small for the lamp but it will do for now.

I love that I could potentially fill that glass lamp base with whatever I wanted. For instance, Christmas decor! Why am I only thinking of this two days before Christmas?

What do you think? Any comparison to those with the high price tags?