Frame It

Continuing with the wedding shower projects.  I had found another idea I really liked over on Pinterest which didn't take a lot of time to re-create for this holy cow I'm running out of time to do everything I want to do wedding shower.  We will switch things up and start with the finished product and then I'll tell you how it all went down.

Pretty cute huh?  Anyway, I always like having pictures at events like this and I love the versatility of this particular picture frame.  To make it I simply picked up a couple pieces of 1x2's at Lowe's.  I cut 4 two foot pieces, stained them, and connected them with our Kreg Jig.  Now if you don't know about a Kreg Jig this is the part of this blog post you are going to get a little jealous about.  A Kreg Jig is an amazing little tool which makes pocket joints for binding wood.  It is both amazing and simple at the same time.  I LOVE IT!  I laid out the four 2ft pieces of wood just how I wanted the frame built.  Then I simply took the top and bottom pieces and made a kreg hole on the backside of each end.  The next step was to use the self tapping kreg screws and put the frame together.  Here is a picture of the Kreg joints.

Once the frame was built I laid the pictures out for spacing, and then I had to get ready for the party so the hubby took over.  Yeah at this point in the project we were expecting friends to show up in about 30 minutes so we were officially in a crunch to get things finished.  On the bright side me fixing my hair and finishing this frame was all we had left so it was manageable.  Anyway, the hubby marked where to drill the holes for the eye hooks, drilled away, and twisted the hooks in place.  Next was to tie the twine onto the hooks and clip the pictures on with clothespins.   We also added the picture frame hooks on the back in case Renee and Brad ever want to hang this up on their wall.

Party Time

My best friend since 3rd grade is getting married so I had to throw a party for her.  Although I didn't have a lot of time for party planning, I did manage to get a few small projects in for it.  Most of the projects involve wine bottles because I had plenty to spare.  As I mentioned before the hubby and I really enjoy kicking our feet up on the logs on our patio while enjoying a glass of wine.  I wanted to do something personalized even though I had a short amount of time so I went to my DIY pinterest board, and decided to do this.

Simply apply a little hot glue to the bottle.  For this party I decided to write my friend's new last name on wine bottles, then spray paint them the color of our bridesmaids dresses, which just happens to be my favorite color (navy blue).  Here's what they all looked like with the glue, but before the paint.

Ellis!  Renee Ellis doesn't that sound nice.  Side note: my best friend since 3rd grade I mentioned above also responds to the name Renee (we have the same name).  Anyway, after the paint dried (about 60sec.)  It was time to head to the ally behind our garage for some paint.  A few navy blue coats later and here is what we used a a centerpiece decoration for her wedding shower party at our house.

 It's kind of hard to see in this picture, but it really did look quite nice.  So nice that Renee wants to use them for her upcoming wedding reception.  I'm so excited she liked them, and wants to use them for her wedding!

Taste the Rainbow

As I said in my very first introduction post I've always learned by watching my Dad fiddle with projects in the garage and basement, but I also learned a lot from my Mom by watching her in the kitchen.  Though she doesn't do a lot of baking these days, and I often kid her about her pies (just call her Mrs. Smith) she did bake a lot when I was younger and living at home, and I remember very few meals that weren't made and eaten at home together.  So I do credit her to my curiosity in the kitchen.
Anyway, my favorite niece recently celebrated her 5th birthday and I was designated the cake baker for the party.  I knew exactly what I wanted to make which was nice, because usually decision making isn't my strong point.  The cake I chose for Chloe is a little wild just like her.  It is a two layer rainbow cake.  Here is where I got the idea/how to for the cake.  http://www.omnomicon.com/rainbowcake

The cake was fairly simple to make, which made me nervous that it may turn out more like a pile of craziness, but it didn't.  Sorry if that was a story spoiler, I'm not good at surprises or secrets.  Anyway, once you have the white cake batter made (you can use whatever recipe or box you like best) you separate it into 6 different bowls.  In the six bowls you mix in food coloring until you get your desired batter color.  For my cake I made a red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple bowl of batter.

Once your colors are what you are looking for you start pouring them into your prepared baking dish. As the website above suggested.  I poured a little of each color in the first dish, and then for the second dish I did the reverse order of the colors I poured in the first dish.   Here is a picture to help it make more sense.

Once this was done it was time to bake them, and hope for the best.  After they were baked and cooled I iced the cake, which is something I have no talent with so I opted for a simple buttercream icing recipe with a slight pink color just smeared on the whole thing.

Here is a picture of Chloe and my Mom.  We were celebrating her birthday also.  I made my Mom's cake as well but it was much less exciting (just a root beer float cake)  so it doesn't get it's own blog post. Once we cut into it the kids were quite impressed with the exciting inside, especially after seeing the less than exciting icing job I did.

It worked!  The cake was a big hit with the kids and it was quite tasty as well!

Logs

The hubby and I have put a lot of work into our back yard patio, and after building some patio furniture I felt the need for something more.  I needed some logs on the patio.  Luckily my favorite sister has some land at her new house and has a lot of extra logs.  When Carrie and Jeremy bought their land and moved into their house I quickly claimed this.

Not the dog, just the log.  Though I wasn't quite ready for the project this log brought, I quickly put my stamp on it telling Jeremy to save it for me.  When I was ready for the project Jeremy borrowed his Dad's chainsaw while the hubby and I were down for a visit and about 15 minutes later the hubby was happily satisfied that he was able to operate a new toy and I was thrilled about loading my new logs into the truck.  Through this whole process the hubby and my Mom thought I was a little crazy for being so anxious about a dead tree, but after a little love to the dead tree, they now understand.

So once home I sanded the logs first with a low grit (I think 80) sandpaper, and our handy little mouse sander.  Once I was satisfied I smoothed them out with a higher grit sandpaper (I think 120).  I must say I was quite lucky that the logs had already lost the bark so they were pretty easy to sand down.  It was super messy, but actually quite therapeutic to sit out on the patio and just sand away knowing I was going to have some sweet logs.  After the sanding was done I did a little research on some different types of finishes I could put on them.  I decided on a high gloss spar urethane.  We went with the Helmsman brand because the container bragged that it was ideal for outdoors and provided flexibility for the changing climate, which we all know we have here in St. Louis.  I ended up applying 3 coats to the logs, and absolutely love how they turned out.

The last two pictures are of the container of spar urethane that I used on the logs

Initially I had planned on using them as stools for added seating, but since it is usually just the hubby and I entertaining ourselves on the patio we have quickly found them to be super useful as tables and foot rests as well.

Oh yeah, I have to give a shout out to the best part of this post, Ziggy.  That's the adorable little chocolate lab puppy my niece Chloe got for her 5th birthday.  Ziggy and Stanley have become pretty good buddies despite their size difference.  No worries though it won't be long until Ziggy and Stanley are on a more level playing field.  Isn't he the cutest little pup ever?  Well second cutest.  I mean look at Stanley as a puppy.

Trash by the Bushel

So the hubby and I were making a lot of messes in the project room, and we quickly knew we needed a trash can in there like ASAP!  More like yesterday.  We were at Target while thinking about this, but I just couldn't buy a trash can or even a bucket to act as a trash can knowing that I wanted to repurpose/re-use as much as we could in this room.  Luckily we escaped Target without anything destined for a trash can in the new project room.  Later that weekend we were actually free, meaning we had no plans or commitments to be any place at any certain time which was quite nice for a change.  As we were driving around doing some errands we realized that one of the streets in our neighborhood was having a HUGE yard sale.  The whole 3 block street was participating and for the most part you could just walk down the ally and hit up every house from the back.  They even had Kennrick's BBQ at the midway point in the yard sale fest.  Anyway, we knew we would be able to score something to act as a trash can in that room so that was our mission.  We found a lot of neat things, but in an effort to not accumulate any clutter we stayed on track and found a really neat bushel basket for $.50.  That's right a fifty cent trash can.  It was cute, perfect size, and perfect price so we snagged it.  Like I said before I get a little excited about the things I do and sometimes forget to take before pictures which was the case here, but it was basically just a very light pine colored bushel basked in very good shape still.  To add a little character to it I broke out some navy spray paint and gave the basket a light coat.  My intention was to apply a second and third coat of paint to fully cover it, but after the first coat I really liked the way it looked so that's how it stayed.

Here's the bushel basket, I mean trash can in use.  It is hard to tell, but the navy blue is just kind of dusted over the light pine color so you can actually see a little of both.

Lonely Lamp Shade

Moving on in my project room, the hubby and I decided we needed to update the light.  Initially we were browsing the selection at Lowe's, but then I officially declared that this room was going to be made up of stuff we already had, or made, or re-used, so Lowe's was out of the picture.  Here is a picture of the simple and cheap 2 for $19.99 light fixture we got when re-doing our house.  We resorted to those because they were cheap, and we really didn't have any big plans for the two extra rooms so the light fixture didn't matter to us at all

 I was pondering and browsing pinterest for ideas when I remembered this lonely lamp shade we had stored in our basement.  We did have an awesome set of matching lamps, but about 3 moves ago one of the ceramic bases bit the dust.  This lonely lamp shade made three moves with us without any base.  This is a feat in and of itself because the hubby and I aren't pack rats in any way, shape, or form, well mostly not, so for us to move this lamp shade with us only to put it in storage 3 times just goes to show you it is special.  I proposed the idea of using it for our "new light fixture, but the hubby wasn't totally sold until I held it up toward the ceiling at which point he started to feel what I was feeling.  We did have to buy a pendant light fixture from Lowes to hang the shade on, but that was a lot less expensive than buying an entire light fixture.  This project was actually very simple, and I have to admit that the hubby did almost all the work.  I guess this post should be a project dude post rather than a project chick post.  Oh well!  First step was to figure out exactly how we were going to hang the lamp shade on the pendant fixture.  When we got the fixture out and figured out how it was put together it was actually VERY easy to attach the lamp shade .  We simply unscrewed the wire cover which you attach the fixture to the ceiling with, and pulled the cord through the lamp shade.

To help secure the lampshade better we also unscrewed a little cone above where you put the light bulb, threaded the wire through, and then screwed the little cone back on.  Now that you are confused here is a picture to help show what I'm talking about.

Once we got that figured out, it was time to remove the old light.  First step, turn the light off.  I also wanted to flip the breaker off to that room, but the hubby was being all macho and only semi-careful so he insisted that was not necessary.  He was right it wasn't necessary, we are both here to tell the story.  

The removal seemed pretty easy the hubby did it but he explained it to me so I feel like I could do it by myself now.  I probably could have done it here with a tad bit of research, but it was nice to have his help because it got finished much quicker.   Once that was finished the last step was to attach the "new" light fixture.  This was pretty simple too.  Attach the red wire to the black wire, and the white wire to the brown wire.  This step was just repeating what the hubby had just un-done, and this is just me repeating what he told me he was doing.  Once the wires were connected, the hubby unscrewed the old fixture brace, screwed in the new fixture brace, and attached the base to the brace.  These terms are all from my own brain, so I what I'm calling a brace and a base could have a different name, but it makes sense to me.  Here are a couple pictures to help.

Now for the best part, the after pictures!

We happen to like it a lot!  I especially like how the color isn't too matchy matchy.  The one downfall is that with the particular pendant fixture we found at Lowes the actual light bulb is pretty small so it doesn't put off a lot of light.  We are totally O.K. with this because I'm hoping to make some kind of side table for my rocking chair and we would like to put a lamp on there anyway which will help light up the room a little more.  What do you think?  Good improvement or what?

Trash to Treasure

I'm sure you've heard the saying one man's trash is another man's treasure.  Well...I turned someone's trash into a treasure I'll hopefully use for a long time in my new project room.  Since I'm still new to this blogging thing, and because I was incredibly excited to get started on this project I don't have an untouched before picture.  Here are parts of the chair before I got crazy with it.  

It wasn't really trash so to say, I did pay $25 dollars for it from a craigslist ad, but I consider that an awesome deal for such a neat chair.   By the way how do you like that stone patio in the first picture?  That was a crazy DIY project the hubby and I did in the heat of summer 2010.  I LOVE sitting out there with the hubby, some wine (or pumpkin beer), and the pup with his soccer ball.   Anyway, back to the chair.  Isn't that brown fabric beautiful?  I didn't think so either, so it had to go!  The seat of the chair and the back of the chair easily came apart with a screwdriver.  Once I had it taken apart it was time for demolition, which was fairly easy.  The fabric was glued to the frame so that took a little effort, but it all came apart without much of a problem.  Once I got the fabric off and the staples out this is what I was left with.

Looks to me like that old school wood paneling you used to see on walls.  Hubby and I considered cutting new boards because while getting the fabric off the back cushion (the one on the left in the picture above) I slightly split the wood paneling with my strength, but I decided to opt for the easier fix, Duct Tape.  

Sure, it looks a little ghetto, but it worked great, and we didn't have to bother with cutting any plywood.  SOLD!

The next step was to do a light sanding on the frame of the chair.  This was done while enjoying an evening on the patio with the hubby, the doodle, and a nice glass of red wine.  After sanding I made sure to clean the surfaces well, and started spray painting it with some oil rubbed bronze spray paint.  The painting took a couple evenings because with all the curves of this bentwood rocking chair I had to work at a lot of different angles, and I wanted to make sure the paint was completely dry before flipping the chair.  I started spray painting with the more expensive "fancy" can with the "neat" trigger, but it was no good and was spitting out blobs of paint, so I went with the middle of the line, run of the mill spray paint, and it worked wonderfully!  The finish on the rocking chair was in really good shape to begin with, but once I had it painted I got really excited because I liked it so much more already!

With the frame for the  cushions painted it was time to start the reupholstering.  I started with 4 or 5 layers of batting on the side of the cushion you would be sitting/leaning on, and one layer on the back side of the cushions.  The batting was quite simple...trace, cut, repeat several times and then secure in place with a staple gun.  The cushions go onto the frame with a slight lip so I tried to keep the staples close to the edge where the lip in the frame would hide them.  Once stapled I trimmed off the excess batting, and put in place to make sure everything fit O.K. 

John and I put the cushions on the floor and sat on them to make sure it would be sufficiently comfortable before adding the pretty fabric.  They were comfortable so it was onto the next step.  When planning for the fabric I wanted to make sure everything was lined up evenly on the cushions.  To do this I put the empty cushion frames on the rolled out fabric to get an idea of what layout I liked the best.  You know, do I want the birds centered, do I keep the vine things centered, do I try to keep all parts of birds on the cushion without any heads or tails cut off, there were lots of things to consider. 

The birds on the fabric were pretty important to me so I laid it out in such a way that two birds could fit on each cushion as you can see in the picture above.   Once we agreed on the layout, I traced around the frames with a pencil being sure to leave an inch or so of overlap to fold over and staple in place.  I must say cutting the fabric was a little scary because I really didn't want to mess up.  Good news is that I didn't mess up and it worked great!  Once I had the pieces cut I enlisted the help of my hubby to staple it in place.  It was important to have four hands on deck here to make sure the fabric was in the right place and that it was pulled tightly.  We started by putting staples in either side, then top to bottom, and finally filling in the gaps.  I don't have pictures of this process since all hands were on deck to get the task done. 

Above are some pictures of the finished cushions.  You can see how we kept the staples very close to the edge.  We did this so that when the cushion went onto the frame the staples would be well hidden.  To put the cushions onto the frames I simply used some all purpose glue I found in my toolbox my Dad made for me when I went to college.  Side note:  I love that my Dad made me a toolbox, and though I'm grown up now and have a lot more tools, I still use that toolbox all the time!  I think it will always be the best one!  Anyway, a little glue on the lip of the frame and a little elbow grease to get the cushion squished in there was all I needed.  It worked great, and the staples were well hidden.  I was a little worried about the fabric fraying, but with the glue around the lip of the frame I'm sure everything will stay in place just fine.  

The last step was to screw the finished cushions back to the rest of the chair frame.  Before taking that last step though, I stuck all the screws and washer in the ground and spray painted them to match the frame.  Below is a picture of the rusty screws before I painted them to match the rest of the frame.  It worked great to stick them in the ground because I really just needed to paint the heads since the rest of them would be hidden. 

Putting the chair back together was a breeze. All I had to do was line up the screw holes and press the trigger of the drill about 16 times and ta da I have an awesome "new" chair!

As you can see above the hubby and the pup approve!  What do you think?  Was it worth $25  and a few more for the paint and fabric?  So far I LOVE it.  Now I need to spend an evening sitting in there reading a good book!

Bye Bye Hubby...

No, John didn't leave me he left his office in our house and moved to a big businessman office.  It is actually VERY exciting for him to have his first ever out of the house office.  I have to admit it was a little bittersweet for me because a) he most likely won't be home all the time when I get home from work b) our sweet little (well not so little) doodle Stanley won't have a buddy to hang out with during the day anymore. I guess it is time for a second child, I mean dog.  In all reality it is a great opportunity for him because he will have his business space separated from home, and his office is above an architect which could be potential business for him.  His new office is also only 4.5 miles from our house so it is still very easy for him to come home to let the pup out and throw some food in the crock pot for dinner that night.  

Enough about the new office, let me tell you about the old office, now my fun room.  Since I have this need to always have a project on my hands, and our house has been completely remodeled from head to toe including the guts (plumbing, electric, heating and cooling) I've decided that I'm going to make, reuse, or repurpose everything we put in this room.  Let me just say I'm super excited, and have a lot of ideas with not so much time so this will be a work in progress for sure, unlike the rest of our house which was primarily done in 3 months. 

First things first, I had to paint the room.  The room color wasn't bad considering we had just painted it last year, however there were some places we tried touching up, but when we got another gallon of the paint we had used the colors didn't match up quite right.  

See the color wasn't bad, a bit of a grayish blue color.  But the problem came in just below our attic access where we tried to touch up all the ladder marks and foot prints on the wall there.  

Here was the aftermath of trying to do some touchups.  Not pretty at all.  Since I had to repaint the whole room (which is quite small so it really wasn't a big deal) I decided to change it up quite a bit.  I LOVE the color blue so I knew I wanted that involved, and I kind of hate beige or tan because we've lived in a couple of homes the hubby built, and to keep things nice and neutral most all the walls in those houses were beige.  I need more spice in my life than an all beige walls.  My inspiration came from clothing, I really love the combination of a navy button down shirt dress with a camel colored belt around the waist and some awesome camel colored boots to top it off.  I thought an all navy room would be too much so I decided to make the back wall navy, and then to try to avoid beige at all costs I opted for a more goldish color for the other three walls.  I got the navy going and once it dried I loved it, so much so that I wanted to do it all navy, but that wasn't a good idea so I didn't do it.  I got going with the goldish color and immediately didn't like it, but with the hubby's encouragement and because painting is fun to me, I kept going to finish one wall and "give the color a chance"  The verdict, YUCK YUCK YUCK!!!!

Next I had to come to the sad realization that something more creamy/ beige would be the best match for the navy blue accent wall.  So very sadly I went through the pile of paint swatches I had hoarded from Lowe's and we decided that the color classy was the one to go with. 

Away with the gold wall and old grayish blue walls and hello classy walls.  When I started painting I still wasn't sold because the trim color and the wall color nearly blended into each other, but as the wall color dried there was definite separation and I started to really like the combination.  

The "beige" color turned out to be more of a creamy color, with a slight yellow tint that comes out when it is compared to the ceiling or trim color.  That was the good, the bad, and the ugly of my painting process for my new craft/project room.   In the end I really like it!   What about you?

Well Hello

I've been a crazy project chick for a long time, but didn't always know how vital to my personal sanity having an ongoing project to do list was.  When I was just a little girl I would follow my Dad everywhere, and want to do most things he did.  I probably asked a ton of questions and possibly even annoyed him, but what I remember is just watching and taking in every thing he did.  I'd say it was the same way with my Mom, but the watching, asking, and absorbing of information took place in the kitchen with her.  The projects continued into college when I moved into an old house with a bunch of my friends, and the funeral home wall paper, green carpet, and dungeon like basement room just were not jiving with us.  Now my husband and I have been living the first home we bought together for just over a year, and every single square inch of this house has been painted, stained, or had some polyurethane swiped on it.  That's just a fraction of the love this old house has received in the last year.  This blog should have started February 9th, 2010 on the day we signed the papers and came right "home" to start tearing down a wall between the kitchen and dining room, but I wasn't smart enough to do this at that time.  

Here is my handsome hubby getting crazy with that plaster wall.  I defaulted to a picture without me because the picture of me getting crazy on this wall wasn't good enough to share on the internet.  

Now I'm much more intelligent and a bit more motivated to keep track of all my fun, crazy, annoying, successful, and failed projects right here.   I hope you enjoy following this crazy project chick along as I go.