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?