Fun Door Decor

So the other day while I was at the doctor's office perusing through their magazines I came across a really cute door decoration idea for the fall. I liked it so much I even took a picture of it so I could reproduce it later. Well today is later and it looks great! (eh hem- if i do say so myself.)

Basically it's a cluster of pine cones, tied up in ribbons and it's just simple/pretty.

So off I went on a hunt to find pine cones, which wasn't too hard because the park right around the corner from us had plenty I could choose from off the ground.

(Here's my loot!- 8-10 pine cones, & 2 spools of ribbon.)

Once I got them home, I had to pick out pine needles and various other foliage since they had been lying on the ground for a bit of time. I even managed to have an earwig fall out on me (in the bag) while cleaning one of them, which startled me but since he landed in the bag it wasn't traumatic. (if you know me, you know I HATE bugs and admittedly can over react when they come crawling towards me but out of a genuine fear of them).

(You probably can't see but there are pine needles and leaves in the bag)

After that, I just cut my thinner ribbon at various lengths, tying a pine cone to each end, leaving a bit of a 'tail' so it would flow and look purposeful rather than awkward.

Like so:

Once all the pine-cones have been tied you simply tie a larger ribbon around the loop you create at the top, which will be used to hang on a hook (or nail) when you put it up on your door! The larger ribbon I used was wired which helps create some interest since you can make it curl however you want.

And that's it friends! 15 minutes later I had a fun, fall/hokie-colored door decorator. Simple as that!

ta-da!

It's coming!

Oh I love house projects- well most of the time. And this is one of those most-of-the-time times.

I've been recently working on painting a BEAUTIFUL bookshelf, Josh's best friend made for us to go in our foyer. See when we moved in here the banister that existed could hardly be called a banister. (well maybe I'm being a bit hard on the poor rickety old thing but anyways) Suffice to say, it would not be staying as it was un-safe.

 Here's my husband, who stands 6'4". See how short the banister is? (*granted he is not the 'standard' height)

Notice the gap on the bottom- i.e. not safe for when we have babies crawling around who might like to go right under the gap (or stick their head in between the not-up-to-code slats)

No no. It was decided that this puppy needed to go. So out it went.

(Note the HORRIBLE linoleum floor that we found after we ripped up the carpet in the foyer! It's the black stuff)

And so then we were left with this, which is how it looks TODAY (with the exception of 2 pictures I hung on the right wall)...

But not for long because right now I'm in the middle of painting this sucker that will soon find its permanent home running lengthwise in the foyer, complete with baskets for organization and shoe shelves on the bottom!

End capped with this beautiful piece (see safe, aka child proof, aka Josh height and normal people height safe):

Welp, I'm off to go paint. Can't wait to see how this looks when it's all finished and installed! =)

~We're Home Owners~

So while I had every good intention of getting this blog going in the spring, it seems like life just took over and I couldn't find time to post over here as well as my personal blog, and even that was sporadic at best.  But since starting this blog A LOT has taken place and hopefully this'll become a place to post about our house projects. Yes friends, you heard me right- we bought a house! Our first house and I love it!

She is a fixer-upper indeed but her bones are great! (like how I've managed to personify our house already? Apparently, she's a she.) Anyways, as I was saying her bones are great! We knew in buying this house we'd need to do some things even before moving in. She's been a rental home for the past few years and as such needed new flooring, new kitchen counters, and preferably new toilets to replace the, what I affectionately call, snot-green toilets. Yes snot green.

See? 

We closed on this puppy on July 12 and one month later we have ripped out all the old carpets upstairs and replaced the entire upstairs with a hardwood laminate that we LOVE, we replaced our counter tops in the kitchen, Josh, my husband installed a BEAUTIFUL new kitchen sink, Josh's best friend (& contractor) built us a custom bookshelf/banister for the entryway & a new railing for our kitchen stoop (to replace the hideous 70's brown, view-blocking fence) and I've managed to transplant the few plants we do actually have in the front yard to a more prominent and appealing location. It may not sound like that long of a list but I am SO pleased with the way even those changes have improved the house!

But let me not just bore you with words of these beautiful changes- let me let the pictures do the talking!

Before & After living room floors:

The Kitchen: Complete with new sink, counters, and floor!
Top: Before, Bottom: AFTER!

Our outdoor fence replaced by beautiful railing (T.B.S.- to be stained) (please ignore the horrible 1970's siding. That will be replaced eventually)
Before:                                                                     After:

These are just a small sampling of the wonderful changes my hubster has made happen- I really can't say enough for how he has blown me away with his handyman skills! We also are so blessed with generous and thoughtful friends who have helped us along the way and we could not have done so much so quickly without them. I've got to run for now, but at least this is a start- hopefully to be followed by many more fun updates!

It's a process- Stage 1: Cutting the Seats

So about a month ago I mentioned that I scored some wonderful free chairs!

Since then I've been slowing making some progress on finishing these puppies, but man there are a lot of steps involved. So I figure let's go ahead and talk about it in steps.

Now let's talk the first step- seats! The chairs didn't have any when we snagged 'em so I decided I would buy some 3 or 4-ply particle board, cut it to size, sand em down, get some foam and batting for cushion, and finally upholster them! Shoo- and that's just the seat part! Granted, that is by far the most time consuming part of the whole thing.

So off to Lowe's I went and man was I in for a treat! I went to the lumber section (albeit I feel a bit weird whenever I go to that part because I get these funny looks from burly men- What? A girl in an Ande's mint green trench coat and grey faux suede boots doesn't belong in the lumber section!?) Anyways, I just couldn't find the dimension I needed- either I would have had to buy a bazillion little pieces which would have meant big monies or one big 8'X4' slab that would have left me with over half left in extra wood. Again, not necessary. So I pulled the cute card and asked if they had any in between pieces. TA-DA! It worked- they took me out back and cut down a perfect 4 ply board to the dimensions I needed and instead of paying 20$ for wood, my grand total = 3$! Yesss!!

Then it was time to cut. Fortunately Josh's work has a band saw that I could use and after taking many measurements I drew out a seat matched to each chair frame, and went to work. I made sure to measure and measure and measure! One thing I also recommend is to err on not cutting off enough, that way once you put the seat in the frame, if it doesn't fit you can trim a bit more, but if it's too small... well you can't add the wood back on.


Here's my 'workshop':

(Safety first- my husband wanted to point out that glasses are required. Fortunately-I complied.)

One thing to note- it is extremely important to measure each chair (I used a numbering system where I numbered the chairs 1-6 and matched their seat 1-6 to them.) Each chair although, very similar, is unique in it's shape for the seat and thus needed individual tweaking.

So after hours of cutting, here is the end result for Stage 1- Cutting the Seats!

(It looks like they're having a pow-wow discussing their seats. 'yah dude, ya look good.')

Up Next- Cutting the Foam

Painting Party!

Today was fun!

Despite the fact that it was a dismal, foggy, damp day- it was tons of fun inside my older sister's bathroom! Her birthday was about 2 weeks ago and for it, the ladies on my side of the fam decided to give her a bathroom re-decoration! What a fun idea. So what I decided to contribute was a paint job complete with painting services!

And today was delivery day. =) So at 10:30 I showed up with paint, paintbrushes, roller, and a pan and we got crackin'! April, my older sister, sent me the paint color she wanted yesterday and I knew from the name it was going to be good-

Brandied Pears!

It's a great cream based color with a pear undertone and it makes the whole bathroom feel relaxing, warm, and open! Three great things from a paint color. I can't take any credit on it though- it was all her expertise color picking. =)

Unfortunately I didn't remember (durr holly) to take any before shots of the bathroom but here are the afters!

(Here you can see the color to its truest. It's a tad lighter than the light towels which makes for the best kind of depth to the bathroom!)

I bit the bullet

and finally ordered some fabric for our chairs! Yes yes, indecisive I know because it only took me about 2 weeks to finally pick a fabric! (but in my defense some of the fabrics I would have ordered were out of stock, so I had to debate if I wanted to wait for them, or keep searching)

SO I decided to keep searching and tonight I finally just picked one. I can't wait to get it, and even snagged a lovely online coupon to use for fabric.com so I saved myself another $1.50 in this project , more on the overall savings to come later.

Want to see what I went with? Here it is!

I know you may be thinking, huh that looks tan- but it's not. It is light grey and dark grey, to put it simply and I'm excited for it to come in a few days! I figured that since I'm painting the chairs an off-white of sorts, to not risk it by putting it with any other variation of white fabric.

To give you an idea of the scale, this is what it looks like in 'real life' in pillow form (except in black and white):

(image from kfddesigns.blogspot.com)

So we shall see.

In other news, I'm really excited because a friend of mine is going to let me borrow her staple gun to upholster the seats once the fabric gets here! How wonderful is that? Yay!

So Many Choices!

In my last post I told you all about a fun project I have to work on, and now I'm digging in!

Last Sunday, my husband and I were able to spend the afternoon at his office where he worked on some electronic stuff while I was able to use the band saw they have at his work to make seats! (more on that to come later)

One of the next steps I've been working on this week has been trying to find fabric for covering the seats I've made. And that is so much easier said than done. Why you ask?! Because there are SO many wonderful options!

One of my new favorite places to dig for fabulous fabrics is fabric.com. It has a huge selection of fabrics and here are some of the tops for me, however some of them are unfortunately OUT of stock. Poop.

Anyways, here they are:

(My top choice: Dwell Studio Bella Porte Charcoal, but out of stock.)

(Premier Prints Chipper Slub Texture Charcoal- out of stock.)

(Not quite sure about going this route- but it's really pretty!)

(Ty Pennington's Home Decor Impressions Lace Gray.)

(Or a totally different route, Amy Butler Midwest Modern Optic Blossom Linen)

(Or maybe the black and white route- Waverly Sun N Shade Chippendale Fretwork Onyx.)

And these are all just my top choices! Because if we wanted to look into what I just found pretty,
or neat- man there are like ten more!

Just for kicks- here are a couple that I am storing away in my memory for the future:

(In a kids room some day!?)

(Or something totally random, for who knows what! But I like it!)

So yes, while it's good to have so many good options- it's a problem too! Who knows what I'll end up picking,
but hopefully it will be something a bit out of the 'comfort zone' for me that I end up LOVING!