New Finds!

Just wanted to send a warm thank you to the new people who are reading along. I enjoy "meeting" new people and reading other blogs and I will follow you back. Hope everybody had a nice Easter and got to spend time with loved ones. Easter was good. The weekend was good... I got an afternoon all to myself Saturday afternoon. YESSSSSS! I can't remember the last time that happened. I used to think it was so strange to hear mommies talk about how the only place they had a moment of silence or time to themselves was in the bathroom but I totally get it now! I adore my children, don't get me wrong, but I do dream of "me" time and need to find ways to fit more of that into the mix.

On my afternoon off, I got in the car, rolled down the windows, opened the sunroof and blasted the music somewhat and tooled around doing the things that I wanted to do. PLAY!!! Sweetness. First off I heard that there was a pretty good Salvation Army nearby, that I have been meaning to test out so I went and checked it out. I'm not a huge thrift store shopper but thought it would be fun to browse to find things that I could fix up and make my own as far as decorations for the house. Salvation Army was pretty cool but I didn't buy anything. If I was trying to furnish a home, it would be a great place to go. I saw many solid pieces of furniture that looked like they were never used. The prices were great too.

After that, I trucked over to Good Will and wooo-hooo! I found two items I knew I could fix up. I picked up a wooden tray that has some sort of Chinese scripting on it and I got the most adorable lime green lamp! The lamp came with a simple canvas barrel type lamp shade. It was brand new and it works! I would have a picture of it but I already put it in the baby's room and he's sleeping. I have plans for it at a later date but for now it matches the baby's room and looks adorable. Hey did you know that Good Will does returns? That is pretty cool. They take returns up to 7 days after the purchase date. Good to know for future reference! I have some plans to turn this tray into something cute!

Another new find was the HomeGoods store. It was fantastic! I have been dying to check that place out for a while and boy was it cool. There were so many inviting things to look at. I think I walked down every aisle looking at all the modern home decor. If I ever need a super cool lamp or anything for the house, I'll go there! They have so many classic, stylish pieces. I did purchase a cool, glass cannister and it was CHEAP compared to most stores. I have lots of ideas of ways to use it! Psyched! I know I'm a goofball!


So the rest of the week, I will be spending my nights preparing for a neighborhood garage sale this weekend. Pricing, making signs and cleaning out the attic! Lots of work to come this week! I'll keep you posted on that one!

Inexpensive Play Room Wall Art

Anybody else suffering from the pollen and allergies? Hack Hack Hack!!! I can't stop coughing and my voice has been nonexistent for over a week, which a certain someone in the household has probably enjoyed a break from, not mentioning any names!! I'm kidding! I'm not sure if it's allergies or a cold or what, but I am ready to shake it off to shift back into high gear!

In playing catch up on projects, here is one I did soon after hanging the curtains in the boys' playroom! The room has felt bare and unfinished for a long time so I feel like it's more complete with wall hangings on more than just wall in the room now! 

 

 

I've been looking for some sort of simple something to go on the wall for a while and I finally came up with an easy solution. My favorite book of scrapbook paper is one of thick, card stock types and they are more modern patterns and designs. There just so happened to be a cool one with cars, trucks, planes and bikes, just perfect for a little boy and a mama who doesn't care too much for super cutesy patterns that they'll outgrow in a year. I like to make changes that will last. If I get tired of them, I can still change them easily but it's not something I have to change right away.

I found three black wooden picture frames at IKEA for $2.99 each and cut the scrap book paper to fit. I hung them over a toy shelving sorter unit thingy in the playroom! I think the wall art adds a nice clean, more contemporary flair to the room and it was a very easy solution. The colors matched the curtains almost perfectly and the background of the paper is blue/green with a shiny copper embossed design, which is very close to the color of the curtain rod.

It's amazing to see some of the cool papers that come in bound scrap book pads.
Happy to have the playroom more complete! What projects have you been up to lately?

Garage Redo Reveal

Things have been super busy lately between work and home life and everything in between that I have been a bit slack getting back to this but certainly not intentionally slack! 

I'm sooooo excited to FINALLY show you the garage redo! It's something we've been wanting to accomplish for a while. I have loads of pictures too so watch out! We don't have tons of stuff in the garage but we park the cars in there and wanted more order to all the tools and toys to make it easier to get to them. Plus we wanted to get the chemicals locked up so the little men wouldn't ever be tempted to get into them. A big goal was to get most of it off the ground and hung in an orderly fashion.

Before Pictures

We hung dry wall on the left wall since it was unfinished. I can't take credit for that part. My husband, his buddy and my brother-in-law did that. They mudded the walls painted them gray, which wound up taking a little longer than planned. They ran into some snags along the way but finally got it up.

During Pictures

 

 

We weren't planning on painting the ceiling but decided that if we didn't do it now, then we would never go back and do it later so we did. We got textured white paint and painted that with the help of my dad and brother-in-law. It's nothing fancy.

After Pictures

A small touch was the decorative plate where the door opener button is.

 

After much research on the tracking system we decided to go with the Gladiator Garage Works Organization System. The heavy duty cabinet has a lock and key so that was helpful. It's a simple easy-to-hang solution with different hooks and shelves and hanging units, including baskets and trays that can be moved around for more versatility. 

We kept one shelf that we had before to store paints and misc items on.

My beach cruiser bicycle is really heavy so we're looking for more lightweight bikes to ride.

We still have a sheet of pegboard that we are trying to decide if we can use. 

Those two tables folded up will be hung over the garage door, up high, eventually.

We want to eventually so some sort of treatment on the floor but there is some research to do.

Car cleaning items are together!

We reused some old pegboard for small hand tools.

There is a hanging basket for balls. All of our other stuff is up high! 

Cabinet can be hung on shelves but we kept it on the floor to use the wall space for other things.

 

Added a striped rug at the back door for a splash of color! The old rug didn't survive the mud part of the redo. Whaddayathink? I love it! I feel a little less stressed when I get home every day and park the car. It's nice and clean and organized now! An organized room can sure boost the spirits!  

Garage Project Teaser!

Hope everybody is doing well! Thank goodness it's the weekend! The weather is supposed to be nice so it's time to finish up the big garage makeover. What didn't seem like was going to be a crazy project turned into more of an ordeal than expected. I am soooooo ready to get things back in order and share the after shots! All that is left to do is clean up, organize and final touches so we can get those cars back in it.

Speaking of cars, a guardian angel must  have been watching over us yesterday. I had my car parked in the driveway, which is a slight incline from the street. Once I stepped in the house with the kids I noticed my car out in the street and in my neighbors yard. My emergency brake was on and the car was in first gear with the steering wheel straight. Anyhow the car somehow made a zigzag and missed our mailbox and the neighbor's mailbox across the street. Luckily no one was hurt and no damage was done. WHEW!

So my computer is in the shop yet again and I also need to troubleshoot problems with my camera. I hope to have everything back up next week so I can share the final pictures of the garage! Have a lovely weekend and talk soon!

Accidents Happen And Sometimes For The Better!

I am slowly knocking some things off of my 2011 home decor to do list and I got to use my drill and my stud finder in this little project! I hung some store bought drapes! YAY!

 
Make sure you use a drill bit that is smaller than the screw's circumference so you don't have a hole larger than the screw. 
 

My drill has a level which helps put the screw in straight. I drilled the first hole and then measured out for my second one.

My handy dandy laser level makes it so easy to line up holes once I decide on the distance away from the window on either side where I want to hang the curtain rod. Make pencil marks and drill away!

The curtain rods have a bronzed finish and are very simple. They came from Ross Dress for Less and were under $10.00 each. 

A little background... We bought our home 4 1/2 years ago and have spent that time redoing most EVERYTHING. When we bought the house it was about seven years old and very basic. We liked the floor plan but it was a simple house with no real upgrades and LOTS of wallpaper, borders and stencils that were not our taste. Have I mentioned how much I dislike wallpaper??? Yuck!!! Over the past several years, I've enjoyed painting and personalizing and making our house our home. We have changed almost every fixture, painted every room and changed out every curtain and curtain rod in the house, among other things. The playroom started out as our office but gradually(child number one arrived) became the playroom. :) I wanted it to be a neutral color for boys or girls, just in case, and flow with the rest of the colors in the house. I painted the room a light shade of yellow (I'm a more natural/neutral tone kind of girl).

Since we have boys I finally decided to start decorating the room more for boys. I didn't want to go with a specific theme or anything real childish-looking and am excited to share the drapes I hung. Funny though, I purchased these drapes from Old Time Pottery (very reasonably priced per panel), months ago to see if they'd go in our living room. NOT! They completely clashed with the rest of the colors in the living room which worked out quite nicely in the end! It took hanging them up to realize that the curtains didn't go though. It was accidental that these drapes went so well in the playroom. They turned out to match the rug just perfectly!!  See for yourself. 

 

Blue for Boyyyyyeeeeeeees! What do you think? Ya think I need to iron them? I will eventually! Looks like the curtains were made to go with the rug but they were bought at two totally different places, several months apart! What have you done accidentally that you just LOVED in the end???

Chalkboard Labels For Pantry

So psyched to post my chalkboard labels!

We had warm weather a few weeks ago and I took advantage of the sunshine to do some painting! I may be a little over the top when it comes to organizing and labeling but I have to admit this is fun!

Materials you need:

• small wooden ovals or rectangles - I bought mine at Hobby Lobby for real cheap! They were on sale too. I think I got 14 for about $3.00. I used the rectangle ones for the pantry project.
• a yard of burlap - Found 3 yards on clearance for $2.00
• glue gun
• chalkboard spray paint - You'll find at any craft or hardware store!
• twine or ribbon - I used twine b/c I already had a roll.

My little helper placed all the wooden ovals and rectangles on cardboard. : )

 

Why do they make these spray cans adult proof? 

 

I mean, really!?!?

See what I mean. I cracked the darn thing to get it open!

 

I sprayed two coats.

 

I placed the wooden rectangles over the burlap and casually cut the burlap to give a 

quarter inch boarder around the mini chalkboards.

 

 

I cut the corners off so they would fold nicely.

 

 

I used twine to hang the labels.

 

 

Using the glue gun I attached the twine along the tops of the backs of the wooden pieces.

 

 

Next step was to glue the chalkboard piece to the burlap.

Next I folded the burlap over the edges and glued them down. 

 

I made sure to do it so that all labels were consistent in the folds.

 

I hung the labels with the twine and used chalk to write what was on each shelf!

 

 

The great thing about this project is that it is super cheap, easy enough to involve your children and the labels can be changed easily, just wipe them off and re-chalk them! Have fun labeling your pantries!

Personalized Bubble Magnets Using Text & Pictures

Hi all! It's been a week since I last posted and I am going to try to get back to posting a couple of times a week. I have been doing plenty of fun projects, just haven't sat myself down to share them yet but I will, for sure! Here I will tell you how to make customized magnets using text or free clip art that you can cut out and glue together!

I still LOVE this fun little project for gifts. It's great as teacher's gifts, gifts to family and friends or for yourself to decorate your refrigerator or metal cabinet in your office or cubical at work! They are so much fun and very easy to make. I first did a tutorial back in December to share how to make them for Christmas gifts and mentioned that I would soon share instructions on making magnets in a little more advanced way. It has been a while so here goes! 

The first tutorial was Fun Bubble Magnets! Please go there for the list of materials you'll need. In that tutorial I made bubble magnets using scrapbook paper. For these magnets above and below I used photo paper. I have tried printing on several different papers and photo paper seems to work the best. With thin paper, the ink will run when you apply glue.

These magnets are from a couple of years ago. That year I thought it would be neat to make gifts for all of my relatives and close friends and personalize them so they would be special to each person. I made a mess of my kitchen table for about a month but it was so much fun and everyone really seemed to like opening them!

The bubble magnets above were for my grandfather who is an Air Force Veteran and so I used a clip art of an American flag and then typed up some words of phrases he says to cut out. You need to use a text formatting program to create the text for your magnets. I used Adobe InDesign. You can use Word or Illustrator or another program that allows you to manipulate text in a text box so you can do cut outs for your magnets.

Below shows the dimensions for small glass stones (on the left) and the larger ones (on the right). In InDesign I created several text boxes (with no outlines on the text boxes) that were .55" X .5167" and 1.25" X 1.2667" like my diagram shows below. The glass marbles are not perfect circles so the "squares" are not exactly square. They are off just a tad. I lined the boxes up on an 8 1/2" X 11" size document by copying and pasting. I made sure each box had a little space in between the next one. Then I played with fonts and colors plus background colors and little sayings or inside jokes and I typed them up and placed them within the text boxes. After I had a full page of text and clip art sized to fit inside the boxes, I made a high res pdf and put it on a key chain flash drive that I took to Kinkos to have printed. I was out of ink at home and it's really cheap to have one sheet printed at Kinkos.

Once I had my sheet with my printouts of the text and pictures, I took the glass marbles and placed them over each item I wanted to cut out. I played with placement and then drew around the marble with a pencil and simply cut them all out and glued them together just as in my other post on Fun Bubble Magnets! 

I used a Pixar Cars child's sticker book to make these magnets below for my children's art display in their playroom! It's another fun way to decorate and make things fun for your children. Just make sure your child is over the stage of putting things in his/her mouth!

I used dollar store tins for the packaging and taped ribbons to the insides of the lids for the gifts. You can fit a total of six of the large bubble magnets in these. As for the smaller bubble magnets, I ordered some tin hinged containers(looked like small Sucrets tins) online to hold them. They hold six of the small magnets. The tin containers are lovely because the magnets cling to the them and they are a good size! Hope this helps! 

Elementary But Hey It Works!

How is your weekend going? It has been good here so far. I have the luxury of living near an IKEA and so this afternoon I went to look around and pick up a few things for another small project. This time I pushed a stroller instead of using a cart. IKEA is wonderful but am I the only one alive who cannot control an IKEA cart? I swear pushing a cart at IKEA wears me out. I wouldn't consider myself a complete whimp but the carts seem to drift and it makes me crazy! I just picked up a few things but it was fun to get out and window shop!

A couple of months ago I did the following little project and it was fun and free! I covered infant formula cans in card stock scrapbook paper to corral my artsy crafty supplies in my kitchen craft cabinet. I got the idea from seeing contact paper-covered tin cans that hold pencils at the Pediatrician's office. I spend quite a bit of time at the doctor's office with my sickling tykes.

It's pretty simple as you will see. All you need is:

-A clean tin can, you can use soup cans for smaller items.

-Scrapbook paper

-ModPodge glue

-Paint brush to apply the glue

Strip the label off your can and after you've cut the paper to fit around your can, start spreading the glue! Next you'll wrap the paper around the can and apply more glue over the paper if you need to. Let it dry and the cans are ready for storage! YAY! How do you store your craft supplies?

Conquering Kitchen Clutter: Part Three

Happy hump day! How's your week going? Has anyone done any organizing? I haven't done much this week on the organizing front. It was migraine city one night and last night I was so whooped from work that I crashed early and I think I fell asleep before my head even hit the pillow! Can you actually do that? heh. Timber! I really think I did! Anyhow I'll be happy if I can get the laundry washed and put away before it's time to do more loads!

Oh I have to share that I did finally relax some last weekend. I have trouble relaxing. 

EVER! I think it's partly just in my blood to be busy and to always want to be doing something productive. Over the weekend I did an exercise (not so much a conscious decision but it just sorta happened and I liked!) in leaving the wrist watch at home and spending time away from any clocks and simply losing track of time! It was awesome! So good for the soul! Went to the park and played like a kid! 

Tangents tangents is muwa. Okay now back to organizing which I did a few weeks ago and am just now getting to! Below is the BEFORE picture of one of my craft cabinets which is located in the kitchen. I have gobs of artsy crafty goodies and supplies waiting to be used! Everything was pretty much thrown in the cabinet, no rhyme or reason. 

Junk to the left! Junk to the right!

I basically just grouped similar things together

and tossed what I could.

My spools of ribbon are stacked to the right. 

I used jars to store stones.

To the left side, bottom row of the cabinet I decorated some tin cans to corral miscellaneous items. Sounds elementary and maybe it is, but it's a cheap and functional solution! I'll share that whole project with you in my next post. Until then, hope you are able to get away and lose yourself somewhat! It's so refreshing!

Back Up and Running

My computer is back up and running and fortunately it was an easy fix. Since I have had limited computer access this week I used my spare time to play with my new TOY! I'm stoked! Are you ready??????

Drum roll please!!! I got a cricut this week. Do you have one? How do you like it? Any advice? My husband surprised, no shocked me with it Monday night. I have been wanting one for a while but certainly didn't expect to be getting one. Wow what a nice surprise. It's the Expressions one in teal blue, just like I wanted. For those of you who don't know what a cricut is, well first of all it is pronounced like the insect "cricket", which I did not realize until my husband purchased mine. It is a personal paper cutter. I have read it does more than just paper too! Anyhow, I was calling it a cry-cut and my husband was completely mortified when he went shopping for one and asked a salesman about a cry-cut and the sales guy laughed at him and said, "dude it's a "cricket" see the little insect on the box," pointing to the picture of the little cricket face. Whoops. Leave it to me to mess that up. I am still having a hard time pronouncing the darn thing correctly, even now that I own one and have been corrected! Ijust forget what it's called. OWNED! haha!


So last night I finally pulled the cricut out of the box and hooked it up. I played around with it to see how it worked and it's pretty cool. Oh let the creative juices flow! Now I have so many project ideas that I can't wait to try out, on top of all the other home decor projects I am working on! Did I ever mention that I am QUEEN of starting projects and having too many projects going on at one time? It's one of those things with me. DIS-TRACK-SHONE(I know how to spell distraction for your information, just trying to emphasize)!!!!! I get all my projects done, I just keep coming up with new ones before finishing the older ones. I'm constantly reminding myself to slow down, first things first... do one project at a time, start to finish, before starting another one!!! I have so many ideas though! Oh I can't wait to see what this baby can do!