A Basket Case - Recognize That Basket From My Mom's Garage???

Happy Fourth of July! I hope you have a great holiday weekend and stay safe!

 

It has been an unusually quiet week here. My kids are away visiting their grandparents and my husband has laryngitis. Needless to say I've been hitting it hard trying to get as many projects accomplished because I know next week will be a different story after the kids return home.

 

So here is one small project I did. I got this round brown basket from my mom's garage a couple months ago. It sits in the bay window of our dining room in a designated sitting area.

  

After looking at it for a couple of months I decided to paint it. I know there is no going back once I paint it but there is always more paint and I can change the color if I decide to! I really wanted a fresh, more modern look to the basket. I found some adorable beachy looking baskets with navy blue stripes at Target that were my inspiration for color! I wanted contrasting colors on the basket but nothing too "matchy matchy" for this particular room.

I painted the bottom portion of the basket with Krylon Indoor/Outdoor Gloss in Celery. So it isn't white! I sprayed in the direction of the pattern and the paint went on with a nice smooth coat.

See below - I sprayed using strokes left to right and back and forth to get even coverage.

Sitting the basket upside down over a bucket allowed it to dry without being touched.

 

This is the sitting area. 

 I painted the inside of the basket too! 

 After taping the inside and outside areas, I painted the handles in Valspar Satin Indigo Streamer.

I think it's a keeper! What do you think? Have you painted any baskets lately?

Some of Us Still Use Snail Mail

How are you??? I am tickled to have found a better use for these baskets I put together a few years ago with paint and burlap. I hung them on hooks in my pantry to hold plastic grocery bags. It wasn't the best use of the baskets so I added the black wooden letters for incoming and outgoing mail and hung them in the laundry room next to our keys. The "in" basket is currently overflowing. Uggh, another thing to go through and sort.

What have you been up to? Happy Hump Day!

MISC! Label Another Basket

How have you been? It has been a while. I usually try to post a couple of times a week but for a while now it hasn't been happening. Just too much going on. Getting ready to send a child off to Kindergarten and so leave it to me to run around like a chicken with my head cut off b/c I waited until the last possible moment to purchase school supplies.

MISC! I soooooo try to get away from this word in everything I do. Miscellaneous  just seems like the file ALL our crap gets dumped into. Miscellaneous to me is the L-A-Z-Y that I become when I don't want to label something for a specific thing. This little basket is my hub's dumping ground when he walks in the house each day though so I found it appropriate to label it as such. Plus it makes a great statement and looks mighty cute across the room from the etc basket of toys!

All you need for the look:

-small wooden letters
-acrylic paint
-glue gun

I think it cost me $1.00 for the letters. They are so cheap! You can buy them in the color you want but I had to buy them in white and paint b/c there weren't enough black ones. Until next time!

Label A Basket

WASSSSSUP? It's Monday night and I am pooped. How about you? I'm glad Monday is over and believe it or not I actually got some things accomplished tonight. Pat on the back! Lately I have been a S-L-U-G when I get home from work. I admit it. I think I have every right to become a slug once in a while though. Don't get me wrong, I have been busting it but at night I just wannna vedge (or however you spell it) some too!

Have I ever told you how many TOYS we have? We have too many to count. It's ridiculous. I go through them every so often and weed them out. Don't tell my kids though! ;- ) I am not so mean that I'm blatant about it. I do have to get a little sneaky and do it when they are sleeping or out of the house but I try and go through things they've either outgrown or ignore. Sometimes I put them in bags and just hide them in a closet to make sure they won't be missed. I even go as far as putting things in the attic for months at a time to pull them out and surprise them all over again with certain toys. The toys are stored in the play room and their bedrooms but we do have one basket in our living room too to corral some.
 

My oldest asked me the other day if I could label his toy bins like they do at school and I thought SURE  I could do this. I would LOVE to. I'm an organizational nut that way!

I started the label project with the basket in the living room.  I realize this isn't exactly what he meant by labeling his toys but it is a start and I thought it was cute for decoration too. It's Pottery Barnish! Or so I think!
 

I picked up some wooden letters at Michaels and painted them black. Can you guess what I spelled? Come on, see if you can guess!

I used the hot glue gun to attach the letters. My youngest has plucked the "E" off once already and I had to re-glue but I thought it turned out nice!

At least this way we can use the basket for something else later on when they outgrow toys. Or do you really ever outgrow toys?!?! Hope you have a great week!

Hanging Basket With No-Sew Liner

I hope you're having a nice weekend! I'm sitting here taking in what just happened on one of my favorite tv shows. I don't watch a lot of tv but I've been sucked into an HBO show - Game of Thrones. I've heard that the book is fantastic so I'm watching the show. It's fun to have something to look forward to watch and the show is great! 

Having a few days off is pretty nice! It has been a pleasant holiday weekend at home with some time to catch up on things and relax a little. Last night I did this little project before I went to bed. I replaced our old system for grocery bag storage. I put together a no-sew hanging basket to keep our grocery bags organized in. It's simple enough!

Below was our old system. It's kind of country with a cat theme and it has seen better days. It was never my taste but it did the job. The problem with it now is that the elasticity on the bottom of it has worn out and so the bags fall out of the hole in the bottom and I was constantly cleaning up bags. Annoying!!!

I found these two hanging baskets at Dollar Tree for a buck a piece. I got three and will use the third as a basket for my bicycle, which I will share when I get to it!

 

 

I wasn't crazy about the color of them so I took some white latex paint and brushed a coat over them. I didn't totally cover the baskets and I left the inside unpainted since I was planning on doing a liner. They're a little rustic.

Below I cut two separate pieces of burlap. I played with the material inside the basket and adjusted how much I'd need. I wasn't precise about any of it. I want to learn to sew but for now this will have to do! It's easy enough!

I just eyed it and reverse-wrapped (wrapped the inside of the basket) it (did I just make up a concept here?) with a glue gun. I started from one end of the inside of the basket and worked my way to the other end, making a flap over the top of the basket and glued it down. 

So that you don't see the cuts in the burlap around the handles on the back side of the basket, I took another rectangular piece of burlap that I cut two slits in below and placed it inside to cover the bottom and then pulled it thru the handle to cover the folds on the back side and I glued it down.  

 

 

On each end of the tops of the basket I poked my scissors thru the two layers of burlap and tied them together with a piece of green ribbon. If you need any more pictures to help see how I did it, please let me know and I'll post. 

It's definitely not perfectly measured but I think it works well in the pantry! Whaddayathink?