RTR!

We love Alabama football in this house. My little monster has crimson walls in his bedroom and wants it decorated Crimson Tide style. I have plenty of houndstooth plans running through my head but I was browsing pinterest for more ideas and to find some ways to make sure it doesn't go over the top. That's when I found this photo...

I L.O.V.E. it! This is going to end up in my living room for football season some how, some way!

It's essentially our family in elephants. Dad, mom, and the little wild child. That baby elephant cracks me up and reminds me of my little high energy boy.

P.S. I finished recreating another pin! Yay! More on that tomorrow :)

 



Easy DIY Zinc Letters My Ass

I wanted some of those Anthropologie zinc letters for my kitchen and I've seen plenty of DIY versions on Pinterest. Apparently these letters are so easy for others to DIY however mine ended up looking like grey mud in letter shape. About the time I was about to throw them in the trash I figured I would try out the nickel spray paint I had. I threw away everything I know about getting an even spray paint job and got the can up close and personal so I would have some color variations. After the spray paint was dry, I dry brushed on some dark patina metallic acrylic paint.

I think they look darker in real life. I'm happy with them for now. I might try out a tutorial again for letters in the laundry closet but after how angry I got at these three little letters my guess is it will probably be awhile. I want a couple baskets to go on either side to hide some lesser used kitchen items. The more I look at this picture, the more convinced I am that I need to carve out some time to go buy a camera instead of continuing to use my phone. The letters are really darker and my walls look grey here but are actually taupe. arghh. It's driving me crazy now so it's obviously my bedtime.

 

 



From Pinterest to my kitchen counter

Anytime I get around to actually doing something I've pinned makes me very happy. After all I spend time finding and pinning things that I want to create and I don't want the things I pin to only ever be dreams of fun projects. This time this was my inspiration pin...

This is from Natalme and she created this fun little cake stand like to corral her dish soap, sponges, etc.

I wanted to make one. I felt like it would definitely pretty up the kitchen sink some. So off I went to Salvation Army to find a candlestick and a plate and they did not disappoint. I had plenty to choose from. I walked away with a lovely brass candlestick and possibly the ugliest plate I've ever seen. With a glop of E6000 glue I attatched the two and after it dried I started the process of

 spray-dry-turn-spray. I sprayed it with Nickel spraypaint. All the hardware in my kitchen is brushed nickel and I'm not brave enough to go with as daring a color as she did.

 

 

This is what I ended up with. I love it and while I still need some different soap pumps, for now it is happily holding my pretty gloves, soap, and windex. Mine is plenty stable and hasn't tipped while using the soap or windex pumps but I'm pretty sure it's because I chose a candle stick that was wide on both ends.

The next project I'm hoping to tackle is this one

This one is from Love in Motion I believe.

There are lots of variations of these floating around Pinterest. I'm hoping to get this one accomplished this week.

 

 



My First Experience with Stain

When we bought our house we were fortunate enough to inherit 6 cans of Minwax stain in all different colors. That got me pretty excited because I've never stained anything before but I've been wanting to try it out for sometime now. My mother and father got a beautiful solid wood dining room table from my grandparents as a wedding gift. My mother decided she wanted to refinish it sometime around my early teen years but her version of stripping it was scrapping the finish off with a butter knife while she drank coffee and talked with friends or me and my sister. It has been my intent to strip it and refinish it ever since I inherited it almost four years ago. Now that I have a garage that gives me space to do projects like this I instantly got cold feet. I'm scared I'm going to ruin this table that is older than I am and holds so many memories of all those years.

 I remember making "biscuits" with my sister when I was my sons age. At 8 and 6 years old we had no idea that bicuits had more ingredients than just flour and water. Thats right, we coated that entire table top in paste while my mother was on the phone with my grandmother. She made us clean up the mess we had made and I'm amazed that there isn't still paste in the groves of the table. Over the years we have spent a lot of time around that table and I'm amazed it's still in such good shape after all that plus the 6 moves in 3 1/2 years I put it through after it became mine. So that rambling explains the cold feet I have about messing with that table.

In an effort to get some staining under my belt I felt i should go with something less sentimental like the unfinished shelves in the laundry closet. So that was my test run and I survived it and now I'm ready to tackle a bigger project. Maybe not the table just yet but something bigger than a closet shelf. But here is a picture of my newly stained dark oak shelf in the laundry closet.

 

Uh oh! Please ignore the wet white touch up paint and the dark iPhone pic.

 I love it and it makes me happy every time I open the doors to wash clothes :)

 

 

Stomach viruses and a miracle

So since last Thursday or so we have been sick in this house. I started off the stomach bug we have passed around. It started while I was at work early Thursday morning and it lasted well into the weekend. Ugh! and now my little monster has it. He woke up this morning saying his arm and legs hurt and he was "noxious" which seemed to go along pretty well with my experience of achiness and nausea.

Along with the fun stomach bug he is having a little respiratory flare up so the inhaler is back out and so is the vapor rub. Speaking of vapor rub that is where the miracle happened. After listening to him cough all afternoon Friday after school I knew he was never going to sleep through the night with that cough. I had seen on pinterest that you can put vapor rub on the soles of your feet and slide some socks on and it would get rid of the cough. I didn't have a whole lot of faith in it because the cough medicine I had already given him had decreased the frequency of his cough but by no means got rid of it. It was a bit of a fight to convince him to sleep in socks but it definitely paid off. Now for three days we have been doing vicks slathered on feet and no cough medicine and he is sleeping soundly with no coughing. I'm totally suggesting this to people from now on if they are struggling with a coughing kiddo because if it can get rid of my little monsters cough then I know it works. Pinterest to the rescue again, however there was no miracle stomach bug cure that I could find on there so hopefully that will be out of his system soon.



Cricut fun

We finally got a fill in washer and dryer for the front load washer that decided to call it quits at 3 years old. I have decided that as much of a pain it is to do laundry, it's even more of a pain to have to haul basket after basket of dirty clothes outside of your house to do laundry. Oh and the real joy of having to haul all this laundry around is that boys make sweaty,stinky clothes so my car constantly smlled like a men's locker room. Eeeewwww! Man am I glad that's over! And at $30 for the washer and the dryer we really couldn't be happier at this moment.

Now that I'm going to be spending a lot of time doing laundry I would like that area to be a little prettier. The entrance from the garage into our house opens up into the kitchen right near the laundry closet area. I had three frames that I couldn't find a good spot for in the house so they have been sitting on an end table until they found a home. I decided to make a little project out of them while dinner was cooking. A little vinyl applied straight to the glass and voila!

 

 Our little back entrance is headed in the right direction.

I think I need to add a couple items to the shelf but I'm nervous that my little monster is going to pull to hard getting his backpack one day and it's going to crash down. It feels sturdy to me and it's able to hold a lot of weight so far but I just don't trust my little one with anything breakable :)

 



Summer Mantle Inspiration

Now that I have a mantle to decorate I'm excited to be able to change that decor up pretty easily with the seasons or holidays. My mother is a big fan of fireplaces(like really huge fan, she likes to text pictures of her warming her hands in front of the fire to her friends almost every day in the winter) but she never ever mixes it up on the mantle. The arrangement of pictures,candles, etc. that is on her mantle would be almost the exact same arrangement that you would have seen there yesterday, last month, or even 3 years ago when she moved into her current place. For me I feel like this is a spot where I can get creative and inject some holiday(seasonal?) cheer without making major changes in the house or investing a whole bunch of time. However, having never decorated a seasonal mantle before I needed a little inspiration and her are a few I rounded up...

  

this one is from Ashley's Thrifty Living and she shows how she created the banner along with highlights of some of the other little touches

 

 

I love the nautical feel and the muted blues in this mantle from Completely Coastal and I feel like most of the things here wouldn't be too hard to recreate with just a qiuck trip to Lowe's.

 

 

I really love this one from The Lettered Cottage with that adorable flag idea.

 

I can't wait to get started on making my mantle summery so I can enjoy it on every one of those long summer days. With our fireplace being in the kitchen, whatever I choose to put up there I definitely will see a lot of since so far that is where I can typically be found when I'm at home.