Jazzin' Up Some Dressers!

Welcome back! I hope you have been enjoying this beautiful weather as much as I have! Us in Georgia sure did have a crazy couple of weeks-- ice storms, tornadoes, 70 degree weather, earth quakes...

I have been busy around the house completing some projects and thought I'd post some how-to's and show some before/ after photos since that's what we really love about DIY anyways :)

First up is my Grandmother's old dresser. This thing was COATED in some Poly like no other. I'm talking multiple coats of stripper to get this stuff off plus tons and tons of sanding. 

I decided to finish the front with a map. The hardest part is finding the paper map honestly.. luckily my dad had a stash of old maps of Georgia and Tennessee so I chose the map of Nashville. 

to do this, I took the map and put a layer of modge podge on the drawer as well as the top of the map. Once covered, we smoothed it over and let it dry. It really doesn't take much more than that! Now to find some knobs...

 Next up is our $25 dresser from goodwill!

as you can see, it was a bright white dresser with very ugly handles. I already started the top before I realized I needed a picture! I had a few repairs to make to the structure of the piece (re-attaching some of the trim, fixing the drawer tracks and repairing some broken wood inside). 

I decided to go with a mustard color (obviously) and made my own chalk paint for it. If you have used chalk paint before, you know it's pretty much an investment to do a few pieces of furniture. I looked up several recipes and landed one that works really well! 

DIY CHALK PAINT

1. 1/3 cup plaster of paris
2. 1/3 cup warm water
3. mix these together until you don't have any clumps
4. add in 1 cup of latex paint, any color
5. stir well!

if you need more, double the recipe. I usually keeps any extra in a cleaned out pickle jar but noticed the more it sits the more it settles. Go ahead and throw out what you don't use since it's so cheap to make :)

I did a few coats since the white was so glossy (no sanding necessary with chalk paint!)

because I didn't want white showing through when I sanded it, I took a sharpie and marked up the edges where I figured I would distress.

I painted all surfaces about 3 times. After it was dry, I did a light sanding to get rid of the rough texture (chalk paint is meant to be dull and a little rough. With a little sanding it becomes nice and smooth!)

I found some $1 hardware on Etsy from China? The old brass pulls were perfect with the mustard color. I also added some brown glaze to the surfaces so it didn't look like literal mustard. Now it's a more... aged mustard.

Voila!

Now for some views around the somewhat-finished room.

This is my first room that I love in this house. I love the wall, the old furniture and accessories, the $30 Nate Burkus curtains (!!!) and the new comforter.  Anyone lookin' for a place to stay anytime soon? :)

Thanks for reading!

Creepy Decor Galore!

Hi there! It is finally the fall season- my favorite time of the year! I have been busy doing some projects around the house preparing for a Halloween party (that I probably won't have but want to pretend I will).

My family has always gone way above and beyond for Halloween decorations and I've always enjoyed coming up with new, fun, creepy decor to put around the house. Traditionally most Halloween decorations have been outside but with the rapid popularity increase in Pinterest I assume many more people are now starting to deck out every flat surface with some pintresty project :)

Here is a look at what I've been doing so far! Some tutorials are written out, others are just photos. If you want to know how I did anything specifically just let me know!

Here is a view of the entire mantle. I draped the "creepy cloth" from the dollar store to give it something different. (yes, my fireplace is always orange, we painted that awhile back and LOVE it)

Here are some closeups of the actual items:

I got an old dictionary from goodwill and am using it just for paper. I tore some out, burned the edges and crinkled it up to stack it up to look like spells or potion recipes!

Also, these labels were hand-drawn on the inside sleeves of the old book's covers (it was a perfect aged, discolored look that is the perfect setting for creepy things!) I drew in pencil and modge-podged over to seal it up. 

Here's where the twine-wrapped vase came from--

I took a cheap cylinder vase I had from my wedding and decided to wrap it in some twine I had on hand. I know I can use this for far more than just Halloween so I hot glued it going up. After doing glue all the way around I realized I really only needed a few dots here and there and it stayed pretty well. Just make sure you keep it tight going up!

Here is the finished vase before filling it

I went out back and collected some branches. I cleaned them off a bit and just put them in to create some height to the mantle. I played around with different ones in order to not completely take over my TV but also keep the volume.

Besides the mantle I did a few other things around the house!

Here I took some of those pages from the dictionary again and glued them on cardboard. I took a sharpie and drew out a spider. I started drawing a skull but realized I just can't make those look good... so I went for the easier option :)

I am so excited to have collected some stuff for this table! I have the candle stands from wedding gifts and added the other stuff to them. I found the skill, bat cutouts and crows from the dollar store. My mom found the cool skeleton candelabra, spider vase and pumpkin from Kirklands.  The only other thing I might add eventually is more creepy cloth or black lace underneath it all.

Here are more closeups of the cool potion bottles. I simply spray painted them all matted black and added the paper afterwards. Some labels were printed from sites I found on Pinterest- just search halloween labels and there are TONS of ideas!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

A new twist on displaying guitars!

4. A NEW way to display guitars!

So for this project, there has to be a little bit of a back story. At our old apartment, we hung all of the guitars around the room randomly, filling almost every wall. When we moved, Andrew decided to go ahead and do the same thing. Unfortunately, this room was much smaller and it never really sat right with me.

See what I mean? Kinda blah.. and didn't really fit well in the room with the piano and ridiculously large sofa.

SO... I had this amazing idea kinda pop into my head one day. I thought it would be cool to place them all together in one area in the corner, and create a fun, art piece. I layed out the guitars on the floor and came up with an arrangement I liked, and then traced them onto the wall.

I could have done regular outlines of the guitar shape, but decided to do something a bit more interesting. 

Each guitar has it's own "personality". One is melting, one is on fire, one is boxy, the ukelele, my favorite, has some Hawaiian flair, and the others just have interested shapes. 

I added the other art things I had- the melted record, the different notes with quotes on them and some other things.

I went with a pop of tangerine on a grey wall.. and black and white accessories/ pillows. 

This actually ended up taking forever. I free handed all of the orange, then painted the grey, then had to do all of the outlines of the orange back with grey. It took about an entire weekend to get the lines really crisp and finished.

I think it turned out really neat! What do you think?

DIY Roman Shades

2. Simple panel curtains turned into roman shades!

This next project was really one of the first we did here. I have 3 large windows that let in SO much sunlight around 2pm that we really needed to solve the issue. I know roman shades can be quite expensive, and I had 4 panels of striped curtains from our old apartment that we got with wedding money....so why not reuse them?
I decided to make the printed fabric into roman shades.. originally my idea was to do the whole pinterest "roman shades out of cheap walmart blinds" thing, but my mother suggested we do it the real way, and I have to admit, I think she was right :)

 I also kept our long brown IKEA curtains which weren't quite long enough for these windows. I added a small panel of gold to the bottom which was from pieces of cheap curtains from Walmart.

The kitchen window also has the roman shade, but instead of doing it the real way, I thought tying it up with jute would look a little better.

I really like the informality of it... the nice thing is if I want it raised, I just have to adjust the knot!

total project cost: $30 for the roman shade kits

The Long Awaited tour of the house.....

Happy New Year everyone!
I know it has been quite awhile since the last post, but here are a few things that have been going on since we've last spoken

• Andrew and I have bought a house!
• Kaylee graduated from college with a degree in Music Education
• Andrew just got a new job working as a mechanic at a scooter shop (which also works on other small engines)
• he loves it btw.. :)
• Gnarley is now 1 yrs old and still driving us crazy

Ok, so some of you that are on here are most likely looking for pictures of the new home!

Sorry it has taken so long, but I hope you enjoy!

if you would like to see the house go from a pile of dirt to what it is now, click here!

one of the guest rooms

office space upstairs

looking into the dining room 

view to the front door

the dining room

view from the kitchen down to the living room

our bedroom

bathroom

other side of bathroom

the "mudroom"

office space downstairs

music room downstairs

kitchen

living room

There is just a few pictures from around the house. If you would like to see more, let me know! I also posted this link in case you would like to see the full process of the house being built!

Hopefully we'll have more posts coming soon on all of our projects we have done/ working on!

Till next time....