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?

Burlap Christmas Stockings

3. Christmas stockings for the door

I was given one of those door stockings as a wedding gift (3) years ago. I thought to myself...as I usually do with these kinds of gifts.. "I could totally make that myself!" Well, I tried it out that year, made 2 for some friends for Christmas, then this past Christmas I decided to finish up the burlap and paint that I already had and make more for the entire family!

Here is how to make them:

1. trace out a large stocking pattern with newspaper or poster board.
2. trace with sharpie onto the burlap, make sure to do 2 per stocking you want to make!
3. lay them out and paint...I did red spray paint for the body, and white paint (a bucket of oops paint from Home Depot in just flat white). I found that painting with actual paint was A LOT easier than spray painting the white on. Also, for the polka dots (if desired), just spin a cheap paint brush in one spot to create the perfect circle.

   

make sure you paint the backside as well, and that you do the flip side. I just do solid red and white, no polka dots

   4.   After all of the paint is dry, bring inside and pair them up!

   5.   Take a small bottle of black acrylic paint with the fine tip and draw a messy line all the way around.     

         outline the white areas as well, and add some "stitch" marks in there!

   6.   Once the black paint is dry, hot glue the bottom toe area and heel and start to stuff with whatever you

          have on hand. I used old grocery bags since I always have a million of them...

   7.   After you stuff it all the way, finish up the edges with more hot glue

   8.   After everything is set, grab some thick, but bendable wire. Poke holes through in the top corners

         leaving excess on both ends. Then just take pliers and twist into a random bundle to "tie" off the ends

Voila!

(Sorry there aren't more pictures, that was the husband's job and he kinda slacked...)

Total project cost: $10  would be more if I had to go get all new materials. 

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

Re-Purposed Antique Sewing Table

Hello everyone! (if there's anyone...)
I am finally at the point where I can sit down and show you all of the things I have been working on in the past 6 months or so.
The last post was all about the new house. Well, since then, I have changed/ added/ decorated/ re-purposed/ salvaged/ painted/ etc. MANY things.

Let's have a look... shall we??


1. Antique sewing table turned hall entryway table!

Found this at a local flea market.. someone had painted the top a weird grey color. The first thing I did when I got home was sand it back down and stain it dark. I kinda liked some of the grey still showing, so I went with it!

Next thing I did was polish up the iron legs and pedal

Love it!

Stuffed pork-chops- YUM!

hello again!

I have been creating a few posts here and there but haven't had the chance to actually upload them and finish 'em up.

Here is tonight's dinner.

enjoy!

and here are a few shots from cooking-

close-up of the stuffing. 

...I'd show you a picture of when I plated it....but, I ate it already.

couldn't resist :)