It's official...

I get to design and execute the best house project ever!!! A NURSERY! We've been waiting for what feels like forever for this, so the hubs and I are on cloud 9!  Stay tuned for lots of nursery ideas that I've accrued over the last year... or three ; )

God is SO good!

First real experience with the sewing machine = success!

I've decided that I didn't become crafty because I have some great knack at it, rather, it was out of necessity because when I decide I want a certain something, I won't give up until I can find it.  So, I decided I wanted some thick black and white striped seat cushions for our kitchen table but couldn't find them anywhere. I remembered I had these lovely things and decided to try to recover them:

And here they are recovered

I used black ribbob for the ties as seen above.  I like how they turned out, and the fabric was pretty inexpensive. I think the whole thing was about $20!



$3.50 project!

I found this wooden tray a few months ago at TJ Maxx (where else?) and I had an arrangement of white candles on it. Well, some of the wax fell onto the tray and I got it out as best as I could, but I couldn't get it all.

I added some fabric I found and loved but couldn't decide where to put it or what to recover, and voila! I bought a 1/2 of a yard so it was cheap as can be. I cut the fabric to size, and then sprayed adhesive glue (the same thing I used for our DIY tufted headboards I told you about a while back.

More Inspiration...

I love all of these rooms and I keep them in a nice little folder on my laptop when I need ideas.

Thank you, Google Images!

Love these curtains from 6th Street Design School

New Front Door... Sort Of

So we're still trying to figure out exactly what we're going to do with the front porch, but one thing that we could decide on was that the front door needed some TLC.  When we moved in it was green, we painted it black, then we got weird for a few days and painted it red (hated it), and then we painted it black again.  Phew. Needless to say, stripping it required a lot of patience...

Here it is now... we really like it and it was super cheap. We used an "ebony" color to stain it. It was pretty dark, almost looked black, so we decided to sand it and put polyurethane on it and it helped lighten it up a bit. 

Chalk Board Paint

We started trying to memorize a different Bible verse every week, and this led us to make this wall in our kitchen a chalkboard wall. You paint it on the wall just like regular paint, let it dry for 24 hours and then you can start writing on it. It took some getting used to (it's a black wall in our house... a little bold), but I really like it. It's so practical for notes, reminders, shopping lists, etc. We are also really trying to stick to our budget we made a few months ago, and writing our "entertainment" expenses each month really helps us stay on track. 

We bought this from Home Depot

 Other inspiration

If the idea of a whole wall being black is too much, try painting the inside of a frame or replace a mirror with some wood.  We originally had this, but I always ran out of room to write all of the things I wanted to write:

uh oh...

So this is the first time (or maybe first time in a long time) that we've done a project that we kind of regret.  We woke up this morning and thought it would be a great idea to knock out the railings on our front porch. We knocked out one section, took a few steps back, and both said we loved it!  So then, of course, we proceeded to knockout the rest.  As you can imagine, now we are having second thoughts but it's a little too late. Josh says if it really bothers me, he will find a way to put them back. I feel like we may have lost the charm of our house by getting rid of them...

Now:

Before:

This was our inspiration... cute, right?!

DIY Tufted Headboard Tutorial

So yesterday I posted some of the headboards my husband and I have made. I wanted to show you guys how he did it. These pictures are from the first one we ever made, and honestly, this headboard is my least favorite of them all. Nevertheless, here is how we did it:

Materials You'll Need
1. Depending on the size of the headboard, you'll need to find 2.5-3.5yards of upholstery fabric of your choice
2. 2.5-3.5 yards of batting
3. A large piece of wood (usually about 65x37 for a full/queen)
4. 2 inch foam
5. Upholstery buttons
6. Thin upholstery twine for the tufting
7. Spray adhesive to keep the foam/batting to the wood
8. Upholstery needle
9. Sharpie
You'll also need a jigsaw or a circular saw (if you're making one without any curves), but hopefully you already have that!
- The total cost of the materials is about $100 (sometimes less if you JoAnn's is having a sale)
 

Step 1: Cut the shape of the headboard you'd like. A great way to use a template is to trace or freehand the shape onto wrapping paper while it's folded. Cut it and open it up and then trace this shape onto the wood using a sharpie.

Step 2: Use a jigsaw to cut the shape

Step 3: On the back of the headboard, decide where you would like your buttons. This will involve a lot of measuring! Be sure to make a nice mark where you need to drill the holes for the buttons.  Only drill through the wood, not the foam and batting. (This picture shows the foam and batting already on the headboard... you'll do that after you drill the holes)

Step 4: Once you have your shape cut out, now you'll need to add the foam and batting to the wood. The thicker the foam, the more tufted it will look. This is when you need the spray adhesive to keep everything in place. When you have it all in place, use a staple gun to secure everything to the back.

Step 5: Now you can add your fabric to the headboard, basically in the same way you did the batting. The best idea way to do this is to only staple the top in place and one staple in the bottom (just to keep the fabric tight for the tufting). You don't want to staple all of the sides before you do the tufting because that will create wrinkles, or it will be too tight to create the tufted look.  Put the needle through the back hole in the headboard and pull the thread (or twine) through to the front. Attach your button to the front and thread the needle through to the same hole to the back again.  It's best if you can have someone help you with this part because one person will need to knot the thread/twine on the back while the other one is pushing on the button from the front. This will help create the really puffy looking tufting.

Step 6: Enjoy your finished headboard! Sometimes we like to put a black fabric on the back to cover up all of the sharpie marks, but it really doesn't matter. You can attach the headboard to the wall using a french cleat.

A few things I'm dying to add somewhere in my house...

Is that a deer? A steer? A longhorn? Okay, I don't know what it is, but as long as it's faux, I really love that above the fireplace (actually I just love this whole room)!  I'm going to buy this horse head (below) for above our fireplace. I had originally intended to add this to our fireplace, but after I bought it and brought it home, I realized it was too small. So instead, I'm planning on picking up this little guy from Z Gallerie because it's a lot bigger:

I also saw this while I was browsing around and I think it's really creative! I'm thinking of doing this for our guest bedroom window treatments:

$7 artwork makes me happy

We have a pretty small foyer area (okay, it's basically non-existent) and I needed a space to hang jackets when guests come over. You can't see it in this picture, but there's also a woven basket right below this for shoes.We made the coat hook board out of a piece of wood that sod came on and added the crystal door knobs.  I wanted some type of artwork above them and didn't want to spend a lot of money. I had been eying this fabric at my favorite fabric store but couldn't decide where to put it. Best part? The fabric cost me a whopping $7.  I finally had the idea to frame it and voila!

DIY Tufted Headboards

So, I have to give my hubby all of the credit for this! He's amazing! A few years ago, I started pointing out tufted headboards that I loved but of course they were all too expensive. He surprised me one day with one and we have been making them and selling them ever since! I think I'll put up a DIY Headboard post soon for anyone who wants to tackle this. Here are a few he's made...

Deer Head Love

Okay, so this is a little ironic since a real deer head in my home would make me cringe (insert typical anti-hunting comment here) but I just LOVE these porcelain deer heads!  They also come in silver and I think this would look great in a bedroom, above the fireplace in the living room, or even in a little boys' nursery!

Here's one from Z Gallerie for $49.95:

To-Do List

I'm on Spring Break this week and have some serious projects on my to-do list. Only problem? If we did all of these, we would be shelling out some major bucks, so it's one at a time for now.  Here are some of the projects on my list:

1. Stain our front door like this one:

2. New Landscaping -- how great does this front yard look?!

3. Put up these ceiling tins in our half bath:

4. Spice up our fireplace mantel a bit.

5. Finally finish our bedroom makeover... here's a mini preview:

Here's to hoping I can get most of these completed by summer! :)