Perpetual DIY micro-journal.

I saw this idea for a micro-journal awhile back (even before Pinterest!) Ha...it's hard to imagine a world without Pinterest! But it was pre-pinning and I loved the idea so I made one but never really used it! Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure I sold it last year at a yard sale for like $2. 

 But with the new year just beginning, I decided to make another one and actually start doing it! To be honest, I had already done all the stamping (because I made a few sets last time around) so all I needed to do was find the perfect container! I didn't really like the yellow one I used that time so I knew that type was out. I wanted one that would provide a little more support to the cards and found this adorable little thing yesterday for $1 in the Target Dollar Spot!

 And since I'm being honest, I didn't really like the monthly dividers in the last one (no wonder I sold it for two bucks!)

So for this one, I just used what I had lying around...a simple small pink binder clip. It works perfectly and there's no fooling around trying to find today's date! 

So there you have it! I really love this container (although I might remove the ribbon!) and I'm super excited to keep it up! So for years to come, I'll always know that January 19, 2012 was the day I helped Janice pick out a new couch and we lunched at Chick-fil-a!

**I'm linked up to Southern Lovely and a Bowl Full of Lemons**

Street name printable.

I don't know why I never thought of this myself, but it's such a great idea I wanted to share it with you! I don't believe it reinventing the wheel, so I'll just direct you over to Thrifty Decor Chick, where like Clarissa, she explains it all.

But basically, you can create your very own subway art printable using a blank document and the free photo editing website Picnik! Brilliant, right? So I made my own!

My favorite "style" if you want to call it that have been of the street name variety! Here's my version that I whipped up in just 15 minutes...

 I'm only 31 years old (soon to be 32) but man I've moved a lot! I've lived mostly in California (where I am now!) but had a few stops up in Oregon and even Sweden! That's where the Sernanders väg comes in :-)

 This was so easy to make and I love the pop of color it adds!

 I'm trying to add a bit more color to my place and since tangerine is the new "it" color, I thought this sign is a great place to start!

Trashcan makeover.

I have a pretty standard cheap white trash can. It's nothing fancy but it does it's job. I had seen an idea on Pinterest where someone had decorated their trash can with vinyl and it looked super cute! So like all Pinspirations, I had to do it, too! I was all set to borrow a friends cricut machine and buy some vinyl and try to make something but then I found vinyl wall decals at Target and my trashcan went from this...

  

...to this in a matter of minutes!

 Totally my kind of project...quick and easy!

It's clearly still a trashcan but it's just a little easier on the eyes now!

 Especially, since it's practically in my living room :-)

Here's a quick side by side of the before and after...

It's funny how something as simple as a flower decal can make me love my trash can! It's the little things, right?

Furniture finds.

Has it really been a week since I last posted something? Wow...last week flew by! Anyhow, I wanted to share a few before pictures of some absolute steals that my friend Jill and I found this weekend at the local Habitat for Humanity Restore!

Jill and I decided to team up, pull our resources and talents and make over a few pieces for resale!  And these are the first three pieces (of hopefully many!)

We scored this beautiful dresser...

 These matching nightstands....

 And we're hoping this unbelievably beautiful piece will still be there when we go pick up the dresser today...

Jill affectionately named her "Fancy." And rightfully so. Who in their right mind would give her away?? Oh well, their loss is our gain!

I'll be sure to keep you posted on the transformations!

Easy weekend project.

Happy Monday (afternoon)! I hope everyone enjoyed the nice long weekend. The weather wasn't as bad as predicted around here and we didn't receive a whole lot of rain so I didn't even make a dent in my long awaited chair project. Oh well.  It's really not hard to talk myself out of a upholstery job so I think it's best I keep quiet on those chairs until they are actually done :-)

Anyway, moving onto a quick little project I was able to accomplish this weekend! Awhile back I made a framed jewelry display using a decorative metal sheet (another Pinterest inspiration).

I love this little guy and use it daily. I had large chunk of the metal sheet leftover and had been wanting to do something with it - and I finally did!

A friend showed me this idea in a magazine and I loved it! I simply shaped the metal using different kitchen objects (quick oats, can of soup, etc.) and then "sewed" it up using floral wire. I'm really not the best seamstress...can you tell I got bored half way through the big one? Ha! Oh well...it was sticking together just fine so I skipped down to the bottom to seal the closure :-)

 This is another case of done is better than perfect! You can't even tell once I gave them a quick coat of white spray paint. Plus I've made the seams face the wall, so it's fine. Really.

I also love the beautiful shadow reflected on the wall and the three different sizes. If you're working with a full sheet of the metal, you could probably get several big ones out of it, but I had to work with what I had leftover.

There you have it...super easy! Until next time...

Suitcase Table #2.

I've had this vintage suitcase and table legs lying around for at least the last year! After I moved, the suitcase was stored high above my closet but my recent closet makeover project has forced me into action! So I pulled it down and got to work! This is such an easy project and I just love how it turned out!! Thankfully, I had a spot in mind for this little guy - right between my two vintage cane chairs.

  This is the second suitcase table I've made and this one was just as easy as the first! I started with a suitcase, table legs, and some mounting plates! The suitcase was salvaged from my grandparent's garage, the legs came from Habitat for Humanity Re-Store (for $1 each!) and the plates I bought from Lowe's for about $1.50 each.  They are also available on Amazon if you don't want to trek through a home improvement store!

It's really an incredibly easy project! Some tutorials say to place a piece of particle board inside the suitcase for the screws to drill into...but I skipped that step and just drilled directly into the suitcase and it's just fine :-)

I love it!!

I also love the total cost of the project - only ten bucks!! 

And if you're interested, you're looking at my next two projects! I adore these two cane chairs that were gifted to me and I think I'm finally ready to paint and reupholster them! A rainy weekend forecast just might help me finally get this project marked off my list!

Until next time...

*I'm linked up to House of Hepworth's, Fingerprints on the Fridge, and Saved by Suzy*

Rosette making.

About a month ago, I hadn't the slightest idea of how to make rosettes. But thanks to a quick tutorial by a friend and an even quicker glance online, I realized just how easy they were to make! So I thought I'd share a quick tutorial on how I made the rosettes used for my felt rosette wreath.

I didn't want to waste a lot of felt so I made two different sizes and placed them alternately around the form. The larger rosette was made out of the inner part of the felt and the outside gave me the smaller one.

But here you...your guide to quick and easy felt rosettes:

1. Get a square piece of felt.

2. Starting at a corner, cut about an inch or so into the square making sure the edges are rounded. I've seen others cut more of a circle, but I didn't see the need. I then rounded edges of the outer piece so I could make two rosettes out of one piece of felt.

3. Take the large circle/square and begin cutting it into a spiral. You can just eyeball it, an imperfection here and there never hurt anyone :-)

4. Now that the felt is cut, it's time to start making them! Take one strand of felt and begin wrapping it into itself and then keep wrapping until you have your rosette.

5. Take a bit of glue (I used hot glue) to secure the end.

6. Admire your creation!

Easy right? It seems so simple to me know, but hopefully this will help someone who just needed to see how it's done!

Until next time...

When good ideas go bad.

A few weeks ago, I read about a blogger who used inexpensive pipe insulation as a wreath form. I had also seen the idea on Pinterest, so I figured I'd try it out. It seemed pretty fail safe, right? You take the insulation, make a circle, tape the ends together and you have your form!

Ha! Yeah right. This was not as easy as everyone had made it out to be! In fact, this project went south pretty quickly! But did I stop when I started seeing the signs?? Of course not. But I'll get there....for now back to the project.

I swung by Home Depot and after roaming the aisles a bit, I found a long piece of the stuff for just $1.28...score!

My goal with this project was to make a yarn wrapped wreath with felt rosettes in purples, grey, and black. So I gathered my materials and started wrapping the form with a thick yarn. One of the perks of using the insulation was not having to keep moving the bundle of yarn through and around the wreath with each wrap. That much was true. It was really easy and quick to wrap the straight piece of foam.

But that's where the ease ended. Because as soon as I started to shape the foam into a circle, it started doing this...

It buckled! I should have known this wasn't going to work, but I kept going anyway.

And don't get me started on how difficult it was to tape the ends together! I tried keeping both ends flat but it would just buckle more! So I tried cutting each end at an angle and fitting them together, but that wasn't working either. I finally just settled and taped the stupid thing together as best I could. Ha!

It wasn't pretty but I figured I would just cover this lopsided mess with rosettes and it will be fine.  

And it was. For the most part. Once the rosettes were on, I thought it looked pretty good! I loved the colors and it helped even out the shape of it.

But because the wreath was heavier on the left side and the form was so misshaped and buckled, I had to hang it off center for it to hang straight! The above picture is using the hook on the back of my bathroom door since I needed to figure out if it would hang straight. Of course, the hook on my bathroom door is centered, which means the wreath is not. Ugh. And anytime I tried to move it so it would be centered, the thing thing would swing down due to the weight of the rosettes and the buckled part of the wreath would show even more! You can see the beginnings of the buckling there in the right hand corner.

It was a mess.

Again, I should have just stopped there, but of course, I didn't. I hung it on my front door anyway. I had to MacGyver it with a little tape and managed to get it somewhat decent. I don't have any pictures of it hanging on my front door, but it looked similar to the picture above. At least in the beginning.

It hung for a few days but started drooping more and more and was slowly becoming a jagged oval! It looked awful (at least to me) so the wreath came down last night and in a fit of frustration very calm manner, I decided to just chuck it and start over but salvaged my rosettes, which were hot glued to the yarn.

I was able to save most of them, but I can't say the wreath form or yarn were as lucky.

You can see what became of the form after hanging a few days...it was a total disaster!

So what's the moral of this story, sometimes the cheaper option will cost you more in the end! I wasted yarn, hot glue, a little bit of felt and A LOT of my time in order to save a few bucks on the wreath form. Never again!

Of course, I accept that this disaster may be operator error since it seems that other folks have been able to successfully use pipe insulation as a wreath form. Or perhaps, they're just not telling you the whole story. Either way, it was a learning experience.

So with that wreath in the trash, I need to make another one. Off to Michael's...

Ledges are up.

About 5 months ago, I bought a few floating wall ledges from the Restore for a few bucks each. I painted them white and then they just sat gathering dust. Then I moved and was moving furniture around like crazy and couldn't decide on a spot for them. But once I found an arrangement that I loved, I decided on a spot for the ledges and hung them all by myself :-)

Here we are before...

 And here we have the after!!

The shelves are sparsely staged - I feel like I need some special for the bottom shelf but I'm not sure what that is just yet. I plan on shopping my house and will figure out what looks best in the long run but it works for now! 

The mirror is from IKEA and I picked up the lamp from TJ Maxx this week. The blue matches my bedding perfectly and I loved the shape! It was $30 but I had a $25 gift card, so it only cost me $5...which is more my style. The camera belonged to my grandpa and I already had the gray vase and just filled it with a few fresh flowers from the yard.

Now I could just end this post here and make you think that everything went super smooth and that hanging these shelves was a breeze. But I can't do that...because it wasn't! I was nervous about hanging them because I've never quite grasped the idea of anchors but knew I would need them for this project. I looked in my supplies and surprisingly had some!

I used a drill bit, hammered in the anchor and then screwed in the screw - but it took me two tries to get it right! The first set was just...how should I say it...off. Kind of loose. It didn't feel quite right. I'm not sure what went wrong but I did what any logical person would do, I took it down hung the shelf anyway.

 And I paid the price because as the shelf fell, I broke this sweet little yellow vase that belonged to my grandmother.

Ugh...after getting over the frustration and anger at myself for breaking that...I carried on. Unscrewed the bad ones and did it all over again...with much better results.

 This experience reminds me of this little guy I saw on Pinterest...

Not in this case, my friend, not in this case.

Anyway, the end result is nice and secure (I think!) and has been up for 8 hours with no sign of coming down!

Having this project finished gives me two walls in my bedroom that I absolutely love (the other one is the wall my bed is against.) Of the walls I'm still working on, one stores my hutch (post on that coming soon!) and the other is the window wall with a sewing machine desk and these cane chairs.

I love the chairs but I really want to reupholster them soon and I need another table to put between them, because this one is currently being used as a nightstand. Hmm...I think a trip to the fabric store is in my future!

Until next time...

The three dollar dining room table.

I love bargains and on my recent trip to Portland, I had hoped to find some good ones that would allow for budget friendly decorating of my sister's new place. Little did I know I would find the deal of the century!!

After a quick trip to IKEA (Yeah right...I'm pretty sure we had breakfast, shopped and had lunch before we were done), I convinced my sister to stop at a Goodwill Distribution Center on the way home. I believe the words "they never have anything good" came out of her mouth but I insisted and she is glad I did because we found this...

A dining room table with two leaves (which are not pictured!) for a whopping $3! I wanted to take a picture of the price tag for proof but started sanding and cleaning it before I remembered and by then it was scraped off. Oh well.

My sis loved the look of the long dresser I recently made over, so I gave the top a light sanding and decided to paint the top black and the bottom white. I would have sanded completely and stained the top but time was of the essence and I didn't have the luxury of waiting hours between coats of stain so I opted for the black and it worked just fine.

Here's the after...

This puppy seats 12 when both leaves are in and I still can't believe it cost less than a gallon of unleaded!

I only had my iphone so the pictures aren't the best...but you get the idea! It fits the dining room so well, too! And the only thing left to complete the set, is to find a couple of long benches which I'm sure my sister is scouring Craigslist for right now :-)

Easy DIY tape art.

In between a yard sale, a little work, and a baby shower, I managed to tackle a few things on my to do list this weekend. As a result my bedroom is finally starting to come together and my whole place is feeling more and more like home!! This feeling has been helped along by simply moving a mirror and creating a ridiculously easy piece of tape art! Let's begin with the tape art!

I started with my $2 Habitat for Humanity frames...and while I love bargains, I do believe that you get what you pay for! You'll see why later...

Side note...as I checked out the lady commented "Oh...what pretty prints!" Umm....okay.

Back to the art, I wanted to create something original that I could do for very low cost! So I spray painted both prints white - they were in decent condition and were adhered to the cardboard backing so I just went with it and it ended up working! After that was dry, I eyeballed and taped horizontal stripes and gave it a coat of gray spray paint.

I let it dry a bit and then pulled off the tape! This part is seriously the most fun step...I love a good reveal! I used Frog Tape and it worked wonderfully leaving me with super clean lines.

That's really all there was to it - plus I already had all the supplies so it cost me nothing! Always a plus.

I had two frames, so here's the first...

 And here's the second...

Yep...it's a broken mess! About a minute after it was hung, it fell off the wall and shattered breaking the glass and frame itself! The picture hanger on the back gave way which sucks but makes me glad I only spent two bucks on it ! Oh well...I was having issues about how I was going to hang both pictures anyway and it solved that problem :-)

So I'm left with one frame which I decided to hang to the right of the bed and the mirror I mentioned earlier was moved from behind my front door to over the white panels above my bed. I just nailed it right through the fabric which helps keep the panels closed, too! And believe me, I made sure it was securely attached to that wall!

Here's a quick before without the curtain panels, mirror or art...

And here's the after...

I am on the hunt for some more pillows but for the most part I feel this section of my bedroom is done...just two and a half months after I moved in. Yeah!!

 Now onto the three other walls that so conveniently avoid being photographed and/or blogged about...

**I"m linked up to House of Hepworth's**