guest room to dining room

One of the main problems with our house (on a long list of problems) was that it lacked a dining room.  Soooooo many bedrooms but no dining room!  Well, my amazing hubby made my vision come to life with a simple ceiling medallion for the chandelier I bought and another archway!  Check out the before and after on this one!

BEFORE!!!

AFTER:

Here is our lovely new archway that leads you into the dining room.

This is a goodwill find!  Once an ugly brass lamp, now a lovely centerpiece in my dining room due to a can of metallic bronzed spray paint!

I love this gallery wall!  I loved it soooooo much that I took the frames from my guest room to recreate it in my dining room so I could see it every day!  I took a few old book pages and printed Christmas silhouettes on to them from the computer for the holidays. 

Here's a close up of the Santa silhouette. 

I love this silhouette because it reminds me of my sister and brother growing up.

All the furniture in the dining room are antiques passed down from generation to generation through my family.  Even though I'm not necessarily a fan of light wood or round tables, there's no way I will be painting or re-staining these pieces.  I do plan on changing out the fabric on the seats to coordinate with the gray and gold I have used in this room though.

Can you believe I got this Spode China at Goodwill for .59 a piece?!?!?  The Spode cookies for Santa and milk for Santa cup were also a Goodwill find for $1 new in the box at Goodwill!

Wthl all the Spode for Christmas, I had to purchase this new Spode Christmas table cloth for $20 at Home Goods.  Still a deal since it was listed on Ebay for $60.

I bought a plain card board house from Hobby Lobby to make this gingerbread house.  I added a coat of brown paint and put mod podge on it after it dried.  The sheen came from the glitter I sprinkled on the glue.

To make the icing around the doors and windows, I just stole my hubby's caulk gun.  Some simple candy left over from Halloween and a real graham cracker for the door and I had myself a realistic decoration I can use year after year! 

And More Play Room

I also wanted to share this really cute idea I decided on for displaying the kids' artwork. In the old house playroom, I took a simple poster frame and framed a giant drawing and it stayed that way for 2 years. The fridge here and there are stainless steel so magnets don't stick to it and, the the old place, we ended up having papers scattered everywhere of random drawings. No more messy stacks of artwork! I figured the main reason the art stared in the frames is because it was annoying to have to take a picture down and replace it after removing the old and so and and blah blah blah. Since I break g;ass all too easily anyhow, why not just use those cute little clips I used for the flash cards?
This is what I came up with: I haven't decided if I'm going to paint them or not. I kind of like the mismatched colors.


Here's a close up of the empty frame and the clips. Now, I can easily change around their art whenever I want, in no time at all!

Projects From the Past

No new projects were started today due to work and a 12 hour seminar then more work from home. Since this blog is new, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to showcase some older projects from the past. WARNING:these pictures were taken before I ever thought I'd share them with the world! I don't have step by step photos but I did provide written instruction. Just grin and bare with me!
1) BOOK PAGE FALL WREATH

This is a wreath I made for my mother-in-law out of an old book and collected fallen leaves. I took a wire hanger and bent it into a "U" shape. Then, I took one of the leaves that I collected from outside and made a pattern on cardboard. I hit up Goodwill for a really old book with yellowed pages and traced the leaf pattern and cut out individual leaves. Next, I took a 6" piece of craft wire and tucked it between two cutouts and glued them together with a glue stick. I added a real leaf to the stem I made on the book leaf and wrapped them with floral tape to secure it together in a bunch. I did this for about 200 leaves until I had a huge amount of bundles to work with. Than, I began wrapping the wire stems of the bundles around the "U" shaped hanger for for a full wreath. I wrapped the top with a simple ribbon and a bow.

2) TWO FRAME FAMILY TREE

For this project, I took scrapbook paper and cut out half of a tree on two sheets. I turned them to mirror one another and placed each one in identical picture frames. I spent the next hour or so cutting out leaves from two complimentary green paper sheets. I also made red apples from paper as well. I wrote the family member names on the leaves; men on one color, women on the other and any children between them were writen on apples. To personalize the family tree, I took a paper clip and scratched/carved the names of the gift recipient into the trunk. The idea here is "the apple doean't fall far from the tree". I really wish I had better photos of this project I made!

3) FOOT PRINT BUTTERFLIES


This project is easy as pie and messy fun for the kids! I laid out a sheet of paper on the bathroom floor and sat the kids on a stool in front of the paper. I took acrylic paint and a cotton ball and dabbed it on one foot at a time. I lined up where I wanted their foot to go and had them stand. Then, I washed the painted foot and repeated the above steps. I took a paintbrush and added a swirly body and drew a face with a sharpie when it was all dry.

Time for a DIY

I spent most of today painting...again. The problem with painting today wasn't that I got to spread a new color on a beautiful made over room. No, I got to stand in a damn closet and paint something that no one sees. BORING!!! I then proceeded to paint a laundry room. Not a fancy one; that would be fun! I painted your standard accordion door, in a hall, nothing spectacular laundry room. BLAH!
So basically, it's been raining all day, my work has been blah so I needed to spark my creativity because I was doing that thing I used to do as a kid today. You know that thing! That thing where you feel like petting your cat, but you are really bored and don't really want to be petting your cat, but instead be running with your dog and the pent up energy results in petting the cat way to hard and it runs away fearing its life? Ha.. okay, so maybe that was just me. What I meant, by totally going off track, was that all I could think about was doing something else and I got impatient and was slopping paint all over the place. Either way, no animals were harmed in the making of this next post!
Because J has been prepping the playroom, I thought I'd have some creative time making art for the playroom walls. In the old house, I had giant poster frames of their drawings and I will do that too. I just wanted something cute and personal of them over where I will have their art station and easel. I had seen floating around Etsy some crayon art. That's when I got my idea. For this project, you will need the following:


(Crayons in a big pack of 120 or two boxes of 64, Black scrapbook paper, hot glue and lots of glue sticks, scissors, a HEAT GUN and two canvases)

Next, I browsed my computer for pictures of the kids playing and blew them up and simply printed them in black and white on standard old computer paper my printer. I put the black paper underneath and cut out the silhouettes of the kids.



Then, I laid out crayons so that they were the length of the canvas in shades of blue, gray, black and white. I had just enough from the giant pack of crayons. I glued these down, one by one, to the top of the canvas with the labels all facing the same direction.



I put my silhouettes on the canvas at the bottom and modge podged them on. As you can see, I was going for the look of the kids running through the rain.



Here's where things get tricky and messy. This was my first time doing this and I had it down by the end of my project. I wish that hadn't been the case and I like the way the second one came out better. However, listen to this advice to avoid common errors I made. I have no pictures of this process because I needed two hands. Lay newspaper down on your floor. I work best from my floor for most of my projects. Pull a chair or trash can or something up to your work space so that the canvas can lie at and angle and rest against it. Hold your heat gun (NOT HAIR DRYER unless you want to splatter wax everywhere) about 1-2" from the TIPS of the first few crayons below the paper line. If you heat above this point, the wax seeps onto the paper around the crayon and it doesn't look as good. It takes a few seconds for the wax to start dripping but have a hold of your canvas when it starts to run so you can tilt it back to slow the dripping. Do this carefully along the length of your canvas and when you're done, you will have something like this:



I followed my advice for the second canvas creating a rainbow effect:

Kids' Bathroom Part 3

I started hanging things up in the bathroom yesterday but then hit a creative block. Instead, I ran some errands to help get inspired and went through some old pictures I had taken on my phone when I was out browsing weeks ago. I went to bed refreshed and woke up this morning very pleased with how the bathroom turned out.
I'm still looking for a few things though. I need some kind of shelf for over the toilet and a bad ass toilet paper holder that looks like a branch or something. You can see why from the pictures. :)
The girls' bathroom is divided up into two rooms: the Jack and Jill vanity and sinks and a door that leads to the the tub and toilet. I still have some work to do on the vanity so that isn't pictured yet. That, and I'm not 100% done cleaning the tools and boxes off the sink. It was late. I was hungry.
KIDS' BATHROOM BEFORE:



KIDS'S BATHROOM AFTER:



You would never guess that I framed and matted a place mat, would you?


Here is where I need a cool toilet paper hook:


I just ADORE this wall of photos taken of my kids at different ages in the tub!


Here's a bow holder I made out of an old picture frame, ribbon and left over shower curtain fabric:


And here is my most favorite part of the whole bathroom!!!