Recent craftiness

Last summer I stopped by a neighbor's yard sale (which I rarely do...) and found 2 old, 70's-style lamps for $3 each.  I just knew some spray paint would do wonders for them.  Enter some oil-rubbed-bronze spray paint.  And some clearance shades from Target (that are literally screaming for some burlap or fabric ruffles or something along those lines...).

 I also needed some tables to put my awesome new lamps on.  And being the cheapskate I am, I asked my mother-in-law if I could have some old 70's-style (in keeping w/ the theme, haha...) tables that were collecting dust in their shed and do whatever I felt like to them.  She said o.k. so I got out the sander and paint and gave them (well, technically only one, so far) a makeover as well.  I think it came a long way as well.  And for pretty cheap!

I think the before and afters are pretty impressive!

I'm not sure yet if I love the parts where I distressed it...I may eventually go back over some spots w/ the black paint and un-distress it just a tad.  Sometimes I go a little too crazy w/ the sandpaper...  And now that I see the oil-rubbed-bronze lamp on the black table I think it's too dark and boring, and maybe the lamp should be some fun color like red or aqua...good thing it's easy to change! 

 

Here is the after of the lamp on its new home.  You can also see that I FINALLY painted the piano room.  One less white wall in the house...hooray.  I also got slipcovers for the green and magenta couches (what was I thinking 14 years ago???) and new drapes.  I just couldn't find those pictures on my computer and I'm too lazy to take them again...  Maybe once the new carpet (Hip, hip, hooray!!!) is installed in 2 weeks, I'll take some more pictures.

Pinterest is my new favorite thing.  It's awesome.  But I have decided I need to make sure I'm DOING, not just pinning.  So last week a few friends and I got together to DO one of our pins.  We made paper roses and glued them onto twigs, then put the twigs in vases.  It's much cuter than it sounds as I'm trying to describe it!  Ours all turned out a little different based on our vases, but they all look awesome!  I found some perfect little vases from Target (seriously, that store is the best) that already had the little I LOVE YOU on it.  They look great along w/ my other little V-Day decor on my shelves in the entry.

I'm hoping we can get together once or twice a month for our "Pinterest Parties."  Not much makes me happier than spending time w/ great friends while using a glue gun. :)

gettin our craft on!

While my momma was here, we played around with my vinyl cutter quite a bit.  Pretty sure I'm clean outta vinyl now, but that's a small price to pay for crafty time w/ my momma and all the cute things we made!  Here's what we did:

*I made Sydney her I am a child of God plaque with her name on it, but forgot to take a picture...

*I bought some simple glass canisters and made labels for them--love how they turned out!!!

*We made Mom a sign for her family room...she always tells the grand kids to "speak soft, kind, comforting words" so that's what her sign says...she likes it a lot!

*I made a sign to go above my pantry that says "simplify" to hopefully remind me to chill.

*We made my great-aunt Dottie a sign about dancing, since she's a dancin' queen and all.

It was so fun to craft and have fun and ignore the kids for the day while they harassed Poppa!



My new BFF

Isn't she beautiful?!?! She's called a Silhouette, and Santa delivered her to my door last week. I'll wrap her back up on Christmas Eve and be super-excited on Christmas morning, and even pretend to be shocked and surprised. But until then, I am going to play. :) This is the very first thing I made with her. It took maybe 3 minutes. I changed out the plates on the plate rack in my kitchen with red ones (they were less than $2 each) and printed out JOY and stuck on the vinyl...it was real hard, haha! I love how it turned out, and once Christmas is over, I'm going to put EAT on plates to match my kitchen for the rest of the year. I'm thinking I could do BOO or EEK for Halloween...so many ideas spinning in my head... This pic totally reminds me of how tired I am of my mustard-colored walls, though. They will be changing REAL soon.

Project #2...I cut out snowflakes from white vinyl and stuck them on the glass panes of the office French doors. Again, so easy and so fast. It would have been even easier if I had make one huge snowflake for each door, though. Next year...

This picture is a craft I did before I had a new BFF. It's just an idea I saw online and decided to try. It's a coffee filter wreath, and cost me about $4. I still can't decide where I want to put it, so for now it's on the inside of the front door, but I think it will move to the entryway once I get it repainted...soon!

Project #3 with the Silhouette...new Christmas throw pillows. I only used my machine to cut out the template for my Heat and Bond, but that helped a lot! It was more work than I thought it would be, since I had to sew around each snowflake once I ironed them on to make sure they'll last, but I'm so happy with the results, it was worth it. Especially since I can reuse them year after year.

Here are two pillows on one of the couches. I made 4 total, and I love them. And yet more walls that need painting...I can't believe I was this boring when we built our house...

I have so many more ideas spinning in my head to make with my new BFF, but I also still have wrapping, baking, and last-minute Christmas stuff to do, so I don't know that I'll get to have any more fun with her til after Christmas.

And whoever says happiness doesn't come from a store, they're right...the UPS man brings it to you! Just kidding! Well...mostly, anyway. :)

Pumpkin crafts

So even w/ reading so much in October, I still found a little time to do a few fall/Halloween-ish crafts. One of my new obsessions is blog-hopping different crafty blogs, and I had to try out a few ideas. My absolute favorites are the glittered pumpkins on my kitchen table. I saw them on Martha Stewart several years ago, and always wanted to do them, but you had to special order her super-fine glitter and it was pretty pricey. Fast-forward a few years...now they sell her glitter at Michael's, and it was 30% off a few weeks ago, so I splurged. I pretty much want to glitter everything in my house now, and I'm already wracking my brain for what Christmas-ey things I can glitter...so many possibilities! And super-fast and easy! Love them! I also copied a few other ideas and made some scrapbook paper pumpkins and fabric pumpkins. They turned out pretty cute. And I love that they will be able to be stored and re-used year after year. And that they're a little different... I also love that they're not Jack-O-Lanterns, so I can keep them out through Thanksgiving. Cause I hate having to change things out...too lazy.