DIY Card Display

Dec 16, 2014 /

Mike and I overslept this morning because when we got home from a Christmas party last night we decided to watch Jimmy Fallon instead of sleep. But in our defense, Oprah was on! I hadn’t seen Oprah since… Oprah!

But anyways, back to why I’m really here.

Christmas Card Season

Last year, I had a stack of Christmas cards that sat on our dining room table for far too long into January… (Uh.. February) that never got looked at besides when they came out of their envelopes. This year, I was determined to come up with some sort of year long decor that could display Christmas cards during this season.

Remember these?

I bought them at a garage sale 2 springs ago in Sterling. They sat outside our little house in sterling for months (my bad) so I had quite the mess when I decided to pull these out of the garage.

It was colder than cold outside so hosing them down was not an option. So I scrubbed these guys (by hand) with soapy water until all that nasty was gone. It took some time. Hindsight I probably would have waited for one of the warmer days we had last week.

But after the scrub and letting them dry they looked good as new!

Next was filling those little holes. I called in help from the handyman.

After we let it dry and sanded everything down a little bit, it was time to paint.

Seafoam Pearl was the color we had on hand. It is also the color of our front door so it works well in the room.

It took three coats to really get these guys covered. And now that they’re on the wall and I can look at them really closely – a fourth would have been just right. I like it being imperfect though. These are old shutters.

I called in for help from the master when it was time to hang them on the wall.

We wanted them to be secure enough that if they were bumped they wouldn’t crash down on someone. Luckily they are very lightweight. And then came the ribbon. I bought this ribbon at Hobby Lobby – I love it! I attached it with hot glue.

The bow is fake. I used hot glue for this one too because I ran out of ribbon for a real bow. Oops! And the final result?

I love it! It moves us closer to having more things on our walls and it displays all the beautiful Christmas cards we’ve received this year. I finished this project on Thursday and it’s already almost full. During the rest of the year I plan on displaying Grad announcements and Save the Dates. It would also be fun to put up little prints that could be changed out depending on the season.

What do you think?

9 days till Christmas, people! (and it’s my birthday week) Happy Day!

Our New Headboard!

Oct 16, 2014 /

Confession… This has been sitting in my “projects to blog” folder for awhile. We’d been living without a headboard since we got married and now that we have one it feels like we’ve always had one.. So I kept forgetting to tell you about it!

We have a headboard now though!

Mike built it for me! It is one of the many things I love about having a handy husband. I told him what I wanted and 2 ish days later he had it ready for me!

I used 3 inch foam squares to create the padding. Luckily we already had some on hand from a project that didn’t happen when we lived in Sterling. I used scissors and a serrated knife to cut the foam and adhesive spray worked great on attaching the foam to the plywood.

After all the foam was on and fit perfectly I moved the headboard inside to add batting and my fabric!
This was long enough ago that we still had brown cabinets… Ooh I’m so happy that we’ve changed those now.

I used a simple staple gun to attach the batting and fabric – and I’m thankful for our big dining room table that I used as my work surface. The carpet would have been very frustrating to get the fabric pulled tight.

Next up was nailhead! I bought mine at Hobby Lobby. It was the only place that I could find big nails for a decent price. I bought them when they were on sale too – bonus!

Pliers, a rubber mallet, and something to keep the lines straight was all I needed – well that and reinforcements from my patient husband on the curved parts. He used a really hard wood on the curves and I did not have the patience to nail the nails in slowly. Every time I tried the nails would bend and be useless. So thankful for him.

Our bedroom is really making major progress from where we started. I really love it – and I love the colors. Now, for paint on the walls and some decorations… Maybe next year.

Happy Thursday! Are you working on a project today? I attempted some decluttering… I only made it a little ways before I got distracted and gave up. Whoops!

Ultra Bright White Cabinets

Oct 1, 2014 /

We have made a big change in our little home in the last couple months.

It’s in our kitchen.

Here is our before…

When we bought this house I knew I wanted all of that oak to be white. If you’ve been following along then you know we painted our trim white last winter. Well this Fall we painted those cabinets white: ultra bright white!

And let me tell you, this is a project. Whoa. I still have a hard time believing that I did all of this painting on my own. Wowza. But I did learn how to use my husbands sander. That was fun.

I started by taking all the doors off and putting them aside. I wanted to make sure our kitchen was out of order for the least amount of time possible. So I just started with the cabinets themselves and did the doors later. I kept most of our stuff in the cabinets – except for the food.

Over a six day process I painted all of our cabinet boxes and all our cabinet doors.

So essentially what I am saying… I am a crazy person. But the result? SO GOOD.

Now I just need to find pulls that make my heart sing. I haven’t had much luck yet, but the internet has a forever endless array of possibilities, right?

What do you think? Have you ever painted your cabinets? Wasn’t it 10x harder than you expected?