Filling my home with Family

I have a wonderful family; one that, like me, is very nostalgic and retains relics of previous generations that hold no real value outside of sentimental value.  I made a trip to my grandmother’s old house recently to grab some items that had been left to me when she passed.  While there, I found a treasure of items that reminded me of her in some way that now have a permanent place in our home décor…especially this suitcase that was hers before she got married (EKD stands for Elizabeth Kinsler Deuel, she married my granddad and became a Holland).

I also picked up a few more old suitcases that now reside in my bookcase (that now is painted on the inside and almost completely decorated) along with a few pieces of silver and crystal.

I’ve also gotten several neat items from my other grandmother including some cast iron pots and irons that her mother owned.

The large projects that I worked on the first year or so of being in our home have been replaced slowly with more finishing touches.  There’s still more to paint, but it’s coming together.  Trey is also working on something in the yard right now…more to come soon!

Pinterest

I fell into Pinterest in a backwards sort of way, only joining to get a recipe for homemade laundry detergent.  When I started browsing, I found so many other things I wanted to try like these painted shoes and this craft desk. 

I bought the $15 black flats at target and then just used craft paint from Michaels, painter’s tape, and a few Sharpie’s (for touch-ups) to make these dolls!

For my $45 craft desk, I followed these instructions only changing the color of the door to grey (same grey as my kitchen), vs white in the link.  I also faced my bookshelves inward and stashed a toolbox or two on the floor under it.

For my birthday, my wonderful friend Danielle made this for me, which was one of the things I had pinned and planned on making.

I made this sign for the arrival of my goddaughter Grace. 

And I just finished this $10 vase today.

I also love Pinterest for recipes, though I haven’t really done as much of that as I have the crafting projects.  Fortunately I can't access it at work or else I would NEVER get anything done!

Homemade Household

Get prepared; I’m about to go on another blogging binge! 

Quickly, here’s a few ways the house has changed since Christmas.  No more ornaments in the apothecary jars and no more sparkly Christmas colored balls in the sisal rope pail.  They were replaced with natural and white vase fillers from Target.

Pinecones and candle sticks are still there, I kinda like them!

Also, new curtains and pillows in the living room.

What I really wanted to write about was how I’ve gotten on this homemade kick lately…unfortunately (for my husband) the kick is not related to food so much as it is household goods – cleaners and bath salts.

A couple in my Life Group at church had found a recipe on pinterest for homemade laundry detergent.  They went on and on about how much money the website said they would save on detergent since it only costs about $20 to make and lasts for 9ish months (based on their wash frequency).  They hadn’t tried it first hand but I was intrigued.  Not really because of saving money, though I like to save money; really just having and using something in your home that you made instead of buying.  So I tried this recipe.  Note: if you will be making large batches like this, purchase a dust mask and a few 5 gallon buckets to allow for more even mixing.  It would have made my life easier.  Anyway, so I made a huge batch in an hour or so and put about half of it in a glass jar from Hobby Lobby.

I took this picture today and I made this in January!  So far, Trey (my wonderful clothes-washing husband) has said that it works pretty well with only 1 tablespoon.  He uses more for dirtier loads, but has indicated it cleans very well.  The clothes I put on everyday are still clean, don’t smell any different, and haven’t caused any strange skin rashes, so I count this one a success!

Homemade laundry detergent got me thinking about homemade fabric softener, which led me to a DIY Natural book, which also includes tons more recipes for other types of household cleaners.  I do not count the fabric softener a success.  It was basically white vinegar with several drops of peppermint essential oil, which smelled nice….until you washed your clothes with it.  A whole load of clothes came out smelling like vinegar and we haven’t tried it again since.  Maybe I did something wrong, because I have read a lot about people using vinegar in combination with other things for fabric softeners.  Either way, we won’t be using that one anymore J

In conjunction with this, “I need to make all my own cleaners,” Centsational Girl posted a recipe for making your own lavender sea salt scrub.  I thought, cleaners for my house…cleaners for my body…let’s keep this homemade train going!  Alexa came over and we had a Kindergarten craft morning of sorts and made the salt scrub (which leaves your skin feeling very luxurious).

Excuse my scrubby appearance…  I put them in small canning jars from Publix and distributed them to some people, keeping a jar for myself.  After all, if you can’t share your homemade joy, what’s the point in making it?

Christmas, a month late

I realize Christmas was a month ago.  Between going to Disney World with the in-laws,

visiting with my family, and end of the year (rolling over into first of the year) demands at work, I’m a little behind.  Sorry!

Last year’s mantle was boring.

This year I decided to put a little more effort into it. 

I LOVE the look of apothecary jars with Christmas ornaments, vase fillers…anything in them really.  So off to Hobby Lobby I went (where both Christmas ornaments and glass were 50% off).

Those pine cones came out of Kinnery Mastroianni’s yard about a year ago.  I was at her house for a baby shower and noticed how huge they were and made off with a couple.  They just sat in my house for 9 months until I figured out a use for them!

The silver candlesticks were a wedding gift and the mercury glass-ish ones are from World Market.  I am really loving the contrast between natural elements and metals these days and thought this would offset the pinecones and jute Christmas trees well.

The Christmas trees are Styrofoam cones (Hobby Lobby) wrapped with jute thread (Home Depot).  I must have saw this somewhere else, because I’m a lot of things, but original isn’t one of them, though I can’t remember where…  Anyway, Styrofoam, jute, spray adhesive, and a little hot glue and these babies were born.

I’ve had the snowflake ornaments for a while.  I kinda have this thing for snowflake ornaments, so much so that I have a separate tree covered in them.

Every year my mom and my grandmother get me a snowflake ornament (Swarovski and Lenox, respectively).  The gold ones on the mantle are just some cheapies I found at Target one year.

   

I also got some sisal rope at Home Depot to wrap around this aluminum pail (with hot glue) for a natural touch on the other side of the living room.

I later picked up these beauties at TJ Maxx on sale after Christmas.

Oh, and here’s a look at my tree.  Looks a lot like it did last year! J

It was a lot of fun this year to do a little more with my mantle specifically, especially now that this really feels like our home instead of a house we just bought.  Outside of Christmas though, I'm working on a few fun projects, now that I have a little more time in the evenings than I did late last year.  I'll keep you posted!

More Painting

The hallway has more wall space than any other room in the house.  Below is a schematic of our house layout with the hallway colored in…you see how much wall space we are talking?! 

It’s not a lot of square footage, but it’s 10 foot ceilings everywhere.  Here’s the color it used to be.

That drab beige that was EVERYWHERE when we first moved in.  All I did, was go to a warmer neutral, and look at how much richer the hall looks (forgive the terrible lighting).

It is crazy that just a darker shade of neutral has made our house look so different.  I’m thinking of continuing that color into the master bedroom (with the exception of the feature wall, whose color I have not yet settled on), but not any time soon.  I am DONE painting inside our house for quite some time.

Just to recap on all the painting we have done (a lot of the pictures are old!)…

We painted the living room blue,

The dining room green,

The sunroom yellow,

 

The laundry room chocolate,

 

The kitchen gray,

And now the hallway Gobi Dessert (all Behr Ultra Premium Plus paint).  But looking at the schematic and all the beige left….it looks like we’ve barely even started!  Here’s what our house looks like in colors.

We've got all three bedrooms and the office left to do (the two bathrooms were already blue and yellow when we moved in).  Anyone like to paint? :)

 

Hall gallery

I've been planning on hanging lots of different types of black and white pictures and knick knacks in the hallway on the wall opposite the console table.  My mom even got me several black frames with black and white pictures of family members for Christmas (wedding pictures, etc).

I took a cue from Young House Love and started with pieces of paper that were the same size as the frame I was planning to hang.  Luckily, I had purchased several frames from Michaels (at 40% off) that came with a hanging template.  The template ended up making a big square and that was too boring for me, so I just cut out the frames and made my own!

Before:

After:

Sorry, but there's not really a good way to get an upclose picture of the second side.

We currently have pictures of scenery taken when we spent a few days in the Northeast last fall, wedding pictures of parents and grandparents, and pictures of the pup.  We'll eventually fill the rest of the frames in with more of the same.

Speaking of the hall, I also stopped by Home Depot to grab a couple of paint samples for the hall.  We are planning on just using a warmer neutral to make it look like it wasn't forgotten about.  Here's the three we are looking at, I'm kinda partial to the top one.

I'm going to extend that neutral into our bedroom on 3 of the walls and find a great bold color for the wall behind our bed.  I'm thinking maybe the dark teal that is found in two of our new throw pillows (in the center of that red flower).

Thoughts?

The one that almost ended me

I cannot believe I made it through this project without killing someone!  Warning: the project outlined here takes quite a bit of time the way I did it.  I loved the end product, but I will never make another one this way again.  I will say though, half of the reason it took me a month to finish is because I spent the entirety of the first two weeks of July at work…

I did some more copying last month.  J  How many sunburst mirrors have you seen lately?  They are popping up everywhere and DIY bloggers are making them out of everything under the sun – paint stirs, skewers, and 2X1s.  My personal favorite is this one made by Crazy Wonderful using cedar shims.  My mirror was a little smaller but other than that, I pretty much followed her tutorial since I liked the result so much.

I bought 7 packs of cedar shims and made a big circle out of them (to see exactly how many I would need). 

Cooper helped.  Clearly.

Then I split them up into bundles of 7 and 5 like she did.  I would have just tried to bundle and arrange them while still in the circle, but I’m too much of a freak for consistency to be able to handle that.  So I made several identical bundles and glued each of the 5 or 7 in a bundle together with Wood Glue.  For the overall assembly, I copied Crazy Wonderful almost exactly with the left over plywood and Gorilla Glue. 

For the paint job, I initially just tried metallic spray paint.  I used an entire can of brushed nickel and champagne but it still just didn’t look right.  I was trying to get a way with not using any metallic glaze.  I don’t really know why because as soon as I bought a champagne colored metallic glaze and applied one coat, the mirror looked like this. 

Then I just glued down the mirror and attached the wire on the back so I could hang it.  Here’s the finished product!

It is amazing how much it has warmed up the front guest bedroom which really up to this point has only had furniture in it, no decorations/art/anything.

Again, I love it, but I will never do anything like this again!

Oh, and just because I'm a proud mommy, check out Cooper in his very first Puppy Parade!  He did SO well!

Now he's prepared for July 4th, next year!