Saturday, November 24, 2012

Floating Mantle: Tutorial




I've been dreaming of having a mantle for a while...especially around the holidays, when it's hard to imagine decor without a mantle involved. Unfortunately, our home doesn't have a fireplace, thus no mantle. We're also tight on space, so the only realistic option is a floating mantle.

We had a 3 foot scrap piece of 4x4 out in the garage and some fancy trim from a previous project, so Santa's helper got right to work (he'd kill me if he heard me call him that!).

After finding the wall studs, my husband used three 6 inch heavy duty screws to attach the 4x4 to the wall. He used a countersink to make the screw heads lay flush with the wood (or so he tells me!). Then he attached the trim with finishing nails and painted the whole thing white.

Our Christmas decorations are silver, aqua and burnt orange, so I wanted to keep the mantle decor within the same color scheme. I frame a piece of orange chevron striped material with an aqua "J" in the middle. I lined that with some oversized snowflakes and hung the stockings. So cute!

So excited to come up with new mantle decor each season!

Merry Christmas! 




Pin It Now!

Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Simple Flower Arrangement

Looking for a simple, last-minute centerpiece? I'd been saving these cute owl wine bottles for such a time! I used some twine to dress up the neck and added a basic Autumn floral arrangement. Voila! 
 
Happy Thanksgiving!!
 
 


Pin It Now!

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Mama Rants: Short Hair Goes a Long Way

Last week I blogged about feeling stretched to capacity and needing to simplify life somehow. This may come as a surprise, but the next day I decided to get a dramatic haircut. Yep, about 10 inches cut off, bangs and blonde highlights…I haven’t looked like this since I was twelve! I’ve included pictures of the before and after for you…
Down my back, usually in a braid or ponytail
You may be wondering what in the world a haircut has to do with simplifying life? Well, honestly, it doesn’t make anything simpler. It actually adds a few minutes to my morning routine because now I actually have to style my hair and get my bangs all laying in the right direction in order to be presentable.

I guess you could say I added yet another thing to my plate, and how in the world hasn’t my rubber band snapped yet?! Which is what I would have thought even a few days ago and is why I hadn’t gotten my haircut since shortly before the birth of my first son. No cut, no coloring and very, very rarely did I style or even blow dry my growing locks for almost a year and a half. It was just one of those things that I let go in the midst of so many other demands pulling my time, attention and energy in other directions. I had shrunk my “get-ready-routine” down to a 10-15 minute process…literally just the basics and some days I didn’t even get those 10 minutes done!

After my rant last weekend, I had this depressing feeling that life was just inevitably out of control and I’d be unbelievably busy forever. Yuck! As I thought about what I could cut out and simplify, very few things came to mind. In fact, nothing came to mind. When I isolated any one category of my life and tried to imagine what it would mean to cut it out or “downsize” it somehow, it always seemed like something would be missing. In this imaginary new world with less time to craft or less time to spend with family or less time to clean the house, I was even less satisfied.

And then this thought struck me…what if life isn’t about just the basics? What if we’re meant to take in as much as we can, as often and fully as we can? Not just to feed our bodies, but to feed our hearts - to satisfy our spirits and engage our minds. Yes, to prioritize and to say “no” once in a while, and yes to realize our limitations…but to live beyond the basics. To fill our lives with the things that are truly satisfying…our families, our passions, our hobbies.

As I thought about this idea: To feed my heart….I decided perhaps my solution was less about taking things away from my life that I enjoy and more about changing the way I look at all those “things”.

So this in my experiment…to dive into all the things I love and to go after it all with ferocity and see if that “busy” feeling is overtaken by a deep sense of satisfaction. 

And thus, I made time to get my hair cut. And I’ve made time everyday for the past week to style it and show it off. And it feels good…and in some weird way, I feel a tiny bit less busy and a tiny more excited about each day.



Pin It Now!

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Framed Name Tutorial


Some good friends of ours are expecting a new baby boy any day now. The mother asked if I could make some sort of name sign for baby Greyson’s nursery. Here’s what I came up with…

 

Can’t wait to hang this in his nursery! They are actually in the process of moving and I’ll be helping with his entire nursery remodel in the new house, so stay tuned for future blog posts about that! For now, here’s a quick tutorial on how this cute little sign came to be…

 
Mama loves monkeys, but didn’t want to go with the traditional browns and bananas, which I totally agreed with. I found this adorable aqua, orange and grey fabric that was the perfect alternative!


I bought a simple 10x20 black frame at our local Meijer and cut out a piece of fabric measuring approximately 12x22 (I always leave a little wiggle room!). I attached the fabric to the back insert using spray adhesive and pressed flat. TIP: I found spraying a narrow section on one side and aligning my fabric there first allowed me to get the straightest, smoothest finish. Once that set, I sprayed and adhered the rest.



For the letters, I used my Cricut to cut out aqua lettering with white shadowing. The letters were also attached using the spray adhesive.

 
 
And thanks to the skills of my mom, we also have a matching baby blanket to give to the expectant mother! Woohoo!!
 
Pin It Now!

Friday, November 9, 2012

Pennant Banner

Cannot believe Christmas is just around the corner! I know, I know, Thanksgiving first! But, it's sooo close!!

I've been working on a cookie decorating Christmas party for my nieces, Madi & Tatum, that I'll be sharing photos of later on. Very excited about how all the little details are coming together!

My initial inspiration came from Kelly over at The Party Dress. She posted photos of an adorable, whimsical child's Christmas party using reds, greens and aquas. If you know me, you know I'm a sucker for aqua, so I loved this color palette! I decided to go for a playful but modern layout with red, green, white and aqua. 

When I plan a party, I like to start with one or two core “inspiration pieces”. That gets me going in the right direction and then I’m able to add in other pieces and details that make sense along the way. For this Christmas cookie party, I found a roll of wrapping paper and gift bags that had all the colors I wanted to incorporate…so that became my starting point. Next, I found some red and green feather boas at the dollar store and knew they would be the perfect whimsical addition to this décor. With my wrapping paper and boas in hand, I sat down to sketch out the party. Just so you know that you don’t have to have ANY artistic ability to sketch a party, here’s my drawing…VERY basic, but it gives me a sense of how things will layer, what details I need to develop further, etc. I use this sketch to create a more detailed “To Do” list as well as a budget and then I get started!

My first project was to make pennant banners for the main food table backdrop. Since I had already found wrapping paper and gift bags that had the exact colors I wanted, I decided to use them for the banner. This is a cheap and easy way to create a coordinated, professional look without spending tons of money on the actual pieces. Here’s how I made the custom banner…


I used scrap pieces of cardstock to cut out my pennant shapes, then glued them to the backs of the wrapping paper and gift bags.
Once the glue dried (almost immediately!), I cut out the pennants and re-punched the holes.



Final step was to string them on a piece of ribbon. So simple, but so cute!


I'll also be using this wrapping paper for over-sized gifts on the food table and drink wraps. More photos of the whole event coming soon!

Pin It Now!

Thursday, November 8, 2012

Progression Pictures

I adore my kids. I think I could literally sit and cuddle with them all day...and at this age, they just might let me! Which is why I'm obsessed with soaking up every moment of these childhood years and always look for creative ways to preserve these special memories. I've blogged about other memory preservation ideas before. This one was inspired by a dear friend who took a picture of her daughter every month during her first year with the same stuffed animal sitting beside her as a comparison of how much she'd grown. I gulped up this idea and determined to do it with my little ones, too!

We put our own little twist on the progression pictures...Kyler got an adorable mini-office chair from his Granma (yes, no "d", she insists!), so we used it as the main feature to compare his growth.








I love to see the growth! I will say, if I could do it over though, I would have made sure to get the entire chair in the picture and taken it from the same angle every time so that the comparisons were more accurate. You can also see that as he grew more mobile, it became harder and harder to get him to sit still for a posed shot! Still, it's a pretty good sampling of the first year.

Pin It Now!

Thursday, November 1, 2012

Guestroom Remodel

I'm going to brag on my husband for a minute. He is so enduring of my crafting bug! A few months ago I brought home a picture of a room that I loved and was keeping as inspiration for whenever we got around to remodeling our guest bedroom. I mentioned that I was especially crazy about the headboard, but with more of a whitewashed look. Within weeks, my husband had painted the room, built side tables, hung an old wooden shutter and custom built this amazing headboard. Come on, he deserves a round of applause for that one!! :)

Help with building & distressing the headboard came from this tutorial.

I found the side table idea here.

And old shutter as a magazine holder was inspired by this post.
Pin It Now!

Hairbow Holder Tutorial

I have a side business making boutique hairbows for girls and bowties for boys...so my daughter has A LOT of bows! It quickly became evident that she needed some way of storing them all. It needed to be functional & cute. Here's what we came up with.




All you need is a piece of scrap wood, paint, ribbon, letters & some hot glue. We chose a light aqua & peach to match my daughter's room decor. My husband actually borrowed a router from a friend to create the detail on the edges that you see, but we later found out that we could purchase an unfinished wood plaque at Michael's for $10, which would have saved a lot of time & energy!


I wanted the sign to have a shabby chic distressed look, so we painted a layer of the aqua & peach in patches before putting the final white coats over them. Later, we used sandpaper to rub off some of that white coat so that the aqua & peach coats showed through.

Color coat underneath

White coat directly over


Next, we modge-podged letters cut out of scrapbook paper with my Cricut to the front and then sprayed with a clear coat of spray paint. The final step was to hot glue strips of ribbon to the back of the plaque. I used two types of ribbon, five strips total, each about a yard long (just to make sure we don't run out of bow space anytime soon!).  





Finished product hanging in her room (before the bows took over!)



I've made 6 more of these for friends & family since our first trial run for Havyn! Here's another version:



Pin It Now!
 
Design by Small Bird Studios | All Rights Reserved