I'm Not Happy

New posts will be on hold temporarily. My Rebel is being a rebel so I can't take any new project pictures :-( My instruction book was very helpful...."ERR 99 - an error other than above has occured." Hopefully someone will be able to look at it soon, I'm starting to have withdrawals.

Cheap Finds

I hopped into HomeGoods the other day and came out with a couple good deals from the clearance section.

I found this cute piggy bank for my youngest to replace her other cute one that had a little run in with the floor.

The one is the best deal I’ve ever gotten from HomeGoods…

 

It’s a little (about 16”) metal angel for my oldest’s room and it was…wait…ready…70 cents! Regular price $9.99!

Recycled Decorating

I recently got a few scrabble games at a yard sale for my newest Etsy item but I didn’t want to just throw out the game boards and letter holder things so I searched online for some ideas for how to use them.

For the game board you can glue pictures of family members then glue their names on with scrabble tiles. Or you can glue the letter holder things onto the game board and use it like a picture ledge.

Here’s what I chose to do with some of the letters and the holder thing…

I just glued the letters on and I’m going to give it a coat of Mod Podge. I made two other ones with my kids names on them. They can just sit on any shelf for a little decoration. 

Sand Castle Cake

I meant to post this awhile ago but better late than never right…

I recently helped throw a shower for a friend that’s getting married at the end of this month. The shower was beach themed and I was in charge of the cake. I was almost ready to buy a cake when I found this site. Lots of cake ideas!

This is the one I decided to copy. I thought I would be really cute for a beach themed shower.

Here is my version…

  

I know theirs looks a lot better but I don’t think mine came out too bad. Especially for a last minute decision. I couldn’t find the graham sticks to go around the edges and I had to make it bigger to feed 50 people. Here’s what I did…

I cooked all the cake the night before (3 cake mixes of your choice)

The bottom layer is a regular 9x13 cake.

The next layer is two 8“ rounds one isn’t quite as thick (see below).

For the next two layers I cooked a 9x13 and put a bowl on top and cut around it to get a smaller circle and the top I cut around a wide mouthed glass.

The cone towers I used a little of the cake mix from one of 8” rounds to make cupcakes out of them. (They bake 20 min) frosted them and stuck the other cone on top.

I wrapped my cutting board with foil as the cake base and started the layering the next morning. Frost between each layer to stick them together then frost the outside with white frosting (3 cans total). I bought the graham crackers already crushed up..much easier that way and they were really fine it didn’t use quite 1 box of them. Then stick your cones where you want them.

I got lots of compliments (of course they didn’t see the original) and it tasted yummy too.

Faux Locker Baskets

I’ve been waiting for some locker basket to come my way for the bench in my “mudroom”. I was in Walmart picking up some white spray paint when I saw Hammered Finish spray paint. Hmm…that got me thinking. I had seen plastic baskets before like this….

What if I used the hammered spray paint to make it look like galvanized metal…

$5 for the spray paint and $3.50 for the basket it was worth a try.

Not too bad..I held it up to my real galvanized metal bins and it looks pretty close. Just don’t touch it!

I have these little metal book plate things in my scrapbooking stash. I’m going to print out a number and attach it to the basket.

 

Of course I just won an auction on Ebay for some real locket baskets I had bid on awhile ago, but these will do until they arrive….

Paint Transformations

I got out the can of spray paint again…I had to try out Kimba’s spray painted glass idea. I was too excited to do this project I didn’t stop to take before pictures. So here are the afters….

  

This was a little glass jar I got at a yard sale for 25 cents.

The little jug bottle I got at a yard sale for 25 cents and the other bottle I got a Michael’s it was 99 cents then I used a 50% off coupon. It has a little cork but I forgot to put it in for the picture.

This was an old coffee tin my mom had just gave it a coat of spray paint and used rub on letters to spell out recipes.

Yard Sale Finds

Three apothecary jars. These things are BIG...I’m not sure where I’m going to put them yet but I couldn’t pass up the good deal. One lid had a little incident coming out of the car but I can still use it for a fish bowl or something.

Bottle for bath salts ($1) and not sure what I’m going to do with the red bottle but it was red and only 10 cents.

I got some more glass bottles for 25 cents each and I’ll show you tomorrow what I did with them.

Mini lampshades for one of my chandeliers ($5)

I got this seltzer bottle ($10) on Friday from an antique store my Great Aunt works at. I drive by it all the time and have never been in. It will definitely be one of my regular shops now.

Fresh Flowers

I picked these lilacs at my parents house. I’ve been loving the smell all day! I hope the neighbors won’t mind me stealing some lilacs off their bush too!

Faux Mudroom

Once again my house is small so I have to do without a lot of the "luxuries" that many of you have. I'm very jealous of all of you that have a mudroom! Alas, I had to make do with what I have and created a "faux mudroom"

The idea started when I bought this buckboard bench at AC Moore. I got a really good deal on it. At the time I bought it they had a 50% off 2 items coupon. The way the coupon worked was that they took 50% off the highest priced item and then 50% off the next highest priced item. They took the discount off the bench and then it was still the highest priced item so their register took the discount off the bench again, so I got a $100 bench for $25!

Then I found this coat rack at an unfinished wood store for $80 and used a 20% off coupon.

One step of this process was to finally get rid of the bead board to nowhere. I have no idea why it just stopped but it has been driving me crazy. I've tried many things to cover it up but nothing seemed to work in that space. So I started by cutting into the railing where I wanted it to stop and prying it off. Then I covered it all up with the venetian plaster that I had originally put on the walls (I don't know why I didn't think about doing this when I had worked on the walls in the first place).

Then I added beadboard and some moulding and gave everything a coat of my leftover black cabinet paint.

I got the bins at Ikea this past weekend. (the camera is crooked not the shelf)

 

I’m looking for locker baskets for these three spots.

We’re eventually getting new countertops and they are going to extend a little longer than they do now so I left a little of the railing up to stop where the new countertop will stop which will be even with the upper cabinet.

Head over to Between Naps On The Porch for some more before/after projects.

A 5 Min. Makeover

My sister has one of those machines that makes the wall decals…I am sooo jealous. It would probably be a really bad thing if I had my own though (walls covered with decals from floor to ceiling.) So for now I’ll just give her my list…

(notice the ugly wallpaper that has yet to be taken care of!)

This is my headboard. I’ve had it for over 10 years and got it free when I saw it sitting in the basement of the house my father-in-law moved into. It’s been painted many times and many colors but I’ve settled on black for awhile now and I think the black is going to stay. It has a raised medallion in the center and since I love monograms and decals I had my sister make me a “B” for the center.

Instant Project

I love when things are easy! I found a bag of old wooden spools at a consignment store for $10 and these two were perfect for candle holders. No need to do anything!

Check out Thift Store Thursday over at Homebody Holly for more ideas.

 And Thifty Thursday at Bloggeritaville.

Back To Business

I guess I’ve taken a long enough break from home projects and should get back to it…

I’m in the process of making new curtains for my dining room so I ran to Wal-Mart today to get some cheap fabric to line them. Well, it ended up being cheaper than I thought. As the woman was cutting it she told me that all the by the yard fabrics and trims were 50% off because all Wal-Marts are closing their fabric departments. By the middle of June they hope to be closed so go through your project lists and stock up now!

I picked up this burlap to make a cheaper version of those grain sack memo boards. It’s $1.23 a yard now.

I also got the webbing that I think I’m going to put on the memo board  or make one of those french memory boards with it. It was only $.32 a yard. I think I’m going to pick up some more. I think it would also look neat as trim on some of those drop cloth drapes.

Kitchen Cabinets

I added cabinets to my stove wall awhile ago, I bought them from a salvage store so they didn’t have much size choice. It was bugging me that they were a different height than the cabinets on my sink wall. Then along comes Layla from The Lettered Cottage and her cabinet moulding tutorial and my problem was solved.

Just don’t look too closely at the ceiling I haven’t touched it up yet. Ignore the stupid pull chain for the light too.

Here’s a reminder of what the other cabinets look like. I’ve uncluttered them a little though.

Soon I’ll keep the dishes out of the sink long enough to take pictures of the whole kitchen.

Crafty Wednesday

Sickness has attacked our house again. This time we all got it. I’m much better now and managed to finish my kitchen cabinet transformation. I’ll post that tomorrow. For today it’s a quick art project…

All you need is a piece of paper, a frame, a stamp, ink and some markers.

I just used a dollar stamp from Michael’s and stamped him on a piece of white paper. I used my Copic markers (LOVE THEM!) to color him in. Added a little decorative border and cut the paper to the frame size.

A Work In Progress

I’m wondering if I’m every going to get to a point where this house is finished and I can just sit and relax, hopefully for awhile before it’s time to move onto a different house. This past weekend we made a few small steps.

We changed out a few light fixtures. Let me tell you a couple of things about our lighting situation. Our house is old and has old wiring and until we get loads of money to change out the wiring we’re stuck with what we have. I thought that meant being stuck with the old ugly light fixtures too but I was wrong. Our living room, dining room and bathroom have wall switches so I knew those could be replaced but the rest of the rooms have pull chains and if you’ve ever wandered through the lighting section the only pull chain lights they have are the ugly ones that are already in my house. So here is the solution…I came across lampsplus.com and saw beautiful light kits for ceiling fans. They even had chandeliers for them with pull chains. The only problem was I didn’t want a ceiling fan in every room. I purchased this one and was determined to make it work without the fan because it was perfect for my 3 year olds room.

Before

After

It worked! Hubby just took off the old light but kept the box thing that was attached to the ceiling and screwed in the chandelier instead! I’m thinking about buying this one for my little ones room now.

Before

After

We also added crown moulding to the dining room.

 

Now I’m in the process of Layla-izing some of my kitchen cabinets.

Storage Solutions

While I was looking for office ideas I came across these neat storage ideas…