Mercury Glass Mirror

I've had this faux window box sitting in my garage for forever.  It was $5 at Goodwill and I thought I could use it for something, you never know.  The paint job was just awful.  So, I decided to separate the two pieces and turn the window into a mirror.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with the window box yet, but I feel another DIY project coming on.  

I gave it a quick coat of gray paint, after scrubbing the whole thing down.  Then I sprayed the back of the window with looking glass mirror paint.  I purchased mine at Hobby Lobby and used a 40% off coupon.  It gave it a really nice faux mercury glass look.

Unfortunately, I have no room for it in my own home so I'm hoping it will make someone else very happy when they see it all adorned for Christmas in our booth!

DIY burlap wreath

I forgot to take step by step pictures of this DIY wreath but it's pretty simple to figure it out.  I started with a plain chicken wire wreath (purchased for $1 at a thrift store) and added some burlap "ribbon" made by cutting strips of burlap fabric.  Then I added some extra snow flake and bulb ornaments I had laying around. Now, it's for sale in our booth ready to adorn someone's lovely cottage chic home!

It's Christmas time!

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!  I know I sure did, so much to be thankful for!  I always start my Christmas decorating the day after Thanksgiving.  I usually have the day off work and it gets me in the Christmas spirit.  Here's a little sneak peak at my Christmas decor in the dining room.  

I started out with this wreath that I got at a warehouse sale at a local thrift store.  It was only $6.  It was nice and full, but just had a little too much tackiness going on.  Less is more.  So I just plucked out the gaudy plastic plants that were mixed in and added my own blue mercury glass ornaments.

I also added a mantle to our dining room.  I love mantles and all the decorating opportunities they present.  However, ours in our living room is adorned with a flat screen TV and xbox.  My husband puts up with all my decorating shenanigans so I figured that's the one place in the house that he can "decorate" with electronics.  I just picked up this mantle at our local Restore and planned on selling it.  Then, the idea came to me to hang it as a faux mantle shelf in our dining room.  I gave it a quick coat of white paint and hung it on the wall.  It looked great and I couldn't wait to start decorating it.  So, I added the lanterns and stepped back to admire it.  Then, as if everything was moving in S-L-O-W motion the whole thing came crashing down.  My hubby rushed downstairs and was not too happy.  I assured him a could fix the huge barely noticeable hole in the wall and come up with a better method for hanging it.  He was not convinced, but my DIY skills came in handy and we were able to hang it and get it all ready for Christmas.  Close call.

I forgot to take a before picture but you can imagine it, just your basic unfinished mantle.  So, here it is all decorated for Christmas!

and this is another thing that's getting me in the Christmas spirit today, yummy!

so stay tuned to see what I did with the legs of the mantle!

Honey Mustard

Honey mustard, that's what my husband says our nightstands remind him of.  He says it's a good thing, so I'll take that as a compliment. ;)  For the rest of the furniture I decided to skip the honey mustard and go for a nice black finish.  Here is the paint I used in a semi-gloss finish.  I have used this paint before and had good luck with it so I tried it again.  Painting furniture black is always tricky to me.  It seems you can see every brush stroke.  You would think it would hide more, but for me definitely not.  So, I used a foam roller to apply and a brush for the areas that the roller would not work on.    

Here is a reminder of the "before"...

and here is the after, the lighting is awful but it's 4:45 and it's already dark and I couldn't leave you hanging any longer!

and we decided to keep the original hardware, it just seemed to suit it perfectly.  My husband spruced it up first with a little Brasso (he's a sweetie and he's really good at cleaning, I'm a lucky girl)

Did my mention my husband and I moved this up the stairs from the garage by ourselves?  I woke up this morning regretting that for sure!

Christmas Show!

We went to a Christmas show recently that they were having in our area.  It was SO much fun and it definitly got everyone in the Christmas spirit.  This place was huge and filled with all kinds of vendors.  Lots of crafty folks along with some rooms decorated by local interior designers.  I would love to do this!

Here is the first one, that actually won first place...

and the others...

and a few ideas I snagged while I was there...

I thought these were super cute and could be so easy to make, It's just a wooden post made to look like a lamp post and there is a small night light bulb behind the plexiglass.  I think you could make these even cuter with frosted glass and maybe a more 3 dimensional pole, great idea though!

cute little dish towels, who doesn't love pom pom fringe!  Could be easy to make and would be a nice gift.

Definitly going to try to make one of these hummingbird feeders.  I come across so many beautiful glass bottles in my thrifting adventures and never buy them because I have to many already.  Well, it looks like I've found a use for them!.  They just turned the bottle upside down, attached a decorative hook to the top with some epoxy and then attached the feeder to the bottom, which I'm pretty sure you can get at a local garden shop or maybe even Garden Ridge. 

I have lots of fun things that I've been working on to show you, but with the time change it gets dark too early and I can never get the lighting right to take the pictures.  This weekend, I plan to take lots of pictures so I can show you what's been keeping me busy.  Happy Friday! 

Fabrics

I love fabrics and I have way too many of them in my sewing cabinet but I just can't help myself sometimes.  They are so pretty and when I find a good deal it's just hard to resist!  Fabric can provide the inspiration you need for a room, a jumping off point.  I always tell clients to try to find some sort of inpsiration piece and it usually ends up being a fabirc.  So, on that note I thought I would share some awesome, inexpensive fabrics I stumbled upon from dwell studio on Fabric.com  I have purchased fabrics from them before and they are great!  Very good customer service, which is a rarity these days, and fast shipping! (free right now if you spend $35 or more)

So here are some of my favorites..all under $16 a yard!

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and I love the yellow of course...these would make great drapes for my bedroom....

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and birds seem to be all the rage these days....

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and some other great fabrics from fabric.com that I've got my eye on right now... (most of these are under $10/yard)

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a little retro but I think it could be great in the right room, maybe even a little boy's room...

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I've been eyeing this broad striped silver and cream fabric for my dining room chairs for a while now...

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I'm still a sucker for the chevron stripe...

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and I think this could be the inspiration behind a beautiful fall tablescape, perhaps a tablecloth....

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Just a few I'm liking right now, what about you?  any favorite inexpensive fabrics/sources?

Sneak Peak

Ok, so I'm not totally finished with the whole bedroom set, but I am finished with the nightstands and they are in the room all setup and I'm so excited!  As you've seen in previous posts, our colors are black, gray, white, with touches of yellow.  Well, I wanted to take the yellow up another notch so I decided to paint the nightstands yellow.  At first my husband thought I was crazy, but that isn't unusual ;)  He wanted all black. Now that they are in the room, he loves them and can see the vision I had for them all along.  

So to remind you of the before....

I love all the details on this piece and knew they would pop with just a little bit of glaze.  

I started out by priming each piece.  I tried to skip it on the first one and ending up doing it over again.  Note to self, don't be lazy, always prime. 

The color I chose was Martha Stewart Yellow Magnolia

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It was just the perfect combination of yellow.  Not too pastel, not to gold, not to mustard, just right.  I wanted to keep things from looking too juvenile and I wanted those great details to pop so I added a black glaze and distressed it a little.  I love the juxtaposition of distressed, slightly aged looking piece of furniture with clean lines and more "fancy" accents.  I think it creates depth and interest in a room.  I love the way they look with my DIY lamps  too!  

I used a semi-gloss paint so that it would clean up nicely and I could skip the polyurethane step.  Also, I always use semi gloss or gloss paint when I am going to glaze something.  Otherwise the glaze will not be workable.  For this piece I actually used black paint instead of glaze to give it that "aged" look.  Lately, I like the way the paint works versus the glaze and I have lots of it.  I concentrated mainly on the details, but still covered the entire piece with the "glaze" so it all had the same look.  I wiped most of it off using a damp cloth (which is important, a dry cloth won't get as much of it off and again makes the glaze or paint less workable)

and finally the AFTER!!

HIS...

HERS....

and great legs!  one of the things I love about it and the other pieces have these as well, can't wait to show them to you!

I mentioned to you before that we got all this furniture for FREE!  Our friend just so happens to clean out foreclosed homes or homes that have to be torn down for one reason or another and this was in one of them!  I can't believe someone would leave this behind, I guess it really is true that one man's trash is another man's treasure.  My jaw dropped when he opened the trailer door and this was in there.  I was expecting ordinary stuff that I could just fix up and resell, but I fell in love with this so much that I decided to redo it for my own bedroom. Not only did he get it for us, but he brought it to our house too!  Thanks SO much Mike!!

Costume Party!

I've been busy working on a little mini makeover for our bedroom, which includes the furniture from the previous post, some great shams from GW and a few extra touches, the main color scheme is the same just gotta mix it up a bit :)  But for today, I will leave you with a few fun things from the costume party we had for my husband's birthday.  We started this tradition a few years ago because my husband's birthday falls around Halloween.  It's the one time you can dress up and look totally ridiculous without anyone questioning you or you can choose to get a little more glamorous, like we did.  I was Audrey Hepburn (from breakfast at Tiffany's) and my husband was Clark Gable. 

My husband used a suit he had and found the hat at Marshall's.  We added an eyeliner mustache and he carried around a cigar.  His mustache ended up looking a little more short and stumpy (slightly hitleresque) and most people didn't know who he was but we had a great time anyway.  I found my dress at Goodwill for $5 but it was way too big so I took it in and it worked perfectly.  I used the tiara from my wedding, some pearls I already had, $4 long black gloves from Target, and a $2 magic wand for my "cigarette".  Other guests that joined us included, Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler, a bag of Jelly Beans, a "ME" monster (Brian Regan, anyone??) a few dragons, a lovely gypsy, a go go girl, a redneck, the cutest little curious George (I may be a little biased since he is my nephew ;) and the man in the yellow hat, a blind referee and lots more!

The real Audrey Hepburn...

Every year I make a fun cake for my husband's birthday...

The first year it was a sushi cake....

and then there was the Florida Gators cake....

and this year....Angry Birds!  For those of you who have never heard of  "Angry Birds", it's an incredibly addictive game app. for your phone.  The basic gist, the pigs stole some bird's eggs and the birds are "angry" and decide to attack them.  Sounds weird, I know, but my husband loves it so it inspired this year's cake.

The "angry bird"

and the little cupcake piggies....

check back soon for the furniture makeover and some other fun stuff!