Shared Boy/Girl Room

When sweet little number 3 came along, I wanted her to be in her own room.   I wanted to put the kids who where on the same sleep scheduled in the same room.  That way there would be less waking me up!  And I felt little Ruby Lou would be safer if she didn’t have a loving sibling trying to give her an extra blanket or stuffed animal.  So, my only solution was to put the two oldest in the same room.    How do I decorate a boy/girl room without it being too masculine or too famine?!   I decided I would start with fabric and go from there.  After a fabric hunt I found my base for the room colors.  (Which are the drapes)   My mom and dad sent down my old bed frames from Washington and I painted them a color from the drapes.  And I went from there…

Here are some pictures.  I will post more info on the art and other tidbits around the room later.  I am doing the reveal first hahaha….

My friend (who has a super cute house and blog, click HERE for The Rooster and The Hen) gave me the idea to paint the beds this teal color, pulled from the drapery fabric.

To see how I painted the beds Click HERE

-The room looked like this before-

-At first I tried to go this route-

It just wasn’t working for me.

So I changed it up!

I took some pictures of my midgets to put up in their room.  Bought the shelves from Ikea and painted them yellow.  And made some art to put up.  They helped me make the “Every freckle on my face is where it’s supposed to be.” quote art work.  And they had a blast.  I’ll post pictures of that later

(Quote from and India Arie song.  Love her songs!)

Now don’t worry, these are not really hanging from the rope.  I have earthquake wall hooks on the back, these babes are not going any where!  Safety first!!

I made these out silhouettes of plywood and paint that I had in the garage.  I watered down my paint and sanded after I painted to give these a distressed look.  I added the rope and make the “faux” mustard yellow wall hooks.   Pretty dang cute I think!

I put up these picture boards, I had them laying around the house.  I want to have lots of pictures around my house

and I knew my kids would think this was super cool.  It is up pretty high so they can’t reach the tacks.  

I have been seeing all those cute “Read” signs on Pinterest and wanted to do one similar.

But, I didn’t want it to seem like I was demanding someone to read, lol, so I added the “we love 2” part.

The heart is from the top of a cardboard box near the letters at  Hobby Lobby.

By the way!  I do not recommend these Ikea spice racks for book shelves.  The books fall off all the time.

The “animal cage” as we like to call it was built by little ol’ me!

I didn’t know what to do with all the stuffed animals my kids have.   I had them pick out some to donate, I was sneaky and got rid of a few, but they still had so many.

So I thought up the idea for this bin.  I measured they space under the books and made this one morning while my kids where at school.   I will share that tutorial soon too.

I love it!  And it cost me about $8 or less.

I thought a lot about bedding for this room.  That was probably the hardest part.  I looked everywhere!  I bought a few different things, tried them and sent them back.  I ended up going with these from the Land of Nod.  They were both on sale for about $25 bucks each.   It was my husbands idea to do a blue and a pink.  I love how it all came together.

How I Paint Furniture

This post has been moved to my new blog.

Building a Rad Sand Box Tutorial

This post has been moved to my new blog – Pocketful of Paint

USA Plaque

I made these fun USA and I (Heart) U plaques the same way I did the BOO Plaques I made a few years ago.   I made the I HEART U one for my soon to be baby girls room. (Pictures of her room to come!)

Tutorial can be found HERE for how I made these.

I used my Cricut to cut out the stencils for the letters.

I hope you have fun this 4th!  FYI the Fourth of July is like a party every night in Utah  FIREWORKS!!! YAY!

Building an Ottoman

I keep seeing all these cute ottomans in adorable fabrics and I WANT THEM!  So, I decided, “Hey! I can do that!  I am soo crafty with my bad self, how hard can it be?!”  Well my fine friends.  It is NOT THAT HARD! YOOOU CAAN DOOO IT TOO!

Here’s how I made this fun little one for my front entry way.  I am planning on a much larger one for my living room in the near future.  So stay tuned for that bad boy.  I already bought the fabric and am super excited.

I bought this round wood piece of wood at Lowes for about $7.  Home Depots are different, not as good for this type of project and are MUCH more expensive (FYI).

I measured to the center and drilled a whole first, because I knew I wanted to add a big button in the middle later on.

I bought this foam from Home Depot, they have it at random times through the year.  It is $20 for a huge piece.  You could make a few ottomans with the size it is.  It is 3inches.  This stuff is much more pricey at JoAnn’s or any other craft store, so this is a good deal.   Great for seat cushions on a bench or something too.

I traced a circle and cut out the foam with my ceramic knife.  Any smooth super sharp knife or razor blade will work. Then I used a permanent spray adhesive to attach my foam to my board.  I also cut two different layers of quilt batting and sprayed that on too.

I glue it all down and then cut my fabric circle.

I did not glue the top fabric.  I used my staple gun, pulling my fabric tight! and stapling it all the way around.  I tried to make sure that the pleats of my fabric where only on the bottom and wouldn’t show around the sides.  This would be much easier if it was square, but it worked out.

I have an electric staple gun and one that uses an air compressor, I used both.  But the electric one would have been fine.

After that I put my button on, this was tricky because I didn’t have a very long needle.  You will need a really long needle! You can read here to see more about putting buttons on furniture.  CLICK HERE TO GO TO BUTTON TUTORIAL

After my button was on nice and tight, I cut and glued a cover over all my staples and ugliness underneath.  You can buy this black chair under cover stuff from JoAnn’s or any craft store.  I can’t remember what it is called at the moment, but it will be in the upholstery section.

I then drilled holes for my freshly painted high gloss blue legs.  So cute! And screwed them in to the bottom.

I hot glued down the cover fabric and waalaa! Done!

This would be rad with a cowhide too.  Oh the possibilities!

GO ON NOW!

AND!!!

Photography Backdrop

For all you amateur photographers and momtographers out there- You will love this!

I hope it helps you take some fun pictures this holiday season

I was asked to take some indoor photos the other day, since it is FREEZING!! here in Utah lol!  So… I needed a backdrop!   I was mulling over how I was going to make this work and decided I needed to make a PVC pipe frame to hang some fabric from.  I have tons of upholstery fabric laying around from projects I have not yet done 😉  It was nice to finally use it for something.  Turns out thick upholstery fabric makes for a really good backdrop.  And, I got all the PVC pipe I needed for about 3 dollars.

I used 3/4 inch PVC pipe, 2 elbow joints, and 4 T joints.  The two cross pieces are 50 inches long.  The pieces going up the sides are 24 inches long and the bottom pieces helping it to stand are 12 inches long.  This was a great size for little people and 54in wide fabric worked perfectly, but it you need to make this bigger I would use 1in or bigger PVC pipe to make it stronger.

Then how to hang the fabric?  I didn’t want to do anything to the fabric, in-case I did get around to those projects.  Clothes pins?  Curtain clips?  Clamps!  I thought about running to the store for one of those first two things, then I saw the hubs box of clamps in the garage.  Waa laa problem solved!

Here is the finished product- I am pretty pleased how it worked out And I can take it apart and store it for another day.  It doesn’t take up much room, perfect!

I put it in front of a big window for natural light.

Here are the pictures from the shoot that day.  ADORABLE kids!

I am SOO glad it worked out!

We then went outside for a few minutes against the brick on my house.  Use what you got! 😉

I love babies that are sad, but just can’t help but smile when someone smiles at them.  This kid was SOO cute! Such a smiley guy

What a pouty lip!  He was so done, but kept smiling for us.  What a sweet boy.

Making a Table- The Process

I really really wanted a new dinning room table when we moved.  But, a few things kept taking priority over buying a new table.  Espeacially since the tables I liked where around 1500 to 3000 bucks.  hmmm…. Dev (the hubs) wasn’t really feeling that.  So for my b-day he told me he would make one before Thanksgiving.

Uh… he has never made a table before!  What to do… Thinking thinking.  I started to cut out pictures and read blogs about what I wanted.  Then like a present the Lowes project magazine came in the mail with instructions on how to build a table.  It didn’t look to hard.

We went and bought all the wood a week later.

This table from Crate and Barrel is one I have had my eye on for years.  We modeled our table after it.

I told Dev that if we were going to build our own table I wanted to do it for under $100.  And! I wanted it to fit 10 people.  He liked my challenge.

We bought pine 2×6 x8 boards for the top

2×4 for the ends of the top and the frame

4×4’s for the legs

We did a few things differently than the Lowe’s directions.  But, it helped to have an idea of how to start.  Mostly we used the directions for the frame (which I’ll share below).  We wanted the table top to be seamless.  So instead of the Lowe’s way, we changed it up a bit.  We started by trimming up the sides of the 2×6’s to make them flat.  2×6’s from the store are slightly curved.

After cutting those we used a biscuit joiner to cut into the sides of the wood.  We put biscuits and wood glue between the boards and clamped them together, adding one  board at a time.  The table was large so we used pipe clamps to hold it all together.

We planed the ends then put the end board on using a router to cut a tongue and groove joint.  Then glued it and clamped it again with the pipe clamps.

We then used our hand planer to smooth/even out the top.  After that was done we used 100 grit sand paper on the electric sander to smooth it out more.  Ideally you would want to use a planer and run each board through it before starting to put the top together.  OR! You could put the top all together and find a cabinet maker who would let you run the entire piece through one of their large industrial planers.

While the glue was hardening we picked out stains.  I wanted a beachy farm house table feel.  So we decided to do a gray stain with a white wash over the top.

Here is a link to the Lowe’s table directions that we used for the frame. Click HERE

We flipped the top upside down and started building the frame right on to it.

We used a pocket hole jig to join the top to the frame.

We changed the placement of the legs and moved ours to the edge of the table top,  and secured them with lag screws.  We inset only the apron piece.

Then we flipped it back over and filled some of the knots and holes with stainable wood filler.

You should probably use gloves here….oops

After that was dry we sanded the entire piece with 220 grit sand paper.

Before staining the table, we prepped it with Minwax Pre-Stain Wood Conditioner.  This helps a lot!!  It helps you get an even stain, avoiding ugly blotches.

I then stained it with a weathered oak stain.

After that was dry I went over it with a white wash.

To finish the table we applied 4 coats of a water based polyurethane.

We built a solid table for under $100 dollars in less than a week.  AND! It seats 10 people.

We already have plans to build another one! Ha, I know, we are crazy.  But, we had a ton of fun doing this project together.  I love my man.

This table might be for sale soon, if you want it let me know

The next table will have turned legs, with a darker stained top and painted legs.  I am excited to do it again  Stay tuned for that one sometime in January 2012!

Please leave me some comment love!