House plants

I had a small table that had been in our bedroom acting as a stand for the cake tree that I had painted red a while ago.  You can see it here in the corner:

 

When I replaced the stand with my black trunk (more about that in this post) I decided to move it into the dining room to set one of my house plants on.  I primed it to cover up the red, then painted it a cheerful yellow.   My plant was also in need of a larger pot so I transplanted the plant and added a bit of new soil.  And here you can see how everything looks:

My poor "Angel Wing" begonia looks a bit scrawny but hopefully now that it's roots have room to grow it will be much happier and flower again.  It has the prettiest leaves, they are a dark green with silver spots on the top side and a pinkish underside.  Here you can see a closer picture of the "angel wing" leaves:

It's really lovely, I've never seen the silver pigment before on a plant!

And here's a closer picture of my new pot and the painted stand:

So that's all I've had time to fit in so far this week.  Brian and I have tried to tackle the yard some too but I will wait until we have better progress pictures to show before I post about that :o)

Adding some style with shelf paper

When I was working on the nightstand I bought some striped shelf paper to line the drawers with but in the end I decided against using it because the colors wouldn't work together.  I had eyed the same shelf paper a while ago for lining the back of the corner cabinet in our dining room (posted about here and here) but never got around to it.  So now that I had the paper I thought I'd test out a section and see how it looked.

I first started out with the drawer because if I didn't like how it looked I could just shut the drawer and ignore that it was there.  (After working with it some it is really easy to remove, not like wallpaper so if I had changed my mind it wouldn't have been difficult to remove.)  Here you can see a picture of the drawer:

The shelf paper is a ticking stripe pattern in a turquoisey-grey with thinner white and green stripes.  The green is pretty close in color to the green paint of our walls so it ties everything together pretty nicely.

Next I decided to tackle a bit larger of an area, the back of the cubby in the middle of the cabinet.  Working with the shelf paper was a bit frustrating although I think the stripe pattern did make it a little easier for lining things up and matching edges of side by side sections.  I began at the center edge of the cabinet back, aligning the paper and then working out from there.  The part that tends to be a bit tricky is smoothing out all the air bubbles.  I kept having to pull the paper back and work out the bubbles before moving on to the next section.  If the bubble is relatively small you can use a needle to prick the paper and release the air.

I left a little overhang at the bottom and top of the section I was working on, rather than try to cut everything perfectly before applying the shelf paper as you can see here:

I then used an exacto knife to trim the paper at the top and bottom edges for a nice clean edge:

And here you can see the finished cubby and drawer:

And finally I worked on the larger compartment on top:

Here it is with all our dishes loaded back in:

 

And a closer view with the light on:

Now we really need to replace the cabinet window with plain glass!:

 

One of the added benefits of the darker color of the shelf paper is that it makes the cabinet appear deeper than when the back was a plain white.  Not only is it cuter it also seems larger and makes our white dishes stand out more!

For comparisons sake, here is a before picture:

And an after picture:

 

So that concludes my adventure with shelf paper, there are a lot of cute styles of shelf paper out there, I had no idea!  There are some really cool patterns at Chic Shelf Paper ............ or they have some nice patterns that are less expensive at Orchard Supply Hardware where I found mine :o)

The living room

I realized looking through the "Our Bungalow" page on our blog that the picture of the living room was quite out of date.  We haven't finished everything we would like to in the room but we've made some progress.  So here's the previous picture we had posted of our living room:

And here's a more current picture:

The main changes to the room are the couch and artwork.  The couch was a Craigslist find that we got a good deal on.  We don't have a lot of extra money to spend on buying all new items for our house so we end up doing a lot of refurbishing of things we already have or buying things cheaply that with a little TLC can be brought back to life (as you might have noticed from previous posts!).  Overall, we want things that are functional but also that make our home comfortable and fun.

The painting was a birthday gift from my Grandma a few years back that we finally hung up.  We plan to put something more on the wall flanking the painting but we aren't sure what yet.  I'm also hoping to reupholster or make a slip cover for the chair in the center of the picture, right now it is covered with a blanket.  The golden arm that you can see in the bottom right of the picture is Brian's recliner that I really want to get rid of, but until we find a new one, we're stuck with it.  I also hope to eventually find a new area rug and a cabinet that we can hide all our dvd's in to help alleviate the clutter.

Here's a picture of the opposite wall of the living room:

You can see this is where we have the blue dresser from a previous post and the chairs also from a previous post.  I'm hoping to hang either the mirror resting on the dresser or something else on the wall one of these days.

So that's how are living room is looking, we will keep you posted as we make any changes.

A numbered nightstand

For some reason I'm attracted to old apothecary type items ........ maybe it's the scientist in me.   Things like a wall full of numbered drawers filled with all sorts of ingredients and shelves of bottles with neat old labels.  "Let me just get the eye of newt from drawer number 47, it will cure all your ailments!"  Maybe that's more from witches in movies :o)

Anyway, the reason for the post.  I can't remember where but sometime in the past week or so browsing the internet I came across a blog where someone had painted numbers on the drawers to a dresser.  I tried to find the blog again this weekend but couldn't so I tried to do as best I could from what I remembered.

Brian had a small nightstand that I had painted black because a while back I thought black furniture might look nice.  But hidden away in the corner, the nightstand just looked dreary.  So I decided maybe a fresh coat of paint and some new handles might bring it back to life.  Here's a before picture:

Here's another picture of the nightstand outside in better light:

So first I had to remove the old handles from the drawers.  They were actually just wine cork size pieces of wood that had been nailed to the drawers so I had to work at driving them out with a nail set:

And then prying them off with a hammer and driving the nails back through the inside (why couldn't they have just been simple screw on handles?!).

Once I had all the handles off I filled in the nail holes with wood filler and then gave the whole nightstand a light sanding to rough up the surface a bit.  Then I applied a coat of primer.  This time I tried an oil-based primer which was quite odorous even working outside (the weather has been nice!) and stickier it seemed than the water-based primer.  Therefore, I would recommend the water-based primer unless your task calls for the oil-based (the can states use for water, smoke, or tannin stains, sealing odors .... maybe it masks the odor with it's own!).

Next I applied two coats of Martha Stewart Paints' "Nimbus Cloud", a very light grey color.  After I let that dry for a while I got down to drilling the holes for the handles.  I bought cup-shaped pulls in a pewter finish that I thought would work nicely with the brushed nickel finish of the curtain rods and the lamp on the nightstand in our bedroom.  So I first measured and marked where I wanted the pulls to go and then got to drilling:

My first two drilling attempts were not quite successful (the holes being too small) but once I chose the correct drill bit I was good to go.  Here you can see the nightstand with it's new coat of paint and handles:

And now for where the numbered drawers, apothecary-style comes in.  I found a font online that I liked then enlarged it to the size I wanted and printed it out onto thick photo paper.  I then used an exacto knife to cut out the letters and numbers (I left off the curlique of the "N" just out of personal preference):

 

I then traced the letters onto the drawers and filled them in with black paint:

And here is a picture of the finished product:

Isn't it cute!  Here is a picture of it back in the bedroom performing it's duty as a nightstand:

 

And a bit of a closer view:

I'm loving it!  I wish it wasn't hidden-off in the corner of the room but was on full display.  Now I want to paint numbers on everything!

A family tree

When Brian and I were planning our wedding (we tried to do most things ourselves and with our families help!) we decided to forgo the traditional wedding cake  because we wanted something a bit different.  We had our caterer make us a few cheesecakes  with raspberry sauce and a few chocolate ganache cakes..............yummy!

We still wanted the cakes to look special even if we weren't having a fancy decorated cake but I wasn't sure what to do until ....................... I came across just the thing in a Martha Stewart magazine!:

I showed my Dad and he said he could try to make one like it for me!  He enjoys welding, mostly things having to do with a car, so this would be a bit different, more of an artistic endeavor :o)  He bought some metal rods in different diameters from the hardware store and found an old metal disk from a tractor at my aunt's farm to use as a base.  Then he got to work wielding everything together.   About a week before the wedding I remember calling my mom to see if the cake tree would be possible and hearing metal crashing in the background and her convincing me things were going fine!...........yeah, I had a few cake stands as a back-up plan (sorry Dad!).

A couple days before the wedding my parents came driving up with a cake tree in the back of their truck.  Some of the finishing touches had to be made but we had a tree!  My dad was pretty fancy with the decorating, he painted the trunk and branches a darker brown first and then sponge painted on a lighter brown to give the appearance of bark.  I bought some moss covered "rocks" and hot glued them on to the base and then we had a CAKE TREE!  (Sorry, I couldn't find a picture with the cakes but here it is in our bedroom now acting as a candle stand for the time being):

Here you can see some more of the details:

So for now the tree has become an art piece in our bedroom:

But I'm sure it will be making many appearances at family get-togethers where there is food to be displayed :o)

A lyrical pillow .......... well, um, wall art

Last week on one of the blogs I've started reading, Miss Mustard Seed, she made a pillow decorated with lines from a poem she enjoyed.  I thought it would be fun to make a pillow with the lyrics to a song Brian and I really like, "Such Great Heights" by the Postal Service.  (It was almost our First Dance song at our wedding but both of us aren't really dancers and we didn't want to look like fools.........so we chose a slow song so we only had to sway a bit!  Anyway, back to the story).

Well, I had the intent to make a pillow but after I got through the first few steps I thought maybe I'd just make it a wall hanging and not worry about the sewing part!

So, I basically followed the guidelines she had on her post.  I really loved the font she used so I found a similar one online, found the lyrics I wanted, enlarged the font to what I needed, printed it out, then cut and taped it to the right dimensions for my fabric:

I didn't have a fancy light box like the one she had on her blog, so I used the old "hold it up to a window" method to trace the lyrics onto the fabric with a pencil.  I then chose a fabric paint in "midnight blue" and got to work painting the lyrics.  I don't know if it is just me, but this took me quite a while! 

 

And here's the finished product, it almost looks like embroidery:

I then stuck it in a frame and hung it on the wall over our bed.  Here you can see it flanked by two black and white photos of us. 

Here's closer up:

And another angle :o)

So there you have it.  Our bedroom is finally coming together!

I'm loving our bedroom!

I have to admit, even after painting our bedroom blue I was still skeptical we had found a color we would stick with.  I really liked the shade of blue, but for our small bedroom it was a bit overwhelming ......... until today when we put up the new curtain rods for the curtains I had made.  We hung the curtains higher and wider than the window and it did the trick, it made the window look larger.  And the billowy, white cotton fabric I used softened the blue of the room and I felt it looked so much better.  I'll just show you the before and after pictures and then get down to the details of what we did.

So here you can see the before (sorry about the messy bed!):

And then the after:

 

We bought a double bar curtain rod in a brushed nickel finish so we could have both sheers and thicker curtains over the window.  Here you can see Brian hanging the new curtains rods higher and wider and below on the window frame you can see the old curtain rod:

 
For the inner rod we hung a cotton eyelet sheer panel I found at Target.   Here it is with sunlight filtering through (I just love it!):

For the outer rod I bought a thicker, white cotton fabric and made panels to hang on either side of the sheers so we can pull those closed for privacy and to block out any light when we need to.   I used no-sew tape that I picked up at our local fabric store to make the hems.  I also left a slight overhang at the top of the panel that you can see here from a before picture:

And today when I came home from work and opened the window I had to take a picture of the curtains billowing in the breeze!  And the afternoon sun filtering in.........oh, I'm just loving it!

Here's some more angles of the room to show how it's coming together.  We still need to add some art but things are improving.

 

I removed the clutter from our dresser and the small drawers on top to place the focus on our letters (talked about here).  I also added small glass votive holders with tea lights across the top of the drawers and a canvas runner along the dresser to soften things up a bit and add some interest.

Here's a closer picture:

And here's looking towards the bed:

 

The frame in the center contains lyrics to one of our favorite songs, "Such Great Heights" by the Postal Service, painted on canvas fabric (talked about here) flanked by two black and white photos from our wedding.

So that's how our bedroom is looking.  I'm so happy that I don't have to paint it again, I'm really liking the color now.  And I LOVE our new curtains, they add a bit of romance to the room :o)