Hiding the Clutter

Living in a house built in 1914 we have found that people in the past must not have need closets like we do today!  I think the two closets we have in the bedrooms were added on to the house after it was built.  Our only other "closet" is a tiny nook in our hallway that we use to store our vacuum, broom, and other cleaning supplies along with a few boxes of my crafting supplies (I have stuff hidden everywhere!).  It really is just a little nook in the hallway with no door or any type of covering and who wants to see cleaning supplies every time you walk down the hall, not me!  So I decided to use a curtain to hide everything.  Here's a picture of the storage nook, see it really is tiny!  We plan to move the ironing board hanging on the hallway door into a closet once we make enough room in there.

I had bought a curtain from World Market to try out on our front living room window, but it didn't quite work how I wanted.  I really liked the fabric and I thought it would work well for our little nook as it ties in a lot of our room paint colors leading off the hallway.  It was about twice as wide as we needed for the storage nook so I cut it to fit.  I finished the cut edge with some no sew tape from Joann's.

And here's a picture of the finished edge:

To hang the curtain we bought a tension rod in an oil-rubbed bronze finish and matching curtain clips.  The tension rod was too long for the nook so we had to cut it to size using our Dremmel.  Here you can see Brian cutting the rod with sparks flying!  (Luckily everything was a bit damp from a recent rain.)

After we hung the curtain we decided it would work best if it went all the way from the floor to the ceiling to give us more space to hide things :o)  But that left the curtain about a foot short:

I had leftover fabric from cutting it to the correct width, but I thought just adding more to the bottom wouldn't look that great, the seam would be obvious because I couldn't match the patterns on the two pieces of fabric.  So I decided to use a thin stripe (two to be exact) of chocolate brown fabric to go in between the curtain fabric.  For this I had to use a sewing machine.  I measured how much additional fabric I would need to extend to the floor and then got to sewing.

And here is what it looked like after I was finished sewing:

And finally, hung in place:

And from another angle:

Much better, now every time I walk past I don't have to be reminded of the cleaning I need to do! :o)

A Gallery Wall

Hi Everyone! Sorry for the blogging hiatus. Brian and I have exciting news which will explain why I was missing in action for the past few months..........we are expecting a baby! I had quite the morning (ALL day) sickness that has been gradually subsiding.  I still don't feel back to normal in the eating department but I'm eating pretty normally (just don't feel all that great after) and the baby is good and healthy. We don't know the gender of the baby yet, as the baby thought it would be funny to have a foot (and even two at one point!) strategically placed during our entire 20 week ultrasound. But that's okay, we are trying to get the nursery decorated gender neutrally.......but whenever I see baby clothes it makes me really want to find out!

So my first blog post back is about some decorating we are doing in the nursery. We have a small two bedroom house so the guest room is now the baby's room. We kept the light blue color on the walls (I'm a girl and I like blue!) and were lucky enough to get an awesome crib from my cousin fit for baby royalty. It really is something fancy! I have been wanting to have a gallery-style picture wall in the room for awhile and had been stocking up on photos, art, and dark wood frames. But now that the room will be a nursery I switched out some of the artwork and swapped the dark frames for white ones we also had on hand to match the white crib.  I then laid all the pictures out on the bed to figure out a layout I liked.

Next I cut up some advertisements we received in the mail (junk mail is good for something!) to the size of the picture frames:

And punched holes in the advertisements where the hooks were located to make it easier for placing the nails in the wall later on.

Then I transferred the advertisements in the same layout onto the wall above the crib.  I used a level to get the first few positioned right and then eye-balled everything from there and taped them into place.

I was able to hammer all the nails into place using the pre-punched holes in the advertisements as guides, and finally got to the fun part, hanging the pictures!

 

We can swap out pictures as the mood fits us, but right now we have a collection of prints I purchased on Etsy and baby pictures of Brian and I, and don't forget Bailey the cat!

Here is a closer view of the pictures on the left side of the wall (my and Bay's baby pictures along with some of the Etsy prints):

 

And a closer shot of the other pictures (Brian's baby picture, an ultrasound profile picture of the baby, a map with an embroidered heart over where we got engaged, a print that looks exactly like Bailey sleeping, and a couple others):

I also plan to add some sort of adhesive to the back of the frames to make everything a bit more secure since the pictures are over the crib.  So that's what's been happening around here lately.  We have quite a few projects we want to tackle before the baby comes so I will be trying to post more frequently from here on out! 

A Halloween Display

Waiting for Brian to finish work last week, I stopped in to the Dollar Store to see what seasonal decorations they had.  I immediately was drawn to a section of crows.  After picking through their supply to find a couple with all surfaces covered by feathers and no huge glue blobs I had the inspiration for my Halloween decor!  I also picked up a pack of glitter pumpkins from target and moved around items I already had in the room and put my display together.  I love how you can see the reflection of the crows in the mirror making it appear there are more ............. Oh no, an invasion of birds a la Hitchcock!

 

In one corner I brought out my glass pumpkin and switched my pinwheels out of the striped vase for twigs from the yard with plastic spiders I glued on.  I also brought out a small ornate gold frame and filled it with a large plastic ant.

In the center I kept my ampersand with quail eggs but added one of my watchful crows.

 

To the right I stacked a few pumpkins and gourds under my glass cloche, with a spider perched on top. 

I stacked the cloche on a book of Edgar Allen Poe stories I found at the thrift store.  Another crow perched beside it .......... or maybe it's a Raven! 

Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary .....

A BOO-tastic Banner

I am officially in the Halloween spirit. This past girls' craft night and the weekend I worked on making a banner for the front window. I have loved the look of wreaths or banners made from old sheet music so I thought I would give that a try for a Halloween-inspired banner. I found an old book of sheet music on Ebay for pretty cheap. It already had some imperfections (missing cover, torn pages) so I didn't feel too bad taking it apart.

I cut each page in half and then folded the halves accordion-style.

I glued the ends of the folded sheets together until they were long enough to fold into a circle and glued the circle closed (my circles needed 5-6 half sheets).

Next, on to the letters.  I printed out the letters "B", "O", "O", and a couple spiders from clipart and cut them into circles.  I added silver glitter embellishment around the edges.  For the letters I also cut out black construction paper a bit wider than the letter circles to add some contrast between the letters and the sheet music.

 

Then I glued the letters and spider clipart images onto the sheet music circles and pinned the circles on to a black and white striped ribbon.

 

Lastly, it was time to hang the banner in the front window!  I had to adjust the placement of the circles to fit the windows (good thing I had pinned them into place!).  And here it is!

I also added a swarm (flock?) of bats I made from felt, swooping across the window.

Maybe not the scariest Halloween display but I LOVE it!

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New Light Fixtures

This was a project we worked on quite a while ago but I hadn't gotten around to taking pictures because our dining room was a mess!  When I took the pictures of the new placemats and fall decor earlier in the week we did a bit of cleaning and rearranging.  We moved Bay's cat tower to a corner of the living room and that opened things up quite a bit in the dining room.  So without further ado here is a picture of how our dining room looks now with the new light fixture:

Both the dining and living room light fixtures were similar in style when we moved into the house.  They actually were one of the things I initially loved about the house, the stained glass appearance.  Here is the light in the dining room decorated for Halloween last year.

But looks can be deceiving as we later found out, the light shades were actually made of plastic :o(  And with the color of our dining room walls, the yellowish tint to the "stained glass" made the green even brighter when the light was on.  So we decided to find new lights for the dining and living rooms.  We thought an oil-rubbed bronze fixture with white glass shades would look nice and hopefully minimize the florescent color our dining room walls became when the light was on.  Through Home Depot's website we found a couple of lights that we liked and were not too expensive.

Brian was our electrician swapping out the old lights for our new ones.

In the living room we chose a standard three-bulb fixture in a semi-mount style.  We initially had a two-bulb fixture that was a bit dark so we increased the bulb number to brighten things up.

It's a pretty simple and standard fixture, but it works well with our decor.

For the dining room we went a bit fancier with a chandelier type fixture in the same style.

Even though I loved the style of the old lights I really like how the new ones look.  In the evenings when we turn on the dining room light, the green walls are still florescent but I guess that's just something you have to live with when you pick such a bright color.  In natural light  the green is really nice.

The next things I would like to tackle in the dining room are to change the ceiling color a bit and add crown molding.  Ah, to dream :o)

Nontraditional Fall Placemats

A few weeks back after I finished my dining room table my family suggested we have Thanksgiving dinner at our house this year.  Right away I got to thinking about how I would pull this off!  But then after the panic eased I got excited and started thinking about how I could decorate!  Since I had worked so hard on refinishing our table, I thought I should make some festive placemats.  I went to Joann's fabrics but I couldn't find anything that really jumped out at me.  The fall inspired fabrics were to "fall-y" for me so I thought maybe I could use something nontraditional but still formal enough for the occasion.

I searched on Joann's website and found a Waverly fabric I really liked, "Tucker" in the moss color.  I know, moss not a traditional color choice for fall but it works with the colors in our dining room (blue and green) and the print seemed to fit.  Nothing says Thanksgiving like a pheasant...........well I guess turkey, but they are along the same lines, right?  And the green would double for Christmas placemats as well.....Woohoo, I was on a roll!  And being all about multiple uses I figured I could put different prints on either side so I chose a more everyday fabric in Waverly's Chippendale Fretwork in mineral blue.  I found the fabric for cheaper on Ebay in an indoor/outdoor fabric which would make them easy to clean if there are any spills.  Perfecto!

Here's a little sneak peak at how things came together.  I did a little fall-inspired decorating just to show that it does work for the season.

Now to the details.  I wasn't sure the measurements of placemats as I didn't previously have any so I did a little scouting at Target.  I found the placemat isle and looked at the measurements on the price tags, 14"x19".  So that probably translates to fabric cut to 15"x20" with 1/2" seams.  I measured things out on my fabric and used a right angle to make sure things were straight.  I tried to keep the pheasant to the center of the fabric so I wouldn't have any headless birds.

For sewing, I placed the two good sides of the fabric together and sewed around the edges, leaving a few inches open at the bottom for flipping the fabric right side out.  I'm not sure my seams were exactly 1/2", I made all the seams the width of the sewing foot because I find that easier.

After flipping the fabric right side out I hand sewed the remaining opening closed.

 

Here's a picture of how the green-colored side looks:

 

And the blue:

Then I got to work decorating the table.  I used a strip of canvas from a drop cloth as a runner down the center of the table.  I also bought a few pumpkins and gourds at our local farmers' market that I placed down the length of the table and on a cakestand in the center.   For the cloth napkins, I had left over guinea feathers I had used for boutonniere decoration for our wedding that I held in place with twine.  And I got out the vintage silver my Grandma gave me as a wedding present.

And for more informal occasions:

 

I'm so excited about how things turned out, I can't wait to share it with my family!

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Centsational Girl 

Repurposing an Old Sugar Mold

A few weeks back on WUSLU they had old mexican sugar molds for sale.  I thought they were so cool but a bit out of my price range.  So I searched on Ebay and found one for a lot cheaper.  It has a couple chips in the wood at one end but that just adds to the character.  I love the worn wood look and it works perfectly as a candleholder on the top of the short wall in our bathroom!

I also had a fluer de lis finial on the shelf that I bought a while back.  It had previously been red but I painted it with a layer of gold paint then green and did a light sanding to have the gold show through.  I had to go over it again in spots where the gold paint had rubbed off down to the red layer.  I was trying to go for a patina like the base of the bird I also have in the bathroom here:

So it went from this:

To this:

And here is the fluer de lis finial and the sugar mold/candleholder:

And another angle for good measure :o)

And if I'm in the mood for a relaxing, candle lit bubble bath I can move the candleholder to the edge of the tub.