Archive | September, 2012

Vintage Bottles

27 Sep

I have a new product that I am in love with, it’s Krylon Looking Glass Spray Paint. The options are endless! You spray the opposite side of glass and it creates a mirror. Or you can turn any glass into vintage looking mercury glass. I still had a few vintage bottles so I decided to experiment with the antique mercury glass. I turned to trusty google and found a few different ways to create the look. I thought I would be daring and try a combination of what I read. Most tutorials said to use clear bottles, but I used a mixture of clear and colored.

After washing the bottles I lightly sprayed water over a bottle followed by a coat of the spray paint. I waited for about five minutes then used a paper towel and dabbed at the bottle. I repeated this process until the desired darkness and look was achieved. I had to do an extra coat on the green bottle. 

After they completely dried these bottles found a new home in my downstairs bathroom. I like the way they turned out, each bottle turned out better than the last, I guess practice does make perfect.

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A Festive Mantel Makeover

26 Sep

While perusing pinterest I have taken notice of all the festive fall mantel ideas, and I felt mine needed a little fall sprucing up. It all started with a BHG tutorial, about how to make pumpkins out of books. First a disclaimer, no classic books were harmed in the making of this DIY. I used a Nora Roberts book that I purchased for a dollar and another book that I had a double of.

First take your book and remove the covers. Then draw a half circle on the page, or you can visit BHG website and they have a template you can use, but I just used freehand and it turned out fine. I would trace a page and then cut multiple pages at once.

Repeat this process untill all pages are cut.  Your book should end up looking like this:

I am beginning to see my pumpkin take shape! I then glued the first and last page together, along with every fifth page together.

Then I lightly spray-painted them Orange and added a stem.  Here they are on my mantel.

Now on to my scrabble letters. My lovely husband took a 4 foot long 1′x4′ and cut it into 3 1/2 by 3 1/2′ pieces. I then traced the wooden tiles with the letters I wanted and filled them in with a Sharpie paint marker.

And that was it, pretty simple! Here is my fall mantel makeover.

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Dining Room Makeover

24 Sep

Before we even moved I knew I wanted to put up wainscoting in our new dining room. Of course, after moving our budget was a bit tighter so I searched for a way to achieve the same look for less. I was beyond excited when I found this tutorial for creating your own wainscoting. As you know I am horrible at before pictures.  I have posted the few I took when we were looking at the house so it’s decorated how the previous owners had it.

What we used:

(14) 1/4″ x 4″ x 3′ poplar boards
(10) 1/4 x 3″ x 3′ poplar boards

Prepainted chair rail

Kilz primer

Semi-gloss white Paint

First, we measured how high we wanted the wainscoting to go, and then I painted the top half of the walls Nantucket Fog from Benjamin Moore. We did things a little differently than the tutorial.  We hung the chair rail first and then the 1/4 x 3″ x 3′ underneath, horizontally.

Then we cut the 1/4″ x 4″ x 3′ poplar boards to fit vertically.

We spaced the boards 16 inches apart, center on center. Next came painting.  I primed the boards first since we ran out of poplar and had to use oak boards and the oak knots are a lot darker then the poplar. The knots can bleed through the paint so we used Kilz primer to cover them up.  A piece of advice use all poplar even if you have to wait for it as the oak, if its warped, cannot be nailed flush to the walls unless each board lands on a wall stud.  Some of the oak boards we used were warped so we used a white caulk to fill in the gaps which worked well and they now all look flush with the drywall.

Here is the final product.

I am so excited how this turned out! I now want to do the whole foyer as well!

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Happy Harvest Party

17 Sep

I am excited to share with you pictures from our harvest house-warming.  I didn’t get as many pictures as I wanted due to the fact I was hosting, but here are a few of what I do have.

I used a piece of burlap to cover part of the table to give it a festive feel.

What better way to hold the silverware in a festive way then everyone’s new favorite item, mason jars.

The main course as you all know was make your own baked potato bar with all the fixings. I am sure my guests would have figured this out, but I am a chalkboard paint nut so I thought why not. 

What is a harvest party without a burlap banner, this was a must have. :)

There was of course a drinks and desserts table.

I could just have regular seating, but I wanted to do something harvest and fun.

We even had a few tree logs for seats.

What is a harvest party without gourds!

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Twine Wine Bottles

14 Sep

I am slowly but surely becoming addicted to Craigslist. I search it all the time and get way too excited when I think I have scored a good deal. The other day I found someone selling these old vintage bottles, for a buck a bottle. I was like a kid on Christmas morning!

Now I know what you are thinking, she is crazy they are dirty and just old. I knew with a little TLC these bottles could be collectively a great accent piece. All they needed was a little love, like Charlie Brown’s Christmas Tree. So I cleaned them up and spray painted them with valspar cream.

Next I had three different types of twine which I hot glued around the bottles.

I continued this with the rest of the bottles, seven in total. Here is the final product.

I am really happy with how they turned out! You don’t have to be addicted to Craigslist to recreate these.  Simply use bottles you would normally recycle like wine bottles, jam jars, or sparkling water bottles.

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A little sparkle never hurt anyone

11 Sep

What is it about women and sparkly objects. I am like a moth drawn to a flame whenever I see sparkly jewlery. I don’t have a birthday coming up (thank goodness I am not ready to get any older) and christmas is miles away so I really shouldn’t even be looking! I just can’t help myself, here is what I am being drawn to these days.

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Hot Potato

6 Sep

Working with a bunch of crazy, Type A meeting planners definitely has it’s perks. It means I can go into endless logistical details about my house warming and get tons of opinions and feed back. Today’s “hot” topic was my harvest housewarming menu. Lets be honest, food is the most important thing with any party! I came away, today, with a menu idea.  Drumroll please….A Baked Potato Bar! I know, pure genius, right?! It’s completely a comfort food and perfect for the cool days of fall. As I mentioned in my post yesterday we have some food allergies to consider but with a baked potato bar we can accomodate everyone. Plus, it’s interactive and build it yourself so party guests get exactly what they want. This will not be your normal baked potato bar.  We will be adding a baked sweet potato bar where guests can add cinnamon and sugar. Here are a few ideas I pulled from Pinterest, what do you think is it a good idea?

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Chalkboard Labels

5 Sep

I can’t focus on our upcoming party! I have all these grand ideas but I keep getting distracted by my house projects. As I mentioned previously our party is a harvest theme. I decided this long weekend would be all about our party. I have been thinking about our menu and, as any good party planner would agree, you have to make sure to label everything! Espically at our party since we have guests with gluten allergies, vegans, and vegetarians, I don’t want any guest guessing if they can eat something without having a reaction!

I started my search for cute harvest themed labels and came up short. I then thought, “Why not make chalkboard labels?”  Then they can be used over and over again. Of course as with every project I started making these and then got sidetracked and turned my chalkboard labels into kitchen lables.

I had the plain white canisters already and I was about to get rid of them because I just wasn’t  loving them anymore.  They were too boring. Adding these cute chalkboard labels have totally transformed these canisters. Read on to see the step by step tutorial.

Step one: Gather Materials- I luckily already had these labels left over from our wedding so I pulled them out of storage. If you are not like me and don’t have labels just laying around, these can be easily found at any craft store. You will also need a sponge brush, and chalkboard paint.

The only step to follow to the letter! – Paint two coats on the labels, paint one coat horizontally and let dry for 30 minutes then paint vertically. That’s it.  Its super easy!

Then apply to anything. I will be making more of these for my party. In the meantime my kitchen canisters adore them.  If inanimate objects had feelings!

What do you think?

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