Friday, April 29, 2011

Pretty Much the Easiest Before & After Ever

Im always looking for ways to reuse things, so when I purchased there Pepperridge Farm Purouette cookie stick things at a recent grocery shopping trip and noticed they came in a METAL can.....I new I could do something with it.  So here is my first Idea...


This:



Plus This:



Rustoleum's Painter's touch, gloss white, or any white gloss spraypaint.



Equals:




This! A handy dandy new utensil holder for my kitchen! 
If you are feeling super creative you could even add a design, number or letter decals or chalkboard labels 








I have several of these cans lying around since I buy these cookies regularly...so I'm trying to think of more ways to use them. If you have a great idea please let me know!

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

Thrift Store Shopping

Today started out rainy and cold, so I loaded up my girls and decided that it was a good day for grocery shopping, AND of course couldn't resist stopping at Goodwill on the way! Here is what I got:

 I always snatch up cheap fabric at Goodwill when I find it, you can usually get several yards for around $1.99, which is what I paid for this chunk today!


 Since my new basement living room will actually have bookcases, I need interesting books to put in them!
I found these two today, .60 cents each, thank you very much!



I needed a simple glass vase for displaying flowers in, so here I go, for a buck fifty!

Tuesday, April 26, 2011

DIY Ruffle Pillow


I came across the idea for this pillow over at Oh So Crafty, I loved how she used old clothes to make something so cute and useful! Here is a tutorial on my practice run making her ruffle pillow. I leaned some how to's and how not to's for my next time, I'll explain along the way....


Start with a large men's button down dress shirt. Iron and lay out on your cutting board. Cut straight across the front right at the level just under the armpits, and again to even off the bottom if your shirt has slits on the sides. you should be left with a rectangle shape with the buttons running down the front. 





    
This is what the shirt looked like after I cut the chunk out. You can set this part aside and save for possible future projects!



My shirt was a little too wide so I just sewed some straight seams parallel to the to side seams that were already there to take it in a bit.


Next you will need a bunch of strips cut from another fabric. I used a old Goodwill men's T-shirt. I cut my strips about one to one and a half inches wide, and decided in the end that they were to skinny...next time I will make them closer to 2 or 2 1/2 inches. 

Sew a wide stitch down the center of each strip with out backstitching either end.

Pin on the front of your pillow case form and pull the bottom thread to ruffle. Or, you can ruffle it before you pin it, I did it both ways....so do however its easiest for you.





Once its ruffled, pin strip in place at top, bottom and middle. and stitch right down the middle again to sew it in place.

fold over to the side to place the next strip slightly overlapping.  I ended up not having enough strips to overlap very much so mine look a little more spaced out. Another tip for my next attempt!


Once you cover the whole front, turn inside out and stitch closed along the top and the bottom. Unbutton the buttons and turn right side out.



Mine looked like this before it was stuffed.


I used this for stuffing because I already had it and because I didn't measure to cover a specific Pillow form.
It was $2.99 at JoAnn's.




Stuff it!

Button it up!


And thats how my first attempt Ruffle Pillow turned out! its kinda sloppy, rustic cute! I am itching to try my hand at another one!





Mood Board for New Basement Living Space



Another one of my bigger projects I am working on this spring is finishing up at least one room of our walkout basement. Today, out of our boredom on what was both of our last days of work (Okay I still have to go back for a few hours on Thrusday and Saturday, but it was my last FULL day) we created this mood board for my space.
























So far, the room is drywalled all but the ceiling...and thats it. Ill add some before pictures soon. And we shall see how it all comes together with the ideas I have in mind!

Sunday, April 24, 2011

An Easter Getting to Know Pinterest

So, many of you may have heard of this new, all the rage, website phenomenon....but I bet many of you have not!  Pinterest is a new website community that lets its its user "pin" photos of things they love, are interested in or that are just cool to look at. Its like a virtual pinboard. And, once you start, its a rather addicting pastime....here are some of my first pins: 















Source: tumblr.com via Megan on Pinterest






















And this was all on my first day! Sound like fun? It very much is!  So head on over to Pinterest to get started yourself! you do need to be invited to join the site, and its much quicker to be invited by someone who is already a member, so if you need an invite just email me with your email address and I'll send one to you asap! arens_33 (at) yahoo (dot) com

Friday, April 22, 2011

Shelf re-do


So I was getting the feeling that my floating shelf wasn't performing as well as it could be. I wasn't liking the white frames, on a white shelf on a tan wall...blah blah blah....

Here is what it originally looked like:






I played around in photoshop to test what I wanted it to look like, here is my rough idea: 


Next was a trip to Dollar General, I picked up 5 of their TrueLiving brand black frames.
They are surprisingly good quality for the price! Everything seen below for $24 total! The price of only one of the 11x14's most other places....


And up they go, together with my wallflowers I happened to find at my last Meijer grocery shopping trip for $19.99








I like it so much better now! much more dramatic and less blah.  And dont mind the model lady's picture still in the frames, I still have to make some prints to fill them all, :-P  
 Here are some other things I also picked up at Dollar General while I was there:









Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Kitchen Tour


Since my kitchen is the room that I've made the most changes too, I figured I should show it off alittle more! 
quick reminder of the before: 





And here are my much lighter, brighter and whiter afters!































































DIY valance, is actually totally unfinished...its just cut out and pinned at the
 top to make a loop for the rod to go though...I just slapped it up there to
see if I liked it and obviously, I did!