Welcome, Fall!

Good morning!  And happy third-day-of-fall! We hope everyone is having a fantabulous week so far. Our week has been pretty good. The first days of the new season have definitely been fall-like. We’ve finally had a good rain storm for the first time in quite a while. The biggest problem with the rain is the wet pant cuffs... We’ve also been working at school. It’s always fun to work in the same school and grade as each other and mess with the kids a little. Sometimes you have to go with the “No, I’ve never met her before today” when they ask if you’re related. Good to know most of them can tell the difference between their everyday teacher and the sister.

Anyway, today’s project is a quick fall-themed home décor project we came up with. We wanted to post it on Tuesday but unfortunately didn’t get around to it until today. It is a set of fall-themed wall signs.

We were inspired by some prints we found online and maybe possibly a new line of projects to sell. Just what we needed- another set of items to create!! Especially since we were talking about what to focus on last night!! We decided to go with some fall images, including a cute scarecrow, a tree with its changing leave, and a set of little pumpkins. The last one is a little “sentiment” that reads “welcome fall”. How cute are they?!

Now we have to figure out if we want to frame them or make them into canvases. Either way would be super cute! We like our version (compared to some of the other ones we’ve found) better because they are thought-out and 3D (even a little) compared to just a printed image.

Thanks so much for stopping by! Enjoy the rest of your day and come back tomorrow for some more fall-themed party items we’ve been working on!

A (Very Late) Birthday Gift

Good morning! We hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend so far. We have finally caught up, or are at least catching up, with the list of projects we've needed to complete. Here is one that is quite a bit late, but I'm sure it'll be OK! 

Last month was our niece's birthday and we knew exactly what we wanted to make her.  After looking around at the craft stores and not being able to find what we were looking for, we had to order it on-line. (I'll admit, we did run a bit late piecing it all together, but...) After ordering it, it finally arrived, only to come the day before we left for vacation and we didn't have enough time to get it out. However, we're pretty sure it was worth the wait:

The completed project is a personalized glass block light. The pictures aren't the best, but the first is when it's unplugged and the second is it on. (My back-lighting skills are terrible) We decided to go with purple, teal, and lime green (because who doesn't like that color combination?!) The hardest part of this gift was (safely) sticking all of the lights in the block and cutting a whole in the bottom (or maybe cracking it) to keep the lights in. The craftiest part of this project (the bow) was a little troublesome, but it works and it made me wonder where to add more of the super easy loopy bows. I was thinking Christmas...  *<|:0)
 Now we just have to get it out in the mail. At least she'll have an extended birthday, and she'll have it before her next birthday!
Thanks so much for stopping by! Have a wonderful day!

Go Hawks!

Good Sunday morning! We hope everyone is having a super weekend so far. As everyone knows, today is Super Bowl Sunday. It's been pretty exciting out here. Everything, and we mean everything, has been decked out in Seahawks paraphernalia. It's been Blue Friday for the last two weeks. OK, it's been the entire season. So, I guess it's a good thing the Patriots aren't playing because we don't have to choose who to root for. Not that it was much of a choice out here. So, in honor of today's game, we made a little banner to hang on our mantle:

It's a totally girly way to show who we're rooting for. (We did make a Patriots one a few weeks ago, too, in hopes that they would make it today, as well.)

 Here are the spacers and the two ends.  Our little football player is showing his 12th Man pride, of course. And the middle spacer has some sparkle, of course! Unfortunately, the green isn't quite the "right" color, but it works!
Hopefully there will be more celebrating tonight and tomorrow. If not, it's going to be a sad state. Oh, and it's Groundhog Day! Apparently we will have six more weeks of winter. If the next few weeks are anything like the rest of this winter, we can't complain too much. Now, it's a bummer if you live in the rest of the country...
Thanks for stopping by today! It's time to get our tailgating food and drinks and take in the big game!

Happy New Year!

 Good morning! We hope everyone has had a safe and wonderful night yesterday.  We can't believe how fast this year has gone by. We have a lot to be thankful for this year, including seeing our entire family, including an awesomely planned road trip back East this summer. We were most fortunate to have some guests out here, as well, which is always welcome, unless it's Boy and our apartment is in a state of organized chaos ;) At the end of summer, Robyn began working in fourth grade and made some new friends (although I take a teeny tiny amount of credit for talking her into interviewing for the position.) 

Now that most of our Christmas presents are at their destinations, and have been used a few times, we have a little more time to design and create new projects. We wanted to make a quick banner to hang on our mantle. The flags are smaller than normal, but it ended up being a perfect size. We used bright colors, with some shimmery silver-gray for our letters and images. And they're a little hard to see, but we also used a bunch of rhinestones, especially on the two noisemakers on the end.

  Thank you so much for stopping by! Here's to an even better 2014!

Twas the Night Before Christmas, Part 1

So I should totally be doing some work, getting ready for this week, but with just two weeks left before break, well, I don't really want to right now...

We've had the same stuff up on our walls since we moved in, and it was definitely time for a change, at least for the holidays. A couple of weeks ago, when canvases were on sail at Michael's, we picked a couple up for this project. along with paint and vinyl. Our color-scheme/decor is pink and green gingerbread (very fun). We painted two of them bright green, and with Design Studio, cut out part of the poem "Twas the Night Before Christmas." I think these are going to look great when they're up on the wall together!

Back to school work, now, I guess. Part 2 of this project will be up tomorrow, and hopefully the last one on Tuesday!

Thanks for stopping by!

Santa's Coming?!

Happy hump day! We hope everyone is having a super day so far. Luckily, it's already Wednesday and a few days closer to another weekend. We have never been guilty of rushing anything. The weekend, the holidays. Nope, not us! So, while taking a few minutes out of our orders, (and a need for change), we made a quick banner.

This banner matches the bags we made yesterday. It reads "Happy Holidays". The banner is pretty basic, with a few embellishments. We were fortunate enough to find the perfect paper to use in our scrap stash. It probably wouldn't have been used for anything else. Below are pictures of the letters, with some glitter on each, the Santa in the middle, that matches the bags, and the poinsettia on the ends, that match yesterday's tags.

 Santa has his googly eyes and spakley white trim, which is a bit hard to see. The poinsettia on the two ends have rhinestones in the center.
The plan is to create a few new matching items. Hopefully they'll be done before the holidays!
Thanks for stopping by! Have a great day.

My Bathroom Redo

Good morning! We hope everyone is having a fantastic weekend. We’ve been busy getting caught up on all of the work we didn’t do yesterday, along with some new projects we found and just have to try out!! Hopefully they will go as planned and we can share them in a few weeks. If not, then we’ll just have a bunch of yarn hanging around.

Today’s post was originally going to be a tutorial, but as I was writing it, I thought that it would be hard to follow. It something that’s been hanging around for a few months, but it wasn’t fully completed until last night’s addition of the curtain rings:

 

I would love to say this was totally my idea, but I can’t take any credit for it. Unfortunately. Similar shower curtain DIY’s are all over the internet and Pinterest. They are all remakes of this Anthropologie curtain that sells for $118.00. That’s just an absurd amount of money to spend on bathroom décor, so I decided to make one myself for around $20.00. The most expensive part was actually the rings to hold it up (the old blue ones weren’t working for me). I used 3 sheets in all. The two pink ones are queen-sized sheets that I found for $5.00 a piece, and the third was the original shower curtain I had up (which was also somewhere around $5.00, too). In actuality, I got the pink sheets to make a bedspread, but I thought it was time to spruce up the bathroom. There was a whole lotta fabric, a bit of extra thread, and some fighting words, but it is totally worth it. I won’t lie, I kind of feel like a princess whenever I get into the shower…
And the frame with flowers also helps. It's a happy reminder of our amazing trip a few summers ago. They were taken at the International Rose Test Garden in Portland.

Thanks for letting me share by bathroom stories! Or, just the bathroom. Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

A Happy Boo to You!

Happy Sunday! We hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend. We've been super busy this weekend. We spent yesterday working on a ton of projects that will *hopefully* be up soon. Anyway, today's project is a cute little Halloween banner.

It's a little hard to read, with the glare from the window, and the fact that it's pretty busy. It reads "Boo to You" (hence, the title of the post!) and it has a few little monsters on it. Here are two pictures of the banner, up close:

There are three little monsters that wouldn't be complete without their googly eyes. And each flower is handmade, which took a little (a lot) longer than it should. Trying to come up with a placement for the flowers. I tried to make a pattern, but it didn't work out quite right. Luckily, it came out well, in our opinion!
Thanks for stopping by today! We hope everyone enjoys the rest of their weekend!

Kitchen Vinyl Project

I hope everyone has some fun plans for the weekend. I know that as soon as I finish posting this, we get to take a drive up to Seattle to pick up the family from Texas! They're super excited to come and explore the PNW and we're happy to have them. It's been just about two years since we've seen them, so it will be nice to have them here for the week.

Today's post is a super quick kitchen project we did a little while back. Our kitchen is decorated in red, white, and black. Since we're only renting and don't want to paint or redo anything, we mostly decorate with our appliances and other things on the counters. We found these plain red canisters at IKEA the last time we went and knew they would look much better than the gingerbread ones we had in there before. (I know, gingerbread are awesome, but not really year-round.)

 

But they were definitely boring. We gave them a face lift with some leftover black and white vinyl, with the names of what's inside each one. Since they were still a little plain, we added some adhesive rhinestones around the frame, which you can see in the next picture. They jazzed them up and made them more girly.

Thanks for stopping by!

Bedroom Makeover!

I hope everyone is having a fantastic week so far. We've been pretty busy around here today, but didn't get much paper crafting done. Just business of the cleaning sort. Boring, right? But I wanted to make a quick post showing off some of the bedroom decor I made earlier this summer. It was definitely time for a change from my darker, winter colors.

Here's the room before:

It didn't really need a style update, for me at least, but the color was dark and it was just time for a change. I will probably go back to it come fall, but for now, it looks like this:

I love the gray and yellow color scheme. It brightens up the room a lot, perfect for summer. Even with the gray, it is pretty cheery. I found the directions for the duvet cover at Be Sweetly Inspired here. I didn't quite follow all of her directions, but got the general idea there. It was a set of king sized sheets and after it was pintucked, sewn wrong sides together. It looks hard, time consuming, and expensive, but wasn't at all!

The next step was the accents and extras around the room. I went over to Joann's, and after getting distracted and looking at everything in the store, went over to the fabric section. Luckily, since I had the solid gray and yellow, finding a pattern that matched wasn't hard. I got about 3 1/2 yards and was able to do all of those little pretties around. (It was a couple of months ago, but I think it was 3 1/2, maybe 3, maybe 4... somewhere in there. And of course you'd have to measure your own, but that's a rough estimate to start with.)

I cut the strips for the bed skirt by measuring the length (times two) and the width of the bed, and then how far I wanted it to be on the floor. After those three easy cuts, I attached the skirt with Velcro. This way, later on when I want to change it, it just pulls off, and a new one can be put up.

The bed skirt took up most of the fabric, but there was still enough to cover up the two lampshades. They needed it after a previous not-so-well-done decor project. There are a ton of tutorials out there to learn how to do this.

I don't have a headboard with my bed, but I needed something on the wall behind the bed. You can see the one that was there before, which clearly wouldn't match the yellow and gray. So we had one canvas at home, left over from another project, and I got two more for the set of three. They were recovered with the fabric rectangles. The hardest part of this was making sure they were straight and spaced evenly, or evenly enough.

And there was just enough left over to recover the small pillow in the middle, finishing off the look. I love the update and it makes going to sleep even more inviting at night! Or sleeping in.

Thanks for stopping by!

A Little Brightness for a Tough Day

Today's post is a little hard to write. I've been sitting here for the last fifteen minutes trying to figure out how to start it. As runners, it's hard to imagine something like this happening at a road race. Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone affected.

Anyway, today's project can hopefully put some sunshine and light into today. Since Easter is now over, this is our new welcome wreath for our front door. 

 

It's nice and bright, which is always a good thing in a sometimes-dreary place. As I write this, it looks like it's about to start pouring, with what sounds like some rumbles of thunder. Or it's the neighbor's dog. Either way. The wreath is full of (what's supposed to be) Gerbera daisies. These are, by far, our favorite summer flowers. They are so colorful and bright, and they always catch our attention when we see them at stores. 

 

Here is a close-up of the flowers, and the little butterfly resting on the flower. The little guy is attached to a thin wire, so he comes out of the wreath a little bit. We also added some little green 'fronds', to add just another small touch. 

We have a  few more projects for this week with daisies. We're trying to get all of our decor matching, and fortunately, they can be left up for spring and summer!

Thanks for stopping by! 

Easter Decor

Today's project is one of those "let me catch up on past seasons of tv shows" projects. It's a little time consuming, but definitely worth it!

We usually use Styrofoam wreath forms, but for this one, used a wire form. And about 3 rolls of tulle. We cut the tulle at 6 inches and knotted them around three of the rings on the form. You probably don't need to use that much, but I like the really full look. We then used some coordinating ribbon on the last ring. Finally, we knotted ribbon through the eggs and tied them around. It doesn't look like it in the picture, but it is one extra-poofy wreath. It takes up about half of our front door!

Thanks for stopping by!

Create with 8

Today's project was made for Joann's "Create with 8" challenge. The job was to use eight products from the list. We used a frame, cork tiles, ribbon, wood letter, glitter, paint, scrapbook paper, and a scrapbook embellishment.

It's a perfect little holder to put the recipe cards we are going to use, and to keep track of what's for dinner. We like to make a menu for the month, and cook ahead. So now, after doing the prep work, we have some place to keep notes.

Thanks for stopping by!

Kiss Me!

Happy Thursday! We hope everyone is having a wonderful week. We are definitely looking forward to the weekend. It's been one of those weeks here. It hasn't been bad, just busy. We've been spending our free time working on a set of wedding invitations- not that we're complaining, but it's quite a bit of tedious and repetitive work. But totally worth it. They look pretty hot so far! Between that and work, we haven't had much time to craft for ourselves. However, we do have a project to share with you this morning:

Our door was looking a little bare after we took down our Valentine's Day wreath, so we decided we should start decorating for St. Patrick's Day. Now, it didn't come out anything like planned, but it's still cute, none the less. We have a cute little 'couple' in the middle of the wreath, holding a lucky shamrock. Adding the pink was Dawn's idea, obviously, which looks better (in our opinion) than if the vests were to be another green color. Also, every holiday should include some pink! His vest is a little harder to see, but it's there. Along with the pink, it's not a holiday if there isn't any sparkle:

We found this fun sparkly paper at Micheal's. It was a buy one, get one offer, and it was just so sparkly, we got a few sheets. Of course, one of the little characters had to have red-orange hair and freckles. We decided to make the girl with brown hair and some freckles. Looks kind a familiar. It's a cute little decoration for our front door. But we'll keep it inside...wouldn't want random people knocking on the door in the middle of the night...But I digress. Honestly, though, who wouldn't want to kiss an Irish girl?!
Thanks so much for stopping by! Hope you have a wonderful day!

A Conversation Starter

Happy Monday! We hope everyone had a wonderful weekend. We have been keeping busy crafting and completing some orders, so we have stayed out of trouble. We are definitely going to enjoy our day off today- don't know how, but we will!
A few weeks ago, our sister asked us to make her a Valentine's day banner. She is a big fan of the candy hearts and asked us to make her a banner with them. This is what we came up with:

OK, so maybe our Christmas decorations will come down today...Anyway, as you can see, each piece has been designed to look like a candy heart. One of the things that I like the most is that it's not a 'typical' Valentine's Day banner, in the fact that it's not pink or red, but it is still in the holiday spirit. The hardest part was deciding what to write on the hearts. (There are a lot of new sayings that probably just wouldn't look very good on a banner.) We wanted to add some 'pizazz' to the pieces, so we made the sayings pop out, and added a (very light) white stitching pattern around the edges:

We decided to tie the hearts together with the sparkly ribbon, since she is a big fan of sparkle. We knew it had to be purchased when we were at the store! How awesome is it?? I'm so excited that there is extra ribbon left over :)
Thanks for stopping by! 

Valentine's Day Wreath

Every holiday needs a wreath, right? We've made some winter, Christmas, and sports wreaths, so why not a Valentine's Day wreath?! The heart shaped wreath form was perfect for this wreath.

I love how the tulle ends up looking a little more like a circle, but still keeps the heart shape in the middle. We used about half of 3- 25 yard rolls of red, white, and pink.

Here's a close up of the die-cut we pinned to the middle of the wreath.

Thanks for stopping by!

Be Awesome!

Good evening! We hope everyone is having a wonderful week so far. We're definitely looking forward to the weekend. It's been tough- a two-day work week. Well, today's project is a wall hanging we made for a bedroom. It is, in a way, a New Year's resolution, and a nice reminder to wake up to

How cute is that? It was finished tonight, but I definitely could have used it this morning. When a piece of pesto chicken flies into your first coffee of the day and then it takes 10 minutes to close your car doors (because the locks are frozen- which never happened before, even back home in Connecticut). Luckily the sunrise this morning was amazing and the day turned around!
This was actually made with a 16"x24" canvas and some paints. We saw a printable somewhere with this saying and thought this would be perfect in a bedroom. I chose the color to match my color-theme. The teal matches remarkably well, which was kind of surprising. It is a little hard to tell, but "awesome" glitters (the phone camera just didn't capture the sparkle as well)
Thanks so much for stopping by!

Getting Glittered!

Nothing says "Happy New Year" like some sparkle! And who doesn't like to use glitter on everything?! Today's project is a fun little home decor project to share.

Both of these projects are basically the same, just on different materials. First up are our 2013 candles. We cut out 2013 from vinyl, just big enough to be able to see the whole year on the front of the candle. Then we covered the whole thing in mod-podge, and added glitter. After it was dry, we pulled the vinyl off the candle, and viola! To make sure that the glitter doesn't get all over everything, we sealed it with a clear spray lacquer. (The small ones in the back are done the same, just without the vinyl step.)

 The second part of our project are these awesome wine glasses. Of course you need some glasses for your midnight toast, (or just your after work glass of wine). We did the same thing here: coated in mod podge and glitter, and sealed. Even though the are sealed, they still have to be hand-washed.

Close ups of the stem and glass.

Imagine the possibilities and how many different things you can glitter like this! One thing I would suggest, though, is to make sure that your vinyl isn't the same color as your glitter! I should've known this before doing it, but was clearly not thinking that far ahead. Otherwise, when you go to pull the vinyl off, you have to do some searching for it. (Note the little marks that look like claw marks next to the 1.) They still add some great sparkle to any party!

Thanks for stopping by!

Just Believe- #2

Happy Wednesday! I hope everyone is having a great week so far! I know, not a clever post title at all. Especially since we've already had one the week with the same title. That just seems to be that kind of week. 
All this talk about being able to hear bells is starting to get to me. This morning, I was listening to Christmas music while getting ready for work, and the first song I heard started off really quiet, with some bells tinkling in the distance. Somehow I forgot that my phone was in my pocket, and all I heard were the bells. At first I thought the bell project from yesterday made the noise, but realized no one was near it.  So, logically, my next thought was that Santa was coming, of course! I only figured out it was the music when the singing began. Oh well. It would have been a little too early for the Big Guy anyway.
So, continuing on with today's project. We have another quick home decor project to share today.  We have a pretty big mirror hanging over our fireplace and decided that it needed to be spruced up a bit:

We cut out the word 'believe' in  super fun sparkly red vinyl. The shooting star was cut out in a silver an a gold vinyl. We wanted to make it big enough to take up a good chunk of room, but not to make it look too silly. It is about 1/3 the width of  the mirror. It's a little hard to tell, but any other picture would have gotten us in the reflection. We surrounded it with some greenery, as well. The mirror looks much better now that it has some pizzazz to it!
Thank you for stopping by. Hope you all have a wonderful Wednesday!

Jingle All the Way

We hope everyone is having a good morning. It seems as if this is going to be another slow week. It feels like it should be at least Wednesday. Although who can complain when you get to watch 'Toy Story' and 'Finding Nemo' all day?! Hopefully everyone else's day will be just as good!
For today's project, we have a craft that would cheer up any space. These 'wreaths' can be found at any craft store, but we made this one on the cheap- $6.00 for the entire thing.

In order to make this, all we used was some jewelry wire we had hanging around. Ours is the size of a large coffee can, but you can make it any size you want. We recommend using thick wire (or even a metal coat hanger, if you have any more of those) so the shape stays better. Ours was kind of thin, so the small size worked well. Then, all you take are some jingle bells and string them onto the wire. (The bells are on sale this week at Micheal's, for like $2.99) We used two different sizes, but you can pretty much design it however you want. Once they're all strung, you can form the wire into the shape you want and wa-la! A quick project. We added a little bell in the middle, tied with a cute gold bow!
In 'The Polar Express' if you believe in the magic of the holiday, you can hear the bell jingle. There is no way you can't hear these bells jingle!
This would be a quick little gift for a holiday grab bag, maybe, or something to make and give to yourself!