Girls' Night

Friday, September 5, 2014

Girls' Craft Night 

 Rachael, Malu, Rena Jean, Noelle. Friends for two decades. Wow.

 We are always good at documenting our activities.

Also, apparently Rachael missed the memo to wear black.

Here is my cell phone shot of the darling pumpkins I made that night. Eric helped saw the sticks for me.

Grandpa Milton

January 16, 2013 

 As soon as Grandpa walked in the door Valette got very excited and shouted "Grandpa, books!" She ran to the couch with a stack waiting for Grandpa to read them to her.

Remember how my Dad is a rockstar? Because he can make anything he decides to?

My laundry room/pantry has two walls with nothing on them.  Above the washer/dryer I want to install cabinets and on the wall to the right of the dryer I planned to have a shelf where the detergent and such could go.  I decided this a really long time ago. I bought the awesome jars from Walmart at least two years ago.

For Christmas this year the Lara's gave all of us a girls a Silhouette as a group gift.  (This is a cutting tool, you design what you want on the computer and instead of printing it out, it cuts it with a tiny blade. You can use paper, fabric, vinyl, whatever you want.  It's wonderful.)  I love this thing and I'm so excited to get to use it more.  I knew the first thing I wanted to try on it was the numbers for my laundry jars.  Turned out awesome.

After I finished that I told my dad I was beyond ready for the shelf to go up in the laundry room so I could get all these things off of my dryer.  

And here it is. I painted the shelf yellow, but it's a fairly light yellow so you can't tell very well from this photo.  I am so happy with it. I have more I would like to go on it, but I haven't decided what yet. 

The board that I bought to be the flat of the shelf was 8 ft long, so in a few months my Dad is going to come back and we're going to make another identical shelf to go above this one. Yay. Bring on the storage.

While my dad was here working so hard I asked if we could hang this.  I finished this bedpost thing a year ago. I kid you not.  It has been leaning against this desk just WAITING to be hung.

Here it is before I started. All that had been done was Dad Greg cutting the legs down for me.

I "sanded" it with that liquid stuff she recommends in the tutorial and here it is primed and ready for the spray paint "antique white."

 This is the glaze. You paint it on kind of lightly and then wipe it off with a rag.

And then install super cute coat hooks and fall in love.

 I love it so much. I'm so happy I made it, and even happier I get to use it now.  I think I'm going to put a ribbon on a 5X7 frame and hang that on one of the other hooks. I haven't made any effort to start that yet though.

Here is the tutorial I followed to make this beauty.

Eric had to saw off some of the length of the screws that hold the awesome coat hooks on because they were too long.  Also, I didn't sand mine down to look shabby, I used a glaze from home depot. That quart size can will last me forever. It is pretty easy to use too.

I Made That!

Remember Girls (Crafting) Night? Rachael requested (again) that we go to As You Wish for our night out. Poor Rachael, she has been trying to get us to do this for over a year (maybe 2?). So we finally went in August.

I am not a painter. So I wanted to do something simple. I had seriously planned to pick a small thing to glue a magnet on for the fridge. But all of their add-on trinkets were silly or holiday related.

so I picked this mug (tumbler? it has no handle).

I found this awesome speckly paint for the base, and then I just wanted it to be sorta shabby flannel-looking. (I don't know if that's actually the word I want..) This way it didn't matter that I can't make a straight line to save my life. It was intentionally a little wobbly. Can't you tell?

And I chose colors to match my green kitchen.

 I started this wreath on our Lawlor Girls Weekend LAST YEAR. Not even kidding. I wanted to do a fall colored yarn wreath. But that was as for as I got. I couldn't decide what embellishment to put on it after I finished wrapping all the yarn. Then it was Christmas time and I never even hung it up.

In the middle of August I realized it was almost time to get out my fall decor. (YES! Isn't that what determines cooler weather? decorating for fall. Duh.) Which meant I needed to make a decision about finishing this wreath. I looked up a lot of felt flowers and chose to make these easy rolled up ones. It cost me $1 for my 4 felt colors and then I realized Rena Jean still had my glue gun. So I didn't actually finish it until the first weekend of September. (Not bad for me.)

 I used this video tutorial for cutting out the flowers. They are super easy. I had planned to do it two-tone like hers, but I guess I made mine too small or something, I still really like it though. And the leaves I just free handed.

I'm so happy to have something fall-colored on our door finally.

Next year I will probably hang it with a different ribbon. This is what I bought for it last year, but I want something wider to stand out more.

Gifts

You've seen those Aden & Anais blankets? I think there are other brands too. Very lightweight material with a print on it, usually an animal, although I think they recently started doing stripes too.

Have you seen the price tag? Those are over $30 for 2 blankets. That is nuts!

Eric's cousin Tamara made me 2 blankets like that when Valette was born and let me tell you:  they have saved.  my.  life. Seriously.

After Eric gave me the sewing machine for Christmas I have started making these as gifts for baby showers. I love them. And I've gotten more artistic with each new one.

For Kaylee's baby shower I made her 2 white ones. These were the first ones I got to make for a girl baby. Her nursery is purple and green, so I did one to match.

Plus Kaylee has a thing for birds, particularly owls, but I didn't have a stencil of owls.

I did a decorative stitch in contrasting colors for the hem so it would show up and I love how it turned out.

For the second one I used ric-rac (which is so easy to work with and you can wash it). I also did a yellow hem on this blanket but it doesn't show up as well because it is such a light yellow.

 I stuck Valette in the laundry basket expecting her to be upset and maybe cry. Instead she loved it and got mad when I tried to help her out.

June 19, 2012

Girls Craft Night

 They didn't know I took this one. Look how hard they are concentrating.

Malu, Rachael, Rena Jean, Noelle. June 12, 2012.

Rena Jean was almost finished here and I was not even close. Rachael and Malu are done.

For a while we were really good about having girls nights every other week, then schedules got crazy and we fell off the wagon. So we planned another one and Malu and Rena Jean decided it would be a craft night, which we have since repeated. 

As you can tell, Rachael likes to make crazy faces for the camera. 

Notice the paint? 

See? crazy girls.

The Nursery

I don't usually call it that though. I almost always say

"the Baby's Room."

This is the bedroom next to ours in the hallway. Until we started painting it was sort of a storage room--but mostly of the things that were supposed to be in there--just not set up yet.

The Before:

(the paint is not that green) The next picture is a much better example, this is the color of most all of my house. It's called "honeymilk" by Valspar at Lowe's and it's a creamy yellow.

February 2010.

Yes. I was not even pregnant when Eric and I started painting. He was hoping to have all paint up before so that I wouldn't have the pregnant excuse not help paint...it didn't work out that way, but I am VERY glad we started so early.

I intentionally did not paint it pink. I wanted it to be a gender-neutral color so it wouldn't need to be repainted. My first thought for a boy/girl color was of course green. But I had to tell myself--you already have 2 green rooms in this house. Pick something else.

So it is Behr's "Mineral Water" from Home Depot. A beautiful light blue.

first coat

MONTHS LATER

Celeste helped me get the tape up. Really she did way more of the work than I did. Especially the more pregnant I got, the more she would say "get off that chair, I've got this."

We had 2 full walls done (from I think 3 different work days) when it finally occurred to me to buy a freaking laser level. OH MY GOODNESS! We got the other 2 walls done in one sitting with that little light. It was wonderful.

One night when I was out Eric wanted to surprise me by getting more tape up. His mom came over to help him and I don't know how long they worked but they got fed up with the level (this was before the brilliant laser level) and went and did my dishes and cleaned the kitchen instead. But Mom Julie left a little note first. =)

Here it is all ready for caulking. I didn't think we had enough blue paint to do the once over thing that people do to seal the edges so we bought painters calk and ran that along all of the edges that would get paint. It sealed it really well and I am so glad we (and mostly that means Celeste) took the time to do it before the paint. It made a big difference on getting the crisp lines I wanted.

DAP painter's acrylic latex caulk. You just run it along the edge of the paint with your finger. Super easy and very effective.

December 3, 2010

Adria playing peekaboo with the plastic drop cloth.

She looks alot like Casey (her dad) in this picture.

We started the stripes. Finally.

This is after the first coat, the yellow needed a second coat and the brown just needed touching up.

It's a beautiful chocolate brown called "Root Beer" by Behr and the yellow is Behr's "Moon Dance."

The beginning reveal. So happy.

And the finished product! I am SO pleased with the result. The walls look absolutely wonderful.

And here is the chest of drawers in it's final resting place by the closet (as opposed to the middle of the room where it lived all year while it was in painting mode).

Those vintage-looking ruffle-y dresses hanging in the closet are all mine. I am not that old but the dresses look like they are from a different time period. I am really excited to put her in them.

Linking up to Thrifty Decor Chick's Before and After Party