Think Avocado!

Hi all!

This is the eve of the 1st 2nd most glorious day in a teacher's life! Spring Break Starts at 3:00 tomorrow afternoon!

Last year, the hubbs and I went on an AMAZING road trip up the east coast. This year, I've got too many projects to go anywhere. You just wait....you'll be sick of seeing emails and dashboard updates from me! I'm planning on FINALLY getting more pictures up for the home tour too!

 I wanted to get this piece finished tonight, but the weather just wasn't cooperating. So for now, a sneak peak.  Here is the before....Just look at those details!

Now...think avocado!

Stay tuned for the reveal! This may just end up being one of my favorite pieces so far!

Happy Friday to you :)



Follow your dreams

I have always wanted to do something "nifty" with my life. You know, when you tell people what you do, you get the coolest reactions. Some days it's write a children's book, other days it's become a famous blogger. Some days it's rescue sweet little animals, sell re-painted furniture, or even be a professional Goodwill-er (I'm sure there's such a thing!). Yes, there are even days I want to be a rockstar (even though no one wants to hear me sing!!) I'm not really sure what I'll end up as, but whatever it is, I know it will be MY dream. I will be happy :)

I was recently inspired by a guest to my classroom, Sharna Fulton. Sharna is the mastermind behind Chloe Pink, the official spokesperson for following your dreams.

She spoke to my kids about following their dreams and never giving up. She even signed copies of her coloring book, in pink of course. You can order one here. I was inspired to finally do something I've been talking about forever...this!! Start a blog. I've joked around with friends and co-workers, but I decided...why not??? Why not today?? Why not do it??

So on this day, I just want to remind you to follow your dreams. Even if it's baby steps, it's still a step in the right direction.

Take the

Chloe Pink™ pledge:

I, __________ promise to believe in myself, to be curious about everything and to always, always follow MY dreams!

Are you following your dreams?

Betcha can't guess what it's made of...

As I mentioned yesterday, we held a shower at our house for a sweet friend of mine. Her wedding colors are black, white, and pink, and I wanted to keep everything in that color scheme, but using things I already had. Remember how I mentioned I LOVE decorating with scrapbook paper?? Well I needed a cute cupcake stand to hold the black and white cupcakes I was making. My friend Lori sent me a link to a blog where they made a cupcake stand out of....cans and a diaper box! You'd never guess it by looking at it!

I used my cricut to cut a 5, 8, and 11 inch circle out of white cardstock. I used that to trace onto the diaper box and used a box cutter to cut out the circles.

(Note to self: Carefully plan where to place the said circles so I don't have to beg another friend for a diaper box!)

After that I glued the scrapbook paper to the cardboard. I reinforced the bottom layer with tape just because it was going to have the most cupcakes on it.

Then I hot glued the ribbon around the edges to hide the cardboard.

I laid the cans down and traced the edges on scrapbook paper and then cut. To put around the can, I just rolled it and hot glued the ends together so the can could slide in and out. I didn't want to damage the can...I mean I paid to eat the stuff inside!!!

Then I layered it all together, and ended up with this :)

And....it was FAH-REEEEE!! Can't beat that!

Family Room Reveal!!!

First of all, thank you for all the emails and facebook posts about our gallery wall! I loved that so many of you had some great ideas! I could not be happier how this room turned out. I squeal every time I walk down the stairs now!

The driving force for this room was that we were hosting a bridal shower for a dear friend of mine. It was an absolute blast! We were literally hanging the gallery wall up the night before the shower!

Ok, enough chit chat....I'll get to the pictures. One last look at before and during.

AND NOW!!!!

Look at that gallery wall~I just LOVE how it turned out! (Sorry the picture is blurry :( I'm not sure if it was the lighting or what but I took about 10 before giving up! ) For those of you wondering which option we chose, it was number 1. We decided we wanted a layout that we could add to easily.

I'm still not satisfied with the curtains and I'm on the prowl for some wood nesting tables to replace the metal ones we have now. So it's not 100% complete, but what room ever is?

So before...meets after!

Figuring out a gallery wall

So I'm finally ready to reveal my plan for the large 2 story wall. Well it's not exactly a plan...it's a "how do I decide what to put on the wall" plan.

I need your help! I've been playing with different designs. I laid everything that I wanted to include in the gallery out on the floor. Then I would arrange, run up the stairs and take a picture of it from our landing. The hubbs thought I was nuts. I kept asking his opinion but I got, "Do whatever makes you happy". Some women would love for their husbands to say that...but it drives me NUTS when mine does!

So here are some options: 

My blank frame at the top will have a painted "W" in it for our last name, but it wasn't quite dry for the photo shoot!

I just love the quote on the shutters! See how I made that here.  

 There are my cute bird shadow box projects I made here and here.

Sidenote: Our AMAZING wedding photos are from Lindsey Turner Photography in Atlanta. She travels and does destination weddings. Check her blog out here! I just can't say enough wonderful things about her!

By now you've looked at so many options they all look the same! The hubbs said the same thing!

Got lazy Didn't feel like running up the stairs for this one!

So what do you think? I'm not sure which one to chose because I like them all! Help me choose! I'm hoping to decide this week and reveal on Monday!

yes, another bird

I've had this design for the big family room wall in my head for a long time. I'm slowly getting there, but this week I've been on a roll because we're hosting a friend's bridal shower at our house Saturday. Remember it started out like this.

The big wall behind the couch is going to be some sort of gallery wall, and I've been busy making lots of art/gathering pictures for it. I alread did a painting and a shadowbox bird . I bought another shadow box (For 1/2 off of course!) and have been debating what to do with it.

I stained my shadowbox again using leftover stain from a previous furniture project.

 

Then I got some scrapbook paper that I thought might look good with our colors.

I had a wreath I bought from goodwill a while ago. I played with the scrapbook paper until I found a color I liked. I put it all together with those scrapbook stickies.

Then I used my cricut to cut out a cute bird in white. I just out some stickies on it....and it was done. 5 minutes and about 5 dollars! Can't beat that. 

This will be added to the gallery wall above the couch. I'm working to get all the pieces together so I can post about how to do the gallery! Busy nights ahead!

Canvas painting-knock off

I hope everyone had a GREAT weekend! It was so beautiful here in Georgia!

Remember the other day when I was saying this room still lacked inspiration?? Afrer a few days of looking at my shutters with the coffee filter wreath, I decided it just wasn't cutting it for me.

I searched and searched and finally found this quote, which I LOVE! This Etsy shop is so cute and pretty much has anything vinyl you can imagine!

I needed it to be horizontal and it needed to be able to attach to the shutters. So I found a canvas for 50% off at Michaels and it was just the right size for my project.

I found a super cute font from this blog. It's called monster paparazzi. I printed out the quote in different sizes and other fonts, just like my inspiration. I cut out the words, and laid them out on my canvas. (Note: if you have a Cricut like I do, this would work great too...but I didn't want to spend $50 on a new cartridge....I'm thrifty remember!) Then, I traced the letters with a pen.

Next comes the part that required A LOT of patience! I painted around the letters with brown craft paint. (There is a reason for my madness!) Painting around them rather than painting the canvas first allowed my letters to have crisper lines.

Wait, there's still more. After the brown dried, I went over the letters with white wall paint, not craft paint. I wanted the paint to be thicker and go over any of the brown in case I messed up.

I ended up with this :)

I'm in love with it!!! The best thing was it only cost me $8.39. If I had ordered the one from the etsy shop, it would have cost me $20. Plus, the vinyl wouldn't have worked on my shutters anyways.

Now I replaced the coffee filter wreath with my canvas sign!

Before.....Meets After!

There are still LOTS of changes happening on this wall this week :) Stay tuned!

Not too bad of a knock off either

family room inspiration

When we moved in, we really didn't do too much with this family room. It sat empty for a while.

It's a huge room and our furniture just looked ridiclous because of the scale. So we decided to spend most of our time in our keeping room off the kitchen.

The room sat empty for a while and I gave in and we finally bought a beautiful couch. But then it looked like this. Beautiful couch, but nothing on the walls, no inspiration color, just BLAH!

I finally got inspired with the color turquoise. I found some wall shutters and painted them Agave, by Behr. I also found some cheap pillows on clearance from Garden Ridge for $5. I would have made them myself but for $5 you couldn't buy the fabric and the pillow form!

So now the room looks like this.....

But it's still NO WHERE NEAR done!! Stay tuned this week! LOTS of changes happening in here :)

Friday...post for a cause!

No post today in honor of the relief efforts in Japan. Please donate to such a worthy cause. Prayers are being sent their way :)

shutters...on the wall!

I have been trying to decide what to do with our big 2 story family room. Those of you that have one know it can be a blessing as well as a curse. I love how bright and airy the room is, but I hate the big empty walls. I've had a plan in my head what I've wanted to do with the walls for quite some time. It all started from a fellow blogger, The Nester. I just LOVED her shutters above her fireplace. I decided that's just what I needed for my wall. Lo and behold, the next weekend after I had devised a plan, I went thrifting. I found 2 sets of old shutters for $10. What a steal!!!

I took them home and immediately painted them turquoise...of course! The same Behr Agave color I painted this piece.

I painted about 2 coats on them and then sprayed with a polyurethane to seal it. I will share with you this weekend how I made the wreath.

Don't worry...I'm not done at all! Still lots more to do on that wall! I'm thinking a gallery wall like the one here. What do you think?

Craigslist Nightstand

I found this beauty on Craigslist. Again, a cheap find for sure. I think the girl didn't know the potential it had.

I LOVE the open space at the bottom. I had the perfect plan for that!

When the hubbs brought it to the basement I gave it a good sanding with my new palm sander. Yes, the hubbs bought this for me. Most women would KILL their husbands if they bought them a tool, but I was screaming in the driveway :)

 Anyhoo, back to the furniture. I ended up having to put a layer of KILZ on it because it had some pretty bad spot. I.HATE.KILZ. I love it for what it does to furniture, I hate it for what it does to my hands and paintbrushes. (Note to self: Next time don't be so cheap and buy the KILZ spraypaint!)


I decided this would look so cute painted a creamy white and distressed. (Can you tell I'm really into that look from the last piece I did?) Well during the KILZ process, I realized if I was going to distress it, when I used my sander you would see white, not the brown from the wood. Halt. Stop project immediately. Use nail polish remover to remove some KILZ from the edges. Yes it actually worked! Luckily I hadn't painted much so I just skipped a lot of the edges. When applying KILZ you really don't have to be exact.

You can see my half KILZ-ed piece, half painted. Notice the edges on the front and bottom where I left off KILZ.

After I finished painting, I gave the edges a good sanding with my new sander :) Then I spray painted the handle in ORB and put a basket from Joann's on the bottom.  

Here it is before......

Meets After!!!

Look at how cute the drawer turned out!

And the detail at the bottom is so cute! I love it!!

This has been one of my favorite transformations so far! (It must be because of the new sander from the hubbs!)