Valentine's Day treats and decorations

Thank you so much for your words of encouragement! I needed a little love in my life after the past few days I've had. I decided nothing would make me happier than doing some Valentine's projects.

I have soooo many candy canes left over from Christmas. I was thinking about what I could do with them. I hot glued a few together to make cute hearts hanging from the window in my kitchen.

                          Then I googled Candy Canes and Valentine's Day and found this!

I had some left over melting white chocolate and sprinkles.

I unwrapped 2 candy canes and put a sucker stick in between and laid that on wax paper.

Then I poured in the melted white chocolate and smoothed it around in the heart shape.

I sprinkled on some cute red and pink sprinkels and put them in the fridge for 5 minutes.

YUM! Fun snack for me and my Valentine :)

(See I TOLD you it was a rough weekend! But hey, at least it's a picture of my face, and NOT my hand)

All of these things I had lying around the house so it was FAH-REE!!! Got to love that!

Momma said there'd be days like this....

I set out this weekend with a massive to do list. I am one of those people that feels accomplished with the more stuff I get crossed off my list. But sometimes that's not the plan. Do you ever have one of those days where you get one thing accomplished, and then 8, 234, 564 things go wrong?

I was having one of those weekends. I had set out to finish up some custom pieces, and everything that went wrong could. It's rained like you would not believe here in GA this week and we finally had some beautiful days. I dragged all the stuff that needed sanding outside and things just fell apart.

Hubbs called and said the car needed $800 worth of work. My furniture pieces weren't turning out like I had hoped, the dogs had gotten into paint, my school work wasn't done, my computer wouldn't work, and the list just goes on and on from there.

I was so mad and frustrated I sat down on the back deck and just sobbed. I'm sure our neighbors thought I was crazy!

I had screamed at the hubbs that I was done with furniture, done with blogging, and I was just plain done!!!

Luckily, he helped me pick back up the pieces and encouraged me to go on from there.

Mamma said there'd be days like this...it's called life. Sometimes it gets in the way. Luckily today is a new day :)

How to redo a kitchen island: Part 2

I am so smitten with my new blog design that I almost forgot to post part 2 about our kitchen island.

If you missed part 1, click here.

We left off with the construction of the island, so now we'll focus on paint! (My favorite part you know!) 

Last time I left off with asking you whether or not you thought I should have painted the island white or turquoise. I appreciated all of your honest comments! 

I finally got the nerve to paint the island turquoise with some existing paint I had from my TV stand makeover.  

It sat like this for a few weeks and I wasn't in love.

It was too solid. You know what I mean? There wasn't any interest.

It sat like this until I had a thought....I should add some glaze!

Glaze is so easy to apply.

It just LOOKS really scary!

I just paint it on, wait a few minutes, then wipe it off with a damp cloth. You control how much or how little glaze you want.

 Luckily this is a less creepy picture of my hand than the other day!

Here is what the glaze looks like on part of the side.

See, the glaze adds so much dimension to the beadboard and it was the final touch I'd been looking for!

So there you have it. Our $50 island makeover.

Here's the breakdown of costs:

$40 in beadboard

$7 in moulding (we were able to reuse most of it that we didn't break)

$3 for nails

(paint and glaze, construction adhesive, and spray paint I already had)

I hope you found this helpful :) Do you have any kitchen projects planned this year?

Notice anything?

Remember those BIG CHANGES I was telling you about last week? Notice anything new???

You better!

Thanks to Jessica at Creative Index, my new blog looks amazing. Jessica is great to work with. She listened to all my ideas and came up with a smokin' design the first try. Head over to her blog and check it out if you're looking for a new blog design.

I'll be back later this week. Until then, feel free to have a look around :)

Getting Organized

I hope everyone had a great weekend. We tackled a project that I've been wanting to do for-evah!

My parents are redoing their garage and gave us some amazing shelves. Amazing because they hold a TON and they were FAH-REEEE! (You know how I feel about free things!)

We finally had a chance to put them together.

I likey some shelves for all my stuff :)

Thanks to the hubbs, my workshop area in the basement doesn't look like this anymore!

(I almost didn't show these because it was pretty bad!)

Everything was on the floor...and I mean everything! It was so hard to move around down there and find anything.

Not anymore!

I have never been so thrilled to organize something in my life! I'm hoping this means I can get even more projects done now that I can find stuff :)

Hubbs even put together a workspace area for me out of our old kitchen countertops and some sawhorses.

The plan is to put some pegboard behind the countertop area so I can hang some of my tools up.

Are you like me? Do you work better with organization or "organized chaos"?

Valentine's Day Banner

Can you believe love is in the air? Valentine's Day will be here before we know it.

I decided to lug out all of my Vday decorations in the midst of our basement chaos (More on that later)

I got everything out and decided I needed to make a cute banner for my mantle.

It seriously took me 10 minutes!

Here's what you need:

 8 squares of 6X6 paper (in 2 coordinating colors) I used red and white

4 squares of 5 X 5 paper (I used a heart pattern)

4 hearts ( about 3 inches each)

The Letters LOVE (cut for 3 in size on my Cricut)

I placed heart paper on the red squares and glued them together. I glued the hearts on the white paper and then strung them together. Then I glued the letters LOVE onto the heart paper that I cut out from my Cricuit.

On the white paper I ran the edges along some red ink to give it a more pronounced look.

(Please excuse the REALLY creepy picture of my hand) I promise they don't look like that :) No.really. Is it just me or does anyone else have a hard time taking pictures of steps when you need one hand to hold things and one hand to hold the camera? That's another post for another day....moving on!

I used a long piece of hemp cord to string it all together because I wanted to keep the banner light.

To string it, I poked holes in the paper about 2 inches apart and slid all the paper on.

I put it all on my mantle and spaced it out accordingly.

I'm in "LOVE". Haha....cheeseballs I know. But that's what Valentine's Day is all about right?

I'll post some more Valentine's Day crafts next week!

Grey beauty

  If you follow me on facebook, you already got a sneak peek at this dresser.

I scored this beauty on Craigslist when it looked like this.

Often times I get emails from readers asking about how I chose paint colors for pieces. Sometimes I just use what I have, sometimes I dream about them. (No.joke) There's no science about it!

Anyways, I needed to put primer on it since it isn't solid wood and I wasn't using chalk paint. I gave it a coat of Kilz Oil based primer so it would dry quickly.

Then I used some left over black paint and just mixed in white. Simple as that. I kept adding more and more white paint until I got the shade I wanted (Sidenote, make sure you mix A LOT of extra paint if you're making custom colors. It will be a pain if you don't. Take my word on that!)

It turned out so great, but it needed a little more to show off the pretty details. I added Ralph Lauren glaze in black. I love glazing furniture! It really brings out the details!

To finish it off, I took off the knobs and sprayed them with a dull black.

There was also a mirror that went along with it, so it could be used in a bedroom too!

I finished off the whole thing with a coat of Polycrylic.

Here's a Before Meets After shot!

I'm happy to say this piece is already sold!

Happy Monday!

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