My Advent Garland

Last week, I put up the garland in my front hallway so things are looking a little more festive around here. I put up the advent bags that I made last year and filled them with some little treats. I like this better than a calendar. It's fun to find a treat in each bag on your way down the stairs in the morning.

New Pillow Covers

A little a while ago I recovered a chair that turned out like this...

Part of the reason for choosing this particular fabric is that I have two dark blue wingback chairs in my living room. They are in good shape so it doesn't make sense to pay to recover them or even slip cover them. Instead, I decided to use dark blue as the accent colour for my living room. I made some pillow covers to tie into the recovered chair fabric. Here's how they turned out:

 

Organized Spice Cupboard

I recently organized the spice cupboard that is beside my stove. I thought that it was looking a bit too busy. Here is a picture of it before:

Mini Blind Turned Roman Blind Tutorial

Let me apologize in advance for the length of this post, but I didn't want to leave out any of the steps. Basically, I used fabric glue to attach fabric to a $10 mini blind from Walmart to create roman blinds for the window at the top of my stairway. It's simple, cheap and turned out as a good looking, fully functional roman blind.

Chair Makeover Tutorial

I showed a sneak peek earlier this week of a chair that I had made over. Here is exactly how I did it.

An Old Chair Makeover

Here's a quick peek at an old chair that I recently made over. I will post a tutorial about exactly how I did it later on this week. For now here are a few before and after pictures. So this is what I started with:

 

And here is how it turned out:

 



 

Revised Kitchen Artwork

A little while ago, I added some vintage labels as artwork in my kitchen. I liked how they turned out as a project but in the end, I thought they made the kitchen walls look too busy. I also tend to want to change my artwork frequently so I adjusted the pictures frames that I already had to make these:

A Few More Halloween Ideas

I just wanted to show a few more pictures of the Halloween decorating that I have been doing. I hung some orange-coloured Christmas balls from our front entry light fixture. I drew faces on them with black sharpie. I also took a branch from my yard, spray painted it black, and hung dollar store spiders from the branch with black thread.

Chalk Paint and Antiquing

Here is a more detailed look at how I painted my small table with chalk paint and how I antiqued it. I apologize that it's kind of long and wordy but I didn't want to leave anything out.

 

Here are a couple of pictures of how the table looked before I painted it.

 

Chalk Paint Makeover

 

So here is the very first peice of furniture that I painted with my new chalk paint. It's a small table that I keep in my upstairs hallway. The chalk paint was super easy to use. I also found it easy to distress (I'll explain more about this in a future post). For now, here are some pictures of the finished table.

My To-Do List

I've been trying to be more organized lately and so I decided to make myself a To Do list. I wanted to make it something that I could reuse over and over again so I decided to use post-it notes to write the things I need to do. That way when I finish something, I can take that post-it note down and there's room for a new note.

Burlap Wreath Tutorial

As promised, I'm here to explain how I made my burlap wreath.

Burlap Wreath

I'll be posting a tutorial for this tomorrow but I wanted to quickly show you a little project that I did today. It's a wreath that I made using burlap. I'm really happy with how it turned out and I will definitely be making more of these.

Chalk Paint

I just needed to do a quick post because I am so excited to have finally picked up some of Annie Sloan's Chalk Paint. 

I went this afternoon with my Grandparents to a lovely little shop in New Hamburg run by a lady named Kathie Jordan. I just got one can to start with to see if I liked working with it. As it turns out, I love it! (Of course I started painting as soon as I got home) I'm sure I will be posting many, many pictures of painted furniture in the near future. I'm really looking forward to it!



A Quick Kitchen Project

Here are some pictures of a project that I  did yesterday in our kitchen. I got these wood letters from Walmart for $0.99 each and spray painted them ivory. I apologize for the cord you can see beside the letters. It is for our range hood microwave that hasn't been installed yet.

 

Bridesmaid Survival Kits

This past weekend I officially asked all of my bridesmaids if they would be part of my wedding. We are not getting married until August 2014, but I have been thinking about it a lot lately and wanted to officially ask each of them. I wanted something small to give them when I asked, so I decided to do a Bridesmaid Survival Kit. I put a bunch of things together that I thought they might need during the wedding/planning process. I boxed these things up for each of them and gave them a little poem explaining what each of the items was for. I had a lot of fun putting all of these things together.

 

Ottoman Tutorial

As promised, here is a step by step tutorial of how I made an old coffee table into an ottoman. Here's a quick picture of how the ottoman turned out.

Coffee Table Turned Ottoman

I will post a tutorial for this project either tomorrow or Monday, but I just wanted to quickly show you how it turned out. One of Alex's coworkers gave us an old coffee table last week and here's what I did with it...

Tutorial for Trick or Treat banner

Here's a quick reminder of the Trick or Treat banner that I made earlier this week.

 

Now to explain exactly how I did it.

A bit more Halloween decorating

This is just a quick post to show a bit more of the Halloween decorating that I've been up to.

I made the Trick or Treat banner using burlap and a wax paper ink transfer method that I will tell you all about in a tutorial very soon. For now, here are some more pictures.

 

How I made the doll house

As promised, here is exactly how I made my small bathroom cupboard into a doll house.

 

Remember what I started with...

 

Bathroom cupboard turned doll house

My latest project...

A couple of weeks ago, I made a vintage hanging rack out of the door to a small cupboard that was in my bathroom. Here's a quick picture of the cupboard before I did anything to it.

I decided to use the actual cupboard to make a small doll house. It's perfect because it doesnt take up much space on my floor but is almost as tall as my neice, which makes it perfect for her to play with. Here are a bunch of pictures of the dollhouse. I plan on posting a tutorial of exactly how I made it in the next few days. I got all of the furniture from Len's Mill Store for abour $1 each.

 

 

 

 

I hope everyone is having a nice Thanksgiving weekend!

Some Halloween Decorating

This is just a quick post to give you a peak at some of the Halloween decorating that I have started. I've only got as far as the dresser by the front windows of my living room. Here's how it looks so far.

Our Kitchen Message Board

We really needed a kitchen message board but I couldn't find one anywhere that had everything that I wanted. We decided to make our own and here's how it turned out.

It has fabric pockets for mail, cork board, a calendar, and magnetic chalkboard sections.

Here are some more pictures of the whole board.