AT Projects Revisited: Gallery Wall

Remember almost a year ago when TG took the kids to Gigi and Papa's leaving me with three days of free cleaning, organizing and crafting time?

I just realized I never shared my two big projects on here due in large part to the fact that they weren't completely done until months after my family returned. So here's part one of the last two alone time projects.

I give you my gallery wall.  It's a work in progress.  Even now looking at this picture I'm feeling like there should be something to the top right of my 3 photo frame.  Maybe one or two of the things that this blogger used to make a complete hallway gallery?  Hers is pretty awesome.


I know, I know what's up with the blurred mess in the middle?!?  That piece is actually our name frame that I planned the whole wall around.  For safety reasons I blurred out our last name, but this piece of art is amazing.  My older sister gave it to us for Christmas two years ago.  The artist spelled out our last name using information about our family to form the letters.  For example the middle 'N' is made out of children's blocks spelling our kids' names.  The last 'N' is in d'nealian letter form on lined paper because TG and I both teach.

For the layout, I didn't draw a plan or tape a mock up which most tutorials suggest you do, but I did work the layout on my dining room table until I liked it and then transferred it down piece by piece.  I do things the super easy way like that all the time.

The rest of it I pieced together using ideas from Pinterest and family photos that I loved.  The frames are just a random collection of old frames and thrifting finds that I spray painted either with Rustoleum Hammered Silver or Satin Espresso to give them a unified look.

I picked up the "love" plaque at Joann's on deep discount and the mirror at Dollar Tree.

I made this sweet reminder of our wedding date with some remnant fabric from our couch pillows, wooden numbers that I dry brushed with white acrylic paint, and two sequins after I saw the one this blogger made.


I picked up two small plaques, also in the clearance aisle of Joann's. They had a green bird print on them and I just used mod podge and scrapbook paper to cover it.  I hand wrote and cut out the letters and used sky blue acrylic paint to paint a wooden number 4.  It's not as cute as Shelley's from House of Smiths, but I like it.


This last project took the longest for me to plan out and complete (sorry it's blurred for privacy reasons again).  I loved lots of subway art prints that I had seen in the blogosphere and I really wanted one for this wall, but I was unsure about how to make mine.  Shelley Smith made one using vinyl decals and this blogger actually made a poster print and placed it on a canvas.  I opted for neither of those and used an assortment of scrapbook stickers and just the thinnest layer of sky blue acrylic paint.  While it was still wet I carefully peeled off the stickers to reveal the places that were important to us.  Some of the stickers didn't come up cleanly so I had to touch it up with white acrylic paint and a small brush by hand.  It's not perfect, but I love it anyway.


Here's the finished product one more time. I realize the builder grade "white" kills the wow factor of it some, but I am completely stuck on what color to paint the hallways of our home.   I'm hoping this summer to make a decision and get them painted.  Anyone have a great neutral go to hallway
color for me?


 

Front Porch Fix: AT Project #9

Way back in March I started my container garden. I am dreaming of a real garden, but our backyard needs some work first. We just haven't had time to get to it in our first year here because we've focused all our attention on the front yard.

TG has worked hard on the front, planting a tree, adding new bushes and seasonal flowers, and restoring our grass. The grass was a big project. After last summer the sod was mostly dead. We had to start over this fall from seed and thankfully with a little reseeding in the spring we have a new lawn (I use that term 'lawn' loosely as we live in a townhouse and our area of grass is about 5 square feet).



Anyway, I regularly make DIY wreaths, seen here and here, for our front door, but other than that there's not much happening on our little front porch except for my mish mash of herb containers. I didn't want to spend any money on this area and I had a table I knew I could use to give it some height and a cleaner look.

Four years ago we bought this outdoor cafe table from Target to use on the deck we had then. It had definitely seen better days and although I thought about passing it off as "weathered" I decided to give her a quick face lift.

Enter Rustoleum. Mama loves her some spray paint. So much so, that last summer after watching me spray painting things (table, four chairs, two lamps, dresser, vanity, picture frames) in our backyard and garage for a month my sweet neighbor finally told me how she'd been watching me and couldn't believe the transformations she had seen. That's right, I'm officially known as the "Crazy Spray Painting Lady" in my neighborhood.

Back to my little table, I made a quick Home Depot trip to pick up my favorite spray paint: RustOleum Painter's Touch Ultra Cover 2x in Satin finish. I chose a dark brown color called Espresso.



Listen, I'm not a professional, but I use spray paint A LOT. This stuff covers like a dream - in two very easy coats. Now our little table looks brand new and my corner is a little less cluttered. It's not exactly what I want, but it will do for now.



Spray paint: $2.99
Table: Free, already on hand

Meanwhile, I'm pinning like crazy, ideas and inspiration for where I want our outdoor decor to go. Have you heard of Pinterest yet? It's amazing. When I read design blogs I basically right click and save photos or links of ideas that I love or projects I want to do into a file on my desktop. With Pinterest you can "pin" and organize all your ideas online. I was lucky enough to get an email invite from one of my favorite inspiration blogs Domestically Speaking and now I have some to give away. Send me an email if you want to start pinning!

Sewing and Mending: AT Project #8

Last summer I won a blog contest for $80 to CSN stores. I was so excited and after several days of browsing all the things CSN has to offer I finally chose my Brother sewing machine.

It has been the perfect little machine for use around my home. I am by no means a seamstress, but I enjoy doing small home projects and mending things if I can.

However, a few months ago I saw a little girl's dress at Joann Fabrics that I fell in love with. I got ambitious and bought the pattern packet and all the necessary supplies.

It's been sitting in my corner of craft store bags since the day I brought it home.

Enter alone time and the list. I wanted Riley to be able to wear the dress at least once this summer so I decided to tackle it.

I have to say, I much prefer sewing without a pattern. It took me so much longer to finish because I've never sewn from a pattern before and I had to educate myself on how to use it, via youtube videos and other online tutorials.

I also have to say I don't consider this OTC. I spent about $15 on the fabric, buttons, thread, and pattern. Factor in the amount of time that it took me to sew this and it would have been cheaper and easier to just get a dress from Target.

But the end product is pretty darn cute and one of a kind. Even if I can't get the right child to model it.

Ha, ha, ha.


Please excuse the mountain of clean laundry on my table.


A view of the back.


I was able to do some repairs to a couple of Riley's dresses and pillowcases too, including the little gray and yellow dress she's wearing in that photo.

Little Frame: AT Project #7

Way back in November, when I finished the last bathroom project, I went out looking for some little things to jazz the space up a bit.

I found a vintage glass perfume and jewelry tray at Lucketts, a gorgeous white frame I used for a photo of our two babies in the tub at Z Gallerie, two pretty vases at IKEA, and a sweet three window frame at Home Goods.

It mocked me for months, empty, except for the $4.99 price sticker.

Until last weekend when I finally decided what I wanted to do with it.

I used some scrap paper I had on hand and bought these swirly silver glitter scrapbook stickers at Michaels for $2.99.

I used the paper as a background and then spelled three little words on the glass.

Splish, Splash, Bath


This was an easy project, less than 5 minutes, for under $10, but I'm so thankful that frame is no longer empty. I'll be sharing our finished bathroom soon!

Throw Pillows: AT Projects #5 and #6

In March I began an overhaul on the colors in the living room. I loved the look I had going, but it was very dark and didn't fit my springtime mood. I went to JoAnns for some inspiration and stumbled upon this gorgeous print.



I pulled out the beautiful cerulean blue and made two pillows and a lampshade. Then I made a big move and pulled out the coral to make my new curtain panels. I picked yellow for our rectangular pillow for a pop of color. That's where I got stuck. I had two more maroon pillows to cover and was out of ideas.

Then one day I got an email from an amazing design blog I follow on pillow tutorials. I fell in love with her gathered flower and ruffle pillows and knew they would be the perfect finishing touch for my couch. Because all the other pillows were patterned I decided to go with solid colors. After a quick trip to Joanns and many hours of sewing (more on that in a second) later, I had this.



And this.


Looooove, right? They came out beautifully and they look gorgeous on our couch. And I made them both for under $10. Honestly, I've been pillow shopping before and that is an impossible price to beat. I got 1/2 yard of the sage green at $4.99/yard, 1/2 yard of the yellow for $4.99 yard, and 1/4 yard of the goldenrod at $3.99 a yard. I bought a two pack of crystal buttons for $2.50 and I already had thread and of course my lovely hot glue gun at home.

I'm not sure if I've shared with you before, but when I redo my pillows I just reuse my inserts and sew pillowcases. This way they are easy to wash (very important in a house with two small children) and easy to change out each season or as my mood changes. 1/2 yard of fabric is plenty to make a 14x14 pillow with an overlapping back panel so you can easily slip the insert in or out.

See?


Anyway, these pillows should have taken me an hour tops, but I learned the hard way and spent 2.5 hours on them. Here's a few tips in case you decide to try them yourself.

1. You need a sharp, sturdy needle to sew the gathered flower together. You are layering at least 7 petals together and a blunt needle is going to take a lot of work (and possible injury to yourself) to finish it.

2. Make sure you when you sew your ruffles that you use a heavy duty thread. When it is time to break the thread and pull the fabric so it will ruffle if it's not heavy duty it will snap. Easily. Many times.

3. You have to wait to sew the pillowcase until your ruffles are sewn on. I mistakenly made the cover first then realized I couldn't stitch the ruffles on with my machine without sewing the pillowcase shut. So I improvised and I hand stitched them on either side and then used my glue gun to stick them on the rest of the way. That worked fine, but they won't be as sturdy that way.

If you attempt these pillows yourself I would love to see them. Happy crafting!

The Kitchen: AT Projects #2 - #4

There is always a running list of things in my head that I want to organize (or reorganize), but at the end of the day I never seem to get to them. Partly because they are low on the priority list and mostly because they are not fun to do.

However, with three days and a quiet house, it was the perfect time to tackle some of the areas in our home that had been bothering me.

Project #2 - The Laundry Cabinets

We live in a small townhome and the original design had the washer and dryer on the bottom floor of the house. After living in a rental townhome with a similar design TG and I both knew right away that we wanted to move the w&d in our new home up to the kitchen on the middle floor.

Storage space is also extremely tight in our house so TG's dad helped him install two cabinets in the free space above the washer and dryer. Slowly over the past year those cabinets became a receptacle for anything I needed to access quickly, but not daily, including laundry supplies, home improvement tools, and our filing.

I wish I had taken a before picture, but imagine loose nails, screws, paintbrushes, soaps, rags, filing, shredding and the like jammed in there with no sort of order.

Almost two hours full of sorting, trashing, shredding and filing later on AT Day 2, I had this.



And this.



Ahhh. Much better. Paint supplies together, all our tools and necessities neatly stored in the toolbox, filing updated and new folders labeled "to be filed" and "to shred" so there are no loose papers in there.

Eventually our board games will be moved into the living room on a built in bookcase I'm dreaming of, but for now the cabinet area is so much less cluttered.

Project #3 - Junk Drawers

I'm fairly certain every home has at least one of these and I try to keep mine orderly, but eventually they become overrun. It only took me about thirty minutes to get them both done. They are still kind of junky, and just now looking at the photo I've decided I need to get a couple storage bins from Dollar Tree for the lip gloss and antibacterial, but for the most part Mama likey.





The last kitchen project was a small redo, but it's one of the things that always makes me smile in that space.

Project #4 - The V

Eventually we want to get an over the range microwave, but for now I was left with a huge blank space in that area. I randomly bought a wooden monogram on sale at AC Moore a few months ago for $2 and when I got home I knew it would be perfect in the kitchen. Originally I covered it in a more whimsical floral pattern, but after a month of that I decided it needed a more sophisticated look.

I picked up a piece of pink paisley patterned scrapbook paper for $0.59 and acrylic craft paint for $0.99. I painted only the sides of the letter that would be visible. I traced the letter onto my paper and then hot glued it to the front.

Cute, right?


Here's a view of the area so you can see our little "V" in all her glory.


I just used some left over 3M strips I had to hang it on the wall and now our kitchen has a custom piece of art all for under $5.

The List and AT Project #1

It's been 7 days post AT, aka my Alone Time days. We have had a busy and fun week as a family, but I've managed to keep up my enthusiasm and energy for finishing my home projects.

I wanted to come out of the gate full speed, and hit you with my favorite project but the entire thing wasn't done in the three days. I worked on some of the finishing touches tonight and hopefully will be able to share it soon.

Then I figured I should just start at the beginning and share with you The List.



It wasn't as wrinkled when I started, but after three days of being manhandled and toted around in my purse it was a little worse for the wear. You can see my "to do's" ranged from things as simple as thank you notes to more complex tasks like our master bedroom stencil (which I still haven't started). I didn't take a picture of the back, but it listed the items that fell under the organization/cleaning category like the laundry room cabinets, my kitchen junk drawer(s), the playroom, the garage, and my craft "corner".

With the Fourth of July in just a few days I decided that Project #1 should be my holiday wreath. I had searched at a few places looking for a festive wreath at a bargain price. When my search came up empty I decided to go OTC style and make my own.

I started with a 14" MDF wreath form for $1.99. I picked up 3" red satin ribbon for $3.99 and red, white and blue star garland for $1.99.

If you've never seen the MDF wreath forms before this is what they look like. They are available at most craft stores and some Walmarts. I got mine at Michaels. The wreaths range in size from 8" up to 24" and are thin and flat. I chose the MDF wreath because it's sturdier than the foam wreaths and I figured I can reuse it and recreate new wreaths year round.
























Armed with $8 of supplies and my trusty hot glue gun, 10 minutes later I had this.



I wrapped the red ribbon around the frame, overlapping just a bit and hot gluing every 2 inches or so. After the ribbon was on I simply wrapped the star garland around and tied it off at the back. Using a Martha Stewart bow tying tutorial as my guide, I used the remaining red ribbon to make a bow and added three rhinestones in the middle for some extra Fourth of July bling. Before I hung it outside I gave it a good coat of Scotchguard for fabric (just so it will survive the month in the elements), and now my door is ready for the Fourth. All for less than $10!