My Easter Egg Wreath

I had originally wanted to do my Easter wreath similar to the other 2 wreaths that I did for my friends, but I decided to branch out from the traditional grapevine wreath. While browsing around blogland I found this super cute egg wreath, and I fell in love with it. I bought some of the heavy cardboard from Hobby Lobby to use as my wreath form, 8 bags of eggs (12 pack), and ribbon (pink and egg wired ribbon). I ended up with 2 bags of eggs left. I must admit when I started it before it shaped up, I was pretty worried about what the outcome would be. I think it turned out super cute and it is the cheapest wreath I have ever made... $8 SCORE! :)

I am linking up here...

She's {kinda} Crafty Giveaway

She's {kinda} Crafty is having a super cute ribbon wreath giveaway! She has hit 500 Facebook followers and is offering this great giveaway to celebrate! Since I love a good wreath, I had to share this with you all! :)Check it out here... 500 Giveaway

Easter Wreaths 1 & 2

First, I must say that Easter is my favorite holiday to decorate for! I just love all of the bunnies and chickens and the wonderful colors! Two of my friends asked if I would make an Easter wreath for them. Since I LOVE a good wreath, of course I said yes! Here is what I came up with...

WREATH # 1
I will admit that when I started the first wreath, I was so indecisive and could not figure out exactly what I wanted the wreath to look like. Here are the supplies that I ended up using for wreath 1:

• 18 inch grapevine wreath
• 1 roll of poly mesh (I used the 21 inch wide mesh and I used about 3/4 of the roll)
• 2 rolls of wired pink ribbon
• 1 roll of polka dot ribbon
• wooden bunny for center (This was a yard pick that I had to cut the stake off of.)
• 7 Easter egg picks (from Michaels, everything else was from Hobby Lobby)
• lots of gas making multiple trips to Michaels and Hobby Lobby because I was so indecisive about what I was doing. :)
• Total cost to make wreath - roughly $30

Soooo tada here she is..

After the headaches, frustration, and plenty of gas fumes - I think the wreath finally turned out cute! My friend was pleased with it, so at the end of the process that is all that matters. :)

WREATH # 2
After my experience with wreath # 1, I was pretty scared to even get near Hobby Lobby or Michaels to start on another wreath! I was a little anti-wreath and anti-hot glue gun. Butttt I had already commited to making another wreath. So here is what I came up with for wreath # 2...

• 15 inch grapevine wreath
• left over mesh from wreath # 1
• 1 roll of Easter egg ribbon (I totally fell in love with this ribbon!)
• bunny for the middle
• 4 large, sequined Easter eggs
• Total cost to make wreath # 2 - roughly $20 (not including the cost of the mesh)

This is what I used for the center of her wreath. It had 3 bunnies hanging from the welcome sign. I cut the 2 bottom bunnies off because it was too long, so I will use the 2 extra bunnies for another project to be determined at a later date. :) So ladies and gentlmen, I now present to you wreath # 2... (Sorry for the poor picture on this one.. I took the pic with my phone.)

Next on my to-do list is my own Easter wreath. I have decided (so I think) to make mine out of all Easter eggs. We shall see how that turns out! :) I am linking up to the following parties today: :)

What will be my first attempt at furniture re-finishing..

I have been peeping around blogland and have been introduced to the world of re-finishing furniture, so I have decided to dive in and join the re-finishing club. I found this solid wood desk on Craigs List for $40...

I love the hardware on this desk, so I will be keeping the hardware. I am going to paint the bottom no other color than - light greenm then do some glazing. I am going to stain the top a dark walnut-ish color. The previous owners spray painted the entire desk and I am not sure what look they were going for, but the finish is pretty bad! And I have no clue why, but they put some sort of flimsy plywood on 2 of the drawer fronts... I ripped that mess off before we even left their house, as you can see above. :)

I will probably start on this project this weekend. This may be my first and last attempt at re-finishing depending on if it ends up being a horror story or not... let's hope that is not the case though. :)

If all goes well, the desk will be making its debut in our home office area. :)

My New Obsession with Green.. laundry room = work in progress!

So I have this new found obsession with the color green. Growing up, my grandparents had avocado green everywhere in their house - siding, the kitchen, the carpet (shag carpet of course!), everything that stood still! We were all so relieved when they updated and got rid of the avocado green. I think green is definitely making a come back though... just not in the form of shag carpet hopefully! You would think I would be over the green, but I can't get enough of it these days. :)

With that being said... I decided to liven up our laundry room. We just bought our house not too long ago, so the decorating and personalizing is still a work in progress. (Unfortunately at this point we still have "builder beige" on all of our walls.. hopefully not for long!) Our laundry room is very small.. just enough room for the washer and dryer, so it needed something to liven up the space. Aaaaand the timing was perfect because I won a vinyl decal from Salvesen Vinyl Creations in a giveaway that was being hosted by Craft-O-Maniac.

Here is the boring before... The small space is located between our garage and our breakfast area.

It was not cute by any means. Please excuse all of the "clutter" on the shelves. The disorganization was also about to drive me crazy! And yes, that is rust on the top of our dryer. :) I really need want a fancy, new, front load, steam washer and dryer. I am not picky.. I would take any of them. :) Now that I am rambling.. here is an after shot..

The paint color is Limonata by Valspar. I ordered the bins on the Sears website. I found them for right at $5 each, which I convinced myself was a steal and I could not live without them! They are the perfect color and size... Even better there is no more "clutter" on the shelves! :)

The green in the above pictures is not the exact color that it is in person. The picture below is more accurate for the color...

I won this super cute and perfect vinyl decal from Salvesen Vinyl Creations through their giveaway via Craft O Maniac's blog. Thank you so much again for this wonderful giveaway! It is just perfect! :)

One more view of the new and improved laundry room... Oh and I got a hold of my dryer with a can of white spray paint! It worked like a charm to cover some of that ugly rust.. a quick fix that will do for now! :)

So that is my laundry room makeover for now. I am pleased with the way it turned out so far, but I still need to add a few finishing touches... new rug (I am thinking a brown and green paisley print rug), something to go on the wall by the door, and I am thinking an apothecary-ish jar to hold laundry detergent to sit on the dryer. I still have a half gallon of paint left, soooo I am looking for my next green victim around the house! :)

"Every Day" Wreath

My mother-in-law wanted a wreath that she could leave up year round. She wanted it to be mauve (yuck!) and green. All in all, I think the wreath turned out pretty cute. I got everything at Hobby Lobby, and everything was 50%. I spent right at $20 for everything and it took me about 20 minutes to make it.. not too shabby for mauve. :)

Valentine's Day goodie cups

I volunteered to make goodie cups for my son's class for their Valentine's Day party. I decided that I would fill the cups with candy and little goodies and make Rice Krispie pops to stand up in the cup. I had never made Rice Krispie treats, and I must say that I don't think I will make them again for awhile! I was thinking this would be a super easy, quick little treat, like chocolate covering strawberries which I absolutely love! By the time I finished the Rice Krispie pops, I must admit I had said a few choice words. I will just say that I am glad I had enough to make some extras in case I had an "oops" (which I had several of!). I followed the original Rice Krispie recipe that is on the box, and here they are all nicely pressed out ready for the cookie cutter...

After I cut the hearts out with my cookie cutter, I just inserted the lollipop sticks and stuck them in the refrigerator for about 10 minutes to cool and harden...



Next, I melted my chocolate in the microwave (I prefer the Kroger brand chocolate bark for melting chocolate because it melts so smooth and hardens pretty quickly) and dipped the hearts in the chocolate and covered them in sprinkles. This is where I had the "oops" moments. I think I should have left them in the refrigerator for awhile longer, so they would have been harder before I dipped them in the chocolate. When I dipped the first one in chocolate, the chocolate more-or-less melted the Rice Krispie treat right off the stick. It was a hot mess! If I were to do it again, I would leave them in the refrigerator for about 30 minutes to harden and really cool. After it was all said and done, I think the goodie cups turned out super cute and the treats were pretty yummy too...

I just wrapped them up and tied some curling ribbon around the top. The little cups were a steal - 4 for $1 at Kroger. I figured you can't beat that, so I cleaned Kroger out of the little cups! And drumroll please, 6 hours later... Here they are, all packaged up and ready for Mothers Day Out. :) I hope these are the best Rice Krispie treats these 2 year olds have ever seen! :)

I hope that everyone had a great Valentines Day filled with lots of love! :)

my son's letters that I FINALLY finished!

I ordered plain wall letters about 6 months ago (no exaggeration!) from http://www.craftcuts.com/ with the intent of decorating them for my son's bedroom. In the past 6 months they have taken up space on my kitchen counter, my son's closet, in the laundry room, and in the garage. My husband cleaned out the garage this past weekend, and told me that he was going to chunk them if I didn't do something with them. Instead of relocating the unfinished letters to yet another place in the house, I FINALLY got around to finishing them. So TADA! Here they are...

I covered them in scrapbook paper, except the M. The M is actually leftover wrapping paper from his birthday party last summer. Sorry for the poor photo quality.. I took the pic on my cell phone. I think they turned out pretty cute, and my son loves them! :)

Crazy Texas Weather

So the weather dropped 12 degrees just on my way to work this morning. All of the stations are predicting that we could have snow flurries on Thursday and Friday. I am pretty excited about this because I would love for Cameron to get to enjoy some snow because it is pretty rare for the gulf coast to get snow! Southeast Texas snow usually = a sludgy mess, not real snow, but hey I will take that! Southeast Texas snow also usually = crazy drivers who don't have a clue how to dry in freezing weather... which means that we would get to leave work early! I will take that any day of the week! So we shall see what happens with this crazy Texas weather. Happy Tuesday! :)

Some of my pre-blog projects...

Here are just a few of my pre-blog projects... mostly just wreaths and diaper cakes. I have a thing for a good wreath! After fall and Christmas, my front door looked so bare. Needless to say, I am pretty sure I will continue putting seasonal/holiday wreaths on my front door. They are so fun and festive!

Our front door with the gingerbread wreath that I made.

Our Mantle... I also made this wreath. It was actually my first wreath making experience! :)

I made this wreath for my friend and neighbor

diaper cakes that I made for friends (please excuse the Ozarka bottle in the background.. hehe)

Last but not least, our Valentine's Day wreath that I made a couple of weeks ago. I love grapevine wreaths... Well any wreath for that matter. :)

My Very First Post!

So this past weekend was pretty jam packed... We had 2 birthday parties to attend, and I wanted to make something to display all of Cameron's (my son) artwork from school. He is only 2 years old, and he thinks that we need to hang all of his artwork on the refrigerator. Needless to say, our refrigerator was on overload with all of his cute little drawings and paintings. So here is our alternative display:

I had some extra wood that I just cut to be the size I wanted. I spray painted the board with 2 coats of cheap spray paint from Hobby Lobby. It took 2 coats of paint for the writing as well because I wanted the writing to be solid.

I then spray painted clothes pins and hot glued them along the bottom. I stenciled the stars and just free-handed the little doodle design. Tada! Here is the final display, hanging in Cameron's bedroom! (Cameron's bedroom is done in Toy Story, so that is where the color scheme came from.) He LOVED it! :)