More Homemade Gift Ideas

I am drawn more and more to homemade gift ideas. Probably thanks to all of the awesome craftiness I find on the web. Tonight for your viewing pleasure, I shall show you two such projects that I have completed lately. The first is an idea I found here http://thestewartestate.blogspot.com/2011/12/love-message-board-tutorial.html. I tweaked it just a bit. I used thick wrapping paper that I found at a thrift store for $.25. I cut it to 8x11.5'' and then taped it to a piece of cardstock to give it more weight so it wouldn't tear as it printed. I purchased the frame for $4 at Walmart. I then presented it to Miguel for Valentine's day.

You just use a dry erase marker and write directly on the glass. It then wipes right off for you to surprise your hunny with another reason you love them.

I simply love this idea, as it makes me slow down from the busyiness of just living and think daily about why I love Miguel. (Not that I have to think hard or anything, but I think some times we forget to focus on why we love them as much as we may look at this flaw or that they leave dirty laundry laying around)

My second gift idea for my dear readers tonight, is something else I made for Christmas. This summer, I asked my sisters to be on the lookout for cloth placemats. My sisters Nicole scored some really nice ones for I think $.25 each. I dried lavendar and lemon balm from my garden.

I then purchased a big bag of rice. I was trying very hard to learn to sew, with the help of my sister Maria, but Nicole and I's sewing machine needs a new part. So, a week before Christmas my aunt Keila came to the resue, which is nothing new. lol We folded the placemats longwise and then Keila sewed a seam, leaving the top open. We cut off the excess and then turned them inside out to you wouldn't see the stitches as much. We then mixed the dried lavender, lemon balm, and rice together and poured it into the pouch we had just made out of the placemat. We filled them about half full. Next, Keila sewed the open closed. We repeated this process until I had enough for everyone. Now the gift recipent just has to microwave this for about a minute and place it on his or her aches and it will release a soothing essence of lavender and lemon. I also made everyone homemade cleaners.

Hope this gives you all some more gift ideas if you need some in the near future! Blessings!

Guest Bedroom Reveal

Happy gorgeous Tuesday! I tell you what...the old saying is so true, if you don't like the weather in Ohio just stay a few days it will change. Yesterday it was cold and very windy, today the sun is shining bright and its almost 60 degrees.
Well, we are still in the middle of our kitchen remodel. Miguel got most of the drywall hung last week. =) This week he has to level the floor followed by rerouting the plumbing since we are moving the sink and installing a dishwasher. So, even though I am simply thrilled with the process it means my house is still a wreck. To counterbalance that I thought I would do a guest bedroom reveal. We still have a few more pieces of moulding to install and finish the closet but it is mostly done so I am happy. Here we go....

First off a reminder of what this space looked like at the very beginning when we purchased the house in 2006. I could not find a decent picture of this exact room but here is another room upstairs that is very similar to what this room used to look like.

This next picture was winter 2010 when Miguel was on shut down and he gutted and drywalled the other three rooms upstairs. (Adaliah's room was finished first upstairs.)

This is after we painted and installed the majority of the moulding and the floor.

This picture you have seen before. It is the view you see coming up the stairs. Miguel kept knocking into the tables and we had to move them every time we wanted to get into the attic. So, I moved the tables into the guestroom to fill a wall I needed filled anyways. I am not sure if they will stay, but I am happy with the change for now. =)

This is the view standing in the hallway looking into the guest room. The picture over the bed is a beautiful Calla lily (which I had a lot of in my wedding) and my mom purchased it for me my birthday that I was married. I have been storing it waiting to hang it in the guest room.

This is where I moved the tables from the hall. I think I am liking it. =)

I found this bedspread at a Salvation Army and it was exactly what I wanted! It was in awesome shape except the underneath part was pulling away a bit. It was $8 and I thought that was a little steep seeing how it would need some work so I decided to pass. I was a little sad but I figured I would find something else. My mom went back later to the same Salvation Army and decided to see if it was still there. It was and it was priced at $1.50 now! Score! She was so happy and she purchased it for me. I know, I know I have an awesome mom! She even soaked and washed it for me to insure its cleanliness.

The pillow on the bed, I snatched from someone else in my house and "prettied" it up a bit. I had some felt from a thrift store and some left over fabric from the window treatment I will show you in a bit. I found a tutorial online for making fabric flowers and I went to town.

Here it is with my first flower. I just kept making them and hot gluing them onto the pillow until I liked how it looked. It was very easy and I can see myself making more for headbands and other things around the house.

This is the finished product and it now sits proudly on the guest bedroom bed.

Remember a couple of months ago I shared a link for free printable art online from http://indiefixx.com/Feed_your_soul/downloads.html? Well, here are the prints that I selected and framed and I love them!

This is view you would see sitting on the bed. It is next to the door as you enter the room. The chair was my grandpa's and was downstairs but it now has a new home in this room. The tree mirror is a garage sale find and the family sign on it was a birthday gift from Maria a few years back. The vintage pendant lamp was also my grandpas and I love it sooo much and believe it fits perfectly in this room. =)

Now for the window treatments. I made Roman Shades. I started with $4 blinds from Walmart.

I found this fabric at another Salvation Army for $2.

I followed the steps from one of my fav. blogs. Here is the link to her tutorial on it. http://welcometoheardmont.com/2011/09/operable-roman-shades-a-tutorial/ Meredith (Who writes the blog) does an amazing job giving step-by-step instructions with pictures. Miguel helped me (since I am horrible at cutting straight lines) and we finished this in about 1.5 hours. Thanks so much Meredith for the great tutorial on it. Even I could follow it. =) Here is the finished product.

I hope you all have enjoyed the tour of my guest bedroom. Now, I can not wait to have another house guest and can take them to an actual finished (ok minus moulding and closet) room for them to relax in. Have a wonderful day and God bless!

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Christmas Shutdown 2011

Welcome back from the Holiday Season 2011! I didn't do much blogging during the holidays because not only was I busy hosting Christmas, having Adaliah's 3rd birthday and Micah's 4th birthday on January 2nd (pictures will follow in another post about our birthday adventures), but Miguel was on shut down from work for a week so we took that time to turn my kitchen into this.....

Ok...so it really looks more like this right now....

But seriously if you close your eyes real tight and use your imagination my kitchen kinda sorta looks like the first picture. Ok. I can see no one is buying that! lol That first picture is one of my inspiration photos from www.pinterest.com. Love that site! If you have not been on it and need an invite, email me and I would be happy to let you in on all the fun.

Back to my kitchen. We did spent the majority of Miguel's shut down totally gutting the kitchen. So, (insert a happy dance here) we are on our way to my new kitchen! Goodbye green floors from who knows when, adios rose paneling and ugly ceiling tile. Hopefully within the next couple months I can show you the finished results. =)

I realized I have not shown you my new front door. We purchased it at Lowes and had them install it and we could not be happier. They did an excellent job and I love how it changes the whole feel of the front of the house. It definitely is way more in line with Miguel and I's style than the previous door.

Sorry, not sure why the picture flipped but I couldn't get it fixed so please just tilt your head. Thanks! This is just a reminder of what the old door looked like.

I will leave you with some pictures from Christmas. Enjoy your day and blessings!

Homemade Christmas

Good Evening All! Well, it is finally starting to look like winter in our neck of the woods. =) I am glad. I would so much rather have the white stuff than the rain, rain, and more rain we have been having. This Christmas the majority of my presents I am making myself. (I know, I know this should be REALLY interesting coming from the queen of big ideas that flop) lol

I can not share most of my ideas until after Christmas, because the recipients of said presents read my blog. I can share one idea though because no one in my family is receiving this present.

A couple of years ago I went to a Christmas Open House at a kitchen store. I came away with a stand by idea for the coffee or hot chocolate lover....chocolate spoons. My sisters and I have been picking up cool, unique vintage spoons at garage sales and thrift stores all year. I sterilize them first and then the fun begins.

You melt almond bark or any sort of chocolate that you use to make chocolate dipped pretzels or strawberries. I just melt mine in the microwave. Then you drop in candy flavoring oil. I always use peppermint but there are tons of flavors. I got a two pack of the oils for $2.00 and the chocolate was just under $4.00 I believe. I forget how many pounds of chocolate were in the package I used. I used an entire bottle of the oil that you pour into the chocolate after you have melted it. Then you simply dip your spoons into the chocolate and set them on wax paper until they harden.

I then take the completed spoons and put them in a mug with a ribbon. Now, the next time the person sits down to enjoy a cup of coffee or hot chocolate, when they stir it they get an extra flavoring of chocolate and peppermint. =)

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Finds on the World Wide Web

Hello one and all! I am sitting here waiting on my contractors to come and install my new front door. Yippee! I am soooo excited to show you when this one is finished. We decided this is a project we didn't want to diy again. Anyways...while I am waiting on them I thought I would tell you all about a few finds on the world wide web. The hubby and I tackled some finishing up stuff in the guest room last week. (Can't wait till it completely finished and I can show you!) But, I was not going to let a little unfinished moulding stop me from FINALLY decorating it, which is my fav part! I had some really cool looking dark picture frames that looked like they had designs carved straight into them. My sister Maria picked them up at a garage sale for me for $.50 each. I have heard of other people finding cool free printable art online, so I decided to give it a try. I googled it and I find the most awesome site.

http://indiefixx.com/Feed_your_soul/downloads.html

I couldn't get any to upload because they are too big and you can only resize them when you are going to print them. Take my word that they have some really neat pictures and I will be showing you soon when I do the guest room reveal which ones I picked. =)

My sister Maria has been making homemade crayons for a while now. She had interest them so she started making them to sell. Within one day she had almost an overwhelming amount of orders, offers to have her in craft shows, and boutique wanting them to sell. She is celebrating her gratitude for this responce by giving some away on her website.

http://nehemiahsmommy.blogspot.com/

Bop on over and enter! You will love them. So cute! Have a great Thanksgiving and remember how truly blessed we are here in the good ole' USA! I know I am counting my blessings and you all are in them!

Up'ing the Cuteness Factor

Happy frigid Thursday to one and all! I have another "wrap up" project today that Miguel and I got finished this week. Adaliah's room is basically a finished room, aside from installing blinds. There is one thing in her room that has always bothered me, her ceiling fan. It was just a plain white one that I picked up at a garage sale for a few dollars. I stenciled butterflys and dragonflys in the colors of her room, but it still seemed kinda blah. So, my decorating blogs to the rescue! I had saved this idea http://kadburyis.blogspot.com/2011/04/lampshade-redo.html ever since Kadbury first posted it. I knew I wanted to try this, but Addie already had several lamps in her room. Then I saw another blog that I love who did this project http://thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com/2011/04/prettying-up-ceiling-fan.html. The wheels started turning, if I combined the two projects maybe this would bring the cuteness factor I wanted to the ceiling fan. So, I started searching garage sales and thift stores for a drum lamp shade and guess what?!!? I found one by the curb. It just had a bit of dirt on it. But hey people it was FREE and I would be covering it anyways. So I happily skipped (as decreet as I could of course cuz I was picking up trash lol) to my car. Now for the flowers. I decided to use pink, purple, and white. I searched high and low and couldn't find many second hand options. The dollar tree to the resue. And here she is.....

I followed Kadbury's instructions from the above link. I just didn't do the last hot glueing step. I realized something though when Miguel and I were deciding how to hang it.....



Since this was going on a ceiling fan that hung in the middle of the room, you were going to be able to see where I punched the stems through. Not cute at all. So I thought and came up with cutting up an old white sheet and I used spray adhesive to attach it inside to hide the stems. If you have never used spray adhesive it is wonderful! I have been using it for a lot of projects lately and it is so much easier to use them most glues.

I was going to get it completely smooth, but I decided I kinda liked how it looked ruffled. Now, how to hang it. Sarah from Thrifty Decor Chick showed step by step how she hung hers, but I knew we didnt have those supplies on hand and I wanted to work with what we had. So, I googled "how to add a drum shade to a ceiling fan" and came up with this awesome blog with a great idea for it. http://www.fingerprintsonthefridge.com/2011/04/how-to-add-shade-to-ceiling-fan.html Here's hubby installing it.

We ended up having to cut the metal parts inside and thread it through the wire through the shade with a needle. It was not hard to do just took a bit of time to get it to hang correctly. Then Miguel just put the shade back over the bulb.

Here is the finished result lit and unlit......

Total cost of the projects was around $11 for the flowers. Everything else was free or we already had it at home. What do you think? Does this project up the cuteness factor in Addies room? I have to say thanks to all the people who blog and give me ideas! It is one of my favorite things about the internet. God bless and enjoy your day!
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http://thestewartestate.blogspot.com/2011/12/link-party-3.html

Another Eyesore Gone! (AKA An Office Redo)

Happy Monday to one and all! We have been busy at home wrapping up some "little" projects that have been on hold for awhile. One of such projects is our little office area. Since this is an old farmhouse, over the years the various owners have done some remodeling that left some awkward spaces. One of said projects was a former owner moved the furnace from the utility room to a little space off of the living room. This space use to be a little foyer area from the front door. This door is no longer the front door because we do not own the driveway that you would enter by to get to the front door. So, we had a side door that entered into a room with a furnace that you had to open another door to get into the living room. Awkward yes? Confusing too. Whew! I hope that all made sense. Therefore, we decided to completely eliminate this door and we sided over it when we sided the house. This left us with a little room with a furnace in it. I do not like unused spaces so I thought "Why not make this a little office area" ? A place for the computer, some bookshelves with books, and a filing cabinet for our paperwork. It was pretty ugly in said room.

This is a shot of what the floor looked like. (Thanks to Adaliah for this random picture cuz it was the only "before" picture I could find lol) We also had a computer desk in it but it was waaayy to big for the space and gave no room for anything else. We also had a very nice, sturdy desk chair that I picked up at a garage sale for $2.

It wasn't exactly the most beautiful chair, but it was in great condition and only two dollars. Now, we had the makings of a projects list. I wanted new flooring installed, a new computer desk, and to recover the chair. Before we could tackle any of this Miguel had to cut a pipe that was sticking up above the floor. When the previous owners moved the furnace they repiped it with the pipes above the floor. Not so attractive. Miguel had to crawl underneath in the crawl space and cut and reattach them in the crawl space. Now we could install the new floor. Meanwhile I was on a hunt for fabric for the chair. I didn't want anything too pricey as the chair was only two dollars and this was my first attempt at recovering something. I didn't want to mess up expensive fabric. While I was hunting for fabric, I was at a thrift store one day and I saw 2 really nice full size sheets that were what I was looking for in fabric. I wanted something with brown or tan in it with some pops of color. They were only $1.50 each so I bought them. With the help of hubby I picked one for the chair and went to work. I dismantled the chair as much as I could. The back rest part didn't come off completely so I couldn't hide all of the staples. The bottom was easy though. I followed the advice from Lindsey from http://mrsbucks.blogspot.com/ when she redid her kitchen chairs. Thanks for giving me the courage to try this Lindsey! And here is the finished product.

I was pretty pleased with the turn out, especially since the entire project only cost $3.50 for the chair and the sheet that I used. I even had some of the sheet left over that I have other project in mind for.

Here's Addie trying it out. (Please ignore the wild hair. lol)

Here's the shot of our new office area. The flooring was peel and stick tile from Lowes. We had to purchase two boxes so I think it was like $35 for the floor plus we had to purchase some underlayment since the floor was way uneven. That was $20 I believe. We also had to purchase a room divider t-moulding thing because we were transiting from one type of flooring to another. That was probably the most expensive item at $35 for the one piece. Sheesh! The desk I found at another thrift store for $4. So, total this project ran us around $100 total. But, getting rid of another eyesore in my house and marking another project off our list is priceless to me! =) Have a blessed day.

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