Family Motto + Old Ironing Board = ?

Ok so I've been wanting to do a family motto.  So that when someone in the family isn't behaving we can say, "What's our motto?!?!"  And so that we can feel like we have a purpose in our family.  Something that we strive for.  So we made the motto all together one (actually it took a few nights) evening and then I made this to display it-  

I found the ironing board at a thrift store a long time ago- like at least 5 years ago-  It started out a light brown.  So I stained it dark -

Obviously I outlined the wave... (note about waves- I really like them because they mean two things to me at least.  First they are constant.  I love the fact that they are constant.  Sometimes big sometimes small but always rolling against the shore.  That is a goal of mine to be constant.  Next they are beautiful and a gift from God.  The waves say to me, "Beautiful things don't just happen, they are made."



Then I painted the wave and using my friends Cruicit.  I cut out all these little letters and mod lodged them on.  IT turned out like this...



 Do you have a family motto??

Bunk Beds

I had this great idea of making bunk beds out of pallets.  Yea it would have been cool.  I sanded and sanded and sanded.  My man hauled pallets to and from work.  He's a champion.  Well, I was talking to my sister and she said that she was getting rid of their bunk bed and moving kids around rooms, so I decided, that more sanding, staining, finishing, assembling and hammering would be a lot more work than just painting.  Guess what?!? I was right.  Here is the before....

 

Well woops- I didn't take a before.  SO I guess you'll just have to imagine a fake brown oafish bunk bed.  

 

Imagine that?? Ok!

 

 

AH HA!  I FOUND IT!!

Here is the after

Like the bed making? I'm a champ at it!  

But anyways this is cuter.  What do you think?

Pot Rack UPdate!

So here was the before, I wanted it more full and to have more variety.  SO I just added stuff.  Now people hit their heads once in a while.  But its so cute- I think it's worth it~ sorry friends :)

 

Here it is after being "filled up"

 

 

Yea its better now- everything is a work in progress !

Emma's Modge Podge Wall Hanging

So my wonderful friend Melody Ross taught me at Brave Girls Camp how to use modge podge to create art.  I had the amazing blessing to attend as staff-which was just amazing and I hope hope hope to go back as soon as our schedules allow! It was amazing, uplifting, spiritual, fabulous experiance that I will always hold close to my heart... and if you go to the website, she has these fabulous little messages that she sends out every day and you should sign up because they are fabulous!!! (I think I use that word an little too much)...umm back to the point My daughter has been wanting flower painting in her bedroom, so I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to do some fun, stylized, pop type art. (which is fun but i don't really want in my living room)  And a perfect opportunity to give her something that reminded her whenever she saw it that she is loved and perfect just the way she is. So here is the finished product...

 

First I cut wood to the size I wanted - you can use canvas but I didn't have any ... but I did have wood so I used that -

Then I painted a base layer of paint -

On top of the paint I painted the bottom half -afterwards I wished I had done the top too- with modge podge and layed down tissue paper...

  

of course you put a layer of modge podge on the bottom and the top...

Then I painted another layer of paint.

While it was drying I cut out tons of different flower petals, laying them on the table as I went to see how it would look.

When the board was dry I used more modge podge and started laying down petals with the modge podge...

 ...  The awesome thing about this type of work is that you can do almost as many layers as you want.  This ended up being pretty 2 dimensional and kitchy art but it can also have a lot of depth and movement from all the textures and layers but that wasn't quite what I was going for a fun playful hangin

once I was done laying all that I wanted to modge podge... I added some fun little paint here and there, I did dots on some of the flowers and swirls on the background- which thinking about it now I should have done the swirls before I laid the flowers
 

When it was all dried and done I took about 10ish different ribbon, knotted them together, and stapled them with a staple gun onto the back.  And yes this is a piece of beadboard.  That all I had on hand so I used it and it worked!!   And also yes this photo is out of order, I couldn't seem to move it, so here it is in the middle of the process,...whoops!

Heres the fun swirlies... and some more dots around the swirlies...cause I wanted to..
  

Around the outside of the piece I painted a pink boarder- mainly because I never get things framed and so it helped finish the piece off, But what I was actually going with this is that inside the pink boarder I wrote in silver the many things that I adore about my oldest girl... creative, daring, zesty, adventurous, imaginative, thoughtful, lover of life, girlie... etc  I want her to look at the art and know that life is fun, optimistic and escpecially that she is loved and perfect just as she is.  Here is the pen that I used...
 

Then I hung it on the wall!!  
 

A little detailing... um above⤴   and below ⤵ I just wanted to point out that since i did do it all on beadboard I needed to hang it in a stud, so it has two hooks.  Next week I am going to be switching some rooms around in our house and at that point this will be moved to a new wall, hopefully that wall will have a stud exactly  where I want to hang it, and then I won't need two hooks! positive thinking!!!
  

 

Honestly, emma helped with it a little too much design wise and colors (which don't flow as much as I would like but she likes them and thats what counts) and I ran out of modge podge to do all the different layers and things that I wanted... melody gave an amazing example with soooany layers it was fabulous. But Emma loves it so that's what matters! (and the cool thing about modge podge is if you don't like it, layer over it...so I might fix some issues one day when I get the bug!  

(also i did one for my bedroom, and I'll show you when I get around to it)

Up next this week...jocelyns curtains, a new addition to my kitchen made out of an antique footboard and a tutorial on how to make bread

Brit

Bathroom Cabinets Before and After

I have been wanting to finish my cabinets downstairs to match what I have in the kitchen.  So I woke up this morning with a fire under my rear to finish!   Here is the before...
 I removed the doors and with a hand sander did a light sand over the surface, then painted my base coat of whitish cream...  (yep you dont see any tape, I know Im crazy but I hate taping, so i don't and i just spend the time painting carefully, much more fun than taping)

I gave a nice coat to the doors, remember it doesn't have to be nearly perfect because you are putting a brown glaze on the top to antique it, antiquing is fabulous because it doesn't have to be perfect!
 

here they are all drying.. the other two are for the laundry room

Never a good idea to paint drawers on a toilet seat, the fall off   ...:)

Then I glazed using a damp lint free tea towel and just dipped it in the glazed and brushed the rag across the surface trying to put more in the corners and then I would take the clean side of the same towels and wipe off the excess... quickly! To make my glaze I just bought a quart of really nice satin paint in the brown that I wanted.  I put about a cup of water or so in a bucket and then drizzled a bit of paint in and then stirred, so easy so cheap.  It dries REALLY fast so you have to be ready to wipe up any mistakes pronto!
    

K
 

Lots in the corners then wipe it off...


Replace the doors after a few plus hours of drying and then you have your after.....!!

 

and I'm done-phew!

Brit

Sisters Friday!!!!- Typeface Makeover

Jocelyn's week was such a fun before and after that this post can be put into so many different categories, Before and after, Decor, Tutorial, and of course Sisters Friday!!!

So our fabulous friend told us that This weird box thing that Jocelyn found at a yard sale is an old typeface organizer for a printing press... how cool!!

Before...

 

So we spray painted it,

Made all these little boxes by first cutting out tons of the pieces of cardboard to fit the spaces in the wooden thing.

Glued them together with handy dandy hot glue.

 

Cut a ton of different fabrics into rectangles, then modge podged them onto the little cardboard boxes, the corners were the hardest part!  

We used a ton of modge podge to make it all stick and solidfy.  

Drilled the heavy thing to the studs- booya! with out the men-

And filled it with fun crafting and sewing paraphernalia.

 

So Fun and colorful!!

Jocelyn's Sewing Room Makeover

Before...

Fair warning this pictures may not be suitable for all eyes.  They are quite scary and may cause lasting damage....I even want to cry when I see them.

 

My sewing room has a lurking sewing room monster that likes to rear its ugly head as I get super busy.  I end up losing control of it and then it looks like this.......(cue scary music and loud sreaming:))

Can you see all the projects piling up in this crazy "waiting" room...When it looks like this very little sewing actually happens

 

Knowing that Sisters Friday was at my house this week I spent ALL week cleaning and reorganizing and resisting the urge to complete or start new projects.  I even threw some stuff away....when all was said and done  the Sisters came over and helped me do the finishing touches and rearrange some.

 

After.... (I love love love the color)

These fun red cabinets were beige filing cabinets that were on the side of the street in Brit's neighborhood, somehow we convinced her hubby to load the one million pound metal hunks into his truck and deliver them to my house where we spray painted them, I then painted some swirlies and loaded them with all of my fabrics...they work great!  I love them so much....

 
 
 
 
 The plan is always to keep my sewing room looking like this but who am I kidding...I just hope and pray that the sewing room monster doesn't rear its ugly head again...let's hope I vanquished that foe

~Jo

Therese's Living Room Tour!!

Here is our first home tour...Therese's living room.  I just love how open and airy her Front living room is.  The story of this house is cool.  It was built sometime in the 1960's and when they bought their home, it looked pretty badly run down :( So they completely gutted and rebuilt a ton.  The ceiling of this room was low and cave like, they tore up into the attic and raised the roof -well no not the roof, just the ceiling -  Sadly during the renovation the window was badly cracked, so when they redo all the drafty original windows this living room window is the first on the list. Also above their fireplace they just took their family photos so they are framing a large picture of their large family to place there-therese is way excited about that :) Oaky enough chat... So here is the view from the front door... You can see the hallway up to their sons room...

Their piano (which was Jeremy's family forever and that heavy too!) with a peek into the dining room...

Their ficus tree that the green thumbed Therese saved from our black thumbed mother...

The beautiful couches that we have had in our family since I can remember.  (Awful note...when they were in the process of gutting the house an army of mice infested their garage and made a home in the couches...don't worry the mice are gone ...thanks to Natalie's cat and lots of poison... and the couches saved, sanitized and repaired from grossness from a professional furniture guy)

And therese always has the funnest  selection of coffee table books out too browse through.

Notes on the last sentence-  the word "funnest"-(that is considered a word in our family)

and coffee table- (is it still considered a coffee table if no coffee is served in the house???)

That beautiful mosaic was made by my grandmother, i think it's inspiring and amazing to look at, but don't touch- you will bleed...or wait this is a blog, no touching possible :)


     

I hope you enjoyed the tour despite all my camera phone pictures!!!

Kitchen before and after

About a month ago I painted my cabinets cream with a brown glaze, which I now love! It really lightened up my kitchen, which I love the lightness but I also feel that now it is almost white washes, there is now umph or focal point to the kitchen. So I've been wanting to paint the space between the backsplash and the cabinets a musty blue. So my mom told me of the cool second hand building material store. I'm always up for something like that ao I headed right over yesterday. The lighting wasn't great but they had a pretty big selection, at least bigger than I thought. So I picked up this paint for a whopping $2.00! Nut when I put it on the wall, I stated having second thoughts...it's not a big deal at all for me to repaint... So what do you think... To dark?

before...

after...




and...

Sunshine Daisy Quilt Tutorial

Soooo, I found a fun find on craigslist this week, a lady selling all of her grandmothers vintage material, granted what she had was an astounding amount of fabric , most of it was ugly ugly but I found a fun garbage bag full!!!  As soon as I found this yellow on yellow print an image popped in my head and I knew what i was going to make!  I call it the sunshine quilt!  

 

Please dont laugh at my process but this is how I make stuff... I dont tend to be very specific when I am first cutting, I cut more material than I need and then size it down to exactly what I need it to be once I lay it all out.

1. I cut out of the yellow on yellow about how large I wanted the baby quilt to be, (ended up being almost exactly a yard)

2.  Then I cut out of cream on cream print from the little old seamstress a rectangle that looked pleasing to my eye that would fit in the middle.

3. I cut out a TON of 3 inch wide and very long strips of all different creams and some of the yelllow print, and quite a few of long flower petals.

4. Then I laid them all out, with the rectangle in the center and flower petals forming an off centered flower in the middle and switching all the stripes around until I found what worked for me.

 

5.  I sewed the 2 sets of 4 long strips together at 1/4 inch seam allowance), then the 2 sets of 4 short strips, (although this can be done in any order :)

 

6. Next up was the flower, a normal person uses wonder under ( a fabulous material that binds with an iron one fabric to another) but I didn't have wonder under and so I pinned that flower like it was going out of style!

 

7. Then slowly and carefully (which I am terrible at, I like to sew fast) I zig zagged around the petals, (you need to play with the zig zag a bit on some scraps before you find the right width and length and such)

 

8. Once that was sewn together I sewed the short sides to the flower rectangle and then finally the long stripes onto the rectangle (of course ironing my seams down as I went)

  

9.  Then I found the thinnest batting possible to fit between the back and the front  of the quilt.

10. I like the envelope finish the best when it comes to binding quilts, it just looks cleaner to me.  So you do this by laying down the right side of the back of the quilt facing up with the right side of the top of the quilt directly on top of it facing down (so right sides together) then placing the batting on top of the wrong side of the top of the quilt.. I hope that makes sense.. then pin

 

11. Sew along the outer edge, leaving at least a 6 inch gap in the middle of one side so that you can turn the quilt right sides out. I like to double pin the spot that i am going to leave open so that I remember to actually do it, half the time i forget!

12. Trim off all the left over egde, or serge it, then turn the quilt right sides out.

 

13. Once its turned facing out pin the edges so that the edge, when doing the finishing stitch looks straight and even, and clean. Making sure that the opening you left it tucked in together and looking like the rest of the edge, I pin this part really close together so that it says nice and perfect (at least that is the goal)

14. Do the finishing stitch around the outer edge very close (1/4 inch) , beautiful!

15. Then I pinned the center of the flower on top and did a zig zag around that,

 

16. And to keep the quilt from bunching in the wash, I did a bit of stitching in the ditch.

To stitch in the ditch just set you machine to sew a straight line and then as closely as possible stitch along the seamline from one end of the quilt to the other.  I did one row on each side of the quilt.  

 

And done!!!

 

  Wouldn't it just look so pretty in a room like this

or this...

FYI for those of you who live in eagle, this quilt was made for an auction that is going to be held at the Palmers house on Monday the 19th in the evening, it is a benefit BBQ and Auction for a friend that has cancer, to benefit his wife and children with all the expenses they have at the current time, if you want any more info give me a call and I hopefully gave help :)

Brit