Necklace Hanger

When we lived in Pensacola DH and I each had our own walk in closet. DH had built me this beautiful huge wooden earring holder with a bunch of pegs at the bottom to hang all necklaces from. Well now that DH and I have to share one standard size closet and there was no room for it. However I still needed something to hang my necklaces up on.

I went to the hardware store looking for pieces of wood and drawer pulls. However the pulls can get pretty pricey and weren't as fun as I wanted, so I found these hooks instead. You don't need very large hooks. These are about 3/4 inch. Our hardware store has a scrap wood pile so I got one piece about twice as long as this, and another piece this size for $1.50. After cutting all the pieces to size, twisting on the hooks, drilling holes for the screws and screwing it onto the wall I was done. This one I put the hooks at varying heights, but the next one I just put them in the middle. I didn't paint or stain the wood, but you certainly could to make them look more polished or to give them a pop.

Serving Tray

It was my mom's birthday coming up and I was a little stumped about what to get her. Then I remembered seeing how some people had been using picture frames to create serving trays. So I went on a hunt to gather the supplies to make her a serving tray. 

The first thing you need is a sturdy picture frame that is preferably wooden. A picture frame, you think, not hard to find at all. And that's true, there are many frames out there, but ones that are a suitable size for a tray and are wooden are much harder to find. I used this project as a way to explore some of the local thrift stores that I haven't been to, or don't frequent often. The first place I looked had some good options, but the woman then said that she had set the frames aside for herself and the place wasn't really a thrift store, just a sorting facility for a thrift store. I tried two more places striking out, then I found this frame. It was perfect. It was the correct size, it had a wooden frame, it had a wide enough frame to add handles to, and it was already white. Bonus. 

After obtaining the frame I then had to purchase handles for the tray. This, too, was more challenging than I had anticipated. While the big box hardware stores have many different handle options, they didn't have many that I felt were pretty enough. I was ideally looking for one that had glass on it, and neither of the places I went to had them. I ended up going with a nickel plated cage handle that worked well enough. I marked holes on the frame using the handles as a guide and then used a drill for the holes. The holes on one side weren't quite lined up, but the handle was forgiving and it still screwed in. Afterward, we realized that the screw heads were rounded. This made the tray not quite lay flat on the table and also created a possibility for scratching the table. So I bought some felt stickers that were taller than the screw heads and placed them in the corners.

 

Finally I had to select the paper to go in the tray. The tray was shaped differently than the 12x12 paper I had selected. Since it was striped I had some added difficulty of having to line up the paper properly and cut it down to size. However, I was able to find some paper that complemented some of my fun napkings well. My mom loves bright fun colors and has dishes in several colors that would match these colors. If I had a tray like this I'd probably change it out for the seasons, but knowing my Mom she'll probably just leave it these bright summery colors.

All in all this was a quick project that took one afternoon to create including hunting for all of the pieces.

Valentine's Love Decoration Tutorial

On Pinterest I have seen several Valentine's Day decorations with white backgrounds and colored decorations going from red to pink. I've seen it with the word love and with hearts. I happened to be walking through Michael's when I saw the word "Love" in the clearance bin. I immediately purchased three of them, and an appropriately sized canvas and hurried home to make decoration for my mantle. 

It is simple to make with a canvas, your selected decoration, paint, glue, and paint brushes. As you can see here I've got my canvas and love words. I already had the white spray paint, acrylic paint and paint brushes. The glue isn't shown, but it's just Elmer's glue. One of the things I really liked about having the whole word connected as opposed to the individual letters is it is much easier to get everything aligned.

I sprayed the canvas white just to give it a uniform look. Then I painted each of the love words a different color, one was red, one was peach and the second a mixture of a bright pink and some white to make it a little more muted. You can see how it turned out below as well as have a sneak peak of my entire Valentine's Day Mantle.

Wall Decoration

I saw a pin on pinterest where they used ceiling rosettes painted yellow as decoration on a white wall. We have a large mostly empty wall in our living room and I felt like ceiling medallions would be a way to add some decor to the wall. They are large, so they took up the wall well.

We looked at Home Depot and Lowe's to see their selction. Lowe's had a slightly larger selection, but neither one had a plethora of choices. There was a small selection of different sizes. The medium sized ones were $20-25


For the centers there was a solid, circular one shown below. Other options were not satisfactory as they were picture frames, clocks, or had holes in the centers. The center I selected cost $8. For the center of the middle two medallions we used wooden circles with wooden flowers attached. These ended up being slightly more work in trying to attach them to the medallions, but I didn't want all three centers to be the same and there were not really other options.

The larger ceiling medallions are closer to $50. I was very surprised by the price difference. We went to try and see what was available at Hobby Lobby and found a couple of crests that were similar to what we were looking for and cost much less. 

To match the larger medallion we spray painted the white ceiling medallions with bronze spray paint. Then for the accents we used copper acrylic paint . 

Baby Shower Gift Idea

So many of my friends are pregnant right now! It seems like every time I turn around another one is expecting. I'm so happy for all of them, but mostly I'm excited that this all means BABY SHOWERS!!

With my last friend I made a 3 gift baskets each with a theme...and went a little overboard. The first basket had bath toys, a bath book, wash cloths, and soap and lotion. The second basket had a bunch of clothing. The third basket had baby care items such as infant acetaminophen (Tylenol) and ibuprofen (Advil), saline spray and a baby grooming kit. I really liked the idea of the baskets, and the fact that some of the items are useful, not just cute, but I didn't have a great way of presenting it and/or telling my vision of the gift.

So with this next shower, I felt like I really wanted to stick to that idea. I was on more of a budget though so I needed to tone it down a little. So what I did was buy a fabric cubbie (off of her registry) and put 3 bags in it. One is filled with clothing, I got a 5 pack of Gerber onesie's and some other adorable onesies from Target. The Target brand Circo stuff is ADORABLE! I was fortunate to get in some clearance deals so it was even less expensive than it's normal $5.  The second bag has a large thing of Target brand baby wash and a cute owl scrub with some washcloths. Finally, the third bag has the acetaminophen, some saline spray and some chocolate. Cause Mommies of sick kids need some  chocolate!

It took me a while, but I finally came up with the best little poem to present my vision to the future Mom:

A gift for your little one:
Some cute new duds,
Gear for the tubs,
and finally some drugs!

Lots of love and hugs,  Katy

You wouldn't think it would be that hard, but it is nearly impossible to find things that rhyme to represent clothing/looking good, being sick/getting better, and cleaning/shower/bath.  However, I was finally able to perservere and come up with this poem.

Another one, which may be more appropriate for a boy is:

A pretty new sweater,
some meds to help you feel better,
and something so you don't smell like an Irish Setter.

Washer Necklaces

So after stalking a friend's pinterest boards I found this very intriguing idea. Make your own statement necklaces using washers, scrapbook paper and mod podge.

Any variety of washers can be used. So far I've only made the ones shown above. However I recently went to Lowe's and bought all of the ones shown below which have a variety of sizes, width, and weight. 

 However, if I have two contrasting colors or complementary colors hanging them like this would be great!

 This is what the back of the finished product looks like. It's still unfinished. However, when I've worn the necklace it likes to flip around some so I'm considering covering the front and the back. I also need a better chain/rope to tie it up with.

So you basically find a washer that you like and some scrapbook paper that you like. Although the site above has used other paper items like comics, so you could probably use any paper product. Then you trace and cut out the shape and mod podge them together. I bought the matte mod podge, and in hindsight I would have bought the glossy one. However now I think I'm going to buy some enamel spray or something to make it shiny and more finished looking. 

Christmas Card Wreath

Christmas Card Wreath 

I saw this idea from here. It's pretty easy to make. 

Items:

Clothes pins

Green Spray Paint

Red Pony Beads

Ribbon

Wire Clothes Hangars

Hot glue gun.

To make: 

1. Spray paint the clothes pins green. I did it by laying them out on newspaper, but the other article recommended clipping them to an old box you don't care about. Honestly, it probably would have saved some time, but it wasn't that big of a dea. 

2.Make the clothes hangar a circle. This part is actually easier said than done! Mine isn't perfectly round nor perfectly flat, but such is life. 

3. String the clothes pins and pony beads on the hangar, alternating.

4. Attach the 2 ends of the hangar. The other site recommended just lining them up and gluing the heck out of it. My husband had the great idea of just bending the two ends to make hooks and hooking the two sides together. This alone probably would have been enough to hold it together, but I didn't trust it so I glued the hooks together. It also made it so I could fit another couple clothes pins on since I didn't have to rely solely on the glue.

5. Take the ribbon and tie a string to hold it up. Using another piece of ribbon tie a bow. I used some wire ribbon from the dollar tree. It is red with green wire and green flecks. I really like how that ribbon goes with it.  

 An example holding a card. I actually really got a kick out of this card! It says "It's 80 degrees and sunny somewhere" "Oh yeah, that's here. Merry Christmas there." It's fitting and wonderful and we are sending it from sunny Florida to our friends in wintery Maine.

PinFail? Washcloth cupcakes

So one of my friends...actually several of my friends...are pregnant! Yay! That means that we are just starting on the deluge of baby showers. I always see some of the cute diaper cakes and cupcakes and other amazing things. So I wanted to try it. However I'm not sure that I was very successful.

Here is a picture of the largest two:

 This is a picture of them on the side. The towels are orange/pink stripped (right) and hearts (left). The 'wrappers' are made from scrapbook paper.

This is the four of them together. The container is actually the end of a 12 pack of soda which I covered in pink paper. It was the perfect size to show them off. 

This was the mini gift for my friend at our work shower. For her main shower gift I got 3 baskets and filled them with different goodies (I forgot to take pictures!!)

Basket 1 Baby Bath time:

• Baby Shampoo
• Baby Body wash
• Fun bath squirt toys
• Washcloths
• A water book
• Rubber ducky that tells the temperature

Basket 2 Get Well Basket:

• Infant acetaminophen
• Infant ibuprofen
• Saline nasal spray
• Baby groomer/first aid kit

Basket 3 Clothing:

• Onsies
• Socks

I may be forgetting stuff, but that's most of it. It was a lot of fun buying all that fun stuff for her!