I don’t actually own a Cricut, but my mom left hers here two years ago and never has asked for it back. Erin and I have been having fun with it the past two evenings.
I made this for the little table that sits by the front door:
Welcome
And this is now in the hall bathroom:
Birdie in the bathroom
One of these days I’ll learn how to use my camera. No really, I will. Promise. Seriously.
There have been many variations of this craft circulating among blogs. I typed this up in Word, trimmed the edges a bit, and slapped it into a black frame I had in my stash. Easy Peasy Christmas artwork. I want to do another with a Christmas verse or song lyrics on it. Maybe I’ll get to that later today!
King of Kings
I love holiday decorations, but I hate spending money on them. I always mean to buy them on sale, after Christmas, but I never feel like trying to beat the crowds so I end up missing out. It doesn’t help that I like decor that has a sleek look to it – which usually costs more. Target had some cute trees that cost $25, but I was able to make something similar for only $4. I brushed some silver paint on, spread some glue, covered in silver glitter, dotted with pearl and silver beads, draped in a strand of tiny pearls, and then topped with a silver star. Fun!
Plain tree....
...pretty tree.
I have so many items I’ve kept from my boy’s baby and toddler years. The little knitted caps they wore in the hospital, the little I.D. bracelets, cards, extra ultrasound pictures, so on and so forth. I also have a mountain of these cute, sturdy white boxes that my husband receives computer parts in. And I also have a partial collection of old, old, old, alphabet flash cards. I found them while raiding my mom’s homeschooling stash and couldn’t bring myself to throw them out. Well those things have all come together to make this:
Keepsake boxes for the boys.
‘L’ for Luke and ‘G’ for Gabe, of course. I Mod-Podged some scrapbook paper to the tops and sides of the boxes. Then I Mod-Podged the cards on top. Took me no time at all and these are cute enough for me to put on display!
Lots of keepsakes!
You could go crazy and decorate the insides, as well. But we all know I’m much too lazy for that!
I may have an addiction. To High Gloss Black. Everything that falls into my hands ends up coated in High Gloss Black. I may need an intervention.
Here’s my latest and greatest project: Shelves. We have a partially finished basement. It was half of the basement so it was one loooong room. My husband put in a home theater a couple of years ago. That helped break up some of the space, but there was still a pretty long room down there. I’ve been wanting shelves along one wall in particular, but good shelves are expensive. I’m DONE with pressboard shelves. The shelves inevitably sag and nothing is sadder than that. I considered bribing my husband into making some, but that would have been a big project and still pretty pricey. So when I found these beauties on Craigslist, I knew they were THE SHELVES. Only $95 and they are made of real wood. No pressboard here, my friends!
And they were 8 feet long and over 4 feet high. No wimpy shelves for us. No sir!
Funkalicious Bookshelves
According to the seller, these shelves were custom made to hold an album collection. And no, not photo albums, MUSIC albums. So they are old. They are well made. They are funkalicious. I could hear disco music as soon as I touched them. Okay, not really. But you can see how that could happen.
Here’s the shelves after my trusty High Gloss Black Paint and I were through with them:
No More Funk
I still have the doors for the top. Ben thinks they look better without the doors. I thought they would have looked cool with a hip little stainless steel knobs I found at Home Depot. But they are off for now. Either way, I think they look vastly improved since when we purchased them!
Now I just need more books to fill them up…
This toy box was made for me when I was little by my mom’s step-mom’s dad. I must have been very small because some of my earliest memories were of this toy box. It was plain brown forever. When Ben and I got married, we had a lot of dark colors in our apartment; Hunter Green (tee hee, remember when that color was all the rage?), Burgundy, Gold, and Navy Blue. I painted the trim of the toy box in Hunter Green. Just because I could. It stayed that way up until recently. This poor toy box had been stashed in storage while I mulled over what to do with it. I certainly wasn’t going to part with it, but had a hard time coming to terms with painting it completely. I finally decided to do just that so the toy box could come out of exile and join the family.
Here it was before:
Out with the Old
Here it is in all it’s gloss black glory:
Toy Box
Next, I want to see if I can find some handles to replace the nylon rope thing we’ve going on there on the end. I might splurge and buy some cool fabric and make a little cushion for the top. But for now, this little guy has a place and a purpose, which is a good start.
I have a lot of gloss black paint. Nearly everything I buy is repainted with gloss black. That way I know it can be used anywhere in my house. I do promise, however, to pick up some gloss paint in some other colors. Just to mix it up a bit in the future. Until then…
Here’s another little thrift store find that I redid. It was a very ugly brown. I loved the shape of it though. And it was $1.29. You really can’t go wrong at that price!
Here it is looking right at home on my table.
Little Black Tray
I’m no seamstress, but I wanted to recover some pillows and I had the fabric on hand so I decided to give it a go. Two pillows were in okay shape, but they were tan and the chair I had them on were tan. Too much tan. I had just enough fabric left over from recovering my dining room chairs to cover them both. Nothing daring, but it was FREE!
Recovered Pillows
My other project was to make a cover for a body pillow. It was originally a green and white striped fabric. Didn’t go in my purple, black, and gray bedroom. So that got a cover, too. I had the fabric left over from the curtain swag that’s in the bedroom. Again, nothing amazing, but it was free!
Long, gray body pillow
As soon as I get some time, I want to use those two pillows in front elsewhere and make two black pillows to replace them. That’ll give me some variety there. I’m keeping my out out for some lamps to redo – I need more color in this room!
I love old things. I love old family things. I want to preserve them, but I want to be able to display them, too. I do a lot of scrapbooking, but some things just don’t go in a scrapbook either because they are too bulky or because I end up with several pictures of the same thing and it would be a bit redundant.
When I saw a simple, cheap, black recipe box at Goodwill I snatched it up. I didn’t know what I was going to do with it, but it called out to me. So I brought it home. I repainted it right off the bat, but then set it aside, waiting. Finally inspiration struck. I Modgepodged some old pictures and paper scraps on the inside. Then I hot glued some of my great grandmother’s faux pearls, added some mementos and a bundle of old photographs. I added an old earring of great-grandma’s to the outside and here ya go:
Memento Box
Inside of the box
Lester and Nancy Haas
Bottom of Memento Box - Great Grandparents and My Mom
More about the pictures: Lester and Nancy are my maternal grandparents. This picture was taken during their first year of marriage. Grandpa was in the Army and he and Grandma lived in one of those Silver Bullet-type trailers. Grandma said there was very little space, but they had “dinner” parties anyway and had the best times in that little trailer! Think of that the next time you want to say, “Oh my house is too small to host anything”.
My great-grandparents, John and Stella, where Grandma Nancy’s parents. They were a lovely couple. Great-Grandma was every inch a lady and was everything I want to be.
The last picture is my mom’s baby picture. I think she was a beautiful baby.
Along with the packet of pictures, I have a butterfly pin that was my great-grandmother’s, an Indian-Head nickle (my grandfather had a collection of those), a wax stamp that had belonged to my mother, and two wooden hearts that say ‘Ben’ and ‘Jenn’ on them (from when we were first married). I’m sure I’ll find more to add!
My little sister passed her GED in January and is now signed up for college classes in the fall. We couldn’t be more proud. So we are throwing her a graduation party in May. One of the perks of being a homeschool grad? You get to choose your own “class colors”. She said pink and green. Love it. I went to Hobby Lobby to pick up a few supplies and made these:
Chelsea's Graduation Invitation
Oh, and I found a HUGE stack of pink and green paper plates at Costco today, for her party. They were just a smidge more expensive than the set of 10 plates at Hobby Lobby! I love it when things just come together!