Master Bedroom Update, Part 3

Do you get inspired by nature like I do?  More times then not, I want to be enjoying the outdoors: frolicking in the trees, laying out in the sunshine at the beach, or even working on a sweat in the garden.

But I can't be outside all the time.  It would be awfully cold to be sleeping out in my backyard in the damp coastal weather.  But maybe I can bring that feeling of being surrounded by nature inside?  Like on all four walls of my bedroom!

Homemade Stencil

I found section of a fern and had it blown up to fit on a 11x17 size of paper.  Then I cut out the shape, traced the shape on a flattened cereal box, and WAH-LA!  I had my own homemade stencil that didn't cost me a cent.  (Also what didn't cost me a cent was an old bath sponge that I was going to throw out anyway. :-)

I could vary the height of the stencil, depending on where I placed it on the wall and how far down I painted, and could also (after the paint had dried on the cardboard) flip the stencil over and work with the mirror image or rotate the stencil to make the print look different everytime.  Can you guess, by the picture above, that each fern print came from the same stencil?

I loved playing around with the shape and coming up with new configurations that would add to the "organic" look I was going for.  This layout was definetly not planned out, but thats exactly why I love this type of stencil to work with.  Not like the geometric pattern stenciling projects I've seen that look great, but so much repeated steps-that can get boring to do quite quickly.  This project took me three 2 hour-nights to do, but could have easily been done in one day (if I ever had an entire day to myself ;-).

Have you ever done any stenciling?  What did you most enjoy about it?

Master Bedroom Update, Part 2

Oh headboard, how we missed thee! It has been more than 5 years since we last had a headboard on our bed. That's longer than we've been married!

Our old bed frame came from neighbors in our apartment complex, who were moving out and sold to us an entire bedroom set of four pieces: a nightstand/dresser, armoire, mirror, and headboard with bed frame. It worked with our rental house, but we -I- was tired of it and wanted something new. So we went on the lookout for something we could do.

Source: google.com via Petra on Pinterest

Pinterest is awesome, no? I went back and found the actually site: http://hoboswarehouse.com since I had pinned this before I grew an etiquette conscience by reading CrafterMinds.  Don't worry, I just slapped my own hand.

I love the subutle curve and the gentle tufting.  I have read tutorials on diy tufting, and a headboard should be the perfect place to start, but we got antsy to get the project started, done and over with, so we skipped the tufting for now.

Piece of plywood cut out in curved shape

I'm not very good at belaboring you with the step-by-step tutorial since I'm sure you could just Goggle "how to make a padded headboard" and you would get something much better then I could ever write.  So I will just share some photos of our process:

Cut 2x4 boards to make frame to attach headboard to back wall 

The fabric we purchased from Ikea.  It's in a nice neutral color so I it could go with any color we decide to change our walls to in the future.

Super thick pad bought at Joann's fabrics

Yes, our garage work space was very tight that day.  I had to work around my husband's dirt bike and stand.  Total man cave our garage is.  Well, with plush carpeting.  ;-)

Lots of staples in the corners

We worked so well together on this headboard project, I'm looking forward to finishing the rest of the bedroom with my hubby!

Master Bedroom Update, Part 1

This post is more than a bit overdue. Like try a few months late, but I'm trying my best now to catch this here blog up on my recent -productive- activities!  I give props for all you mommy bloggers out there that have daily (even weekly!) posts. Actually, that goes to all bloggers out there- if you have any tips on how to keep on top of posting to your blog on a more scheduled basis, please share!  I think I just need to make the time to sit down and type! and I haven't been.  But my brain just jumps onto the next project on my list, instead of keeping up this baby.

On to the post:
So my husband was never very fond of the wall color in our bedroom. It was painted this way by two owners past (not the ones we bought from, the ones before that). But it just happens to be my favorite color: I call it Blurple. You know the color found in those beautiful blue-purple hydrangeas?

(Before)

Blue Hydrangeas were also the flower of my wedding, so you can see why I hestitated on changing the color in the first place.  Well I guess it is not very masculine in my husband opinion on color.  But his biggest issue was that it was too dark for his taste, and he wanted something lighter on the wall.  Wait a sec, I thought men liked darker rooms?  He and I are often switched, in our lives together, as male-female stereotypes.  ;-)

After much debate and discussion on if we wanted to go through the effort of putting up wainscoting and a chair rail, we decided to go with a light tone over a slightly darker tone in a sage green color to still give it that half tone look.

Bedroom Walls (Progress)

I think the room looks bigger now thanks to the lighter color up top.  We even went as far as to paint the ceiling with the lighter color as well.  (Which is hard to see in the picture above.)

There are still plans to put up a chair rail, to give the room more architecture, but you might have to wait a while longer to see that post. We may even put up crown molding at the ceiling to better show the light green above.  In the meantime, I'll be posting again (what?! Two posts in one day? Unheard of! ;-) on what came next to our bedroom walls...

because I can't miss adding a pic of my little helper

DIY Sandbox

This is a quick 1-day project my husband and I came up with back in December that I am just getting around to sharing with you.  It all began at nap time on a Saturday afternoon.  We were hanging out in the garage in order to not make noise in the house and wake the baby.  Yes, we are THOSE first-timers.

We had taken apart the steps up to my old turtle enclosure=claw foot bathtub.  Sadly "departed" pet turtle of mine, that I had for 10 years all through my college years and early married life.  Her name was Frankie and I had her since she was a hatchling.  I so loved that turtle :-(  She would have lived for another 25 years if "natural causes" hadn't interfered.  It was a horrific thing to watch and I won't put you through the details of her passing-ANYWAY, moving on...

Easter 2011

Sorry y'all, but we already gave the tub to a friend in the valley who was going to turn it into a planter bed.  But the wood from the steps was ready to be recycled into something new:

I forgot to take pictures of the box construction, but I think it is simple enough to figure out.  The picture above was taken after the majority of the work was completed (and "Nap-Time" had obviously run out, since there are little feet shown here) but I digress.

We bought this chalkboard oilcloth (how cool is that?) at our local hardware store.  Until this point, we had been clamping it to a cheap plastic adult size table, and would have to have the baby on our laps in order to let him draw on the table.  But putting down at his height, AND covering a useful lid for the box, was a much better solution.

Staple down all four sides- starting with opposite sides first, then turn the board 90 degrees and finish the remaining two.  The corners took a bit of origami folding action, as shown above.

We also screwed in two blocks of wood in the corners to help guide the lid to a snug fit to the box.

Next step: fill with sand and toys and begin play!

Be Mine

Happy Valentine's Day!

Happy New Me!

Hurray for 2012! My family was eager to say goodbye to 2011-to put all our health problems behind us-and we are embracing a new year with hope and determination. Yep, we got some BIG home projects on the horizon and I can't wait to share them with you.

In the meantime, while we plan out these projects, I'd like to share some recent fashion purchases I treated myself to during the after holiday sales. Well, first I want to point out what my loving husband got me-the iPhone 4, and as you can see I'm making good use of it. I'm even using it right now to type out this post!
I am in love with this new shirt from Land's End Canvas. I would never have thought to check out LE for updating my wardrobe, but this post by my girl crush Emily had my attention and so I clicked my way over to their sale at their hip Canvas sister store to see what I could save. I was actually surprised at what I found: cool, yet still classic, looks for both men and women. I bought myself a cream ribbed long sleeve ($15), and a floral poplin button up shirt ($15). I even found this flannel workshirt for my husband for $20, and he has received so many complements from his co-workers on it. I paired the cream shirt with my jeggings and new leather riding boots to wear to a recent baby shower and I loved the casual look. Today is the first day I'm trying out the colorful floral shirt:

It's hard to tell from the picture, but it has my three favorite colors: french blue, orange-red, and poppy pink (ok, that last color name I made up ;-)  It was told to me by a marketing co-worker in my office that the print reminded him of the 60s.  Not sure if that makes this a vintage remake or not, but I'm loving it either way!

Do you ever ponder if you should hang on to clothes that no longer fit, but maybe they will in time to come?  My body has been through so many size changes in the past 5 years that I don't know what to do now.  It has grown and shrunk, grown and shrunk, so now I don't know what my size really is anymore.  Most of my closet doesn't fit my body these days, which makes getting dressed hard to do most workday mornings.  I have work pants in 3 different sizes, tank tops I originally bought as maternity I wear regularly, and over coats that I swim laps in.  I guess I'm all over the place with how my clothes fit.  It makes me pretty self conscience when I know I really could be looking put together if I had the right sizes on.  Maybe this sounds like a rich man's crying, but it has semi-importance to my life: to look good = to feel good about myself.  I want to hold my head high.

Casa Granolé

Not long ago I was invited to a friend's Holiday Gingerbread House Party.  I could hardly contain my excitement.  You see, my dad gave me this book years ago:

and I just couldn't wait to make a real gingerbread house out of it!

The "Pueblo House" was perfect since my family had just gone to visit Casa Grandé National Monument during the Thanksgiving holiday

But my excitement was tripled when my husband and son both put their architects' caps on and sketched me out this:

I made sure to pick up some extra materials I would need, and didn't think my friend would have thought of for the more "traditional" gingerbread house.  Assorted sizes of pretzels and a few graham crackers was basically all I needed but that didn't stop me from buying gourmet marshmallows, fruit bars, chocolate chips, coconut flakes, and granola!

When I arrived at my friend's house, she was still in the midst of setting up and I helped her in the kitchen.  We made a simple Royal Frosting/Icing out of:

2 egg whites

1 cup of powdered sugar

1 tbsp lemon juice

All beat together-but found we needed to add 1/2 cup more powdered sugar to get the consistency right.

Then the other guests started to arrive and so I found myself a spot at the table and set up.

I mixed crushed up graham crackers into my icing to give it that "stucco" or "adobe" look.  Then I just spread out the mixture with a knife on the rough side of the modified IKEA kit walls.

I started with the typical four wall base, added a roof/entry from a piece of wall with a window.  Then built a smaller three wall box to fit over the roof top entry.

Next I added skinny pretzels to make a ladder (to climb the wall to the roof/entry of course!), half pretzels on the sides for the ends of adobe-style framing beams (I'm a practicing architectural engineer mind you), and a large pretzel door header (strictly architectural façade here, not doing much structurally for the opening ;-).

I tried my best to add some color by making a cactus out of large pretzels and green icing, but it looks pretty sad leaning against the house in the corner.  

Going back to my architects' plans:

A marshmellow "Peep" Snowman was provided by another guest to the party, so that took very little effort on my part.  (My husband DID think I made it myself though when he first saw it...he gives me far too much credit)

Red licorice and red gum drops came in pretty handy for a side yard fire pit.  And Mr. Frosty felt a bit lonely so he asked over his friend Giant Rambo Man to come frolic in the coconut snow!!

I hope you enjoyed reading about my fun holiday activity~Merry Christmas!