We have some fun shindigs coming up including a baby shower and my birthday (gasp! I’m turning 30) and both parties will be in our home. I’ve got my work cut out for me getting the house whipped into shape.

I’ve been feeling like we needed a little more color in the living room/dining room since they’re connected. Imagine Nick’s surprise when I greeted him at the door the other day when he got home from work and my first words were “Don’t be mad, I did something crazy.” <Insert panic face here.>

We’re in a rental home so major changes aren’t an option. But paint can easily be changed so I whipped out the Annie Sloan Chalk Paint and went to town painting the wall at the end of our dining room just one week after I spent hours putting up a picture gallery. I like to make things difficult! Dramatic, isn’t it?

I’ll be adding a skirted table like this one to the wall once my dear husband builds it for me. I’ll be using a white duck fabric to blend in with the rest of the room. Stay tuned for details on how to make the skirt without sewing.

Image House Beautiful

Color… Check! Drama… Check! Uncertainty… Check! The dilemma is now what to put on the wall. We have a ton of art, but none of it seems to work with this color so I went searching online for a few options. Can ya help a sista out? Let me know what you think we should do!

Option 1: Large Scale Art
I love the Giuliana and Bill Rancic show on the Style Network mostly because of their gorgeous homes so naturally, I’ve spent hours googling pictures of all 20 something homes that they have lived in over the years and found this lovely piece of crazy art that made me swoon! Thom Filicia designed this home for them and I really think the large scale art is amazing!
Via

We’re not the Jones’ so I figured why not create our own using The Graphic Fairy’s vintage clip art of an octopus.
Via

Option 2: Blueprints framed as art
Via
We scored several real blueprints at an estate sale a while back and these could really add to the drama.

Option 3: The Fam
We have 4 of these brushed silver frames from Crate and Barrel and the photo gallery is really growing on me.
Via
So there are the options. I think I like the photo gallery the best because it’s simple and clean and doesn’t add too much. Let me know your thoughts and if you’re looking for me… I’m snuggling on the couch with this guy!

I actually am an excellent gifter – or at least I think so. I knew Lauren wanted a particular brand of watch with a certain style – so I started paying attention to watches that she was looking at and what she was drawn to. I was storing this information for her birthday or Christmas. But then our anniversary snuck up on me (who new it was November already!) and I panicked – ordered a watch online using my blow money and then I remembered that whole paper thing. Doh! I don’t know where this idea came from, but I decided to buy a book, cut out the inside and present the watch to her like that. Two birds with one stone, right? And it would be funny. (Sometimes I laugh by myself – well a lot of the time).

So I ordered the book and went to Google to figure out how to do it. (Slightly backwards, but it worked). I found this awesome tutorial on how to do it – so I bookmarked it and waited for the gifts to arrive. I smartly had them shipped to my office as Lauren is part bloodhound and can sniff out anything. Once everything arrived, I used my lunch time for arts and crafts and created my nifty little gift package. I later read the comments on the how to post and found lots of great ways to do this better, but I’ll store those away for future use. Plus I couldn’t very well bring my dremel to the office without causing some questions.

Doing this is pretty easy (sorry about the pictures – used my phone in the office) – and I didn’t lose any blood. I would recommend using a power tool if you have access to one or don’t have to hide this project from your spouse. But it’s really messy using the exacto knife method that I used – so be prepared to have paper pieces all over the place.

So there you have it – the finished book & gift! A few things I didn’t think about was the fact that the book wasn’t that thick, so I had to lay the watch down in it to get it to close properly. I wrapped it up and gave it to her and upon opening it, she was a bit confused but was as nice as ever saying “oh, thank you for the book! I really need this!” then I told her to open it and that’s when the laughter started.

Happy anniversary Lauren – I’m so glad I finally convinced you to go out with me

We’re still sifting through all the boxes of farm fresh goodies and slowly listing them in our Etsy store. If you are a fan on Facebook – check out the coupon code! If you see something here that’s not listed on Etsy – just contact us and we’ll send you some more information on it.

Vintage Tools & Decor Posts:

• Vintage Tools – Gallery #1
• Vintage Tools – Gallery #2

Just show us some love & link back once you are ready to show off your masterpiece! See the original NYC Subway Dresser here

Well our NYC Subway Dresser has become a huge hit – thank you to everyone for all the feedback & kind words. As much as it looks difficult – I hate to say it, but this piece was really really easy. I hate stenciling – all that dab dabbing drives me nuts, so when I was concepting this idea I wanted to make it as easy as possible. It’s the K.I.S.S. method (keep it simple stupid). Or the lazy man’s way – as I like to say, efficient! The secret to this piece was not stencils or complicated taping – it was simply stick on vinyl letters from Hobby Lobby – yep, that’s it!

Since I didn’t take step by step pictures of the dresser in progress (because frankly, this was an experiment that totally rocked), I quickly whipped up a piece to show you the steps involved.

Step 1:  Get yourself a piece of furniture to work with and paint your base colors. For this example, I put on a few base color variations to see what worked with what. I used old white, paris grey, duck egg and abusson blue in this example. For the dresser, I used only old white (Annie Sloan Paints). And on the dresser, I sprayed the base coat. Learn how to spray Annie Sloan paint here.

Step 2: Apply the vinyl letters once your base coat is dry. Critical here to make sure they are straight & aligned. Also – make sure you buy extras when doing a large piece. Nothing worse then running out of letters and having to come up with new words from what you have – this is where scrabble skills come in handy!

Step 3: Apply the top coat of paint & let dry

Step 4: Peel off the letters once the top coat is completely dry. A sharp knife comes in handy here – but be careful!

Step 5: Once all the letters are off, distress the piece with some sand paper to dull the edges of the letters & add some character. Interesting to see how light the graphite grey becomes with distressing, but don’t worry – this will get fixed. I prefer to distress before waxing because it’s easier – but it also creates much more dust – wear a mask!

Step 6: Apply thin coat of clear wax & then a thin coat of dark wax. For the dresser, I diluted the dark wax using a 4:1 mixture of mineral spirits & wax (4 mineral spirits & 1 dark wax) to create a liquid that I could apply with a brush and then quickly wipe off. Adding dark wax to the graphite makes the grey almost black. Wipe off the excess wax as you go – leaving only a thin coat.

Step 7: Step back and enjoy your master piece!

Maddox is our nephew – so while I did this as a quick demo – I think we’ll finish this one up a bit more (paint the back & add hangers) and then put it in his nursery. But the brilliance of this idea is that you can do whatever you would like – and very easily! Old white underneath is still my favorite – but we will definitely be using this concept on future pieces moving forward.

Materials Needed:

1. A piece to work on – you choose the size, shape and style
2. AS Sloan paint – 2 or more colors
3. AS Wax – Clear and Dark
4. Mineral Spirits (low odor)
5. Gloves
6. Rags
7. Sanding blocks or a sander
8. Stick on letters from Hobby Lobby – I used 2″, 4″ and 6″ – buy extra packs of each!

We’re extremely blessed to be a part of such a creative community & we love to see what others create. So seriously, take this idea and make it your own! Share with us what you create from it with a link or a comment – we’d love to see how this idea takes off.

As seen on:

This piece has been in the works for a while. We’ve had the dresser for a few months and I’ve been marinating on this idea for quite some time. We both love the NY subway art that is every where these days – and it’s especially close to our hearts because we both lived in NYC – at the same time, worked 3 blocks from each other, attended a few parties at the same time – but never met until we both moved back to Houston (within a month from each other). But that’s another story.

I came up with this idea based on the NY Subway art – it’s always something that we’ve wanted to have here in the house but it’s a matter of finding the right piece for the right place. So when this dresser came through – I immediately knew what I wanted to do with it.

This dresser before wasn’t bad – solid oak with a empire style front – sturdy but blah. So I treated it to a dark grey paint, old white and some distressing. The top was stripped and stained – and the knobs to match. (How to guide to come soon) And now we have:

This piece is for sale – not matter how I hate to let it go – if you are interested, just contact us – $325 – Measurements: 49″ tall, 18″ deep & 33″ wide

So over the weekend, while the 3 month old was passed out, I did some digging and started to figure out the “Pinterest Phenom”.

What is Pinterest?

Let me explain this like I would explain it to my mom, who still thinks I work for Google, God Bless her! Basically – Pinterest is a platform for you to share and organize your bookmarks. Instead of all the site you love, or things you want to remember to look at going into that blackhole of a Bookmarks folder in your browser – you can create Boards (aka folders) and share the bookmarks with others.

You can search Pinterest using the search box, categories or tag functions – just like a wordpress blog.

How/Why Do you Pin?

You pin items you like – or that match a theme by a) copying the URL of that website and then pasting it into the Pin It box, b) using the handy Pin It tool on your browser (see below) or c) the Pin It button on the site.

Why pin? Ever start shopping or researching online only to come out of it with 12 bagillion ideas and options? Ever try to remember that one thingy that you looked up 2 months ago that would be perfect for your latest project? That’s why you pin. I started pinning based on a few of my favorite things – just to get a feel for it – and I’ll be expanding soon. So far I’ve got a great board about Knobs (because there are so many great ones out there and I’m always forgetting where I saw the last one), Things with Small drawers (unhealthy obsession – deal with it) & recycled wood furniture.

I have a design/refinishing/craft site – How does this help me?

Beyond the obvious organizational purpose for your future ideas – it can help you if you set it up right on your site.

The General Follow Me Button (see left hand column on this site for an example) can be added to any site using the following code:

<a href="http://pinterest.com/USERNAME/"><img src="http://d3io1k5o0zdpqr.cloudfront.net/images/pinterest-button.png" width="78" height="26" alt="Follow Me on Pinterest" /></a>

This button can be added to any WordPress site using a text widget for your sidebar – it will allow users to see all of your boards, follow you on Pinterest and generally see what you are doing on there.

But, the larger question comes from wanting to make sure you a) get credit for your items on Pinterest and b) help users easily Pin your items on Pinterest. That’s an easy fix as well. I’ve done this on a few posts this morning (see the Union Jack – pin it button is at the bottom) and will be doing it for more in the future. Now there’s a plugin called Pin It On Pinterest that makes it easy for WordPress sites to add a “Pin It” button to the end of posts.

Here’s how it works:

Install and activate the plugin and then you’ll be able to tailor the “Pin It” button on a post-by-post basis. It will add a box to the post editor for you to fill in the description of the pin and assign the image you’d like for it to pin when the button is clicked. The button will then be added to the end of your post with a little tracker to show how many pins your post has received.

When the button is clicked, you’ll get a popup that is identical to the behavior of the “Pin It” bookmarklet:

It automatically populates the box with your description and image. Of course, the user can still edit this information. Your image, text and the link to your site are then automatically sent to Pinterest, giving you another avenue to gain valuable traffic from visitors who are genuinely interested in your content.

Pros: This plugin allows you to choose the image & description per post that will be pinned.

Con: You have to set this manually for every post – which is a pro and a con. Not all posts should/will need a pin – but if you’ve been doing this for a long time, you’ll have a lot of catching up to do.

Alternatively, there are several general sharing plugins out there for WordPress that already include Pinterest as an option. You can install one of those and it would be implemented site wide – but again you loose some of the control.

Hope this helps!

This awesome chippy desk/table is on sale for $100! That’s $75 off from now until the end of October. Measurements: 26 1/2″ x 42 1/2″ and 30″ tall – More pictures can be seen here.

This piece is available as-is for $150 – That’s $100 off!

It’s made of solid maple wood with dovetail construction and removable hutch. Perfect for a small study desk or even in the entry way to hide everything away.

Also includes the key for the lock – and it works! – More pictures here (does not include the chair)

Available through the end of October for only $150! ($100 off) What can we say – this chest of drawers is massive! Each drawer is 12 inches tall, 24 inches deep and almost 40 inches wide! It’s made of solid wood with heavy rope handles – stained with a walnut stain. This would make a great blanket chest and/or a toy chest in the kids room – and the good news is that it’s so heavy, they can climb on it all they want and it won’t move! Measurements: 24″ deep, 40″ wide, 38″ tall (more pictures)

Remember – These prices are good until the end of October only – so email us if you want one of these items.

So anyways, it’s Friday! I thought I’d share some great finds I came across on CL – grab them please! Otherwise I will have to and that means my garage will be filled up once again.

Please note – these are not my listings and I do not know the condition of any of these pieces – I just found them on CL and thought I’d share – because someone out there is going to want these!