This Little Old Home

The Wreath Dilemma

2011-09-25T17:40:00.001-05:00

Since we moved into our house, I have been debating on whether

or not to put up a wreath on the front door. The door has

a large glass window, so I have always been worried

about hanging one on one of those over-the-door hanger.

Then I started thinking that I could hang one to the right of the door

under the lamp. But, I realized the house numbers were there.

So, for quite sometime, it was looking like our house

was going to be unfinished, just plain wreathless.

A few weeks ago, though, my wreath dilemma got solved!

I came across this idea on Pintrest from the blog Teach.Craft.Love.

I can't believe I never realized to just put the

house numbers on the wreath!

Problem Solved.

I quickly got to work on my wreath with help from my friend Laura

(who recently went into the wreath business - Whimsical Wreath Creations).

I got all of my supplies from, where else .... Hobby Lobby (I feel that my

blog is just an advertisement for that store, they should start paying me).

I decided to go with a late summer/fall theme and make the wreath

simple by just using sunflowers. I just stuck the stems in on the

left side of the wreath and bent them around until it looked right.

Some of the little colored balls/fake berries fell off in the process

so I just stuck them in randomly around the wreath for more color.

Next, I pulled the house numbers off the front of the house

and I painted them yellow. Then I attached

them on the right side with clear wire.

I plan on making more house number

wreaths for each season!!!

Jarrett hung the wreath up for

me after I had many failed attempts. Apparently

I put too many nail holes in the house.

Awwww the house feels so much more complete!! And pretty!

~Supplies~

Wreath, flowers,

paint, clear wire,

house numbers

(from home improvement store)

~Cost~

Total: $12-15

Wreath - $3

Flowers -$2 a piece

Paint -$2

Wire $2

Numbers - $1 a piece

Put a Belt on Your Head!

2011-08-27T16:39:00.003-05:00

Well it's about time that I put up another post!

As some of you know, I started PA school back up

again last Monday. And sadly, I have been going

through Blog/Hobby Lobby/Estate Sale

withdrawals all week. But now its Saturday

and I am a free woman (except for the massive stack of

homework that I have piled up to get done this weekend).

So, I went to an estate sale this afternoon and I hit it big!

They were practically giving stuff away because they were

closing about 10 minutes after I arrived. I ended

up with eight wicker baskets, several holiday decorations,

an old painted coffee can (don't know why I love

those cans but I do), and a belt all for $6!

In my mad rush to grab everything I could at the sale,

I noticed the belt I bought and thought that I would use it

with a blue/turquoise dress I had.

When I got home I tried the belt on with

the dress and I loved the belt,

but not the belt with the dress or with

any other clothing I had. I realized

that maybe I didn't necessarily need to

use the belt as a belt.

So, I decided instead I would

turn it into a headband!

Here is all it took ....

All I used was fabric scissors,

super glue, and an

old clear headband I had.

I cut a piece of the belt to

fit over the headband.

Then I put super glue on the back of the belt and glued it

across the top of the headband.

And, I ended up with a beautiful headband!

It was that easy!!!

The estate sale today was AWESOME!

I got a lot of good stuff and love my new

headband, heck I probably would

have paid more than $6 for it alone!

~Supplies~

Fabric scissors, belt,

super glue, old plastic headband

*Cost*

Practically free!!!

The Traveling Leaf

2011-08-16T00:25:00.000-05:00

Several years ago, my Dad was on a trip in Shanghai, China

and he found this MONSTER of a leaf. For some reason, he

thought it was so cool that he decided to bring it

home with him. So he packed up the leaf and flew home,

half way around world, to Kansas with the

leaf perfectly intact. Now this is quite impressive

already, but to make the story even more interesting the

leaf hung out on a shelf in my Dad's office for several years.

Then, when my parents moved to their

new house a few years ago he packed it up again and

took it with him. And until a few weeks ago the

"Traveling Leaf" still set undamaged in his

new office on the same shelf.

So, I decided it was about time that we were going to

do something with this crazy leaf. I asked him if I could frame

it so that we could protect it, but I was really thinking

that we might finally give this leaf a purpose.

He agreed and the fun began!

First, we decided to spray it with a sealer

for protection (after like five years uggghhh).

We then let it dry overnight.

The next day, I came over with a 12"x12" frame

(that's how big this leaf was!) and some

scrapbook paper for him to pick from.

He choose to place the leaf on the scrapbook paper

I had with all of the postage stamps and letter images.

My mom and I thought this was the perfect choice since it

kinda of incorporated the whole travel story of the leaf.

We simply just attached the scrapbook paper to the frame

backing, laid the leaf where we wanted it,

and then added the frame.

It took like 5 minutes or less!

Now it looks great!!

Dad loved the way it turned out and my parents decided they are

even keeping it in the living room for now on the mantel.

I'm just happy we don't have that dang leaf floating

all around the place anymore!

~Supplies~

A leaf, spray sealer,

a piece of scrapbook paper,

and frame

**Cost**

I just had to buy

the frame, it was $10

from Micheal's

Table Decoupage

2011-08-15T13:47:00.002-05:00

Before we moved into our house last July, Jarrett built

a little table for our kitchen. The plan was to mosaic it

eventually, but 6 months went by and I still didn't know

how to mosaic. However, I was learning about the

wonderful world of decoupage!

Here is the table that I started with.

Originally, we had gotten little chairs at a garage sale to go with it.
But when I decided to decoupage it I set out to find some wooden ones
that I could paint like the table. I found the pair below at a
thrift store for $9 total. I decided to go with a "crackling" technique
when I painted the table and chairs so
that I would get that aged effect.
Click here to see the crackling process.
I started out with a tan base coat.

After the tan base coat dried, Jarrett and I covered the table

and chairs with the clear crackle medium and let that dry.

The next step was to paint the top coat, I picked out a dark purple.

If you click on the pictures to enlarge them, you will see the

crackling effect that the medium gave the paint.

After the purple paint dried, all that was left to do was decoupage.

I decided to put one of my favorite sayings on the table and then

I cut out the butterflies that were printed on scrapbook paper

from Hobby Lobby. Once I had all of my lettering and pictures

cut out, I laid them out in the design I wanted and I started

gluing them on with Mod Podge decoupage glue. After all

of the pictures were glued, I covered the entire surface

of the table and chairs with several layers of the decoupage

glue (letting the coats dry in between). That is the great part

about Mod Podge it is a glue and a sealer!

For better decoupage instructions and some other ideas click here.

Here was the end result!

I love this table, now it is functional and pretty!!

~Supplies~

Table and Chairs,

base coat of acrylic paint,

crackle medium (any kind will work),

top coat of acrylic paint

(pick something that

contrasts well with your base coat),

decoupage glue,

scrapbook paper/pictures/fabric etc.,

scissors

**Cost**

about $20

I got the table for free, chairs for $9,

the acrylic paint comes in $2 bottles

at Hobby Lobby,

Crackle Medium was $3 (I think),

scrapbook paper was $2.

The Office

2011-08-15T03:16:00.000-05:00

Recently, I redid the back bedroom and made it an office.

When we bought the house this room was the same tan color as the

rest of the house. Originally, I painted it blue.

But, I changed it to yellow last week. Poor Jarrett, he just

had to go and marry a girl who loves changing color (I credit it to my

childhood in a white-walled house).

Here is the new office.

Click here to see this button lamp project

I still have some pictures to hang up in the room,

but it looks better now than I thought it would have

when I started. The best part of this room was the

name of the paint color..... "Pale Butter" or

as I call it "Pale Butta!"

The Guest Bathroom/My Bathroom

2011-08-15T02:45:00.001-05:00

Our second bathroom is in a hallway to the left of of our living room.

It is the green room with the door in the picture below. The arch you

see on the right of the picture is the entrance to the kitchen.

I don't really have before pictures of this bathroom but it was about

as ugly as the other bathroom when we bought the house.

Below is what it looks like now.

In this bathroom there was tile all along the lower half

of the walls. We took that off and added the white beadboard like we

did in the bathroom off of the master bedroom. We also

put in the sink, mirror and lights to match the other bath. The bathtub

is original to the house, Jarrett just painted all of the tile in it

a solid white. I picked out the green paint color.

Surprisingly, Jarrett does actually like it though.
We will probably tone down the wall color before we sell the house.

My friend called it "Doctor Scrub" green one time, which is pretty perfect for me!

Our Master Bedroom and Bath

2011-08-15T02:07:00.000-05:00

This is what our bedroom

looked like when we bought the house.

The bathroom was horrible when we bought it!

We gutted it completely. I even got in on this demo!

Jarrett and his Dad rearranged and

remodeled the bathroom

Here is what the bedroom and bathroom look like now!

The color of the bedroom and bathroom walls are a light gray

and the bedding and towels are a charcoal gray (it was really

hard to get the coloring right in the pictures). The bathroom is not

decorated yet but it is still wonderful! In the bedroom, we just decided

to add wedding pictures for some decorations. The frames were all

from the Dollar Tree and the "love" sign was from Hobby Lobby.

I spray painted them all a shiny metallic gray. We hung black curtains

in place of the broken closet doors that originally came with

the house. I love having curtains instead of doors!

But, that is probably something we will change before we

ever decide to sell the house.

The Dining Room -- My favorite room!

2011-08-15T00:32:00.001-05:00

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the dining room

before the remodel. But it was just basically a plain box.

This what our dining room looks like now!!

The picture above is looking through the arch
from the living room.

As you can see our bedroom is just off the dining
room opposite of the living room.

The kitchen is off the dining room under the other
arch that we have in this room.

The reason that I probably love our dining room so much is because

of the color and the accessories. The walls are painted a

turquoise color, called Woodlawn Valley Haze from Valspar.

This color inspired us to pick out the plum color curtains

in our living room and the accessorizing of the

two rooms kinda took off from there!

Here is a closer look the accessories in this room.

The cross above was one that I got at a garage sale for $2
and I painted it white. The Milk glass in the above and the
below pictures are my Great-Grandmother's collection.
They are in shelves that I added fabric to.

Below is a picture of a stained glass piece that our friend Connie

made for us for our wedding (BEAUTIFUL!!!).

The above picture shows a lot of the details of this room.
We added the white hang lighting fixture. The table was found at a
church garage sale by Jarrett's parents for $30. We tried to
stain it originally but ended up painting it black,
I think it turned out perfect! The white chairs were a
present from IKEA. The vase on the table was a wedding gift and
I added the purple flowers to tie in with the purple in the living room.

The side chairs that you see in the corners of the dining room
came with the dining table from the garage sale. Jarrett's
mom and I painted them and reupholstered them.
Here is a close up..

Below is a close up of the picture hanging the chair
you saw in the previous picture.
It is of Jarrett and I on our wedding day. It is probably one
of my favorite pictures of all time!

The dining room is finished for the most part.
All that I have left that I really want to do is to add some
pictures in the cabinets eventually. I especially want to add a
picture of my Great-Grandmother since it is her beautiful Milk Glass!

What a Kitchen!

2011-08-14T23:33:00.000-05:00

When we bought our house the kitchen was so old and dated!

Everything in the kitchen when we bought the house was old

and falling apart so we decided to completely gut it.

Jarrett and his dad designed the new kitchen and installed

everything from the cabinets to the tile floors to the new lighting.

They even built a wall to separate the laundry area from the kitchen.

What a lucky girl I am!

This is our amazing kitchen!

Jarrett and his dad installed all of the cabinets in the kitchen,

Jarrett bought all new matching appliances (for an

amazing deal), we added a tin backsplash

Jarrett's mom and I helped put in the tile floors and

we painted the walls to match the living room.

Jarrett also put in another arch from the kitchen to

the dining room.

Most of the stuff in the kitchen were gifts we got from the

wedding and the rest are things I have gotten since

we moved in. The little table and the mail holder

were projects that I recently completed for kitchen.

Hopefully I will get some posts up on

these projects soon!

I did have to keep one thing though to remind us

of the old kitchen, a piece of the original tile backslash!

The Living Room

2011-08-14T22:30:00.000-05:00

The first room you enter when you come into

our house is the living room.

This is what it looked like when we

bought the house.

Some of the things that we liked about the room

was the hardwood floors, the old fireplace and the

arch between the living room and the dining room.

The picture below is taken in the direction straight from the

front door into the kitchen and hallway.

We added the two arches that you see to tie in with the

arch we loved on the other side of the living room.

Originally, there were two doors where these

arches were. I feel like all of the arches have really

helped to open up our house.

Now, this was the first time I had ever been around a house remodel.

So, I was pretty terrified at times by the dust and the mess.

Also, I am not the most patient person so I was always

so anxious for it all to get done.

It was so worth it in the end!!

Here is our living room now!

The following are some of the changes Jarrett and his Dad made:

adding the arches and the new front door, refinishing the floors,

painting the walls a mocha brown color and putting a TV in

place of the mirror above the fireplace.

All of the furniture in the room is reused.

The coffee table was given to us from my Aunt and Uncle and the

end tables are from my Great-Grandmother's home.

The cabinet on the left of the fireplace is from Jarrett's room at his parents

house and the bench on the right of the fireplace was a

great $10 find at a garage sale.

All of this furniture was mix-matched in terms of the colors,

so we painted it all black to add some cohesiveness.

The couch, ottoman and the chair (Jarrett's chair) were ones

that his parents used to have in their basement before

they they redid it. We bought slipcovers to make them

go with the colors in the room.

I've had a lot of fun accessorizing this room!

One of my big projects in this room was the gallery wall

behind the couch. I found all of the frames at the Dollar Tree and garage sales.

Then I painted them all black. I then had some of my
favorite pictures of us and our families printed in black and white.
I just love the feeling of family and home that it

gives you when you walk in the front door.

Some of the projects that I have left to finish in this room

is hiding all the cables for the TV, putting up some wall art
next to the bench and adding a mirror. Remember, that
huge mirror that was above the fireplace when we moved in?
Well I have this big frame that I painted that I want to get the
mirror cut to fit in. I plan to hang it on the wall next to the
white coat rack. Hopefully, this project will get

done in the next week or so!

Make Your Own Cross

2011-08-10T22:08:00.001-05:00

I love crosses! I have been keeping my eye out for

them at garage sales and stores for the house. A while back, I found out

that Hobby Lobby sells unfinished wooden crosses.

So, I decided I would try decorating some.

I made these crosses in my "pre-blogging" era, so I didn't take

good pictures while making them. The processes was the

same for both, though. First, I painted the front

and sides of the cross with spray paint. I painted the turquoise

one black and the pink one silver so that the sides would

look nice. Then, I found fabric to decoupage onto the crosses.

The fabric on the turquoise one was off of a $2 pillow from an estate sale

and the fabric on the pink one was actually from one of our table

runners from our wedding. You could also use scrapbook paper instead of fabric.

After I got the fabric glued on, I trimmed the edges. Then I used super glue

to attach accessories on them. All of the accessories I used were

from Hobby Lobby. I found the pearls on the turquoise one from the

scrapbook department, and I cut the flower off of a

floral stem. On the pink cross I picked off the little white flowers off

of a couple of floral stems and the little bird I found by the floral section.

The crosses were a fun easy and fun project!

The turquoise one is hanging in our living room

and I love it every time I see it!

~Supplies~

Unfinished wooden cross, spray paint,

fabric/scrapbook paper,

Mod Podge glue, accesories, super glue

*Cost*

about $10 for the two

Buttons Buttons Buttons

2011-08-10T22:07:00.001-05:00

During the makeover this week of our back office

I decided I wanted to do a project that I saw on

the internet...a Button Lamp!

"Recycled Lamp Shade"

Recently at an estate sale I came across

a perfect lamp for the project, at a perfect price - $7.50.

Now all that I needed to find were buttons! I wanted to

cover the whole lamp shade like the picture so I was going to

need a lot! I searched on the internet and thought eBay would

be my best bet to buy in bulk, but I was concerned about

the colors I would end up getting. Then I remembered that my

Aunt had made me a button bouquet (more to come

on that project in a future post!), so I asked her where she came

across all of her buttons. She told me that all of her's were from

auctions and estate sales and that she had enough that I could see if I

wanted ones from her collection. So I gathered up all of her

buttons and started picking out ones that I liked for the lamp

Lulu helped me

I picked out colors to match the fabric panels I am making for the office also.

After I had picked out what I thought would be enough

buttons it was time to get them onto the lamp shade.

I decided to try using a hot glue gun to get them on. This

plan worked very well (just be careful, I dropped a button

on my leg....ouch!) I randomly glued the buttons all over the lamp

shade. It is a good idea to do this step while watching

TV, it is a looooonnnng step!

After I got the lamp shade finished, I painted the base

red. I taped over the gold around the top and bottom of the

greenish part that I wanted to paint, then I used Folk Art acrylic

paint and then sprayed it with a sealer to protect it from

chipping. Looking back, I think that spray paint would have been

a faster option.

After the paint dried, I had my finished product!!

I was so happy with how this project turned out.
I can't wait to get it into the office!

I think I might even have to make a
button frame too!!

~Supplies~

Lamp, buttons, paint (spray or acrylic),

spray sealer, hot glue gun and glue

**Cost**

around $10

Based entirely on the lamp you get and

if you have an AWESOME Aunt with lots of buttons!

Butterfly in a Shadow Box

2011-08-10T22:06:00.001-05:00

While on vacation last week in Eureka Springs, AR
I stumbled upon an amazing little DIY wall art project.
It was "Butterfly Season" down in Eureka, everywhere
we went we found beautiful flowers that
were surrounded by butterflies.

When we woke up our second morning on the trip Jarrett
found a dead butterfly out on our deck.
Please note that the butterfly was already
dead .... NO animals were hurt in the
making of this craft project haha!! We named
our dead butterfly "Decker" to commemorate his
death on our deck.

I decided that this beautiful butterfly would be
perfect in a shadow box. So I carefully got Decker back to
Kansas and I immediately bought and unfinished shadow box
at Hobby Lobby. The shadow box was 5"x7" and
was $3.99, but I used a 40% off coupon (did you know that you
can use that weekly 40% off coupon on one item for every
visit you make to the store that week that the
coupon is for...AMAZING!) To paint the shadow box
I used an acrylic blue paint mixed with a pearl medium
to give it that glossy effect.

I then decoupaged a piece of thick white paper (which I
painted with just the peal medium) to the backing of the
frame. I then just used super glue on Decker's wings to
attach him to the backing. Now, Decker did get tossed
around the living room a bit during this project by the air
from the fan, so Decker lost his antennae and one wing,
the wing I super glued back on to him and the antennae
are yet to be found. Here is how he turned out!

I was pretty excited with this project. I also gained a new
interest in butterflies. So I decided I want to raise them, I know
what a hippie. Jarrett is afraid I might raise them for wall-art-slaughter.
I told him I will set them free once they come out of their
cocoons. But, if some happen to die on the deck after a long happy life
I will definitely make them live on in a beautiful shadow box.
I think he his just worried the house might end up like
this weird attraction, Mrs. Quigley's Castle, in Eureka Springs!

O how lucky he would be if it did!! :)

~Supplies for this project:
unfinished frame $4.00, paint $2, a piece of
scrapbook paper $0.60, decoupage glue, super glue, and
a butterfly or whatever you want to display in the shadow box

** Cost: about $2-$6 **

depending on if you use a coupon
and if you already have paper and paint

Glamorize Your Shelves

2011-08-10T22:02:00.001-05:00

In our dining room I wanted a way to display my Great-Grandmother's
beautiful Milk Glass. I put the pieces in shelves we had gotten
from Walmart quite some time ago. One of the shelves had even been
used in the office for several months to hold the printer and TV.
So, the shelves never really looked right with the beautiful glass
pieces in them. I researched how to spruce up shelves online
and came up with a solution .... adding fabric!

This is what I had going on before the glamorization ...ugh

As you can see they needed some work. I started out pulling
off the backing on the shelves, with a knife (this high-tech idea was Jarrett's).
The backing got pretty beat up, I had a lot of tears and holes
where all the nails were, but it didn't matter at all because
fabric would go over the whole back.

Here is the fabric I choose, it is from Hobby Lobby. I got 2 1/2 yards
for the two bookcases, which ended up working out great.
I even have leftover fabric that I am already envisioning for another project!

All I used to adhere the fabric to the backing of the shelves was
Mod Podge glue (one of the greatest things on earth). I cut out a piece of the fabric
that was bigger than each of the backings. I found that the best way to make sure
I avoided wrinkles in the fabric was by gluing the fabric down in sections
so that I could smooth out an area before I moved on to the next.

After I got fabric covering the whole backing, I flipped the backing

over so that I could cut off the excess. By the way an "X-Acto" knife

will make this project and a lot of other projects so easy!! Jarrett just bought

me my knife set at Micheals last weekend, he's the best :)

Now that all the excess fabric was off, I was ready to attach the

backing back on the shelf. I was going to use a hammer and nails,

but then Jarrett brought me the staple gun he was using in the

basement. The staple gun made it easy (and fun),

but nails would have worked just as well.

I flipped the shelf back to upright and found out that my idea worked!

I dusted the shelves and I used a little bit of black acrylic paint
to cover up the holes on the sides for shelf height adjustments.

I added the Milk Glass and some other items and
the shelves finally looked complete!

~Supplies~
Shelves you want to cover, fabric,
decoupage glue, scissors or and

X-acto knife, a hammer and nails
(or staple gun), and maybe some paint

*Cost*
per shelf: $20ish

-$6 for the fabric

-$10-15 for the shelves
***Almost Free if you use old shelves***