Have you ever finished a project and immediately broke into an awkward little happy dance?

Celebrating the fact that you had just finished a new technique or mastered a brand new skill?

Well, yesterday, my dance moves were a-flying after I finished making a wood planter (on wheels) using power tools.  (Whoop! My first time using a jigsaw!)

Yes, I cut a wooden plank into thirds using a jigsaw.  (And now I think I’m a master carpenter.)

I’d been wanting to make a planter for our kitchen table for a while now.  (Ever since I initially bought the wrong size plank for my Roman Numeral Height Chart project.)

I cut the 6 foot board into thirds and sanded down the pieces.  I also used a bit of old picket fencing (left over from another project) for the ends.  My initial plans were to glue the pieces together first, and then reinforce them afterwards with screws.  The thing is, the wood glue held together so well that I ended up skipping the screws.

Just a simple design.  I ended up setting the end pieces about an inch in from the edge for a more interesting look.

After the glue had dried, I applied the first coat of walnut stain.  I used enchilada sauce cans to keep the box raised.  (Only the latest, highest tech gadgetry is used around here.)

And then I sanded it well.

I taped a zig zag pattern across one of the sides of the planter and applied three layers of stain.

The stain was a polyurethane mix, so after three coats, the design was quite shiny.  I then gave the whole thing one more coat of stain.

Lastly, I added casters to the bottom.

The planter ended up holding four of my succulent pots.  I also think it would look great with mason jars filled with fresh flowers or art supplies.  But I’m most excited about using it as a rolling condiment tray.  Ketchup, mustard, salsa, napkins and silverware (in cute cups, of course).

Not bad for a little wooden box on wheels.  (And yes, I do make it a habit of placing tiny toy dinosaurs among my plants,)

So what about you?  Are you a powerhouse with the power tools?  Or do you prefer a swift karate chop to your wood instead?

~Miss Charming

Have you ever noticed how difficult it is to walk into a store and find a decent rug?

Go ahead and try it.  I dare you.

For some reason, many stores seem to want to keep in stock the poorly made, badly designed rugs instead.  (One of the great mysteries of decorating, I suppose.)

Now there are legions of design blogs that sport colorful photos of cool rugs.  Unique, creative and awesome designs.  But then, most of them confess to ordering their rugs online since the selection is just so much better.  Now, while I’m not totally adverse to shopping online, I do like to be able to touch and see my items before I buy them.  Especially something that is based on color or design.  (For example, the rug is reading a little on the tangerine side in the photo above.  But actually, in person, the hue is a little closer to red.) 

So imagine my delight when I spied this white and cayenne colored graphic piece just rolled up on a shelf at my local Target, waiting to come home with me.

I wanted something bright with a contrasting pattern and this rug fit the bill.  (It’s wool with an indoor/outdoor label.)

I’m not sure how well it coordinates with the pink, black and white striped edge of the front door, but so far I’m digging it.

If I change my mind about the entryway, another option is for it to reside in my son’s room.  (His room is on the list for a makeover and the new bedding would be a great contrast with this new rug.)

And then, of course, each new acquisition must be approved by the resident canine.  (Thankfully, she gave her bark of approval.)

So what about you?  Are you a picky rug purchaser?  Or more of a “I’ll take whatever they have in stock” kind of shopper?

~Miss Charming

I have a confession to make.  (And no, we don’t need to call the priest just yet.)

This is a confession of a gastric nature.

You see, every time I make this Super Yummy Summer Salsa, I tend to put my (mostly) giving nature aside.  I become a little stingy.  A little selfish.  A little greedy even, with my portion size.

Yes, it’s true.

There is just something about fresh salsa that is, oh so good.

The beauty of making salsa is that there are no exact measurements.  (So give your measuring cups the night off.)  Everything is suited specifically for your own taste.  Whatever you want to add, and in whatever amount.

So here is what I like to throw together for my version of this delectable veggie delight:

Super Yummy Summer Salsa

Roma tomatoes

Sweet onions

Can of black beans (drained)

Roasted corn (I use baby white & yellow frozen corn)

Avocado

jalapeno pepper (minced) (We like a little heat.)

cilantro (chopped–although mine is usually closer to being minced.)

garlic (minced)

lime juice

salt & pepper

All you do is just chop up the items that need to be chopped and then mix everything together.  I usually begin with adding the first five ingredients and then add the rest by taste.

Now I just thought I should let you know, this recipe is perfect with blue corn chips.  It really is.  (You should try them.)

So there you go, a simple recipe that is totally tasty.

And what about you?  Do you have your own version of a spectacular summer salsa?  I would love to try it.  (With the blue corn tortilla chips, of course.)

~Miss Charming

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Six Sisters’ Stuff

Classy Clutter

Today, I am instead, asking for YOUR help, dear reader.  Yes, you!  I need your discerning eye and impeccable taste.  Help me select a new blog header.   (The part with the title at the top of the blog, Mom.)

You see,  I do everything at Charming Zebra myself.  When I started blogging, I knew absolutely nothing about working a computer other than turning it on and checking email.  (I didn’t even know what it meant to “cut and paste.”)  By reading other blogs and doing searches on Google, I was able to learn so much.

My blog design has been in need of a major overhaul for awhile now.  I haven’t hired a professional designer because I’m not ready to shell out the big bucks and to be frank, I’m not really sure what kind of design I even want.  So I’ve just been fumbling around myself.  You may have noticed that I revamped the menu bar near the top of the blog.  Click on the Peek Inside My Home, DIY Projects & Tutorials, Tasty Treats or Crafty Crafts tabs and you will find everything organized into galleries with photos.

My next focus is to change the header.  The current photo is one I took of a flower in my friend’s garden.  And although, I love it, it doesn’t adequately reflect what Charming Zebra is about.  So I decided to go with a basic, more streamlined design in the interim.  (Before I hire a fancy blog designer, that is.)

So here is where your expertise comes in, experienced readers.  I have 9 designs that I’ve been playing around with.  If you would be so inclined as to give me your opinions on them.  The good, the bad and the ugly.  Let me know which is your favorite or if you despise them all.

1) Blue green duo with no border.

2) Pink title with double border.

3) Green blue title with grey border and pink &.

4) Pink title with blue border.

5) Black title with pink lettering and black & grey border.

6) Tri-color title with grey border.

7) Pink and grey offset title with grey border.

8) Pink and grey two font title.

9) Pink and grey title

Originally, I had this vision of a design that would be sophisticated and elegant.  But when I started playing around with the fonts, for some reason, I found myself gravitating toward the cutesy and playful instead.  Go figure.

So, talented readers, I’m looking forward to your “two cents.”  Let me know what works and what doesn’t.  (Fonts and colors can be changed, too, if you have any brilliant ideas.)

Thanks so much for all your support!

~Miss Charming

Have you ever forgotten about something important?

Or at least, something somewhat important?  (Like showing up for your court date or picking up your mother-in-law from the airport?)

Well, here is a snippet of a conversation between me and my man this morning:

Me: (glancing down at the calendar)  Did you remember that yesterday was our anniversary?

My Man: It was yesterday?  I thought it was the 15th.

Me:  No, the 15th is your parents’, ours is the 12th.

My Man:  I thought the 12th was my parents’.  I told someone at work yesterday that “Today is my parents’ wedding anniversary.”

Me:  We are so lame.

My Man:  That’s okay, we’ll just celebrate it on the 15th.

So, I totally forgot that yesterday was our anniversary, while my husband was going around thinking that yesterday was his parents’ special day.  Really?  And the thing is, we’re not newly weds.  We have three teens at home and one in college.  We’ve had plenty of years to get the date right.  I need to do something to make June 12th a little more memorable, a little more exciting.  To jazz it up.

Sort of like jazzing up a plain, forgettable knife block.  (Did you notice my slick attempt at transitioning into a totally unrelated subject?)

So let’s go back a year or so at the beginning of the knife block saga.

I was getting tired of the light wood, standard look, (thrift stores are full of them) knife block.  And I didn’t want to put my sharps in a drawer or hang them on the wall with a magnetic strip.  I liked my knives residing in the knife block.  It functioned well, but I was starting to harbor snobby thoughts about the way it looked.  My knife block needed a makeover.

Two of the designs I considered were:  1) Re-staining it in a rich walnut.  2) Adding some color and a little chalkboard action.

Well, you can see that I opted to go with the second choice and that it was a complete failure.  I started off lightly sanding and then with each added paint layer it just looked worse.  I hated it.  And to top it off, the birds even hated it.  For sure.  I left it drying outside and came back to find a less than lovely splatter of bird excrement all over the front of it.  (Okay, I get the hint.)

So, after cleaning and repainting the block, I thought I would spruce it up with a stamping image of a butterfly.  (Because everyone thinks of butterflies while they’re using their knives, don’t they?)

Not my favorite look, but it would do.

Until last week, when I decided to paint the whole block in chalk board paint.  I just sprayed it on–so easy.

After about three coats of paint, I let it cure over night.  Next, I rubbed the block all over with the side of a piece of chalk (to season it) and wiped it off again.

Then, I was ready to write.

As I’m looking at this photo, I realize that I just wrote the first thing that popped into my head.  My knife block lives in the kitchen, and when I think of kitchens, I think of goodies.  It might have made more sense to use words such as: dice, chop, cut, filet and slice.

Oh, well.  I like treats better than chopping anyway.

My knife block is quite popular with the other kitchen appliances now.  It went from boring brown to sleek black.  And I can write on it, too!

So what about you?  Have you survived any creative knife block makeovers?  Or are you too busy remembering important dates?

I’m looking forward to this Saturday, the 15th.  Our new anniversary date, apparently.  We’re going to party hard!  (Unless, of course, we forget…)

~Miss Charming

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Shabby Creek Cottage

Frugal Girls

Has there been something small around your home that needed attention?

A problem, glitch or issue?

Something that sadly, went ignored?  Because it just wasn’t as urgent, pressing or exciting as painting gold stripes on deer antlers or adding tiny dinosaurs to a succulent jungle?

Let me introduce my kitchen back door.  (And the unwashed windows.)

A well-used, functional, but largely ignored decorating opportunity.

So let me explain the issue.  Here at the Charming Zebra household, we love natural light.  We crave it, in fact.  Each morning, every single window covering in our home is opened to it’s fullest extent to let in every last ray of sunshine.  And because our backyard has the beginnings of an overgrown jungle, privacy hasn’t been an issue with our kitchen windows.  Therefore, the window in the door has never had a blind or curtain.  That would all be well and good if it wasn’t for the blazing, early evening, blistering, Texas Summer sun streaming through the window and searing the faces of about 3/4 of the family sitting at the dinner table.

The kitchen door is metal so my temporary solution was to stick on a magnetic mini curtain rod.  Then I would grab whatever material was closest (be it fabric, a towel or an errant t-shirt) and drape it over the rod in an attempt to partially shield the burning rays from the faces of my suffering children.  (Shameful, I know.)

So I finally decided to make a more visually appealing solution to our dinner sunshine problem.

I grabbed a brightly colored fabric remnant from Joann’s.

And decided that it would be the perfect project to try out fabric glue.  And magnets, of course.

I wanted to make this as simple as possible so I just measured the size of the covering I wanted and cut the fabric with pinking shears so I wouldn’t have to hem the sides.  I then folded down the top edge and spaced four magnets right under the fold and glued them.  (I used scratch paper underneath so the glue wouldn’t stick to the table.)

Next, I glued a bit of green ribbon across the seam to give it support.

Well, the glue dried beautifully and the window blind worked just great.  But something was missing.

Pom Poms!  I love them.  The world could definitely use more pom poms.

And this little window covering was begging for pom poms.  So I just glued a string of white to the bottom edge of the blind.

I left a few inches of the bottom of the window uncovered so some light would still stream in.

The beauty of this simple window blind is that it can easily be put up or taken down.  When I don’t wish to have the window covered, I just move the blind directly beneath the window.  That way the morning light is invited in and I still have a pop of colorful pattern in the room.  So simple.  So ridiculously easy.

So what about you?  Have you had to deal with the laser rays of the sun or have an unnatural affinity for pom poms?

~Miss Charming

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If It’s Not Baroque

Home Stories A to Z

DIY and Showoff

Six Sisters’ Stuff

Classy Clutter

Be Different Act Normal

It’s all about presentation.

At least that’s what realtors, stylists and advisors to the President tell us.

Take a handful of Summer berries.  (Strawberries and blueberries, to be exact.)  By themselves, they are quite tasty.  But mix them together with a bit of angel food cake and a dollop of sweet cream and then you’ve just created a Summery delight.  Now take that Summer delight and add an adorable (it’s so cute, I can’t stand it) mini trifle bowl.

And there you have it.

Presentation.

I used to wonder about all the beautiful food photos I would see on Pinterest and other websites.  Was EVERYONE a professional food stylist?  How did the average (I don’t have any styling skills or pro equipment) person take a decent photo?  Again, it’s all about presentation.

So, little grasshoppers (Kung Fu reference here), I’m going to spill the “behind the scenes” photo styling secrets (and mishaps) from my Summer Berry Trifle photo shoot.

First, I prepared the food.  I made an angel food cake (from a box),  washed the fruit, cut the strawberries, and whipped the cream.  My mistake was turning the mixer on high and walking away from it to check my Facebook page.  Surprisingly,  the cream over-whipped.  No biggie.  I would still make it work.  I cut a few pieces of angel food cake to use in the bowl.  After that, the rest of the cake strangely disappeared.  (Seriously, despite being from a box, it was rather good.)

My photo shoot set-up usually consists of a white table cloth and a white tri-fold screen.  (The kind used for science projects.  Only smaller and made of foam core.)  I generally use the end of the kitchen table closest to the window for the best light when shooting.  This day, however, I was running a little behind the light and so I had to set up on the living room floor near the window.  Well, as soon as that happened, the “Inspector” came around to survey the scene.  She gave the cream a few sniffs but was shooed away before any tasting commenced.

So there you have it.  A sneak peek, behind the scenes, non-professional, almost typical Charming Zebra photo shoot.

But hey, just look at that presentation.

So what about you?  Are you a photog phenom or are your photos full of over-whipped cream and cat sniffles?

~Miss Charming

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Six Sisters’ Stuff

Classy Clutter

Be Different Act Normal

Silver Pennies

DIY & Showoff

Welcome to a mini tour of my home.

Two rooms, to be exact.

So come on in and take a look around.  Snooping is encouraged.

The first room is the piano/music room.  It is actually in the dining room space, but apparently we enjoy music more than eating.

And yes, your eyes are not deceiving you.  That IS blue painter’s tape across each drape.  (So classy.)  I’m in the middle of transforming shower curtains into the window coverings.  I hung them up to have a good idea of the true length of the fabric.  (And maybe that was a few weeks ago.)

The chalkboard was made out of a mirror.  And the chair was a thrift store find.

I have a thing for mirrors.  And anything with a little sparkle and shine, for that matter.

See the moulding under the chair rail?  I added it myself without using any power tools.

This Swedish inspired long clock I found at the Round Top Antiques Show a few months ago.  I added some chalk paint in white and Provence to jazz it up a bit.

The crystal chandelier was a gift from my sis and discovered at an antique mall.  I had it rewired and it works beautifully.

The two story living room sports a black scalloped chalkboard wall.

The chairs were a Craig’s List find.  (My first ever!)  I painted the brown wood trim with white chalk paint to make the chairs pop.

My horse head (it weighs a ton) and little orange garden gnome.

The disco ball (see, I like shiny) and the french bulldog lamp are two of my favorite things in this room.

You can see part of the kitchen, too.  The vintage window, kitchen hutch and my grandma’s chandelier.

The unattractive brown armoire and the over sized twin speakers are still going strong.  (And such a style statement, too.)

The sofa table design was my artistic interpretation of the Union Jack.  (Or maybe just some random pink stripes.)

Hope you enjoyed this tiny peek into my home.  Feel free to come back and visit.  (Just be sure to knock, first.)

~Miss Charming

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The Shabby Creek Cottage

Serenity Now

Silver Pennies

DIY & Showoff

All that glitters is gold.  Gold spray paint, that is.

Now, it appears as though I’ve been wielding the can of goldy goodness a lot lately.  (Frames, branches, art work and antlers.)  So it seemed the obvious choice to fancy up the soap dispenser in my powder room.  Now, you may be asking yourself, ”What is up with this woman and why is she even bothering to give her soap dispenser a makeover?”   Well, the answer, my friends, is that the powder room has a nice little pedestal sink.  So nice and slim in fact,  that the area on the sink where the soap belongs is quite narrow.  I wasn’t having much luck in finding a fab looking liquid soap dispenser that actually fit on the sink.

A few months back, I ended up receiving a tall, narrow dispenser from Bath and Body Works as a gift.  It was the right size for the space so I was reusing and refilling it.  And although it was functional, it lacked a bit in the style department.  So I decided to give it the Midas touch.

Now, this might be a contender for one of the easiest DIY projects ever.

I simply wiped down the soap container and then taped off the hand pump.  Next, I covered it in Gloss White (even over the stickers) and let it dry.

I will admit that I forgot to put a substitute soap dispenser in the powder room while the paint was drying, so a child ended up rectifying the situation by peeling off the tape and then placing the dispenser back in the bathroom.  We ended up using it for a day with it’s snowy white coat before I moved to the second part of the exciting makeover.

I used extra painter’s tape and cut it down the middle to make a narrower piece of tape.  Next, I just wrapped it around the bottle in a spiral.  I then re-taped the hand pump and used a little gold magic.  (Krylon Metallic in Gold)  The paint dried fast so I was able to remove the tape in no time.

And so it goes.  An easy, simple project with a gold twist.  And now guests to the powder room can marvel at such a fashionable, stripey soap dispenser.

So what about you?  Have you ever gilded or goldified (another of my self-created words) an object of humble beginnings?  Or had the urge to paint gold swirls on your soap dispenser?

~Miss Charming

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View Along The Way

This, That & Life

Serenity Now

Tomorrow is the last day of school for the kiddos.

No more homework.  No more books.  No more teachers’ dirty looks.  (Or something like that…)

It also means that the Summer celebration has officially begun.

In looking back over some of my blog posts two years ago, a few stuck out.  Reminding me of the casual days of Summer with a touch of pink.  (Even if the projects themselves, may have actually been done in the Spring.)

The first is Flower Pot Cupcakes.  Real pot.  (Ah, not that kind.)  Fake flower.  Cupcake dirt.  I had fun making these treats and giving them away to unsuspecting friends.  (I mean really, who doesn’t love a little Oreo dirt now and then?)

(Flower Pot Cupcake Tutorial)

The second project is the Cutesy Fabric Flower Wreath.  I started making this without a clear vision of what the finished design would even be.  Just a pile of fabric and a styrofoam wreath form.  But many hot glue burns later, I emerged with an acceptable wreath specimen of fabric rosette flowers.

It was interesting going back and reading those old posts.  (My writing was definitely at the rookie level then.)

(Cutesy Rosette Wreath Tutorial)

And the last photo wasn’t even in a post.  It is a picture of my daughter with our canine, Bella.  (Apparently attempting to read each other’s minds.)  Pink hair was a fun Summer color.  It definitely was attention grabbing.  And tiny little girls of the preschool persuasion absolutely loved it.  Seriously.  Strangers came up multiple times to say basically the same thing.  “I just wanted to let you know that my precious princess (insert name here) just loves your pink hair.”

So what about you?  Any fabulous projects planned or fun bits of pink this Summer?

~Miss Charming