Stationery card

Sweet Pinstripes Girl Birth Announcement

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Stationery card

Watercolor Ornament Christmas Card

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Stationery card

Watercolor Ornament Christmas Card

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View of a Room

Sam and I finally decided on a paint color! We began painting our spare bedroom right before Thanksgiving. I mentioned before that we bought these awesome shelves at IKEA that we want to frame the bed with. Sam stated that he would not put them up twice, so we had to paint first. We chose Fresh Guacamole by Glidden as our paint color, and got to work!

We are still learning about being homeowners, and DIYing and this project reinforced that! Sam has always worked with his dad, who is a residential contractor, and has learned a lot from him. Sam is pretty handy to have around! We both have "experience" painting, but the rollers we bought were something neither of us had worked with before. Of course, we did not figure this out until we had half the room painted. The rollers have a texture to them which soaked up the paint pretty quickly. We used the entire gallon of paint, and still needed another coat to fill in the spots that were left. We went back to The Home Depot the next day to get another gallon, but they were out of Glidden base to mix our color. The man told us he could mix it in Behr base and color match it, but give us the Glidden price. We tried this, but when we got home, the color was just a tad off.

Lesson Learned: as good as color matching is, it isn't quite the same.

And just so the Behr company doesn't feel bad-mouthed, we did buy Behr paint for our bedroom color.

Our painting project got interrupted with a trip to Colorado to visit my family for Thanksgiving. My grandmother was visiting from Delaware and we got to spend an entire week with her. Definitely worth the break from DIY-ing!

When we got back, we got the paint we needed, and new rollers and got to work.

We also spray painted a bookcase white to put in that room. Have I mentioned how much I LOVE spray paint? Our only problem-we didn't buy enough, so that project took a little longer than we thought. It has also been really cold around here lately, which makes it even more difficult to spray paint, so the bookcase is still not finished yet.

Next Lesson Learned: you always need to buy more paint than you think you need!

Sam put up the shelves, we brought the bed back in and when we finish spray painting the bookshelf, we'll add that too! Here is the almost-final project:

Timetable: November 20-December 30 (1 month, 10 days) + finishing the bookcase?

Budget: IKEA LACK shelves: $100

2 Gallons Glidden paint: $48

4 Cans White Spray paint: $16

Full-sized bed: already had

Bookshelf: already had

Total: $164

Before:

After:

Oh, and these little things on the shelves?

We're not sure if they are all staying yet. We are trying to figure out what we want and what we like. More about them, and what the rest of the shelves will hold/where we got everything coming soon!

Merry Christmas!

Our friend Donna took these pictures, and Sam put the card together. Thanks again to Shutterfly and their 50 free cards for bloggers!

Thanks for the Memories

Over the years, Sam and I have taken a LOT of pictures. We both enjoy photography as a hobby and our computer is filled with many memories of us together, the things we have done and the places we have lived.

Since we have moved into a new home this year, we also have a lot of pictures of our home. We have begun to decorate and have taken a lot of "before" and "after" pictures to post on this blog, so that our friends and family can keep up with what we have done with the house.

Today our friend, Donna is coming over to take our Christmas card pictures. We waited until the last minute-we know. It is actually perfect timing because it snowed last night and looks like a winter wonderland out there! I can't wait to make our Christmas cards on Shutterfly after our pictures are taken. Two years ago we sent out photocards and we planned on sending another one this year. Thanks to Shutterfly's 50 free cards deal for bloggers, we are getting into gear so that we can once again send our family and friends a picture of us and the new house. I love receiving photocards at Christmas-I love to see how people have changed, kids have grown and peoples' personalities show through in their selection of photocards. It is my favorite time of year because I get to reconnect and catch up with old friends.

As I have perused Shutterfly's site, I am also contemplating a calendar for the new year. I thought about a DIY-ed calendar of our house projects, but then I realized we have a lot to do, and that might be a project to tackle next year. Only time will tell.

I have used Shutterfly before, and I really do like them for photo projects. They are easy to use and I also taught my Mother-in-law about photobooks using Shutterfly. I just recently printed pictures of my house to send to my Grandmother, who does not do a lot on the computer. I will put them in an album (the old-fashioned kind) and send them off to her for Christmas. After I printed the pictures, I realized I should have made a photobook to give to her, but my good ideas usually come after the fact. I also noticed these thank you cards that I thought would be great for housewarming thank you's.

Here's to another order from Shutterfly and more memories to make with my husband in our new home!!!

DIY-ing it Up!

We are s-l-o-w-l-y decorating our house. We decided that we would focus on one room at a time, and I'm having a little decorating ADD. We started with the tables in the living room, one of which is complete and the other is apart, but still in our living room.

After our big trip to IKEA, we thought we would tackle the spare bedroom. I know it may sound strange to begin in a room that we are not in often, but we found these awesome shelves that I am dying to put up. The only problem is Sam says he won't put them up until we paint. So...I have put up paint samples, (by the way-I think those are the best things invented, because it is so hard to go by those paint squares) and we are still trying to decide on the one we like the best.

So my project tonight has nothing to do with the spare room or the living room. (I think I have blogging ADD too!) I really want an area that I can work on crafts in, i.e. sewing, scrapbooking, jewelry making, etc. Enter 3rd bedroom. I am so excited that we are able to have a guest bedroom and a spare room. Since we Sam isn't going to start another project, I thought I would do a quick DIY project on my own. So here it is: Super EASY and super CHEAP!

I started with an empty cashew can:

I tore of the label:

(I know-these tips are so great, you can't stand it!)

Then I used scrapbooking paper I had lying around and trimmed it to fit each can. I used mod podge to adhere the paper. Any kind of glue would work, but I like that flat look it gives underneath the paper, and the low-maintenance it provides. I rolled it around the can and glued the backside down.

On the bigger can, my 12x12 scrapbook paper, didn't quite wrap all the way around. I thought about leaving it, since I will face that side to the wall and only I would know (and the few of you that read this blog)...

...but Sam convinced me to fix it, and with the scraps I had left, I cleverly matched up some of the paper to cover the little spot.

So there it is! My little DIY project I completed in about 15 minutes. I know it's not fancy, high-tech or sophisticated, but I like it and I can't wait to fill it with craft goodies! (pens, scissors, glue, whatever floats my boat)