DIY Ideas and Projects

It's been almost 2 years since we bought and moved into our home. Slowly we've added little touches to each room to make it more complete. We've also hung pictures, taken them down and changed our minds about a thousand times - in each room. Ok, maybe not that much but it still seems like there are several rooms in our home that are unfinished or not how we'd like them to be. I've been browsing through Pinterest like crazy trying to find the perfect DIY projects and decorating ideas to pull our house together. I guess you could say we are going for the "Farmhouse" look. 

Here's a couple of the next projects I'd like to start (and finish :o)

To hang at the bottom of our stairs

visit flowerpatchfarmgirl.blogspot.com

A corner unit for our dining room

Visit indulgy.com

To hang behind our small couch - but, of course, with a 'D' and in green instead of teal

visit pin4fun9003.blogspot.com

By the front door - I'll be attempting to make my own

found on Etsy

Propped in the corner of our living room next to the TV or hung on the wall between the basement and garage doors (I'll be making this sometime this week(end)

Behind our small couch in the living room (maybe in a rustic brown color or green)

visit 1.bp.blogspot.com

For the living room

visit necessarycreativity.blogspot.com

So if anyone has or knows of someone who has some antique ladders, antique porch rails, vintage/antique wooden window frames let me know :o) ha ha. I'll be on the hunt for these items.

Paint Project #1

A long time ago we bought Taylor an art easel from Ikea. And for a looong time I have been wishing it was a different color. It's a chalk board on one side and a dry erase board on the other. She also has a large roll of paper attached to it.

The plain wood was fine but it didn't seem to fit in with the other bright colors in her loft. So Tuesday I took Taylor to Home Depot to buy some paint for it. She was so excited when I told her she could pick the color. She picked out Tootie-Frootie. 

I didn't get any pictures of the painting process. To be honest I was a little worried that if I took my white camera out into the garage it would somehow come back inside with pink on it. I was scared.

The easel turned out perfect! 

I love the way the pink looks in the loft. She has bright blue and green walls (as you can see in the pictures), a large purple chair and one wall is a chalk board wall. I'm working on the finishing touches of her loft and soon I'll post pictures of the finished room. It's been a work in progress but it's finally all coming together.

 

Craft Sunday

While I wasn't working I really enjoyed doing fun little crafts with Taylor. She always got so excited and I loved that we were being creative and making something fun for her to show off. I found a lot of cute ideas from here and here. They both do such neat things that are easy as pie! I love their blogs.

Usually the crafts I did with Taylor were small and involved a lot of help from her. Recently we decided to tackle a bigger project. It took a couple of weeks to finish between all the plans we have had lately and my new work schedule. But we finally got it finished - even hung up!

We started with a black frame I had hidden in the back of a closet just waiting to be used. We sanded it down and sprayed it purple. The light isn't good but it's really just about K-State purple really.

Then we used the help of Grandpa to use his staple gun. We stretched chicken wire across the back of the frame and stapled it down. Then we took all the fun stuff I have been saving for Taylor and arranged it on there. A while back the first thing we did for this craft was cutting scrap book paper to fit the front of miniature clothes pins and gluing it down. Taylor loved these so much that for a few days she just carried around the clothes pins. We also found a wooden cut out of the letter 'T' and painted it her choice of designs. She wanted stripes and polka-dots just like her bed.

                        

We ended up painting each side of the 'T'. I loved how out cloths pins turned out though. We did a lot so these are what's left over. . .

We decorated the frame with pictures of her family - Grandparents, Aunts, Uncles, Mommy & Daddy - even her. I also put the corsage from her Father-Daughter Dance on there, her first plane ticket out to Kansas City, first Rockie's baseball game ticket on there, first rodeo ticket and the first train ticket on there. This frame holds everything dear to her heart and some of the best memories we have made as a family . . .

So Much Fun

You have probably noticed that I made a new header/banner for my blog. I learned how to do this from This site. I love the software she uses and it's very easy to learn. Well I have been playing around with it for the past few days and I find I like it more and more. Here is one fun project I did. I plan on making more like it for Taylor. This takes my scrapbooking to a whole new level. :)