Front Porch Re-do

I have been so excited to share this with you guys! It has been months in the making and of course I tackle this project right before and after having a baby, but it seems to be when I most motivated. :)

So when we were first looking at buying a house back in 2009, I remember pulling up in front of what is our house now and thinking, "I don't know about this one." The outside was DRAB. Everything was brown and there was very little color in the landscaping. It did not fit my personality at all. But, when we walked through the house, we fell in love with the inside. It was by far, the best fit we had seen for our needs and wants and so we bought it!

For the first few years, we started planting flowers and bushes and trees in the front of our house to lighten it up. I really didn't do much to the front porch other than put a wreath on the front door and add a big pot next to the door. I think I was overwhelmed by the space and I was spending my decorating budget on the inside of the house instead.

At the beginning of this year, I just couldn't stand my bare porch any longer! So I did what I always do when I want to decorate: I went to Pinterest for inspiration. The biggest goal for me was to lighten up my front porch with bright colors, but do it ON A BUDGET. We were about to have another baby after all!

So without further ado, here's a before and after!

The first thing I wanted to do right away was paint my front door. I really wanted to paint it a bright blue (have I mentioned how much I love all shades of blue?!?), but my hubby wouldn't go for it. So I convinced him a dark red would look nice. I went to Ace Hardware and bought a quart of their Clark&Kensington Semi-gloss Exterior Paint and got to it!

It is SO easy to paint your front door people. I'm serious. You don't even have to take it off the hinges. Just do a really good job taping around the hinges and hardware. Start with a paint brush for the indentations and around the hardware, followed up by a small roller brush for the flat surfaces. I did 2 coats of paint and wa-lah!

 It took me like an hour total (granted I didn't paint the inside of my door, just the outside and inside hinges that would show when the door was open). Isn't that wreath so cute? Would you believe me when I said that it's made out of paper and cost me $4??? When I saw the tutorial for it here, I knew I had to make it. She has had it for years and it's held up just fine so I thought I'd give it shot too. The rug came from Wal-Mart and perfectly matched the colors I'd already chosen (I love it when that happens).

Next, I wanted some kind of fun chair or rocker for the right corner. And I adore the old milk cans. So I hit the local yard sales and found a rocker for $15 and this milk can for $15. Add some paint (and polyurethane to protect from the elements) and they were transformed! Do you see the vinyl on the milk can? The numbers on our house are hard to see because of our dark brown siding, so I did the vinyl so people would stop knocking on our neighbors asking where 780 was. :)

 The blue pot came from the dollar store (I spray painted it of course), the watering can came from a yard sale for $1, and I made the pillow from a pillow form and outdoor fabric from JoAnns ($8 total).

Next I loved the idea of doing something fun on the right wall, but I didn't want to drill holes in the siding or anything. Then I found out they make awesome hooks that you just hook under your siding. You can find them on Amazon. I bought 2 heavy duty ones for the basket and then one small one for the star (that I already had, I just spray painted it). I found the hanging basket at a yard sale for $5 and the basket liner at Lowes for $6.

The hardest part was knowing what to do with the large empty space under my windows on my porch. I immediately thought a bench would be nice, but every bench I liked was well over $150! Then I found this tutorial on Pinterest for a bench and two tables and knew we had to make it! I heart people who post tutorials online for free.

I have to say I am so proud of me and my hubby for making them. The tutorial is pretty straightforward, but we'd never built furniture before. They turned out wonderfully simple and clean looking. I was very happy. With wood and paint, it cost about $55 to make the bench AND the tables.

A bench is not cute without pillows though, am I right? Well lucky for me my indoor couch came with a bunch of excess pillows (I'd like to have room to sit on it...) so I used three of them as the pillow forms for the 3 pillows you see above. Then I used the same bright fun fabric from JoAnns as my other pillow and some white burlap for the small pillow. I personalized it by painting an A on it (with just plain old craft paint)! Total cost for pillows: $10

Now I had two tables to decorate. Groupings of three is best for decorating, so I had to find 3 things I could use that would incorporate the turquoise and bright yellow that I had chosen for the front porch. This cute turquoise vase came from Ross for $11 and I found the old tool box from a garage sale for $2. All I did was paint it and then I used this cool tutorial to add the "Welcome" with wax paper and my own printer. The little house thing came from Deseret Industries for 50 cents!

On the other table, I really wanted a bird cage. I love bird cages for outdoor spaces. Well lucky for me I found a nice big one at a garage sale for $8. Add some turquoise spray paint and hello beautiful. I also love lanterns for outdoors and this one I already had from Ross. I just spray painted it that bright yellow (can you tell I love spray paint?). Then add an IKEA plant and pot that I already had and this table was good to go.

Last, but not least, I needed something above the bench. This flower arrangement was inspired by this post I found. I went to Hobby Lobby for the container and flowers, but I painted the container to match my front door. Got to tie in that red somewhere! Then I got the burlap ribbon from Wal-Mart. I spent about $20 on this arrangement.

And there you have it! All in all, I spent under $175 on all of this. I was very happy with how it turned out! I've also had a few different people refer to our house as "the one with a cute front porch" so that's been very rewarding after all the hard work! :)

Baby Girl's Nursery Reveal!

I'm done! Well... for now. I have a Phase Two (My hubby says, "Of course you're not done...") that I will do in the future, but I'm done with what I wanted to finish before this baby girl comes.

I think there's virtually nothing in the room that hasn't been left in it's original state. Except for maybe the crib sheet and bumpers. That's it. And that is why it took so long. I like to create a lot of work for myself. Although thank heavens I didn't do it all alone! Thank you to my amazing and ultra-supportive family. It took me, my hubby, my mom, both of my sisters, and one of my brother-in-laws to get this room finished.

The first thing we did was put up crown molding at the top of the walls and add two chair rails. I loved how different this look was. I saw it in a picture on Pinterest and knew it was what I wanted to do. What I underestimated was how long it would take! If I ever do a chair rail again, it will only be ONE with no moulding!

But it was totally worth it for this room. Top it off with off-white paint for the borders and grey in between and I had a great neutral background for the room so that it can be a girl nursery, boy nursery, guest room, whatever it needs to be in the future.

Next we painted all the furniture. My sister Natalie brought down her paint sprayer and we set up a little painting booth in our unfinished basement. Oh my heavens it was a lot of work for her and I will owe her eternally for it. :) We chose off-white for the crib and glider to keep both very clean looking.

And yes my sister might just kill me for posting this pic, but I just love her in paint mode.

Then to spice things up, we did green for the dresser with a distressed look and a stained top. The stain is the same custom mix I did for my dining table and chairs and it worked perfectly! I still have some more for anyone who wants to use it!

 

Amazing transformation, huh? I got the dresser from Craigslist for $60. Between using paint and stain that we already had, as well as the same knobs for the top two drawers, the total cost for this awesome dresser with character is around $85 (I'm including the cost of the new knobs and polyurethane to the original price). You just can't beat that.

The next thing we did while my mom and Natalie were here was to make a roman shade for the window. This window is the only one in our house that gets direct sunlight (hence why our indoor plants always die...) and I knew I would need a good black-out curtain if this baby ever wanted to sleep during the day.

Sorry lighting is bad here!

 We followed this tutorial and made this black-out roman shade from a mini blind. These roman shades sell for $200 on Pottery Barn. Crazy. We made it for less than $35. I love this fabric. It was perfect for my color theme and I loved how it was polka dotted but didn't make you want to zone out while looking at it.

Oh so much more to share! Yay. Years ago we bought a very cheap bookcase (as $4. Seriously) and I wanted to use it in the baby's room, but it definitely needed some TLC. First of all, it was laminate so I had to prime it before painting it. Then for the color, I used a darker version of my grey wall color. Add a coat of polyurethane and it was ready to be moved into the room. But it really needed something to spice it up. Following a Pinterest find, I went to the dollar store and bought 2 foam boards to cut and fit in the back of the shelves. I then hot glued some great fabric I already had on hand to the foam boards and slid them in the back.

Why did I do it that way? Because now I flexibility of switching them out in the future if I move the bookcase to a different room. I love how it dresses up the plain bookcase. And since you've probably noticed, I didn't do it on the bottom shelf because in Phase Two, I will be putting some cute bins on the bottom shelf for baby toys. The rest of Phase Two involves hanging some more things on empty walls (like above the crib).

Above the bookcase I hung the awesome bow holder my friend Janell gave me at my baby shower. I hung it a little high so that I can add hooks sometime to the bottom for the baby headbands I have. That little box on top of the bookcase holds her little hats. The flower pot is one of my favorite little touches in the room. I got the bottom vase at Deseret Industries for $1 and the flower bunch for $1. All I did was spray paint the vase white and add the two together.

Back to the glider: After painting, I recovered the ugly blue cushions on the glider. Oh man that top cushion was a bit of a nightmare because of the inset sewing in the middle. I had to hand sew some of it (and I HATE hand sewing). But it was worth it. I got this fabric from Hobby Lobby and it's duck cloth, which is great for upholstery. This glider also has a footstool that I recovered just using a staple gun.

 

Another thing I made was this ruffled crib skirt. You can't see the ruffles very well because the crib is on the highest setting for a newborn but once we move it down a setting it will be perfect.

My sister Jennifer helped me with this and was kind enough to do all the math and most of the hemming. Love her for it. :) I got the idea for this crib skirt from Pottery Barn (they have SUCH cute stuff, just way too overpriced!). They were selling it for $70 and I made it for less than $10. Have I sold you on DIY yet???

Thank you to my friend Jess who made the green and white pompoms for my baby shower since I was planning on making some for the nursery anyways! And thank you to her for responding to my SOS when my first attempt at making the pink one failed miserably. :) I also love the bedding I have for the crib. It's all ready for a cute little baby!

I also added another flower accent to the room. I just love hydrangeas and there are some very pretty fake ones. I found this bunch at a Down East Outlet for $5. I bought just a clear vase from DI For $1.50, spray painted it the same white as the other vase and I love how clean and pretty it is on the dresser.

Another DI find: This lamp base for $6 and a plain ugly shade for $1. I spray painted the gold base the Oil Rubbed Bronze and then added ruffles to the shade to cover it and tie it in with the cribskirt. The inspiration for this came from here.

 Add a cute little flower made out of the roman shade material on it and it's perfectly girly.

Okay almost done. I needed a mirror above the dresser and when I saw my sister's friend's tutorial on making a sunburst mirror on their blog here, I knew it was perfect. To top it off, it was cheap to make!

Between the mirror (from Michael's, used a 40% off coupon), glue, paint sticks (free from Sherwin Williams -- thanks to the awesome guy who helped me!), and spray paint, this cost me $10 to make.

I love how this mirror makes a statement. It's very large, but I love that because it holds the entire wall's attention and really looks impressive above the dresser.

And that's it! Thank you to my sister-in-law for letting me use her camera so I could properly show you the nursery. Never to be left out of a photo session, here's the big-brother-to-be:

I think he's as relieved as I am happy to have the nursery done. I've spent a lot of time this last month working on it and he's noticed that I haven't been able to entertain him all day long. He better get used to it since that won't change once the baby comes along!

Updating Hardware

For all four of you who anxiously waiting Baby Girl's nursery reveal, I promise it is coming. I'm so incredibly close to be finished.

Until then, I thought I'd share a little side, easy project I did a couple of weeks ago. Since we moved into our house, I've always wanted a corner hutch for my dining room. I was talking about this with my mom a couple of months ago and she said that she knew exactly where I could find one: my grandpa's house. Turns out that my grandma (who has since passed away) bought an antique hutch once upon a time, but it's basically just been sitting in their bedroom. I was pretty close to this grandma and loved the idea of having a piece of furniture that was hers. So after seeing it and judging that it would work, I asked my grandpa if I could buy it from him and he was more than happy to oblige.

My brother-in-law and sister were SO sweet and stopped to pick it up for me on their way to come visit a couple of weeks ago. It needed a little TLC. After vacuuming it out and brushing off the cobwebs, I used the wood conditioner that I absolutely love on it to give it a little more life again.

The next thing I did was update the hardware simply by spray painting it. The hardware blended in with the furniture and I knew if I painted it, the piece of furniture would fit right in with my table and chairs that I just redid. If you haven't looked lately, hardware for cabinets, dressers, hutches, etc. can add up to a pretty penny. Unless you REALLY want a certain kind of hardware, I would suggest first painting your hardware to see if you like it better. This is such an easy fix most of the time and saves you a lot of money. I'm a huge fan of spray paint, if you haven't noticed. :)

So I took off all the hardware and laid it out to spray paint (the six knobs on the right were actually from another dresser). The color I chose to use was the Oil Rubbed Bronze. This is great for updating metal especially. If you haven't noticed though, each of those butterfly hinges had 6 screws a piece. I had no clue how to paint 48 screws (there's one butterfly hinge not shown above) without making a huge mess and having to paint the entire screw. My sister Natalie always comes to the rescue and shared a great tip with me:

 Find a thin cardboard box and just stick the screws in it. This was perfect as I could just spray paint the tops of the screws in two easy coats without having to change angles or rotate them.

So how does it compare when all is said and done? Look for yourself:

BEFORE

AFTER

 I wish I had a better camera so you could really see the difference. Just know that now it looks like it has always belonged in my dining room and isn't a boring thing sitting in the corner. And it cost me less than $3! So next time you want to get new hardware, try some spray paint first. It might surprise you how much it updates your furniture!

My Design Work and My Talented Sis-In-Law

I was a busy woman the last couple of weeks. I've been working on a project that I've been excited to share with all of you!

If you don't know it already, my sister-in-law Deborah is a writer. And I'm her book designer and one of her editors. She published her first book, The Gifted, in March 2011. At the end of this month, she is publishing her sequel, The Betrayed. So without further ado, here are both book covers (and backs):

Two and a half years ago, Deborah entered The Gifted into the Amazon writing competition and made it as a finalist. She made it to the top 100 books! So you know it's good. And honestly, her sequel would have won if she had entered it into the contest this last year (but I'm pretty sure they don't accept sequels). I'm proud of her. Writing a novel is on my bucket list, but she has already written and published two!

I recommend both books to anyone who is interested in YA Fantasy. I really liked the sequel especially (which comes out in less than 2 weeks so you have time to read the first one before it does!).

To order books or to at least check out Deborah's author website, click here.

This is the kind of design I love doing. I wish that I could say I made the brushes used on the book cover, but I didn't. It's a goal of mine to learn how. But, I love designing and I enjoy editing so these two books were the projects for me! And now after who knows how many hours, I will have TWO books on my bookshelf that I have been a part of. Thank you Deborah for giving me the opportunity and for always telling me that I'm awesome. :)

Our Rare Show Of Original Creativity

For some of our neighbor/friend Christmas gifts this year, my husband and I had a moment of creativity and came up with an idea that I've never seen before (but I'm sure we're not the first to think it up).

Last year, my husband won a sweepstakes where he got at least 14 bags of Halls Cough Drops (for tips on doing sweepstakes from Ryan, click here). So since there was no way we needed that many cough drops, we decided to give them away for Christmas. Well, really, my awesome husband says it better than I do (although it didn't QUITE happen this way). Here's his side of the handout we made for our gift:

Isn't my husband so creative? Most people don't know it, but he is pretty talented with rhyming. Although I won't tell you that it took him a half-hour to write this (I never thought he'd get so involved in neighbor gifts!). So then I took 5 minutes and came up with this for the "flipside".

Then we punched a hole in the cough drop bags, tied the handouts to the bags with cute ribbon and wah-la! We were done! No spending hours cooking goodies (although we did do that for a few gifts) and stressing out when they weren't home to receive the goodie plates. It was so NICE!

I'm pretty proud with the way they turned out and we got quite a few laughs when we handed the gift to them. Then they read Ryan's poem and laughed even harder. I told all of them not to expect such creativity out of us next year... because who knows what we'll be doing then!

Going from a muu-muu to muuuuchhh better.

Last year I bought a dress for $4 which is an amazing price, but when I put it on, it looked like a muu-muu (am I even spelling that right?). So I decided to take my first venture into sewing without a tutorial or pattern and it turned out surprisingly well. Here is a tutorial if you would like to try doing it yourself.

So here was the beginning product:

The dress wasn't quite long enough and really needed a tie to break up the funny design and create some structure to make it more flattering. So my first step was to go buy fabric that coordinated with the dress. Make sure to match the color and type of fabric as closely as possible. I simply took the dress with me when I went to find fabric. Make sure the fabric has the same feel, stretchiness, and color.

THE HEM:
Okay so I don't have good pictures of the process because I didn't take pictures while I did it. But the next thing to do is measure the bottom of your dress (just one side, not the circumference) and add a seam allowance to that number of 1 inch (this number is your width). Then figure out how long you want your hem plus 1/2 inch, then double that number (this number is your height). Hopefully that makes sense.

Take the height and width and cut out two pieces of that width and height.

For both pieces, fold the height down so that you don't have to do a hem, because the fabric will just be folded. Then sew the two pieces together on each side with 1/2 inch seam allowance. My dress kind of flared as it went down, so I sewed the pieces at a slight angle so they flared a little too.

Then iron those seams flat so you can sew over them (look left). Then match the bottoms of your dress and hem (the non-folded side) together and pin really well. Make sure to match the two together at the seams on the side of the dress. Then sew.

Now that I have a serger, I would also serge afterwards. If you don't have a serger, just zig-zag stitch

THE TIE:
Figure out how long you want the tie and how thick, then double that number and add a 1 inch seam allowance. Turn inside out and sew it along the long edge to make a long tube. Flip right-side out.


Iron the tie so that the seam is on the backside of the tie. Then tuck in the edges on both ends and sew over to close up the tie.

So I was really scientific about the placement of the tie (and I'm totally being sarcastic). I tried the dress on, held up the tie, marked with an erasing ink marker where I wanted the top of the tie to be on the side (where the dress seam is). Then I took off the dress, measured down from the bottom of the sleeve seam to where the tie was, then marked that length on the other side. I honestly could have put the tie a little taller on this dress, but who said it was perfect? :)

Now you're going to pin the tie to the dress where you marked (make sure there's a pretty even tie on each side leftover). Also make sure you pull both tight so that your tie isn't too loose. After you've pinned it really well, just sew over the tie starting at the top, making a huge rectangle to do the bottom and sides also. Make sure you separate the two layers of dress before you sew so you you're not sewing the insides of the dress together! And make sure where you're sewing on the sides is right along the dress seam.

And wah-la! You're done! With a dress like mine, when you tie it in the back, the fabric back there will naturally bunch together and look nice. And it gives you a nice silhouette!

If you learn anything from this I hope it's that you can easily alter a dress to give it a fresh look or to make it more modest or stylish. All it takes is a little guts and a sewing machine!