Before and After

I got this sweet cupboard from Craigslist for free.

It was a mess!!

The veneer was peeling off and it was missing the back.

 But it was just so quaint and cute.

 I knew it would be perfect for a makeover.

I scraped of the peeling veneer, sanded the holy junk out of it, added a back piece

 and painted it a lovely purple.

I sanded the edges and wiped stain over it. Then, finally added some glass knobs.

Done.

She's a little beauty.

She lives in Ragan's room.

Amongst the rubble.

And, yes, I shoved clothes and other paraphernalia out of the way to snap this picture.

(smiley face)

cake plate love....

Lately, I have been loitering on the Pinterest sight far longer than necessary.

I'm sure some might say it's unnatural and unhealthy for someone to sit and covet  admire all the pretty things on there, but I think I will take my chances with it all!

Well.......on Pinterest, I learned a valuable skill. And that skill is.....cake plate making! Yay me! :)

All you need to make your own cake plate is;

1. some sort of pedestal.

2. a plate

3. Spray paint, if desired.

4. some special glue

So, off to the thrift store I went, in search of a plate and a pedestal.

I found this candle holder for the pedestal......

And this plate........

I loved the green and black so I knew I wasn't going to paint the plate, but the candle holder definitely needed paint. Flat black to be exact.......

With a pencil, I traced around the candle holder on the bottom of the plate.

 I eyeballed the center, but a more perfectionist type might want to measure.

I  put a thin bead of silicone adhesive around my pencil mark.

Less is more when it comes to this kind of glue.....learn from my error here, folks. :)

I let it dry for a few hours and then flipped it right side up.

Easy, Peasy.

For now, this cake plate will hold Mr. Jack.

On account of I won't be baking any cakes in the near future.....on account of my unattractive mid-section girth.......on account of my emotional eating.

But a girl never knows when a cake may be needed....like for a decoration or something.

(or an emotional break down! haha!)

With the silicone adhesive, it is safe to hand wash these babies.

If you opt to spray paint the plate, put a paper doilie or other barrier between the cake and plate.

Have fun!

I've been junking again!

I am not a Craigslist fanatic, but I do get on to check things out from time to time. I always check the free stuff first and then I go to the furniture section, and then finally to the antique section. I have rarely called on or purchased anything because it has to be something specific that I am looking for, and priced within a limit that I've set for myself. With those parameters, the pickin's are slim.

I happened upon a free listing one morning that I just had to be the first to get!

One of the items up for grabs was this cute little deacons bench.

Truth be told, I didn't even notice the bench in the picture on the add. It was all the other stuff that I was interested in. (I will show that later!) It wasn't until we got to the house to pick it all up that I spotted it!

Although it appeared to have been sitting outside for the last several years, it was solid.

It was also super dirty.

 So I cleaned it up and went to work.

I sanded it lightly and spray painted it a lovely buttery yellow.

Then I sanded it again to distress it, and wiped Old English scratch cover all over it. (I opted for the Old English because it doesn't have an offensive smell like stain does and I didn't want to wait to bring it in the house.)

 I put it in the hallway that leads to the preschool room, next to the guest bathroom.

(Picture taken from laundry room doorway)

Then I made this little pinwheel wall quilt to hang over it.  

Oh. I love things like this. Especially with the very affordable and agreeable price of free. ;)

another makeover

I have an old file cabinet in my preschool room that holds all of my lesson plans

and other important things that I need to keep at hands reach.

Well, this summer as we painted the preschool room,

 I got to thinking that this old guy needed some paint too!

So...... I emptied it, and dragged it out to the garage.

I removed the hardware and sanded it quickly with a very fine sandpaper, then wiped it down with a damp cloth to remove any dust or dirt that might be on it.

I picked this "oh my gorgeous!" color to spray it with.....

 A couple of cans of spray paint later and, WALLLL-AAAA! It was transformed.

I looooove how it turned out!

It looks so happy in the preschool room!

(Incidentally, I turn the file cabinet like this so the kids can play with magnets on the side of it.

It's like an extra magnet board in the room!)

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to find something else I can paint with this fabulous color! :):):)

A new lamp....for under $10!

I spotted this cool looking lamp at the GW store a few months ago.

I was dying to get at the make over, but we have been so busy wrapping up

 the end of the school year that I just barely was able to do it.

Now be patient with me as I explain what I did......

I seem to have lost all the pics that went along with the explanation.

I unscrewed the top where the bulb goes. It just unscrews. No tools needed. Once that was done, everything just kind of slides apart....but I left it all connected since I knew I probably couldn't re-connect all the wires if I wanted it in all separate pieces. (make sense??)

I masked off the plug, bulb holder and cord.

Then I painted it with spray paint. It is a Krylon color called Watermelon.

I got a little bit of over spray on the glass, but it came right off with a little W-D 40.

(Sprayed it on a rag then wiped the paint off.)

After it was dry, I slid it all back together and screwed the top back on.

Easy, Peasy, Lemon Squeezy.

 I bought a new shade with a 40% off coupon.

While the cellophane covering was still on the shade,

I traced around the inside of the small part where the fabric is now.

I carefully took the cellophane off the shade and taped it down on a piece of paper to give it more stability. Then I cut it out. I pinned it on some fabric, and cut 4 pieces.

Then, I used clear craft glue to adhere it to the shade.

Using a tooth pick, I smoothed the edges down,

 making sure to clip any threads that may have come loose.

Finally, I glued some fancy ric-rac around the top and bottom.

I love how it turned out.

It's going in our guest room.

The guest room that we will put together after we're done painting our whole downstairs....

which is taking far longer than I want it to.

Right now, it just looks like we turned our house upside down and shook it real good.

Clutter and mess.

The very two things that make me really cranky.

Oh. And it's getting hot.

Make that the THREE things that make me really cranky! ;)

What do you do in the summertime?

There is a song that I learned as a child that began with the question,

"What do you do in the summertime, when all the world is green?"

Well, I don't believe the person who composed that song ever came to Arizona in the summer. Ha ha! There sure isn't anything green once summer hits here.

We have been enjoying cooler temps these last few weeks, though. It's technically spring all over the rest of the United States, but it seems Arizona skips right over spring and jumps right into summer.

We just finished up with preschool so my summer has officially started. I sure am going to miss all of these cute little people coming to my my house 3 times a week!

We always take a silly face picture when we have our class pictures. It seems to get all those funny faces "out of the way" before we take our serious one.

With the warmer weather approaching, the bugs start appearing.

A huge grasshopper came to visit recently.

Rusty had some fun with it before I set it free.

I also managed a finish last week.

I found a small shelf at a thrift store right about 3 years ago. It looked like it had been out in a garage or something because it was dirty and stained. But that was a bonus for me as it was only $5!

I painted it tan and stuck it in our master bathroom toilet room, affectionately referred to as "The Library".

Since there isn't a place to store TP in there and to avoid one having to fetch some from another place causing one to potentially be caught with their pants down (literally), this shelf served its purpose well.

But, it wasn't that attractive. Soooo, I had the mister cut a top for it and I gave it a little face lift.

Now that's much better to look at while one is......er....."brainstorming". ;)

Oh....I almost forgot.

I have a little secret.......

I found another chair!  

Isn't it awesome?!?! I can't wait to get started on the make over!

A Love Affair.

You may remember me mentioning my fondness for chairs.

Some might call it a borderline obsession.

But for the sake of argument, let's just call it a love affair.

My dad gave me a box of chair pieces several years ago. There were the makings of four matching chairs. The backs were in tact, but the seat and legs were all in pieces.

We brought them back from England in the late 70's.

They are so old that they were previously put together with dowel.

Craig and I (mostly me) got a wild hair to put one of them together. It has just gotten to the point that we had to do something with them or toss the whole bunch. This was the third house I had personally moved the box of parts to and I know my parents had moved them that many times or more.  

So we cut some dowel pieces and started wood gluing and clamping one of them back together.

It was a bit of a puzzle but we did it.

There were bits of the old upholstery, nails and tacks on the pieces.

We pulled them all out and filled the holes in and sanded it really good.

I  love the detail of the top piece.

Isn't it pretty??

The open part in the back is supposed to be upholstered

but the chair back is curved we didn't have any
"bendy" wood. ;)

My very handy hubby cut me a seat bottom for it. I sprayed the whole thing with a gloss black. I bought

some foam at Jo Ann's using my 40% off coupon. It ended up costing about $3.50. The fabric I used for the seat was a remnant of upholstery fabric. It was around $4.

Not too bad for a make over under $10!

Now I'm excited to get the other 3 done! My plan is to paint them all black but cover the seats in similar, but different fabrics. We will use them with the table in our kitchen nook.

Fun stuff!

Speaking of feedsacks......

I have another feed sack project to share!

I've been dragging around some vintage 9-patch blocks forever. I found them on ebay for about $7!

They are all hand stitched.

I decided to use the disappearing 9-patch pattern and make them into a little lap quilt.

Mary @ Gettysburg Homestead just finished up a great tutorial with this pattern. http://gettysburghomestead.blogspot.com/

First, you cut your 9-patch in half down the middle squares, then turn your block and cut it in half again down the middle square. (Sorry-I should have taken a picture of this step)

 The thing I like about this pattern is there are several ways to arrange your blocks after they're cut....

You can sew them back together like this-

 Or like this-
(I chose this way)

 Or like this-

 Then you sew them all together!

I quilted in the ditch for this one. It went fast and easy. Two of my favorite things!

This is my favorite block in this quilt. :)

 I put a small checked gingham sashing on it and bound it with a small rosebud print. I like how the black anchored it but it has all f the bright colors found in the blocks.

 I think I am really warming up to all of these fun colors.

Have a great day!

a vintage finish.

About 5 years ago, I bought a vintage quilt top on eBay. It was an incomplete top so it was very inexpensive. When I got it, I didn't quite know what to do with it, but what I did know was that I loved the colors. I was made from old feed sacks, which delighted me all the more.

I could see where the seams of the sacks had been picked apart

and there were stamps like this on a few of the blocks.

I loved the "make do" quality of it.....

See here where two of the light blue hexies are the same color but not the same pattern?

 I like to think of the thrifty hands that pieced this together using the last bits of fabric they had. :)

Since I couldn't make any sort of a quilt out of the top I decided to take it apart and make a few things with it. First, I unpicked enough blocks to make a portion of the quilt into a table runner.

Then, I took two of the unpicked blocks and framed them. I found these frames at goodwill and spray painted them black. Then I used spray adhesive to attach them to the fabric backing.

I took the largest piece for the runner and machine quilted it.

I used a stippling stitch with a red variegated thread.

When that was finished, I couldn't decide how I would bind the edges.

I finally decided to measure and cut straight edges, because some of the border hexies were so uneven.

 Then I bound it with a black pin dot fabric.

It was a ginormous pain in the neck to sew all those corners,

and it took a whole lot longer than I want to talk about,

BUT, I'm so glad it's finished!

 I like how it is just the right size for our big table.

And I loooove the red!

 I hope that whoever pieced this all those years ago, likes how it ended up. 

 I am certainly grateful for all the work that went into it before it came into my life!

A few weeks ago, I had the rare opportunity to stop in at our local Savers store. I don't go there often because, for the most part, they just have clothes and shoes.

But every once in a while I find a treasure there.

This was one of those occasions!  

In a bag, hanging on the wall, I found 12 sock forms.

 Now, they aren't anything vintage, and they were painted in some funky colors,

 but I could see these would be pretty easy to make over. :)

Here is the before picture.

I'm not sure why there are so many holes in the smaller ones.

 My guess would have to be for some decorative purpose....?

**Thanks to my blog friends, I have been enlightened about the holes in the sock forms...They are ventilation holes for the drying of socks. I let out a great big DUH! when I read their comments.

Leave it to me to completely miss the obvious! ;) 

 So, I got out some of my trusty spray paint colors and started spraying.

I found a place for one in our guest bathroom.......

A couple more in our family room.........

I got this wall hanging from Kimberly at My Brown Bag Studio.

We did a swap a while back. I loooove it!

And don't mind the dust....I live in the desert, and dust is just a given.

And more in the upstairs hallway.

Boy!  I sure do appreciate an easy make over project!

**************************************************************************
Onto some other stuff......

I have a dear friend, whom I have known for years, that is organizing a service project for some of the children of Africa. Her son is serving a mission on the Ivory Coast. Given the fact that our son, Mark recently returned from serving a mission in Uganda, it was easy for me to want to contribute.

  It goes without saying that there is such need in Africa....it's hard to even put a finger on one thing that is needed. But, Sindy heard about the teachers who were trying to teach the little children some church songs, but didn't know the tunes. They hadn't heard the songs before, and without a piano, they had no way of knowing the tunes. Sindy immediately went to work organizing a project, collecting children's hymn books and CD's containing the primary songs (in French) to send to Africa.

Then, as most projects go, it got bigger. More people wanted to participate so Sindy decided that she wanted to put together 100 tote bags that included a picture of Jesus, a CTR ring (a popular piece of jewelery in our church that has the CTR emblem on it, reminding the wearer to "Choose The Right") and a Book of Mormon in the French language.

Since I have a hoard of an over abundance of fabric,

 I decided to sew up some tote bags to contribute to the cause.

  I know I'm not alone in saying that there isn't a better feeling

 than knowing you have done something to help someone else.

It sorta just makes you look for the next time you can serve, right?!

:)  :)  :)  :)

One of my favorite sayings......

Give without Remembering,

Receive without Forgetting. 

Have a blessed day!



some more make overs

Well, it's April 1st, and I hope everyone is playing nice April fools jokes on people.

The mean ones are just not as fun!

My Craig sure was the victim of a mean one this morning.....

One of his athletes came up to him this morning with big tears in her eyes,

asking him to help her tell her parents that she was pregnant.

As he went to give her a consoling hug, telling her that he would do what he could to help her,

she started laughing and said, April Fools!

Needless to say, he didn't think it was funny.

I have always told my kids that playing a joke on someone is only funny if everyone has fun.

Anyway.......I have a couple of new make overs to share.

This bowl was a thrift store find that I got a while ago. I really liked it's size and shape.

 It was only $1.99 and I knew I could sand the edges to get rid of the few blemishes it had.

 After I spray painted it black, I did just that. With a nice coat of stain, it turned out real purdy!

 I put some paper grass in it and it made a nice little nesting place for my new grunged eggs.

I got the idea to make these eggs from Linda, over at Parkers Paradise.

Linda is such a sweet blog friend and has the funnest blog.

These eggs are so easy and fun to make and they smell delish!

If you've ever grunged up some candles, then these will be a piece of cake for you.

I keep my wax in an old coffee can and heat it double boiler style.

I put a pan of water on to boil, and set the can inside of the pan.

I use plain old wax that you can buy at the grocery store and colored it with black and brown crayons. I have also put bits of old candles in it (I melt what's left in the jar in the oven (checking often) on about 150* until they're liquid, then pour it in the coffee can) and they help with the yummy smell.

As for the smell, I have added all kinds of spices....cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, allspice, etc.

After all of it is melted, I take the wax off the heat, and start dipping.

I stir the wax  often (with an old wooden spoon) to ensure the spices haven't all sunk to the bottom.

I use rubber gloves and just dip the eggs with my hands

and then set it on wax paper until they have cooled.

 I also rolled them in more spices that I have in a bowl.

It took about 4 dips and rolls before I got the consistency I liked.

As the wax cools, it sticks a little better.

I used my hands to help mold the wax around the egg.

 After I'm done, I peel the drips off of the wax paper and put them back into the wax along with any left over spices. SO fun! :)

The next little make over is for Ragan's bathroom.

I have been looking for a little clock to put in there for a long time,

but couldn't find the right one for just the right price.

BUT----she NEEDS one in there, on account of her chronic lateness.

I remembered this clock that my mom gave me about 100 years ago that I had out in the garage.

I figured I'd see what I could do with it.

I took it all apart......glued some round beads to the bottom for legs and painted it.

And here it is.

I painted it a hot pink first. Then I painted black over the pink. Her bathroom has bit of a shabby chic look to it, so I didn't want to prim it up too much. I spray painted the gold rim around the clock silver. After everything was dry, I lightly sanded the edges to show a tiny bit of pink, then sealed it with a spray sealer.

I think it turned out perfectly for Ragan's bathroom counter.

I have a feeling she will still be late though.

She never has really embraced my 5 minute beauty regimen.