Fall Mantle (a little late)

I feel like this week I am finally getting into a groove...a little. I keep waiting to get less busy but I don't think that is going to happen so I need to get organized and go with it. My son got his splint off (from his broken elbow) which is awesome, but he can't fall on it. And he really likes to play... hard. He is 9 and getting him to slow down is not easy. I might be more nervous now, at least before he had the splint. Poor kids just wants to play football and soccer but we can't risk him falling. He also still can't straighten or bend his elbow so we are adding PT to our schedule.  He is such a trooper though and I get to spend alone time with him waiting in Drs offices, which I kind of love. Shows me I need to make more of a point to hang out with my boy just the two of us.

Well my fall mantle has been up for a few weeks and I have just been slow to share, sorry. I like to change up my mantle for the seasons, but not completely. I keep the base and just change up the extras. It takes too much effort to switch everything out. I have found this is what works best for me. Do you change your mantle with the seasons or more often or not at all? Just a few tweaks really changes the look but doesn't take me all day to do it.

I am really pleased with my fall mantle this year, I feel like I am getting better at styling with more practice. I am getting better at figuring out what I like and what works with the house. And it is fun to look at my mantle and see that I DIY'ed almost everything.

The wheat bundles I found a few years ago on clearance, I just added some brown ribbon to them. The chalkboard is the back of a picture I painted with chalkboard paint. I can always turn the picture around again when I am done with the chalkboard. I painted the chevron pattern onto an old canvas. The fall banner is available in my etsy shop, but is would be easy to duplicate. I used craft paper, book pages and letters cut out of blue paper and strung them together with twine. You can find big letters at a craft store and you can hand cut everything else.

My favorite thing about this mantle are the DIY arrows! As soon as I saw them I knew I had to make them.  Jenn over at My Fabulous Life made them. Aren't they awesome? So easy and fun. Just need some sticks, DMC thread, and clay ( I used gold oven baked clay so I could skip the spray painting).

I still love my little pumpkins, here is a tutorial. You can pick any colors you want to match our decor.

I added a few Goodwill books to the hearth, just make sure to check the books without the paper covers. Their are some pretty books behind those ugly paper jackets.

Aren't those little pumpkins cute? Seriously you should make some.

Hard to believe October is here, I might need to start thinking about a Halloween mantle. I kind of like this one though, we will see.

Have a great day!



Sharing over at: Nancherrow, Tatertots and Jello, Natasha in OZ, Remodelaholic

Announcement!

I am super excited to tell you I have opened an Etsy Shop!!

Every year I make a birthday banner for my kids and this year I started making some for friends and neighbors. When a friend suggested I sell them on Etsy I decided to go for it. I love making banners and other paper signs, now I could do more than just a few a year. And since I got a Silhouette for Christmas I am always looking for ways to use it.

So I wanted to share some of my creations with you in case you are looking for birthday banners or photography props.

I made a SISTERS banner that would work great in a shared girls bedroom or for a prop for a photo. I also have it in purple and could do any color you wanted.

Here is a heart birthday banner I made for my daughters birthday. I could easily add any name.

My latest banners are this elephant and owl birthday banners. They turned out so cute and could be customized with your child's name.

One of my favorites is this rainbow happy birthday banner. It is smaller so your child could hold it up for a picture. My 7 year old can easily hold it on her own.

Here is a Thank You banner great for a wedding or shower picture to send off to guests. It could also be customized to your color theme.

Stop by and check out the shop to see even more choices!

I would love to make a banner for you.

Thanks and have an awesome day!

Master Gallery Wall

I can't get enough of gallery walls, big and small. Gallery walls and stripes, love them! This particular wall in my bedroom is constantly changing. I hang something but don't love it so it only stays a short time, then the wall is empty again. Or I make something and I like too much so I put it somewhere else in my house where I can see it more often. Like the abstract art I did a little while ago. That was moved to the office. So this wall has been blank for a few months now. My husband began asking what happen to the picture that was here? Not a good sign when he starts asking why walls are blank.

So, I decided it need to be finished with something that would stay. So I came up with this. The only thing I didn't already have was a canvas, so this wall cost me $2, perfect!

I knew I wanted some "love" art and I liked the idea of adding some gold. I decided to use my Silhouette and the "weld" feature. The weld feature allows you to take a script font (or any shape) and connect them to be one continuous word.

The day I wanted to work on this I didn't have any gold paper and had no plans in the next few days to make it to the store, so I made some. When I decide to work on something I want to do it now. Patience is not my strong suit. I grabbed some heavy duty white card stock and some craft paint and made my own gold paper.

I used Martha Stewart Metallic paint in Gold and light gold. (The white pile of paint is mother of pearl, but I didn't end up using any of that). I mixed the two together using just a small amount of light gold.

I wanted the brush marks to be seen so it wasn't a solid color.

I LOVE the way it turned out!! So simple. Exactly what I was looking for. I glued it onto a large piece of white paper and put it in a frame I already had.

Next up was some monogram art. Again I used my Silhouette, but you could easily print out letters on your computer in any size and font and cut them out.

I traced the letters and painted them with black craft paint.

I am so pleased with the results. It works perfect for our master bedroom and I have no plans of moving anything. It was kind of fun going through old wedding pictures too. Wow we both look so much younger, how time flies!

I am still toying with the idea of painting the big black frame gold. I tried white but didn't like that. My white spray paint did not match the mat and it looked funny. Maybe I need a different white. What are your thoughts? Keep the black or try gold? Or a different white spray paint?

I hope you all had a wonderful Easter. I love seeing how excited the kids get for Easter morning, such fun memories.




Sharing over at: Skip to my Lou, Mad in Crafts, Yesterday on Tuesday, Love Grows Wild, Home Stories A to Z, Blackberry Vine, Coastal Charm, Tiny Sidekick, Winthrop Chronicles, Lil Mrs. Tori, DIY by Design, The Turquoise Home, Someday Crafts, Fearlessly Creative, 733 Blog, The life of Jennifer Dawn, Cherished bliss, Lamberts Lately, Living well spending less, imparting Grace, Jennifer Rizzo, Life in Velvet, liz Marie Blog, craftberry bush, The 36th Avenue, Remodelaholic, Nancherrow, Tatertots adn Jello, Be different act normal, Thrifty Decor Chick

Painted Drapes Round-up

I have had my painted drapes for about a month now and I still LOVE them. They provide some much drama for a small price tag. I was looking around Pinterest for other painted drapes and found so many as inspiration, so I thought I would share some with you today. The possibilities are endless and each blogger has great tips on painting. I love all the different choices and methods.

I did a tutorial on mine and it is not as hard as you might think. I still love my gray stripes!

The Colored Door (me)

The Blissful Bee made the cutest yellow chevron drapes, so happy.

The blissful Bee

Megan at Balancing Home made these beautiful stenciled drapes. I love the color and design.

Balancing Home

Kelly at View Along the Way has such a fun blog. If you have not checked out her blog you should. She has a great tutorial on painting her striped drapes. I followed her tutorial to make mine.

View Along the Way

I love Laura's striped drapes at The Turquoise Home. They offer just enough stripe to add some interest, very nice.

The Turquoise Home

The Hunter Interior painted some great chevron drapes. The color and size looks so nice.

The Hunted Interior

The Soulful House painted small stripes and they turned out perfect. It still amazes me what a little paint can do.

The Soulful House

So have you seen all the painted drapes lately? Do they look like something you want to have in your home? I was worried about the stiffness of them but they hang really nice and I never touch my drapes so I don't notice the stiffness.  Their are lots of great tutorials out there to follow!

Have a great day!


Sharing over at: The Turquoise Home, The life of Jennifer Dawn, 733 Blog, Someday Crafts, Cherished Bliss, Lamberts Lately, Mostly Homemade Mom, Not Just a Housewife, Thrifty Decor Chick, The child at heart blog, Living Well spending Less, Imparting Grace, Liz Marie Blog, Jennifer Rizzo, Craftberry Bush, The 36th AVenue, Remodelaholic, Nancherrow, Tiny Sidekick, Yesterday on Tuesday

Winter Centerpiece

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving. It was so nice to take a few days off, now I just need to get caught up on laundry and email. I am almost glad Cyber Monday is over so maybe my email will slow down, so many ads. Anyway back on task.

We went to my parents for the Holiday and I volunteered to take care of the centerpiece. My mom does an amazing job at hosting around 25 people every year and a lot of them are overnight guests as well and she does it with ease. Everyone pitches in with the food but I thought I would also help with some decorations since that is what I really enjoy.

I was more inspired by a winter theme than a fall theme this year, and since my parents had about a foot of snow it seemed fitting.

I went hunting through my Dad's wood workshop and found this beautiful piece of wood. He had it cut from his own woods and plans to make some furniture with it, I call dibs on that piece. It worked perfect running down the length of their table. I also added burlap in three strips down the table. I found mine at Hobby Lobby, the roll was 15 feet long and about 7 inches wide.
We used a table cloth my Mom had and fortunately she had lots of white candles.

My Dad and I went hunting through the woods looking for different kinds of evergreens. There were several varieties to choose from, most of which where extremely pointy and sharp. Their was no danger of the kids touching this centerpiece, at least not more than once.

I brought some feathers to mix in with the evergreens. I picked them up at Michaels. I absolutely love that the bark is still on the wood. If I had had room in my car I would have tried to sneak this in.

I added glass candle holders at each end to anchor the centerpiece and added more greens inside.

 We had another small table off to the side for more people to sit so I added some log slices with greens and candles. Their is no shortage of natural elements to use for decorating at my parents house. My Dad and I found a log in his barn that he was able to cut into slices, it worked perfect. And these I got to bring home!

I need to finish my Christmas decorating, we don't even have our tree yet. This week for sure, the kids are so excited. I finished my outdoor flowers pots yesterday, just in time for some overnight snow. Every year I say we should do more outdoor lights, but then it is so cold to go outside and string them up. I still have time right?

Have a wonderful day!


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My New Kitchen Wall

I really hope a house can't have too many chalkboards because I just added another one. I love the look of the chalk markers so I had to try one out for myself.

This is how the wall was before. We have had this wine rack for a long time and as you can see it is mostly empty. Because I like wine. So there isn't usually much hanging around. And an empty wine rack doesn't look that good. Sometimes I didn't drink a bottle because then the rack would be empty and that just seemed wrong.  So down she came.

I started by putting the pictures on the floor so I could see how they looked together. I even put tape on the floor showing how wide the wall was, I am VERY visual.

Then I cut out pieces of paper the same size as the pictures and hung those up. I then measured where the hooks were on each picture and marked that on the paper so I could put the nail right into the paper and the picture hung right where I wanted it.

I found these chalk markers at Michaels. They worked pretty good, but I would try a different brand if I bought more. You had to push down on the tip to release the paint/chalk and if it ran out half way through a letter it was hard to get it to look perfect when I went back. Maybe this is how they all are though.

I put chalkboard paint on the last of my canvas stash. Here is where I painted over a canvas for my mantle. I really love the look of the chalk marker, it is so crisp and bright. And I finally found a permanent location for my watercolor "S". Here is a tutorial I did on watercolor letters. The mirror was a birthday present from Ballard Designs.

I love this new corner, now it looks complete. The mixture of colors and finishes just feels perfect to me.

Have you used a chalk marker before? What is your favorite brand?

Have a wonderful day!!



Linked up at: Liz Marie Blog, One Project Closer, It's overflowing, Or So She Says, Suburbs Mama, Uncommon Designs, Craft-O-Maniac, Skip to my Lou, Keeping it Simple, Cupcakes and Crinoline, My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia, Blackberry Vine, Coastal Charm, A bowl full of lemons, Sugar Bee Crafts, Hope Studios, A stroll thru life, Handy Man Crafty Woman, DIY by Design, Someday Crafts, The Life of Jennifer Dawn, The Happy Housie, The Trendy Treehouse, Cherished Bliss, Lamberts Lately, Imparting Grace, The 36th Avenue, Life Inspired, Thrifty Decor Chick