Wreath Redo and How-to!

I got the idea for this wreath (Insert Picture of finished wreath)

somewhere on blog land.  I know it is one of the blogs that I follow but I am not sure which one. 

Anyway it was super easy and super cheap, but very (and I mean VERY) time consuming.  This would be a good project if you were on a long car ride, or had some extra time to kill. 

Here is the how-to for the paper wreath up-cycle.

Supplies to make the 'flowers:

Old dictionary style book (it needs to have the pages filled with words to look the best)

Box Cutter

Large Flower Punch

Brown Stamp ink (I had two different colors)

All you need to do is punch the flowers out of the book pages. I found I could get the most out of the pages if I cut them off of the binding with a box cutter.

Oh and a quick little tip for the punch.  If it starts to freeze up, just take a piece of wax paper and pump the punch a few times.  The wax paper will lubricate the sides of the punch and prevent it from sticking.

After all of the flowers were cut out, I 'swiped' just the edges in the ink. I tried to alternate between the two colors for a really antiqued look.

(Insert Picture)

Then I took a wreath that was given to me a few years ago at Christmas time.  It got a little smashed in storage..as you can tell.  It just looked like a lump of red.

I removed all of the plastic balls and flowers.  Which left just the base. 

I would have just bought a new Styrofoam wreath, but 1. I couldn't find one that wasn't ginormous and 2. they were like $10.  I didn't want to spend anymore than I had already invested into this project.  Which was $27 (and that included a new hot glue gun). 

The cost break down will come later. 

Back to the pictures.

After hot gluing it back together 

I wrapped it with some off white satin binding.  It was waaaay cheaper than ribbon. 

I hot glued as I went to make sure that it was secure.

Much better. No?

Now it's time to attach those flowers!

Really the idea behind this thing is like what you would have done in grade school art class.  You crinkle up a piece of paper and glue it really close to the last one, which give it that tufted look.

I found the easiest way to do this is to wrap the paper flower around the eraser of a pencil. 

Then add a dab of hot glue, you really don't need much, then (with the paper still wrapped on the end of the pencil) stick it to the wreath. 

This is what it will look like when you first start.

Then this is what it will look like after about three hours....yea, told you it took a very VERY long time.

Then this is what it will look like after about 9 hours worth of hot gluing.... 

(finished picture)

But it was totally worth it! I love the finished product.  Of course you can use a lot less flowers than I did.  But that's the look that I wanted. 

Ok as far as cost goes....

Book: $1

Flower punch: $1 (bought on a garage sale)

Wreath: Free

Hot Glue Gun: $20 (but it can be used on other projects...so I won't really count the cost)

Box Cutter: Free, stolen from my mom's house

Ink: Free, also stolen from my mom's house

Satin Binding:  Joann's for like $4

So total cost of this project (minus glue gun) was a whopping $6. 

Yea, 9 hours was totally worth $6.  :)

Pretty Silver!

So here are some more pretty silver pieces to accompany last week's post. 

These are different silver plated items that I have acquired from different estates and auctions. 

Here is a picture of the condition of a silver pitcher I got from an online auction.

Yuck, huh?  But the good news is I only paid 3 bucks for this, another silver 'Revere' style bowl, and a whole big box of other silver looking items...I just know they will come in handy one day. 
Hopefully.

Here they are soaking in a homemade silver cleaner!  This is what I like to call Kitchen Chemistry. 

Which is my favorite, by the way!

Anyway, what you will need is:

baking soda,

table salt,

hot water,

aluminum kitchen foil,

some kind of baking dish or basin to put everything in (I just used my kitchen sink)

Here is what you do:

1. Fit your container (sink or other wise) with a piece of aluminum foil, making sure that it touches both sides of the container. 

2. Fill with hot water. 

3. Then put equal parts salt and soda in the container.

4. Place silver items in the container.  You will smell a slight metallic smell and see the bubbles from the reaction. Look at the pictures, that is why the water looks cloudy.

6. If your container is not big enough to submerge the piece completely, then turn after about five minutes.  You may have to repeat if they are really bad, like mine were.

5. Remove your pieces and buff with a clean and dry rag. 

And when you are done you will have cleaned silver without the harsh chemicals and little to no elbow grease!

Look how shiny they are...and this is all without scrubbing and no harmful chemicals. 

Then (because it was night time) I grabbed a flashlight and went to get some flowers to put in my newly cleaned silver pitcher!  And yes, my husband did think that I was crazy.

But doesn't it just look great on my window sill?

I love fall!

It Starts....

I have decided to get off of my lazy butt and start (and hopefully finish) some of these projects that I have been dreaming about. 

So this weekend it all started.  What pushed me to start?  Well we are trying to sell our house and we had a call from a realtor to 'showcase' (whatever that means) twice on Saturday...well we unfortunately had to turn her down because my Oma passed away.  For those of you who are not German, it's my grandmother (on my mother's side).  Although it was not unexpected, it was a difficult weekend.  So a distraction of the crafting and DIY-ing persuasion was welcome.  Actually my mom is coming over on Tuesday to help stencil the back room (more details to come!)

Here is a list of what I did on Saturday from 2pm on  and all day on Sunday.  Are you ready?

Saturday:
2-3:30p- collected supplies from the parents house
4-6p- did some shopping in town @ The Home Depot, Walmart, and Aldi.  The Home Depot should really be called the Intimidation Station..I mean really I never go here and holy crap there is just to much stuff.  Luckily the workers are very nice and helpful.

6:30ish- got home, put groceries away, ate a quick dinner, clean our messy kitty's room, painted said kitty room (which is actually a half bath), and did laundry and made it to bed by 11ish.

Sunday:

7:30a- woke up and made the E monster pancakes and sausage
8a-11:30a- Put another coat of paint on the back bathroom.  Spray painted...A LOT, picked up and started to glaze a mirror...I also ripped apart an old interior design picture because I wanted the frame.
Noon- Lunch at the hubby's grandma's house.  This is just about an every Sunday tradition.
2-3:30p- Spray Painted more and picked up a bit. 

3:30-6p- I have been reading this blog Make 5 Dinners in ONE Hour and it has had me really intrigued.  So I tried it.  Mainly because I had 3lbs of hamburger that I needed to split up...so why not just make the meals they will be used for?  So I made Meatloaf and mashed red potatoes and gravy, beef stroganoff, and hamburgers, and chicken stir-fry.  Now they are not complete meals like I still need to make noodles and rice but I am pretty excited that I am done cooking for the week and now I will be able to getting our house in viewing condition.  Oh yea I also made these killer muffins from King Arthur Flour. 

They are soo good!  I just them to make chocolate chip muffins...just add chocolate chips (I use milk chocolate) to taste and a few table spoons of water...because the baked muffins will get quite dry in 3 days.

I am really tired today...but I will have a whole bunch of cool before and afters to post this week.  I am pretty excited about it. 

Just wait for the fun coming up!

Diversifying my Handiness Portfolio.

I really think that my husband needs to make more money so I can stay at home and diversify my handiness portfolio.  Your thinking what the heck? Right?  Well after looking at the million bazillion trillion websites that are about DIY-ifiying your home.  I am totally obsessed, and not only that I am seeing AMAZING projects that I know I could do.  Well ok, may be not do well but defiantly do. 

But if I could become a stay at home mommy and wifey then I could get some practice with baking super cute desserts, doing crafty decorations, up-cycling old crappy furniture, and the whole slew of other things that I would like to do that keep me up at night. 

Well actually I have a few projects up my little slevies, muhahaha (evil laugh).  We actually the way these projects excite me it should really sound like EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! (Better? No?)

I need to get some pictures up...well I should say I need to charge my camera(s) so that I can take some pictures of my projects before I start them.  You can see some of them in the previous post.  But I have a bit of a surprise, I conned/quilted the hubby into getting me the coolest buffet ever!  Accept the truth of the matter is I am a little intimidated to get into the whole redoing/up-cycling thing.

I know this piece has great potential but I have never done a project like this and I don't really want to mess it up.  I should just go for it right?  The perfectionist in me says that I will never get it to look like this from Better After. 

I mean look at that!  Isn't that awesome! OMG! Can I fake an illness so I can skip work to begin the beautiful transformation that I have in mind?

Ok, I'll stop obsessing over what I don't have time to do right now.  But I will get pictures posted sometime soon! 

I think these projects really need to be started soon, if not I do not see much sleep in my future.

I want to be DIY and design queen!

So after hours to trolling the depths of the interwebs, I have found my new calling:

DIY designing my home. 


I know, it seems like a really silly thing to be excited about.  But the thing is I am really super excited about my self assigned projects.  It was pretty hard not to after looking at websites like this one Centsational Girl.  And there are like 500 million of these blogs out there. Oh after looking at them, it really makes me drool and anticipate the next free weekend that I have to start some of these projects!


So here is a short run down of the things that I plan on doing (and spending under $100)


1.  Framing the mirrors in the bathrooms.
     
     This one may be a little tricky, but what I am planning on doing is gluing the mirrors to the wall, then gluing a baseboard frame to the mirrors (after they are painted white of course).  Hopefully they will look a little more finished than they are now.


2.  Painting the bathroom vanity white.


     This one is still up for debate.  I would like to do it.  I think that it would really finish off the room and the feel better than the laminate wood color that it is now...or maybe I should try staining it a dark mahogany color.  Well at any rate I would like to change the color.


3.  Yard Sale and Restore decorating.


     There were tons of ideas on those websites that I have been obsessed with for the last few days.  There are somethings that I would have never thought about.  Like taking frames (or making if you are savvy with power tools, which I am not) and wrapping them with yarn.  I know it sounds kinda funky but it looks really cool.  And I also realized that you can paint ANYTHING.  Seriously. 


4.  Repainting/Upgrading Laminate bookcases and TV stand


    We were given some really nice bookcases a while ago.  The only bad thing is that they are laminate wood, and pretty ugly.  So I plan to paint a few of them and see how they turn out.  And I plan on having a friend who is good with wood working help me to transform the TV stand into something a little more substantial than it is now.  And paint that black too!


Oh man do I have a TON of stuff to do, I am soo excited!