The Eve

Happy Christmas Eve! I'm just checking in this lovely Saturday without a usual lengthy essay. Let me tell ya, I fully intended on a full post this week but I'm having technical difficulties with the 'ole point and shoot so I'm going to have to take a rain check and get this week's holiday flavored post up next week. Sorry! I'm off to wrap the remaining few presents we've got to give and then family will be my top priority! Have an incredible Christmas everyone! Thank you Lord for this day of celebration, for sending your Son so that we might know what love is!

Introducing...

Rockin' Chair

Behold, a glider.  It's a glider my mother-in-law rescued from either a curb or someone ridding themselves of extra furniture...I forgot the real story.  Either way though, it was free and my sister-in-law took it in as her own with hopes of reupholstering it and making a new seat bottom.  And that's where I come in.  :)  Making a trip up to New York (where Anthony's fam is from) for a wedding, gave us a great weekend to recreate this glider together.  It was my first experience ever sewing upholstery and it actually turned out pretty darn good...although I had an incredible sister-in-law-sidekick who actually did most if not all of the actual sewing...her first time too!  I tried to take a bunch of pictures of the whole process but we were so hard at work I ended up limited in the pic department but I'll do my best to explain.

I might mention before I start too, that this was a very, very low budget project (the story of my life).  With that in mind, we first had to find a seat cushion.  In comes my wonderful mother-in-law.  She found an old couch cushion that we cut up just a little here and there, fit together like a puzzle, and glued back together.   

I know the picture looks a little rough but before making a fabric slipcover for it, we used some "improvised batting" to smooth it out.  You see, normally we would have just used regular, store-bought batting from the store, but we didn't think about buying it while we were there, went home without it, and then didn't want to make the trek back out to the fabric store.   Soooo, we used...one of Alicia's old fleece blankets! I had heard once before of someone using fleece as a substitution for batting but never had the chance to try it until now.  Basically we just wrapped the entire homemade cushion up and then glued the fleece together along the one and only seam. 

 Then we concocted our new fabric slipcover.  Unfortunately, I didn't take one picture of us making the slipcover but basically we sewed together six pieces of fabric - a top panel, a bottom panel, and four side panels.  Pinning the fabric together inside-out over the seat cushion, then removing it with the pins intact to the sewing machine helped us to get a perfect fit.

As for the seat back cushion, we decided to just sew a fabric slipcover right over the existing fabric to make life a little easier.  However, the existing fabric was a little too textured to remain completely smooth under the new fabric so first we covered it with...yep, the same fleece blanket!  First we wrapped the cushion in the fleece, glued it together along the seam in the back, and then pinned our way along the curved edge.  After sewing along our pinned edge, we had a perfect fit.   

To make the new fabric slipcover, we used the same pinning technique using two panels of fabric.  We pinned along the cushion while the fabric was on the cushion, removed the cushion (very carefully so none of the pins came out), and sewed along the pinned edge.  Here's the finished slipcover, ready to be put on:

Alicia then used her mad hand-sewing skills to sew both slipcover openings (top and bottom cushions) closed.

That was the extent of what I witnessed that weekend.  Alicia was left to recover the arm rests herself...and she did an incredible job!  Here's a picture she sent me a couple weeks ago of the finished product:

Doesn't it look incredible!  It's a whole new chair!  Seriously!  Add a cute, patterned throw pillow, Alicia, and her future babes and it'll be one rockin' chair, huh?  :)

The fabric Alicia bought was from JoAnn's.  It was a soft, faux, blue suede and cost around $30.  I can't remember how much we bought so I'll have to put in an update once I find out.  Everything else was F-R-E-E.  So, 30 beans for a brand new glider and a wealth of sewing experience for both of us...not too shabby! 

Anyone else taken on revamping a glider?  I'd love to see pictures!  Send 'em on over!

Have a great weekend everyone!  I'll be back next weekend to tell a couple of secrets we've been keeping from y'all!  :)

Oops...and an Update

So, you Saturday readers of mine, you might've noticed I just might've made an oops last Saturday in the form of zilch for a blog post...so sorry.  We got some ground-breaking news on the home front (I'll divulge later, gotta love cliff hangers...whatever keeps you coming back, right?) Friday and then celebrated our four years of blissful marriage in New Orleans on the day when I should've been pressing PUBLISH.  (I was just gonna write this here post a week late becasuse of my blunder but my kindly sister sweetly reminded me that she had been looking forward to a blog post last weekend and guilt-tripped me into this little post here...just kidding, she just provided the mid-week motivation I needed.)  Ah well, it's now Tuesday and I'm currently in the middle of whipping up some oh-so-good enchiladas for dinner so I'll give you a spoiler for being so patient with forgetful me.  Since I don't have time in the present to write a whole this-is-what-I-did post for ya, I'll just post all the delish pictures and you can figure out your own story line until I get a couple of minutes (or an hour) to fill in all the words.  So, here ya go people!  Imagine away!



T.E. Dious

For the past three weeks I’ve been working on the most time-consuming, am-i-insane project ever…but it’s done now and was “wall” worth it.  Let’s backtrack though before we get to the good stuff.

As you might recall, we’ve been transforming our master bathroom into light and bright over the dark and outdated it was.  So far, we’ve ripped up the laminate tile, laid down new, ceramic tile, painted the cabinets, and painted the laminate countertops.  Most recently though, I took to painting the walls and adding some accent wall flair with a stencil.  I’ve always loved the idea of having a tiled accent wall, using either some gorgeous glass subway tile or round penny tile in a bathroom but, on a budget, those dreams remain just what they are…dreams.  :)  But the next best thing is a free stencil, right? 

So, using the same stencil (downloaded from Jones Design Company) I used to spice up these pillows last spring, I first penciled the stencil, then grabbed a small paint brush and leftover cabinet paint (Promenade by Valspar) and played Picasso.

Here’s the wall before I started:

   Of course, this is after I painted the entire room – Smoked Oyster by Valspar.  It’s a sort of dark grayish beige, or greige if you’re into mixing words like that.

This is in process…when I was questioning why I did this and also came to the realization that my hand wasn’t as steady as I had previously thought…:

 And this is done:

The whole process took me almost three weeks to finish, me working on it about 4 hours a week…yeah, for one wall, that’s crazy!  Tell me about it!  One of the reasons it took me so long though is because I used an el cheapo paint brush we had lying around.  It was not very short of a kids watercolor brush.  But, once I started with it, I had to continue because if I had gotten a nicer, stiffer brush it wouldn’t have looked quite as hand-painted…which I wasn’t necessarily going for but actually looks really good on the completely finished wall. 

Any imperfections are unnoticeable because when you look at the finished wall, your eye doesn’t know where to land so they just blend in…even though after I was done I did take some of the greige paint to fix a couple of “oops” spots.

I’m really happy with the end result even though I’m not sure if I’ll ever take on this stencil again…it made the $40 - $50 wall stencils look cheap and maybe worth it in the future.  But, when the day comes where I forget how long this took me but remember how cheap it was to do, I’ll probably stick my foot in my mouth and do it again.  :)

Just to jog your memories, here’s where we started:

And here’s where we are so far:

We have yet to add some floating shelves to the wall in between the two mirrors, make a roman shade to adorn the window, and add some other decor in the way of pictures and such before we can officially call it a done deal but the big projects are d-o-n-e.  Thank goodness, because the loveseat’s a-waitin’.  Look for a post on her next week…yes, we’ve made progress!  Until then, have a great weekend! 

Happy Feast Day!

Today is the feast day of St. Cecilia, who happens to be the incredible saint I chose for my Confirmation in eighth grade to be the saint I would imitate and who would be my guide and leader to our one, true, and loving God...a.k.a. my heroine.  :)  So, because of her day and her awesomeness, she deserves a special, it's-not-Saturday blog post.

(image found here)

There are so many words I could type to describe this holy woman but I'll stick to the stories that pluck my heart strings and that glorify our Lord, proving His powerful presence and undying love for us.

Cecilia was married to a man named Valerian, an arranged marriage, but vowed to remain a virgin.  On their wedding night she revealed this vow to her new husband and also told him that an angel of God in her presence, guarded her virginity and would let no one touch her.  She told Valerian that if he were to believe in the Lord and be baptized, he too would see the angel that guarded her.  He did and upon returning from his baptism, he saw Cecilia praying in her chamber, beside her an angel with flaming wings who placed two crowns of roses and lilies upon each of their heads.  Can you imagine?  Sometimes I wish God would allow us all to see the angels that roam this earth so that everyone would believe, but I know that we would either pass out or die just looking at their beauty.  And, what's the value of faith if everything is handed to you on a silver platter, right?

So anyway, on to the sad and a little gory, but glorious part of her life...her death.  Because of her outward love for God in a time when religion was persecuted, Saint Cecilia was condemned to die, first by enduring extreme heat and thereby, suffocation.  By the grace of God, and I mean by the grace of God (oh my gosh!), it had no effect on her - she didn't even SWEAT!  Seeing the ineffectiveness of her "death sentence", an executioner was sent in to sever her head.

(image found here)

  After three blows, he gave up trying.  He had succeeded in severing her head partially but she still lived for three days, preaching and praying to God.  After the three days were over and her death came to pass, those around her knew she must be in heaven.  It was around the year 177 A.D.

Now my fave part...in the year 1599, her body was exhumed and found incorrupt - meaning it did not show signs of decomposition!  If that's not proof of a working, magnificent God, I don't know what is?!  Things like this don't just happen! 

Presently, Saint Cecilia is buried in a church built in her honor in Rome.

The picture above shows a sculpture in St. Cecilia's in Rome that was handcrafted by a sculptor who was present at the time her body was exhumed and found incorrupt.  He formed his masterpiece based on what he saw, Cecilia's body 'distored but somehow graceful'.  The pavement in front of the statue contains a round marble slab with an inscription of the artist's statement, made under oath, that Cecilia's body was found incorrupt:

Behold the body of the most holy virgin Cecilia,

whom I myself saw lying incorrupt in the tomb.

I have in this marble expressed for you the same saint in the very same posture.

(Quoted from here.)

Her story takes my breath away every time I hear it and causes me to love God with a renewed fervor, counting on his unending mercy and hoping to one day be in the His presence and that of all of His saints.

Saint Cecilia...Pray for us!

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To read more about Saint Cecilia, click here and/or here.

To read about more incorrupt saints, click here.  (Yes, there are lots more!)

To read more on what the big deal about consecrated virginity is and why it's special, click here and/or here.

Nothing New

Happy Saturday everyone!  I for one am estatic that's it's the weekend because it happens to be the only weekend in three weekends that I've been home!  Last weekend, I went on a road trip with three high school crazies -

- to visit my alma mater, Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio.  The two weekends before that Anthony and I were retreats, one as chaperones and one as 'retreatants'.  All of the days in between it was work, work, work and no play, play, play (which you all know in my case is translated diy, diy, diy).  However, to keep you entertained and coming back, I've got a better-late-than-never AND I promise that next week's post will be 'wall' worth it!  :)

Anywho, let's take a trip down memory lane, circa this past summer, back when our tomato plants were pumping out those little, red, succulent, maters like it was no one's business...

and when more than one of our daily meals consisted solely of homemade salsa and chips.

Well, it was during those hot, humid, glory days that some friends and I decided to have a craft night.  We cranked out a couple of plain-shirts-made-fab-with-embellishments that night (neither of which I have pictures of...shame on bad blogger me) and the much pinned melted crayon art project.  The process is as follows:

1 - Glue

2 - Melt with hair dryer

 3 - Admire

We liked it upside-down.  :)

Twas much fun!

It was also around that same time that I stumbled upon this criss-cross, geometric fabric

at a local discount store (for $5 a yard),  in exactly the amount I'd need to do what I had in mind and proceeded to drive just a little bit over the speed limit all the way home to make these:

(Sorry for the awful picture.)

About a year ago, I adorned our french doors with sheers and this time, instead of replacing the sheers with the new geometrics, I simply layered the two.  :)

And that's all I've got this week...pitiful, I know.  Time has not been my friend.  However, due to Thanksgiving, I have the whole week off next week and I've already got a list started...enough for, hmmm, let's see, five future blog posts?  Busy bee I will be...a busy, happy bee that is.  :)

In the meantime, I'm off to try to steal Anthony away from his studying to help me start reupholstering the loveseat!  :) 

Have a great weekend everyone and a Happy Thanksgiving!  Thanksgiving day also happens to be my beloved's birthday this year so I'll be celebrating my blessings times two!

Words From the Wise Irish Twin

To add some family fun lovin' to our blog, (er, what I really mean is, to distract you from the sad but true fact that I don't have another project whipped up or one of the many I've been "working on" done) I asked my Irish twin sis, Farrah, to guest post this lovely weekend.  She was born ten months and five days after me - me in February and her in December - and yes, we have the same mother.  As the story goes, our mother got a surprise notification at her post-birthing-me exam.  :)  News to us and known by God, we endearingly refer to that blessed surprise as "Peach".  She's one of the most artistic, creative people I know and I'm so excited for her to share her wisdom with y'all.  So, without further ado, here's Peach:

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Well, I'm excited to say, I am one day closer to putting my sister's fabulous tutorials, tips, and tricks to practice! But first, I must CLEAN.

A recent series of events has landed us in this little ditty.

It's a cute, little, three-bedroom house only a couple blocks from the beach. 

As my sister knows, I am a total sucker for all-natural products and all things DIY and budget-friendly; having a new baby only makes me more so.

So, to prepare my canvas (aka new home), I am pulling out all my cleaning secrets (or maybe not so much secret) but certainly all-natural, DIY, and cost-effective cleaning methods. Of particular interest, and for the purposes of this post, I am highlighting odor-fighting tricks and wanted to throw out a couple quick and easy recipes. Bear with me.

1. I use this to wipe down pretty much everything, including walls:

ALL PURPOSE CLEANING SOLUTION:

1 part (preferably distilled) water to 1 part distilled white vinegar

Lemon EO (optional)

That's it. So easy right? And vinegar as a cleaning agent rocks. Read more about it here. (O, and don't worry, as you clean, the vinegar smell will completely dissipate.) The essential oil is totally optional. Sometimes I'll even just throw in a fresh lemon peel (makes it pretty). A note though about the benefits of lemon essential oil. It is thought to lift spirits and fight fatigue and psychological weariness (definitely helpful when cleaning), and is a powerful antiseptic - antibacterial, antiviral, and antifungal (also good for cleaning). It's also useful for a lot of other cool things. See here.

So, to rid of smells trapped in walls (aside from painting... also very effective, and I'm certain you can find a tutorial about that on here somewhere), I simply wipe them down with this solution using a soft sponge (so as not to destroy the paint).

I also set out bowls of straight up vinegar where needed (particularly smelly areas like closets) and let them sit anywhere from overnight to several days.

*Tip: If you get a gallon jug of vinegar, use half the jug to set out in bowls and replace that half of the jug with water to make your cleaning solution. To this I add about 40+ drops of Lemon EO.

2. To deodorize the carpet, we use this:

NATURAL CARPET DEODORIZER

(Recipe adapted from aromaweb.com)

1 12 ounce container of baking soda

8 drops Tea Tree EO (optional)

8 drops Lemon EO (optional)

16 drops Lavender EO (optional)

You can always find a use for baking soda so be economical and get a big box. But also get one of the small 12oz ones with the holes in it that permit you to "shake" it onto your carpet and just refill it as needed. Again, straight up baking soda does the trick but I love using essential oils, especially because of their antibacterial and disinfectant properties (the above named are particularly useful). If you choose to use the oils, simply add them to the container and shake it all up really well (you may have to remove a little baking soda first to give you room to do so). 

To use, simply sprinkle onto your carpet, allow it to sit for 20 minutes (sometimes I leave it overnight) and then vacuum it up. That's it!


A few more smell-good tips:
– Sprinkle several drops of your favorite essential oil (mine is lavender) onto your ac filter to get the house smelling fabulous in seconds. Sort of like a giant diffuser. (My husband was the genius behind that one.)
– Also, dry coffee grinds are another great odor-neutralizer and can be set about in small bowls/cups much like the vinegar.
– Dilute several drops of your favorite essential oil in a spray bottle with water and use like you would Febreze. 

So there you have it. Now my sweet daughter can rest her weary head upon fields of clean, aromatic carpet and reserve her energies for things of greater importance, like finding her lost sheep...

Note: She does have a bed. I only do this for pictures. I swear. Check out more here.

Thanks for reading and happy cleaning!

~Farrah

Toothpicks Galore

I recently swiped up this Target mirror

complete with a few dents and a bunch of tape residue due to someone placing some sticky stickers on it's pristine surface.  Happy camper I was though because I took it home for 3 bucks, knowing a little creativity would hide those imperfections and leave me with a brand new mirror.

So, I brainstormed for about a week on what I could do to fix it up; something that would barely make a noticeable difference to the 'ole bank account.  Here's what I came up with:

Should I...modge podge fabric or scrapbook paper on?  Glue on sticks from the backyard?  Cut wine bottle corks into small circles and glue them on?  Glue twine or some sort of string around it's perimeter?  Since it was going in the laundry room, glue on some clothes pins?  Use a silver sharpie to draw on some sort of design?  Glue on tile/rocks/pearls/vase fillers?  On and on and on my brain racked.  

After making two maybe-something-will-pop-out-at-me trips to Michael's, I was almost set on the gluing on tons of pearls option...but I couldn't find any faux pearls that weren't meant to be strung/without a hole in them, not to mention the fact that the amount of pearls I needed would cost more than I wanted to spend.  

So it was that I felt like I was back to brainstorming when I stumbled upon a little box of goodness and inspiration as I was reaching into our cupboard for a can of soup for lunch - TOOTHPICKS!  Perfect!  I could glue lots of toothpicks around the perimeter!  A trip to the store and I was all set!

      

Out came the mirror, which I first cleaned with a damp cloth.  I really didn't bother trying to scrape the sticker residue off much since it was just going to get covered up, besides, the mirror frame is made out of MDF and I really didn't want to warp it with cleaner and lots of scraping.

 In the above picture you can see penciled lines - I quickly tested the 'draw on it with silver sharpie' idea using a pencil just to see if the design I had in mind would look good.  As you know now though, that idea was scrapped and eventually disappeared behind the chosen wood sticks.

To attach the toothpicks to the frame, I used some craft glue we already had.  I worked in sections, lest the glue dry faster than I could work, and simply laid a thin foundation of glue, threw on a handful of toothpicks, and arranged them next to each other.

To make sure the toothpicks were laid at the correct angles, I laid the top and sides first as a base to go off of.

 When I got to the pegs, I just trimmed some toothpicks to fit around each.

500 toothpicks later, we have this:

 A mini-mudroomesque spot to hang a coat or two and maybe an umbrella.  :)

I really love the natural look of it but if ever the tides change, the toothpicks could easily be stained or I could whip out some of my favorite color in a can and spray paint the entire frame.

It will also serve us well as a memo board of sorts to hold to-do lists, birthday reminders, and whatever else we feel we need posted, all in the name of beauty AND function.  :)

Total cost:

Mirror:  an "as-is" steal for $3

Toothpicks:  $3 (I only used 2 boxes of the 6 I purchased...and will be returning the extra 4) 

Craft glue:  free (already had) 

Grand Total:  $6

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I was anticipating a post this weekend on our 'painted wallpaper' but it's taking much, much longer than I expected.  I only had time to spend about three hours on it this week and I'm only a third of the way done.  Needless to say, it's made me question my sanity and marvel at the beauty it adds to our bathroom all at the same time...  I hope to have it done, time allowing, within the next couple of weeks!  It'll be one post you won't want to miss!  Until next week though, have a great weekend y'all!  :)

Hung Over

No, this post doesn't have anything to do with alcohol...or a self-induced nausea fest as a result of too much of it (I don't see how that's "fun"...never have, never will).  Anyway, it does, however, have everything to do with valances.  And it all began with a little bit of this:

and a little bit of that:

I know some of you (eh-hem, Farrah) were hoping I'd have a post on a finished loveseat this lovely Saturday Friday (I know, I usually post on Saturdays but tomorrow my world wide web access will be a world wide won't), but alas, it still sits undone.  I'm at the point with it where I need Anthony's help and he's been swamped with school and work so - no Anthony, no help, no loveseat...yet.  But back to the valances.  It's been on Anthony's to-do list for me to whip up some valances to adorn our dining area windows for like a year.  Finding the perfect fabric took me a long, long time...one reason for the delay in said project...but I did find it.  It wasn't as cheap as I'd been hoping (actually it's the most expensive fabric I've ever bought at $17 a yard) but luckily I only needed two yards to get these babies made.

Here's how it all went up:

First I painstakingly cut out the four rectangles that would soon be sewn into valances and laid them out on our living room floor to make sure they'd look okay...a.k.a. to make sure that there weren't two side-by-side that looked too similar.

I could've made each valance exactly the same - the same floral pattern across each - but that would've required about 4 yards of fabric and I wasn't willing to splurge.  Besides, I liked that they would all be different and since I was using a floral, I could do that without it looking off.

Next up I cut the lining that would be sewn onto the back of each valance.  All I did was lay a large piece of lining fabric (don't know the technical term) over the future valance and then cut it to be about an inch smaller.

After everything was cut I went back and forth from ironing down seams, pinning, and sewing until I had five almost perfect valances ready to be attached to the wood beams that would hold 'em up.

We used two, long (8 ft. I think?) pieces of the cheapest 1x2 pine strips at Lowe's but made sure they were straight before we bought 'em...very important!  Enter handy man Anthony, who cut the wood pieces to the measurement we needed to fit each window.  Because of my little perfectionist personality, I also gave the under side of the wood beam (the side that would show if you looked under the finished valance) a coat of white spray paint, you know, so in case anyone looked underneath they'd look nice too (okay, maybe I'm crazy).  Then, Anthony attached some corner braces we picked up for 75 cents for 2 at our local ReStore.

  

In comes the staple gun and newly sewn valances.  First, we stapled the valance to each corner.  Since we wanted the valances to wrap around the entire piece of wood, we did this first to ensure the fabric was centered and that the side seams were straight and would be flush with the wall.

Then, to make sure the valance hung level, I quickly measured along the length of it.  When I had measured twice and was certain of it's perfection, we began the stapling.

I held each valance in place while Anthony did the clickety-clicking.

We didn't use too many staples since the valances were super lightweight - about one every 4-6 inches.

And then, after a tough 20 minutes of holding and stapling, we celebrated our 'hang-overs' with a rousing game of hide-and-seek.  Ten points if you can find Anthony!  :)

 Haha...that was fun.  Anyway, we did get around to putting them up and we're thrilled with them!  While we were staring, admiring our work, Anthony said "They look so good.  I can't believe we went this long without anything up there."  I don't know...how did we ever survive?!  : p



In case you were curious as to what they looked like underneath...

 To get the crease on the corners, Anthony broke out the iron and made his own corner...yep, that's what I said, Anthony used the iron...I know, I'm a lucky woman.

And finally, here's the whole shebang:

We also hung an itty-bitty valance over the window above the sink, but lighting conditions and a not-so-great camera wouldn't allow a good pic.  You can take my work for it though, it's darn cute.  Now I just need to dress up our plain jane table with a runner and decor or something.  And, now that we've got valances up, the wall to the right of the windows is looking a little too blank and bland, but don't worry, I've got a collage project up my sleeve and I'm sure you'll be hearing about it.  :)

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Stay tuned in the coming weeks if you wanna see a curb-side rocking chair make-over and painted wallpaper...and, crossing my fingers and hoping for time, an un-antiqued, antique loveseat finito.  :)  That's all.  Have a happy weekend everyone!