Painted Glass

Our first order of hanging-business in the twins room was getting the big painted window pane up.  A friend gave it to us for the nursery and so we couldn’t wait to get it up.  I even had the perfect spot…

…and then the stud-finder shattered my decor dreams by telling me there wasn’t a stud dead center in the middle of the far wall.  Ever had that happen to you?  You want to hang something heavy somewhere, you go to find a stud, and the only one is like a foot to either side?  It’s one of my decorating pet peaves.  Either way, my two options were 1) rip out the wall and put a new stud where I wanted it or 2) improvise.  After pleading my option #1 case to the handy man around here, I took my shut-down to option #2.  I know what some of you are thinking, “Why didn’t you just use a heavy-duty dry-wall anchor?”.  If you came over and lifted this thing, you’d know why.  It’s a beast!  To be honest, we probably could’ve gotten away with a super-super-super duty anchor but I wasn’t taking any chances.  The last thing I want is a glass angel crashing into me while I’m rocking away. 

So, back to option two – improvising.  That’s exactly what we did when we added these Target shelves I found for $3 (at Dirt Cheap) to the left side of the painted window last weekend: 
To accessorize them I just used things we had laying around – a St. Philomena statue (love that girl), a candle from my sis, a piece of fabric I cut out from a tablecloth, metal l-o-v-e letters I found at Goodwill for a few cents a long time ago, a candle votive and vase from my mom, a tissue paper pouf (good tutorial here) made for my baby shower by my friend Jenn, and a jazzed-up Dollar Store frame showcasing some homemade, 10-minute art.

Today you’re gonna get to know the art and how that all went down.  You see, when we put these shelves up last weekend, I needed an easy way to fill the frame so I simply place a few sheets of tissue paper inside and then painted the girls’ initials onto the front of the glass with the same gold paint I used on the mirror over their bed and the corners of the frame, which I’ll get to later.  I got the idea from it’s side-kick, the angel painted on window, and thought it’d complement her by copying.  Not to mention that down here in the South, monogramming is the bees knees so I figured I’d semi-cave to that trend.  At least everyone knows now that “s & c” live here, right?

 

But, I wasn’t in love with the way the initials turned out – I meant to make them smaller – but this was a late night project and I wasn’t in the mood to re-do them.  So, the next day I snapped some pictures for the Fresh Coat of Paint feature and went on my merry way.

A couple of days passed and, perfectionist being my middle name, I had to do something about my frame art.  Since I had just painted right over the glass, removing the initials was as easy as spraying some glass cleaner and sliding the paint right off with a razor.   

This time around, instead of trusting my free-hand again, I went to work on Word where I simply typed up the girls’ names (free font:  Porcelain), printed it out…

 

…cut out each word, and taped them underneath the frame glass to be painted over like so: 

Then I got out a smallish paint brush and started painting right over the letters.

Ten minutes later it was done and up.

And, once again, I wasn’t satisfied.  "Seraphia” was a tad crooked and the whole thing a tiny bit off-center, and all-in-all a little fancier than I thought it’d be.  So, a glutton for painting, out came the glass cleaner and razor for another go at it and off I went to Word, where I created these two new designs:

After  much debate (inside my own head of course), I ended up going with… 
…option #1 (free font:  Matilde except for the ampersand which I randomly picked).  I painted it on the same way I painted the previous design, but instead of cutting each word out, I stuck the whole document behind the frame to make sure everything would be nice and straight.  So easy and just imagine the options.  You could print just about anything, paint over it, and have some great looking art…and then you could get out the glass cleaner and do it all over again, and again, and again…fun, fun, fun.

And that’s that…but wait!  The frame.  I could’ve sworn I took pictures of how I painted the corners of my $1 frame, but alas, they are not to be found.  Either I hid them from myself or I’m just losing my mind.  Probably the latter.  But, in case you’re interested in knowing, all I did was lay pieces of tape a couple of inches from each end, painted within the taped areas, and removed the tape (while the paint was still wet to reduce peeling).  I whipped up a little diddy in pixlr.com for ya below to further explain:
The blue lines represent where I taped.  It was a super-easy way to dress up a frame and I love how it turned out.  I’m thinking I might have to do the same elsewhere in our abode.  Maybe a whole gallery wall?  Who knows. 

Anyway, that’s the story on the shelves and their contents.  My nervous twitch cause by the off-center angel is now settled and it’s on to the next (and final) wall of the nursery – the one over the dresser.  It’ll have a frame collage with a side of unconventional art.  Stay tuned to see how that turns out!

Until then though, I’m off to brush my teeth, put some real clothes on, tame my hair, etc… (the stuff I should’ve done before I sat down to blog… lucky for you, we’re separated by a whole world of web) before the twins wake up from nap numero uno. 

Have a great weekend y’all!!!!

P.S.  I’m back (still have to do the aforementioned things) to tell you that you have to check out my Godchild, you simply have to.  If you need a smile, you’ll find one, an ab work-out/laugh, you’ll get it, fashion ideas, you’ll get them, a sense of care-free living, you’ll get that too.  Go!  I promise you won’t be disappointed!!!!!!!!!!!!  (Just one more.)  :)

Bean Sprouts: 8 Months

Eight?!  EIGHT?!!  You can’t be serious!  Our little bean poles are EIGHT months old?  I guess time flies when you’re having/or have had babies (Ana hit the nail on the head with that one)!

Milestones, personality traits, what have you, here’s what we know so far:

-After exclusively breastfeeding the girls for their first 5.5 months of life, they now enjoy a wide variety of pureed people food – apples, bananas (an unfortunate source of much constipation), pears, peas, squash, sweet potatoes, avocados, carrots, rice, and oatmeal.  I’m still nursing but we’re down to four to five 10-minute sessions per day, a welcome change from the 7+ I spent doing the same thing during their first few months of life.

 

-We’re still riding the cloth diapering train.  In the beginning, we’ll admit it was a little rough/inconvenient, but know it’s all we know and we’re LOVING the extra $700+ we’ve been able to keep in our bank account because of it.  By the way, I’ll spare you the details but solid food, so much easier to clean off.  Praise God for that.

 

-Both girls are still small for their age width-wise but average to above-average for height.  As you can imagine, this makes for lots of clothing issues.  They’re currently sporting three month dresses as tops and pants as capris, some newborn tops, six month onesies, and six to nine month footed onesies.  It also makes for a he**ish time sorting clothes.  I’ve pretty much given up.



-Seraphia is chomping down with two teeth with two on the way while her toothless sister looks on in complete admiration and love.



-Both girls are sitting up unassisted.  Seraphia gets up on hands and knees and rocks and dances the army crawl slowly but pretty well but Cecilia seems content on her butt or belly, until bedtime, when she thinks I’ll let her stay up if she gets up on knees and elbows to practice this thing her sister is so good at…

-Cecilia is still chillin’ every second she can, in case you were wondering.



-Cecilia still has eating at the top of her list of priorities.  When we feed them people food, we alternate girls – three bites to S, three bites to C.  During Seraphia’s three bites you can be sure Cecilia is letting out a guttural growl in frustration and impatience.  It’s really quite impressive.  I’m not sure yet if I should be worried about this little act or not.  It’s as scary as it is cute.

-They both love getting out of the house which is awesome for this mom.

-Very saintly sprouts have we when it comes to napping.  Six out of the seven days in every week they nap at the same time and they take two naps a day lasting at least an hour each.  Tons of people ask me how I have time for all this DIY and blogging and well, that’s how.

-As of three weeks ago and minus a couple of nights in between then and now, the girls have been sleeping around eight hours straight every night.  If it wasn’t Lent I’d let out a big ‘ole A!!&!$^@.  I’m finally sleeping long enough to dream!



Bonus Video!!! 

If you’ve been following the twins monthlies, you might’ve noticed we’ve had a change in venue.  Monthly photo shoots were taking place on the (still) unfinished loveseat in the living room.  Well, sorry to say but we sold that dadgum thing – unfinished and “as-is” – but we sold it!  It got to the point where it just became a big weight on my shoulders.  Every time I walked past it I thought of all the work still left to do and how I needed Anthony to do all of that and how he’s too busy right now to work on it with me and blah, blah, complaining blah.  So I petitioned Sir Craig and his list just to see if there were any takers and before it was posted even an hour I had at least three interested peeps.  Out the front door it went the next day and now two swings occupy it’s previous spot.  I was super sorry to see it go but super happy about the fact that we picked it up (off a curb) for free and sold it for a profit.  Once the twins no longer are interested in their swings, we’ll probably fill that empty space with a couple of small comfy chairs or a buffet/dresser of some sort.  Time will tell…and so will I, you can be sure of it.  Over-sharing comes with the blogging territory.

Until tomorrow then, we bid you good day!

Five Things You Might Wanna Know

Taking part in the “5 Things” chain, courtesy of Lauren, just in case you didn’t get enough of me in my Liebster facts.  :)

1 – I’m an Irish twin.  My mom was notified at her post-partum exam post-me that she was in fact pregnant with another little nugget, later known as Farrah.  Needless to say, 1983 was a busy year for mom.
 

2 - I grew up on a farm.  Not just any farm though, a BEEEEEEG farm with 15 times more cows than the population of the town (321, to silence your curiosity) we called our own…no exaggerating.  If anyone told my dad “It smells like sh&!”, he said “It smells like money”.  As long as I didn’t smell like “money”, it didn’t bother me none.

3 – I went to the same school for all twelve years of elementary, middle, and high learning with the same 18 people every year plus and minus a couple newbies once in a great, great while.

4 – After graduating third in my class (impressive if you didn’t read #3), I went on to Franciscan University and started a rap group with two guy friends.  I sang, they rapped - think Black-Eyed Peas-esque.  Our name?  E.O.S., short for End of Silence.  Believe it or not, we were actually pretty popular on campus.   We stepped behind the big, glass window to record our first (and last) album my sophomore year.  Twas a good time, a real good time…chicka chicka, wha?!

5 – I was training for the potty marathon when Anthony was born.  Robbing the cradle?  That’s me.  But for some reason the vivid second grade memory of learning that the average life-span of a male is 73 and of a female is 76 came swarming back one day shortly after we met and somehow it all just made sense…  Two of the cutest little sprouts later, and it still does.  :) 

Tag Ann, Lizzie, Audrey, Mary, and Natalie!  If you haven’t already been tagged, sit down and (pretty, pretty please) gimme five!  :)

Boo Google. Yay Blog Lovin'!

Hey all!  I'm sure I'm not the only one saddened by the somewhat sudden discontinuation of Google Reader.  For a minute, a depression settled over me as I tried to grasp the meaning of this digital tragedy and searched for another way to get in my daily dose of my fave blogs.  That's when I signed up for Blog Lovin'. We'll see how it stacks up but all I know is that I'm happy I was able to move my dailies over to it relatively easy and without much work.  I'll be sure to put up a social network button in my sidebar in case you want to follow Bean here in Blog Lovin' land, but until then, you can click this link:

Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Have a great day!!!!  I'm trying to play catch-up with some drafts that have been longing to be posted so I'll be back tomorrow with some more words 'o wisdom in the form of some more random facts.  Ta-ta for now!

The Cheapest Mirror of Them All

Before I dive into the details of this mirror on the wall, Deme is featuring the girls’ nursery today over at her blog, Fresh Coat of Paint!  There’s some never-before-seen shots of their room and a few updates that we spent last weekend completing!  You should go check it out…but make sure you’ve got some time on your hands when you do because you’ll get sucked in to the all of the beautiful details of her home and all the diy that goes on over there just like I do!  My favorites are the curtains she made from a duvet cover, her stenciled and painted interior door, and her polka dot closet.  Needless to say, she’s making me seriously consider switching out our plain curtains for some bold black and white’s, every door in our house is yearning for some tape and paint, and you might venture over to see the girl’s closet dotted with gold one of these days.  :)

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Remember the $8 mirror I found at a thrift store while on an excursion to visit my sis? 

Well, it lost the dull and took up the glam in a whirlwind diy project that took me much, much longer than I anticipated…or that I wanted.
  
Big change, huh?  The hours of naptimes and bedtimes spent working on this thing paid off!

To get it to where it is now, I first had to rip off all the tape holding it together and rip out the staples that someone thought would maybe hold the back on…they obviously didn’t hence all that tape. 

Then I gave the frame a good scrub down and the two of us took it outside where it got a coat of primer (Rustoleum)…

…followed by a few thin coats of white spray paint (Valspar   cZ VJ UMMMMMMMMMMMMM—>thank you Seraphia—in a satin finish).

Then I got my inner King Midas on and gave the recessed area of the frame a few coats of gold.

All thanks goes to Deme, who introduced me to this maaahvalous paint from Home Depot:

(Speaking of gold, Anthony once told me, during a conversation about investing in a house, that “You can build a house out of solid gold but that doesn’t mean you’re going to get every penny you put into it back out when you sell.  It all depends on the neighborhood.”  Well, we’ll see about that mister.  You might come home to a gold house courtesy of Martha Stewart and her metallic paint one of these days.)

Anyway, there’s more gold in the imminent future so keep reading. 

Next up was hatching a skewer-to-mirror plan.  I wanted to do something unique to the recessed area, something on top of just painting it gold so, I went to the local grocery aisle #8 and picked up some 12 inch skewers.  Of course I couldn’t do anything with a whole twelve inches of bamboo so I cut them into four inch pieces.  Using one, cut skewer as a guide, I laid out a bunch of full-sized ones in a row with the rounded ends against a picture frame, laid a ruler over the top of them, and penciled a line along them.  It went a little somethin’ like this:    

Then I painstakingly cut along the penciled mark on each skewer (and cursed myself for having and executing this idea in the first place) until I had over 300 four inch pieces of round bamboo. 
(Side note:  Take a hint from this smarty pants here and, if you ever decide to use short pieces of wood to adorn anything, go buy yourself some toothpicks on Amazon…they come in lots of sizes!  Until you do, I’ll be shaking my head at my impatient and desire to do it the hard way.)

After I had all of my skewers cut (and a case of pre-arthritis setting in), I did a dry fit onto my mirror frame to make sure my idea would actually work and look decent (translation:  Anthony was skeptical and made me question myself).  For a little flare, I laid each skewer at an angle so that each end was touching the edge of both sides of the recess, like so:

So, hour 53094 into this crazy project and here I was, needing to paint the skewer pieces.  Are you surprised?  You didn’t think I was going to leave them did you?  I debated staining them a deep, dark brown but, oh no, I love that gold paint to no end.  However, it’s the littlest bit opaque when it goes on and so, to save me the insanity that would’ve been brushing 3+ coats of it onto hundreds of small bamboo rounds, I first coated them with a layer of gold spray paint followed by Martha’s tub ‘o goodness.  Tony the Tiger helped with this step.  I used his box to tape three strips of masking tape upside-down to which I stuck the skewer pieces to hold them in place while painting.  It worked GREEEEAAATTT!!  (Cheesy?  Yes, that’s me.)  

Last and late last Friday night, I used regular old Elmer and his glue to attach my gold sticks to the mirror frame.  I made sure to only place the glue close to the inner edge of the recess, where the sticks were closer together, lest it be seen through the spaces towards the outer edge.
My initial thought on using Elmer’s glue was that it’s washable so, in case the desire strikes to ditch the skewer pieces someday and go with something else, I can simply pluck them off and wash off the dried glue residue.  However, after seeing the finished product, I don’t think those skewers will ever be coming off.  :)

So, after attaching every last stick and letting the glue dry overnight, Anthony attached the mirror to the frame with some caulk (we would’ve used glue but the mirror is relatively light and I like the idea of having it semi-removable in case I have the urge to re-paint the frame someday…) and then attached the frame backing with three screws drilled into the back of the frame.  We hung it centered over the girls’ cribs, where there wasn’t a stud (grrr…) so we made sure to use a heavy duty drywall anchor.  Luckily, the entire frame + mirror weighs around 15 lbs. so the super-anchor is a little overkill but it’s better to be safe than sorry when you’re dealing with cute, little chicklets?  Am I right or am I right?

What do you think?  The pictures don’t do the glorious shine of the gold any justice but I absolutely love it!  I swore to myself over and over and over that I’d never do something like this ever again in-process but after seeing the show-stopping result, I’ve changed my mind and just might be crazy enough to take another stab at it someday.

And, as the title alludes to, here’s the jar-full of change it put us back:
Mirror:  $8
Skewers:  $4 (two packs and we still have half a pack left for summer shish kabobs…yum)
Gold Paint:  $6 (not even sure this counts since I used like 1/20th of the jar)
Spray Primer:  free (already had)
Spray Paint:  $4.50 (still have over half the can)
Grand Total:  $22.50 (or $14 if you subtract my actual usage of material)

I think “The Cheapest Mirror of Them All” about covers it, huh?

 

Anyone else tackled a mirror revamp lately?  How about using skewers as decor?  Fallen in love with gold metallic paint?  Crazy mom of two or more hopelessly addicted to decorating and doing?  Anyone…?  Anyone………….?

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P.S.  It’s party time!!  I’m pulling this one out of the archives and linking up with East Coast Creative’s Upcycle link-up!