Bench Seats - DONE!

The bench seats are finally done. :) I think they may nead another coat of stain in order to match the kitchen cabinets, but I don't think I care that much right now.

If you want to read about building the bench seats - go here. I used some heavy duty upholstery type fabric for the seat cushions and I went shopping online for the foam.  I was at Jo-Ann's and wasn't not about to pay $90 for foam.  Who knew foam was so expensive?? I didn't!  I ended up getting the foam from "OnlineFabricStore.net" and found the foam for $32 with shipping.  Much more reasonable.  And the foam was just what I needed.

I installed zippers on the "back" side of the cushions so they can be washed if needed.

I bought WAY too much fabric (about twice what I needed) so I may be making little back cushions or some pillows for the basement or something.  Oh well.  All in all, the bench cushions cost about $55.  Not cheap, but it could have been worse.  I could have bought cheaper fabric, but I really wanted something bold.

Oh, I think it took ~ 3 hours on the sewing machine to do both cushions.  Including the zipper and finishing the edges.  VERY quick project. :)

Bench Seat - Finished - Sorta.

The bench seat is sorta finished!  (See previous post here if you want to read about my inspiration for this project.)

Here is the finished product.  I have to say, the camera doesn't do this thing justice!  And the cabinets and benches are much closer in color than the camera makes it look.  The main difference is the cabinets have a protective coating on it, and I didn't put a protective coating on the benches.  However, I think I'm going to put polyurethane on it sometime soon.  I think the polyurethane will make them look even closer in color. Not to mention it will help protect them if someone spills something on them.

Honestly, I'm THRILLED with how they turned out.  I designed everything myself, and my brother and father built them.  Lots of hard work.  I even have a 3rd bench that will go in the den due to an inexperienced furniture designer.  (my fault)

I don't mean to toot my own horn, but I love the way the molding turned out. :) Honestly, there isn't much I don't love. Hah.  

Now I have to sew some bench covers so that you can sit on the window seats and be comfy.  

Did I mention how nice it is to have extra storage?! :) 

Organization - Best Idea Ever

What do you do with all your gift wrap, tissue paper, gift bags?

I saw this pin on pinterest - and I have to say its GENIUS!  So I started doing it.  Now I store most of my wrapping supplies in a convenient bin. :) I still haven't figured out what I want to do with my wrapping paper, but this is great for bags, tissue and bows!

I have to say, the only problem?  Right now my bin is too small to store all the bags I have. :-/  Oh well, one of these days I'll get a bigger one.  Until then, I have the large, gigantic bags stored next to the bin.  At least its better than having to go search for the bags.

What do you do with all your digital photos? Part 2 of 2

Last week I posted the first part - What do you do with all your digital photos?

Essentially I'm still not convinced digital is the way to go.  I feel that hard copies are nice.  You can look at them and display them.  Shutterfly is my website of choice.  They have pretty decent prices and always have sales.

But then the problem is, once you make all these photobooks, what do you do with them?

I saw this pin on pinterest. - I thought it was great.  She used plate hangers. And I thought that was a great idea.  You can display them and everyone gets to see them.  They can get taken off thew all extremely easily.  It was perfect.

 So this is my interpretation of displaying photobooks.  Right now I only have 2 to display,  I guess I've been busy getting married and remodeling the basement. Haha.  But that didn't stop me from wanting to hang the 2 photo books I have.

The problem came when I tried to decide how many plate hangers do I buy?  Do I buy 2? Do I buy 4? 6?  I really liked this hanger from Amazon priced at $6.55 each. But how often to things change slightly, or go out of stock.  And how would I know how many I would eventually need?  Or the bigger problem, where to store them.  So, I came up with the idea to buy 2 now, and then every time I make 2 more photo books buy 2 more slightly different hangers.  I think it'll look good, a little eclectic, and unique.  And then you don't have the matchy matchy problem.

Now to make more photobooks. :)

DIY Raised Garden Bed

It has been my dream to have my own garden.  And literally a weekend or so after we closed on the house, back in 2012, I built this raised garden bed.  

I used the instructions here - http://www.sunset.com/garden/backyard-projects/ultimate-raised-bed-how-to-00400000011938/

After reading the comments in the above link I read that the wood would sometimes bow outward due to the weight of the soil.  So I added the separator in the middle and so far it works great.  It has been 2 years and there haven't been any problems.  

Building the raised garden bed was a piece of cake.  One of the challenging (and expensive) things was filling the bed with dirt.  I can't remember the specifics, but I think I bought $100 worth of top soil.  I didn't even buy the fancy plant stuff, just regular black dirt and it barely filled the bed 1/2 way.  Each year I just figured I would buy a few more bags of dirt, or through in some peat moss or compost or something.  Last year I bought 2 bags of dirt and 1 bag of peat moss, and I'm sure I'll do the same thing this year.  

The bird netting is kind of a pain in the behind when it comes to mowing the lawn.  I need to figure out a better solution for it.  The netting always gets caught in the mower blades, or I don't pay close enough attention and the plants grow through the netting.  This year I think I may just keep the netting on the garden while the plants are seeds or when they are first planted, and then chance the birds.  We'll see.

I can tell you I've definitely got my money's worth of vegetables from the garden. :) Just ask my mother and friends.  I constantly drop off extras with them so they don't go bad. 

I'm so tired of winter that I'm already starting to plan springs garden. 

Bridesmaid Hangers - Pinterest Inspired

Some of you know I got married last November. Which is part of the reason why I slacked on the blog. Sorry about that! Anyway, I've finally got the time to update the blog on everything I've wanted to share over the past year. :)


Bridesmaid hangers!

 


I absolutely love the bridesmaid hanger shot. You know, with all the bridesmaid dresses and all on matching hangers. So I started to research how to make those really cute hangers. I didn't want to spend $20 on a hanger for 1 picture (which is the cost to buy it via etsy) especially since I had other ideas for gifts for my bridesmaids. So, DIY it was. :)


I also made them for my mother and my fiance's mother. I got the hangers at Bed Bath and Beyond. Then I went to Michaels and got the blinged stickers. I really wanted to do glitter, but my MOH hates glitter and calls it "The H*rpes of Craft." Haha. She says glitter always gets EVERYWHERE! And since my Bridesmaids and my dress have zero glitter on them, I didn't want them to have any glitter specks on their dress.




One of my bridesmaids is married, so I put her last name on the hanger, And I put my new last name on the hanger as well. :) I don't know what the bridesmaids thought of them, but I think they liked them. I can't wait to see the photos from the professional photographer!

All in all, I love the way they turned out.

Do Not Disturb - Pinterest Inspired

I saw these on Pinterest, and I absolutely loved them.

 

So off I went to Vistaprint. I designed the layout myself and sent it to Vistaprint to print it there.  I had a groupon so I printed everything on high quality paper cheaper than if I was going to print it myself.  I used the "note card" on Linen Finish.  I had a minor heart attack when the door hangers arrived from Vistaprint because they didn't print correctly.  One side was printed upside-down.  But a quick call to Vistaprint remedied the problem and they sent new ones right away.

 Then I went to Michaels and bought a 3 inch circular punch by Fiskars.  It was a long process, because the paper was thicker than the punch was meant to be used with, but I love the way they turned out. :)

We put them in the hotel welcome bags.  I can't remember if everyone used it, but I know I saw a few on the doors when my new husband and I were walking back to the rooms.

Christmas Cards - Pinterest Inspired

What to do with all those Christmas Cards?  That's the main question.  I found these photos on pinterest -

      

They gave me some inspiration.  I love the old book idea, however I find it difficult to deface a book.  I may incorporate that into my Christmas cards later.

I was not a fan of keeping the Christmas cards separated by year, because I wanted to group them by families.  How neat would it be to be able to flip through the Christmas Card "book" and see each families Christmas Cards over the years. :)

So here is what I did.  I bought binder rings - 1 inch in diameter size.  Honestly, I would recommend going bigger than 1 inch.  Especially if your only creating 1 "book" as mine is pretty full already and I only have 3 years binded. If your doing each individual year, 1 inch would be perfect.

Here's my final-ish product.  It's awaiting a cover, either a book cover, or just something printed.   All in all, the whole project took 20 minutes?  The longest part was hole punching the cards. :) A very easy task, and now they are stored with the Christmas Decorations!

Pinterest - Guest Bathroom Towel Rack

I'm addicted to pinterest.  With a new (to me) house, I have a lot of decorating and projects I want to do.  One of the biggest challenges in the house is storage.  There is no pantry, very few closets, and no linen closet.

So when I saw a pin on pinterest where you can store towels on a wine rack that hung on the wall I was intrigued.

The first challenge was locating the wine rack.  I found it at wayfair.com.  Here is the link to the wine/towel rack.  Right now the price is listed at $30.99, but I bought the rack at $19.80.  So I would watch the price, $31 is a little pricey to me.  I had never used or even heard of Wayfair before this purchase, but there were no problems with the purchase.

As a warning.  This rack did not come with any hardware.  We had screws laying around so we used those.

I plan on having navy and tan towels in the bathroom, I just need to buy some tan towels.  I also plan on painting the walls, although I'm not sure what color to paint the walls.  

Anyway, its just a small step to decorating, but it was fairly easy.  First project down, 1,000 to go.

Pinterest - Will you be my ...

Everyone knows I recently got engaged.  I knew who I wanted to be my bridesmaids since before I was even engaged.  One time, I almost slipped and asked my Maid of Honor to be my Maid of Honor before I was even engaged!  But I wanted to do it right, so I made sure to hold my tongue.  

However, as soon as I got engaged I went over to Michaels to mimic a pin I saw on Pinterest.  Below is the inspiration and the final product.  

The boxes included:

• Memories Picture Frame - For a picture of us at my wedding
• A scented candle in my wedding colors - Purple and Green. :)
• Chocolate - Because what girl doesn't like chocolate
• A Bridesmaid tank top - Unfortunately, I couldn't find one for my maid of honor, so she also has a bridesmaid tank also.  I wish I could have found one that matched and said Maid of Honor, but ... I didn't have enough patience to wait for it to arrive if I ordered it online. haha.  
• A cocktail - I went to Target and bought a Champagne cocktail bottle.  It was either that, or a mini bottle of Champagne, and I chose the Champagne cocktail since I feel like Champagne can be hit or miss. One of my bridesmaids is only 17, so I gave her sparkling juice instead.  

Honestly, the most difficult thing was finding the box to put everything in.  Michaels and Target did not have any appropriate boxes.  Either they couldn't fit the frame or they were T-Shirt boxes.  My mom had some boxes laying around and so I used those.  They were a bit large, but that just meant that I could display everything so nothing was covered up.

Unfortunately, because the boxes were so gigantic, the stamps looked really tiny.  I wrote "Will you be my" on the front in stamps so that when my friends opened the box they would read "bridesmaid" on the tank top. :)

I think my bridesmaid liked the boxes.  But like I said... nice boxes were really hard to find.