Hooray for Fall!

Fall is by far my favorite season.  Every year I come to hate summer more and more.  I am just not cut out for heat.  And so, by the day after memorial day I am desperate for fall and I could cry tears of joy when September comes along.

I need to move North, like Alaska north.  Well really, upstate NY north, but whatever....

My trip to HomeGoods was so-so.  There was a lot of Halloween stuff left, but the really cute items were gone and a lot of the merchandise was damaged.

The second I walked in the door, this pumpkin plate caught my eye and I snatched it right up.

I love the pretty taupe color and the 3D metallic stem

I found a yummy smelling candle and it is currently burning on my coffee table.

The main reason for my trip was to finish up my mantle - I don't have much Halloween decor.  Here is a reminder of the before:

And here is my after:

Moving from left to right:

The Beware sign is a new HG purchase - they have a bunch of words there but the little ghost and swirls won me over.

The plate was already there, the ceramic pumpkin came from Target last year and the wire pumpkin from Michael's last week.

The mirror was an awesome find from HG last January (can you tell I love HG??).

My husband picked out the No Evil gargoyle trio at Michael's last year.  The barn star was also found at Michael's last year.

The witch is my other HG purchase.  Her skirt says "are you a good witch or a bad witch?" - Love It!!

Her packaging came with some black marabou, so I took it off to wrap around my candle holder.

Then we have the other two halves of my pumpkin sets and finally the hurricane filled with silk leaves.

I'd still like to find some more goodies.  I need a taper for the candle holder and I really want to get some purple up there.  I'd also like something sparkly or twinkly to add some light - it is feeling a bit drab.

Happy Fall Y'All!!

Let's Get Ready for Fall!!

Now that I am back from my Labor Day vacation, it is time to get ready for my favorite season - Fall!!

My mission today is to get my mantle cleared and ready for my shopping trip tomorrow.

Here is the photo of my mantle this morning - it has been this way since before Memorial Day:

With all the summery things cleared, only the mirror, candle stick holder, plate and hurricane remain.  What a nice, neutral palate to start building on for Halloween/Fall.

And finally, a few things to start it up.  The barn star on the mirror is the same as the turquoise one - I bought three and have two that are still unpainted.  I filled the hurricane with silk leaves from last year and replaced the blue ribbon with a purple one.  I got the pumpkin salt and pepper shakers last year and the wire pumpkins Monday at Michaels (they are placecard holders from the Celebrate It line)

I'll be going to HomeGoods tomorrow to raid their Halloween section and then I'll share what I got.

Early Spring/Easter Mantle

Hi! I'm back from my trip to Denver. I was so busy visiting family, playing with my cutie pie cousins, and visiting the aquarium that I had no time for blogging!



A purple Starfish!?!



Look at that funny face.

I was also battling altitude sickness that finished off with a fever the night I got home. Now that I'm feeling back to normal, let's talk mantles.

After Valentine's Day, it was time to swap out all the red for some more cheery colors. I also wanted to get some eggs up there for Easter.



For Valentine's, I had a pink heart hanging from the mirror. After having it naked for a few days, I knew I liked it a lot better dressed. I painted a barn star turquoise and now I love it!



I found this great lantern at Marshall's for $17. If you can see, inside there is a white pillar candle with a seashell and raffia belt. I swapped the red taper candle for coral and added a starfish in front. Turquoise and Coral are always paired in jewelry, so why not in decor? And then a bud vase of tulips for some life. {these were on their last leg in the photo and they are gone now}



Where is the Easter you say? Right here in my topiary! I got this at target last year and I love it! I wish I bought more than one!! The hurricane jar has the remains of a bag of peanut mnm's that I've been munching on. And then there is my family sign.



After Easter this Sunday, I'll be taking down the topiary and tossing the stale mnm's. Then it's time to re-do the mantle with more of a late spring feel.

Check out all the other great mantles and vignette's at Beth's Party:

Dressed Up Candles

I have this little cabinet and candle holder in my entryway and for about two months I have been trying to find five white candles for $1 each. It seemed the cheapest I was going to find was $2 a piece, so I picked up two three-packs at target.

These are my old candles:


And with some little ribbon belts added, here are my new candles:


This was the easiest thing I've ever done. I cut 9 1/2 inches of ribbon per candle, and taped it at the back with double stick tape. I'd love to find some type of medallion to add to front.


Since I bought them in three packs I had one leftover candle to play around with. A glittered fleur de lis perhaps? I took a fleur shape I had and pushed it onto the candle using my bone folder.


I scored around the outline with the tip of the bone folder and peeled off the pink shape. Then I used this tool from my cricut tool kit to dig out a bit of wax and make a well for the glue.




I added the glue and the glitter...


And it looked like crap!! It was all wonky and weird and bad.

But the little Tim Gunn angel on my shoulder told me to "Make It Work!"

So after some thinking, then some ignoring, then some thinking again,

I cut out another fleur on the cricut and glittered that!


And glued it to the candle :)


Tim would be so proud. I give myself a pat on the back for that one.

And then I shoot myself in the foot for this one. I was at Home Goods yesterday and passed up on a candle holder. It was one of those pedestal kinds, it was a dark silver metallic with chandelier-like crystals draped all around. It was the only one left, in the clearance section for $10. I've thought about going back but who knows if it is even still there. Bah!

A Little Distressing does a Caddy Good!

I bought this vintagey looking bottle carrier on Tuesday while browsing the shops in Occoquan, VA.

What I loved about it was the Maison de Campagne sign on both sides. When I got it home and set it on my counter, I realized you couldn't see the lovely little plaque at all!!


All it needed was a bit of distressing to make the words and design pop!

I though I could glaze/whitewash it but that didn't work very well. It looked great when I painted it on, but when I wiped it off nothing stayed behind in the crevices.


And then a light bulb went off. I didn't need to add to it; I needed to subtract!

So I took some 400 sandpaper and lightened the areas I wanted to stand out.


Now it's perfect!

Mini Master Makeover

Ooh, are we loving the alliteration?

This makeover was super mini - there were only 2 changes I made, but they has a huge impact:  a painting and a bedskirt.

Here was our bed before:

Exposed boxspring - yuck! and you can see all the stuff we store under the bed, mainly off season clothes and our board games :)  After three years of this I finally bought a bedskirt.

I chose black because I knew there was no way I could match the comforter and I didn't want to.  I also felt that it would blend in with our black furniture and look less like a skirt and more like a platform.

The second change was adding my quatrefoil painting to the formally barren wall.

You may be wondering about my barren bed.  I have no decorative pillows :(  We have a nicely sized bedroom, it obviously accommodates a king very well, but there is no place to have a bench or other piece of furniture to place the pillows on while we are sleeping.  And I hate pillows on the floor!  So much that I'd rather have no pillows at all.

My Ballard Inspired Wall Art

I love quatrefoils! I think it stems from my love and desire to own a piece of Van Cleef and Arpels Alhambra collection - so gorgeous!

So you can imagine my delight when I saw all the new items Ballard Designs decked out with these little gems.

 

umbrella stand

chandelier shade

Marquee Hand-Painted Canvas

Friday night I began thinking that I could probably knock-off that canvas. By Saturday morning I was full-blown obsessed and running out to Home Goods in search of a canvas that I could use to make my little dream a reality.

What I found was this:

In the little girls section. It is 24x24 - the same dimensions as the Ballard. I paid $30 for it although I was hoping to spend $20. This was the best I could find and I was too anxious to keep looking.

Before I could paint, I had to get the glitter and rhinestones off. Scrape, scrape, scrape away with a craft knife. Look how awesome my hand looks!

I found a quatrefoil lurking on my cricut storybook cartridge and used a piece of card stock to make a stencil. The Ballard piece has the quatrefoil in the center, but I decided to place one in each "tile". I sketched the shapes out and started painting each quatrefoil green, then a tan border and finally a pink background.

When I was done, not only did I have a killer headache from not opening the window for good ventilation, but I hated it! Instead of the classy palm beach look I was going for - I had this tacky, cheesy 70s mess. So before going to bed, I decided that by changing the colors and enlarging the design I could save it.

Sunday morning, I got to work adding a white-wash over the pink to tone it down.

Then I repainted the tan a darker brown and the green to blue.

Much better! That is the calming, sophisticated look I was going for. I would have liked if the blue was paler, but I'm learning by trial and error here and I'm pretty happy with how this turned out - especially since I've never tried to replicate or just paint a canvas period! I added some lines with a sharpie to mimic the look of four tiles. This was $30 considering I already had the paints instead of spending $139.**EDIT** Whoa!! Just took a closer look at the pricing.  They are $139 EACH SQUARE or two for $129 each.  I would have had to spend $516 to get this look from Ballard!!!

This project is part of my mini-bedroom makeover. I'll show the finished room later this week.

Linking up to the following:

DIY Day at A Soft Place to Land

So You Think You Can Decorate Viewer Inspiration
Room to Inspire: Be Inspired 
Finding Fabulous: Frugalicious Friday

Family, Couple? Sign

My nuclear family is just my husband and me.  When I refer to my family, I'm talking about my parents and siblings.  Ronnie and I are just a couple; just the two of us.  I feel weird calling us a family since we don't have kids yet.  Hence the title of this post.

On to the crafting!!  I had all these leftover sticks from my christmas ornaments and I knew that I wanted to make a fence out of them after the holidays.

I hot glued them all together...

And started to paint.  I mixed antique white acrylic paint with a drop of burnt umber to get a nice cafe au lait color.

I don't have any ralph lauren glaze, sniff sniff, so I mixed more of the burnt umber into water to make my own.  I wanted this little sign to look like a weathered old fence.  I was so happy with the results, I had to restrain myself from glazing my entire apt.!!

I used the cricut and contact paper to make stencils - last name, year we got married*, cute bird on a branch.

I needed to get some blue/turquoise paint.  Since these paints are on sale for 25cents each this week at Micheal's, I stocked up :)

And here is my new little beauty.  I used burnt umber and laguna blue (top row, fourth from left) paints and added a key embellishment and some ribbon.

I used that E-6000 glue to attach the key and some wooden triangles on the back so it would stand up.  Boy is that stuff stinky!!  It was also globbing up and not very fun to work with.  I have seen so many crafty bloggers raving about this - any tips for me on how to love this, too?

*yes we are going on 7 years and have no kids. why? we were both 19 when we got married. he is we are close to ready but not quite there.