creative little daisy

One of Santa's elves paid us a visit today

and dropped off a little Christmas bling, a week early. Want to guess what it was? A shiny rock for my finger? Nope, not into that sort of thing. Something to make my ears shimmery? No, I have sensitive lobes.  How about some flash for around my neck? Or something bright and twinkly for my wrist??? No and no.

OK, I'm sure you'll never guess, not in a million years, unless you were about to say, something steel for your bar.  Galvanized steel maybe? At which point I'd say, that's freaky! Correct, but freaky. 

It's a counter slipcover made of galvanized steel. It fit right over top of the existing formica surface. 

I had the idea to do this when we replaced the rest of the counter tops with butcher block.  I did some google-searching for galvanized or metal counter tops and fell in love with this image from Handcraftedmetal.com

 

I also stumbled upon an image at Funky Junk Interiors of her funky metal island top.   No one I talked to about it seemed sold. They couldn't quite imagine using galvanized steel for a counter top.  While sharing my hair brained idea talking to my friend Kelli one day, she mentioned that she knew who might be able to help me. He's the father of one of her daughter's friends and he fabricates commercial range hoods. BINGO!  He was a little skeptical when I told him I wanted galvanized steel for my bar top, but never tried to discourage me. He came out, took some measurements and brought samples of stainless, brushed stainless and  galvanized to be certain it really was galvanized I wanted. I was certain. The stainless was too sleek and sterile for me. It looked like an operating room table. The brushed steel was better, but still a little modern.  The galvanized has a little more patina, more irregularities and imperfections, making it perfect for my kitchen. 

 

 

 

Add me to the list of bloggers,

who has made the Eddie Ross ornament wreath this year.

 

I'm trying this mirror in a different location. Same wreath, same mirror, different room. See what Mitch has to live with.

A skirt for a tree

Made from charcoal burlap

with grey ticking striped ruffle and binding. Nothing fancy. Just a simple skirt, for a sparkly tree. 

Feeling all festive

~silver and white on the tree

~silver and white on the mantel (+ a little green)

~ notice a theme here?

check out my outdoor lights used indoors-  I'm such a rebel 

 

~a little burlap  to hide a green candle 

~green is OK if you are a tree or a wreath, not a candle

this wreath looks much better in person but was a pain to try to photograph- out of 15 or 20  pictures, taken at different times of day, this was the best I could get

~ goodbye gold foil with big red bow, hello burlap and pretty blue bow!  

I'm still working on the dining room- more silver and white and almost entirely from the dollar store.

 

I made a slipcover

It's been on my list of things I wanted to do, forever! I finally did it. Not without the help of Mitch.  Whenever precision is needed, I get him in on the job. He made my pattern pieces out of some heavy masking paper he uses for his paint jobs. That was the hardest part of the project. Once I had a pattern, cutting and sewing wasn't bad at all. 

 

I made it from a drop cloth that I  pre-washed (in bleach) twice. I made the piping from a slightly darker linen like fabric, just for a hint of contrast.

 

I gave it a pleated skirt.

I love it. I won't say it was an easy project, but it wasn't difficult either. Just fiddly and time consuming. I'll definitely be making more. Under this baby is a really ugly red chair, but it's comfortable. It  rocks and swivels and cost me less than $20. Add about $15 for the cost of the drop cloth and piping materials- for less than $40, I've got a pretty cute chair.

The madeover coffee table make-over.

This is what my coffee table used to look like. It was a thrift store find. For $15.00 I got the coffee table and a matching end table. They were a really ugly. I wrote about them here. Click over to see the picture, I'll wait. Ugly, huh?  A little paint fixed em up though, and we've enjoyed them for about three years now.  Until Mitch sat down on the corner one night and the glass shattered in about 374,000 pieces.  It was like an explosion. Glass everywhere. I was so glad that I don't have carpet anymore and that Bayleigh wasn't here.  Rather than trying to have a new piece of glass cut, we decided it would be safer if the top was solid anyway.

Mitch cut a piece of plywood to replace the glass and together we upholstered it.

 

Discontent, be gone!

Wow, I've been away from this little corner for a while, huh? I didn't intend to stay away. I was supposed to be sewing in November, wasn't I? I did sew. I just didn't feel like talking about sewing, I guess. I've been feeling blah and bland.  You know how it is when you have a bad cold and nothing tastes right? It felt like my creative vision had a cold and nothing looked right. Does that make sense? I've been busy.  There has been sewing, painting, thrifting even cooking happening around here, but I just didn't have it in me to take a picture or to write a post.

I usually catch up on my blog reading in the morning as I read my coffee but instead of being inspired to get in there and share, I've felt like I didn't have anything of interest to share. Nothing that measured up. When I tried taking photos, I couldn't get a shot that made me happy. I've just had a bad case of discontent. Not sure why. Maybe the winter blues? Whatever it is or was, I don't like it. I like to look at things with positive eyes. I like to see beauty all around me instead of feeling like nothing I do turns out right.  The past couple of days I've felt the fog clearing. As I tinkered around this morning with my Christmas decorations, fluffing here and straightening there, I realized how much I've missed this place, this little blog. I've missed the interaction.  I got my camera out and started clicking away. I have much to share. Don't say you haven't been warned.