creative little daisy

I lined my bamboo roman shades

I tried to share a few of the changes I've made in the masterbedroom, but Willie stole the show. That's the honest truth. I went in there to snap a few pictures, and suddenly I was taking pictures of him. Just him.

If you did happent to get a glimpse of what was going on in the backgound, you were probably thinking to yourself, hmph, nothing special there. And you'd be right. I don't have any show stopping before and after pictures. I've just made a few small changes over several months. That goes completely against my typical method. I'm a vicitm of the trading spaces mindset. You know, you get the urge to redecorate and want it done now, but I've had to change that way of thinking. 

I've been pinning ideas, mulling over the feel I want the room to have, and implementing changes gradually.  One of those changes was the window treatements.  My color palate is going to be blue, white and some light sand/linen tones. 

The room is void of architectural details. The ceilings are not high, there is no crown molding. A pretty boring box of a room. To add some interest I stencilled the wall behind the bed.

It gave the room so much interest. Stenciling gives you so much bang for your buck. Even without a headboard, the room looks so much better.

The stencil I used is the Anna Damask stencil from Cutting Edge Stencils. I'll talk more about that later this week.

Today I wanted to share what I did with the windows, hence the post title. Sometimes I get sidetracked.

Pay no attention to the ginormous used to be in the bathroom mirror leaning against the wall. (Unless you happen to need a ginormous mirror, then look closely at it and email me. It's yours if you want it and live close by.) Also ignore the comforter draped futon at the end of the bed. Like I said, no stunning after photos here, it's a work in progress.

Where was I? Oh yea, the windows. The curtains are simple white panels from Target. I doubled them up because they aren't very wide and look a bit wimpy with just two per window. So for these two windows there are actually six panels. Good thing they were on clearance when I decided to double up.

What I'm here to talk about are the bamboo shades. I love the look of bamboo shades, but they provide no privacy and let in lots of light. Not really great for a bedroom. Especially when someone who sleeps here sometimes works nights. If you've ever worked nights and tried to sleep during the day, you know light blockage is essential. Even a sliver of light peaking through can seem like a spotlight. I'm telling you, we go to great lengths to block light. Not only did we have room darkening roller shades, but over that I made from black-out lining a panel that is removable and covers the whole window. It has grommets and velcro and completely covers the window and blocks all light.

But again, that's not what I'm here to talk about. Those roman shades. Remember I said I had room darkening roller blinds? Well, my friend Kelli recently hung roman shades in her daughter's room in a front facing window. She wanted to keep visual uniformity from the outside of the house, so she left the white roler shades she had and hung the bamboo shade outside the roller shade. You can't see the roller shade from inside the room and you can't see the bamboo shade from outside the house. Sneaky and smart huh?

Well, my widows aren't deep enough for that to work so I had to come up with a different privacy/light blocking solution. I googled how to line roman shades and found this tutorial. Woohoo. So, I proceeded to do just that. I decided to reuse the roller shades for the lining.

I opened the bamboo shade out completely, laid it on the living room floor, placed the shade over top and followed the tutorial. I was quite pleased with myself. It's easy-peasy. Just glue the liner to the shade at the top and cut slits for the metal rings, oh wait, back up. You have to untie the strings from the rings first and pull those out of the way. After that you glue the liner to the top and cut slits for the rings. Then run the string back through the rings and you're done. Be sure to follow Jane's tut at the Borrowed Abode. She goes into more details and has good pictures.

All was good. It was easy. I hung my lined bamboo shades and was quite pleased with myself. It should be noted I did this at night. It was dark when I hung the newly lined shades.

I woke up to the strangest sight.

In the photo it's dots of light. In real life it was as if rays of sunshine had pierced the shades and were invading the room.

Well, that had to be remedied ASAP.

Think, think, think...what to do. I pulled the shades back down and tried to think of what I could do. I thought to myself, I need something like those stickers that reinforce the holes in notebook paper.

So, I got myself some white silhouette vinyl from the craft room, which by the way looks like a war zone right now, but that's a post for another day. I used a circle punch to cut circles from the vinyl then punched a hole in the center with a regular hole punch.

Then I cut a slit in my little vinyl donut and covered the slit in the liner.

 

As usual, being supervised every step of the way by the foreman.

And his less hands paws snout-on sidekick.

Some of the slits were larger and required a little extra vinyl to completely cover over, but once it was all on, the shades went back up and all was good. No more darkness piercing beams of light shooting through my shades.

*This photo was taken before I doubled up the curtains.

 

Such a ham

I've been so busy with all the apartment happenings I've not even thought about making any changes elsewhere in the house.

 

 

Ha! I had a hard time even typing that sentence. My severe case of decorating ADD doesn't allow me to be reasonable and recognize that I have too much going on. Oh no, I don't seem to grasp the concept that if I would just step away from the paint brush, put down the drill, and for all that is good and holy, stay the heck away from Pinterest, if I would do those things, I might find myself relaxing in a calm and un-chaotic surroundings. It isn't meant to be my friends.

As I type this I am in various stages of unfinishedness in no less than three rooms, besides the apartment.

I've been making some small gradual changes in the master bedroom. I tried to take a few pictures but a certain little weenie kept hamming it up for the camera and upstaging my bedroom decor.

Look at him, trying to look all casual and uninterested in the camera.

What? Me? I'm just relaxing. Being handsome. I can't help it if I'm irresistible.

Go on, take your pictures. Don't mind me and my big beautiful eyes. 

I really don't like the attention, I'll look away. 

Don't you have a stencil to talk about?

Are you going to say anything about that mirror with the  shish kabob sticks?

Did you tell em your idea for a headboard? You know you really do need to get a headboard, slacker.

Excuse me.... hey, I'm talking to you. Back over here with the camera.

That's better.

You didn't even mention the furniture. Remember when you were painting it and I got paint in my hair? Do you have a picture of that?

 

Such a camera hog! I'll share more when a certain little diva boy isn't around stealing the spotlight.

 

 

One where the before is better than the after

But lets don't call this an after, rather, an in between.

That works.

There was a time I was happy with my bedroom.

Not in the recent past, but once...

We changed beds, that's a long story in itself.

About a year ago, I got the bright idea to put our queen size (and very comfy) bed in the guest room,

so that when we had guests, they didn't have to sleep in a little twin bed.

The bright idea didn't end there. Nope. I read somewhere that a king size bed is just two twins.

{don't believe everything you read}

You can even buy a bridge sort of contraption that goes between two twins

to well, bridge them.

I took that idea a little farther and bought a big thick mattress pad

in a king to put over the two twins.

Well, it worked to join the two mattresses as one seamless bed. It wasn't a total fail.

We slept with it that way for quite a while. A little more that a year.

A year of hot miserable nights.

Memory foam, my friends, is very hot.

It is soft and cushy and you sink right in.

That would seem like a good thing.

It isn't.

The sheets never stayed tight. I woke up sore every morning.

I hated it.

I've been whining and complaining for months, but king size mattresses aren't cheap.

With two dogs and a toddler in bed with us many nights,

Mitch became attached to the size of the bed,

and didn't want to switch back to our comfy queen.

I guess he'd heard enough of the whining and we went mattress shopping.

I won't go into the boring details of that,

but I will say, if you have plans to buy a mattress

and are in the Fayetteville, NC area,

email me, I will tell you about a great palce.

Now we have a comfortable bed, but the bedroom is

far from being a sanctuary.

Where do I begin...

Perhaps by apologizing for the lighting in these photos.

Then we can talk about that big blank wall behind the bed.

It could use some lovin',

don't you agree?

I'm thinking some board and batten 3/4 of the way up.

A rustic head board,

something like this.

The furniture will be painted white.

I started by filling in the very dated flower carving detail.

The dried spackle adds a little something special, wouldn't you say?

Those lamps.

I had high hopes for those lamps.

I can't go into detail all the techniques I've tried, it is a post in itself. 

for another day.

I'm waiting to see if they will look better against a white wall.

Bedding, I do have a dust ruffle, gray linen.

It didn't make it back on

before the mattress was delivered.

I have a white comforter I plan to use instead of this quilt.

I wanted to do gray and yellow, but the walls are blue,

so instead of having so much going on, 

I'm going to stick with a palate of blue, gray, and white.

This bench is going somewhere else.

Mitch and I made it from a head and foot board.

I really do like it, but it ends up being a dumping ground.

It needs to go.

Those harlequin boxes need to go. 

Curtains may or may not go. I'll decide later. Beside the banch is a big mirror,

removed from the bathroom.

What do you do with such a monstrosity?

It's huge and heavy.

Anyone want it?

This side of the room. This awful side of the room needs some serious editing.

The dresser will be white.

The TV will go in the attic when it's finished.

That shelf needs better placement.

My car loving husband doesn't get much say in the decorating around here.

None really, and he doesn't complain.

Much.

I felt like I had to give hime a spot for his toys.

Most of them are models he put together.

They don't bring much to the aesthetics of the room, but it is his house too.

Right?

I don't imagine I'll  being back here anytime soon with a makeover reveal.

Too may other things need completing.

For now I'm pinning and dreaming.

And I'm sleeping on a comfortable mattress.

That will do for now.

 

The winner of the headband.

I cheated and picked two, using the random number generator.

and the winners are # 2 Ashley and  #4 DeDe.

I'll be emailing  you ladies to see what colors you'd like.

 

Mark one off

One of my half-done projects is finished.

I think she's pretty hot if I do say so myself, with her sexy curves. 

This was my Granny's chair. I have no idea how old she is,but I'm guessing at least sixty.

I had her professionally reupholstered a couple of years ago for Alyssa.

See her there in the background? Only before shot I could find.

I really debated on whether or not to paint the wood.

I usually have no qualms about painting wood, but since she was my Granny's I went back and forth before deciding that in order for her to really shine, she should be white.

The wood just blends in with my floor and it was not in the best shape anyway.

I was a little disappointed by the job the upholsterer had done. I mean the work itself was fine, but instead of using cording made from the upholstery fabric to trim the edges, he used matching gimp.

It looked OK, just not what I expected, for what I paid.

I made double welt cording and think it looks a little more finished this way.

I took a few photos of the process, but I am in no way qualified to write a tutorial on upholstery.

Every piece of furniture is different. For this particular gal, the worst part was removing the old fabric. Holy staples Batman. To say I removed ten billion staples is no exaggeration. Well, maybe a tad, but no less than several hundred.

Can you see all those staples?  They were in deep too. I couldn't get a flat head screwdriver under there to pry them out.

I have this pointy, poke-your-eye-out-if-you-aren't-careful thingy.

That did the trick.

I wrapped some tape around all but the tip so it didn't dent the wood.

 

Once all those staples were out, I just cleaned and sprayed the wood.

I kept the batting underneath, because it was only a couple of years old. I just taped the edges to keep it away from the frame.

The rest was pretty easy in comparison to pulling out all those staples.

Just staple on fabric in the reverse order it came off.

There are a variety of methods for making double welt cording.

I don't have a special double cording foot or even double cording. I use my zipper foot and regular cording.

Measure what you need for your project and cut strips of fabric 2 inches wide.

 For this, I cut the fabric straight across the width from selvedge to selvedge instead of cutting the fabric on the bias.

I sewed the strips from end to end, at an angle- sorry, no photo of that step.
Now that you have a long strip of fabric, take it to the machine. Wrap it around far enough to cover the cording and using  your zipper foot sew very close to the cording.

Sew to the end or your fabric.

Lay a second piece of cording up next to the first one. Snuggle it in close, but not too close. You want enough room to sew down the center. Not too much room. Just a little. How technical is that?

Sew down the center of the little valley between the two pieces of cording.

 Trim away any excess fabric from the seam, so that it doesn't show from the front.

Glue that baby down with hot glue and your friends will be very impressed.

Glad to have one thing marked off my list. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some pillows to make.

Here's one more look at my sexy girl. You can stare at her curves if you want. She doesn't mind.

 

 

I'll be sharing this at the following link parties. Check them out for some great inspiration.

 

Ever feel like a dog chasing its tail?

That's how I'm feeling lately. Like I'm going round and round in circles and getting nowhere. My mind is spinning with things I want to be doing but for one reason or another things just aren't happening. I never used to be one to have lots of half-done projects floating around. Just the opposite. I was very one track minded, focusing on one thing and only that thing until it was done. Right now I have more projects started than I can count. Maybe if I try counting a few it will shame me into gear.

• I've got a half naked chair on my back porch I'm in the process of reupholstering.

• I drug and old ottoman out of the attic I want to make a slipcover for and use in the living room. It's sitting in the living room in all its ugly dirty green gingham glory in my gray living room. Not very cute. 
• The dressers in my bedroom have been in the early stages of a redo for about a month now. I spackled the ugly 80s carved  flowers in preparation for  painting them and that's as far as I got. White spackle on black dressers,  really not cute. You know how when you are happy with a room, the way it looks, you tend to keep it cleaner. Keep the bed made, keep clothes from piling up. Yea, lets just say, it's quite apparent I have fallen out of love with my bedroom. I have plans, but you know where they are, right? Yea, spinning around between my ears.
• I did get one project completed that delights me to no end. I organized my spices. I even took before and after photos and everything, but guess what? I can't find the camera I took them with. (long story) I've looked all morning. I finally gave up on the before photos and decided just to take more afters with my big camera. Battery's dead. I have one interesting thing I could blog about, but can't find or take photos. Is this a conspiracy?
• I'm sitting in my sewing room that looks like a small bomb exploded and dropped things everywhere including new fabric for making pillows for the living room. Before any sewing can happen some cleaning has to occur. Chasing my tail! All I can do is chase my tail.
• I did manage to clean the shower in my bathroom last night. Scrubbed and scrubbed till it shines, and it still smells like mildew. What the? Chasing my tail. 
• My laundry room... I can't even talk about the state of my laundry room.

OK, enough public humiliation. There is still time in the day to get something accomplished and Alyssa has taken Bayleigh to the movies. I declare I'm stepping away from the computer and getting at least one project finished. I'll be back with something to report tomorrow. Promise. If you don't see me here, please send me stern emails with words like young lady and what do you have to say for yourself?

 

**One more thing before you go. We are having outdoor movie night on Sunday. Like we did for Bayleigh's birthday. The last time it all centered around the movie Tangled. It was beautiful and magical and all had a wonderful time. All but Bayleigh. She fell asleep before the movie started and woke up midway through to throw up. Turns out she had strep. So to make it up to her we're doing the movie part again. We haven't decided upon a movie yet. Any suggestions for a good family friendly movie that adults and kids would enjoy?

Closer

I'm sure I'll never be done with my kitchen, but I do believe I've moved into a more classic direction that I will not tire of as soon. It's beginning to feel settled and comfortable. Just like it is supposed to be this way, not like it's decorated. Does that make sense? It's like me in jeans and a tee as opposed to a dress and heels. I can put on a dress and heels and look nice, but it feels temporary, like I can't wait to get home and be me. The real me in jeans and a tee. I feel like my kitchen has finally found a comfy pair of jeans and a clean tee. Jeans that fit and make her butt look good.

I finished painting the front side of the bar.

I love the added details.

For my birthday, I got two school house style light fixtures.

 
Notice anything else new in this picture??

Bar stools!! I love these bar stools!! I've been dreaming of stools like these, coveting stools like these. Pinning every similar stool I saw. Wishing for these stools. But the thing is, they were way out of my budget. I could in no way justify or afford spending over three hundred dollars for something I didn't need. Yes, I wanted them bunches, but didn't need them one bit. So I decided if I could sell something I no longer needed, something that was just taking up space, I could get the stools. Long story short, I sold a commercial sewing machine I had in the garage and had not used in more than a year for almost exactly what the stools cost. Win, win! More space in the garage, and NEW STOOLS!! I also sold the old stools on craigslist. Triple win.

Did I mention I love these stools?

They are heavy and sturdy and lovely and I.... well  you know.

While I was busy tweaking, I roped Mitch in, as I always do, and we installed some under-cabinet lighting. We purchased it at least 5 years ago, probably more like 10 and just never put it up.

Now if I could find something in the garage to sell that would bring a couple grand I'd get new appliances. Yea, I don't think that's too likely.

I guess she's wearing her comfy jeans with a clean tee and old worn in shoes.

{Dough bowl made my Mitch's grandfather}

Inspired by Pinterest

The plate wall in the kitchen... well it just never grew on me. Too messy, too haphazard. So I pulled them down, patched about 47 holes and went about coming up with something else to fill the empty space.

I fell in love with this when I saw it on Pinterest. Everything about it. The colors, the words, the clean simple design.  Love. I sang you are my sunshine to my children and to Bayleigh when I rocked them to sleep.  I knew I wanted to make my own version and this wall would be the perfect spot for it.

A while back I picked up a few cabinet doors at the habitat re-store for 1.99. They were new doors, with no hardware holes to patch. Perfect for making signs.

I primed and painted the door white, then painted on a rectangle of yellow where I knew Happy was going to go. At the bottom I let Bayleigh paint an aqua square.

Then I cut out the words and heart using my silhouette.

Next  I sprayed the whole thing with gloss gray spray paint. It looked pretty good, but I thought it needed a little roughening up. I gave it some age with sand paper, a little dry brushing,  and dark tinted finishing wax.

I hung it on the wall and meh... was underwhelmed. Does anyone else do that? This is just a small little section of wall in my kitchen, but it's highly visible, so I want to hang something special there. Something with a bit of wow factor. Not to say I don't love the sign, I do. I just don't think it works here.

Take 2. Another take on one of my favorite pins. (yes I'm a pinterest addict) A little side tangent here, OK when a photo has been pinned from Tumblr, does anyone know how to then find the original site? I would like to give proper credit, but clicking on the photo only takes you to Tumblr's home page. Side tangent over.

Take 2s inspiration was also pinned from Tumblr, but this time I was able to find its origin.

I LOVE take 2. Love. It.

It is made from old fence pickets. We replaced the fence in our backyard with low maintenance vinyl and now I have lots of old pickets to work with. I didn't take any photos of the process but it was super easy. Mitch cut the pickets down,  I sanded most of the white paint off and stained three of the pickets with dark walnut stain. After it dried I sanded and stained them again. I used the silhouette to make vinyl stencils and just brused on some bluish gray craft paint. Once it was dry I scuffed the letters with sandpaper.

For the HAPPY section, I mod-podged a sweet, old fashioned looking gray floral fabric onto a board and then stenciled the letters on. This time I started with white craft paint, followed by several coats of yellow to completely cover the print on the fabric. 

The pickets are held together in back with 1/4 inch boards glued and screwed in place.

The skies are gray here today, but looking at this sweet sign makes me very happy.

 

 You can find me hanging out at some of these great parties. Join me!!

A little spring on the table

Creating lovely centerpieces is not part of my skill set. I'm just not good at it. I try, really I do, but usually my table is quite boring. 

Last week I saw this lovely table. She got her inspiration from  Pottery Barn and created it for much, much less. 

My initial plan was to pretty much shamelessly copy her. I already had some white bunnies and a white pitcher, all I needed were the flowers and paper mache eggs. I found the flowers at Hobby Lobby, no luck with the eggs. Dang it!  I remembered a blog post about painting plastic eggs, so I picked up a pack and painted my own.

I sprayed primer on first.

Then a couple coats of craft paint. I used an off white for the base coat adding a little blue and green to some for some variation.

Then I speckled them using watered down paint on a tooth brush.

They looked pretty good, but the seam where the egg comes apart was more noticeable than I wanted. I decided not to hang them, instead I placed them in a little moss nest.

Instead of the white pitcher, I used my granny's old watering can.

I guess it's a knock off of a knock off.

Thanks for the inspiration Roeshel and Pottery Barn.

 

The post where I let you into my crazy little world.

You've been warned.

This post will be long and rambling and will in no way contribute to making the world a better place or make you any smarter. If you have a few minutes of your life you don't mind wasting, stick around. If not, I certainly understand.

Where to begin... Remember last year, not even last year actually, it was several months ago. I found a table and chairs on Craigslist for fifty bucks. Remember how I droned on about it for several posts? Here,  here, here and here. How I sanded and stained and painted and stripped and on and on, bladi bla bla bla.....Remember? Yea, well I bought another table a couple of weeks ago and guess what? I fell into the rabbit hole again. The amateur who thinks she knows a little something but really knows very little about furniture restoration rabbit hole.

I happened upon a table for $48.00 at my favorite thrift store. I wasn't in the market for a table, per say. I was just never completely satisfied with the last table. I was going for farm house and ended up with beach cottage. If I had a beach cottage, I'd put this table in it.

Anyway, this is already way, way too wordy. How about some pictures?

So I bought this table. I loved the legs and the top had promise. The previous owners had started working on her. The top was partially stripped and had been sanded with an orbital sander. She had swirly marks all over her.  To get rid of the swirls, I had to sand. And sand. Then I had to sand some more.

Once I had her smooth as a baby's behind, I applied a stain made by soaking steel wool in vinegar. It's more of a science experiment than a stain actually.

I was singing and dancing and loving it. All was good.

 

I was writing blog posts in my head about how fabulously beautiful my new old table was.

I wiped on some Howard's feed n wax and danced a little more. I was pretty sure I heard angels singing. I was in love.

But I'm a fickle girl. What can I say. What feels like love one day, the next... not so much. It was just a crush. In the light of day, I saw splotchiness that as much as I tried to call patina, I just couldn't get past. It looked like a half a**ed job and after spending so many hours sanding, I couldn't settle for what looked hastily done.

I think the problem was wood filler. See those lighter areas in the photo above? Well they were all over the table. What the heck? My next door neighbor/cousin came over to ridicule jokingly ask hadn't I distressed that table enough. His somewhat expert opinion was that a wood filler had been used in the manufacturing process to smooth the grain of the table. A made in China sticker on the underside led me to believe that perhaps my lovely table was not a hand made antique.  The vinegar stain works by reacting with the tannins in the wood, it didn't affect the wood filler, and left me with a splotchy mess. I wanted age and patina, but this wasn't what I had in mind.

At that point I fell to the ground and cried Why? Why can't I love you table? I've invested so much time in our relationship. I've sanded my fingers down to nubs. I want so much to love you, I do. It's not you, it's me.

So, I sanded her down. Again.

Opps, there I go getting all wordy. 

I sanded, stained, applied 2 coats of satin finish poly and a coat of minwax furniture paste wax.

And I decided to proceded with caution. I thought I could love her, but know my track record too well.

The top looked good. Really good. But then I had to do something about those legs. Those beautiful legs.

Oh my goodness, I'm over six hundred words into this post and I still have to talk about the legs.

It's late, I don't have it in me. I'm not being cruel and dragging it out just to get you to come back. Really it is late. I'll leave you with a photo of the table in the house, but just know, there are more chapters to be written before I can call this a love story.

A plethora of plates. And doors.

 On a whim, I covered this little wall in my kitchen with plates.

Just a random pattern. I got my hammer and nails and just started hanging. No pre-planning, just haphazardly slapping some plates on the wall.

For this wall, in the dining room, I laid out and measured and got things just so.

In the kitchen, it was a spur of the moment decision followed by willy-nilly craziness.

 
That ugly ceiling fixture's days are numbered. It's outta here, as soon as I can paint the replacement.

The door with the ugly brass knob is to the master bedroom.

The doorway (I removed the door) to the left of that is to the laundry room. The door in the foreground is the pantry. Lots of doors huh?

Well that aint all folks.

Lets back up a bit, look from a different angle.

 
Count em. That's five doors. Well, four doors and one door way.

Now that you've seen my plethora of doors, give me your opinion.

Before I painted, (you know I means Mitch) the exterior leading doors had dark bamboo roman shades.  I haven't put them back up because I don't like the look of them against the black door. Any suggestions for what to replace them with?

Remember I have these curtains on the bay windows.

They are from IKEA. I guess I could get another panel and make roman shades, but I worry that it would be a bit too much.

Thoughts?? I'd love to see some examples of treatments on black doors. I've searched around the net, but not really found anything.

I wanted to share how I was able to hang all those plates without going out and buying plate hangers. I first saw this at the Nesting place.

Glue a ribbon hanger right on the back. First put two globs of glue on the plate. Place the ends of the ribbon in the glue, then put another glob on top of the ribbon. Let it cool completely before hanging. 

I've done this all over my house and never had one fall, but please don't do this with your grandmother's wedding china or on a plate you plan to hang over your bed.