Wednesday, January 30, 2013

To Paint or Not to Paint?....

Your Vote is Needed!
I've only painted one other piece of furniture in our Home.
So just the thought of it makes me nervous.
I was all set to paint, but then that nervous doubt kicked in.

 This is one of two chairs left that went with the first used antique 
dining set we purchased years ago. I'm not even sure what
 happened to the other two.  She's kind of drab, but she's got great lines.  
~Don"t you think?~
My oldest says to paint....it's ugly! 
 That's kind of harsh, but then again, she doesn't appreciate antiques!

 I knew for sure the seat needed to be recovered. 
 I recovered them when we first brought them to our Home, years ago.
  It was definitely time!

 I picked something colorful and perky! 
 That's my new mood!

I had every intention on painting her the accent color of my room.  
Turquoise called Palmetto!
But, now I don't know, I kind of like her this way too.

 I dressed her up with a cute little stitched pillow.  

 Looks so much better to me!
What would you do?

I'll just have to sit here awhile and think about it.
I'd love to hear your votes, either way!

What are you doing today?

Tuesday, January 29, 2013

She ain't much,....

but she's all I got!
I can hear the giggles now. 
 Or maybe some of you are alittle bit giddy to see a relic like this!
Okay...not so much and that's fine!

I like to come into my new craft room in the early morning
 hours after my guy leaves for work and our daughter is off to school.
Although today there is a "snow"/heavy rain day.

~It's very peaceful at this early hour~

I thought I would share with you my sewing machine.
My MIL gave it to me years ago. I believe our oldest was just a baby.
Now, I must admit, I am not a sew~er so to speak.
I can sew and have, but only a few things in my lifetime.
Maybe because this little machine of mine only goes
~Forward & Back~


 No buttons holes can be made....
to my knowledge!
But, she does work still!

 I'm probably the one that's rusty!

 Yep, I'm pretty sure it's me!
(don't let this picture fool you, I handstitched this years ago)

Luckily, I still have the book....
 Are any of you familiar with this machine?

 She's definitely vintage!
(apparently one of my girls thought this was a coloring book)

 I do have to check out how to thread her from time to time
Thank goodness for this illustration!


~ It's kind of fun winding the bobbins~

 I'm guessing she came with attachments at one time.
Hmm....
where are they now?


 Were you aware of this?
Singer sewing machines are not sold in departments stores!
I bet they are now!

 This little sewing cabinet was given to my Mom
 years ago by a lady I called Grandma. 
 All of my grandparents passed away before I was even born.
One of the first people my Mom met when she moved
 to Michigan after marrying my Dad took our family
 under her wing and said we could call her Grandma!
She's the only Grandma I knew!
She's been gone since my Hillary was just little. 
 I loved her dearly, so having this
little cabinet means the world to me!

So tell me, what do you think of my little 
~Singer Sewing Machine~

Like I said, She ain't much, but she's all I got!
and she works....

Saturday, January 26, 2013

Letter Fun....

My guy and I went to the next town up to the Restore shop
 and I found these letters.

They were 50 cents each and 3 smaller ones they had for 75 cents.
The vintage red wire dish drainer I picked up at Goodwill for $1.99.  
So I'm just kicking back and having fun!

What are you up to today?

Thursday, January 24, 2013

Craft Room Reveal...part two!....

So now that my project room has been revealed as a Craft Room, I can share with you some of the fun stuff I have been picking up and what I've been doing with it.  Do you ever get lost in a project having so much fun you can't wait to share it here in blogland?  But, you want it to be just right first!  Well, there are a few more things to be done in this room, but....we do have a budget and so they will have to wait.  I will share along the way with those projects.

During all the painting and planning for my Craft Room as I mentioned I made a few stops to some Goodwill's and Thrift Stores.  Looking for goodies that would fit within this room.  I lucked out at our local Thrift Store with these few things pictured above.  A wire basket, a clear vase, a black picture frame, a 14" embroidery hoop, 3 cream colored metal buckets with hooks on the back and some letter stencils.
~All for about $10.00~


I don't know if you've noticed, but in our local Walmart and also our Big Box Store they are now selling fabric pieces.  In bright colors and in rolls of 18" by 21" pieces or bundles of squares in smaller sizes.  You can also pick up rolls of colors too.  Great stuff for the smaller crafts that you don't need a full yard for.

~ Perfect for my first project!~

This is the 14" hoop I got at the Thrift Store.  It had embroidered eagles in it and was only .99 cents. I had purchased this square of brightly colored paisley print for $1.39 for an 18" x 21" square.  



These 3 hoops were some I had that were my Mom's and my MIL's.  So, they both being crafters, will now be a part of my Craft Room.  I really liked these 3 pieces also picked up for $1.39 each.

I have seen on pinterest and other blogs where they did this 
sort of thing on their walls in their craft rooms.
~So I guess I copied!~
Who wouldn't, right!

And you can also see my 3 cream colored
 buckets hanging on my peg board.  
Perfect!

They were .99 cents a piece!

I think I paid .49 cents for the vase and maybe .99 cents for the frame and the wire basket. I'll show you what I did with those another time.  You will stop back and see, won't you?

As you can see I have brought my laptop up here too.  I spend most of my day up here tweaking and having fun.  I am enjoying listening to Pandora while I tweak.

It's really hard to get a "good" picture in this room.  With these two tall windows that pretty much make up the one wall, the lighting changes all day.  These last two pictures probably give the closest feel of the room.

I'm so glad you stopped by to see my Craft Room.  I enjoy your visits and look forward to hearing what you have to say.  I'd love to hear about and see your craft space.  It's been a fun project for me, once the "dirty" work was done.  Please stick around and I'll share a few more things in my next post!

Thanks for stopping!

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

Room Reveal...part one!....

So, as I told you in my last post, I found this great coffee table at our local Goodwill.  I saw it and new it would be perfect for my new Craft Room.  But, I needed to make sure my guy could change the legs for me and make it table height.  So, I called him and he said, "Of course! I can do anything!"
 I knew that, so it came Home with me!

 But, when he saw it, I think these curvy little legs had him at Hello! It then took me a day or two to convince him of my "vision" as I now call it.  He wasn't sure that's what we should be doing with it.  Then when I thought I had him convinced, he wanted to make it more counter height.  I stood my ground and he finally agreed. Thanks Honey!  He is a wood lover and he makes furniture, so there was some doubt going on but, he finally relented and .....

 ~TaDa~
 My craft table was born!  I haven't decided yet if I will paint it or not.  I guess I can always decide later on.  Right now, I am happy with how it turned out and it is working perfectly for me.  
Perfect width and Perfect height! 
 Thanks honey!

 Then it was time to start decorating!  Bringing in some stuff to make it actually feel like the Craft Room I had in my "vision".  I knew my color scheme was bright green and turquoise.  I then remembered our youngest daughter had a cute little rug that had those colors.  I found it in her closet under a bunch of clothes and stuff that shouldn't be on the floor stuff!  I pulled it up, washed  and dried it and it is Perfect! Adds the perfect amount of color to the wood floor!

 Then it was on to this hidden treasure!
Can you guess what's behind this door?

 If you guessed ironing board you were correct. Actually, I was very excited about this.  My family does not understand why!  They are only beginning to see my "vision". I have an ironing board in my laundry room, why do I need one up here they ask?  You all know every crafter at some point will need an ironing board!

 Well, this old cover had to go!  And soon, who knows how long it has been on there.  It was dirty for one, stretched out and taped on (not by me).  This is a large ironing board, 60' long.  The average board is 54" long.  So going out to buy one wasn't going to be easy.  But, I found a replacement at Marshall's for $7.99, good enough and it comes with a pad too.  So it came Home with me!

 I couldn't wait to get it on the ironing board.  Like most, it has an elastic stretchy band to hold it snug to the board. But, snug only worked to a point on this board.  I pulled and stretched and put white thumb tacks/push pins on the underside to keep it on.  It worked until I got to the end.  Then I had to be inventive! So I gathered the stretchy band and pulled it out of the casing....now what do I do.  If I cut it, I may lose it.  If I don't it will look like this.  So I cut it and Thank goodness I had tacked it down along the way.  It snapped out of my hands and disappeared within the cover underneath.  Oh well!  Now the material at the end folded back and almost covers the whole board!

 I'm Happy!
May change to a brighter material at some point, but for now this works!

 And when the ironing board is folded down, it doesn't even hit the table.
Thanks again Honey!

 And when it's up....
No nasty tape going across to hold it on!
Not bad for $7.99!

At this point I'm getting really excited about decorating this room.  I have so much craft stuff around the house and in boxes.  More then enough to make good use of this new Craft Room!
~What took me so long to come up with this "vision"?~

Now on to my recent trip to IKEA with this girl....
 As those of you know, you can get lost in IKEA, just filling up your basket with all the goodies! And before you know it, you've spent some BIG $$ and well, That almost happened to me! But, I only ended up with a few things on this trip.  Just to get me started in my cute little room!

 This cute little two step black stool was only $19.99.
And it had to come Home with me!

 It's the perfect height for me to put my magazine holders way up there on the top of the cabinets!

 I also got these cute little plastic holders and the rod at IKEA.  The rod was only $3.99 and each holder was .99 cents.  I had the perfect spot for it right by my new craft table.  I picked up the bright green lamp at Target when we stopped there on our way Home from IKEA.  It was clearanced for $13.98....perfect!  The cute bird print in the distressed turquoise frame was a Xmas gift from my Hillary.  Perfect for my room!  And then there is a "vintage" Loop Craft weaving loom.  You know the kind we use to make pot holders with as kids!  Not sure whose it was, mine or my guys.  Perfect for the room!

 I had one more vision for this room that I needed my guys help with!  I know a lot of you DIY'ers  could've done this on your own, but I needed him to cut it for me.  I had it all planned out.  He still wasn't quite getting my vision.  But, he lovingly did what I asked him to do!

 And now I have a peg board to hang stuff on!
I painted it my accent color of turquoise called Palmetto!
~Perfect~

So my "vision" is really coming together at this point.  I love coming in to this room in the early morning hours, when it's still dark and turning on my teacup night lite my Mom gave me years ago. It's so warm and inviting!  I have more to show you and I hope you come back for the next post for a visit!  It may be just my vision but I sure think it's a lot better then being an old dirty forgotten storage room.  Don't you?

As Always....
Thanks for stopping by!  Can't wait to hear what you think!

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

I finally had a Vision! (a little reveal)....



I think we can all agree that's our Homes can be a lot of work!
Newer Homes, can be work....
But, if you've ever lived in an Older Home
~like Me~
you know that most of the time re-doing a room
is ALOT of work! You have to be in a 
certain mind set to even start a project.
For example, each of our rooms that we have "done" so far
have had layers and Layers of wallpaper. Put on by who knows
what kind of gunk, back in the day.  Only to finally get it 
all off and have to repair all of the cracks and holes in 
what is sometimes to be discovered to be
~Horse hair Plaster~
Yep, Fun stuff right there!
Which then leads to LOTS of sanding and therefore lots of
~Sanding Dust~
not only in the room, but pretty much every room within the vicinity!

So, sit back and see where this all started!
~Hope you have your favorite cup of something~

When we bought our Home, this room was the kitchen
of the ~in-law~ apartment upstairs at the back of the house.
It had bright contact paper on the walls in a fruit print 
and blue checks.  We made it into a sort of play room for our 
girls at the time.  Then it morphed into a storage room.
And pretty much has been that way for the last 5 or so years.

We didn't know what to do with it!!

Do you see all the work?
Hard to get motivated when there's this much to do!
First couple layers of wallpaper down.
Not even to the plaster yet!


Tell me you feel my pain!


And then I had a Vision!
And I mentioned to my Guy on Friday a few weeks ago.
Let's work on that room this weekend!
We He needed a project!
He responded, let's start tonight!

 So, my Guy and our oldest worked all day on that Saturday
peeling the rest of the wallpapers off and patching and sanding.
Then he and I primed the room.

 and painted it an off white color called
~Bittersweet White~
at times there is a hint of yellow, very soft an pretty
unfortunately my little point and shoot doesn't reveal that.

Then came my Guys favorite part.
~Demolition~
he insisted on removing the old counter top and sink.

Guys love to tear things apart!

 Some lovely blue checked contact paper!

 This is an old cast iron sink!
~Very Heavy~
It took both of us to carry it down the stairs and then we had
to sit it on the floor and relax our arms for a few hours.

Well, we needed something to replace the old dirty knicked up white counter top!

 So the next day we headed to Menards and picked up this
faux granite replacement.  Much better!
And it was on sale!
 Looking good!

Like anyone doing a "project room" you know that
while working on the room, you're also planning what
will go in and envisioning the whole thing.
At least I do!

So between painting walls and woodwork, I would 
slip away for a break and go to Goodwill or my local Thrift Store
looking for treasurers for my new room.

 I found this coffee table at Goodwill and called my guy and 
asked what he thought about it.  He said sure, so it came Home
with me! More on that later!

 Then my oldest and I took a trip to IKEA.
That was a fun day.  I picked up a few things there,
I'll show you that too....later!

 I found these cute airy curtains at our local big box store.
Loved the color and the print, so they came Home with me!
They are done in lime green circles!

 There is this little nook/closet space in the room.
For years we hung our out of season type coats and
stuff in there.  It needed to be painted too.  

 I had a color palette in my head for the whole room
This turquoise color caught my eye.
It's called Palmetto!
I Love it!

So I got that all primed and painted!
Now comes the fun part and I'm in this room everyday.
By the way this room is only about 
8 by 10 (maybe 12).
I haven't really measured except I know we bought the 
counter top and it was 8 ft so, for that I'm sure.

I will be working on my BIG reveal for tomorrow or the next day.
Thank you for sticking with me through all of my little
Hints posts!

I am just so excited about this room, you don't even know!
Hope you see me through to the end!
Have a delightful day and Thanks for stopping by!
Keep giving me your guesses, I love to hear them!
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