DIY: Master Bedroom Gallery Wall

Okay i know i'm the worst blogger in the world! One because i haven't blogged in a week, and two because when i do blog, i take pictures at night and i know it's ridiculous! I promise i will get better, as soon as my work slows down a little bit, which to be honest won't be until the end of April, but the day will come....

Okay, so this isn't really a DIY but it was another step in the right direction for our master bedroom. I decided that on the wall opposite of the sunburst above our dresser that i love, that i would make a gallery wall. All i did was take pictures and frames that we already have and arrange them on our kitchen floor and hang it on the wall....

Sorry that there are a million pictures, and i haven't figured out at all how i'm going to style our dresser, but i did buy that cute little gem this weekend at TJMaxx for $9.99 and i think it is so adorable!

Be looking out this week for my first guest blogger to post on Lucy Schwartz, and if you don't already, i know you'll love her.....

DIY Inspiration: ikea RAST nightstand

Okay okay i know these have been floating around forever, but it's decided! This is exactly what we need to replace Chris' nightstand with. And we did decide to do table lamps. I'm just going to have to have a smaller table for now until we have a bigger bedroom (it's only short by 2 inches!!) and i'm telling you right now, i''m never downsizing to a queen bed not ever so that's not even an option! I got this inspiration first from Marissa at ROOST...she is so talented and i love what she did with this ikea RAST $34.99 dresser....

Even though the color that it is made in is so appealing (NOT), i really love what she did with hers...

I just love it! And my love for gold isn't going anywhere anytime soon, so i'm pretty excited! Danielle Oakey from Danielle Oakey Interiors just finished hers as well and i'm just as in love with hers...

So i've decided that the white with gold is definitely what i'm going with, and that i'm going to do a playoff of the design that Marissa used....both gorgeous and both i'm very envious of! Good job ladies! Thank you for continuing to inspire me daily!

The hardware came from here and is perfect and more than affordable too! Thank you again!

DIY: Chevron Canvas Painting

I already warned you about my obsession for chevron, and i already warned you about needing to get better pictures of this stuff so don't get too antsy about those things quite yet. This is a project that was SO easy and inexpensive and it really makes such a statement in my living room space. I got this inspiration after i saw a home tour of Lauren Davis at Me Oh My! and i fell in love and just had to do it! This was the inspiration...

And this one above is how mine turned out. Hers looks much airier and lighter than mine, however mine does look a lot better in person than in this picture and I'm sure will look better once i use a real camera to take pictures.

SUPPLIES
24x36" artist's canvas from Hobby Lobby (with 40% coupon it was $20.00)
Painters Tape
Sponge Roller
Paint (I used a small test container of Dolphin Fin by Behr)

DIRECTIONS
Create a template either on your computer or just with a ruler, pencil, and piece of paper. Trace the template onto your canvas with pencil (you won't be able to see the pencil after you paint). Tape off the area that you want to paint. *I taped the entire zig-zag that i was leaving white so that i could easily roll the paint on. I did about 3 coats of the gray before i took the paint off. It's my favorite think hanging on any of our walls I'm pretty sure. The part that took the longest was taping, but essentially i did this during an episode of Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice! I could have touched it up more, but i didn't and i think i'm the only one that can see the imperfections so i'm still in love with it.

As you can see it's hung above an old piano. That was the Christmas present that i got for Chris this year, and he has high hopes for this piano. He has decided he wants to paint it in cream with some major distressing and glazing, and then paint the music stand a darker tone. We are for sure going to start that in the very near future and i can't wait to show you the end result! Plus, i hope by the end of this weekend to have a nice furry stool to show you! Woo hoo....

Featured by The Way We Are by Leah

Thank you so much to Leah from The Way We Are for featuring our DIY gold leaf zig-zag tray! I was ecstatic!! Man if this is what kind of satisfaction blogging gives people, now i know why people do it! Thank you so much again Leah. Please check out her blog here...she is AMAZING!

DIY: Anthropologie Inspired Zinc Letters

I love these letters (and everything else) from Anthropologie, but with a $98.00 price, it just wasn't the right time to order one. So i know i'm not the first one to try this, and i also know that this isn't the one-and-only tutorial on how to do this, but i tried it with the silvery paints and it did not turn out the way i planned. Then i stumbled across this tutorial on Sugar and Charm. As much as i love that she chose to spell out 'EAT', i decided to buy 2 different sized 'M's (for Middleton) and do that!

SUPPLIES
Black acrylic paint, Folk Art pearl paint, cardboard letters (you can use wood if you want) and a foam paint brush.

DIRECTIONS
Paint the letters all black and let them dry. Acryllic paint dries really fast as long as you don't load it on too thick, which you won't need to do. Then, dip your brush into the pearl paint and use long strokes to paint over the black. This silver coat will give it the texture and depth it needs to look like a matte metal. If it looks to white, just keep spreading the paint from that spot. The less paint and the longer the strokes on this the better. My sister who has never painted anything in her life got it right away!

The top one is about 12" tall and the bottom one is at least double that tall! I really promise i will take better pictures tonight and update this tomorrow, but this really is a project that i love. I honestly think this is the first one i did after we got married, and i haven't gotten sick of them. I keep moving them around to different places of course, but they're so versatile they can really go anywhere. I hope it's as successful for everyone else as it was for me.

Re-Styling Inspiration

So i was looking at Clementine + Olive today, and came across such a good idea that i love and i'm totally going to try when i get home....

The second picture would be easier to do like now/tonight since i don't have a darling little stool like the first one, but since i have convinced Chris that it's a good idea to save up and get a new bed and new bedding, i think a little stool like that has to make it into the design scheme somehow, don't you?? Plus, i already have the faux version of this from ikea....

This one is $29.99 which is a good price for sure, but i wasn't sure if i was going to like it or not so i was really wishy-washy about buying it. Then one day i went with my mom to look for something completely different, and they now have a faux version for $9.99!!! You can tell it's fake by the back of it, but i honestly like the faux one better...they don't have it online for some reason, but i promise it is in the Draper ikea and will not disappoint. Especially if you want one for a DIY like this, or just as a little accent. So perfect!

DIY: Better Homes and Gardens Terrarium Tutorial

I am a total sucker for TJMaxx!! I go there all the time to try and find whatever i can to make our house even more beautiful! There and HomeGoods will be the end of me, or the end of my access to our bank account maybe...

So this project began at TJMaxx and was ALL Chris. I cannot grow anything, like, anything. He is the one who buys and waters and cares for our plants. So we went into the TJMaxx in Santa Maria, CA while on vacation to see what it had to offer that the ones here in Utah just don't. I couldn't find anything that was perfect, but lo and behold Chris found this x-large apothecary jar that we couldn't leave the store without buying. We had both read the article by Tovah Martin in BHG about terrariums, and he had been pretty set on the idea since then. So the directions are the exact same ones we used. Even though i'm not the one who cares for it, it is the easiest plant we have to care for. Hers a really pretty, but i'm happy with our TJMaxx compared to her Crate & Barrel's.

HOW TO Plant a Terrarium:
All you need; a clear container, soil, and a plant says Tovah Martin

PROVIDE DRAINAGE
Put an inch of 3/8 inch pebbles in the bottom of the container. Mix in a handful of horticultural charcoal to keep moist soil smelling sweet.

POUR IN POTTING SOIL
Add 2-3 inches of light potting soil that contains lots of peat, such as African violet medium. Tamp it down to remove air pockets.

DIG A LITTLE HOLE
No trowel needed! Make a planting pocket with your finger. Set the plant in and firm the soil around it. Make sure no roots are exposed.

WATER LIGHTLY
Dampen the soil until water drips into the stones. Don't use the misters or sprayers, Tovah says: "They make more of a mess than they moisten the soil."

KEEP IT GROWING
Water an open terrarium when the soil looks dry or you can no longer see water in the stones - every 7-10 days or so. A closed one can go for two weeks or more between waterings. Remove spent flowers and leaves as soon as they appear. Wipe the glass, inside and out, occasionally with a clean cloth.

This is how Chris' turned out and it looks really awesome! It's pretty tall and it's a really good natural decoration that not even someone like me could kill!

DIY: Gold Leaf Zig-zag Tray

So I pinned this tray forever ago on Pinterest knowing that I wanted to redo the tray I already had, when I had the time of course. So while i was finishing up Christmas presents and Chris was bored without having to study, he offered to help. I wish I had taken pictures of the step by step process, but if there are questions, just feel free to ask...

This is the tray that i fell in love with from upintheairsomewhere.com, but with a $98.00 price tag, and also already owning a perfectly good tray, the only way i could justify it was as a Christmas list item or a DIY. DIY it was.

All we did was buy FolkArt Gold Acryllic paint and painted over the entire tray. Now i was a little nervous about this. We looked at the gold-leafing option so it could be more like the original, but with never doing it we didn't want to ruin the tray. The other problem was, i wasn't sure how acryllic paint would do after putting painters tape over it, but that was the easier thing to fix if it didn't go well. I taped the stripes as closely as i could to replicate the original. Chris rolled over the Behr Ultra White Matte indoor house paint. And then came the hiccup...

When we excitedly peeled up the paint, there were a few spots where the gold acryllic came with it. We quickly got more gold paint and some touch-up brushes and Chris used his skills and touched it up. We also got come clear coat sealant to spray over the top to hopefully make it more durable. Was it everything i thought it would be??

I seriously could not have been happier! Especially for less than $10.00 total compared to $98.00...um, hello?!? Of course this was the better option. It's obviously not as shiny as it is with the gold-leafing, but it again satisfied my gold fix.