Laptop Bling

Does anyone else think that laptops, while incredibly convenient and useful, can be quite boring? I definitely thought so, so I dressed mine up with some bling. :-)  I saw these vinyl decals at my local Michaels, and liked them immediately.



While in the store, I couldn't think of any way to use them, so I left without purchasing them. But, happily, a few days later I came up with the idea of putting them on my laptop cover. I hadn't wanted to purchase a skin for my laptop, but was put off by the price and the overwhelming amount of options. That's why these little flowers were perfect. They're easily removable, so they don't damage the computer at all, and they add a little pop of color to the otherwise boring case. The only catch was, when I went back to Michaels they were no where to be found. I had half expected that, as they were clearanced out on my last trip, but I tooled around the store, looking at other fun stuff and hoping I might find them in some forgotten corner. I may or may not have spent copious amounts of time in the art aisles, admiring all of the oil paints, canvases and brushes. Brushes are my weakness. :-) Anyways, I took one last trip around the store, and voila! There they were, hiding in a dark corner of the scrapbooking section.

Putting them on the computer was easy peasy. I simply cut out around the shapes, and positioned them on the back of the screen.





The decals included a little plastic piece the size of a credit card that worked very well to smooth out any stray bubbles.  Now my 'puter has a little bit of sizzle to it. Isn't it pretty?

Etsy has tons of vinyl decal options, and most of the sellers are willing to customize something for you. Think of the possibilities! :-)

Centsational Girl is having a "Where I Blog" party. Because we travel so much, I don't really have a stable spot that I blog from, which is why I love my super portable laptop with its long battery power. So now the "where I blog" is a little prettier! Go see all of the fabulous spaces that these girls have!

Also linked to the Sunday Showcase @ Under the Table and Dreaming:-), the DIY Project Parade @ The DIY Showoff and Metamorphosis Monday @ Between Naps on the Porch

Deck Makeover

Last summer our focus was on the front of the house. We figured that we had ignored the outside for long enough, and that our neighbors would appreciate us improving the curb appeal a bit. So we slaved and toiled all summer long, and into the fall to take the front of our house from drab to fab. All of our efforts paid off, when we ended up with the front looking like this:

But the back of the house received zero attention. :-) We've tried really hard to balance out our life with our renovations, and not allow them to take over completely. With that in mind, last summer we decided to only work on the front. Which meant that the back of the house still looked like this:

Not quite as pleasant, right? So this summer we thought we would tackle at least part of this mess in the back, and at the same time spruce up a fun little deck area that we could enjoy throughout the summer. My other two goals were to mostly tackle projects I could do myself, and to not spend huge amounts of money or time by changing anything. We would simply work with what we had, using paint, new light fixtures and simple accessories to make everything liveable. And here's what we accomplished:

Quite a difference, right? I need to mention here that we ignored the left side of the house entirely. Its time will come, but we need to kill some weeds, get rid of some garbage and take out some planters before we can even think of "sprucing up." So this is two thirds of the back fixed up. :-) We continued with the yellow and green color scheme we started with in the front, and then added in some fun shots of red, blue and colored glass to make it very festive.  As you can see, the difference is drastic.

Painting all of the exposed wood, and caring for the neglected deck wood really changed the overall look. For all of the wood that I painted, I simply sprayed off any dirt, then followed with a coat of Kilz primer, and finally with outdoor paint. I love how sunny and warm the yellow is, with the bright pops of green. Caring for the wood of the deck floor was a little more tedious. It took me several hours to sand it all smooth, then I sprayed a deck cleaning solution on, and scrubbed that off. Finally, after everything was clean and dry, we spent a Saturday afternoon applying an outdoor deck stain to the freshly scrubbed boards.



The color is super similar to the concrete paint color we used on the front porch floor. Although not intended, I love that there is such a continuity from front to back now. The other thing that made a huge difference was painting the storm door that leads into the house and swapping out the old handle for a new black one. It's just a simple plastic door, so it looks much better painted.



The deck isn't large, just 10x11 feet, so there was just enough room to add two chairs by the door, and a table and chairs on the opposite side. We made the table from a table base found on Craigslist, and an old cabinet door screwed on as a top. Eventually, I'd like to make a nicer top, but for now, covered with a red and white gingham cloth, it looks sweet and allows us to eat out here in the summertime.

See how rich the wood looks now? And it is splinter free, which encourages bare feet. :-)

The plants, other than the silk poppies on the table, are mostly clearance finds at the garden centers. Next year I hope to grow some healthy geraniums and petunias to fill up all the pots, but for now, these bargain babies provide some much needed splashes of color.


These last ones, the red petunias, are my favorites. We found the little red pails at Target for $1.00 a piece, and I filled them with a six pack of red petunias from Walmart. They are the perfect scale for the corners of the deep windowsills, and they make me smile every time I see them.

I ordered a new light from Overstock for the funky pole in the middle of the deck. The halogen spotlight that was previously there was broken, and had way too much wattage for the small area. This little wall mount lantern was a much better fit. We purchased a decorative halogen bulb at Lowes for inside, and I love how it looks through the glass of the light.

The aqua colored votive holders on either side were clearanced out to $2.57 at Pier 1. I used some floral wire to string them from the ironwork above, and they are so pretty with the sun shining through them, or with tealights inside at night.

I wanted this area to be slightly reminiscent of the balconies in Spain, so I hunted down some pretty plates to hang on the wall, as they so often do there. Beneath them are some colored glass jars and bottles I thought were cool, and a metal smiling sunflower from Christmas Tree Shops.

Lover also made up a bunch of glass tiki torches. We simply collected some little bottles we liked, and filled them with tiki fluid. The wick is a length of sisal rope, threaded through a hole made in a bottle cap. Once the sisal is saturated, these torches burn super clean and work wonders at keeping the bugs away from the deck. The green torches below were made from cooking wine bottles, and we repurposed their tops to hold the "wick" in place.

We also painted the front of the entryway, and it looks tons better. I'm slowly building up a pretty flower garden for this planter, and already it looks tons better than it did before. My beautiful morning glories from last year naturalized, and I love how they look climbing up either side of the window.

So that's how we transformed our less then stellar deck into a fun, relaxing retreat. I can't decide if my favorite part is the yellow wall color, the happy red geraniums or those cool plates on the wall. What about you?


Linked to Sunday Showcase @ By Stephanie Lynn, Metamorphosis Monday @ BNOTP, DIY Parade @ DIY Showoff

Clean House, er, Garage

On my sidebar there on the right, you'll see that I keep a running tally of things that are currently on my project radar. Of course, these are only a sampling of my mega to do list, but I have fun trying to check them all off. My most recent cross off was the long overdue garage cleaning and straightening.

Not exactly a fun task, but one that was long overdue. As you'll be able to see by the pictures below, the garage was a chaotic mess that has never really been dealt with. The previous owners left a bunch of stuff in the garage when we bought the house, and we were pretty excited about some of it. they left lawn tools and a lawnmower, which was a godsend for two broke first time homeowners like us.  Unfortunately, they also left a bunch of random junk, plastic plant trays, firewood and other garbage. And then, as we settled in and began renovations, cleaning the garage never even showed up on the radar. :-)

Someday, I'd like to thoroughly clean and sort out the garage, paint over the orange paint and install some more organizational items. But for now, a major toss of all garbage, straightening of equipment and a thorough sweeping will have to do! Here are all the fun before and afters:

The plan is to use up that wood throughout the summer and fall in our little chimenea, and then evaluate what else needs to be edited and cleaned up. So, for now, it's not perfect or particularly pretty to look at, but it is neat and clean!

Swapping Out a Doorknob

All of the doors on the second floor of our castle have the cool old brass doorknobs with tons of character. I love the patina that they have developed from decades of use, and the little bit of shimmer that they lend to the hallway.

However, the mechanism for the brass doorknob on the bathroom door was broken, and the doorknob would routinely fall off and crash to the floor. This usually happened when we had guests over and they went to use the restroom for the first time. ;-) Not exactly the kind of first impression we were going for, you know?

We tried to fix it multiple times, but there were a few parts missing that made it only a temporary fix each time. Not long after our latest fix-it session, the knob would once again crash to the floor.

We have a ReStore near our house, so we swung by one day to see if they had any old brass doorknobs that matched the style of our house for a reasonable price. Alas, they neither had matching knobs, nor were they reasonable! :-)

Then one day I remembered that there were some random house parts sitting up in the attic from before we moved in. I went up and rooted around in the dusty eaves, and found the two ends of a glass doorknob hidden among the cobwebs. After a couple of alterations, and harvesting two screws from the old doorknob mechanism, we now have a working, non-crashing doorknob on the bathroom door. And, the cut glass is just gorgeous! I love how it looks against the dark wood of the door, and the bit more sparkle that it brings to that dark corner full o' doors.

So for zero dollars and cents, and just a bit of ingenuity, we fixed a problem and added some glam on top of that! Gotta love projects that are easy on the eyes as well as the wallet!


Linked to Metamorphosis Monday, DIY Parade, Making Monday Marvelous,, Making the World Cuter Monday

What's Better Than Free?

Last fall, on one of my walks around the neighborhood, I spotted a chair in a garbage pile that was definitely worth saving! The chair was already painted, but it was a yellowed cream, and the fabric on the seat, although a pretty pattern, was torn and faded, so it would need to be replaced. I figured it was an easy project and that it would take me less then a day to complete the makeover of this pretty little wooden chair, and then it would look perfect in the guest room.

Later that week, I unscrewed the seat, gave the chair a light sanding, and began it's makeover with white spray paint. The cheap white spray paint that I had purchased did not even begin to cover the yellowy cream underneath. So, I set the chair aside until I had time to work on it. Fast forward more than six months, and I finally returned to this project. After dusting off some cobwebs, I pulled out the trusty Kilz primer and brushed it all over the chairs spindles and curves. One coat of primer was all it took, and then it was easy to spray three light coats of white paint all over to complete the chair's transformation.

A few days later, when I had another small block of time, I recovered the chair's seat cushion. I ripped off the old faded floral, and then simply placed the seat on top of the fabric I was using and cut a few inches around it, then stapled the new fabric onto the bottom side of the seat. The whole shebang took less than half an hour. After screwing the seat back into the wooden frame, the chair's transformation was finished!

Check out how much better it looks in the corner of our black and white guest room than the wooden clunker that was there before. Isn't it b-e-a-U-tiful?



The best part was that all I had to purchase was the paint, as I already had the primer and fabric, and the chair itself was free!

Linked to Metamorphosis Monday @ Between Naps on the Porch, Thrifty Treasures @ Southern Hospitality, DIY Project Parade @ DIY Showoff, Get Your Craft On @ Todays Creative Blog, Pajama Party @ Life in My PJs, Furniture Feature Friday @ Miss Mustard Seed

We're not the only ones

We're not the only crazy renovators in our neighborhood. The whole area is in a constant state of turnover as the previous owners are moving out one by one as their age makes  it impossible to live on their own. A whole new group of young couples and families are slowly settling into the neighborhood, and many are taking on renovations just like we are. This home in our neighborhood seemingly changed hands a while ago, and the renovations began last fall.

I love the blue siding and the yellow doors that our neighbors went with. The entire top floor was added to the little house and, once the siding was put back on,  it now blends in seamlessly with the rest of the house.

The renovation was done by contractors, and was only recently finished. This makes me feel better about the relaxed schedule that we use for our renovations. Hey, if the pros can take six months, we can take six years, right? Right. :0)

Anywho, thanks to Google street view, you can get an idea of this little house's transformation.

Before:



And After:



Pretty cute, right? Let's hope our house and this one serve as inspiration for the rest of the neighborhood, because Lord knows these other homes could use some updating. :-)

Hang It Up

One of my winter projects was to finish the bare wood coat rack we purchased on our vacation last year. I finally finished this long-procrastinated project, but then we were gone for a month, so I hadn't gotten around to posting the after pictures of this piece. I am really happy with how the staining and sealing came out, and I've learned the power of sanding when it comes to achieving a professional finish.

This is the first furniture piece that I have braved the staining process of, so one of the reasons that I put it off so long was that I was nervous about ruining the nice coat rack we had bought. :-) Does that ever happen to you? Your apprehensions about doing something cause you to procrastinate indefinitely? Yeah, me neither.

This project was pretty straightfoward. The piece was already sanded butter smooth, so when it came time to stain, I just wiped it all down with a damp rag, and loosely assembled everything so that nothing would stick together during the stain. Here's what the raw wood piece looked like.




I set the rack on a garbage bag to protect the floor, and went about staining. I used the same concoction we've been using to match the existing woodwork in the house, so that the coat rack would coordinate with the other wood. The rack is made of parawood, not gumwood, oak or pine, so the color ended up having more red undertones than the trim in the house. So it goes, but it's not a perfect match.

After the stain had dried (and I gave it ample time to really dry) I started on the lacquer. For previous projects I've purchased clear spray lacquer, which is a little tricky to work with. But, I was working in the middle of winter, inside, so spraying wasn't an option. Instead, I bought a can of brush on lacquer, and the stuff worked like a charm. Three thin coats later, (over the course of a couple of days) the rack has a hard, smooth finish that looks professionally finished. The stuff does stink to high heaven though, so make sure you can throw open windows or work outside if you can. It's not even necessary to sand between coats, so this stuff is the easiest of easy. Then I just let everything cure up for another week or so before we started using the rack. I'm not sure that the week's worth of waiting was necessary, but I wanted to make sure that it was perfectly cured because I was working in less than ideal weather conditions.

Anyways, like I said, the finish came out like a charm, and I love how it looks. We're definitely "throw-it-on-a-hook" people, not "hang-it-on-a-hanger" people, so this works really well for us. :-) Here are the afters.





Oh, and just so you know, I never worry about getting stain on my hands when finishing any type of wood. Gloves really reduce your dexterity, and it is so easy to remove stain from your hands. When you are done staining, just grab a dollop of vegetable oil (or any other kind of oil) and pretend you are washing your hands. The oil will pick up all the stain. Then you can wash again with soap (to remove the oil) and you are back to normal! Easy peasy. :-) The stain will mess up your manicure though, so just keep that in mind. Here's the proof:





Some notes from this project:

• I used rags to both apply the stain, and wipe it off. I use old T-shirts, sheets, whatever we have laying around, and then just toss them when I am done.


• Make sure to stir your stain really well so that you get even coverage. Same thing applies for the lacquer.


• I used cheap throwaway bristle brushes from the home improvement store (each about a dollar) for applying the lacquer. I used a fresh one for each coat as I didn't want to mess up the finish. The only thing that really matters is that you use a clean, natural bristle brush.

Linked to Metamorphosis Monday @ Between Naps on The Porch and

I Made it Without My Hubby @ Shanty2Chic

DIY Day @ A Soft Place to Land

Get Your Craft On @ Today's Creative Blog

Furniture Feature Friday @ Mustard Seed Creations

Lauren's Master Makeover

Not too long ago Lauren asked me for help pulling her master bedroom together. She had all the bare bones in place, and was looking for some help with accessories and art to take the room from good to great. I gave her some suggestions, and now she is back in record time with the after pictures. How fun is that?

For a quick refresher, here's what Lauren's room looked like sans pretty accessories and art.

And here it is today with some new pillows, mirrors and little accessories on the nightstands.



I love how much more pulled together everything looks now. Here are a few more angles for you to see how far this room has come.

Before:



And After:



One more Before:



And one more After:



I love how those mirrors add just a touch of glam to the space without making the room feel really gaudy. And that art on the side wall? Love it. :-) I may just have to get one for my own castle! What's your favorite part?

Oh, and anyone else want some help with their rooms? I have a blast doing this, and I promise I don't only do bedrooms! :-)

Linked to Metamorphosis Monday at Between Naps on the Porch