Fact or Fiction?

My friend Suzanne over at Meridian Road (which you should totally check out, by the way) gave me this!

My very first award. YAY! I told her I would do my best, but I'm not much of a "creative writer." Hopefully I can fool you all :)

Here are the rules:
I tell you 6 things. 5 of them are lies and 1 is true. You have to guess which is true! Then, I will pass the award on to a few other blog friends. I will try to post my lies/truth by tonight or tomorrow night and let you know on Monday which one is true.

My Craft "Room"

A few weeks ago, there was a linky party going around about showing your craft room off. Well, mine isn't a "room" and it looks awful! But I have some big plans for it, so I thought I would show you anyways. 

Here is what it looked like when we bought the house. (I have taken down the white board, moved all the paint cans and put my crafting stuff there!)

Yep, that's my work bench "corner".

Here's what I want to do:

The area where the white board is and over to the right corner (which you can't see in this picture) will become my laundry room. I want it to look like this:

This is from Melanie at The Old White Cottage (a very cute blog by the way!). She found it in Country Home. All they did was hang a curtain to cover up that old nasty block wall and make it brighter and homier! I could totally do that in my corner.

I am going to paint the work bench, the "backsplash" and the peg board a white to make it a little brighter, too. Then, I will paint the shelf and the top of the bench a darker gray color so it will have a little contrast, as well as not show a bunch of dirt and grime.

Sort of like this look (only my top isn't stainless steel):

I want to put nice little knobs on the doors under the work bench. Or open it up for more storage like this:

Or put sliding shelves in them:

And then on the wall to the left of the bench, I want to put a desk/hutch thing where I can sit and work on stuff! 

And because there is no natural light, I want to paint the whole area a cheery yellow.

I would love to put a curtain or something around that ugly hot water heater too! Any ideas for hiding that thing?

Thanks for taking a "tour" of my someday-to-be craft room!

Entryway Dreaming

I have a big beautiful "bay window" in my entryway. It's a "bay window" and not a bay window because it only has 2 windows with an angled wall instead of 3 windows. I have been dreaming about what I'm going to do in that room and I have always wanted a bay window with a cozy window seat to sit and read in.
I found some wonderful inspirations that make you want to curl up and read a book.

Here is our window.

The only problem is how tall the windows are.. oh well, a girl can dream.

Old Trunk

So, a few weekends ago, I found this trunk at a flea market for a steal of $20! I swear we saw about 30 other trunks for over $100 each, so I snagged. it.

I am in the process of making over the inside with "old" newspaper. I thought that would be kind of cool. I would have kept it the same, but it was all stained and gross inside.  There are initials "G" and "K" on the front. Almost perfect! If it was a "C" instead, that'd be wonderful. Oh well.. it's still neat. I wonder who G.K. was?

Take a look!

Now I'm having trouble deciding on where to put it and what to use it for. Any ideas? It's too short to be a coffee table, too tall to be an end table if it's on end. I'm not sure!

Serving Tray Feature

So, I found a great idea on The Little Brown House and Sharyl kindly said I could show you on my blog! Look at her fantastic cabinet door makeover.

 

Diy Serving Tray

So, my oldest sister has a birthday this month.

And she mentioned to me that she would like a serving tray.

Don’t tell her you saw this!

She doesn’t read my blog but others she knows do -

you know who you are!

I decided to make the tray out of cabinet door

(big suprise!)

And where would I go for one but the Habitat Restore Store!

I found an incredibly ugly one – not on purpose, but it was the right size and shape.

Ugly? Am I right or am I right?

I sanded it with my palm sander -

(Quite the tool Diva aren’t I?)

Then sprayed it with a primer coat of….

wait for it…

Heirloom White! (heavens own color)

Then I brush painted it, so that I could get the look

I was going for. I used a Behr paint that is really close

to Heirloom White (heavens own color)

It is called Table Linen if anyone is interested.

Please forgive this photo – night, small dark room, that is all…

I knew that I wanted to put something vinyl on the tray, and was planning

on ordering something, but as usual time got away from me!

I went into my never fail dollar store, Dollar Tree, and found this great

vinyl with the word Welcome on it. Perfect! Guess how much it cost?

That joke just never grows old.

While I was at the Restore I picked up some cabinet hardware to use for tray handles.

They were .25 cents each, and the cabinet door was a dollar.

My sweet hubby screwed in the handles, and then all that was left was putting on the vinyl.

Isn’t it too cute!

She can display it when she isn’t using it as a tray.

Here is is ready to serve coffee and treats to guests!

What are those treats, you ask?

Why, those are my failed attempt at Bakerella’s Cake Pops,

I call them Cake Bombs…

So there you have a Diy serving tray -

Not bad for $2.50 huh!

I really like it, and of course now want to make myself one!

Don't you want one?!? I do!!! I need to find a cabinet door.

Feeling Crafty

Today was a beautiful day! I got so much accomplished. Don't you love days where you have nothing to do and can just stay home and get stuff done around the house? That doesn't seem to happen very often for me, so when it does, it's such a blessing!

Today I worked on my dining room chairs (they have been a pain!). I'm hoping I will get a post up on them before Christmas rolls around soon.

Anyways, I did a few small crafts today and wanted to show you. The first one I have seen quite a few times on different blogs.

I had an old bottle that was very plain that I used on an end table in my living room. I decided it needed some dressing up and gave it a little face lift. What do you think?

This was seriously so easy to do. I hot glued the beginning (at the top) and just wrapped it around the bottle. I tacked it on with some more hot glue every once in a while and then hot glued the end. Easy!

The other project I worked on was super simple too! I was sick of the coasters I have. They are lime green Hawaiian-like flowers that I had in college and they really don't go with our decor. So, I decided to make my own!

I got some unfinished wood squares at Hobby Lobby, painted the edges red (same paint I used on my accent wall in the living room), cut some scrap book paper, and Mod Podged it on! Here they are.

Yay! They look so much better than what I had before. They were very inexpensive too.
Here's the breakdown:
Wood squares: 2/$1 and I bought 4= $2
Paint: had on hand= $0
Scrapbook paper: 3/$1 and I didn't use a whole sheet= $.50
Mod Podge: had on hand= $0
Total cost: $2.50

Hope you enjoy! Have you done any small projects lately?

Our house.. is a family affair!

First of all, I would like to say thanks for reading my blog! As of last night, I have 10 followers! YAY for double digits!

I would like to show you how many people in a family it takes to get a house ready to move into...

My mom-in-law tearing out ugly wallpaper in the bathroom... it took us about 2 1/2 hours to do our little bathroom.

Dad-in-law ripping out kitchen flooring (after we had a major flood...this is AFTER the soaking wet carpet had been taken out and the lovely yellow lineoleum was found underneath...good thing we were planning to replace it anyway!)

Dad and Sister painting upstairs loft area. My dad painted most of the house. Thankfully he likes to paint! And my sister thinks she's the queen of painting :)

My mom had a back injury at this point, so she couldn't do much with the housework, but she made us dinner and brought it to the house :) Couldn't have done it without her either!

Of course Hubby did a lot too. Here he is sanding this beautiful floor in our dining room. Can you believe the previous owners had this covered with nasty carpet???

And here we are staining it! We stained both the living room and dining room in about 3 hours.

And that's not all! Everyone did so much more than just these few things I've shown you. We painted the entire house on the inside, moved furniture in and around, painted more, ripped out flooring, put new flooring in, did I mention painted?, weeded and gardened in the backs and front yards, mowed (when our mower wasn't working), fixed pipes, painted, painted, painted, and a lot more!

Thanks Family! We love you!

Decorating for Fall

I know I'm about a week behind the rest of blogland in decorating for fall. Technically, it's not fall yet though so I think I'm doing pretty good! And, it's my first house to decorate for fall, so I didn't really have any decorations yet. Last fall I only had an apartment and didn't really do much with it.

I've only done my living room so far, but I think it is a fabulous start!

Please excuse the dust and the tags still on the berry twigs... I wasn't sure I was keeping them! 

What do your fall decorations look like?

Halloween Giveaway!

Hey all, if you haven't checked out Tatertots and Jello, you really need to! They do great things over there.

Like give away these cute kits.

Check out this post for guidelines on how you could win!