dream home - pinterest style

Pinterest is so great.  I know I've sung its praises before, but it's just such a good organizing tool for all the inspiration you can get on the internet.  Plus I use it to find recipes, gifts, workouts, clothes, vacation ideas...
I pin a lot of ideas to specific rooms to keep my boards organized, but I also have a "Lovely Rooms" board that isn't what I'd put in a certain room in my house, but just because they're so pretty and I like to look at them and ooh and ahh over them.  So here are some beautiful rooms I've found via pinterest.

These first two pictures are all about my love of cabins.  They just make me feel so cozy and happy.  All the wood and the snow outside and the fireplace, makes me want to bundle up by the fire in my PJ's with a good book and some hot chocolate!

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Isn't the room above so cute? It looks like both kids sleep up top and they put two mattresses together to span the wall, then they have their secret alcove down below.  I would've loved this when I was little.

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Isn't this dining room/kitchen awesome? Love the modern table and chairs, and OH MY! at that silver ceiling tile!

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More of my wood/cabin love coming out.

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I'm a sucker for window seats.  More of my curling-up-with-a-good-book-and-hot-chocolate fantasies coming out.  I love the dark walls (they look almost teal) with the yellow/green chartreuse accents.  Not a huge fan of that mop on the floor, but look how awesome that chandelier is!

So, what do you guys think? I'd love for you to send me your pinterest links so I can see what you've been obsessing over!

Office Makeover Update! Yellow and Gray Awesomeness!

so, i am finally finished with the actual wall painting part of the project... dark gray-blue walls and bright yellow ceiling!  The pictures are looking a little more buttery yellow than sunshine yellow, but believe me, it's sunshiney!

And I have started on my DIY birch tree forest wall, I've done one coat of paint and it is nowhere near covering up the gray, so I probably should've invested in some primer, but at least each coat doesn't take too long with my little roller, so it shouldn't take too terribly long.  Here's my status:

I'm taking pictures along the way, and I'll be back soon with a DIY painted wall tree tutorial.

I've also gotten a better idea of how I want the actual "office" part of my desk to look.  I was really inspired by this office I found on pinterest:

I love the clean modern look of the cabinet-inspired desk unit, and I started looking for countertops.  I want to build a custom drawer/cabinet/nook system to make sure all my paper/envelopes/supplies fit, so the hardest part was coming up with how to make a desktop.  I looked on a couple sites and was finding prices of over $100 for a 6 foot section of countertop, but then I found an Ikea countertop that is 8 feet long and only $39! The little problem is that 8 feet is a little too long to fit in/on top of my car, and no matter what you buy at ikea, it's $100 for them to ship it to you! I'll figure out something though.

I also decided I am finally going to get an Expedit shelving system from Ikea.  I've always wanted one, and I just kept waiting and waiting and the price kept going up and up, so at this point it's like $50 more than it was a couple years ago, and I'm sure it's not going down, so I'm just going to finally get one.

I really loved the yellow interior of the shelves in my inspiration board for my office, so I started doing some research to see how easy/difficult it would be to paint the interior of the shelves, and I found ikeahackers.net, where people share their revamped Ikea furniture, and I found this post where a guy used contact vinyl on his shelves:

I think it looks great and I'm looking into getting yellow vinyl on ebay.  I also really like the inserts for the Expedit system - there's one that's a door and one that has 2 drawers, but holy bejeezus those things are $35 each! Hello, you're IKEA!

Anyway, that's where I'm at right now in the office remodeling process.  I'm really excited with the vision I have in my head, and I'm hoping it's going to look as great in real life!

What I Want Wednesday!

OK so Wednesday's almost over, but that doesn't mean I will want these things any less tomorrow!

"I Love You Like Dobby Loves Socks"... ahhh, Harry Potter humor.  I'm a dork. from MarsupialMenagerie on etsy

Marimekko Outdoor Umbrella from Crate & Barrel via Pinterest

If I could get married again (to the same person, of course!) this would be my dream invitation. Made of real wood! via Oh So Beautiful Paper (my new favorite blog, everything is so pretty!)

Cute bubble mugs from ArtOnPorcelain on etsy

Woodgrain Flask from Liquid Courage on etsy.  So many cute flasks.  I don't drink liquor but I should get one just to put on a shelf. 

Hope you guys are having a great week!

Weekend Update: Wedding Fun!

I had a very eventful weekend! Bachelorette Party on Friday, Trivia on Saturday, Wedding on Sunday!
Here's a few pics from the weekend (I still haven't gotten a hang of my phone camera, everything turns out really grainy... anyone got any tips?):

Holly, The Bride

My friend Rachel and I at the "Sips n Strokes" Pre-party.  And I just want yall to know that I tried to iron my pretty new dress before putting it on, and apparently it is not an iron-friendly fabric, and it completely ruined my dress, but I wore it anyway.  I'm guessing no one noticed because it's black, but I don't know that I can ever wear it again.  BOOOO.  At least it was only $20 at TJMaxx!

Conor & I at the wedding

With the Bride

And I finally finished my niece's bookbag! I shared the beginning of the process here, and last night I stitched around the doggie, in the white space I left myself between the artwork and the pink border, and I stitched beads on as a necklace and bejeweled the crown.  I think she looks cute! Then, to keep the threads on the inside from getting caught on pencils and such, I used fabric glue to attach a piece of fabric to the inside of the pocket that covered all the loose threads, and hopefully that will keep the beads from getting loose and falling off also.

Balancing Wooden Wine Holders - Building Process

As I mentioned last week, Saturday I went to help my bride-to-be friend Holly with her DIY bridesmaids’ gifts: balancing wine bottle holders! I got there at 11 and we started setting everything up: putting a new blade on the bandsaw, getting the planer out of the box, deciding on a plan… and the plan was: “oh, we can whip these out in no time!”  Too bad whenever you think a project won’t take long, it always ends up taking 12 times as long as you thought.  So while I don’t have any pictures of the finished product yet, I do have some how-to steps for starting the project.  

Holly got a 3” thick piece of mahogany.  We borrowed our friend Rachel’s “baby bandsaw” and we were pretty worried about having to cut through such a thick piece of wood with the baby bandsaw, and Holly wanted to use the planer she got for Christmas, so we planed the wood down to about 2.5”.  I had never used a planer, and it was really cool.  You slide the wood through and it shaves 1/16 of an inch off the top of the wood every time it goes through, and makes a huge pile of wood shavings (which reminded me of this regretsy post about "sawdust to throw at weddings"; we could have totally made some money, or thrown them on the ground at holly’s wedding this weekend! Haha).

So, then we cut the huge piece of mahogany into smaller sections to make them easier to maneuver, and used Super 77 spray adhesive to attach the printed out pattern to the wood.  You can download the pattern for the balancing wine holders here.  Ned (Holly’s fiancé) used a holesaw drill bit to drill the hole first (so we had a flat surface to drill the hole instead of trying to drill on a rounded surface after cutting the piece out.) 

 

Holly cut out the pieces with the bandsaw, then we started trying to sand them.  By hand.  It. Was. Awful.  And it also made us realize we would never get them done if we didn’t have some power tools.   

So we busted out a hand sander… the kind that vibrates and makes your hand feel like it is going to fall off after you’ve held onto it for 5 minutes… and started using that, and it worked a lot better.  But not good enough.  So that warranted a trip to Home Depot for a belt sander.   If you’ve never used a belt sander, those bad boys are a little scary.  My first experience with a belt sander was when we were making shapes out of foam in college as an intro to model making, and if you weren’t careful, the sander would rip the foam out of your hands and throw it across the room.  The belt sander worked pretty well, and we got about 4 wine holders sanded with the 80 grit sandpaper, and they were looking good! Too bad you then had to sand them with 100 grit, then 150, then 200, and possibly even finer grit than that, before they can be oiled.  When sanding something, you start with a rougher paper to get out the big imperfections, then you have to keep going smoother to get your wood smoother.  It’s a long, drawn out, tedious process, and that’s why projects always take 12 times longer than you think they will!

I left at about 6:30 and that was the status of the project.  The wedding is Sunday and Holly still doesn’t have them finished, so hopefully she’ll be able to find some time to work on them this week and get them done by the wedding! I’ll post finished pics if I can get them!

What I Want Wednesday!

It's Wednesday, which means "what" and "want" make for some awesome alliteration, and I want to share some things that I've been coveting recently.

Feather Tea Towels from MichelleBrusegaard on Etsy.  I love the color!

Pad of Paper shaped like an iPhone! from becksorange on etsy.  So creative.

Patterned Notebook in Scallops by inkwhimsy on etsy.  Only $5!

Yellow grid-printed pillow from wickedmint on etsy.  Love the chair too! Read how she found it on the side of the road on her blog.

Rain Drop Coasters by Bonni1982 on etsy.  So cute!

Hope you guys are having a great week, our air conditioner is broken in my office, so we're sweating it out to avoid having to mingle with people in the other parts of the office that we may not be too fond of.  But on the upside, we get to wear tank tops to work!

I'm taking a break from working (who actually works on Friday, anyway?) to bring you some pretties that you can lust over like I am!

Things I am in love with today and wish someone would buy for me (nudge nudge):

custom heart -- tree print pillow cover -- by cozyblue on etsy

honeybee soap by luxury falls on etsy

gray purse from piperlime

irish coasters by angelellie on etsy


Happy Friday everyone!

awesome installation art!

the internet has taken me on some crazy twists and turns this morning, and i felt the need to share this awesome video i found.
first i read an article that i think i found through aol that was about favorite websites that you can't live without, and I discovered StumbleUpon, which is a site where you can give it some things you're interested in & every time you click the "stumble!" button it gives you a new article based on what you told it you liked. then you can say if you liked that or not, and it'll refine your tastes every time, kinda like pandora does with your music stations!

so i'm "stumbling" through some art related sites & i get taken to this youtube video of installation artist Joshua Allen Harris. He uses plastic bags to create creatures that come to life when vents or fans blow air into them. check it out:


isn't that awesome? look at the guy petting the doggy:



OK, check out stumbleupon to see what you can stumbleupon!