Crafting through Spring Showers

Whew! It's been a while since I posted any projects so I have a few to catch everyone up on. So, first things first; We made shutters :) Board and Batten ones to be exact. We found that it would save hundreds of dollars to make our own and I really like the look of these type of shutters over the vinyl louvered shutters. I think we spent under $100 in pine to make 8 shutters.

 We primered the shutters and painted them in Glidden Satin Exterior Premium Paint in Cherries Jubliee. The flower boxes were also primed and painted in the same color, then stuffed with pansies and marigolds :)

I have some seedlings planted with what I hope to be some very colorful cutting flowers. I was getting overly impatient in wanting to start planting flowers back in early April. I made it to May though and the landscaping has begun...hopefully a garden will comence soon as well!

Next on the crafting through spring showers list is this cutsie little apron I made for Jen for her Bridal Shower last weekend! This is the most sewing intense project I've attempted and let me note I need to take a sewing class because I did not understand half of the terminology used on the template. Needless to say the apron is a little rough around the edges but cute none the less!

Keeping with Jen getting married in 7 Days! We went on a mini-cruise for her Bacehlorette Party so I made all the ladies gift bags and my pride and joy are the name tags I made for each bag. I need to reproduce these bad boys and sell them :P I used designer paper I bought at Ollies, crinkle sissors from Aaron's mom, and hot glued little sandle buttons on them.

CUTE!

That concludes my spring shower updates but stay tuned I should have lots more to post about now that it's sunny and warm again! Besos

Vintage Luggage

This weekend Aaron and I went up to his family in Hazleton, PA for his grandmother's 89th birthday! While we were there we did a little 'picking' :) inspired by American Pickers I suppose. I've recently discovered I have a strong fancy for old vintage suitcases, hence the header :P Aaron went up to Hazleton last weekend and was given the grand tour of a barn on a family members property. He came home with an old 30's Stromberg Carlson radio, a cute little thing that kind of matches the big 'Christmas Story' looking radio we picked up at the Antique store down the road. Nonetheless he came home from last weekends trip telling me about some suitcases he saw up in the barn so instantly I was a little curious. When we went up this weekend his cousin took both of us down to the barn so I could poke around myself. He so graciously let me snag the 3 piece starlite luggage set and while I was exploring I discovered some 50's luggage set made my Sears and Roebucks, brand new! still the original boxes. Both sets are a light blue but the one's in the boxes are about 20 years older than the 3 piece set. I was so excited and Brian let me take both sets home with me! Here's a little preview of my finds...

 

 

 

Aaron picked up that little lovely case you see in brown and opened it up and surprise polka dots :) It's

hard to tell but the satin is actually purple and the dots are a light green. It's a really nice little leather case so I snagged it up too. It looks like I'm set in the blue luggage now if I could find some pretty greens and yellows that would be great! I'd like to collect a bunch of sets and upcycle them with little prints or stencil designs. I think I might try and put and an anchor on mine and drag them along with me on Jen's bachelorette cruise coming up in April!

Craft Station!

This weekend I headed up to Motor City to help my good friend Jen with wedding crafting. Jen, Emily (friend and bridesmaid), and I did some embossing with embossing powder, for cute little favors Jen is giving away to the wedding guests. They are little photo booth frames with paper inserts, at the top she is embossing the wedding date (5/14/2011) and at the bottom "Thank You"; in the middle a quote will be stamped. The guests will be able to take photos in the photo booth and later use the frames for their pictures :) Such a cute idea, I know photo booths are becoming quite popular these days. Emily also used Jen's Cricut to do some decorative paper crafting to spice up some guest gift bags for their hotel stays! P.s. The Cricut is awesome and I definitely want one, it looks like all the accessories can really add up though :(

Aaron accomplished a lot this weekend while I was gone, I came home to a very clean house, Thank You Aaron! He also finished hanging our french doors yay...and we went to home depot and bought items needed for my craft station :) I was given a My Home My Style magazine and saw this really cute and functional crafting station that seemed simple to put together. I'm so excited to use it, this is a snap shot of my inspiration.

and here is what

has been created

thus far...

I can't leave out the French Doors, we bought them at a home store in Reading, PA called Heeby's, kind of like a Home Depot or Lowe's except the supplies are leftover stock from big box companies and sold way cheaper. We bought the doors for $89/door! Painted them white and Walah

Did I mention we painted the living room a soft sage as well! It feels so much more like a home with color on the walls! Look for pictures of my decorated craft station soon.

Thrifty Thursday

All of our, mostly Aaron's, hard work didn't go unnoticed this week. Thanks to Michelle over at Thrifty 101 for featuring us in her DIY Thrifty Thursday showcase. We appreciate the feedback and look forward to displaying many more great projects as we attempt to bring our home from 60's to Stylish :)

Before and After

New Year's Resolution...become a better blogger! It seems as though it's been snowing at least once a week this winter, never amounting to more than a couple of inches. Nonetheless the snow is making it difficult to be outside these days. Here it is almost Feburary so it's time to post some before and after pictures of the kitchen. If you've been following our blog you'll realize this has been the theme of our posts up until this point so hopefully I'll have some different projects to talk about from now on.

On to the good stuff, here are the pictures of the kitchen:
                      After                                        Before

Last weekend Aaron installed the under cabinet lighting, if you can see there above the light switch near the sink there is a little black circle (sensor) the lights have three dimmer settings. It looks so great! Isn't the white wonderful! The whole kitchen just welcomes cooking and baking and hanging out.

We bought our countertops from Colonial Marble and Granite in King of Prussia, PA. We got a great deal on them, we paid around $2k for ~55 sq. feet of granite countertop, and they threw in ~30 square feet of free  backsplash tile (plus they gave us a little extra...on the side), and a new sink and faucet! We'd definitely recommend them, plus we were given some nice advice on where to go if we travel to Greece, which I've decided is where we'll be going after we tie the knot :-P

I just hung our dining room curtains this evening, FINALLY, so here's a little artsy picture of the dining room I took with my Hipstamatic app. It gives the pictures a vintage analog feel.

...and we can't forget about Lexi, I picked up this little picture at Marshall's, since Lexi seems like a person most day.

Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their Sunday and come on Jets :)

Incredible Craftsmanship

The island is complete!...well all except the paint. Here is a preview of Aaron's beautiful craftsmanship.

 

Christmas Cottage

Eek I said it...Christmas! Aaron's parents stopped by for a visit today and Deb gave me the Christmas Cottage Magazine for a little inspiration. After I looked at it I almost forgot Thanksgiving hasn't happened yet. I was ready to drag out my red and green decorations and take down the fall leaves strung around the house.

I think my first decorative project will be a Christmas card holder, we don't get a lot of cards, at least we haven't to this point since we've moved so much but there are a couple of ideas I've seen that I have to try.

 

We don't have a lot, any actually, art work on the walls. Aaron seems pretty particular so I'm trying to be quite selective when it comes to decor. Anything Pretty gave me some inspiration with her Italy memory wall and I have quite a few walls I could do something similar with. I just need to figure out what theme I want for the frames...I did find some inspiration from surprise surprise :) the PB.

What Happened to October?

Where did October go? Can you believe it's already November! and it definitely feels like November now. It's time for me to post some of the changes that have taken place in the kitchen and the dining rooms. First I would like to note, Aaron is much more dissatified then me when it comes to finishing projects. He has way more finesse then I do so it's a good thing he is doing the most majority of these projects, I can except the imperfections, he can not ;) so it's taking a little longer but the quality is great!!

The Dining Room - Before:

 

The Dining Room - After:

 We used Sherwin Williams Antique Bronze on the walls, we are still going to put crown molding around the top and I am on the hunt for a curtain rod over 10' long for the window so I can get our drapes hung. You can even catch a little glimpse of my table runner I created with the same fabric as the tie backs used on the kitchen curtains :)

Now...previously we showed pictures of us working on those dreadful kitchen cabinets for months. Well we finally finished them, we repainted all of the hardware to a bronze color and began hanging the doors. Well you may remember me mentioning that Aaron has a tough time excepting imperfections. Well on that note, we took all of the hardware back off and took all of the doors and cabinets back out! He decided antique white would look bettter than brown so all of the cabinets are not repainted to antique white (Thank G they are hung and staying right where they are!)

Originial Cabinets (*flashback):

The intended brown color without the doors on...

                                                   Aaron's new antique white choice:

I'm not sure if this will work but I took a Panoramic View of the kitchen. We still need counterops and a backsplash as you can see and Aaron is in the garage working on the built in trash cans for the island as I type :) We're having an Ugly Christmas Sweater Party in December so we have to have the kitchen finished in the next couple of weeks, this will be the first time people outside of family will see the house haha.

Fall Curtain Tiebacks

As I mentioned before I was making new curtains with the wonderful fabric I purchases at JoAnn Fabrics for about $3/yd. Well the curtains are finished and I decided to make some autumn inspired tiebacks and leaf-clips to carry fall into our kitchen.

I bought some bow clips (8 pack) from Michael's for $.99 along with a pack of fabric leaves also $.99

I hot glued the leaves to the clips, wrapped the newly sewed ties around the newly sewed curtains and clipped them on, Ta-da!

Celebrations & Creations

I would like to start out my congratulating my lovely friend Jen on her recent engagement to her Fiance Ryan! I am so excited for the two of them and very pleased to share my Maid of Honor roles with another great friend Brandi! I wish nothing but the best for the both of them and can not wait to begin the traditional wedding festivities :-)

Just a little inspiration from theknot.com based on Jen's color choices...just getting the ball rolling :D

On the home front Aaron and I actually spent the weekend at home and it was quite pleasant I must say! Aaron did some more work on the island and I finished my kitchen curtain project. These are the fabrics that I picked up at JoAnn Fabrics for my curtains, table runners, and the PB wall decor I will be replicating with my own spin!

The brown and white fabric is for the curtains. The orange and green fabrics are for curtain tie backs and table runners. The Asian inspired fabrics are for the wall art work.

I think these curtains turned out pretty well for my first attempt at making them. The curtain rods I purchases off of EBay a while back. The total cost of the curtain's and rods is $30.

Aaron and I also went to Heebie's this weekend, a surplus store for home construction materials. We looked at back splashes, counter-tops, and cabinet hardware. We decided to stick with the hinges we already had on the cabinets but just spray paint them a worn silver/gray look that we liked on some of the handle pulls we had seen in the store. It's hard to get a good feel from the images but you can see the beautiful possibly art deco look of the hardware previously.

The doors are about 1/3 finished. The spray gun worked so much easier than painting them by hand, Aaron says it's a bit messy to keep all everything clean. The doors however look great and I can't wait to get the rest of them painted and the painted hardware back on the cabinets!