Category: Home decor

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Signs galore!

Signs are one of my favorite things to make. No two are ever alike, and it’s a place to really let me personality and mood shine. I have made dozens of signs for customers but, honestly, I don’t think there is a single one hung up anywhere in my house.

It’s not that I don’t love all of them, it’s just, at the moment, I have very little wall space in our house. I’m talking VERY little. There is a 6′ space on our dining room wall, and a 6′ space on our living room wall above our tv.

That’s it.

Above our TV I have hanging these 3 arrows that I made a few years back and I love the accent they bring to our living space. When it’s dark outside and our living room or kitchen lights are on, you can see these 3 arrows from the road. We live smack dab in the middle of town and our living space is on the 2nd storey of a 2 storey house so this is all you can really see from the road, and I don’t know why, but I like that people walking by can see this little piece of art.

 

In my dining room we have our coffee bar set up on a sideboard I also made a few years ago. I LOVE this space, it’s the first area to get redecorated every season. This giant clock hangs on our deck during the summer months, but during the winter I bring it indoors and decorate with it in here. It’s been really beautiful outside lately, and the forecast looks promising for the foreseeable future but I am hesitant to send it back out there. I just love it in this spot. That being said, I really liked it hanging on our deck as well so we’ll see what I decide. I just know if I take it back outside I will need something here to replace it. But I guess that means I get to go SHOPPING!!

Anyway, that paragraph got away from me. It was supposed to explain why I don’t have any signs hanging on the only available wall space. The clock takes up all of the space so I have no need for a sign, but if/when that baby goes back outside I will have to make a sign to hang there. Something about coffee….

Ohh, sidenote, Rex is putting together a coffee bar for his contractors at the store and he’s recruited me to make a sign for the wall that reads, “First I drink the coffee, then I build the things”. I’m looking forward to it, it will most likely be the sign I use for my next tutorial so stay tuned!

I don’t have any tutorials or details on any of these signs as these are ones from my pre-blogging, pre-instragram, pre-attention-seeking days but I PROMISE I will post some in the not too distant future. Please feel free to comment or message me if you have any questions!

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Quick and easy floral wreath (under $5 to make with simple items!)

I made this coffee filter wreath a couple of years back and although I have loved it, it was time for a change. My mom requested a coffee filter wreath for her bedroom and I thought there was no time like the present to give mine up and make something new and fabulous for my gallery stairwell. I found this brass ring at our local dollar store for $3.50 and I have a massive stockpile of fake flowers that I have picked up over the last few years (all of the ones I used in this wreath came from Value Village, score!!) So this ended up being an extremely inexpensive and quick wreath to make but I love the look it provides to our stairwell. Spring appears to be firmly here, so I’m all about the florals at the moment!

They have these brass rings in lots of different sizes at the dollar store, and I still have to come up with uses for some of the smaller ones but the large one worked really well for this wreath. I just made sure to put the leaves and flowers over the seam where the ring was joined.

 

 

 

I started by hot-gluing some leaves onto the wreath. I knew I wanted lots of the brass ring to show, so I chose to only cover about 1/3 of it with the leaves/flowers. A new glue gun is one of the things on my shopping list, I have 2 of these, and they are terrible. They get so hot that I have to unplug them every 10 minutes for a  while otherwise they actual burn the glue. I am constantly burning myself with this glue gun, but I never remember to buy a new one when i’m out and about so I guess it’s better than nothing.

 

After I had enough leaves I glued a couple of larger flowers. I love these flowers, they have burlap in them and are just perfectly rustic enough for me.

 

 

 

 

And, of course, I had to add some pink flowers. It just wouldn’t be something I made if it didn’t have pink in it. But I kept it rustic looking with some dusty pink flowers instead of something bright.

 

 

 

Using a glue gun is so fast but it always leaves the little glue strings behind. Over the years, I have tried several methods to get rid of them, someone once told me that if I kept the glue sticks in the freezer it wouldn’t do that, but I don’t find that very convenient so I just run my blow dryer on a hot setting over the whole things and they shrink right up! So quick and easy!

 

 

I had intended to make an easter wreath today for our front door but I had already used all of my wreath forms and I didn’t think to pick one up when I was at the store, so instead, I made this floral wallhanging. Easter wreath will have to be Friday’s project…stay tuned!

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Adding personality to your home

When we built our current home we knew it was going to be a short term home for us. A stepping stone. A practice run. Rex has built many many homes but this is the first home I have been a part of. This is the first home I’ve had that I didn’t rent. It might be official. I might be an adult?!?! Wait!! That doesn’t sound right?! I’m only 36, I can’t possibly be an adult yet! Right?

Being a short time house we designed everything in this house to be easily saleable. Neutral color palettes (although that’s my usual choice anyway), nothing fancy, something that will suit every style. I feel like we did a good job with that but I made sure to leave my stamp on it. I love pretty things, I love personal touches, I truly love our home. I’m going to share with you ways that we personalized our home without sacrificing that saleability we needed.

Our living room in this home is quite small, there are only 3 of us, and although the living room is the most used room in our house, it suits us just fine. We have a couch, a coffee table, and a media stand. What more do we need? Despite it’s small space it was lacking in any sort of style. I couldn’t figure out what I could do to make it beautiful. I tried hanging pictures on the walls, I tried adding some décor to the media stands, I outfitted the couch with nice pillows and blankets, but still it was missing something. One afternoon we were catching up on some Fixer Upper and the sun was shining through the window and making it difficult to see the “dream team” of Chip and Joanna so we starting talking about putting up a set of curtains. Then suddenly it dawned on me. Barn doors! We’d seen Joanna do it on one of their flips. Barn doors over the window in place of curtains! We talked about whether we would order doors, or make them. It’s easier to just order doors but there are 2 electrical outlets on that wall and they wouldn’t be usable if we had full length doors so we decided we would make some short ones. After a few weekends at the shop we had some beautiful shortie barn doors. I heavily distressed them then stained them in a beautiful English Chestnut finish. After the very painful 48 hours of waiting for the stain to dry, we hung them with some barn door track that Rex had purchased through the store. And I’m telling you, I couldn’t be happier with the outcome. They add so much personality, so much style, and so much function to our living room! We won’t take them with us when we move as they were custom built for this house, but there will definitely be more barn door building in my future!

 

Another thing we did in this house that I will be repeating in the next house is the homemade wood countertop in my kitchen. In my original plan I wanted all of my countertops to be wood, but we had such a short timespan that it was faster to order countertops for the majority of the kitchen and we made the wood counter for just one side. In hindsight, I am happy it worked out this way as I think the combination of the beautiful white fake carerra marble and the richness that the wood counter offers is a great combination. Wood counters definitely need maintenance, I oil the countertop on the last day of every month while Rex is doing the month end for the store, but in my opinion, the maintenance is totally worth it.

 

 

When we were working on the railing for our stairs, our friend Ernie, who was helping us with some of the finish work, suggested that we should have a shabby looking newel post. We had so many other rustic elements in our home that a flawless newel just didn’t fit right. And I’m so grateful for his suggestion. I think our shabby newel just lends that special personalized touch to this home that makes it so much more than just a builder-grade home.

 

 

 

In our bathroom (and our bedroom) we opted to put tongue and groove pine on the walls that we painted instead of just plain drywall. It lends a shiplap-esk style to those rooms and I love it! With the texture of the boards I didn’t feel the need to hang lots of pictures, they look nice just as they are. When it came to picking a towel rack for our bathroom I scoured and scoured and couldn’t find anything that fit with the theme of the house until one day we were in Burns Lake at an amazing antique store I love to frequent. I came across this chair back that had a brace rail across the bottom and it just hit me, “That would make an amazing towel rack!”. And it does. It adds a little farmhouse style to our bathroom and if the future owners don’t like it, it’s easy to change!

 

 

The only room in our home that we didn’t design with the future owners in mind was Maddie’s room. She was 6 when we moved into this house and we wanted her room to be something special just for her. After throwing ideas around in my head for weeks I settled on a feature bird wall! I ordered stencils online and late one night during the painting phase I got to work. I used tape for the lines, then I had some fun with some bright colors for the birds. She loves her room and it was really easy and fast to do! Unless we get lucky and find buyers who also have a little girl, I’m sure the birds will be one of the first things that gets changed after we move, but it was worth it for the last 18 months of enjoyment Maddie got out of them!

 

When all else fails, add some beautiful flowers in some unusual vases and every room instantly looks better! We brought these hydrangeas home from the Chamber of Commerce Business Awards that we attended last night. They are one of my favorite flowers and I am so hopeful that the 3 hydrangea plants that I planted last year come back after the strange winter we had! Flowers also make everything better!

Xo K.