Our Biggest Project to Date...

Due out March 28th, 2012, in a hospital near us...

Color Blitz!

Hope everyone is enjoying a beautiful fall weekend!  We are watching the Iowa/Iowa State football game today and hoping the Cy-Hawk Trophy spends the next year in Ames!  It's been four years since it's been there, so it's time for sure!  If you are from Iowa, went to either school, or just spent any time in the state during the legendary game day weekend, you know how big of a deal this game is.  But you didn't stop over here to read about football, did you?  On to my latest project!

So ever since I domesticated and bought a house, I have been pining for seasonal wreaths.  But man, are they expensive!  Especially since I am turning to Pottery Barn and the like for my dream accessories.  My Mom always told me to wait till they go on clearance at the end of the season, but that never worked out for one reason or another.  They were either picked over, still too pricey, or I simply forgot to look.  I had thought about making my own wreath but it always seemed too expensive.

But then I found a solid grapevine wreath at my favorite thrift store for $2, and I figured, why not?

But yeah, those 80's flowers had to go.  They were easy to take out.  Get a load of the grime that was on them.  Yuck!  I might have sneezed a bit while pulling these off.

So once everything was off, I gave the entire wreath a coat of chocolate brown spray paint.  I wanted to make sure to have a dark, rich base for the fall.  At this point, I was undecided about what I wanted to decorate the wreath with.  I liked the idea of leaves, but I was also liking the idea of some brightly colored flowers.  I looked at Hobby Lobby but didn't see anything I was too crazy about.  I had heard that the Dollar Store can be a DIY'ers paradise, so I gave it a shot.  $12 later, I came home with this pile.  

Sorry for the HORRIBLE picture quality, but I bought these last night and I wanted to work on it right then and there.  So, no natural light for good pictures.  First thing I did was wrap the wreath in some thick, fall ribbon.  I did this so that I'd have a little bit of sparkle, to fill in any holes, and to help hold the stems in.

Please disregard the stuff sitting on the floor in the corner.  Everybody's house has some of that, right?

Then I cut the stems of the flowers so they were all separate.  I took regular scissors and clipped the outside and then bent the wire part till it snapped.  I just slid the flowers under the grapevine and the ribbon in a somewhat random order.  There's no real rhyme or reason to this...it's all about your taste and what you like.

And here's my finished result!  At first, I wasn't sure.  But the more I looked at it, the more it grew on me.  I really like how bright it is, but still within the fall color theme.

I put it together in a little over an hour (not counting shopping or painting) while we watched the season finale of Burn Notice.  I couldn't tell you what all the kinds of flowers I used, but I can identify Dahlias and Gerberas.  I also used some twig like things as fillers.  I went with orange, red, yellow, green, and purple for the flowers and the ribbon is a sheer burnt orange with some gold on the outside.  I didn't glue anything in for a couple reasons.  They flowers stay in place pretty well on their own, and next year, I might want to change it up!  Maybe with leaves.  

So what have you been doing to get ready for fall?  Anyone had their air turned off for a while?  Or how about that season finale of Burn Notice?  Anyone else a little surprised??  And by the way, State is in the lead with 2 minutes left in the 3Q.  Whoot whoot!

Gimme Five!

Don't you just love putting the final piece of a puzzle in place?  Or putting the finishing touches on a project?  Then you can imagine how excited I was to find these at TJ Maxx this weekend...

Look familiar?  No?  Well, they just so happen to be the shams to this quilt...

And did you see that price tag?

It's upside down, but you see that $5.00 tag?  Looks like it had been marked down three previous times before I snatched them up.  It's like they were just waiting all this time just for me.  I haven't had a chance to wash them and put them on the bed, so no final pictures yet, but I can't wait.  Still waiting on those crisp, white sheets though...

By the way, does anyone else enjoy the thrill of finding out how much you saved by peeling back all the price tags?  Original price was $14.99 (no way I would have paid $15 for shams...), then down to $10, then to $9, $7, and then $5.  

Playing Catch-up

It's been a hectic past few weeks around the Freeman household.  I've meant to get this post done for quite some time now, but it seems like every time I meant to, something else happened.  But anyway, I'll move on to the reason why you read this blog...my latest design project.

Our last installment of our Master Bedroom Makeover revolves around what we did with that newly-freed wall.

I didn't want to make the wall too busy, but I really wanted to display some lovelies to admire when we are in our room.  I decided to build three floating shelves, based upon plans from Ana White.  Since Ana does such a great job of breaking it down (I practically built these myself, so that tells you how easy it was), I won't reinvent the wheel.  But, I will give you my tips for making the process easier:

• When building the frame for the outer box, make sure you have someone there to hold the pieces to get you started.  
• On the same lines, build the outer part of the frame first, then put the center supports in.  
• Be careful when sanding down the wood putty, meaning don't rest the shelves on the edges, as the putty that's on there may chip off and cause you to have to re-putty and re-sand.

But without further adieu, here are my shelves!

The shelves are two feet wide, which allows for enough room for the full length mirror without looking too crowded.  As I mentioned previously, I made these shelves practically by myself.  I needed a couple extra hands a couple times, but for the most part, it was all me!  Girl Power! 

And now, for the guided tour...

On the bottom shelf, we have my jewelry tree (Andy uses it too), an apothecary jar with potpourri (used to be in the living room), a handmade pen that my Dad made Andy, and my regal lion from this old post (also used to be in the living room).

The second shelf has two hurricane glasses that picked up for a couple bucks at a thrift store, and inside them are some antique postcards showing sights of San Diego.  I picked those up through an online auction.  Some were actually sent back in the early part of the 1900's.  In the middle is a basket for Andy to put his wallet, phone, watches, etc.  

And up top, we have a mix and match of thrifted wood candlesticks.  Still trying to decide whether or not to refinish them.  Next is our favorite wedding picture in a frame that was handmade as a wedding gift.  It has parts of our invitation, a Scrabble "F", a toy ring, and some pretty stones.  It's really similar to a memory jug, if you have seen or heard of those before.  And then, last but not least, is a small ceramic quail that I picked up for a couple bucks.  

On the floor is a basket that holds our monogram pillows.  Those rarely make it onto the bed.  Just keepin' it real.  Then I snagged one the footstools we no longer use in the living room to stack our books on.  On top of the books is a little lotus votive that, you guessed it, I picked up for a buck at a thrift store.

This cleared up a ton of room on top of the dresser.  All that lives there now (besides the TV) is Andy's change jar.

This was actually a coin jar that came with a pair of Harley Davidson Boxers that I bought Andy for his birthday last year.  While we as big of HD fans as the day is long, a black tin container with a skull on it was not really giving off the vibe I'd hoped for in our room.  So, I secretly covered it with some extra fabric I had on hand and a couple white ribbons.  Blends in muuuuch better.   I also no longer have nightmares of skeletons clinking change...

That's it!  That's our Master Bedroom makeover!  Thanks for staying with me as the project unveiled.  How about you guys?  Have you wrapped up any projects lately?  Or maybe you are just starting some that have several phases?  I'd love to hear! 

Sleeping Dogs

I'm back with the next part of our Master Bedroom update.  Remember before when I hinted we'd be bringing in something that reminds us of Lucy?

Here it is, all framed and hung.

Back in January, Groupon was offering a $50 gift card for $25 to art.com, and after several months of mulling over what I would buy, I landed on this print by Andrew Wyeth called Master Bedroom.  I loved it right away because it was so peaceful and it reminded me of the many times we find Lucy curled up at our pillows in the middle of the afternoon.  

Once the picture arrived, I set out to find a frame and mat that would work without costing an arm and a leg.  I started adding it up, and a custom mat and a nice, large, wood frame was not going to be cheap.  So, when we were at the rummage sale a month or so back, I found this frame that had potential.

It could work, right?  Chunky wood frame, good lines, mat included, and the best part?  $5.  Yep, $5.  A custom mat is more expensive than that on its own, so I whipped out my purse-sized tape measure and figured that it would fit just fine.  

First step was to get the frame up to par.  I went back and forth between paint and re-staining, and finally decided I wanted the wood tones.  So, one evening while we were catching up on the DVR, I sanded down the frame, first with 180 grit and finished with 220.  

Once all was sanded down, I put on three even coats of Jacobean stain by Minwax (I wiped off the excess after about 5 minutes and allowed a few hours between each coat).  Here it is after one coat.

Next up was the mat.  Size was perfect.  Color was not.  So, I had an old white canvas curtain laying around and did an old cover-roo with the help of spray glue.  I learned that trick from Katie Bower.  This stuff is super sticky and super airborne, so I suggest using it outside if at all possible.  I use Elmer's and have been really happy with it.  It doesn't dry really fast, so I have time to position and reposition as needed.   

So, here are my steps in photos...

Easy enough, right?  The verdict?  It's love.  

And yes, that is new bedding.  I am over the duvet/down comforter thing, so we moved to a quilt and blankets.  It's proving to be a good change of pace.  Here's a much better picture...

And, since it's lighter in color, it makes the room feel bigger (or maybe that's because we have one less dresser in there...).  I'm still on the hunt for white, crisp cotton sheets though.  You know, the kind your Gramma always has.  Why is it so hard to find them at a reasonable price?  

I owe you one more reveal.  It's been a really busy two weeks around the house for various reasons, so I'll be back as soon as I can find a few quiet moments while I still have brain capacity left in the day.  

Brown Is The New Orange

This is our sitting area in our Dining Room.  It's quite possibly my favorite spot in the house.  As you can see, Katie likes it too.  She sleeps there most of my work from home days.  

But there has been one thing about the space that has been bugging me.  Can you guess what it is?  No? Ok, let me zoom in...

You see, I get a lot of magazines.  I only keep a year's worth of back issues so that the house is not overrun with several years worth of Real Simples, Rachael Rays, and Sunsets.  But I lacked an appropriate place to keep them.  I actually do refer to them quite often for recipes, how-to's, etc, so they had to be within reach.  I also really wanted a place for someone to set a drink or a plate while sitting in my little corner of sunshine.  While my temp solution was ok, I was looking for something a little more multi-functional.  

Enter Orange Wicker Storage Ottoman.

This guy has been with us since before we said "I Do."  We got him at World Market on super duper clearance and he's been to California and back, always with some sort of purpose.  Most recently, he was serving as the bedside table in one of our spare rooms.  When we moved our extra dresser into said room and dosey-doed the furniture around, he was relieved of duty.

But I knew immediately where our displaced jack-of-all-trades would go.  You tracking with me?

You'll have to forgive me, as I have no in-progress pictures.  It could have been the unbearable heat yesterday, or maybe the five other projects I was trying to do at the same time.  At any rate, I chose to spray paint him a dark chocolate brown, as you might have guessed from the title of this post.  In order to avoid the non-wicker parts from being painted (there is a black fabric liner on the inside of the lid and main part), I took a newspaper and created a barrier with painters tape around the top perimeter.  From what I can tell, it worked swell.

And here he is at his new post.  Looks like Katie split.  Probably some rogue squirrel in the yard that she had to go handle.  

And here's my new magazine storage.

There is more than enough room in there now for all our magazines.  Maybe that means I'll be able to keep more than a year? 

And look at that!  

Milk and cookies!  For me?  Don't mind if I do!  

I have a couple more projects that kept us busy this weekend.  I'll be back soon with the details!

How We Used a Free Dresser

We have a typical brick bungalow, and with that comes smaller bedrooms.  On a good day, our bedroom is 11x12, and in those 132 square feet, we have a queen sized bed, two tallboy dressers and two dog beds.  You can do the math.  The wall to wall furniture was making me a little batty, especially when I had to crawl over the bed to get to my dresser if Andy was at his dresser.  Case and point...

So, I put my thinking cap on.  How could we get the same amount of storage with less furniture?  That's when I realized we were wasting some valuable real estate space...under the bed!  Up until now, it was only storing dust bunnies that had mated with Lucy's kamikaze hair, and an occasional sock or tennis ball (thanks to Katie).  Time to change that!  

So, I started the hunt for a cheap dresser.  And, when this dresser came up as a curb alert on Craigslist, I thought, what's cheaper than free?  

Photo from Craigslist, courtesy of the previous owners 

So I headed out quicklike and loaded up the drawers (I may or may not have left the rest of the chest on the curb waiting for the garbage truck).  

My first step was to figure out how I would make the drawers move easily, and decided on casters.  The drawer fronts were about 7 inches tall, and I had about 8 inches of clearance, so I decided on 5/8" roller ball casters and attached them to all four corners of all four drawers.  It's a good idea to drill first to avoid wood cracking when you put the screws in.  The casters were about a dollar each, and we got 16.

Then we moved on to the fronts.  The drawers weren't quite wide enough enough to fill up the entire length of the bed, and I really wanted a custom made, perfect fit.  We decided we'd need to put a false front on each of the drawers, so we cut four 7.5" x 40" (the length of the bed is 81") plywood pieces to attach to the fronts.  I figured that was enough clearance on all sides, but kept the custom look I was going for.  The plywood was $10, and we got two free cuts from the store.

But this is when it gets interesting.  We were getting ready to attach the fronts (we were going to use a nail gun) when we realized the front was coming off of one of the drawers.  I took a peek in and realized the fronts were plastic!!!  So we pried them off and were left with perfect boxes, only we had some staple rements sticking out.  Andy took the wire cutters to them and clipped them as close to the wood as possible.

We then finished them off with a hammer to make the fronts as flush as possible.  I took one of the drawers inside to figure out the placement of the false fronts so that everything would roll smoothly and then got to work attaching them.  

The actual drawer is centered on the false front at 15/16" from the top and 6.5" from each side.  We then got to work attaching the fronts to the drawers with Liquid Nails (we were going to use the nail gun, but lost all the thickness when we took the plastic fronts off) and clamped them all down.

After we took the clamps off, we felt confident with the bond was strong enough to hold up.  From there, I put on two coats of white semi-gloss paint and found the knobs (we went against staining because we were afraid we wouldn't get an exact match).  I really wanted to it to fit in with the rest of the room, so we went with wood knobs, just like on our dresser.  The knobs were $.68 each and each drawer has two knobs.

Once the knobs were on, we put them in place for a test run and they fit perfectly, and rolled beautifully!

We then got to work filling them up.  We decided to go with our heavy hitters, the stuff that takes up the most room...t-shirts and jeans.  

This is just my side, but Andy's side looks the same.  And yes, I have a problem with t-shirts.  I sleep in them and live in them during the weekends.  I'm ok with, Andy has learned to live with it.  

While we were in the process of relocating all the clothes, I took advantage of the opportunity to do my semi-annual clothing donation.  I ended up with three grocery bags!  Not bad, eh?  So, once all the clothes were moved from the second dresser to the first dresser, the closet, and the new underbed storage, we actually ended up with dresser real estate to spare, and this lovely space left on our wall.

Oh, I love the open space.  As Andy said, "I don't have to worry about running into a dresser!"  We actually have big plans for that wall.  While we gained some openness and floor space, we lost surface space the top of the dresser offered.  I'm planning on building some wall shelves and actually getting that mirror up on the wall.  We also bought a very sweet picture that reminds us of our sweet Lucy girl that will be going up.  

So what do you think?  Not bad for a roadside dresser, right?  And with all the supplies added up, we only spent about $30!  

Keep your eyes peeled; we'll be back soon with how that wall looks post-shelves!