I know I said just a day and a half ago that I would be posting some archived stuff soon, but I had an unexpected update to share. The first flower from the garden beds has finally bloomed. And it’s both gorgeous and just as fragrant as I’d hoped.
I haven’t always had the best of luck with plants (as we all know), so this is very encouraging for more outdoor projects. I’ve been thinking of building a few more beds for another spot closer to the front of the house as well.
There are signs of other blooms on the way, so hopefully soon, entering my back yard through the side gate will involve one hell of a flowery whiff.
And in case you missed it, here is the breakdown of how these beds came to be:
My baby brother is getting married this weekend! Ahhhh! I am so excited for him and his soon-to-be-bride Jessica! I thought in celebration of their nuptials, I would share some fun DIY WEDDING themed projects. Isn’t that fun?! This first one is something that you probably have seen ALL over Pinterest. A cake is just not a cake unless you chop down a tree first. Number one ingredient people! That should be a Chopped show challenge….make a cake with this tree.
We have a lot of woods and we are at the beginning stages of cleaning that up (when I say “beginning stages” I mean…we haven’t started). Our neighbor (whom I affectionately call Super Larry) however has done an amazing job with his wife of cleaning up theirs. For those of you that don’t have woods or are city dwellers or don’t live here in the south, cleaning up the woods is basically removing the pine tree saplings, the poison ivy, clearing any fallen trees and any invasive plants that kill good trees (kudzu being a big one here!). We don’t clear out animal homes (we love our critters!) and we really hate seeing these big trees fall but if you happen to have one that does, make sure to get a slice for your cake plate! Our neighbors were nice enough to let us get some from their wood stack for our project.
The first thing you need is two slices….one that is about 16″ in diameter and about 3″ thick and one chunk for the base that is about an 8″ diameter and about 6″ tall.
Sand the top of the plate part….we used a belt sander with the lowest grit we could find and then progressively worked till it was smoother. Be careful of the edges…you don’t want to loose the bark part because that is where the personality is all at!
When you are done, make sure to double check for levelness. If it’s not level, first try twisting the top around to see if there is an angle it could lay that would make it level…if need be, cut the base with your chainsaw.
Now we tried to use wood glue and that was an epic fail. Don’t try it. And make sure you let these bad boys dry out for a long time in your garage. Then after they are ready, get a dowel screw. Here is the one we used….
Predrill into the underside of both your top plate part and the top of the base….then just twist the base part down.
Once the screw is in the base, the plate part gets aligned with the predrilled hole and you can twist it down and together. It will require a lot of force at the beginning.
Then comes sealing the entire thing. I used Rust-Oleum’s satin polyurethane. The wood is going to suck the poly up like crazy. It took me at least two little cans of the poly to do the entire thing.
At first it will look crazy and weird colored but when it dries, it will be food safe (per the FDA poly is food safe as long as you don’t cut or score the polyurethane layers).
I covered the entire thing with multiple coats and when it dried, it looks so good. This is such a cheap way to do BIG cake plates!
And let’s face it….any project with cake involved is pretty much awesome no matter how it turns out, amIright?!
Now off to wrap a present for that brother of mine and iron a bazillion little matching clothing items for the wedding! Oh and gotta practice those dance moves….can’t let my MC Hammer get rusty
Disclaimer : This post is sponsored by Lulu & Georgia. All opinions are 100% mine.
One of my favorite places to shop online is Lulu & Georgia. It’s one of those sites that I go to if I feel too stuck or too neutral or too blah about a space in my home. I can just browse their site and I feel so inspired. Not only is it a great site for inspiration, but I can also score the freshest artwork or pillows or the cutest home decor and know that it’s on trend. It’s one of the swankiest sites in all the land. Seriously. And now you can swank for less with a discount code. You can thank me later Just punch in “Bower20″ at checkout.
Recently our air conditioner went out in our master bedroom. The entire unit needs replaced and of course, it happened on a Friday afternoon. That meant we had a very hot bedroom…and I’m not talking about “steamy”….I’m talking waking up in a puddle of sweat at night. Yuck. It was miserable. Thankfully the boy’s rooms are on a different unit so they were nice and cool but Max was in our room and to avoid having him sweat with the oldies (see what I did there?!), we picked up our pillows and moved into the guest room till we get a new unit up and running.
Relocating into the guest bedroom was probably a good thing because it actually lit a little fire under my bum to get the space finished. Each morning I sit in there and nurse and I look around. All I think is “What is wrong with me?! Why haven’t I hung artwork? Am I nuts? Who does all the hard stuff like repainting and installing a super cool accent wall and then doesn’t finish?!” By the time I am done feeding Max, I am sick of myself. And so this past week, I finally pulled the trigger. Back in April I talked about the four things I wanted to do in this room…
and this view of the room looks relatively finished…
But this side? It needs some stuff on the walls.
and a new light so that this corner doesn’t become a black hole at night time.
The dresser mirror definitely needed to be hung. Jeremy helped me and it was up in like two minutes. I don’t know why I didn’t do that already! The rest of the creative process is always fun. It’s like creating a decorating mosh pit and jumping in…
I still haven’t tackled the valance….maybe this week….but on either side of the window, the walls were literally crying out for artwork. Seriously. Crying like a twenty year old contestant during an episode of Bachelors in Paradise. I would cry too if I had a body like those girls. tears. of. joy. #thatshipsailed
The space needed some very simple updates and so I hopped on Lulu & Georgia’s site to get some items that I have been wanting for a while. Now, the guest room has some awesome crap on the walls. I did two mirrored thingies on one side of the window and some cute framed prints on the other side.
I am so glad that Anna Rifle did an Atlanta print. She seriously could of done a close up print of the Georgia Peach and I would have bought it. Framed butt in the guest room! And I mixed up the frames so that it played off the gold DIY starburst mirror. Also, if you haven’t jumped on the cactus trend yet…you are missing out!
When the box with a new lamp arrived, I immediately unpacked it and could be found cuddling it in the guest bed. I couldn’t help it! Curves like that call for kanoodling Isn’t it cute with my little bulldog and one of my coveted Bower tins?
The other side of the dresser has a couple reading books, my little thrift store brass elephant, a vase with some faux florals and a framed picture with the wifi password. I hate telling everybody our password. No that’s a lie. I always FORGET our password. This way, it’s not my responsibility. Nothing like passing the buck to a picture frame
The biggest splurge was the navy Trina Turk pillow….but dude, if you are gonna splurge, get a super beautiful pillow to pamper yourself your guests. Navy is my new favorite color…ok ok….I have always been obsessed with navy….and it played so perfectly with the rice-bag pillow that I got for free from my mom and the chair I inherited from my grandma that I figure the overall cost of this little corner was still REALLY low.
Overall, I am amazed that the room went from this…
to this….
with just a little artwork and a couple new items. I can’t wait to tackle that window treatment so that I can finally call this room finished! Now go check out the new stuff at Lulu & Georgia (don’t forget your discount code) and get some pretties to finish your own spaces!
This week has been all about making progress on the kitchen walls. I know some of you guys have waited a LONG time for me to find the motivation to finish this room, and it’s finally come! After finishing off the dining room, I guess I just lost that part of my brain that thinks skim coating is at all fun. But I’m determined, so… I guess that’s enough?
From time to time, we all fall victim to the DIY slump. Skim coating used to be fun for me, but now that I’ve spent at least one part of each year fixing damage from ugly-ass wallpaper (1,2,3,4), I lost my skim coating mojo for a while. I am thrilled to be on the last room that I have to do this to, but I’m once again wishing for tiny DIY elves to come in and get it done for me while I sleep. (I know that I could hire someone to do it for me, but have you met me? I’m stubborn. And when you’ve got more time—and pride—than money, you do it yourself.)
This porous surface sealer/primer has been the best product I’ve found for for nixing air bubbles in torn paper and prepping the wall. I wasn’t sure if I would like it when I was fixing the dining room and still had a couple bubbles pop up (which were easily fixed), but now I’ve treated an entire wall with it before I begin a skim coat (last time I only found out about the product after the first skim coat was on), and it’s seriously amazing. I haven’t experienced a single air bubble in the kitchen thus far because it locks down the paper kind of like a coat of glue. (While there’s an affiliate link to the product listing that will make me a couple of cents if you clicked on it, the makers of the product are not paying me to say this and have no idea who I am. It’s basically a schoolgirl crush.)
In other news this week, my darling furball sidekick had to visit the vet. She was favoring one of her paws Monday night, and I soon realized that she split one of her dew claws (presumably at our most recent visit to the dog park) – ouch! She promptly freaked out in the vet’s office at anyone coming close to touching her foot (she has always been an anxious dog, but she turned it up to 11 and pretty much shed an entire coat of fur on the docs and nurses), and four of us had to hold her down while we clipped it off. She’s been on some light pain meds and antibiotics to help it heal over the next week or so, and then she’ll be fine. It’s basically the most expensive manicure I’ve ever purchased, and it wasn’t even for me. Figures.
Oh, and she also has to wear the cone of shame to keep her from licking at her wound whenever I’m not able to be at home. For the record, this is pretty much the meanest I’ve ever been to her—if you’re reading that guilt-trippy look in her eyes, that is.
I gave her some time to get used to it, and she seems to have gotten back to her old happy self, especially in the car.
While I keep working on the kitchen, there won’t be many interesting updates until the paint goes on. So I started thinking about it, and I realized that there are a number of things that I always meant to do a dedicated post on but simply never got back around to doing, such as info on poison ivy (a good lesson from my highly allergic dad), my stint on HomeStretch (the details on the laundry room and living room makeovers), and some family cookie recipes from this past winter. So, even if you’re spotting some things out of the archives, they won’t be re-runs but instead new details on older stuff I never found the time to share before—including full-fledged makeovers. Which, if you think about it, really is a new concept on this always-in-progress blog!
