Holiday Wreaths and Some Antique Door Knobs

I've been working on a lot of projects lately to try and get them done before the baby comes. Here are a few...

This pine cone wreath was a mammoth of a project. Here is the tutorial. If I knew how long it was going to take me (3-4 hours a day for 2 weeks) I would have thought twice about attempting it. Now that it's done though, and hanging up, I am glad I accomplished it. When my mom was in town we made a stop at Michael's and found a bin of mini pine cones for 80% off! Each bag was less than a dollar! We got a lot of bags because we weren't sure how many I would need. I didn't even come close to using them all, but a lot of them were unusable because they were malformed. Our place was such a mess while I was working on it. Pine cones were everywhere; all over the table and on the floor. I couldn't pick up the ones off the floor since most of them were under the table. Travis lovingly did once I was done. I think he was just so glad that I was finally finished that he would do anything to get the area cleaned up. Oh, and did I mention that they were scented? As I slaved over this wreath it felt like my nose hairs were being singed off from breathing in the scented fumes.

I saw another tutorial on how to make this ornament wreath. It is super easy and I think it looks really good. I found the ornaments at the Dollar Tree. They actually have a lot of cute Christmas decorations there if you've never checked them out. You can't beat paying a dollar for these ornaments.

I saw something like this in a store displaying things, but it wasn't for sale. I figured it would be easy to find some door knobs and a scrap piece of wood in my dad's wood shop to easily pull it together. I love going to antique shops and I found all the door knobs there. Some were expensive and others were really cheap so it cost a little more than I thought it would. I love it though and it was the easiest project I've done in a while. All I did was screw some holes in the board, counter sink the holes, find screws that fit the door knobs (they almost all needed different sizes/lengths) and paint the board! I love how it turned out!

Halloween Wreath

I finally got around to making a Halloween craft this year. It will probably be the only one I get around to though. I love decorating for Halloween and there are a lot of things I'd love to make, but I feel like October is speeding by.

I've been seeing black feather wreaths here and there and I contemplate getting them. Some are too expensive and others, in my price range, look cheap. I went to Michael's to find some black feathers and to get as much as I would need would have cost a fortune. I decided to buy a feather boa instead. It wasn't the exact look I was going for, but I thought it would work. I bought two 6ft boas and headed for home. I still had a ton of wire left from my card/picture holder to use as the wreath form.

I made a form out of the wire, wrapped the boas around it and secured with twisty ties. I also used hairspray to make the feathers more stiff.

Here is the finished product. Travis lovingly refers to it as the Black Wreath of Death.

Vintage

I love watching Martha Stewart and sometimes she shows a craft that I just have to try! Back in December she had a girl on that showed how to make flowers out of zippers. I thought it was such a great idea! I went to my local fabric stores and couldn't find any of the zippers that she used. She used zippers with metal teeth and the fabric of the zippers were in cool colors. The zippers at the stores had plastic teeth that matched the fabric so there wasn't much of a contrast, which I think makes them so unique. They do have black and white zippers at the store with metal teeth, but I wanted fun colors. I searched high and low online and I did find a couple places where I could order them, unfortunately they were super expensive! I was talking to Travis' mom about my problem to see if she knew where I could find what I wanted. She just so happened to have seen exactly what I was looking for in her mom's things! She put them in the mail right away. She sent me her mother's stash and it was more than I could have asked for. There were beautiful, vintage zippers in a pretty purple, a light and dark green and white. Each zipper makes two flowers so I was wondering what I could do with the extra. I thought it was a good idea to make the ones I wanted and then use the extras to make flowers for Travis' sisters/in law. I also bought some pink and purple plastic ones for all the nieces in both our families.


I like to bobby pin mine in my hair. You can attach a brooch pin and wear it as a brooch, or pin it to a bag, there are numerous things you can do with them.

All of the girls with our flowers.

Here are the nieces on my side of the family with the flowers. I attached a hairband to theirs.

Camera Strap

I'm FINALLY starting to feel better-I think the worst has passed with the morning sickness. And the best part is I have energy now and motivation to start getting things done. Those things include doing laundry every week and on the day it is supposed to be done, cleaning the apartment, going to the grocery store, running errands, and shopping. Making dinner is still suffering though.

Since I've been feeling motivated I decided to work on my long list of projects. I've seen camera strap slip covers popping up here and there so I wanted to try and make one. I thought it would be a good idea to try it with some scrap fabric first and play with it since I didn't have an actual pattern on how to make one. I'm really glad that I started with some scrap fabric because I messed that one up beyond repair! I learned from my mistakes though and was able to successfully construct what I had in mind.

I think it looks so much better than the plain strap.

Just a reminder-July 11th is Saturday and that means free 11oz. Slurpees at 7-11!! I've blogged about this before, but incase you're new or forgot about such an important day, I want to give you a heads-up. We've already mapped out all the 7-11's in our area. Travis, in the year of '05, set his all time record of getting 9. If that number doesn't seem impressive, you can only get one at a time so he kept going back throughout the day, while he was working no less. I'm sure we will beat that since we have all day (and no work)! Mmm, I can sense Cherry and Coke overload.

Our 4th of July

We had a great 3-day weekend! My parents drove up and spent the weekend with us. We watched a lot of tennis, had a lot to eat, and enjoyed the sun!

First off, I wanted something patriotic to put up so I decided to make something prior to the weekend. I found a font I liked, enlarged it, traced the letters on some scrap plywood, had my dad cut them out, I painted them, and finally Mod Podged some scrapbooking paper on them. Super easy!

We started the weekend by going out to dinner and watching Transformers. We all loved the movie!

For the 4th we went to our church's flag raising ceremony and pancake breakfast.

We went to our new favorite BBQ place, Gorilla's BBQ, for lunch.

We drove down the coast and stopped at the best little beach. It was a hidden gem! It wasn't crowded, wasn't windy and cold, and had a huge rock to climb on.

We were all attacked by this seagull when we climbed up on the rock.

Personal fireworks don't seem to be allowed in most areas around here (fire hazard, I assume) and there is only a handful of professional shows you can go to. We went to a show held at an amphitheatre, but we chose to find a seat outside so we didn't have to pay for tickets. We setup camp on a huge dirt field because most people were setting up around it and the place was starting to get crowded. We had the best seats and the bonus of having no one around us. It was great!

We hope everyone had a fun and safe 4th of July!

2nd Round of Projects

I finally finished up some projects that I've been working on for a while. I feel like a huge weight has been lifted off my shoulders, but only to be replaced by more weight of other projects I would like to get done.

First up on the list is a dress form I found at TJ Maxx/HomeGoods. I've wanted a dress form for a long time and have had regrets of coming across ones that I've liked and never bought. Now, I can actually say that I'm glad that I never purchased past ones I've seen because this one is my favorite. And the best part, of course, it was only $17! The other ones that I liked were upwards of $50. This one though came without a base so I was a little worried that I might not find something that would work.

Before

After

Next, is an afghan that I crocheted. My mom is a crocheting/knitting queen and has offered to teach me multiple times. I just was never that interested when it was easier to just have her make something for me. While we were at my parents house for Christmas, my mom was going through some old craft magazines in hopes of throwing them away. Unfortunately, I would go through those headed for the trash and find something I liked and pulled it back out. In one, I found directions to an afghan that I really liked. My mom thought it was simple enough for me to try and convinced me to learn how to crochet. I loved it and was very addicted to working on it throughout the Christmas break. I worked really fast at the beginning when you can see your progress and how far you've gone. Once I got halfway through, I couldn't tell how much I'd done because it didn't look that much longer, and I started to lose steam. I also had a hard time understanding the directions so I would have to wait until I could see my mom do it.

Also, these are tails that you have to weave in and that is so tedious.

I like to say this is my first and last afghan, but my mom gets mad when she hears me say that. So, this is my only afghan for the foreseeable future!

And last, but certainly not least, is my railroad shelf. My friend, Ang, has a railroad shelf, which used to be her mantle until she moved to Virginia, and I thought it was such a cool idea. Her dad made it for her so I took pictures of it and showed it to my dad hoping we could make one just like it. The first railroad tie that we got was really hard to work with. It had creosote (coal tar) all over it. They are soaked in creosote to protect it from the weather and apparently all the tools we tried to use on it to smooth it down. To make a long story short, it ended up with too many imperfections, which my dad likes to call character, so I wanted to start over. We had actually found a railroad tie in our own yard that was much older and dried out. It was a lot easier to work with and since we made our mistakes on the first one, this one went a lot easier. It still has character, but I'm learning to live with it. I really love it and I'm happy with how it turned out. The first one with all the character is not being wasted. My dad hung that one up in his wood working shop and it really adds to the space.

My dad had the idea of adding the tops of real railroad spikes to make it look like they are holding it in the wall. Those are the spikes we found behind our house.

Projects

I've tapped into my creative side since we've moved to California. It most likely has to do with having space, our own furniture, and of course money and time. Here are a few things that I, and even Travis, have been working on.

First thing that we finished was this rocking chair. No, we didn't make it, but it was unfinished so Travis sanded it and put on coat after coat of stain. It was my parents rocking chair and they didn't want it anymore so they offered it to us. After seeing it all prettied up my dad asked for it back, but he was just joking...I think.

Next thing that we finished, that took longer than I thought, was our headboard. It started out as just a door that I found at an antique store for $75. I got this idea of using a door as a headboard from Design Star on HGTV. They used two doors and stood them up side by side. I thought that looked a little awkward having such a high headboard so I just bought one and turned it horizontal. The door knob wasn't in the center of the door so we cut off both sides, one side a little more than the other, to make it center. I'm still thinking of something I can do to use those extra pieces. I'll let you know when I do.

Before

After

I've always wanted a card holder to display Christmas cards and I found the perfect one at Pottery Barn. Only thing was you had to order it from their catalog or online and it was already $50 without shipping! Since we already had our first Christmas card I thought something needed to be done. I went to Lowes and picked up some wire and needle nosed pliers and got straight to work. I was able to finish in a couple hours, but my hands were so sore by the end! I bought some brown, speckled spray paint for an antique look and finished it up the next day. I did the whole thing for less than $22! Beat that Pottery Barn.

Does a Christmas tree count as a project? Well, I'll count it this time. This is our first Christmas with tree :) It was really fun getting into the Christmas spirit while decorating the tree! Although, I got out of the Christmas spirit really quick when we got up the next morning and it had practically fallen over! Travis didn't have time before work to mess with it so I decided to try to fix it myself. Bad idea. It almost came crashing down a few times so I just pushed it to lean against the wall since I realized I couldn't do it myself. I called my mom for help and she told me that we probably didn't have it all the way down in the stand. She was right, there were branches keeping it from going all the way down. When Travis got home he held the tree still while I sawed off the branches. Why it was me sawing off the branches, I don't know? Oh ya, I remember why. He didn't believe that was the real reason why it wasn't going all the way down so he made me saw them off to prove I was wrong. Uh hmm, I was actually right and it slid right down and has been straight ever since! Unfortunately, we had to undecorate it to fix it and then me, and only me, decorated it again. I guess I didn't read the fine print that said 'if you have to decorate the tree, AGAIN, you do it by yourself.' Below is the picture of me putting the star on for the first time. I'm glad I don't have a picture of my face decorating it for the second time. I wasn't all that happy.

Here it is standing straight and redecorated.

And last, but not least, here are some ornaments that I made. I got the idea, again, from Pottery Barn. I thought about buying them, but they were pretty pricey for only one ornament. So, I bought a pack of styrofoam balls and ribbon and went to work. It took me a few tries to figure out how best to make them. I ended up making 6 for under $10 compared to paying $6 for only one!

I have more projects in the works; a shelf, quilts, dress form...the list goes on. I'll keep ya posted though.