Halloween Decorations

The Halloween spirit is out in full force around here, and a few weeks ago the Halloween decorations were put up at our house. I thought I would share with you some of my favorites.

This little ceramic jack-o-lantern I got at Bath & Body Works probably 2 or 3 years ago. It sits in our bathroom and it has a little tea light in it.

I love holiday hand towels. It's a thing. In the bathroom I have a green one with spider webs on it.

This is a wreath I made maybe 2 years ago. It is just a grapevine wreath that I had Jeffry spray paint black, and the snakes are from Wal-mart. They were $1 each I think, from the toy section, and I had Jeffry spray them also. The spiders came in a 2 pack and were in the Halloween section. They weren't more that $5 for both. Once everything was painted and dry, I just attached it all with black wire. Piece of cake!

Of course I had to share my love of  window clings. These are from The Christmas Tree Shoppe. Super cheap!

This is actually a card that I got from Flying Seal Press over on Etsy. The frame is from Hobby Lobby.

Once everything was put out, it allowed me to see where the "holes" were, and I came up with a couple craft ideas to fill in those holes. I give you the Spooky Bat Garland.

This project was a little laborious, but was still easy. I googled "bat template" and printed off one that I liked. I cut it out, and then traced it onto a piece of card-stock, so it would be easier to trace onto the felt. I think I used 4 pieces of black felt. I used a pen to trace the template, which showed up nicely on the felt when it was time to cut them out. I got about 5 bats per sheet of felt. 

Cutting them out was the worst part, just because it took a little bit of time, and you have to pay attention to what you're doing. Oh yeah, I used glow in the dark puff paint to dot on some eyes.

 

I picked this ribbon up out of a clearance bin, so they were like 60% off their original $1.99 price tag. I ended up deciding on the black ribbon so there wouldn't be as much contrast. I cut the entire spool into about 2" lengths. ( I totally eye-balled it) Then I just hot glued the ribbon onto the back of the bats in the middle of the wings.

And that's it! Super easy, no sew bat garland. I use small clear command hooks to hang it. I actually leave those up year round because I hang other holiday garlands there, and you don't even notice them when there is nothing up.  I love how it came out!

Oh yeah, here is the bat template that I used. I actually ended up enlarging the largest bat just a teeny bit. I used PowerPoint to do it so you don't even need anything fancy like Photoshop. 

And of course I would be remiss if I didn't share my all time favorite Halloween decoration:

And I couldn't not take a picture of Ruby in her matching collar either.

Happy Halloween!

Address Wreath

What a day it's been already! I slept through my alarm, and then my hair tie broke. Hopefully it's all uphill from here. 

Today I have a craft for you that I've been meaning to finish forever! It's for my friend Rachel and think she's going to love it :)

Here's the inspiration pic:

Unfortunately the link on Pinterest went to a site in another language, but it was easy enough to figure out without step-by-step instructions.

I got most of my supplies at good ol' JoAnn's, and it really didn't cost too much. I used a coupon on the grapevine wreath, and the flowers were $9.99 but on sale for $5.99/bunch. I grabbed 2 bunches. I think I used a coupon on the ribbon too. The numbers were like $2 apiece so they weren't really breaking the bank either, and I borrowed some paint from my parents.

The floral wire I already had too. It's from Hobby Lobby.

All I did was lay everything out until I liked how it looked, and then I used to floral wire to attach everything. I thought about being lazy and using hot glue, but since the wreath is going to be outside I wanted to make sure it held up. I did use hot glue to attach the wooden letters. If they don't stay I'll have to revisit and try something different.

And here's the finished product! Shout out to my mom for tying that awesome bow :)

Rachel I hope you like it, thanks for taking our pictures! You'll have to send me a picture of it on your door I'm sure it will look much better :)

Trash to Treasure: Headboard Edition

Here is another project we did for our bedroom. We completed it some time ago but the BF is very proud of it and I wanted to post it for anyone who hasn't seen it.

So you guys remember this post about the dresser from the side of the road.

Exhibit A

Directly across from that is our bed, and henceforth our headboard. The inspiration came from one of my first pins ever. This pic:

here. You can find my whole bedroom inspiration board here.

So the BF was on the hunt for reclaimed wood. He brought home some pallets and those sat around for a while, and then Jeffry found these in a vacant lot:

And I think we heard angels. Just kidding. (Sort of.) We don't know if they were railroad ties or what. They were nailed together in groups of 2 so we thought that was kinda weird. And who knows how long they had been there but they were distressed and they were AWESOME. Not only was the wood old, but they had all sorts of dents and marks, and even big old nails in them. Reclaimed wood perfection. Each beam is 5' long (perfect for our queen bed) and they weigh a wopping 70 lbs. each. This is how we brought them home:

There's probably an 8-12" difference there easy!

 We let them sit in our backyard for a while, and then they got a good scrub down to remove any bugs and plants that had taken up residence. After that they got a few good coats of varnish to seal them

Then we had to decide how we wanted to put it together. The beams were so heavy that we didn't want to use any more than we needed to, so we cut a piece in half to use as a base. You can see that here:

This part is covered by our mattress anyway. We also had to figure out how to connect the beams together, since we didn't want a couple hundred pounds toppling over on our heads in the middle of the night! So what we did was we drilled a hole down through all the beams, and stuffed a 1" dowel down the hole. We used L brackets to connect the whole thing to the wall, and we also used heavy duty screws and metal plated on the back, like this:

Can't be too safe when there's hundreds of pounds looming over your melon!

I love how he sticks his tongue out when he's concentrating ;P

This is the pretty much finished product

Another bit of inspiration for the whole project was that Jeffry found some industrial looking lighting that was getting thrown out at his work, and he really wanted to add them to our headboard. They were originally hard wired, but I found some switched cords at IKEA that we used instead so we can switch them on and off from the bed, and they just plug into an outlet. We are both so happy with how it turned out!

With the overhead light on and off. Complete with Kitty photo bomb.

And sometimes he likes to do this:

He's about 3x that size now the little chunk

When I Grow Up.... Bonus Post!

I don't usually do more than one post a day, but I just had to participate in this super fun link up over at Two Thirds Hazel & I Wore Yoga Pants!

When I Grow Up..

We're going to live in this gorgeoussss abode, with lots of land

here

In a town like this:

We will grow all our own vegetables and they will never die

here

And have this sweet pool/movie theatre

I'll cook all our meals here, and I'll hire someone to keep our fridge and pantry continually stocked

here

We'll have this awesome fireplace in our great room

And on that mantle there will be a picture like this

used to be here

And a few like this

here (sort of)

Cuz we'll have a couple of these

And they will NOT be allowed in here

Or here (cheers!)

here

And we'll travel places like these

And we'll all live

On that note! I'll be dreaming of these tonight hopefully, and when I wake up, it will be Friday! Yahoo!

Don't forget to check out the other awesome entries

Trash to Treasure

This is a project that I completed some time ago, but I wanted to share it here for anyone who hasn't seen it.

I don't have a ton of great pics of the progress, but here are the deets:

My bestie (who just so happens to live downstairs from us) spotted this dresser on the curb down the street. At the time, she knew we were redecorating our master bedroom, and I was looking for a piece to go across from the end of our bed. So she and I schlepped down the street to check it out. It was solid wood (so hard to find these days!) and really didn't have much wrong with it besides the awful, dated drawer fronts. We tried to carry it back but it was so solid it was too heavy for us!

As soon as the BF got back from the gym we had him go pick it up with the car.  I don't remember the exact time of year, but I remember it was coooold. So the dresser sat outside in the shed until the weather warmed up, which gave it a good amount of time to air out.

Once the weather turned nice, I borrowed a belt sander from my parents, and gave the thing a good rubdown, and a coat of primer. The original handles were just screwed on, so those got removed, and I bought 6 unfinished wood handles from www.MyKnobs.com and they worked out great! I did have to putty the holes from the original "pulls" if that's what you want to call them. You can get an idea of how hideous they were in the pic below.

The outside of the dresser got a couple coats of white we had leftover from the bedroom trim, and I picked up three test pots at Home Depot. I picked 3 from the same paint strip, but the light brown actually was a bit more taupe-y than I liked to I mixed some of the medium brown in with it to deepen it a bit, and that worked perfectly.

I wish I had more pictures, but it turned out great. There is one thing I'm still trying to figure out though, I need something to put on the top to protect it from scratches. A couple of thoughts I've had: a burlap runner or a piece of plexiglass cut to fit. Thoughts? Ideas?