Pinspiration

Sorry for not posting on Friday... I'm a bit busy and I feel like I am out of material. But not today! I have a really fun DIY project that we did involving maps.

A while back my in-laws found a bunch of old school maps (the kind that would hang from the chalk/wipe-off boards) from the 1980's. With our love of maps and travel we knew we wanted one to hang in our office.

We decided to mount it off a piece of poplar because it is a hardwood and since the map is on the heavy side we thought that was best. We stained the wood to match the rest in our office.

Then I had to glue all the weights and leather pieces that had fallen apart back together. 

{gluing the map back together}

After all that had been done it was time to hang it up! First we mounted the piece of wood to the wall and then we inserted the screws that would hold the map up. We definitely made sure that we hit all studs when hanging this thing.

{mounted up}

{we love it!}

{USA, North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa, the World}

We absolutely love this map and its so perfect for our office! Now we have 4 maps hanging and two globes!

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Pinspiration

I have been SO excited to share this project with y'all! It just took me a while to get it all done.

So I saw this post on YoungHouseLove and I knew I had to do the same thing! Unfortunately I read the post too late and all the large calendars were sold out! Boo! So I settled for the flip calendar that is supposed to sit on your desk. Once it was in I measured the page and my very talented dad made the frames for me (since they were an odd size). Then I painted them black and hung them in our guest room.

{In Process}

{all done!}

I love these little pictures, its such a fun way to bring traveling into the home.

How do you bring your love for travel into your home?

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Pinspiration

In one of my Christmas posts I shared a picture of all the Christmas ornaments I/we have collected on our travels. We also collect small works of art! Nothing fancy and we try to get stuff from locals/street vendors to keep it less expensive. When it comes to buying a little something from our travels we ask ourselves if we'll regret not getting it and if the answer is "yes" then we'll go ahead and buy it. Words of wisdom from my parents. My mom also told to always buy a little something on your travels to remember the trip and the moment.

Anyway... A few weekends ago we got around to hanging them up! In our last house we left quite a few holes in the wall from eye-balling where the nail would go so this time we did it smart!

How to hang your artwork:

We started by using some butcher paper to trace all the frames

Then we used painters tape to position them correctly onto the wall

And ta-daaaa! We have a nice little collection from all our travels!

Do you collect anything from your travels?

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Pinspiration

Happy Valentine's Day y'all! I hope you have a LOVEly day :) Over the last week I have slowly been prepping for some cupcakes to bring to work. It always seems like something goes wrong with my icing. Its either too stiff or too creamy. And today it was too creamy. Of course I didn't want to run to the store to get more sugar so I just went with it...they don't taste bad but after being out of the fridge for some time I know the icing will start to drip.

I made the little hearts out of melted vanilla wafers that I piped into the shapes I wanted.

At least they taste good...

yummy vanilla cupcakes

Vanilla on Vanilla

I <3 you!

Did you make anything special for Valentine's Day? Or do you have any special plans?

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Pinspiration: Holiday Edition

I saw this workshop that Home Depot was hosting on how to make a monogram garland wreath. I thought that looks pretty easy, where do I sign up? Well turns out they were just going to show you how to do it and not let you make one in the workshop....LAME! I wanted to make one! So I just called my dad and told him what I wanted to do and he brought all the supplies over during Thanksgiving. We did just as the steps on the infograph show (except I spry painted mine so none of the wood color would show through the garland).

Home Depot

{Original source, Home Depot Do-It-Herself Workshops}

Mine

{'C' Monogram Garland Wreath}

 I think it looks pretty good...although it being a 'C' kind of makes it look like an unfinished wreath don't you think?

Over the Thanksgiving holiday we also put up some lights around the house. I LOVE my glowing, large ornaments! I know wish I would have bought them all!

What have you been doing to decorate for the holiday season? 

Pinspiration

This month's pinspiration is Thanksgiving themed. We usually don't do anything for Thanksgiving because we have been on vacation for the past 3 of them! Hawaii I miss you *tear* But this year we are in a new house so I thought it would be nice to have my family over and have our first Thanksgiving in our new home.

Since we don't usually have Thanksgiving we didn't have a lot of fall decor so when I saw this on the Silhouette Blog I thought, "hey, that's cute and looks easy to make." I went a bought some card stock and started messing around on my Silhouette. Its not like we need place settings because there will only be 5 of us but still, I thought it would be fun. Here are some pics:

From the Silhouette Blog

 {Source}

Made by me!

I think I did a pretty good job if I do say so myself! To make the leaves curl a bit I just wrapped them around a pencil.

Do have any fun fall crafts or decorating ideas?

Pinspiration

So I figure I owe y'all a few posts since I missed some while I had company in town. Yesterday was my husbands birthday and his favorite dessert is rice crispy treats so I thought I would make them in cake form (getting my idea from Pinterest of course!)

Here was my inspiration:

 {Source}

And here is my version!

Happy birthday!

Pinspiration

Hope y'all all had a great weekend! This months pinspiration I have been working on for about a month. It only took me so long because we had some rain on the weekends and I couldn't get outside to sand this dang table.

I wanted to try making my own chalk paint. Chalk paint shouldn't be confused with chalkboard paint, they are not the same thing. Here is the original chalk paint and why its so awesome, the first being you don't have to sand or prep the item. The reason I tried to make my own was because they didn't have the color I wanted...deep purple. Well turns adding water and plaster of paris into the paint didn't make it so deep anymore, oh well. I used a recipe found online:

2 cups paint
1/3 cup plaster of paris
2 tbs of water.

I sanded the top of the table to see how it would look with paint and I didn't sand the legs to see how those would look. Well I didn't like the way I would of had to do 2 coats on the legs if I didn't sand.

Anyway...here is the final product.

Happy Pinning! 

Pinspiration

I have been so busy with the house (which I am sure that you are tired of hearing about) that I almost forgot to post my monthly Pinspiration. Well here it is, and its an easy one!

It all started with this picture I found on Pinterest.

I loved the idea of using a decorative cupcake tower as a way to clear the clutter of my bathroom counter. And in my last house that was a MUST since we only had one sink.

My mission was to find something similar. I had no real luck online so I enlisted the help of my mother-in-law and she was able to find one pretty quick and she mailed it right to me! It had a mirror thing-y on top of it that would not allow me to put tall bottles on the top tier. So I had to take that off. I still need to paint it to match the colors in my bathroom but so far it has worked out great!

Happy Pinning! 

Moving Week!

Sorry for the no-post-Friday but holy cow, what a busy past 4 days I have had! We closed on our new house on Thursday and then moved out of the hotel Friday and brought some essentials from the storage unit to the new casa! Things like a mattress, sheets, towels...stuff like that until it started raining! Boooo! So on Saturday we had clear skies and my husband rented a small U-Haul trailer and began the process of bringing all the boxes to the new house while I unpacked and watched the painters paint all the walls pretty colors!

The trailer was a big help! Sunday we unpacked more and organized the garage, we didn't make any trips back to storage units because really needed to make a dent in the stuff we already had at the house!

And today I am back at work while my boo deals with the movers for our bigger items and the delivery of our new items. Needless to say I am hoping to come home to clean, fully unpacked home :D

Here are some of our freshly painted rooms! Keep in mind that these are taken with my iPhone so the lighting and quality are not the best. All paint is Sherwin Williams/HGTV Livable Lux color palette - Top from left to right: Master in Dovetail, bedroom 2 in Silvermist and Snowbound. Bottom from left to right: bedroom 1 in Softened Green, game room in Serious Gray and Expressive plum in the nook.

Pinspiration

One day browsing Pinterest I found this really cute card for an anniversary and I pined it! Later, after seeing how many cute things Jen over at iHeart Organizing does with her Silhouette I decided I had to have one! Once I got my Silhouette and before we started packing to move I went ahead and made the card for our 3rd year anniversary. I tried to "man" in up a bit and not use girly colors. I also didn't put the middles back into the "o's", "a's", "e's", etc. I thought it would take too long and I wanted this to be a quick project.

What do you think?

How many of you out there are addicted to Pinterest? 

Pinspiration

This month's pinspiration idea was all about making the home we were selling look inviting and green! I saw this cute little DIY on planting your own lemon seeds into a coffee cup and having a cute little desk plant (I was going to place ours in the kitchen). When I found this originally on Pinterest it didn't have any instructions on what to do so I was stuck to interpreting the pictures. After planting my little seeds I found the instructions and they went something like this:

1 - Take the seeds out of the lemon and let them sit over night in water (the overnight is the part I missed)

2 - Then plant your seeds in the dirt you put in your bowl or mug

3 -Add some decorative rocks if you like

4 - Watch your seeds grow (mine have not gotten as big as they show…as you can see)

Now, the growing part took longer than I anticipated so I wasn't able to have them on display for our home showings but over time they have grown and look pretty cute!

Happy Pinning!

Pinspiration

How many of you out there are obsessed with Pinterest? I know I am! I can be on that site for hours! And that is exactly what I have been doing lately since we started the process of buying/building our new home. I wanted to have everything organized by room so that meant splitting up the 'Home Décor' board into: office, dining room, living room, master bedroom, laundry room, game room and closet. I also wanted things in general to be more organized and to have all my boards contain less than 200 pins each. I now only have 2 boards with over 200 pins and they are 'Home Décor' and 'DIY'. But now I have 56 boards…is that too much? I think once the designing of the new house gets done those boards will be deleted. I also have like 11 boards for kids' birthday party idea and I don’t even have any kids yet!

Anyway, here is your Pinspiration for the month. I first got the idea from Jen over at iHeart Organizing and thought it was a genius idea. Jen's idea below

{Source}

Only problem was IKEA was out of these little wooden spice racks. No worries, my dad can make some. So he made me 3 and then a few weeks later IKEA had them back in stock so I bought 3 more for later. I loved Jen's use of them for children's books and that’s why I bought extra. And then I saw a picture of them used in the bathroom…PERFECT! Our current master bath is a 60 inch vanity with one sink and I seem to be a hoarder of bathroom products (I have like 10 different perfumes that I rotate through). So I painted them white and attached them to the wall!

{IKEA Spice Rack}

Happy Pinning!

How to Sell a House

Selling a house can be a stressful time in anyone's life, especially if you have pets and kids. Today I wanted to do a post on how to sell a house (or at least get an offer).

1 - Have professionals clean your house. Currently we have a cleaning crew come and clean our house twice a month. On top of this we are doing a lot of our own deep cleaning. We bought some OxyClean and have been making a paste out of it with water and it has really cleaned up the grout!

2 - Pack up all the clutter and the stuff you don't use everyday. We had some nice custom made DVD shelves that my dad made for us and the DVDs were the 1st things packed and the shelves were put into the garage. We also took down all the personal pictures, they can be distracting to buyers.

3 - Touch up the walls, doors, trim. Like I said in other posts, we started a DIY project in December of 2012 and I finally finished repainting all the baseboards and doors and touching up the walls. Its looks pretty good if I do say so myself! :D

4 - Find some smooth jazz and having it playing in the background all day. That way when you have an unexpected showing they will enter the house and have the background music while touring the house.

5 - Make sure your house doesn't smell funny. Everyone's house has a distinctive smell to it (whether we want to admit it or not) and we have 2 dogs...so ours smells like dog...not dirty dog but just dog. We were given an air purifier/sanitizer a while back but it made the house smell too sterile. BUT having the purifier on AND a few Glade plug ins around the house makes it even out and no more dog smell.

6 - Curb appeal. Having a tidy yard is so helpful! We sprayed and pulled weeds, planed flowers and mulched. But I really like working in the yard so this part is kind of fun for me :)

{Curb Appeal}

Bonuses:

I think its always a good idea/plan that you leave the house in a better state then when you bought it. When we bought the house it had some pretty awful paint colors but the previous owner had removed the carpet in the living room and added laminate floors - UPGRADE. We added much more, we added all stainless steel appliances, a large flagstone patio, new carpet/pad in the bedrooms, new baseboards, and repainted with much more neutral/lighter colors. We all so had my dad, he's a woodworker, build us a beautiful new front door. 

{Our before and after paint jobs}

Weekend Work

This past weekend was a busy one! We are in the process of looking for a new house...and that means getting our current home ready to sell. Over Christmas my brother came and helped us redo our baseboards. He did an AWESOME job! Thanks little bro! So ever since then I have had the wonderful task of painting it..ugh! This weekend my mom and dad came over and helped us finish the baseboards and take our "donate" pile off our hands.

And on the travel side of things tripadvisor started giving out some new badges, here is where I stand:
Hotel Specialist
Restaurant Expert
Attraction Connoisseur

Thanks tripadvisor!

Hope you all had a great weekend! And a good start to the week!

Pinspiration

So while preparing for our trip to Kauai last November I wanted to get a new dress for the occasion. I went to my favorite dress local, Dao Chloe Dao (winner of Project Runway Season 2). I picked up my dress but I couldn't find the right pair of shoes. I didn't want to bring heels and I didn't want to pay $80 for some embellished pair of sandals. So I had seen on Pinterest that some people were spray painting their shoes to add some flair (see her original post here). I had the perfect pair that could use a little something. I went out a bought some gold spray paint and it went a little something like this...

And my outfit was complete! I didn't get a pic of my dress with the shoes but you can see that they do match!

Happy Pinning! 

Pinspiration

Happy Friday y'all! Today I'm going to share with you one of my pinterest projects. I know a lot of people spend copious amounts of time on pinterest (I'm guilty!). And although I don't have enough time to do/try everything I pin I have been able to try a few and I want to share them with you!

The project I am going to share with you today is our bathroom basket storage. We live in a 1600 sq foot house and the space isn't organized in the best way (thanks crappy designer/architect!). For example, there is no linen closet for the master bed/bath. First we bought one of these things from Bed, Bath and Beyond. 

<-------

It didn't really work out, we had to put it on blocks to make it taller and our towels didn't fit in it either and it was really wobbly. It was like this for a while and then in 2011 my mother-in-law showed me pinterest...heaven!...I started pining things like crazy and then I saw someone had taken a basket and screwed the bottom to the wall to make some storage for their towels. Genius! So we went to Target and bought some baskets (laying them on the floor to find a pattern and sizes we liked before we bought). We also bought some washers to help anchor the baskets to the wall (I spray painted them brown). And after everything was said and done we ended up with this! Pinterest WIN!!!   

Hope you find pinterest just was inspiring! Have a great weekend!