Melissa Jeans (first) Garden

Happy February!! Can you believe it is already February? The past few weeks here in “the south” have felt more like a Wisconsin May to me! We have been in the 70’s- absolutely perfect weather! As if the great weather wasn’t good enough, my amazing husband has been lucky enough to have extra time off from work YAY! We spent much of this time “cleaning” the garage. Haha! Funny though, the only thing that changed was that a new (and much larger) miter saw appeared.  ;) I can’t complain though, as the miter is one of my most used power tools.

Any ways, all of this nice weather has got me itching to plant a garden! Now some of you may know that this is no small task for me. I was not blessed with the green thumb my mother and grandmother have, in-fact I have just the opposite. I can kill any thing that grows and is green! Really!

So I set out to gather knowledge about gardening at my local library. I have been there 3 times and checked out almost 20 books about gardening. My all-time favorite is Grow Great Grub by Gayla Trail. I actually plan on purchasing the book from amazon. (Yeah it’s that good!)

Where to put my garden?

After much deliberation on where to place the actual garden I have decided to make a raised bed garden along the back fence in my yard. I decided to do this for several reasons. First I know the soil, or clay here isn’t very suitable for growing. Second I know that location will get the best sun light.  However, the main reason I decided to place my garden there and lift my garden up out of the ground was because of my dogs. We have two very large and very naughty curious dogs. They tend to get into everything they can reach, especially our 10 month old mastiff who now weighs more than I do. Do you know how much damage a 120 lb teething puppy can do!??!
 

Mater (like ta mater, but without the "ta")
with my hubby resting after a long walk



George (as in Curious George)
Standing at our 5 ft gate.

 

Raised bed?

Do you still remember that this is my first attempt at a “real” garden? ;) I have planned out my raised bed garden, and although my husband thinks I am nuts, it will be 8 feet long and 2 feet wide. The garden will be about 1 ½ feet deep. I plan to raise the “bed” up using 4x4s an additional half foot or so (rather than it just sitting on the ground). This will provide a nice height for planting and maintenance etc. It will also help keep our dogs out. Think something like this…

What am I going to grow?

After reading a lot, and knowing what our family will and won’t eat, I had a list of things I would like to have in my garden.  The book Grow Great Grub also touches on what plants grow nicely with each other and which help attract “good” insects.  I sketched out a general plan on paper, and then discovered this amazing website called www.gardners.com. You can actually plan your garden here. The best part is the web site tells you how many plants you can place in a given space. For example you should only have 1 broccoli per square foot, but you can have 2 basil plants, or even 16 carrots per square foot. This tool helped me immensely! Yet another great aspect about this tool is that it will give you planning and care tips on the plants you have “placed” in your garden.

Take a look at my garden planning so far…

I plan on building this bad boy this month, so keep an eye out for the post about that.

Distressed Letter Signs

I found the cutest DIY “eat” sign on a fellow crafters blog and decided to give it a shot. I modified mine a bit, so it could be set atop our kitchen cabinets.

First I cut the wood and sanded the edges a bit. Then I gathered my supplies, and picked the colors I wanted. I didn’t really fuss over to colors too much.

Then I painted on a different color onto each wood block. I let the first color dry, then I sanded it with my hand sander. I did this once more using different colors.

I then printed out my letters on paper and cut them out (this was before I had my cricut) I then laid the letters on the wood and simply painted over them. I was careful to keep them in the same spot, but it was pretty easy.

Peel the letters off, let the paint dry and sand again.

Our eat sign is still lonely above our cabinets, but we are in the works for a kitchen remodel…

How to build a Coffee Table

After we got our "new to us" living room set, we started looking at coffee tables, but whoa were they pricy. So of course I looked on craigs list, but nothing was striking my fancy- well the antique factory carts but remember we are on a budget! So I found Ana Whites web site. Like I said before, I am in LOVE! We picked a coffee table we liked, and got to work.

First we measured the living room, and decided on a 3ft x 3.5 ft table. Then we headed out to the garage to take inventory of our lumber. Because we are using the lumber we salvaged from our garage demo, all we needed was a 4x4. (Turns out we actually HAD a 4x4, oh well save it for our next project) We headed to the local lumber yard, got our 4x4 and some poly for the top of the table. Our total was about $12.

After we gathered all the supplies we started to cut the lumber, remember to measure twice and cut once! ; )

We then laid out our table top to see what it looked like, and we were pleased with it so we continued on.

Ana’s instructions were really easy to follow, and the entire project went very smooth! Just remember to take the extra time to pre drill your holes, so you don’t split the wood.

Assemble the table, fill your holes and sand. Be sure to use a wood filler that can be painted or stained, depending on your plans.

We decided to paint the bottom of our table white, rather than stain it. I used Kilz primer, with a tad of Glidden Golden bronze added to it, for an antique white color. After it dried, I used my sanding block to distress the edges of the legs to give it an old and worn look. After I did that I used some stain we already had, on the distressed edges. It really made the wood pop with the white.

Last but not least is to seal and protect the top of the table! We used Min Wax Polycrylic. All you do is make sure your surface is clean and dry, then paint on. We ended up doing 3 coats on our table.  It was so easy to apply, a snap to clean up and it looks great!

This table took me one day to make and paint. I let it dry over night and finished it the next day after church. I am so happy with how it turned out!

Craigs List Living Room

Hi Y'all! After I re-did our dining room I really wanted to redo our living room. However, like most people, we are on a budget, so we couldn’t just run out and buy a new living room “get up” (as much as I would have liked to do that).  So I did what I always do, I looked on Craigs list. I love Craigs list by the way! It’s like the garage sale for our generation HA!  Because the room is still a work in progress, for right now I will just show you a few things I have been working on for the living room, mainly furniture, but as soon as it is all put together I will post pics of the entire room- promise!

To start off the living room make over I found two cute side tables on CL. I bought the pair for only $10. I popped them into my spray booth, mixed up a “custom” off white color (consisting of Kilz primer and small amount Glidden, Golden Bronze) , and then after they were dry I distressed them a bit.  They turned out great! I had intended to turn around and re-sell them, and even though I had an offer or two, they look so darn good in my living room I think I just might hang onto them for a while. Here they are…

My next obstacles were my sofa and love seat which we had previously bought from CL- told you I love CL! They were just not the right color or size for our living room. In fact the sleeper sofa was almost 9 ft long and over 3 ft deep, it was HUGE. Any ways, we sold that set and bought a more neutral color, smaller set. We now have a smaller sleeper sofa and a chair. My husband has claimed the chair, well when the cat “allows it” he he he.  

I have had my eye on one of those old factory cart coffee tables for a long time now, but honestly they are just WAY out of our price range. (big sad face) However I did find a few GREAT tutorials on how to build your own coffee table. I have just recently discovered Ana White, and of course am in LOVE! So I chose one of her plans for a knock off of a Pottery Barn coffee table.  You can find the instructions we (mostly) used here. Thanks Ana!

We recently tore down a small half wall in our garage, and my amazing  husband so lovingly saved all the UBER cool wood for me :D He even took the time to remove all the nails from each board, such a great man he is! So any ways, we ended up using the wood from the garage for the table top. This was not only a great way to reuse the wood (reduce reuse recycle right!) but we will forever have a piece of our first home… or the garage!

Here are the pictures of the coffee table…

Be sure to check out the post on how I made the coffee table, found here. (coming soon!)

Also be sure to check back SOON to see the finished living room!!! It's almost done, YAY!

Color Change

Hello every one!
I hope your holiday season went well! I know ours did! We have been so very busy, but I am back and ready to continue working on my blog.

Wondering what is new here in "the south"? Well the color of our dining room sure is!

We have been in our house for about 9 months now, and although I do like the traditional colors in our very traditional style home, I really love the look of the relaxed or shabby chic inspired style. The very bold colors in our house don't tie in real well with that style so I decided to paint our dining room. Why the dining room you ask, good question I am not really sure what inspired this random act of crazyness, haha, but here we are none the less.
 As you can see in the previous post, Birthday Party in the Fast Lane, our dining room use to be red. We liked the red, my husband liked the red a lot actually, but after some persuasion he agreed to let me paint it. I did tell him if he really didnt like the color I would paint it back red, but lucky for me he doesn't mind the new color.

We ended up painting it "relaxed navy" found at Lowes, and this is what it looks like now...

Well what do you think? I really like it...but... the rest of the house is still painted in a very traditional color palette. Oh well I guess I will need to paint the rest of the house! ha ha ha. 

Do you remember the table and chairs that are now in the dining room? They were the ones in the posting "weekend project". Oh yes, those are the ones! I think they turned out just great, and I am pleased to show them off. Of course now I will need new fabric for the seats, but oh well.

I would say I am about half way done with our dining room. I plan to get new window treatments, and also a rug for under the table perhaps? I also want to find some botanical prints for the east wall, it is a bit naked at the moment; and you know me, it will be a DIY project. I am thinking about hunting down an old botanical calendar, and framing some of the pictures. 

Overall, we are happy with the dining room...so onto the next room right ;)

Birthday Party in the Fast Lane

Here are a few DIY party decorations for a race car theme party. 

Our little rock star is turning 5, and we are throwing him a birthday party! We are going to order pizza and have cake and ice cream (easy and kid friendly) 

I whipped up a few decorations, using things I already had around the house :D

First the tissue balls
A fellow blogger inspired me to make the awesome tissue ball. (you can check out her AMAZING blog here and her "how to" on the tissue puffs here) I decided to make one large tissue ball, and hang it from our dining room light. Then I added 3 paper circles on yarn below it.

How to make the tissue ball:

Using 1 pack of tissue, fold it accordion style (think paper fan from grade school)

Tie center with string

Trim edges to a point or rounded

Pull each piece out one at a time, and fluff

Hang and enjoy!

*You could even add some of those decorative picks or even feathers into the ball!

DIY fabric garland

This project was inspired by my high school cheerleading squad. We use to make our hair ties this way. I made 6 small garlands, one for each chair, and then I hung a checkered flag on each. The result is a festive dining room! The best part about this project was the fact that I used scrap fabric and yarn I already had on hand, so it was completely free!

How to make fabric garland:

Cut string or yarn to desired length

Cut fabric into strips. Length and width are up to you ( I did 1” by 4”)

Tie fabric to yarn alternating colors

Hang garland and enjoy

*you can also use tulle, ribbon, rickrack, feathers etc to add interest.

*another cute idea would be to tie fabric onto a string of lights, plug in and WOW!

Silver wear holders

So I drink a LOT of coffee, and always have a surplus of plastic coffee canisters on hand. We have used them for projects, painting, keeping homemade play doh fresh etc. I thought they would make cute silver wear holders for the party. All I did was glue on some ribbon, and make mini checkered flags (I used a black marker and ruler) and glue the flags on. PRESTO! Cute silver wear holders. Again, I had everything for this project on hand.

Checkered flag banner

Using my Cricut, I used the wild Card cartridge and cut out the argyle pattern onto black paper, then glued it onto white paper. I then cut out a triangle, or the flag. After I made several flags that way, I glued them to ribbon, and you now have a checkered flag banner! It was very easy and provides a great end result.

Weekend Project Time

Happy weekend to you all! What are your plans this weekend? Do they involve shoveling snow? LUCKY! However, here in the south (as I always call it) we are going to be somewhere in the mid to upper 70s this weekend (which would be fine if it were September, but it’s NOVEMBER!). So with all this nice weather, I am going to attempt to start my table overhaul! What is this table I speak of you may wonder, here is the story….

Well, since you asked; Last spring my oh so amazing and very understanding hubby drove me the hour to Oklahoma City so I could buy an old and very beat up table and chairs out of some guys shop. HA! My hubby loaded it up in our trailer, no questions asked, and away we went. I was so excited I could hardly contain myself! Sadly, for the last 6 months it has sat in our garage (big sad face) BUT THIS WEEKEND I PLAN TO GET A GOOD START ON IT!

First, I plan on taking all the seats off of the chairs, disassembling them, tossing the old foam and yucky fabric, then sand all the chairs. (That should be the easy part) Then I hope to get started on the table… my only problem is moving the big thing.

I should also mention that I have decided to paint, rather than stain, my table and chairs and here is why: First of all I have never worked with stain on such a large scale… So I was a bit intimidated to start out with. Second I have my new spray gun (YAY) Third, I want the table and chairs to be black to match the hutch we already have. With that said if I don’t like the outcome, maybe I will try to stain it… who knows.

I have already ordered and picked up the fabric for the chairs. I chose this….

A dark red fabric, with branches that are brown and black. Since our dining room is Red, with brown curtains and we have a black hutch I thought it would tie in with everything perfectly! I purchased the fabric at Jo Anns during one of their %50 off home décor fabric sales.  I hope to have enough fabric left over to also make a matching table runner :D

As I stated above it’s already November, I had originally  hoped to have this project done in time for my grandparents visit in October…. Now I am hoping for it to be done in time for our kiddos 5^th birthday party! Since we moved away from home when he was 2, he has never really had a birthday party. This year though, he is going to have one! He is really into the Disney Cars 2 movie, so we are planning a Cars 2 birthday party… more to come on that!  Right now all we have is our breakfast nook, and I’m having serious doubts about fitting 13 kids around that table!

So here we go!

Here they are- my table and chairs! Aren’t they wonderful! (what a steal for $75 bucks)

And here they are after I primed them....

And here is one painted black... eek! exciting! :D

Half of them in the house.... getting there.....

Ok, so we ran into a minor snag, (we as in my wonderfull hubby and I... see told ya he's a good sport, helping me out and all) when we were taking the cloth off of the old seats, we noticed the wood was falling apart. It was so old and yucky we decided it would be best to make new wooden seat bases...

Isn't he a great man!!! :D So darn handy, and never complains about my crazy projects. (I'm so lucky)

And there they are, the new wooden seat bases (well there is one anyways)...

Alright, on to the table... As you can see we took it apart, I have decided to spray only the legs black. I am going to sand down and stain the top a dark drown. I just think if I paint it all black it will look so dark! So thats the plan... so far any ways ;)

After I went to the city and got enough foam for the chairs, I covered the seats. I think they turned out pretty nice, for my first time anyways! Jack Jack approves of the first chair.

*MORE TO COME*

 

How to Etch Glass

Here is a glass etching tutorial for you. My husband and I did this last Christmas for gifts, and they went over REALLY WELL! (that’s right my wonderful hubby helped me, he’s such a good sport)

What you will need:

Glass etching cream (found at craft stores for about 15-20 bucks)

Rubber gloves

Small craft paint brush

Contact paper

Paper punch or exacto knife

Newspaper or drop cloth

You will also need access to a sink because you will need to rinse the etching cream off the glass.

The first step is to cut your contact paper to size. Since I was making snow flake etchings, I cut small square pieces.

Then use your punch to punch through the contact paper. You could also use the exacto knife and create your own design. After you have done that, peel and stick the contact paper firmly to your glass object.

Next, with gloves on, paint on the etching cream and let sit according to the directions on the bottle.

After you have let the cream sit, and with your gloves still on, rinse with water and take off the contact paper.

You now have a cute etched gift!

Some ideas of object to etch are:

Glass mugs

Glass pitchers

Glass cups

Glass serving bowls

Glass plates

Candle holders

Mirrors

You can even go as far as to etch designs onto windows and glass doors.

Thank You cards with my Cricut

 I needed to whip up a few thank you cards for my grandparents, after their visit, for all they helped us with. I hadn’t planned these cards out so I needed to use what I had on hand. I wanted to make a card “from’’ my son, so I can up with this cute card…

I used the Play Time Cricut cartridge for this card.

I also made this cute card, which I used the Wild Card cartridge, for the ‘Thank You’. And then I just layered paper and some fun yarn! Pretty easy, and looks nice. (at least I think so)

I am really having fun with my cricut! I cannot wait to work with it more. Since the hubby has been home on vacation, we have been so busy with the house and having family over. Keep checking back there will be more goodies!

Fall Cards

WELCOME FALL!

Image Property of  

spartansusscraper.blogspot.com 

It has finally cooled down here in the south! Well a little bit I guess, we are talking 60’s. Up home in WI they are getting down to the 20’s (oh how I miss that!)  The hubby just got back from his trip to WY, where he said they had flurries- Jealous!!  

But anyways, I am in the mood for fall activities! I’m talking cooking crafts and a pumpkin patch! Last night I made a stuffed pork loin, sweet potatoes and apple pie! YUM!  So my plans for the day are to take my kitty cat to the vet, and then head to Hobby Lobby (YAY) and get some fall inspired paper. After all my new cricut is longing to be used! So I was looking online for some inspiration, and I found the cutest scarecrow card on http://spartansusscraper.blogspot.com  (awesome blog) I plan on making something similar.

Alright, here they are...
(yes they are very similar to those on the spartansusscraper blog, but what can I say I loved hers! Mine aren't quite as cute, but for my first card using my cricut I am happy, and I am sure my family will love them!)

Remember to follow my blog  for a chance to win a handmade gift! Drawing will be November 1^st!