Transformation of a Rooster

Today I’m headed to a shower and I wanted to come up with a handmade gift for the bride that fit her interests and coordinated with the wedding gifts we chose from their registry.

Remember this from yesterday…

Well this is just part of a whole so here’s the full picture…

In my opinion that’s a Cockadoodledon’t! I especially love the matching mini-roosters on each of the pockets. Roosters, yes, we get it. I found this hideous beast at the Dollar Store and envisioned a greater purpose. So with a little tweaking, I used it as a pattern for this…

For my first apron it came out pretty close to how I imagined without using any real sort of pattern. I think it will be a fun gift for the bride and truthfully it was really easy.

Both the bride and groom love to cook so I went with a whole kitchen theme in the gifts. Try not to be too amazed by my brilliance. I like the black & white because it works with whatever colors they plan for their kitchen. I’m thinking I’ll wrap it up with a coordinating potholder or maybe a wooden spoon set.

Cockadoodledoo

I’m so excited to post a new before and after project because it was such a transformation. The end result came out great and it’s a good thing because it’s a gift. I bet you’ll never guess what this is going to be… 

The finished project will be posted tomorrow!!

Another Quickie Before & After

I never posted our Christmas setup (at least I don’t think so and I’m too lazy to check for sure) but it was pretty simple. I  had some garland on the mantel, with some Christmasy knick-knacks and added red votives to the Pottery Barn candle thingy that hangs above the fireplace. When I took all that down, it was very stark all of a sudden.

See what I mean! I obviously had other stuff up there before fall and Christmas hit, but I can’t for the life of me remember what. Anyway it was very depressing and given that it’s the first thing you see when you walk in the door, it needed a change. For the past few months, I’ve been playing with it and constantly changing it up. I’m still not fully satisfied but I’ll live with it for now. Here’s the new pre-party-hosting update.

The red tulips are still alive – all the arrangements are going strong even after almost a week! I’m about done with the candle thingy but the Husband says it was very heavy and awkward to put up so I’d better be sure before it comes down. Sounds like a dare!!

Dining Room Before & After

Recently I’ve been itching to make a few small changes around the house. In my opinion, when you can’t do a major overhaul, a few minor details can make a room much more appealing.
This past weekend we hosted a surprise party for my friend CK’s 30th birthday. It was great- she didn’t suspect a thing and we had a wonderful time! Needless to say when you are hosting a get-together, you want your house to look nicer than usual. The stuff that you can tolerate on a day-to-day basis doesn’t seem so insignificant when you have guests coming. So before the party, we changed the decor in the dining room to help pretty it up a bit.
The before…

Pretty bland and boring. The picture is to small for that wall on its own and the window needs some dressing up.
And after…

So much prettier!
I got the curtains at Ikea and love them because they are super long. They come 98” long with iron-on hemming tape so you can adjust the length to your windows and how high you want to hang them. $14.99 for two panels works for me.

The photo arrangement was so easy and cheap compared to buying expensive artwork or photography, which frankly just isn’t in the budget right now. I found a book about lighthouses at Barnes & Noble a while ago and it’s been sitting in the garage waiting for this very project. Believe it or not, the frames were from the Dollar Store! Up close they’ve got a couple dings and they certainly aren’t high quality but unless you really look hard, you can’t tell. I bought mattes at Michael’s and we just attached picture hangers to the back and voila! The arrangement fits the large wall much better and brings some color into the room.
The hydrangeas and tulips are from Trader Joes. I was really impressed with how many stems you can get for such a reasonable price. The vases are from Ikea and Target and were so cheap. Overall I’m really pleased with how much different the room looks with just a few cheap thrifty updates.

Sleepless in the Springs

photo from marthastewart.com

Our Easter celebration with the grandparents this year was a fun one but not the relaxing, restorative weekend that we had imagined when we set out for the Pink Palace.

Baby seemed to be recovering from a cold so we decided to make the trip even though she had been stuffy and sniffly. Wrong. Her cold escalated to a cough and made for a very difficult time getting her to sleep in an unfamiliar bed, which is usually a task on its own. Which bed did she want to sleep in? Ours of course, which we were happy to oblige at 9:30 the first night when she still wasn’t asleep after over an hour of useless attempts. By the third night of wrestling with her at bedtime, we were ready to pack our bags.
Easter was spent with an egg hunt at Grandma and Grandpa’s golf club. You’d have thought they had hidden $100 bills by the chaos that ensued when 40 or so children were released into the wilderness of the golf course to find eggs. Eggs, which by the way, were dyed and got all over everyone’s hands… except ours because at almost 2 years old Baby couldn’t give a rip about finding eggs in the grass. She was far more intent on pulling the flags off the putting green. The egg hunt was followed by a delicious brunch at the club where we ate enough that the idea of packing the car and fighting traffic was so unappealing that we decided to give naptime one more shot and were able to spend a few hours in the sun. All in all, I’m glad to be home and I’ll be even happier when everyone is back to normal.

I have followers??

I was logging into blogger not too long ago and something strange caught my eye. My blogger homepage showed that my blog had a follower! And now I have two. Compared to the major blogs who have followers in the thousands, this may seem like small potatoes, but to me it is pretty cool. Considering the haphazard frequency of my posting and the random assortment of topics, it is somewhat hard to believe that anyone aside from my friends would be interested.

You’ll see that below the list of blogs that I read, there is now a little gadget where you too could become a follower. It looks a little sparse but that doesn’t bother me. Maybe seeing that little reminder that people actually read this blog will prompt me to get off my butt and write a little more often!

Thank you to the two lovely people who are already followers! I sincerely appreciate your interest in my sometimes ridiculous ramblings. And thank you of course to my friends who I know read as well and often comment. I love those comments!

Changing it up… again

Lately I’ve been feeling a little dissatisfied with how my blog looks. So I’m trying another new background and with it a new header. I’m liking the coordination. We’ll see how it sits after some time.

It would be so fun and motivating to have a custom design but that won’t be happening unless I start using this blog to make money. I’m not sure the Husband would see personalizing my blog design for my own benefit as a “necessary expense.”

Speaking of necessary expenses, we’ve been having a lot of unexpected additions to the bills pile recently. Our furnace was making this horrendous shrieking noise whenever it kicked into gear and because our house is small, you could hear it in all the bedrooms, which was a little unnerving at 3am. A repairman checked it and determined that it might need the motor oiled. Thirty minutes and 140 bucks later, no more shrieking.  Sometimes I wish that I had some sort of knowledge in the heat/AC/electricity/plumbing arena. For the amount of time that it seems to take, those guys sure do charge a bundle. We also had to replace our garbage disposal this weekend, but I’m proud to say that the Husband did that all on his own and it’s working great.

I also found some super cheap frames this weekend and finally managed to complete a project that I’ve had in the back of my mind for months (and months). I’ll hopefully get the frames hung this week and then I will be a very happy camper. And maybe I’ll post pictures too. I have the before pix already but I’d rather wait and reveal both at the same time. I think I’ve been writing a lot about projects yet to come and not a lot about the results. I wonder why that is.