Photo Wall - Finally!!

I have wanted to add a photo wall to our house for a long time. A really long time. But I could never figure out where the best spot was. Finally, I couldn't take it anymore and settled on using the hallway upstairs. Obviously the hallway is a good spot, but it's not a high traffic area so I was a little bummed that not many people would see it but decided it was worth it to move forward. Here's the hallway before we got started (well, I'd removed one picture frame already).

I'd found this inspiration picture via Martha Stewart and decided to go with that idea. I knew that Loren would appreciate the somewhat symmetrical design and since I'd need his help with all the hanging him liking the idea is good. :) I picked up a bunch of frames from Michael's, just cheapies made even cheaper with my 20% off purchase coupon! I got the pictures in and started arranging the frames out on the floor.

I tried a couple different patterns but in the end we went with the second layout. There are no pictures of us hanging the frames because well it was tricky. There might have been swear words involved. And minor temper tantrums. And finally Loren just told me to go sit down and he finished all the hanging on his own. He is a good husband. It took a few hours to get them all hung but in the end it was worth it!

It took a little bit of time to get used to but now I love all the pictures! It's so fun to look at them all and see so many nice memories. And the way the frames are hung it's really easy to take the frames down so I can switch out the pictures often which is lovely! So, that's the photo wall adventure. Anyone else have a photo wall they love? I'm sort of itching to put another gallery up somewhere so I'll have to put my thinking cap on.

DIY Chalkboard

I volunteer to hang out with a kiddo a couple times a month and this time we'd decided that doing something crafty would be a fun way to spend our time together. I'd done some research ahead of time and thought that making our own hanging chalkboards was something that was age appropriate and able to be completed within a couple hours time. I followed a tutorial found here and gathered all my supplies from Hobby Lobby.


I prepped the area that we were going to do our painting in and then headed outside to mix the paint. The grout is really dusty so being in a well ventilated area is a must. I just used a plastic cup to put the grout and paint in which worked just fine.


You have to make sure to mix the grout and paint together really well. I noticed that it was a pretty watery consistency so there were a few little splashes of paint that escaped the cup. The marks washed right up but just wanted to put that warning out there. Once it was mixed, we got busy painting. I'd purchased pre-cut little wooden boards so it was pretty quick to cover the entire surface with a nice layer of paint.

After painting is complete, you let the surface dry and then it's time to "slate" the surface. You just have to rub a piece of chalk all along the board and then wipe it off.


Easy! Then you're able to write on the chalkboard. I also hot glued a cute piece of ribbon the back of the board so it's easy to hang up.

I think it turned out really cute but truthfully I don't really have a place to hang up a bright purple chalkboard. Maybe I'll take it into work someday or something. It was a fun little activity though, and easy to do with a kiddo (I will say that I did all the measuring though). What do you think of it? Anyone else dabbled in colored chalkboard paint? Share in the comments below! :)

New Bed!

We got a new bed! Woohoo!! Okay, I'll calm down a bit now. We've been using a really nice set of hand-me-down furniture since we got married. The set is really nice, good quality, but just not really our style. Plus it didn't really fit in our master bedroom very well. See for yourself...


I tried to work with it since you know, it was free but I was really getting antsy to change up the room a bit. Loren and I discussed building a bed similar to the one built by Katie Bower over at Bower Power but then we found this sucker at Ikea. It has a similar design as the bed we were thinking of building, but we didn't have to build it! So we picked it up and somehow managed to fit it into our little G6 (of course the day we don't drive our SUV we buy a bed) and get home. Then we left the bed in the car for a week. Seriously. I know Loren must've thought I was losing it because normally when I get something new I want to wear it/hang it/see it right NOW. I really struggled with deciding if we were doing the right thing. Get rid of a great, solid piece of furniture for something from Ikea? But in the end we decided to go for it. This isn't our forever home and spending a ton of cash-ola on bedroom furniture just doesn't make sense so the Ikea bed is a good solution for us. All that was left was assembly.


I'm so glad that we decided to go ahead and assemble the bed (and when I say we, I mean Loren). While things look a little hectic right now since the bed is the only new piece of furniture in our room, I can already imagine the finished makeover and it's going to be awesome! :)


Looking a little crazy now huh?! However, now that the bed is in and looking good I'm inspired to get moving with sprucing up the rest of the room. I want to keep the curtains because I like them and stared at them for months before buying them so they'll stay but nothing else in the room is safe. I'd like to get a new dresser that suites our needs a little better, matching nightstands (currently we have a nightstand and a too short table), paint, get rid of the vanity and maybe get a big wall leaning mirror instead, and switcheroo the light fixture. And the good news - none of these things require nice weather because apparently our little corner of the world isn't getting any yet! I have some new bedding to share with you but I just need to get it washed and fluffed up first. :)

Anyone else been working on sprucing up bedrooms? Or maybe buying new furniture? Share the details in the comments below.

*Second picture shown is via Ikea.com

St. Patty's Day Cupcakes

My work is having a little St. Patty's Day fun and we were all asked to bring in some sort of green food. Sort of like an elementary school party huh?! I decided I wanted to make some cupcakes but wanted to do something different than my usual Funfetti cupcakes so I took to Google. I found a couple cool recipes for green velvet cupcakes and thought they sounded and looked good. I ended up using this recipe from Betty Crocker but switched out red for green food coloring.

Here's all the ingredients:

I mixed up the cake mix as directed on the website which is slightly different than what the directions on the box show. Mix the cake mix, cup of water, 1/2 cup of oil, 3 eggs, 2 tablespoons of baking cocoa, and the food coloring. When your done mixing the batter should look like this:

My first batch looked like this:

Not great but for some reason I continued on with baking them. They turned out to be a very unattractive chocolate with very slight green tint. Even worse I wasted a lot of my cute St. Patty's Day cupcakes wrappers and the yucky colored cupcakes.

Told you they were cute. Oh well. The problem with the first round of batter was I didn't use enough food coloring. Every recipe I found said to use 1 ounce of food coloring and the first time I didn't. I used an entire tube from a four pack of food coloring but I think that's only like 6.4oz or something like that. I figured it wouldn't make that big of a difference but I was obviously very wrong. You need to find a food coloring bottle like this:

Finally after the second attempt I was successful with my green velvet cupcakes. The color turned out so much better.

It's hard to see the color good, but they're a nice dark green. I'm happy with the way the cupcakes turned out, hopefully they'll be a hit at work! It really was an easy recipe to use to make something cute for St. Patty's Day. Anyone else making any special treats to celebrate this weekend?! Share in the comments below!

Pinterest Challenge - Tray

It's time for another Pinterest Challenge hosted by Bower Power and Young House Love! I decided it was a good time to finish up a project I'd stalled out on awhile ago based on some pretty pictures I found on Pinterest.

Source: designspongeonline.com via Kristen @ LoveK on Pinterest

Source: google.com via Kristen @ LoveK on Pinterest

Remember a very long time ago when I showed you some items I scored at Goodwill? Well, I finally got around to working on this super gorgeous tray that I picked up.

I actually started working on it months ago. I tried to paint it the lazy way and just went at it with a can of spray paint. That didn't work out so well. The coverage was crappy and I could tell it was going to take a little more effort.

I let the tray sit in the garage for a few months because I was too lazy to sand the tray down and start over. Once I finally got around to it I used a little sample of Valspar paint in the color "Cut Ruby" to repaint the tray. I think it took three coats of paint to get good coverage.

Next step was trying to figure out how to jazz the tray up a little bit. I didn't want it to be too crazy since it's already red and going to be sitting on the coffee table in our living room. I decided to put a little monogram in the center using some scrapbook paper. Loren helped me get things lined up, I did a test print on white paper, then finally went for the gold on the scrapbook sheet.

I couldn't find an exacto knife so I just cut the design out using scissors and tried to be careful. After I was done cutting I busted out the Modge Podge and stuck the paper down right in the center of the tray.

Once the Modge Podge was dry I did spray the entire tray with a layer of clear coat to protect everything but I didn't get a picture. Sort of hard to take a picture of clear spray anyways! :) Here's the finished product on the coffee table:

I already loaded the tray up with some goodies that are normally scattered all over the coffee table. Lots of magazines (I have a subscription problem), the all important TV remote, and some coasters; I think it looks so much neater now that everything is corralled into one spot.

So that's the tale of my Goodwill tray. I'm happy to say that I'm finally done with it. Such a simple thing turned into a super long project. Anyone else ever have that problem? Or have you been completing any Pinterest inspired projects? Let me know in the comments! :)

Booked

After an unintentional blogging hiatus, I'm back to share my new photo books from My Publisher! Loren and I had planned to make a photo book of our Europe trip (you can read more about that here and here) but never got around to doing it. Well, I tried but then got a little overwhelmed at both creating the book and the cost of adding all those extra pages! When I got an email from My Publisher that they were running a promo for free additional pages I knew it was time to get this book going!

I ended up using the custom publisher feature. It was easier for me to keep my photos in the order I wanted doing it that way instead of just having the program insert photos into the book. Once I got into a rhythm it went pretty fast. I actually ended up making a "yearbook" for 2011 too! I uploaded my books with about 15 minutes to spare before the promo ran out. :)

They finally arrived and I was so excited! Even the inside of the box was cute!

I'm super pleased with the quality of the book. The covers are really nice and the photo quality on the pages is beautiful.

I love the books and we're going to start making a yearbook every year. It's so fun to look through them and remember all the fun times we had last year. My only complaint about the entire process is that I couldn't figure out how to upload two different books on one order so I had to pay for shipping twice. But, I did save about $70 on each books so extra shipping costs weren't such a big deal. Anyone else a fan of creating photo books? I can't believe it took me so long to jump on the bandwagon!

Valentine Wreath

I saw a really cute argyle inspired wreath on Pinterest and knew I had to try to make one myself. I feel like the wreaths I've made in the past are all sort of similar so I was excited to try something new. Here's the Pinterest inspiration:

Source: etsy.com via Kristen @ LoveK on Pinterest

Sweet huh? I picked up my supplies from Michael's, a foam circle, a big pound of cream colored yarn, and some pink and red felt. The red felt is sparkly! I love it!

The first thing to do is cover the foam in yarn. I just tired the yarn in a knot to start and then kept wrapping it around the foam circle. For some reason I thought this would take 10 minutes. It took me about two hours. Now, I was distracted by the most excellent movie of all time Cowboys vs. Aliens (joke - the movie was horrid) but it still took a lot longer than I anticipated. Maybe I'm just not a good yard wrapper. Also, little foam bits sort of got everywhere so just be prepared if you decide to make this too.

Next, I needed to cut out my little felt hearts. I found a heart shaped object in our house to use as a stencil because I didn't trust myself to make a well proportioned heart but this wasn't rocket science. Trace and cut.

Once I was done cutting I decided to hot glue the hearts to the wreath. It might not be necessary since you cross yarn over the top but I felt like it was nice to make sure they stayed put. Plus it's fun to burn your fingertips. :)

Now it was time to argyle this sucker. I wrapped the yarn diagonally across each heart once then went back and did the same thing in the opposite direction to create the X shape across each heart.

Basically the wreath is finished now but I decided to add a loop to the back to use as a hanger. It's as fancy as it sounds - I took some yarn, made a loop, and hot glued it to the back of the wreath.

Done! I'm really happy with it. I think it's a cute little Valentine wreath. It's cozy and lovey all at the same time, just like Valentine's should be!

What do you think? Anyone else a super slow yarn wrapper? Or been making an Valentine's Day craft projects?