Last minute, cheap Christmas gift/stocking stuffer

So I needed a SUPER QUICK, cheap little gift for a stocking stuffer. I decided to give Mod Podge a try. I have never used it before!! It is actually really cool. So, I used my leftover tiles from my stencil/coaster project, I bought wrapping paper from the dollar store, and ribbon from the dollar store. Then I made these!


They aren't perfect, but hey they are cute, fast, and under $5.o0! All I did was put a layer of mod podge, cut out sections of the wrapping paper I liked, and then two more layers of mod podge. Then I sprayed them with acrylic sealer and glued 4 felt circles onto the bottom. By the way, I didn't buy the pre-made felt circles that are like $5.99, I just bought a sheet of felt for $.029 at Michael's and cut circles out and glued them on! Twenty-nine cents!


I finished by tying them up with my ribbon from the dollar store. They have BEAUTIFUL Christmas ribbon right now.

My husband and I were doing some shopping the other night, and we stopped in J Crew. Everything in that store I am dying to have, but I really liked these delicate little headbands they had. Here is a picture of one of them.

Only problem of course, they were like $15.00! My husband gave me the idea that I could probably make them! Duh! Why didn't I think of that. So I went home and literally spent like 30 minutes and made 2. I am so glad I didn't waste my money and buy them. But I was thinking these would make cute little stocking stuffers or presents. You could even add little flowers or anything pretty really. All I did was start with a plain headband, wrap ribbon around it, and hot glue a bow on top. Easiest project ever! Since I had the ribbons and headbands already, it was also completely FREE!

DIY Christmas Presents

I have been seeing a lot of really cool Christmas gift ideas in the blog land. So I decided to try and make monogrammed coasters. I bought the tiles at Lowe's for 39 cents each. SO CHEAP! I got PermEnamel for Glass, Ceramic, and Tile at Michael's. For the last project I did which involved painting letters, I used a little paintbrush, but the brush was still enormous compared to what it should be. So this time I bought two teeny tiny brushes for $1.49 each.


Having smaller brushes made all the difference! It made the project so much easier. I printed out the letter N on the computer, cut it out, and traced around it with a mechanical pencil. Then I just painted the N in with my tiny brushes! It was so easy and hardly took an hour! After that I sprayed a coat of Clear Acrylic Sealer.


Then I finished it off by glueing four felt circles on the bottom of each coaster. DONE!




I also made the famous Dollor Tree Wreath that everyone is making this year. Beautiful! And so cheap!

Oh and here is my finished project from a couple weeks ago all hung up on the wall.

Goodwill Junk to AWESOME!

So... I have been looking for something to put up in the blank wall in our dining room. A lot of people have been making personalized signs with their last names on them. One in particular that I LOVE is here. So, she inspired me to make one myself! I picked up this at Goodwill for $2.00.


I took it apart, and sprayed the frame black. I took the glass off and sprayed one side of the glass with Rustoleum Almond (2 coats). Then, I really really really wished I had a cricut!!! A cricut is definitely on my Christmas list! But, since I do not have one at this time, I had to make my own stencils on the computer. So I just played around until I found a font I liked, printed it out, and then cut it out. (sounds easy, but was extremely time consuming!) Then, I took some black acrylic craft paint, and painted our last name onto the glass. I finished it all off with a coat of Acrylic sealer. I am very pleased with the result:

It turned out exactly as I was picturing! Which, honestly, so rarely happens when I do crafts.
I also got a couple of other things to put on the wall. This shelf I picked up at Goodwill for $6.00.


Now, listen to how cheap I am. I had to seriously think about whether I wanted to pay $6.00 or not for about 15 minutes. Anyway, it has a lot of really nice lines and no chips or anything, so I decided to get it. I am glad I did. I quickly spray painted over the lovely purple with black, sanded down the corners a bit and that was it!
I'm sure all of you are familiar with the awesome ladies at Shanty2Chic by now, since they are crazy creative! A couple months ago they did an adorable milk jug redo. When I saw it I fell in love with it! SO CUTE! So I have been keeping my eye out for a miniture one to redo. I found one last week for $0.99!! Here is the before:


I painted it with Rustoleum almond and then put a rub on decal (so easy!!) that I picked up at Walmart for practically nothing. What do you think?


Another thing I got at Goodwill last week to go with all this stuff was a darling little picture for $2.99. Here is what it looked like before:


And after 2 quick coats of paint on the frame:


I like it so much, I might actually put it somewhere else, but we'll see!
Now, I wish I had them all up on the wall and situated nicely together, but alas I am not that organized. I will post a picture later this week when my husband hangs them for me. (He doesn't like me to do it because I always put too many holes in the wall!! :)

Step- Stool Redo

When we moved into this house, the owner had left some "stuff" around the garage. One of the things was this cute little stool:



I thought it was adorable and I wanted to put it inside, it just needed a little work. So I spray painted it, and then took off the old upholstery. This was my first time re-upholstering something and I was very nervous! But honestly it was just about the easiest project ever. I went to Jo Ann Fabrics and looked through the clearance fabric remnant section and found this for only $1.24!


What do you think?

Painting our Table and Chairs

Wow, I finally got around to painting our dining room table and chairs. Let me tell you, that was quite the project!! But I am super pleased with the result. Here is what our table looked like before:


I liked it okay this way, but in our dining room and living room (which is like one giant room) we have used a lot of black to decorate and I have always wanted a black table! Well, after looking at how much a new one would cost, I decided to paint this one.
First I filled some spots on the table with wood filler. I didn't go crazy with this filling every little dent, but the noticeable ones I did. I probably spent about 20 minutes on this step. I am so glad that I took the time to do this, because now that the table is painted black, I realize you would be able to definitely see those dents that if I hadn't filled them.
Then, I sanded. I hate sanding, so I spent the majority of the time on the table top and the chair seats. Everything else, I just gave a once over. I probably spent about a half hour on this. Maybe less :)
Next I sprayed two coats of gray primer. I let it dry overnight, and realized I needed one more coat of primer, because I wanted to get every single spot covered, so there was no wood color showing. So, I went to the store real quick and grabbed a couple more cans.
Then, I started spraying it black. I could not decide whether I should spray paint the table and chairs or do it with a roller and brush. I am so glad I decided to spray paint. I HATE painting with a brush and roller! All the cleanup! With spraying, you can go out there, take about 20 minutes spraying, and then your done until the next coat. But, the one thing, is it did take many, many, many coats to finally get everything looking good. However, I would rather do many quick coats then wasting all my time cleaning brushes and rollers. I used Valspar Satin Black for like half of the coats and then Rustoleum Satin Black for the last half. Rustoleum is a dollar more expensive, but I could REALLY tell the difference! Rustoleum just covered more. It was all around better.
Then I put on 2 coats of Rustoleum High Performance Enamel in Gloss Black.
One thing I did different with this project than my other painting projects is that I got these little light sanding squares at Lowe's for just between coats. So whenever I went outside to paint, I ran these over the table real quick (it took like 30 seconds) just to make it as smooth as possible. It definitely made it super smooth!

Last I put on polyurethane.

I debated about this because here Kimba says she would skip this step because she didn't think it really made that much of a difference. Well, I decided to do it just to be safe, but I am so glad that I did! I have to disagree with my very favorite DIY girl! I'm sorry Kimba. :) I got the gloss polyurethane, and I absolutely love the finish that it left. It made a huge difference. I gave the table top and chair seats 2 coats, and everything else one coat. This was probably the most time consuming part of the process, but well worth it!
Here is the finished project! I love it!

Bathroom Tile

My husband and I (ok, mostly my husband!) just took off the shower surround in our bathroom. Jake had recently tiled the floor and it turned out fabulous so he decided to tile the shower surround. It took a long time but I think it turned out great.
Here is a picture of a part of the shower surround before:

That is just a section of it, but you get the gist. It was very old and it had a lot of stains. Oh and also, it was causing water damage because it was not all the way suctioned to the wall!
Here is Jake working on it: (what a cutie right?!)

And here is the finished project! He did such a good job! I love how it looks.

Using an empty frame to decorate

My mother-in-law found these cute pictures somewhere and gave them to anybody in the family that wanted one. The cocoa company has the same last name as us, so it's kind of fun to put up on display, even though we have no relation to them.


At first I just put the picture itself up, but then I knew right away, it looked way too lonely up on that big wall all by itself.


Lately a lot of people have been decorating with empty frames, which can look pretty good. So I remembered that I had an old cheap frame in the closet.


I spray painted it with black satin paint, and then 2 coats of gloss spray paint.
Much better!

Finished Project!

Make sure and check out Kimba's blog at http://asoftplacetoland-kimba.blogspot.com/! Every week she does a DIY Show Off and it is SO fun to scroll through all the entries!
As I wrote about in the previous posting, we found a dresser/changing table on craigslist for $35.00! I thought it was cute as it was, but I wanted it white!


I did a little sanding (very little) and primed it with 2 coats of grey primer. Then I used several coats of satin spray paint (Rustoleum in Almond) and then I finished with like 4 quick coats of Valspar Gloss spray paint. I am so pleased with how it turned out. I think it is very cute!