October 25, 2012 - admin 3 Comments

DIY {Princess Tiara}

I remember using this technique for a Miss America halloween costume I made when I was younger.

Supplies:

– Headband (I used a narrow one, but a wide headband would work fine for a giant crown)

– Tinfoil (I used maybe a foot, if that)

– Inspiration photo

First, I went on the interwebs to find my inspiration piece.

This one looked nice and gaudy and seemed simply enough to replicate.

Tear a few 2 inch-ish wide strips of tinfoil and begin wrapping the headband. There really is no technique – just wrap the tinfoil at an angle so you can keep it sort of smooth, but you can’t really mess it up. Be sure to wrap the tinfoil with the shiny side OUT throughout this project – you want your crown to be as blingy as possible!

It took me only one of the long strips to wrap the entire headband. It should look something like this when you’re done:

Once you have your headband wrapped, take the remaining strips of tinfoil and begin twisting them into long strands. Again, there’s really no technique to this, just begin rolling and twisting at an angle to get your pieces nice and long.

After I made a few I lined them up by order of size because the design on my inspiration tiara had larger pieces in the middle and they got smaller as they moved out towards the sides. Begin shaping some pieces and attaching them to your headband – tiara base.

I just wrapped the ends of each tinfoil strand around the headband and then wrapped another small piece of tinfoil around the wrapped ends to secure. I might add some glue later and smooth out some of the ‘joints’, but it’s fairly sturdy as it is.

OOOWeeeeee, that’s FANCY!

Then, give yourself some giant poufy hair worthy of a princess and pop on your fab tiara. TADA!!!

Yes I am still in my jammies – don’t hate. I’m jus sayin’.

October 15, 2011 - admin

Kitchen Table Re-do

Refinishing our kitchen table is one project that has been on my ‘to-do’ list for quite some time now… like over a year.

I am usually anxious to start and finish furniture remodeling/decorating projects – with this case, though, I was so indecisive with what I wanted to do with the table.

There wasn’t much pressure of ‘messing’ anything up since the furniture piece in question was as pedestal table from the thrift store (It cost me less than $20, but I can’t remember the exact number since it was so long ago!!). Unfortunately I don’t have a picture of the table before I started priming and staining (they are still housed on my Dell, and this post is being typed on our new Mac).

Here is the table after priming the bottom and staining the top. At this point, I still didn’t know what I was going to do with the bottom.

Then I came across this color. Already mixed and standing proudly on the oops-paint shelf at Walmart. And it was perfect. Have I told you before that I love green?

The best part was the price…$3.88!

Even after the first coat of the green I knew it was going to be perfect.

After the coats of paint and stain dried I made sure to cover the top with clear polyurethane and I used a can of clear topcoat spray paint that I had in the garage for the bottom.

This morning my sister and I went to the local farmer’s market to grab some goodies. In addition to some great veggies and an awesome gray pumpkin (the name of which escapes me at the moment), I came home with these beauties.

Now all I need to do is re-finish the chairs!

August 6, 2011 - Oh Happy Daze

Virginia is for Lovers

I saw a cute print on etsy of various states, similar to the one found here.

I thought it was super cute, but knew I could do it on my own for way cheaper.

I started with a blank canvas I got in a pack of 3 at Tuesday Morning for $5.

It took me a while to decide on my color scheme,

but I’m totally in love with the end result.

First, I painted the canvas using my background color of choice, yellow.

Once that had dried I traced the outline of Virginia from a simple printout I got from the interwebs. Sorry Eastern Shore, you didn’t make the ‘cut’.

I then proceeded to paint the inside of my tracing using my contrasting color, gray. I started on the edge and worked my way in. It took some delicate strokes to get in all those little nooks and crannies in the Chesapeake Bay area.

Once that had completely dried I used my pencil again to freehand a little heart in the bottom right hand corner of Virginia, which is where I was born and raised and continue to live.

I painted the heart red. After all, Virginia is for LOVERS!

I love it, and it cost me less than $2 since I already had the paint and I found the canvas’ for super cheap. I haven’t decided where to hang it yet, but I’m thinking among the photo frame wall in our stairwell. We shall see.

August 1, 2011 - Oh Happy Daze

Our Wedding

I recently realized that I still had not publicly shared about our wedding day. Our one year anniversary is coming up fast, so that put some pressure on me to finally put some things in writing.

October 2, 2010

It may have just been an ordinary day for you.

Maybe you mowed the lawn.

Maybe you went shopping.

Maybe you slept in.

For me, it was the most perfect day of my life.

Now I’m not gonna lie…it actually wasn’t perfect at all, as no wedding is. It was a week long adventure full of ups and downs (more downs than ups, it seemed).

There were a lot of things that went wrong, or didn’t ‘go’ at all, but in the end God blessed us with an amazing day.

________________________________________

Chris and I got married at my parent’s home.

Actually, in the backyard of my parent’s home .

It was spacious, it was beautiful, it was free.

When my mom and I began discussing my thoughts on wedding things it was difficult for me to describe exactly what I had in mind. The only thing I really knew I wanted was that I wanted our wedding to be ‘different’. Also, we were on a tight budget so I was willing to ‘cut the fat’, if you will, and get rid of things that were ‘wedding-ish’ but that didn’t quite fit in with my vision. In the early stages of brainstorming I tried to wrangle my ideas onto an image board, which you can see here (at the end of the post). wedding-photography014

I’ll share more on the set-up and decor in a later post.

You can read about my dress shopping experience (and dress buying opinions) in this post. And then about my obsession with said dress in this post here. Chesapeake-wedding-photography103

My mom helped me choose my wedding jewelry, which consisted of earrings that were my mom’s, a bracelet that was my great grandmother’s, and a necklace that was specially designed for me by my Nana. The necklace was designed around a green tourmaline stone that my Nana had as a ring. She and my Pop had it re-set as a necklace for me. Unfortunately, my Nana passed away just two days before my wedding day following a long, painful battle with a bone marrow cancer called multiple myeloma.

That is why I referred to our wedding as the ‘week-long’ adventure earlier in this post. Nana’s health had been gradually declining, as it does with a terrible disease like cancer. That week was difficult. I felt torn in so many directions. Wanting to spend time with my Nana in the hospital, but knowing that the show still had to go on that Saturday.

There were so many DIY wedding details that, in the end, were never completed simply because priorities had shifted. It also rained about 14 inches due to a brutal nor-eastern that hovered over Virginia the entire week before the wedding, which added to the stress. Our phrase for that week was “It is what it is”.

I loved having everything at one location. It made things so easy.