Party Crafts

This past Sunday I had my Scentsy opening party ....  So I wanted to share the few crafts and decorations I did for the party.

Set our breakfast table on the hallway to set some warmer samples and used my first Good Will spray paint project to decorate (since they haven't made it to their actual destinations). The flowers are some left overs from Easter decorations. You can also see a little bit of the gum ball machine (lower right-hand corner) that my husband won't let me spray paint because he's had it for ever :( 

This is the snack table where I made some iced tea, brownies, chicken buffalo dip, and artichoke spinach dip. All these were served with chips, crackers, cookies, and Hershey kisses. Of course after all was set and done I realized I should have taken pictures while cooking so I could written a post about them, but the bad blogger that I am didn't!!! I guess next time. 

This is my "I'm sorry" face ~ Photo Source

I made two quick flag banners with some scrapbook paper and twine that I had on-hand. One was on the kitchen counter and the other on the mantle.

Another quick little project was inspired in a picture I found in Pinterest . See original project here. You can see it on the kitchen counter above. This project cost me only $5 dollars! - Here is a close-up:

This took me probably 2 minutes to put together:

- 2 vases - $1.00/ea

- 2 glass containers - $1.00/ea

- glue - $1.00

The last thing I did was save several Scentsy pictures into a USB drive and put it on my digital frame... not necessarily a craft, but was part of the theme :)

Overall, it was very simple, but I just wanted to put a few touches to the party. What do you think?

 

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I Heart Organizing

My First Good Will find Before & After

I read so many blogs and find so much inspiration around the web that I've finally decided to take the plunge and do my first Good Will find re-do.

I've recently discovered there is a Good Will {and Dollar Store} relatively close to my house! I was so excited, but time will tell if this is a blessing or a curse ... not a curse for me but for my husband hehe.

On my last trip, I found a few little things here and there that I envisioned in my future closet, my future office, or future master bathroom. 

 

Cost:

Mirror: $2.50

Tree: $1.50

Not bad right? 

Max was as excited as I was.

He even decided to make his debut... can you see him?

Back to the project. I cleaned both pieces, taped up the mirror, and got to spray painting.

Very fancy spray painting station right?

I used: 

Can you believe this is the first can of spray paint I've ever bought? Really... I guess I've been doing a lot of firsts lately.

Here are the final results:

The mirror is going in our living room and the tree in my future closet holding some jewelry. 

Here it is once again the before and after:

What do you think? Do you have a favorite white spray paint? or any favorite spray paint color for that matter? Please do tell.

 

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Gardening Rookie

Yep it's true, I'm a complete gardening rookie, never planted a thing in my life!  And summer after summer I see the wonderful and fresh things everyone gets out of their gardens. Who doesn't love some fresh garden tomatoes?

A few weeks ago, I went to target and my first stop there is always their $1 corner, you know the one. Many times I've been surprised with great little findings. 

In my last visit there, I found several cute little pots that came with seeds, soil, and instructions on how to plant flowers, veggies, and herbs.

 

I thought, why not, for a dollar, let's give it a try !!

First had to add water to the soil pellets and fluff them with a fork:

Yumm ;)

Next, added the soil to the container:

Finally, added the seeds:

I used the boxes to remember which was which

Aren't these cute??

This was so exciting. I put them close to a window where they would get a lot of sun and watered them everyday. After a week the sunflowers started to grow! 

After two more days

See the parsley in the background?

The sunflowers are all grown now and according to the instructions, once they are 3" tall, they need to find a new home in a bigger pot or outside.

This is where I worry I'm going to mess it all up... they didn't give me instructions on how to get them out of those pots! My MIL gave me some tips on how to get them out and I'll give it a shot. I'll keep you updated on how that goes. 

Did you plant a garden this year? Any tips or tricks for this gardening rookie?

Hallway Bathroom - Phase 1

Yay! I'm so excited to show you the first room to be 'finished' in our house!! - Well, by finished I mean that we still have a couple of more things that we would like to do to it, but let's just say that Phase 1 is complete!!!

Here is the before picture which I took before we moved in:

And here is the after pic! - Phase 1 Complete:

Here is what we have done so far:

Something I did not understand about this space was that the bathroom was painted an aqua color with combat aircraft.... hmmm... therefore the first step to the process was: the wall paper had to go.

Next we had to paint. In one of my previous posts, I listed all of our "would love" colors. For this bathroom, the "would love" color was the Valspar Mountain Smoke. After we got a sample, this is what it looked like:

Notice the mustard color frame =_=

So not the color I had in my mind. It looked brown and really dark. Back to the drawing board.

This time we headed back to Lowe's and I promised myself I didn't want to leave without the color I wanted. The result:

Selecting paint color requires a lot of patience and I've learned it's something I'm not very patient about. I see people testing all kinds of colors, making sure it looks right during the day, at night, with the sun shining... and I'm pretty sure that's how it should be. I just can't wait to get it done. Luckily the only 3 spaces we've painted so far have turned out to our liking [knock on wood].

Something else we realized after the sample dried was that the aqua was showing through. So I used some primer we had in our garage and got to work. 

Looks so different already

What do you think of my first paint job? Seriously first time ever, and I liked it! (is that bad?). I see rainbow walls in our future. Actually, I feel brave enough to try the stripped wall so many people in blogville are trying, but maybe not brave enough to stencil..... yet......

After the primer was dry, some cleaning was in order. For this job I used my Method's Le Scrub bathroom cleaner I mentioned in my spring cleaning post and let me tell you I was amazed

I had been washing all our paint supplies in the bathroom tub (actually not sure if I should have done that or not.. oops) and the tub was covered in paint and dust, it looked really bad. So I grabbed a sponge and my new scrub mon ami and got to work (yes, he's french and smells really good...). It did take some elbow greae to clean it, but the results were instant! and once I was finished I even had where to put the sponge I used :)

 

Then, the moment of truth..... apply actual color to the wall. This part actually scared me a little because the primer was going to be covered, while the color was going to be there for everyone to see! But after a few strokes of my roller I felt comfortable and rolled with it... no pun intended :)

We also changed the shower rod to one of those that curves out so we can have more room in the shower! - Always wanted one of those......... ahem

Here is the before and after again:

And what's the plan for Phase 2 you ask? I would love something like this:

and maybe something like this:

and this:

You get the idea... what do you think? Let me know if you have any suggestions or tell me about your bathroom renovations.

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Home Owner Virgins - Flooring

After talking about the wedding, we think about the famous "And they lived happily ever after".......... and of course we ARE happy, but (not a bad but) after the wedding also comes all the dilemmas about being property owners (which is what inspired the blog).

We are not only learning about the house, but we are also learning how to make it a home. With that comes learning how to live together by sharing and being a team.

Meet our little nest:

This is our house the day we first came to see it ( I know, a lot of gardening for the spring)

One of the things I didn't like about the house was the entrance (Once again I apologize for not having a good 'before' picture, sadly this is the only one I have):

It's not too bad (we saw crazier things during the house hunt), but it's bad when ONLY that small little part has that kind of flooring and the rest of the floor looks like this:

You can see a little bit of the other floor on this picture... I have to admit is not such a horrid thing, but for some reason I could not sleep thinking about why would anyone change the floor (they were carpet originally) and just leave the other kind ....there.... unmatched!!!

So hubby and I decided to make this our first little project.... why not start small, let's change the floor of the entrance of our house - the first thing people see (can you hear the sarcasm?). Seemed so easy, like putting a puzzle together... I mean I've done puzzles before..... right?

Did you notice the new wall color? :)

Wrong!!.......As we hubby starts taking off the floor, we discovered that it had actually been glued to the concrete slab!!!! It was a pain to remove. After breaking some pieces and doing that "learning to share and live together" I mentioned at the beginning, we were able to start putting down the new floor

By the way, if you are going to lay down laminate flooring do not do what we did on the picture above (top right).... for some reason we went all the way to the end on one side and tried to come back and do the rest. Well, that's so not how it's done [note to self - read the instructions until you actually understand what they are trying to tell you!]. We had to remove what we had so far and start again. 

Laying down laminate is like writing or typing. You start on your left and work all the way to right before you move onto the next 'line'.

Here is our almost finished floor. We still have to put back the base board, but we need an air nail gun (something like that) because hammering the nails didn't quite do the trick for us.

After this project, we learned that I am the measurer (is that a word?) of the team. Hubby always wants things to get done quickly (don't get me started on the microwave installation), but I make him we have to slow down so we can measure and make sure we are doing it 'right' (ok ok my definition of right). 

There it is, our first project at our house (and to think I want to tile the second floor bathrooms). What was the first project you did?

Until next time,