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?

 

linking to:

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.

 

Linking to:

 

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.

Linking to

  

Easter 2011

I hope everyone had a good Easter weekend. For us it was great to have the in-laws around and spend some quality time together. This is the first year that we have Easter at our house so I wanted to bring a little bit of spring into the place.

There are no small kids on my husbands side of the family (yet!), but we put together some Easter baskets and an Easter 'candy' hunt, which was really fun! My mother in law even hid some doggy treats for our four-legged children :)

We looove nerds (by the way I promise that wasn't a hiding spot)

 The only downside was

great cellphone pic right?

We've actually reached the record for rain for the month of April and we are expecting rain for the rest of the week.... not good. We've had several tornado warnings and people are having to go to their shelters often. Which reminds me that I ran into Brittany's post at Pretty Handy Girl and it got me thinking about being prepared.We should all take a few minutes and make sure we've taken all the steps necessary to keep ourselves and loved-ones safe.

Are you and your family prepared?