Thrifty Harvest Wreath

I love wreaths.  I wish I could have an excuse to have one up all year around.  I really wanted to keep my son busy this morning, so we set out to make a Harvest/Thanksgiving wreath out of crafty materials I picked up on clearance throughout the year.

Here is the mess of a table that we started with:

Yep.  That is a pool noodle!  I bought it on clearance for 25 cents this fall.  Great jumping off point for us since it is already orange!  Tape the two ends together with clear packing tape, and Voila!  Wreath shape!

Start adding whatever decorations you like.  I chose a couple different kinds of ribbon.  (I love animal prints)

Burn yourself a few times on the hot glue gun, because really, you haven't done a craft properly unless you burn yourself or something else! hahaha.

Add some leafy pieces next.  (I got my strand of leaves with little pumpkins and berries attached on clearance for 2 bucks after Thanksgiving last year)  I wrapped it around and around and then pulled off the leaves that were on the back side, then glued them to the front side.

Next I had to come up with something to attach it to the door since the pool noodle is too fat to sit in one of my wreath hooks nicely.  I took and made a large loop of ribbon in one of the colors I already used and attached it at the top with hot glue.

Almost done.  Next step was to let my son have fun with some gemstones.  He isn't old enough yet to use the glue gun, so I gave him a roll of Glue Dots and a bag of gems and let him just stick them on wherever he felt like.  He is all about things being symmetrical so he was very careful to evenly space them and put the same colors in the same places on all sides of the wreath.  (Yes he probably gets that from me)

It was missing something.  I didn't know what, so I stared at it for a while.  Then a while longer.  Then it hit me.  It just needed a flower.  So we glued on a flower and stuck some of the berries from the leafy strand in the center.  Then we hung it up by sticking a really strong magnet inside the loop of ribbon at the top and sticking it to our (metal) door.

And just because I love playing with Instagram:

All together I think this project ended up costing about $8. (mostly in the cost of the pretty ribbon)  I can handle that!

Color Wonderful!

Right before Zane's second birthday (with the help of a couple friends) I tackled painting a mural in his bedroom.  It was complete with adorable animals and palm trees, however that was not my original plan.  The plan was to do vertical stripes on the lower half of the wall and it all went great until I removed the masking tape and half the paint came off with it!  I cried and cried and wanted to scream.  It took days plus hours and hours to scrape and sand all the leftover bits of paint off.  (I'm sorry but I don't even want to look for the pics of the disaster on my computer)  Then came the hours and hours of painting the mural.  It was totally worth it though, it looked great.  Alas, Zane is growing up and it was time for a new paint job.  I took him to Home Depot and let him pick a few colors to do test spots with before we made a final decision what to pick.  We ended up with 3 very vibrant colors and I was nervous.  We decided on a pattern and I went back to go get the full amount of paint I needed.  We were only going to need one quart of the orange color which it turned out was not available in the kind of paint I wanted in a quart size.  I asked the staff if it went on nicely like the other one and she assured me they were basically the same.  Boy was she wrong!!!  I love using Behr Premium Plus Ultra paint.  It goes on thick and covers great; I could get away with one coat if I wanted to.  This CIL Smart crap was HORRIBLE.  It took 4 coats for it to not be see through and it went on like I was smearing on dish soap.  When I sat and thought about it for a minute, all of a sudden a light bulb went off - I had used CIL paint the first time I painted Zane's room and had such horrid results!  Note to self and others:  CIL paint sucks so don't use it!

Before - cute baby boy's room

I have used this primer on a few things, and while I don't use it for the coverage (it is pretty transparent) It goes on nicely without drips and does it's job.  It was about $18 for the gallon at Home Depot

This is the paint I LOVE using.  It is thick and creamy and goes on fantastic.  I like using a flat finish with darker/brighter colors.  It is less intense.

This is the paint I will NEVER EVER EVER use again.  It was horrible horrible horrible!!

And there is his bed with the new Avengers bedding we surprised him with.  If you look just under the edge of the blanket you can see some of the fabric that I had recovered the box spring with about 3 months ago.  Funny, the colors are the same as the ones we put on the walls!  I might have to go use some scraps of that fabric and put them on something else to be all matchy matchy!

Still need the closet door on, but I love it!

Bookshelf was made by Grandpa for Christmas 2009, and I built the desk thanks to plans from Ana White - Knock off Wood.  She has fantastic plans for building things and it is all geared towards women and making things easy, cheap, and fabulous!

I guess they all love it!  The nightstand was something I threw together after I built the desk and had some leftover wood.

This project took a VERY long time.  Zane was displaced from his room for 3 days while I did this all.  The whole time I kept reminding myself how much I love my son or I would have stopped. Haha!  Bye-bye to the little baby boy's room and Hello to my little man's room!  If you are curious, the colors I used are in the Behr Premium Plus lineup:  Intense Teal: S-G-490, Opulent: S-H-300, and Green Acres: S-G-440