New year new goal!

We all make these great New Years Resolutions but most of the time we have a really hard time keeping it past a couple of weeks and in some causes days. Well One of my goals this year is to be more creative. When I find the time to let my creative side out, I find it brings me simple joy even if it is just in the moment. And these days I think we all could use a little time out and joy. So hopefully I will be posting a lot more over this next year I hope to post each week. I might not be perfect at it but I'm going to give it a good try. And lets see where I go from here.....

 - Lisa

Tricked out Treats!

 Every Halloween we have a family Halloween party and my favorite part is the food. It is so fun to make the spooky creepy menu. What a great excuse to play with your food. This year we had ordered pizza for the main dish (it easy) but the fun came in the side dishes. The labels are a must - even if it is a everyday item that you are serving it is fun to get creative and turn it Spooky!

BONES - Breadsticks

 

BLOOD - Marinara Sauce to go with the Bones

BEATLES - Olives 

LEPROSY 1/2 LEFTOVER PARTS - Salad

BLOODY GUTS - Tomatos

FINGERS - Carrots

 BATS BREW and SPIDER CIDER - Sprite and Root Beer

 For an Neighborhood party I made some WITCHES HATS. I found this recipe online at Myrecipe.com There are millions of fun ideas out there, I had a blast just searching through some very fun Halloween ideas.

Last year we focused more on the Halloween deserts. Here is some BUG COOKIES. I made the chocolate bugs with melted chocolate and M&M's. And bunt CAKE with spiders on it.

EYE BALLS - white doughnuts with green M&M's and red gel frosting and EYE BALL COOKIES with peach jelly rings, brown M&M's and red gel frosting.

What fun... I'm already making plans for next years menu!!!

Lisa

Circles

 I have recently (a.k.a a few months ago) remodeled my Master Bedroom. Hopefully I will post the final room soon but until then I thought I would show you the art work I made to go above my bed. I was tired of the usual family pictures and really wanted something bold.

So this is my CopyCAT Design. I found this picture online, I was originally looking at the chevron rug, but quickly fell in love with the Wall art. This room is so bold, but since yellow is not a color in my Master Bedroom I figured I would change it a bit and hoped to make it for way cheaper then this expensive look.   

 

The delemia I had was that my space needed something horizontal and not as vertical as this one. After debating over this for a week or so I finally decided to go for it. I chose to actually use 12" squares but use 6 instead of 4. I bought a package of 3 canvases at JoANN's for $12 (after the 40% off coupon) for a total of $24! The package actually came with two 1" thick and one 2" thick canvases. At first, I thought I would only use four of them but I thought that adding the other 2 would give it the horizontal look that I was really wanting.

Drawing the Circles was actually pretty easy I just marked the center on each side. Then using a string tied to my pencil drew a curve from one side to the next and repeated on all corners. 

 My master bedroom has a color scheme of gray and Turquoise. Since my bed is up against the one turquoise wall I wanted to bring the gray to that side of the room. I had some metallic silver craft paint that I used to paint the curves.
 

Here is the finished piece on the wall. I love it! I do have to admit I was a bit worried as I was hanging it but you can't judge it until you hang it all. Now I love it. It actually made the room seem taller. The bed has always been the focal point of the room but now it really completes the look and brings it all together.  I hung the two thicker canvases in the middle and the other 4 around. I think it came together perfectly.

Lisa

Halloween Fever

Have you been hit by the Halloween bug yet? This is my very favorite time of year I love Halloween. I haven't been able to jump in to the Halloween Ghoulish Spirit as much as I want to yet but I will.
So to kick off the holiday, I spent this last weekend with my friend Brie getting all creative. She found these very cute block signs at The Wood Connection. First, we painted the SPOOKY sign, and had so much fun that we got together again that evening to do the BOO sign. This was something I really needed. It felt like it had been FOREVER since I did a craft. Thanks Brie for sharing with me.

On the SPOOKY sign we painted the letters, then mod podged paper on top. Finally, we added Sparkle on the Bats and Eyes to give it a little bling.


On the BOO sign, I wanted it to be a darker look to it (not so bright and fun). We did the same by painting the letters and then mod podgeing (is that a word - well it is now!) paper on top. After I added a black glaze on each letter to darken it up and to make the wainscoting on the second "O" to stand out more.

Lisa

Boys Only Room

Since we were expecting a new baby this summer we decide to pretty much rearrange the whole house and change every ones rooms around. The baby has come and has kept me really busy so It has taken time to get these posts online.

This is the new room for my 2 boys ages 9 and 7. Up until this point we had 2 bedrooms, the Master and then we had our 3 kids in one room. It was pretty tight in there but we made it work, but it wouldn't work for 4 kids. So we built a new room which now became the master (a post on that soon). Then we told the boys they will get our old room and be able to decorate it and make it all cool. Of course I had big plans for their room and my son "L" was very excited to get it started.

The before - very boring White walls.
We wanted color in the room and I wanted to do a green and blue. "L" came with me to pick out the colors and they were all so excited to start painting.
These were my 3 little helpers. They did awesome no spilled paint and we got it done really fast.

Pretty bright colors, but we were very excited to move the furniture in. The boys have always had bunk beds so I really wanted to give them the chance to have their own separate areas and to really decorate it the way they want. And boy did they ever! It is really cool to see their individual personalities really come out.
We went to IKEA and Home Depot to purchased some shelves, rugs, and hooks to hang skate boards, and snowboards. We moved their desks into there room (you can check out that projects here Boys Desks). I also purchased the large paper mache letters and spray painted them in Nickel. They love their room, they love that they created it and that is their own space. We had a great time decorating and organizing it all together. It is so cool that their little sister really wants to sleep in there too.
We have also decorated the Girls room and the master all within less then a month. It was really busy around here, but we had a new baby coming and so we had a short time. I will post about those rooms soon.

Lisa

Desk

For a long time I have been on the hunt for the perfect desk for me. I was really excited when I found this beauty in its rough form. I picked this desk up at the thrift store for $30, it looks like someone else wanted to refinish it but then gave up on it and I snatched it up. So I didn't need to do any sanding since some one already did that. I just had to put primer on it.

I don't know what what I did with more of the during pictures they just disappeared I guess. So I painted it is Aqua Blue and glazed it. Then I added silver pull handles.




I love how it turned out. It looks great with my Grandmothers Chair, to see how I refinished the chair check it out. I'm excited to work on many more projects on this desk.



Lisa

Summer Wreath

Now that is is summer I wanted to bring on the festivities with a fun fourth of July wreath. My friend Brieanna found a wreath she loved online. It was just a plain white but looked really elegant (sorry I don't have the link). But we wanted to try and use the same idea but make it festive for the summer holidays.
This is what you need. A total of 2 to 2 1/2 yards of felt. (depending on how tight you put your circles.) a floral wreath, and a lot of push pins.



We cut tons 3" circles from each color, about 55 per color so a total of 150 circles!
To fold them it is really simple. First fold the circle in half, then in half again so you have a quarter circle. You'll put the pin in the bottom corner, and then pin it in the wreath.


Just keep adding and building them as you go around. I redid this part about 20 time I swear. I didn't like it in rows. It is best to try to be random in placing them around.
This is the finished product!

I think it turned out awesome. So fun and just perfect for the summer months. Check out how I made the AMERICA sign here.


Lisa