I'm done now.. seriously this time

I'm not sure why I ended up posting about being ok with something being unfinished. I should have known that as soon as I did something like that, it would be impossible to discontinue the list of left "to-do's". Subsequently, I've got another project to share with you! A grand finale of decorations for the wall, above the tv. Priorities, right?

I started by taking the pictures out of this frame, a frame that was definitely one of those iamjustnowlivingonmyownandhavenoideawhatimdoingwithdecorations
butamquicktopurchasethisbecauseitmakesmefeelmorelikeanadult
impulse purchases.

I knew I was going to make my own frames for them so instead of getting glass cut for me for each size frame I decided to laminate the picture to protect them with our laminator that I just had to have as an office "essential". It was so darn essential, that it hasn't been used until this project. See how essential it was for this, though?
Once the pictures were laminated and cut out, Jeremy cut out 8 frames sizes 4x6, 4x4 and 3x3.

I used a thick/spongy mat board as backing for the pictures and literally stapled the laminated pictures to it.

Then hot glued the pictures to the frames after the frames were painted brown

I also ordered some circular mirrors from Target.com (around 20 bucks), arranged them on the wall and hung the pictures I put together by ribbon that I hot glued onto the frame.

Seriously-hot glue guns and paint go a long way!

And here we are!

I clearly need to clean the mirrors and can't end without thanking my friend Josie for helping me today! So, seriously.. Now I think I'm done with this room.... for now.

Another Guest Room Face Lift

Every 3 or 4 days I have a load of strictly to-be-air-dried clothes and have only space in the guest bedroom closet to do so. As I was in there hanging wet laundry I couldn't help but be annoyed at how bright the room is! The bedding, the walls, the furniture we made.. all off colors of white. And I know that I was supposed to accept that the room wasn't complete but... I didn't

I started off with a small project. I used some scrap matting from a craft store and bought some wooden letters, painted them and measured them to fit evenly on the matting.

Jeremy built a frame and I painted it brown. I love it above our guest bedroom closet.
(Not nearly as much as I will love to have trim around the closet doors, but we'll cross that road some day)

The story behind the next project is fun. Jeremy's dad and his wife just bought a new house and have joined their things. In the process of joining there has also been purging. Jeremy and I, along with the rest of the kids, have gotten the opportunity to rummage through things and bring found treasures home with us. This tray we found and was Jeremy's grandmothers'. It has a really cool picture in the wood that matched the style in the bedroom perfectly.

I sanded it down and roughed up the picture on the face
of the tray and painted it brown.

Here's the picture from my last post that Jeremy
built a frame for out of trim. Clever boy!

The collective effort of the projects makes the room look so
much cozier and much less starchy and stuffy.

It's Craft Corner Time!

Want to learn how to make this?

First you'll need these:

And a little bit of this

And you'll get this!

I need to spray all of the little pieces of paper down and clean up the strings from the hot glue gun and will probably be framing it with a homemade frame and paint chocolate brown.
Other than that though,
I'm in love!

An Exception to Completion

The guest bedroom is finally complete with it's decorations and furniture. I'm sure we'll be adding to it here and there with theme appropriate doo-dads in the future and will be most certainly doing the finish work on the room (at the moment it is without base boards/new closet/new window/new closet doors/etc) but for now we're happy with the foundation we've set.

I love the collaborative effort of things that we've purchased-both bargain and expensive-and things that we repurposed and things that we totally made from scratch. It's been a fun to theme out a room with the challenge of keeping the color scheme similar to the rest of the house eliminating the risk of it looking like the crazy room that doesn't fit! I'm happy to let our guests sleep in this room, for now. And for now, it can be our room that's basically complete with the exception of a few things. Our exception to completion.

Canning Experiment

My sister came to visit last October and we attempted to can some apples and pears from our trees. I'm pretty sure we completed each recipe wonderfully (everything tasted great!) but the process of canning to preserve wasn't quite accomplished. I have been doing my homework and decided to give it another go with our plums. With better equipment and a serious set up I was bound and determined to not let these yummy plums go to waste. I was able to can a couple of jars of plum jelly and one can of preserved plums. The jelly is delish. I'm very proud of myself! This is a whole new level of domestication, I was unsure I would ever reach. Our apples are near ready to be picked and I'll have some time before the pears are ready. I'll give it a go, for a round 2 with the apples. I'm crossing my fingers!

Furniture Finale

We've completed our table contribution to our guest bedroom with 2 bed side tables and a foot of the bed TV table. I am so happy with how these tables have turned out and loved every minute of creating them from start to finish with J. I love that this table is the TV table and has yet to have a TV or a DVD player for it's designated shelf. Details, details.. right? We have one final thing to make for this bedroom. We'll see how it turns out before I tell you what it is.These are some of the decorations in this room that I've made and put together. I had the vases for awhile but they were quite formal for the look I was going for in the space. So, to create a far more casual look I decided to use natural elements in them. For example filling the space in them with dark brown coffee beans (which have made the room smell divine) and painted some of our favorite bible verses on some cut out round wood. They'll look complete on the table once we've got a TV on there!

Teamwork

My dad came from Bend last weekend to visit. We played some music, ate, laughed (can't help that when he's in around) and.... did yard work. I know, weird right? Well, he had a use for some plums that were growing on our 3 plum trees we have in our back yard. We picked what we could but the tops of the trees were impossible to get to. What to do? Well, get out the chain saw and chop those trees down, of course! In other words he helped us prune our fruit trees. It was an overdue chore that we completely neglected last year. They're basically bare now! My OCD loves it! I would rather see bare and manageable than full and over taking the back corner of ours and our neighbors yards.

Pleasant Surprise

I have been in a constant state of being pleasantly surprised in the past several months. I start out with a fairly pessimistic attitude of the outcome (which surprises me to say about myself, I've always considered myself to be a very positive thinker) with something I've volunteered to do or am participating in or a sticky situation with someone. It seems that I'm being shown so many different facets of life that I've not been open to in the past. Which also surprises me to say about myself because I've always thought of myself to be open to just about anything. In any case, I love being pleasantly proved wrong. I am absolutely ok with that!

Recently I learned that a crafty co-worker of mine was moving back to her home town in Hawaii after some very unexpected and unfortunate events. As a hobby, another co-worker of mine digs for crystals. She'll ecstatically bring them into work, after they've been carefully cleaned, and show all of us why they are so special. This girl knows her rock facts. I appreciated the fact that she was so interested in digging for rocks, but they were just rocks to me... until... my friend who was moving decided that she would love to go rock digging before her departure. These rocks would be beautifully turned into jewelry. One thing that bonds her and I is our love for being crafty and creating. Since I was willing to do whatever she wanted to get in as much time with her as I could before she left I agreed to go. The three of us met on a very early, misty, weekday to dig for rocks. We pulled into a hidden nook, lakeside and began digging. We played a game called "rock of the day" which was us basically comparing our rocks to see who had the best find. It was exciting to find little unexpected treasures that I would have otherwise walked right over and ignored. I learned a lot and had so much fun! Who knew?

Happy Fall!!

Despite the sprinkles of sunny weather and heat here and there, Fall has crept up and fallen upon us. Fall is a season that I have gradually fallen in love with. I love roaring fire places, pumpkin/apple spice candles, fall decorations (my Halloween decorations are already out), fresh baked ____ (fill in the blank), knee length boots, fuzzy socks, hot cocoa, yumminess slowly cooking in the crock pot, cuddles, fog, crispy mornings and .......... FOOTBALL!! Football is especially awesome this year. Why? Well, a very generous father in law of mine decided to give all of his children/step children/childrens' significant others University of Oregon Duck season football tickets for Christmas. A gift that truly keeps on giving! Their first game was two Saturdays ago and started off the season with a 72-0 defeat over New Mexico. If you know anything about college football, a win like that over N.M. isn't a huge deal, it's sort of expected. Rest assured. The Ducks are legit this year. Proving themselves with a 48-13 defeat over the TN Volunteers. Moving us from a top 7 team to a top 5. GO DUCKS!