Little Man's Last Nursery

When Little Man was born we rented an apartment in Michigan while Casey finished Law School. The awesome thing about our apartment was we were able to paint (not so awesome when we had to prime it back to white when we moved out!!!) Little Man had a really nice sized room for an apartment, not that he EVER slept in there!!! So this is his first nursery.

I was never a fan of the glider we bought for Little Man's room (and trust me I spent HOUR and HOURS in it trying to get Little Man to sleep!!!!) so I sold it before we moved to Wisconsin (why move something I didn't have too!!) We lived with my parents for about 5 months after moving to Wisconsin and because we did a lot of traveling back and forth with him when we lived in Michigan, they bought a crib and he had his own room. So while living there I helped my mom decorate his room there.

Then we have Little Man's nursery in our new house.

About 6 months in our new house I decided I wanted another glider in his room.  So we have our final and last version of Little Man's nursery. Soon we will move him into a toddler bed and in the not so near future he will be moved down the hall to his big boy room.

So I give you Little Man's last nursery!

I love how it turned out!! And I will be very sad when Little Man moves out of this room. But I am so excited to start working on his Big Boy room and all of the fun that will bring!

Here is how I made the alphabet canvas artwork.

More Subway Art

I finally made myself some Subway art, after making it for everyone else!!

I used a 12x24in piece of plywood for mine and pretty much followed my previous post Subway Art Sans the Silhouette except this time I did use the Silhouette!

I learned a few lessons on this. I designed my 12x24 inch file in the Silhouette studio software which was fine but its kind of hard dealing with that large of a piece of vinyl! I used transfer tape (not the transfer paper) for the first time. Did you  know there was transfer paper and transfer tape? I kind of like the transfer tape better, its basically a large roll of masking tape. So again dealing with a 12x24inch piece of transfer tape was a lot of tape to deal with. I placed the entire 12x24inch piece at one time and then ripped the transfer tape row by row only removing one row at a time. The whole thing took a lot more time that I thought BUT it worked out perfect!

The vinyl was perfectly straight!!!

  AND I used the trick of painting a layer of your base coat over the vinyl before using your top coat (in my case white) I really do think it helps! AND I have one letter that up close was not 100% perfect!

I am so happy with how it turned out! I love its "odd" size! I decided not to distress it. I might still go back and do that. I was just so happy with how it turned out I didn't want to go back and play with it any more!!

Nail State Art

My spin on the pin! I have seen this project on Pinterest several times and really wanted to try it out!

I started by spray painting my board with chalk board paint because I had it out from another project and I am sort of obsessed with chalk boards at th moment!

I cut out the state of Wisconsin using my Silhouette, but you could just print it out and cut it out by hand. I taped the paper image down to my board and started nailing!!!

Nailing the nails was a little more difficult than I thought it would be. In some spots it was just hard to hold the nail because of the angle and some I did not get in tight enough (this is important!! especially on the heart because it holds a lot of string!)

I love how it already looks!!!

I then started wrapping my string over all of the nails. The key here was to go slow and to pull it tight but not too tightly or you might pull the nails out. I did have to go back and nail in a few nails as I did this part. Since I used chalk paint I love that I can write whatever I want on the bottom! I ended up giving this to my sister and her husband for part of their wedding gift. I plan to make myself one sometime soon!

 

Not including painting and drying the background, I completed this project over a 6 hour time span. And I did put my little man to bed, make dinner and a few other things, so it took me less than 6 hours. Which is not too bad, I thought it would take a lot longer! 

Linked up at Dog Days of Winter Link Party

Wedding Day Survival Kit

Another day, another wedding post!!

 A good bridesmaid or even the bride will be prepared for any and everything the day of the wedding so that when nothing goes wrong you were just way over prepared! Enter the Wedding Day Survival Kit!

We have had one of these for every wedding I have been in and we may have broke into it once or twice but the most important part was we were way over prepared.

A Wedding Day Survival Kit can be as simple as you want it to be.

My youngest sister actually made this one for her friends wedding. They are going to pass it around among their friends and the only 2 requirements are if you finish something you replace it and you put in your wedding program to document who has all used it!!

Our kit included:

Sewing kit with scissors
Tums
Men's Deodorant
Woman's Deodorant
Q-tips
Static Guard
Make Up Wipes
Bra Tape
Blister Tape
Bean-o
Advil
Tampons
Lotion
Deodorant Remover
Saline Solution
Shout Wipes
Mints
Mouth Wash
Gum
Bobby Pins
Hair Ties
Safety Pins
Hair Spray
Tissue
First Aid Kit

Make sure to check out the rest of my wedding week!! Thanks for reading!

Organized Garage

Well my garage is a organized as it can be for now.... its not 100% done but it is a HUGE improvement!! I participated in the Great Garage Clean Out.

I was not able to do as much as I should have because the first 14 days were dedicated to my sister's wedding and recovering from it :)

I had a small garage sale at my house last weekend and am having a big one at my parents house this weekend so I was able to remove all of my many bins of garage sale items!!! What does not sell will be off to charity!!

I started by hanging a few things up!!! Including my awesome stroller that I LOVE!!!!  I still have a few thins on this side I need to give back or find a more permanent home for! I also hung up my cordless drill!!! (YEAH!!!)

Look at that organized corner!! Remember what it looked like before..... a MESS!!!! I still have some projects in the back corner I need to finish that will free up more space... including those ugly chairs... I have no idea if I will actually finish them or if I will just sell them as is.... we will see. I have decided they will be gone before winter so my husband can park in the garage!!!! I have also (for now) leaned my tables against the wall in the corner. I still have the willow branches in the garage from my sister's wedding....

I never got around to organizing this peg board..... on the to-do list for the future!!!

The biggest improvement... look at all of those bins and organization!!!!!

All in all it is an improvement!! But it still needs a bit more work!!! (I also still need to go through my paint shelf and my "garden" shelves)

Thanks Great Garage Clean Out!!!!! I appreciate the motivation!!!

Bridesmaid Canvas Tote Bag!

Hello! Wedding week continues with a post from the recent bride!!

As I was getting my gifts for my maids ready I decided I would try to decorate reusable tote bags instead of buying paper gift bags that would likely just get thrown away! And I'm a little obsessed with anything neon right now so this was the perfect project for me!

I bought the totes at Hobby Lobby. You can buy them individually or as a pack of three, I think it was maybe 7 dollars for the 3 pack, but I used the 40% off coupon they always have on their website so I saved a couple bucks.

I bought neon pink paint from Jo Ann Fabric. I think it was actually puff paint but I just squirted it into a bowl and painted it on. 

Since the bags were bundled up I started by ironing them so I had a nice flat surface to work with. I also put a piece of cardboard inside the bag to have a hard surface and so the paint wouldn't soak through. I used 2 different widths of tape: 2 wider pieces on the bottom and 2 skinnier pieces along the top. I also taped around the handles so they didn't get paint on them. 

I had a ruler next to the bag to have a loose guideline to follow, but I wasn't worried about perfectly spacing the lines or keeping them perfectly straight.

I printed the letters in a large font on sticker printer paper, cut them out and 

stuck them to the bag.

I only used one coat of paint and I put on a pretty thin layer, I didn't want it to bleed through the tape or through the paper letter.

I made one for each of my maids, with their first initial. I love how they turned out. The gifts fit perfectly inside. Hopefully the girls will reuse them this summer :)

 My cat really loved them too :)

DIY Wedding Garter

It's my third day of Wedding Week!! Do you love weddings as much as I do? I have 3 sister's and Kristin is my second sister to be married... so that mean's there is only one more to go!!!

Another project I was asked to create for my sister's wedding was a wedding garter. The pros: I was only told it needed to have blue in it and she liked lace. The cons: I was only told it needed to have blue in it and she liked lace..... This was a project she told me about a good six weeks before her wedding and I finished it 2 days before...

It was very easy once I figured out what to do, that just took me FOREVER to figure out. I sewed a 2 inch wide band of stretchy lace together. I twisted some blue fabric into a rose hot gluing it in place and added a rhinestone bead to the center.

Super easy DIY wedding garter!

Thanks for reading and don't forget to visit the rest of my wedding week posts!