DIY Fall Wreath with Felt Flowers

I decided to try the noodle wreaths and the felt flowers you see all over Pinterest.  I found this to be pretty easy and super cheap.  I stole my daughter's pink noodle from the garage while she was sleeping...ssshhhhhh...

And I purchased green yarn from Walmart for $3, and bought cream, brown and khaki felt sheets at Walmart for $.23 a piece.

I taped up the noodle ends with packing tape.  I just wrapped it around a couple of times, but you can see in the picture that its already lost its round shape and I think more tape would have made it stronger...and I'm not sure if I hung it right at the seam...perhaps that's not a good idea...

So after taping the seam, I then wrapped the yarn around it.  This part will feel the most painful and possibly cause an arm cramp. When I finished wrapping it, I just laced the end through several wrapped strands to keep it in place.

Next, I made the felt flowers, which seemed daunting before I started but I found them easy and very satisfying to my crafting soul-yay! look what I did! So impressive!

I used Paper&Stitch's blog post: DIY Felt Flowers.

I wasn't as hard core as this, didn't really measure anything, just cut some circles based on things near me that I could trace and I didn't do all the ones she shows.  Just the easy ones. Oh, and I traced with chalk after tracing with a pen and seeing how not amazing that looked.

Then I laid them on the wreath until I was happy with a design and hot glued them on.  The banner was a last minute addition with some raffia, scrapbook paper and a sharpie.

I attempted a bow for the top and then quickly decided I hated bows.

I found a Command clear hook in my closet and put it on the inside of my door, upside down. Then I cut some ribbon I already had and tied it and hooked it over the Command hook.

Ta-Da!

I 

Easy Mickey Mouse Cupcakes

I've been pinteresting for my son's upcoming 3rd birthday, and came across these that I made last year for his 2nd birthday.  Kellen had just been diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia three weeks before the big day.  Cancer took its big foot and stomped all over his party.  

Kellen was pumped full of chemo and steroids and pretty much felt like doggy doodie, but he had wanted a Mickey Mouse party so bad, we put one together real quick.  I found these cupcakes online and thought they were super easy to make.  

I baked the chocolate cupcakes and iced the top with chocolate icing (all of this was store bought).  I doubled up the red cupcake liners to make sure the red showed up enough.

I piped the icing with a good ol' fashioned Ziploc bag (cutting a hole in the corner).   You wanna make sure you pipe the icing high enough to support the ears.

Then I jammed two Oreo's in the top for ears.

I thought they looked pretty good just like this, but decided to add the buttons to his "pants" and thought it made it look better.

I just cut out oval shapes from white printer paper (perfectly unperfect ovals) and in a very delicately messy way, wiped a glue stick on the back and stuck them on.

Kellen loved them.

$130 Backsplash

This is the backsplash the house came with:

nothing.  

But thanks to Home Depot, it now looks like this:

We couldn't decide on a tile material that we both liked (again, no fighting about this...at all). So we were walking through Home Depot one day on a mission for oh-so many things we didn't know we needed and I passed a little stand for the Fasade Faux Tile sheets.  It took a some convincing, but I got Dustin to agree to try it.  It comes in several color choices and all the trim pieces are right there, including the outlet cover sheets.  We have a very short span to cover and it seemed like a quick, cheap fix to make it look better and won't be a big deal if the stars align and we can make a decision on actual tile.

You can see the sheets on Home Depot's website here: Fasade Tile

We had to buy 5 sheets, but only needed a 1/4 of the final sheet.  Each sheet is $21 and then we had to grab the trim pieces.  We only needed to cover two outlets so one packet of outlet paper was enough for us. The outlet pack was around $10 and the J-trim pieces were roughly $1.5 a piece.  We applied with a high bond double sided tape.

It only took a few hours with both of us. And I live with an engineer, so we measure 3x and cut once.  Sometimes I think we measure 12x...I think he even rechecks again when I take a bathroom break.  Dustin is the annoyingly likeable person who reads the directions first all the way through and then gathers everything he needs.  This is not my usual approach.  My approach will always include a few extra trips, a couple of cuss words and a crooked line that will forever haunt me.

Pantry Door

So our home came with a glass pantry door with "pantry" written in cursive and an etched bread basket.  My father-in-law said he would buy the house just for that door and I muttered, "I wouldn't buy this house because of that door". Obviously we did buy the house, but it was one of our first projects.  I'm sad I never took a picture of the door-I was too focused on getting it out.

Dustin removed the glass (which shattered in the garage and remained shattered in the corner for many moons...hey 2 year old, don't go in that corner!).  We got a piece of that board that can have all those little holes in it that people put in their garages to hook things onto...probably has a name.  We got a piece with no holes and cut it to fit the door.  Then our first attempt, we painted magnetic primer on it cause I wanted to have a magnetic chalkboard since we have a stainless fridge.  The magnetic primer has lots of tiny pieces of metal and makes the surface very very rough, even if you sand it.  So we scratched that and started over and just painted it with chalkboard paint.  Ta-Da!  It has become quite useful for parties and to distract children while spending quality time with my dishwasher.

Organizing my Menu for the week...this does not happen regularly

Threw a baby shower for a friend

Paint!

In our last home, it took us close to 3 years to finally pick paint colors (we never once fought about it, not once I say).  Once we knew we were moving again, I refused to live with Builder Beige for any length of time.  So before we moved in, I declared I was not leaving Sherwin Williams until there was a decision (or until I had collected 236 paint chips).  And we narrowed it down to 5 colors.  I painted my son's room gray at our old house and it was runaway love affair from there.  It took everything I had not to only pick out shades of gray. No pun.

House Selection

We moved into our home in April last year.  We let our 3 year old daughter, Blythe, look at a slew of homes online and this is the one she liked best.  So we bought it.  Its in a great neighborhood and its a brand-new tract builder home.  It was a little shy and was faking it with its personality in the way only cookie cutter homes can do.  But we are slowly giving her a makeover as time and funds allow.