January 29, 2011

Goodwill Finds

Last week when we finally were able to go somewhere we went to the Goodwill! These are a few of the things I found....

I want to paint this but the weather has been so cold I haven't been able to get outside and do anything. I'm not sure what color it will be???
I bought this for $1.99 and thought I might use it at my son's wedding reception or the wedding shower. I may end up spray painting it white, not sure.

The box said two used and two new for $4.99. I saw the silver and again thought it might be something to use for the wedding or shower and if nothing else they will be in my house.
With all of the mercury glass in blog land I thought these would be perfect to try to create that look.
There were two short ones and two taller ones. The ones that had been used had a little bit of a candle in the bottom which took less than a minute to get out and clean them up to look just as new as the other two. Not bad for $1.25 each.

I will post pictures later of the transformations to each of the items, if it ever gets warm enough for me to use spray paint on my days off from work.

January 26, 2011

Snow + No School = A Good Day to Paint

Due to more snow and no school we were able to get the ceiling and the walls in our kitchen painted.
This is my son preparing to paint a masterpiece.

Here he is filling in holes with a cake icing knife because we were impatient waiting on his dad to bring the putty knife. Just so you know it worked if your ever in a bind. 
While we were waiting on the putty to dry my hubby took the outlet covers off and my son and I got everything ready to paint the ceiling.
I bought this ceiling paint at Wally World Wal-Mart, it goes on a violet color and then drys white. WooHoo no guessing if you missed a spot.

Isn't this a pretty color.

See no guessing!

With the walls taped off and the ceiling painted and drying we were ready to start painting the walls. And the moment you have been waiting for, loosing sleep over,drum roll . . . . . . . . . . the color is. . . .


 Welcome Sun
Isn't that a great name? 

I have been looking at paint colors since the beginning of January. 
I wanted a change but not a drastic one because I really liked the color I had but it needed a new coat.
So last night while picking up some things from Wal-Mart I decided to take a look at what they had and this is what I found.


We have a sun room that is painted in a similar color called 'Butter' and we are going to have to  replace some windows this summer which will require re-painting it. (I want to paint it blue, maybe)

I decided that a yellow would be a nice color for the kitchen. I plan on putting either blue or red/burgundy accents in the kitchen. (I think anyway).I really like blue and yellow together.
Here is another pic of the paint, now that the walls are painted I think I luv it. 

You know there is always that fear of hating the paint color once it goes on the wall. Well I really like it,and it brightens up the kitchen. I almost picked out a darker color and I am so glad I didn't. 

My kitchen only has one window over my kitchen sink but it gets the sunlight that comes in from all the windows in the sun room, but still a dark color would have been to dark for me. I will post some pics later of how it looks now. 

I still want to give the trim a fresh coat of paint but for now I am so excited that one of my goals for the new year is ready to be marked off my list.
This is for everyone who is snowed in once again or who is like me and can't wait for spring to arrive. This was another purchase from Wally World.
I hope you are getting some of your goals checked off your list. But for now run out to your favorite place to pick up flowers and put a little spring in your home. 

These make me smile and I hope they gave you a smile too.

January 25, 2011

The Big Day

Tomorrow is the big day!!!!  We my husband and son are finally going to begin painting our kitchen. With all of the snow we have had and a minor set back due to my fibromyalgia we had postponed painting. 
I will be more of a supervisor because well I am short and in some pain, but the painting should begin in the morning.
I debated on going dark, I found a milk chocolate color I love, or going light, my sun room is butter and I love it.... I will show you the reveal soon !!!!!
I can't wait to see how it turns out.
Have a great day.

January 24, 2011

BLISSDOM '11

Are you new to blogging like me and are asking yourself what is Blissdom then click here and read.

I just posted this over at Just A Girl about the upcoming BLISSDOM '11

I wish I could come:0( but not going to happen this year. Just to let you guys who are coming to Nashvagas (I live about an hour away) pack warm we are expecting snow Tues. night. Where I live we are only expecting 3" this time, we have had lots of snow this year like so many others. Those of you who live where this is normal are probably laughing! Sorry but TDOT (TN Dept. of Transportation is running out of salt for the roads) So girls have a great time and stay warm and post lots of info for all of us who can't attend.

If you want to keep up with Nashville weather you can visit www.wsmv.com this is a Nashville news network. Again I hope everyone has a great time and please post info about the fun, and maybe next time I will get to attend and join in the fun.

I haven't read everything that is coming up but I wish their was some type of podcast of the speakers, I am hoping to become more involved in the blogging community and would love all of the great information.
If anyone knows of a DVD or something please leave me a comment.
Thanks

January 17, 2011

Weekend out of town

Like most everyone in the country we have had lots of snow and a week out of school. I love the snow but I have had my share and I am ready for some sunshine, and to see my students. I hope they haven't forgot everything.
Here is what my road looked like and yes I am on a tractor with my husband as he clears the road. We are the only people who live on top of this mountain so it's up to my husband if the roads get cleared. It's beautiful until you are running out of food and milk! and you haven't been able to get off the mountain for a week. We were actually going to get our 4WD that got stuck earlier in the week.
We were supposed to go on a youth retreat with some friends, but after my husband got the roads cleared and went down the mountain to check out how everything looked he decided it was still to dangerous. So Saturday we tried again and we made!!!! We were on our way to Pigeon Forge!





This is where we got to stay!!! Beautiful isn't it and we are close to town. It was a great couple of days the only thing missing was the internet. I am so behind on reading what everyone is doing.
So far so good on getting to go to school tomorrow. I hope everyone has a great week and maybe I will get to take some pics of what I am doing.

January 12, 2011

Love - Stamped Necklace

Well I am trying something new again. This time I made a letter stamped necklace I have been wanting to try this for a while. For Christmas my brother and sister in law gave me a gift card to Hobby Lobby (they know me). So I decided that I would buy some of the things I needed to do this project. It was very hard to get a picture, but this is the finished project. I think it turned out pretty good to be my very first one.
I think I have a theme going this year and it is 'Trying New Things'. I have to say I am enjoying it and I can't wait until the weather gets better so I can do some painting.
Back to the necklace....
I forgot to take a picture of the stamps I bought but they basically look like these. I am not sure what size they are but I think 3/8. I had to ask one of the workers if they had them and she brought them to me, but they were not priced. When I asked how much they were she looked for the price and came back with a sticker that said $9.99 SOLD. I had looked on line and knew this was a good price. Guess what????? When I checked out they were half price!!!! I almost did the happy dance when I looked at my receipt. (I didn't notice this when they were rung up. I saw it after I had got in my car and I was telling my husband that I had found the stamps)
I bought a pack of blanks that were different sizes and shapes. I think there were 6 in the pack. I don't have one of the metal blocks so I used my garage floor, it worked great just a bit cold.
I had watched a tutorial and it said to start in the middle and work your way out with your lettering. I did the o first and didn't hit it hard enough. I tried to fix it but got off just a little but it still looked ok to me.

You can see the o a little better in this picture.
LOVE
I used a black sharpie to trace around the letters. You can use liver of something but I don't have that.

After you trace the letters you need to go back and wipe off the extra black. You only want it to make the letters show up better.

Next you will need some round nose pliers. They are round all the way around.
A pair of flat nose pliers. Mine have a place to cut small wire, if yours don't you will need some wire cutters.

Headpins
Beads (I also used a clear bead)
Place your beads on the headpin. I couldn't get a picture of me twisting the headpin to make a loop, but if you go to you tube there are some tutorials showing how to do this. (sorry)

Jump rings
You will need to use your pliers to twist the jump ring to open.
Thread you blank on the jump ring.
Then add your beads, you could hang your beads on a separate jump ring but I didn't.
I had some red cording that I hung this on, but I also have a silver chain I am thinking about using.
I ended up using three beads because I wanted it to hang a little lower than one bead would have hung. Again I could have used another jump ring and it would have allowed it to hang a little lower.

I really liked how it turned out.
I got this ready just in time for Valentines Day!
I think I have found a new hobby, I really liked making this and I can't wait to make some more.
I hope that you are trying things you have always wanted to try. I know I am having lots of fun. I don't know if I would have ever tried something like this if it hadn't been for all you guys showing what your doing. I hope that this will inspire you to go for it and try something new today!

I am linking up with:

IhookedupwithHoHlamespice

January 8, 2011

Snowman Canvas Painting

Well I have been wanting to try painting on canvas for a while now. I have painted a few really simple things like our family name. This consisted of painting the background and using a paint pen to trace our name. So to start out the new year I finally did it, I painted a picture on canvas. I may not have done it the way a pro would, but I did it.
I have to say that I have put this off because I was very intimidated by the process and I really can't draw much less paint. I decided it is paint after all and if it looks terrible I could just paint over it.
I kept the attitude that it was for me and it didn't have to be perfect. (Have I mentioned I have a small OCD problem?) But this is the year to just go for it and get those creative juices going again.
They have been dormant to long.

Here he is......

I think he's kinda cute.
I started off with a blank canvas. . . that sounds so silly doesn't it, of course it was a blank canvas.
The color for the background was inspired by the snowman I saw over at MAY DAYS and the fact that blue is my favorite color. I used cobalt blue.

Believe me I took several deep breaths and there was some hesitation before I put the paint on the canvas.
I debated on painting the snowman first and then painting around him but I decided to just paint him on the blue. Not sure if this is how it should have been done but it's what I did.
I painted about four coats of blue because it is such a dark color being painted on white.
I placed the paint in a plastic shopping bag in between each coat of paint.
I just closed the bag around the extra paint and brush so that it didn't start to dry out.
3rd coat, almost ready
After the fourth coat I decided it looked good and the white was coated good enough.
After it dried I left it for a couple of days and then I decided I would draw what I thought I wanted it to look like on the canvas with a pencil.
I'm not sure if you can tell but I had planned on writing Let It Snow over the top, more on that in a minute.
I had looked at this snowman plate for some added inspiration and then it became my paint tray.
As you can see the white was going to need a couple of coats of paint.

Ok so about the Let It Snow, as I said I can't paint but I really can't paint letters. I hated how the letters looked so tried to wipe them off before the paint dried. I knew it would be a mess but the letters were not staying.
So guess what???? Another coat of blue paint, this time around the snowman to cover my mistake.
I painted a couple more coats of white and then added a scarf.
Yes the scarf would need a couple of coats. The red I used to start with wasn't bright enough so I painted the next couple of coats with a brighter red.
Now for some eye's, a mouth and some buttons. I tried a couple of different things to find the size of these and my final choice was a pencil eraser.



I dabbed the eraser in the black paint and then dabbed off the extra paint. When I was checking for sizes I noticed that the first dot I made was larger because it had excess paint on it, so in order to keep the sizes the same I dabbed off the extra paint.
Here goes....
and here he is


Here are the colors of paint I used.
Cobalt Blue - background
White -snowman body
Pure Orange - nose
Black - buttons
Engine red and Berry red - scarf
The berry red was brighter and is on top of the engine red.

I added a nose after practicing on a scrap piece of paper.
I also added some fringe to his scarf and I even tried my hand at some highlights, I still want to do some on the scarf so that it looks more like a knot has been tied. Just haven't decided how to do that. I loved how the tiny, tiny, speck in the eyes made such a difference.

I also added some snow to the background. I am still debating on a hat or not and hanging him or just propped up. I will decide on the hat later, but for now he is propped up on a shelf by our fire place welcoming the snow.
So the moral of this post is to GO FOR IT! ! Is he perfect? no Could someone else do a better job? sure they are all over blog land
But the lesson I learned is that just by trying I got something I had been wanting and I learned a few things along the way that I would do different , I tried something I had been wanting to do and I like how it turned out.
I hope to try and do many more things this year that I have been putting off and I hope that you will to.

I am linking to :

Funky Junk's Saturday Nite Special