Makeover #1: Arabella's Room

As promised, here is the first room transformation in our new home. Arabella's room just had to be the first room painted because she was SOOOO excited to have a "purple" room. Just ask her and she will tell you lol. A friend of mine made an offer I couldn't resist...he'd paint it for free if I bought the paint! Now how could I say no to that!!! So after a lot of prep work (the previous owner must have had a love for posters because there were a gazzillion thumb tac holes in the wall...EVERYWHERE!) here is Arabella's room makeover.

BEFORE: Pink and Black

AFTER: Purple and white

We still have to put up the curtains and I am waiting for her new bedding that I have ordered. There is a picture of it below. I tried to find something that had purple as well as green and aqua in it so that her old nursery decor fit in as well. Her bedroom set was a gift from her Aunt and used to belong to her cousin. I just love the sleigh bed! And do you remember that chandelier I mentioned so long ago that I was going to paint white? Well I thought it would look ADORABLE in her room. I was thinking of maybe finding some purple, green and aqua beads as well to string through it to add a bit of playfulness.

I will update this post with more pictures once I get the bedding and curtains. Thanks for stopping by!

My First Date with Mason Jars

I've been wanting to post these for a while, but never got around to taking pictures. This was one of my first kitchen projects and also the beginning of my relationship with Mason jars. I had been searching for several weeks for food canisters to place on my kitchen counter. This is something I had always wanted but I didn't like the price of them and also didn't like that each canister in a set was a different size. One day as I was strolling through the kitchen aisle of Canadian Tire I saw a box of large Mason jars for a fraction of the cost of the canister sets. This got the gears rolling and set my plan into motion. I picked up a box of 6 large Mason jars, a box of 8 medium ones and also a package of plastic lids that fit on small Mason jars (who knew these existed?).

That afternoon, I set to work cleaning out my cupboards and replaced all of the miscellaneous bags and packages of dried food with Mason jars. The large Mason jars I filled with my most commonly used baking goods such as flour and sugar and lined them up in a row on the back of my counter. They fit perfectly and looked beautiful but they still needed a little something extra...like labels!

Initially I scoured through all 500 of the fonts I have on my computer (yes, I realize I have an addiction!) until I found one that fit. I printed these off and used a circle punch to cut them all out. I then grabbed a handful of paper clips and using my hot glue gun, adorned them each with a little red button.  Each paper clip was then threaded through a string of black raffia which I tied around the neck of the Mason jars.  Lastly, I slipped my label into the paper clip, and voila, it was done! They looked pretty cute, however after a couple of weeks using my jars I fell quickly out of love. I was constantly having to make new labels whenever I filled the jar with something different.  The process of printing and punching new labels was tedious and I soon found that my new jars were sitting there plain and labelless. That's when inspiration hit!

I recall my sister-in-law raving about chalkboard paper that you could buy at the dollar store. She sent me a sample of it to try and it was fabulous! It came in a roll and the one side was chalkboard and the other was covered in adhesive so you could stick it to anything you pleased! I decided to adhere it to some red cardstock and then using my circle punch I cut out a stack of chalkboard circles. Now I could change these labels with a simple wipe! My ingenius husband came up with the best part...rather than using chalk, he gave me a piece of soapstone from his work that they use for writing on metal. Turns out it writes perfectly on the chalkboard paper without the muss and fuss of chalk! Here is the final product!

 

P.S. Speaking of Mason jars, have you seen American Craft's new line of Dear Lizzy paper? This one is my favourite! I couldn't resist buying it although I have no clue what I'm going to do with it yet. I'm sure you will see a layout soon featuring one of these adorable Mason jars!

Spring has sprung on my picture wall!

My new spring pictures finally arrived for my seasonal picture wall! I had a hard time choosing which photos were going to adorn our dining room for this next season but I finally narrowed it down and ordered them from Scrapping Simply. If you have not heard of Scrapping Simply, I highly recommend you check out their website! I stumbled upon them in my search for a store that would print 12X12 size photos.  Not only do they print beautiful pictures with bright, vivid colours, but they do it for a fantastic price and only $5 shipping to Canada! Thanks Scrapping Simply!

Now for the big reveal:

As with the Winter wall, I designed two different pictures. The first was the letter "S" for Spring! This one took me a lot longer because I had to scroll through a gazillion fonts before I found something I liked for the letter "S." I finally decided on the font Earwig Factory, another favourite of mine from Kevin and Amanda. I spent a little extra time tweaking it by adding a wood grain pattern to the back. 

And now for my Spring words! My husband and I sat down back in January and brainstormed a few of the things we loved about Spring. I made a little collage of them and then added a tulip at the side for this season. I love how the leaves on the tulip turned out! This was completley by fluke as I was playing with a few of the blending options in Photoshop and just happened to come up with this. LOVE!

Now all I need is to get my butt in gear and start on my next home DIY project....an upcycled chandelier for the dining room! I love my red pendant lights but they are just not conducive with scrapbooking because they don't give off nearly enough light. Stay tuned and thanks for stopping in! 

Seasonal Picture Wall

A few months ago, my husband Derrick had the idea to create a seasonal picture wall.  Some of the family photos would stay the same, and the remaining photos would capture moments or words from the current season.  I loved the idea!  Our dining room wall has been bare and in need of paint since we moved into our house 5 years ago, so it was the perfect blank canvas. I started planning the layout and size of frames to use for the space at the beginning of September but by the time I got everything organized, it was clear that the picture wall wouldn't get up until Winter, so that's the season I started with. I grabbed my laptop and started pinning all the pictures that encompassed what I loved most about Winter.  Then I began scrolling through hundreds of family photos, choosing a selection of pictures that captured memorable moments from that season.  When everything finally came together and the last picture was hung (and leveled), we just loved the result! One of my favourite parts is a picture I designed that I call Winter Words.  Derrick and I sat down after lunch one day and listed all of our favourite words or things from the season that we loved and I put it all together in a picture. We have already started a list of our favourite Spring words for the upcoming season! I hope that planning this picture wall will become a special tradition in our family. Now all we need is the banquette seating that we've been dreaming about!