Category Archives: Home Decor

Feb 19 2013

Navy Dining Room

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Even though we have about 4 more months until we move into our first home, I keep finding myself day dreaming and planning out each room. To keep me occupied, I have decided to create a few mood boards with ideas for each room to mull over until the big day finally comes. To start this off I have worked on a design for our dining room. We have never really had a dedicated dining room in any of our apartments so this seemed like a fun one to start with. The overall look we want is simple, modern and clean.  We want to go with a few bold choices, like navy walls, but pair it with classic simple pieces like white accessories and black furniture.

Navy Dining Room Mood Board
Mood Board Breakdown:

1. Alex and I have been wanting to paint a room bold, and being that we have always lived in cream, bland apartments together we are ready to step it up in colors in our new home.  While browsing ideas on Pinterest, I stumbled across Lucyina Moodie Stylist’s Navy Dining Room.  I love the black furniture against the bold navy walls with touches of white for contrast. For more dining & kitchen ideas, follow my Home Decor – Kitchen/Dining Room board on Pinterest.

2. Our current dining room table is a hand-me-down, that while practical and looking a lot better after we refinished it 3 years ago, is not really in line with our style. For this dining room I really want a glass table. One option we found is the Granas Table & Chairs from Ikea.  What I really like about is the price tag, under $200 for table and chairs.  The seats on the chairs do leave something to be desired, but that would be a weekend project changing them out with a nice cream or white padded seat.

3. As for art on the wall, we are thinking of moving the Just Two Crafty Sisters Original Map Canvas Art from the living room to the dining room.  Navy rooms look great paired with bright white and pops of yellow, so this might be its new home soon. Continue reading »

Dec 6 2012

Felt Flower Tree Skirt Tutorial

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This year for Christmas I decided to tackle one momentous project I really have wanted to get done for years; to hand-make a tree skirt. A while ago I saw this beautiful flower tree skirt and nearly gagged when I saw the price tag of $350! Yikes!! With a little ingenuity and elbow grease I knew I could make a tree skirt I would truly love and that would be one of a kind.

DIY felt flower Christmas tree skirt tutorial

I am so happy with how it turned out! This was a very time-consuming and detailed project, so if you are planning to make it be sure to leave yourself plenty of time before Christmas. There are about 120 hand-sewn flowers alone on this tree skirt and each one has to be hand stitched onto the tree skirt once you make them. So, here is my tutorial on how to make a felt flower tree skirt.

Materials:

Step 1: Start making your flowers. Take your felt material and cut out four hourglass-like petals. They do not have to be exactly the same size and shape, but keep them fairly similar. Continue reading »

Nov 29 2012

Holiday Holly Wreath

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Deck the halls with boughs of holly! I love being named after a prickly bush with poisonous berries haha. At least it is great for holiday decorating though :) This year I made a wreath of fresh holly to spruce up our house.

How to make a festive Holly Wreath

I am lucky that my parents have about 8 large holly plants growing along the path between their house and Mel’s house, so I get harvest for free. After visiting for Thanksgiving, I came home with a large bag of fresh cut boughs. Once cut the holly will last for a few weeks before drying out, so this was great timing to start my holiday decorating.

Using Holly in Decorating

To make my wreath I bought a 12 inch wire wreath frame at Joann’s and grabbed my beading clippers and floral wire that I already had in my craft supplies drawers.  Along with the holly, this is all you will need to make the wreath. Continue reading »

Nov 28 2012

Holiday Entertaining: Chalkboard Wine Glasses

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I know chalkboard wine glasses have been all the rage on Pinterest.  I decided to do a twist on the classic chalkboard wine glass to create a great festive wine glass for celebrating the holidays.

Christmas Wine Glasses

These glasses are really simple to make.  First I went to World Market and bought four of their wine glasses on sale for only 99 cents each.  Next I ran by Joann’s and got traditional green chalkboard paint along with red and white gloss enamel glass paint.  Once you have all the materials on hand, it is time to get started.

DIY Christmas Wine Glasses

Step 1: Pour some of your chalkboard paint into a container large enough to dip the base of a wine glass into.  I chose to use an old tupperware that was the perfect size. Continue reading »

Oct 30 2012

Random Acts of Craftiness: Necklace Holder

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This seems to be the week of crafty challenges!  First the Fall Pinterest Challenge, and now it’s that time again!  Time to get crafty and try to think outside the box with the monthly Random Acts of Craftiness creative challenge set forth by His & Hers.  For those of you who are unfamiliar, each month we are presented with a random item and asked to stretch our creative minds to use this item in a new, original project.  For the second round of this challenge, we were challenged with the theme: odds and ends from the hardware store.

Raise your hand if you promised to start your craft right away, but found yourself project-less just two short days before the link-up.  Am I alone in this?  Monday night I sat down after work and started scouring our tool box for any odds and ends to make my project.  I first thought maybe I could make something cool with my random brightly colored zip ties, but set them aside after a few minutes.  I started looking all around the house for any inspiration when it hit me.  I could really use a necklace hanging rack.

DIY Hanger Necklace Rack Tutorial

I know this is not the most inventive idea, but I did use a bunch of random screws that I had from other projects so I think it still qualifies as odds and ends from Hardware stores.  And I finally got a way to view and display some of my unique, handmade necklaces.  Maybe now that I can find them I will wear them a bit more often :)  This was a really simple project to make, and here is a quick tutorial. Continue reading »

Oct 17 2012

Burlap Fall Wreath

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This post will be a tutorial for how I made my first fall wreath, but I wanted to start out by thanking our readers and apologizing for the lack of posts lately. We ran into a huge problem where our site was hacked and we needed to make sure everything was cleaned up and working properly before working on new posts. I want to say a big thanks to my dear friend and web guru Stefan for taking time to help me work this all out and now we are back on track and more secure than ever. In addition to fixing the site; Alex and I have decided to start the process of looking for our first home, so free time is spent researching neighborhoods, meeting with our Realtor and browsing listings. Lots going on to keep life interesting! Now, on to today’s craft, a festive fall wreath!

Burlap Fall Monogram Wreath

Starting off I grabbed some pipe insulating foam that I have purchased a while ago from Lowe’s and decided on the size of my wreath.  I tapes the two ends of the foam together to create my foam structure.  This is a much more cost effective what to create a wreath form than buying one at a craft store.  The foam can be a bit more flimsy than a Styrofoam form, so just make sure to use light materials on your wreath. Continue reading »

Sep 26 2012

Random Acts of Craftiness: Uno Card Art

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It is officially time for the first ever edition of Random Acts of Craftiness, the monthly creative challenge set forth by His & Hers.  For those of you who are unfamiliar, each month we are presented with a random item and asked to stretch our creative minds to use this item in a fun, new, inventive project.  For the maiden voyage, the item is game pieces….board games, cards, domino, dice, etc.

As soon as the challenge was announced I began racking by brain trying to come up with something new and amazing.  Maybe a sweet domino clock?  Or game piece x-mas ornaments?  Then my husband threw out the idea of a game table.  I won’t go into too much detail because I still plan on making it some day when I get the time, but let’s just say it would blow your mind.  Or at least the idea blew mine and still sounds awesome in my head.  Being that I waited too long and we don’t have room for a game table in our current place, I finally decided on creating a piece of wall art using a large canvas and Uno cards.

Uno Chevron Art Continue reading »

Sep 18 2012

Easy Fall Table Decor

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With the weather still over 90 degrees, it is not feeling like fall yet.  I am ready for the chilly night air, crisp mornings and changing leaves of autumn to come!  In the meantime, I dressed up our table for fall so that I can pretend it is here.

Fall Decor

The first thing I did was run over the Joann’s for some burlap fabric to create a table runner.  In order to eliminate waste, I simply folded the fabric in half and tied a cute ribbon bow in each end.  By not cutting the burlap I can now use it for a future projects too!  I bought 3 yards to cover the table and leave plenty hanging over each end. Burlap table runners are really popular for rustic weddings right now, but i really think they have a great fall appeal too and add texture to decorating!

Chalkboard placemats

Once the runner was down, I quickly worked on creating four chalkboard placemats.   Continue reading »

Jul 10 2012

Living Room Makeover

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Our living room was in need of a serious change.  We were longing to be able to seat more than 3 people in our living room. Between the hodge podge collection of hand-me-down furniture, we were lacking a cohesive look. Living in an apartment has its drawbacks; not being allowed to paint the walls, limiting the number of holes in the walls and being stuck with floor materials and color.  Making the best of of the situation, we were able to modernize and make our living room a lot more “us” with updating furniture and artwork.  Ready for a sneak peak of the before and after?

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I am so happy with the transformation :) Sorry the before picture is so awful!  I got so excited with starting the makeover that I forgot to snap a picture before throwing out the old couch and recliner, and had to rely on an old photo from Alex’s phone when we first moved in.  Not much had changed in the look since then, except for 3 photos we hung on the wall behind the couch and we had updated the coffee table by decoupaging photos on it. Continue reading »

Jul 9 2012

Sectional Legs Re-Finished

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Once the decision was made to re-design our living room and purchase our first real couch together, we went right to work researching and pricing options.  After seeing a few options way out of our price range, we found what we hoped to be the perfect sectional couch for us, the Karlstad sectional from Ikea.  I really liked the overall look of it, but was not a fan of the boring light color wood legs.  I immediately told Alex, “I could totally spray paint them black and it would look sooo much better!” Not 5 minutes later while searching for online reviews, he came across my favorite blog Young House Love and discovered that not only did Sherry and John have this same sectional and rave about it a year later, but they also painted the legs of theirs and it looked awesome!

Decision was made, we were getting this sectional and painting the legs to classy it up :)

First we had to remove the legs from our sectional and ottoman.

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Look at how low the couch is without it’s legs!  We had to live with it like this for a couple days while I worked on the legs and let them dry.  Wezley didn’t seem to mind the change, in fact I think he liked it being easy to jump on and off the couch :) Continue reading »