a one of a kind wedding gift.

Long ago, while trolling around pinterest, I came across a mini little canvas art thingie and loved the quote.  It looked something like this: You + Me = Oui!

And I decided right then and there that I'd incorporate that into my home somewhere, somehow.  It's just so darn sweet.

So even though this project isn't exactly for me, and even though I don't speak French, I was excited to create some wall art using aforementioned adorable quote.  

This was created as a wedding gift, but could easily be used for an anniversary present or even for Valentine's Day (how fitting, considering the roundup we just had??  And the awesome part about it was that it cost me exactly $0 to make, since I used things I already had.  Don't tell the happy couple, ok?  It did cost me considerable time, effort and muttered fake curse words.  So, I've got a tutorial for you!

And though I was actually muttering and sputtering under my breath through parts of this, it's actually quite easy to make.  I just make things a lot more difficult than they need to be nearly 100% of the time.  Fortunately I've cut those portions out of the step by step.

Here's what you'll need.

TOOLS:

Palm Sander

Drill (with both a drill bit and a screwdriver bit)

Circular Saw (or other wood cutting type tool of your choice)

Also, you will likely need a hammer.  It's not pictured, but I'm pretty sure I can trust you to envision that.

MATERIALS:

reclaimed wood of some sort

a bit of plywood or other thin, sturdy, mediumish-largish rectangular reclaimed wood

screws

1 firring strip

two small nails

sandpaper

white paint

paint brush

pencil

white Christmas lights

Do not be intimidated by the length of this list.  Trust me.  The good thing about this project is that you can pretty much do whatever the heck you want as long as you use the same general basic steps.

A note about reclaimed wood:
I used the top of a fence panel.  We put up a fence about 3 or 4 years ago and kept the two extra panels we didn't use.  I had my husband cut one of the panels down for this reclaimed wood family tree I carved.  So I had the top portion laying around.  I used it to create the backdrop for the golden birthday party I threw for my BFF a few years ago.  Once all the paper was stripped off, I had this ugly half fence panel with bits of paper and lots of hot glue stuck all over it.  Which means any normal person would throw it away.
But thank goodness I didn't.
A note about Christmas lights:
I used the ones on a white cord because I wanted the cord to blend into a light, neutral wall color.  Lots of walls are white, right?  Anyway, you can go with the normal string of lights if you want to.  I used one I had on hand already.

So.  Let's get started, eh?

1. Start with your partial fence panel.  Clean it up a bit by getting rid of the hot glue clumps and stuck on paper.
2. Pull each fence slat off of the panel.
3. Hammer all the nails out.
4. Give it a very quick sanding with the palm sander.  (you want it to look rustic, but you also don't want anyone to loose a hand due to giant slivers.)  Then, and this may seem silly since you just sanded it, but you might want to add some small holes with nails or a drill and hammer and gauge some spots, or sand more heavily in certain areas.  You know, rough it up.
5. Take the back support board and remove any nails.
6. Cut the support board in half with the circular saw.
7. Decide how you want to lay your panels laid out.  I decided to lay all of mine so the curved edge was like a scallop down the side, but I alternated whether the back or front of the board was showing.
8. Lay your boards face down in the right position, touching edge to edge.  Place your two pieces of support board on the right and left edges.

9. Lay your plywood piece on top of this and mark the edges so you know how big to cut it.  It doesn't need to cover the entire back, but it should come up at least half way and overhang the two support boards just a smidge.
10. Cut the board to the right size using the circular saw.
11. Lay the plywood on top of the support boards.
12. Screw the plywood and the support boards down into the separate slats using long screws, but not so long they poke out the front.  Make sure you screw into each board (I actually used two screws per board - top and bottom).
13. Cut the piece of firring so it fits between the two support boards.
14. See how there's that space there between the slats and the back piece?
15. Push that firring strip into the space - you're making a "bottom".
16. Use the nails to nail the firring strip into the support boards.

17. Use a pencil to lightly write out your quote and figure out the spacing and such.

18. Paint over the pencil lines with white craft paint.

19.  You may need a second or even third coat.

20. Add details to the lettering so they're different "fonts".

Also, it may be important for you to know that if you use craft paint, as long as it is still wet it's fairly easy to rub off with a wet paper towel or clorox wipe.  You know, in case you accidentally misspell the most common word in your native tongue.

Sonofa... yeah.  That happened.

 But I fixed it!

Now, the fun part.  

21. Take your drill and make holes all along your word "oui".  I didn't measure and mark for exact spacing, I just went at it.
22. Drill a large hole in the bottom center.
23. You can see that the drilling left some jagged, slivery holes.  Yikes.
24. Use a piece of sandpaper to hand sand down the holes you drilled.  Smoooooth...
(You probably also want to sand down the whole thing again, just to make sure you don't cause serious pain with your "rustic" reclaimed wood)  Then, do some paint touch ups where needed.
25. Stuff the Christmas lights down in between the plywood and the front slats.  You may need either a. a super skinny arm or b. a long, thin stick.
26. Pull the plug out through the hole in the bottom.

DONE!!  Yeah!!

Plug 'er in!

 Ooooh, ahhhh!  Cute, right?  When on display, pair it with a cute photo of the happy couple.

(back when they were young, wrinkle free and thin.)  If we could do it all over, we'd say oui again!

And there you have it!  A piece of rustic, sweet and lovely, reclaimed wood wall art for some special someones.  Something they can use to dress up their new home and life together.

And I used power tools.  And overcame my fear of the circular saw.  Huzzah!

*Be sure to check below for all the fun parties I link to!*

I may be getting TOO confident...

Am I getting overconfident?  The herb garden jars were so nice, and I loved the green and turquoise together so much, and it matched where we're going with decor for the main floor so well, that I couldn't help it.  I got sucked in.  Sucked right in... to succulent mania.

As I've mentioned, I have a black thumb.  As is evidenced by the very brown, very dead, large shrubbery outside my front door - I don't even know HOW that happened.  I was pretty sure that kind of EVERGREEN bush thing was called such because it was EVER GREEN.  I didn't think it COULD die.  But I digress...

I just heard so many great things about succulents... about how easy they are to care for.  How easy they are to plant.  How easy they are to manage.  How easy they are to KEEP ALIVE.  It sounded like my kind of plant.

Because, you know, generally speaking things that can't scream at me to feed them don't fare well around here.

So because these guys are professed to add greenery by being very difficult to kill, I decided to try my hand at them.  But I needed something clever and whimsical to sport these cute little plants.

It just so happened that I had some wooden birdhouses in my craft stash where they sat for about 3 years waiting for the kids and I to paint them and hang them in some darling little decor vignette.  Perfect. 

Want to make some succulent birdhouses??  Here's how!

It's a piece of cake.

1. First, tape off all the areas you want to remain raw wood.  (I am loving the touches of raw wood combined with paint in decor lately, though I don't think I could do it in large furniture pieces.)
2. Break out the spray paint and spray, spray, spray.
3. Do multiple thin coats.  Since it's raw wood it'll soak up the paint, so working with a primer/paint in one is a good idea.

4. Hook your saw bit into your drill. 
I used three different methods, since the birdhouses were all different shapes:
5. For the steep peaked roof, I sawed a large hole into both sides of the roof at the top,
6. so the holes met at the peak and created one large hole that dipped down on the sides.
7. The tiny house was so little, sawing into the roof was too much for it.  I ended up taking the whole roof off with the drill, a pliers and a screw driver.  Even though it wasn't my original plan, it was the best choice, since a hole in a house that small wouldn't have allowed any room for a plant.
8. For the pagoda style house I drilled three holes in the roof, then one hole in the inner "ceiling" - it wasn't QUITE as large as I wanted, so I enlarged it with the help of pliers and sand paper, as you'll see in the following photos.

** Once the holes are all drilled, take some medium grit sand paper and sand all drilled/cut/pried edges to make them nice and smooth.  I think this gives a more organic look instead of "manmade."

9. Cut some parchment paper to approximate size of the birdhouse.
10. Round the edges of the parchment paper to make it easier to work with.
11. Stuff the parchment paper inside the birdhouse, with the edges meeting the top of the hole.  It will overlap and layer, that's ok.  Just make sure you're covering the wood inside the house.
12. Staple around the top edge of the parchment paper.  (My pergola shaped one was such a weird shape I had to staple from the outside in.  I'm ok with that.  It's not super obvious.)

** The parchment paper serves two purposes.  First, it covers the little bird hole in the front so that soil doesn't go spilling out all over.  Second, it keeps the water from soaking into the birdhouse, thus rotting the wood in no time flat.  In a few of the DIY succulent planter tutorials I read, this was the method used, so I'm trusting to the experts.
Succulents don't take much water so usually I just wet the soil with a spray bottle.  Works great.

13. Now put in your potting soil.  Fill 'er up.

14. Place your succulents.  You may need to fill in with a bit more soil, or but some rocks around.

 And that's it!  You're done!

 Ah, what whimsical little planters you have there!

That little one in on the side is planted in a tuna fish can I had painted for something else.  I think the succulent I used may be a bit to big for it, and I'm not sure it'll survive since Zoe picked it out of it's little pot and brushed all of the "gross hairs" off of it, then cleaned it thoroughly and proceeded to give it rides in the tricycle and sing to it before I noticed that anything was amiss.  Soooo, it's basically hanging by a thread.

I do hope I don't kill them immediately.  They now live on my piano.  Which, since none of us actually play right now, currently serves as a birdhouse succulent planter holder.

*Be sure to check below for all the fun parties I link to!*

I'm a one man band on the wagon.

I know you've seen all those jar herb gardens floating around pinterest - don't pretend like you haven't.  They're everywhere!  And if you know me, you know I'm likely to jump on a bandwagon like a trumpet blowing, drum stomping, cymbal crashing one man band!

Just kidding.

Kind of.

Here's the first one I saw and immediately wanted to copy: (but I don't know where it came from)

And here's one from Not Just A Housewife that's actually houseplants, but you could easily do herbs.

I've been wanting an herb garden like crazy.  Herbs are kind of pricey at the grocery store when you're buying them ALL THE TIME.  And then half of them go bad because you only use a tablespoon or two in each recipe.  Arg!  Anyway, I decided to do an indoor herb garden, hoping that 1) if it was inside I'd see it all the time and therefore be less likely to ignore and then ultimately kill it and also 2) space saving, you know.  

I made mine a little different because I wanted to use things I had on hand.

So, here's my version!

Mason jars.  I used two pint sized jars and 4 half-pint jars.  It's completely up to you what size and how many.  You need one jar for each herb plant.
Chain.  I just bought a pack of (smallish gauge) long silver chain at the hardware store.
Screw in hooks.  Self explanatory.  You need one for each jar.
Pliers.  Also self explanatory. 
Chalkboard stickers.  I used oval ones.  I got them at Hobby Lobby in the scrapbook/sticker section.
Chalk Pen.  Got it at Michaels when I made the huge map/cork board gallery wall.
Ruler.  Average, wooden variety.  But you can use any ruler.  Obviously.
Spray paint.  I used Valspar in turquoise and white.  You can do whatever you want.
Wood board.  Mine was about 27 inches by almost 12 inches.  The size doesn't matter a ton, just so it's big enough to fit as many jars as you'd like.
Painter's tape is optional.  You can use it to tape off your board before painting.  I used the chevron frog tape which I got at Lowe's.
Also, not pictured, a drill.  You know what that is, so it's ok I forgot it in the picture, right?

Start with your jars:

1. Write your labels - one per jar - with your chalk pen.  I made two jars for cilantro since that's the herb we use the most.
2. Place your labels on the jars.
3. Wrap the end of the chain around the jar under the lip to measure how much you need per jar.
4. Use the pliers to lift the link after up.
5. Remove the measured out length of chain from the rest at the broken link.
6. Use this chain to measure out the rest of the chain lengths and break a link to separate them.  
You need one chain per jar.

Prepare your board:

1. Tape off your board (if you want.)

2. Spray it with your spray paint.  I sprayed turquoise from the top down and white from the bottom up to create an ombre effect.

3. Use your ruler and one jar measure the spacing between jars.  

4. Make a mark using the pointy end of a hook where you want each jar to go.

5. Once your board is all marked,

6. Screw in your hooks.

Let's make it hang:

1. Using a drill bit that is big enough for your chain to fit through, drill two holes making sure they are even and centered.

2. Pull the rest of your chain through the holes, putting one end through each hole so you can see the chain on the front of the board.

3. Use your pliers to open a link.

4. Place the opened link through the other end of chain.

5. Close it up with your pliers.

6. And you've got a chain to hang it from!

And... plants!

 2. To prepare your jars, you'll need to put a layer or two of small to mediumish stones in the bottom (don't forget these, they're needed for drainage).  Then put some potting soil in.
3. Plant your herbs!  
4. Wrap a chain around a jar under the lip.
5. Place the ends together and slide the end links over the hook to hang.
6. Do this with each jar.
7. And never mind my wilty cilantro.

 I tried it with the jars straight up and down and with them at an angle.  I think I like it at an angle best.

 Now.  I just have to do my best not to kill them all.  Which, for me, will be quite the feat.

*Be sure to check below for all the fun parties I link to!*

Back when it was warm...

I did this spray paint project.

Because we all know you can't spray paint when it's under like 50 degrees.  And in Wisconsin, that's like 96% of the time.  Which only leaves 4% of the year available to spray paint every single project you want to get done.  It's impossible.  That's one of my biggest beefs with this state, actually.
Anyway.  I received a filing cabinet for free from my mom.  Not one to turn my nose up at storage options, I nabbed it up.  It was the typical beige of an office filing cabinet and unremarkable in every way.
It was, however, in really good shape, aside from being reeeeheeeeally dusty and kind of scuffed up.  So I decided that I would indeed use this filing cabinet on the main floor of my house and not in the basement as I had originally thought.  
See, though my "craft room" is in the dungeon, I often craft with my kids.  Or when my kids are drawing or doing homework.  Which means that I use the dining room table more often than my craft room.  So I needed some storage for those craft items I use all the time, kid craft items, decor items I use in photographs, and drawing stuff for the kids - all stuff that was kind of just floating around the house randomly with no home before.
Enter: filing cabinet storage.  I decided to use it as a set of drawers, a dresser, if you will, instead of for, well, filing.
Behold:

1. First things first, I took all the drawers out.

2. As I mentioned, it was a little dirty.  So step 2 was giving it a goof dusting and scrub down with clorox wipes.  Look!  I made some money doing this project!

3. No picture here, but I disassembled the front of the drawers.  I first had to take the plastic part on the back of the front piece off.  It was slightly tricky, but not bad.  Then I unscrewed the handles off and used a paint can opener to pop off the label frame thingies.  I managed to do it all without breaking anything, which was pretty stellar.

4. I spray painted the front of the drawers with Krylon's Ocean Breeze.

5. I spray painted the body of the cabinet with Krylon's Bright White.

I should mention that even though I didn't break apart the drawers, I did manage to mangle the lock.  Because I'm a little prone to doofus-ism, I accidentally locked the top drawer closed.  The filing cabinet did NOT come with a key, and I couldn't figure out a way to open the drawer without smashing the lock in.  Crap.  That's the one part of this project I'm not happy about.

After I painted it blue and white I thought I was done.  But as I looked at it, I realized it was boring.  And that didn't sit well.

I decided it needed stripes.  

I got some of the super low stick painters tape for delicate surfaces, since I was applying it to spray painted metal.

I taped two drawers with horizontal stripes and two drawers with vertical stripes.  Then I sprayed them white.
Upon peeling the tape up off of the drawers, it was super apparent that the low stick tape was still much too sticky - i.e. I pulled off bits of blue paint everywhere.

And then I got mad and let the project sit for a while.  When mr saw it he said, "Huh.  I usually don't like distressed furniture, but that looks pretty cool."
Um.  Yes.  Distressed.  I totally did that on purpose.  Mm-hm.
If mr. was on board, so was I.  So I gave the whole thing a quick once over with clear spray.  Then I sanded a bit here and there to really seal the deal that it WAS in fact DISTRESSED and not just a total fail.

I used a pencil to outline lightly where the label frames went, then painted rectangles of chalkboard paint on each drawer.  Then I put them all back together.

 Ta-da!

 We had just moved that big black shelf from the living room to the dining room - the distressed filing cabinet fit right in the corner.  Before you ask, the answer is no - I haven't actually staged the shelf yet.  Or even gotten enough crates and baskets for everything.  One thing at a time, people.

*Be sure to check the right sidebar for all the fun parties I link to!

My Thanksgiving Mantel

It's my very first ever Thanksgiving mantel!  Pretty exciting.  As with pretty much every holiday until this point, I just threw up a wreath or two (not "threw up" in a disgusting way... that was weird wording) and stuck a few decorations around.

Now that our furniture is rearranged, and the piano is front and center, I've got a "mantel"!  

I used almost all things I had on hand.  
I made the book page leaf garland two years ago for Thanksgiving.  
The turquoise candlesticks are from ikea, we've had them forever, but they used to be silver.  Yea spray paint!  
The white stand I made about three years ago - it's a wooden plate that I glued to a wooden pillar candle holder.  It used to be gray and I sprayed it for Halloween.  White seemed an appropriate color for almost every holiday so that's what I went with.  
I reused the wooden green apples again.  I got them at a thrift store for 50 cents years ago and I don't know why I like them so much, but I do.  
The gold plate stand is one I got at a garage sale last year.  It was missing plates, so I bought some china at the thrift store for 50 cents each - they're white with gold along the edge.  I put some mini pumpkins and pinecones on top and multicolored corn on bottom.  Those were all on hand, so didn't cost me a dime.  Yea!  
You can see I also reused the green scrollwork wooden shelf from Hobby Lobby that used to be black and is now green as well.  Phew, what a run-on sentence... I find that putting it on its side gives me something fun to stack things on to add height.  So I stacked a handmade chalkboard I made - remember this one?  I made a new one in a different frame and added a quote I saw on pinterest that I really like.

 I filled my chevron painted vases with pinecones, mustard and red yarn balls, and fall colored lentils with cranberries.  I stacked them on the orange mini crate (from the Halloween mantel) and stacked that whole thing on top of two wire baskets which I turned upside down.  They were from the dollar section at target last year.

I turned some votive holders upside down for a taller candle holder - it seemed to get drowned out when I used it the intended way.  

I also used my slinky pumpkins.  Easiest craft ever.

See the cute little bird on the candlestick?  I got that at Hobby Lobby (half off) and I love him.  He's made out of book pages! 

I tossed some brown striped fabric up for texture and some books for filler.  Here's a secret.  I only had three books that fit the color scheme - red, orange and brown - so I spray painted one turquoise and one green.  Yep!  I spray painted some thrift store books to get what I needed! 
One the bottom section of the piano, I put three mini baskets I got at Hobby Lobby for half off.  I filled them with some fake fall fruit and leaves and such.

So there you have it!  A Shabby Chic, on-hand, Thanksgiving mantel.  All I bought special for this one was the book page bird for a dollar, the slinky pumpkins at about 3 dollars each, two votive candles and a pillar candle at 1 dollar each and the baskets at 1 dollar each.  That's a whole mantel for  $11!  I like the challenge of using what I have and seeing how I can put the same things together in different ways for different looks. 

*Be sure to check the right sidebar for all the fun parties I link to!