Pinterest obsession, DIY ideas galore, and the beach!

I am fairly obsessed right now with Pinterest now!!!  It's a website with millions of pictures of STUFF - home decor, food, clothes, people, ideas, places, jewelry....EVERYTHING.  You need to be invited to join (I'll invite you if interested) and then you can start pinning away - you pin the things you love and make pinboards of different things, you can name categories yourself and pin things into them to make the boards.  It's addicting...believe me.  Don't join if you don't want to lose hours of your life!!  DO join if you want fun, inspiration and ideas about everything and anything!

I have found so many fun DIY projects I want to do.  Look at this dress....its made out of a tank top and a few yards of fabric...I'm totally going to make a dress like this next week!  It's called the Alice Dress.  Yes Please!



and what about this little project?



you buy a whole bunch of candle holders from good will - and spray paint them all different colors for such a fabulous effect!  Something else I am going to try next week!!

how about inspiration for our kitchen?!?!  dark butcher block countertops, creamy dreamy cabinets and oil rubbed bronzed fixtures?!?  HECK YES!!



OOOOO I love me some Pinterest!!

As for my outfit today, I'm putting together something that looks like this, for our drive to the beach:



Minus the $8,000 purse of course!  I wish I had a Berkin bag, but we just aren't that rich yet;)  But the white/gray/jeans and chunky silver jewelry I can do!!  My shoes with be red fake snake skin (from AE) instead of leopard print - since I dont have those (yet!!)

Ok, enough about my new found love obsessions! 

Dave & I are off to Atlantic City today!  We are taking a lover's getaway to the beach to relax, maybe play some slots, eat yummy food, walk the boardwalk, dance, swim in the big pool at Trump Plaza, and just have a good time together.  I hope we win 1000's of dollars!  But that won't happen!  I usually win a little bit, but we never win big.  Its ok, it is just nice to get away and have a good time.  We get free rooms all the time at Trump Plaza (seriously, its nice...they send us about 4 free rooms every quarter so we dont have to pay for the hotel - it's how they get you in there to gamble your savings away LOL) and we really like it there.  No it's not the Iberostar Grand, but we'll take it;)

What is everyone else up to this weekend?  I have big plans for my week after we get home.  I am excited to be a housewife again and get working on a whole bunch of DIY projects for our house!!! 

Happy Saturday!  Still working on the Honeymoon by James P...review to come!

How to Bake a Perfect Life, an apron, and Book 10!

Whoa it's been a busy busy weekend!  Where to start?  Lets see, I finished Book 9 which was How to Bake a Perfect  Life by Barbara O'Neal.  I loved this book!!  First of all, you'll want to bake tons and tons of bread while reading this...I really wanted to, but I was so swamped this weekend with stuff to do - I just couldn't fit it in.  But I will get to it, I need to bake so badly after reading this!  It's about a 40-year old woman (a baker) whose very-pregnant-daughter has to fly to Germany to see her wounded soldier hubby, leaving the main character with her 13-year-old stepdaughter.  The girl was living on her own, in a homeless neighborhood after her bio mom was arrested for drugs.  The book is all about the main characters life and background, with a splash of the 13-year-old and the pregnant daughter's lives as well.  Its really good.  I give it a 4 out of 5.  It has love and laughter and baking and heartache...its a good time, I promise!

Then, after finished that I retreated to my new craft room to make an apron out of Book 8, the Martha Stewart book.  Here is it all finished, with a wonderful model, known has my husband;)

 Isn't he cute;)  LOL.  I thought it would be much more entertaining if he modeled it.  I was right.  Thanks babe!

 I made this all by myself!  I love it!  Technically it's for Ashley, but I think we'll share it.  She picked the colors which are pretty sweet together, if you ask me!  I made it by the step by step directions in the Martha book.  I gave this book a 4, since it was easy to read and came with patterns!

 I made these strappy straps! 

This took me about 2.5 hours from start to finish, including printing the pattern, cutting it out, cutting the fabric and sewing & ironing.  Good times!  Not bad for my first sewing project in a while, right?

So that brings me to Book 10 which is Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey.  I am going to be brutally honest here, I don't think I'll FINISH this book by tomorrow night. I'll start it for sure, but it's not a book I want to speed through just to beat my deadline...I figure since it's month with 28 days, I can afford to go over a day or too.  I'm not going to beat myself up about it, I'm still reading 10 books! 

I can't wait to pick out my March 10!!  I can't believe it's time to pick 10 new books already!?!?  Where is the year going?

Stay tuned for pics of our new shelf in the dining room, and some IRISH decor, and a project brewing for this week.  I have to go and get ready for WORK tomorrow!  I have a job!  Yay:)

Night

Craft Room Projects Revealed!!!

My craft room is coming along!!  It's not nearly done, I still have to hang pictures and decorate a little more and actually MOVE my craft stuff done here and make a curtain for the shelf...whoa that's still a lot.  BUT!  I did TWO projects this weekend, I stayed up all night painting/sanding/hammering and almost killed myself doing these things!  I decided to close in the shelf in our basement to make it more of a closet, it used to look like this:

See how it is all open?  I wanted to cover it and so we bought some plywood and had it cut in half to fit the side of this.  The other side of the plywood, I wanted to use to build a desk to put into the wall, right where that folding table with the sewing machine is.  Here is my non-carpenter-I-dont-really-know-what-Im-doing drawing....

 So we had two pieces of plywood that looked like this...

 I used magnetic paint first, three light coats of this....

 and then the chalkboard paint - two coats of this - so it would be a magnetic chalkboard in my craft room for me to draw up and dream ideas on.  Also, Dave & Ashley can leave notes here too, if they want;)

 So I painted it and used my power drill to attach it to the shelf, so it looks like this!  Its very black and once it dries and sets I can put stuff and draw stuff on it, it'll look a little cuter - but I love that I have this space to decorate with chalk and shabby magnets.  I dont really have a "shabby chic" spot in our home so this room is it..

 I'm going to make a curtain to cover the front of the shelf-made-into-closet.  Something pretty to hide all that crapOla.  Anyways, then I got started on the desk.  I went to my parents house and mom helped me, using her table saw, cut all my custom measured (lol) desk parts.  I put two braces on either side on those built in cabinets that hold our water pump and something else, to help hold up the desk top.  Then I primed and painted all the desk parts and mounted the desk top on the braces...

 Not bad, right?  I put the sewing machine on it because the desk top is bowed a little bit.  Mom says to put something heavy on it and it'll even out in a few days, if it doesnt its not a big deal.  This is my first custom built desk, I'm not expecting it to be perfect!  After that I got started on making the "legs" with cubbies.  This part was hard!  I had to glue (wood glue) the little cubby shelves on, and let them dry - see the coke cans hold them in place until they stick??  Thats the official way to do this, by the way!  LOL

 Then after they dried I nailed them in, and then nailed the other side of the shelf on, and PRESTO!  I have a desk, after fitting them under the desk top - they fit perfect and help hold the top up a little better. 

 Heres a straight shot of the whole desk.  I'm very proud of myself for making this.  It was hard and took a lot of blood, sweat and tears (seriously) but I did it and I'm very happy with it!

 Here it is with my craft boxes tucked in.  I need to fill them and make custom labels, and decorate more down here.  That shelf over on the right will be mounted on the wall to hold sewing stuff, and I have wall words and lots of pictures to put up around the room.  It's coming right along, I feel accomplished!!  Let me know what you think!

I think I am going with English Country Cottage theme in this room - it feels very "Pride and Prejudice" and I have a lot of shabby chic type of decor from my old apartment.  It feels so "old" time proper english when I sit and sew:)  Just like Elizabeth Bennett!

Oh if you havent seen what this room USED to look like, you can see that here - it's come a long way!!

Book 6: A lesson in sewing....

I am re-teaching myself how to sew.  I used to know, but I forgot!  Mom gave me her back-up sewing machine and I am learning how to use it again!!  I keep looking at all these blogs where they make bags and aprons and checkbook covers and Ipad covers and I think....whoa...I could DO that...they are adorable!  So...I got sewing books from the library...this one is going to be awesome:

This will be my 6th book for this month.  It teaches me how to sew plus gives me tons of ideas.  Part of the challenge with this book is that after I read it...I have to MAKE one item outta here.  I'm scared!  But very excited too!  When I embark on that adventure I'll be sure to blog allll about it.  See what reading does to me...it gets me hyped up about all this stuff.  Blogging does too...I'm outta control with ideas!!  Maybe one day I'll be a lil miss sewing priss:

I love that idea!!!

I've got all 10 books!  I'll post the official list with pictures tomorrow.  Happy Weekend!