Living Room Tweak List: DIY Wall Sign

There's a new piece in my living room... can you spot it?


Ten points for you if you guessed the art by the TV! I have been wanting to spruce up this corner of the living room with some larger, fun, rustic art. Here's what it used to look like.


(go ahead, you can shiver while looking at that gross old yellow trim paint)

I love my DIY clothespin art, but it just wasn't taking up the space like I wanted. I had been brainstorming some ideas to freshen up the space- namely, a gallery wall around the TV. But the hubs didn't like the idea of cluttering up that side of the room (makes sense, got to have maximum viewing potential I suppose?!), so I decided that just one piece would fit the bill. And after seeing this piece on Pinterest, I knew that a rustic sign was the perfect fit.

After looking around stores and not seeing a rustic sign that I wanted, I decided to shop my house and make my own sign. What do you know, I found everything I needed to make a rustic wooden wall sign. That means this project was free. I said FREE people! Doesn't get any better than that.

 
I was thrilled when I found these old wooden boards in my basement- the perfect size, beaten up and rustic looking. Perfect for my project! I simply nailed them together by using support braces on the back. And yes, I do mean me. Prepare to be amazed-- I did this project all by myself.


Next up, it was time to paint these bad boys. Before I painted the entire surface of the sign, I played around with the lettering. I simply printed off the quote I wanted to use and moved the words around (ensuring that the font size I choose- 300!) fit the board the way I wanted it to to.


Once I knew the wording would fit, I got to work on painting the entire surface of the sign. I decided to continue my love affair with all things fresh and white in my living room (yes, we've gone through about 97 gallons of white paint! ha), but decided to go with a whitewash effect instead of simply painting the boards. Gotta let that gorgeous rustic character shine through.


To get the whitewash effect, I simply mixed two parts latex paint with one part water. Then I just slopped it on! The watery paint absorbs easily into the wood, so you might have to do two light coats like I chose to do.


Next it was time to paint the letters. I printed the words onto heavy card stock paper (I thought it would be less resistant to bleeding or tearing once it was covered with wet paint) and then used a craft knife to cut the shape of the words out. The process was a little time consuming, but not too bad... and I promise, I am not a patient person! Then I taped the handmade stencils onto the surface of the boards and used a sponge roller to paint the letters! Easy as pie.

And the final result?


 

I'm kind of in love. Ok, not kind of.... the piece is maj as Rachel Zoe would say. It's like that wall has been waiting for the sign all along! I chose the navy paint we used in our dining room for the lettering- I thought it would add another element to tie the rooms together.



I couldn't be happier with my new sign! And I just can't believe it was FREE! Love.

I'm linking up this project with the Pinterest Challenge hosted by Katie, Ana and Sherry!

And if the sign isn't exciting on its own, this little guy puts me one step closer to finishing up my living room tweak to do list!

LIVING ROOM TO DO LIST:
1.update mantle
2. add a gallery wall next to TV
5. paint walls a new neutral color
6. add new rug
7. figure out pillow sitcheeyation
9. spruce up wall behind couch

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Between Naps on the Porch
Thrifty Decor Chick
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30 Day Photo Challenge & Link Up {Days 9 - 15}

While a little bit late to the game, I'm back today with week three of the 30 Day Photo Challenge!

So far, we've shared days 1-7 and days 8-14 of the photo challenge. There have been sooo many beautiful pictures shared by all of you so far, so thank you for participating and linking up! Today I'm headed down the challenge list to share days 15- 19. This week was a lot of fun, but certainly had some challenging shots in it. Wanna see?





 

Day 15: since Tucker got to be the start of last week's photos, I thought Maggie deserved a turn this week! Her treeing walker coon hound silhouette is so pretty. And very akin to Goofy. Same diff.

Day 16: Ahh, my favorite shot. Even though it's blurry, yes. Before last week, I didn't know what a long exposure was. But nowwww, thanks to this handy dandy photo challenge, I learned that a long exposure shot is basically where you take a photo with a very long shutter duration. The effect is that it sharply captures stationary objects while holding and blurring the moving object. Or in my case, blurring it all. I opted for a 4 second shutter speed and then hit the streets to take pictures of my neighbors' cars. I'm sure they thought I was a stalker, but I kind of like my photo attempt at the long exposure! What I later learned is that I need a tripod to help me keep the stationary objects in the background from also getting blurry. I'm just happy (at this point) that I got the long exposure part down. Oh well, a good first attempt!

Day 17: a telephone pole + beautiful sunset...
I think I'll call this the "Dichotomy of the Technology Age." Deep.

Day 18: I cheated. Those aren't my shoes. They belong to my friend Ashley, who wore them at her wedding here. But I love this pictures so I had to share again!

Day 19: I think my neighbor's tree speaks for itself! Hello, gorgeous.









<a href="http://www.tenjuneblog.com" target="_blank"><img src=" http://i1143.photobucket.com/albums/n621/TenJuneBlog/PhotoChallengeButton.jpg " alt="Ten June 30 Day Photo Challenge" width="125" height="125" /></a>


Now it's time to hear from YOU! Grab a button and link up days 15- 19 of the photo challenge.

Whether you were able to take all five pictures in the challenge this week or just one, feel free to link up. And don't forget to let me know how the second week of the challenge went for you... what was your favorite picture to take? Did you have any problems with any of the challenges? More importantly, if you did have problems and sorted it out-- share your wise advice with us newbie photographers! I'll keep the link party open until next Friday, when we share days 20- 24 of the challenge. Happy picture taking!



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Neutral Chic Bedroom Design for Tiffany



 One of my latest e-designs was for the stylish, sweet as pie Tiffany from Savor Home. We worked on her master bedroom together, incorporating pieces that she already has (like that gorgeous bed!) with new, chic pieces and planning a functional design for the space.

I think my favorite element in the room is the gallery wall of gold frames behind Tiffany's bed. It's tough to explain, but the wall behind the bed is an awkward, uneven wall which makes any attempt to center the bed (and anything hanging above it) on the wall look crooked. My thoughts were to cover the wall in these beautiful gold frames with chunky white matting to break up the uneven wall. Tiffany can fill the frames with art, black and white photographs... the possibilities are endless!

I'm also totally digging on the swanky velvet curtains, which I found here. Not only does PB have them in this gorgeous stoney gray, but a realllly pretty stone blue. Santa, are you listening? : )


I can't wait to see how Tiffany's space turns out! And lucky for me, she's an Atlanta girl, so I might just have to pop on over and see her bedroom makeover in real life! : )

If you're interested in a Ten June e-design, find out more information here or shoot me an email at tenjuneblog@gmail.com and I'll send over all of my design package information!
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The Good, The Bad & The Ugly


Let's start with the bad and the ugly.

I got a flat tire last night on my way home from dinner with a friend. Boo. So that meant a late night and a morning of hopping around (on a spare tire!) from tire shop to tire shop, pricing tires. You know I won't settle for anything but a good deal.

But, sadly, that means I didn't get to finish my post for the third week of the 30 Day Photo Challenge (yes, I am a last-minute blog post kind of gal, shame on me!). Of course I'll take a raincheck!

For those of you participating in the photo challenge link up, here's the new schedule:

Friday, Oct. 28th: days 15-19
Friday, Nov. 4th: days 20-24
Friday, Nov. 11th: days 25-30

I thought it might be easier to break the rest of the challenge up into smaller chunks.
What do you think- will that work for everyone?

Now onto the good...

and by good...

I mean realllly good.

Two of my favorite bloggers deserve a huge hands in the air, raise the roof kind of celebration. And they both happen to be Bay Area folks that I met last July when I was in San Francisco!

(my sis, me, Michaela)

Michaela of Michaela Noelle Designs recently refinished the dining room of an apartment in Seattle and made the space into her very own gorgeous bedroom! And if that weren't enough, the makeover was recently featured on the ginormo blog, Made By Girl. What an honor!
Check out the highlights from her fabulous new room.






She hit it out of the ballpark, didn't she?! Great job, M.

(Kate, Courtney, me)

In other fun news, my friend Courtney from Courtney Out Loud was recently featured on... wait for it... the Nate Berkus show! I'm happy to report that Nate apparently agrees with the rest of the blogging world that Courtney's fabulous home deserves a whole lot of love. It's gorgeous!




Want to see more? Check out Courtney's Nate show appearance here.

Congrats to Courtney and Michaela for being fabulous! And here's to hoping my Wednesday afternoon is a little bit smoother than my Wednesday morning.... : )
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Living Room Tweak List: Plantation Shutter Update

I'm back today with another update on my living room tweak to do list! A few weeks ago, I asked all of you to help solve a dilemma in our house about the plantation shutters in our living room. Our gorgeous plantation shutters were painted just like all of the trim in our house- a dingy, yellowy off-white. As you know, we've been updating all of the trim throughout our house by painting it a bright, crisp white. But painting plantation shutters just isn't quite as easy. Also, there's not a ton of light in our living room in the latter part of the day... no sunlight + dingy colors = not so hot plantation shutters. So I voted that we get rid of them altogether and throw up new window treatments. My sweet hubs, on the other hand, voted to keep them.

And what did ya'll vote? About 40% of you voted to keep them and about 60% of you voted to get rid of them... but hang on to them just in case I changed my mind.

So what did we do?

Kept 'em.

I couldn't get rid of the shutters without giving them a second chance... with a new coat of white paint!


(Unfortunately my pictures in this post are not exactly rockstar quality... this time of year, when the sun rises after I leave for work and sets before I get home, full sunlight pictures are hard to come by!)

I think it was this picture from Pinterest that sold me.

 
via

Who wouldn't want to keep beautimousness like that in their home?

Ok, so if we decided to keep the shutters, we knew we had to paint them. We've been pricing paint sprayers for awhile, so it was time to finally take the plunge. We purchased this Wagner sprayer from Home Depot, as it came highly recommended from our paint guys at HD (yes, we're friends with them by now). We set up a paint camp on our back deck and my bada$* hubs took on the role of painter.

Because we were pretty sure the shutters had been painted previously with an oil based paint, we decided to play it safe and spray two coats of oil-based primer (I love Zinsser) first. Once those dried (overnight), David sprayed on only one coat of our latex trim color. His review was that the actual painting was pretty easy, but cleaning the machine (especially post oil-based paint) was a little difficult.


But boy is it worth it... the sprayer gave us some amazing results! It's crazy looking at the yellowy shutters next to the painted white shutters, isn't it? Aw, my little painter is so cute.


Now for the fun part... the before and afters!





I know the lighting is so bad in these shots, so I pulled a photog no-no and took one shot with a flash. Maybe it will give you a slightly better perspective of the new white color?


I finally finished painting the trim around the front door, too. Our entry has come a long way....




We even got a little street makeover with this project, since the front side of the house benefitted from the fresh new white. Check out how bad the yellowy shutters looked peeking through last fall.


And now... so fresh and so clean!


I promise some better pictures once things come together in the room!

Oh and before I forget... one other piece of furniture got a tiny makeover with some fresh white paint.


I think it's really coming together in here! I'm crossing things off my list, left and right!

LIVING ROOM TO DO LIST:
1.update mantle
2. add a gallery wall next to TV
5. paint walls a new neutral color
6. add new rug
7. figure out pillow sitcheeyation
8. deal with the plantation shutters
9. spruce up wall behind couch

I'm linking up this project with the Pinterest Challenge hosted by Katie, Ana and Sherry!
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Halloween Treats

 A couple of weeks ago, Mrs. L over on Brooklyn Limestone asked me to share some Halloween fun as part of her Ghoulish Guests series. Since I'm sure many of you are like me and are spending this week getting ready for Halloween parties this weekend, I thought I'd share the treats again in case you missed them the first time!

When I think of Halloween, the first thing that comes to mind isn't spooky goblins or a dancing skeleton. It's not even spiderwebs or black cats. It's quite clear that I've still got a lot of kid in me because the first thing I think of when it comes to Halloween is candy.


Don't you remember trick-or-treating through Halloween nights as a kid, scouring every house in the neighborhood for the best candy? My sisters and I would run back to the house afterward and spend hours sorting through our loot. And even though I don't have kids of my own yet, I like to make trick-or-treating extra special for the kids on our block. Who am I kidding... I enjoy the edibles too!

With a few simple and quick projects, it's easy to turn ordinary Halloween candy into a spooky smorgasbord. Muah ah ha ha ha (that was an evil laugh in case you didn't get it, ha!).


MUMMIFIED MILK CHOCOLATE



I can't even get over how adorable these are. And easy! Glue a couple of googly eyes onto a chocolate bar, then wrap each bar in a thin white streamer paper. It's so easy, you won't even have to call your mummy for help.

SKELETON SMILES


What's creepier than a decrepit skeleton mouth? Not much. For those of us who want to push a little nutrition on the kiddos come Halloween night, this easy mix of apple slices, peanut butter and mini marshmellows will do the trick. In fact, you can scare your kids even more by telling them their teeth will look like this if they eat too much Halloween candy... EEK! 

EDIBLE EYEBALLS



How do you make "EW!" and "YUM!" fit into the same sentence? These edible eyeballs. Simply cover Oreos (I prefer double-stuffed myself!) in melted white chocolate and top with Lifesaver gummies and an upside-down chocolate chip. Cool in the refrigerator for 2-3 hours for optimum eyeball crunchiness.


So there you have it! Some of my favorite Halloween candy projects. Please tell me I'm not the only one around here with a sweet tooth?!

Oh and speaking of Mrs. L over at Brooklyn Limestone... she is the queen of Halloween. She throws the best Halloween themed parties every year. And word round the campfire is that she's sharing details of this year's soiree on her blog this week! Go check it out.

***

Pssst! I announced the winner of the Shabby Apple dress giveaway here. Did you win?!
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