Give me some color!

We have a lot of brown in our house. Brown couch, brown coffee table, wood floors, brown kitchen cabinets....

I finally decided to add some color to our house. I think pops of color can boost your mood and even make a space appear more welcoming. I get intimidated by matching colors and patterns. I don't think I have a good eye for it. But I dove in!

First I made my own pillow case covers. They are removable, so I can change them up when I get bored. I had a few pillows at home, and I bought 2 pillow inserts at Joann's Fabric. They are so easy to make! This video explains it pretty well.

We don't have any lamps in our house, so I thought what a great way to add color. I bought this lamp and the shade (not pictured) for $8 at a thrift store.  

I had trouble deciding what color looked best. I panted the lamp yellow first and left the shade white. It was just too much. Then I painted it gray leaving a few yellow strips. Didn't like that either. This is what is looks like now. I still might add fabric to the shade instead of the yellow.

At the thrift store I also found this wood basket for $2 and this frame for $3. The color on the frame wasn't too pretty, but I knew when I spray painted it, the design on the frame would really stand out. 

The basket has been transformed into a red toy box for the dogs.  

I bought the frame specifically for a vintage hat advertisement that I bought a few months ago. It fit perfectly and is now hanging in the bathroom. I love it! 

I also found this candle holder at a thrift store. It was an ugly brass/rusty color. When I first bought it I painted it white, but now it is a beautiful red!

My other recent thrift store finds include this rusty/antique looking lantern ($3) and 3 chinese bowls. I grabbed the bowls as soon as the staff put them on the shelf right next to me. I think I paid $7 for all three. They are beautiful and have chinese markings on the bottom. 

DIY: Necklace Frame

I love wearing long necklaces, but I never had a proper place to store them. I would normally hang them on a hanger in the closet, but then I forgot about them. I have a jewelry tree that's pictured at the end of the post, but they didn't really fit. Today I got really motivated and decided to create one for myself out of an old frame I had lying around. 

First I put on "french cafe" music on Pandora so help my creativity flow.

1. A wood frame I got for free

2. Hammer and nails

3. Painted the frame black with two coats. Then hammered the nails and painted those black too.

4. Found extra scrap paper I had lying around to frame.

5. Hang it on the wall.

6. Beautiful!

This took me about an hour to do. Not bad for creating it from things I had at home!

Office in the making

Hey everyone! Thought I'd pop in for a little blogy time. What is the special occasion? The exciting transformation of our spare room. Mr. Brilliant and I live in a small, two-bedroom house. Our second "spare" bedroom is used to store everything that doesn't fit in the rest of the house. In other words, it is a disaster junk room. See for yourself...and these pictures were taken after I had "contained" most of the loose items into boxes. The door always remained closed, so we didn't have to face the embarrassing mess.

Mr. Brilliant is going to be starting college soon, and he has other side jobs, so we decided we needed a real office. First task was to find a desk. We looked at all the different office stores, Target, Walmart, and even thrift stores. We couldn't find anything new under $300, and thrift stores had nothing. Then we looked at craigslist and found some hope with many desks to choose from. (I love craigslist. Did I ever tell you I found my last 3 jobs on craigslist!).

We found two matching desks for $25 each! Sturdy metal desk, not the cheap particle board kind. The one pictured below is my desk. Mr. Brilliant's is against the window, but is not as pretty as my area (aka not ready to be photographed).

And for 5 bucks I got the white board, bulletin board, and wood file box at garage sales! 

As you can see, the room still needs some work, but it's getting there! As I sit here blogging at my new desk, I feel so much more organized and free from distractions. It's amazing how your environment can really affect you motivation and mood. 

What part of your house do you like to blog or do work/homework?

My Birthday Party

My vision for my birthday party came to life with a pretty canopy of lights along with flower and candle covered tables. Oh, and Frank Sinatra singing in the background brought it all together. 

We have a huge deck on the side of our house where we do our entertaining. 

I didn't have much time to take pictures, so I'm bummed this was the only night shot I got of the whole deck. 

You can't really see the beautiful tables. But it gives you idea of the lighting.

I made this 4 layered snickerdoodle cake. I'm so happy how it turned out. I got the recipe here. 

I also made this cute bunting for the cake top. I got the free download here. 

The cake was eaten up and I received a lot of compliments on it. 

My aunt brought the apples and carmel. She had a great (and cute!) idea to use twigs for the apple sticks.

Is was a great party with friends, family, and lots and lots food! We are still recovering and still have tons of left overs!

We've decided to leave the lights up on the deck for awhile so we can enjoy the romantic feeling it adds to our deck. 

DIY: Frame Collage

I've been inspired by many photo collages in blog land, and I finally got around to making one. (The wall is actually light gray, but in the picture it looks yellow). Every time I go to thrift stores I check out their frame section and over the last few months I've collected all these frames. I try to get different sizes with different borders so they don't match. I still need to put pictures in the oval frames. Or maybe not, I kind of like how it looks. 

Frames Before

A trip to Michael's to pick up some paint.

Laying out the frames to decide the design. Lia wanted to help out, but she fell asleep on the job.

Tada! As you can see, the huge wall needed something there. 

These ones I made and ordered prints. 

 Arrow border graphic from Amy Morby

Are you working on any projects for your home?

DIY Camera Bag

Oh man, it's been a tough week, but I finally found time to make my own camera bag. After much research online to find the perfect bag, and realizing that I would have spend at least $80 to get a bag that I really liked, I decided to DIY a bag. 

I spent about $45 to make this bag (Purse from Target=$35, supplies=$10). So if you already have your own bag, this project can be really cheap! I was looking for a cute bag that I could wear across my body that could also carry my personal items. (The picture really doesn't do the purse justice).

I went to Joanna's Fabrics and bought foam, fabric, and thread. Then I measured the inside of the purse and cut out the foam. After breaking the needle on my sewing machine and getting the thread jammed several times, I completed the project. Oh, and I had to hand sew all the velcro because I forgot to do it before sewing the fabric over the foam. 

I measured the sides wrong, but this allows it to adjust to which lens I have on my camera and gives it a snug fit to protect it. The extra padding sticking out is where my wallet will go. 

The bag also has multiple pockets to keep my other personal belongings and I can just take the padding out if I want to use it as just a purse. 

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Tomorrow I will be cleaning like a mad woman getting reading for a BBQ were are having with some friends. Mr. Brilliant went out fishing today, so we could cook up some fresh fish! Yummy!

To my friends out in blogland, sorry for the lack of commenting from me this week. It's been a stressful week. I was preparing for an internship interview I had today. They wanted a portfolio with work samples and I had to prepare my answers for their possible questions. The good news is that the interview went well!

Have a nice weekend!