Dare To DIY

Kim over at Newlywoodwards has invited me to be a part of her Dare To DIY party extravaganza. Over the next six weeks she's daring us to do a bunch of different projects, and share them all through a very fun party! I am so excited. Head on over to her blog to get all the details, and then start your planning! The first week's theme is Dare to BE THANKFUL, so I am trying to come up with a fun project. What do you think I should do?

Project Curb Appeal - The Final Reveal!

The day has finally come to reveal our finished Project Curb Appeal. It is hard to believe that we started this project four months ago, and we are just finishing up now. I really expected to have this done a lot sooner. However, time and money crunches meant that we finished it up just in the nick of time, before winter reared its ugly head. Here's where we started,

And here's Wendhurst Castle's new look.

If you recall, in this post I laid out the grand plan for amping up our exterior's appeal, and doing it on a dime. I even did a little Photoshop mockup of what the house would look like once everything was repaired, painted and restored, and the plants had matured.

We worked on each part of the project as we got a chance over the summer, and into fall. Of course, we had the rainiest summer I can remember in a long time, so that made the painting projects difficult. It was great for all the new plants though, I have to say. I hardly had to water.

The first thing we did was tear out the old bushes, which I showed you here. We talked about finding a great deal on Ebay for the boxwoods that we wanted, and picking up a few daylilies for color. I also showed you how I made over the little garden area by the stairs, with some free plants, some annuals and a happy mum.

I also wanted big, showy baskets of petunias hanging from the porch roof. While you won't see them in the final after, they hung on the porch for most of the summer, and looked beautiful. :-) Here's a little mosaic of the various plants we put in throughout the summer.

The bushes really took off once summer started cooling down. There are a couple that are looking decidedly less stick-ish, and much more bushy.

In July I painted the front door and the trim around it. I am so in love with the colors that we chose, and the door looks fantastic now. Quite a difference from the way it looked when we first moved in!

Also in July, Lover and I tackled the broken down, falling apart porch stairs. We had never worked with concrete before, so there was definitely a learning curve, but they turned out fantastic. They're so much safer, and they look great! I have to give credit where credit is due here, and say that Lover did 99% of this project. My handsome hubby has got mad skillz!

In August I blogged about the fantastic deal we got on a hanging, craftsman style pendant. This lovely light only set us back 30 buckaroos, but what it did for the house's looks is priceless. I am seriously so in love with this light. :-)

Painting the windowsills and the porch floor was easy enough, other than trying to find a time when it wasn't raining. The sills all got a couple of coats of Valspar's Native Henna (the color of the trim around the door)

and the floor is Kilz' Antique Spice (matched to Glidden's Porch and Floor paint). It's such a rich, warm brown, I love it.

I found two plastic pots at Big Lots that I transformed into cool metal looking planters with a bunch of spray paint. Then I scored big time at Home Depot with their 50% perennial sale (end of season) and picked up two Dwarf Arborvitae. These bright little evergreens will grow to be about three feet tall, just the right height to the give the door an extra special touch. I'm planning on weaving little white lights through them for Christmas.

And did you see the awesome, fabulous mailbox hanging on the wall next to the door? Lover made it for me. Yep, that's right, he made it. Because he is awesome like that. This was the picture I showed him, when I asked him to make it for me.

And this is what he created for me.

Isn't he awesome? Previously we had a sorry, rusted metal mailbox that just wasn't cutting it. Last summer I quickly sprayed it black to hide the rust, but it was still ugly. This wooden one is so much prettier, and the mail actually fits into it. Novel concept, I know.

So there you have it. A house's transformation from blah to gorgeous that was relatively easy on manpower hours and the wallet. Here's a breakdown of the cost:

• Paint for door, trim, and floor $60
• Plants for landscaping (including two kinds of boxwoods, daylilies, mums, and clematis, and evergreens for porch) $72
• Porch Light $30
• Supplies for stair repair $75
• Chairs for porch $45
• Table for porch $1
• Pots for evergreens and daylilies $40
• Planter for stairs $7

Grand Total: $330

Not bad overall. There are still some little items on our to-do list, as always. I had originally intended to replace the house numbers, but I haven't decided where they should move to yet, and we need to come up with a solution for seeing them at night. We also want to install spotlights on the large trees that flank the porch, but we haven't found the right solution for that either. We can't run electrical because there's a sidewalk in the way, and we haven't found a strong enough solar light yet. And, we have to add the ceiling medallion to the light fixture to cover up the hole the previous light left. But I have to say, I love coming home now, and the sight of our house makes me smile every time. :-)

Linked to:

It's So Very Creative @ It's So Very Cheri

Metamorphosis Monday @ Between Naps on The Porch

Room a Month @ Shades of Pink

Fall festival @ DIY Showoff

Made It Monday @ Persimmon Perch

DIY Day @ A Soft Place to Land

A Real Bedroom

I don't often come across bedrooms that appeal to my sense of style. A lot of professionally (or otherwise) decorated bedrooms seem too done up, or simply unrealistic. For me, a bedroom is glamorous, romantic and relaxing. It's where I am headed with our bedroom, although I'm still working on it for our room.

I found this image on House Beautiful's gallery, and it spoke to me.

Although I prefer darker, richer colors in our bedroom, this one is beautiful. I love the neutral bedding, it is so relaxing. The walls are awesome, and that barely there sage color on the bed and bench is gorgeous. The light in this room is amazing, which is probably one of the most influencing factors, for me. I crave light. In my soul. No, I really do.

I think the two elements of this room I like the best, however, are the ceiling fan and the sneakers. You may hate the look of ceiling fans (I know I often do) but to me it says that the people who live in this room are real. They get hot, and need a fan. I know we do! And even though those sneakers are part of the "styling" of the room, I love the little reminder that this is a room to kick off your shoes and relax. As a bedroom should be.

What's a bedroom image that inspires you?

To Be My Husband's Wife: Part 4

To read the rest of the posts in this series, click here.

Wedding planning went by in a blur, and before I knew it we were married and making a life together in our little apartment by the lake. Adjusting to being married wasn't hard at all. It seemed so natural to be together, to wake up and see Lover in the morning, to kiss him when he came home from work.

Adjusting to keeping a house, however, was a little more difficult. I was working part time and going to school part time, and I was also trying to be the perfect wife. I've always been a perfectionist, and this was no different. I wanted to show everyone that Lover had "scored a catch" so to speak, that I was worth having. If you know my husband, you know that he is incredibly laid back and stable. If you know me, you know that I am not those things. :-) I was constantly worried over every little detail. Oh no, the house is a complete mess, what will he think of me? Oh no, I forgot to do the laundry and now he has no clean shirts, will he be mad? In my quest to be the perfect wife, I was so stressed out that I wasn't accomplishing a whole lot. Lover had several conversations with me about the expectations I had set up for myself. Not, mind you, ones that he had for me, but ones that I thought I needed to meet.

A few people had made some comments to me before I got married that I would be throwing my life (read career) away if I got married. I knew that I wanted to get married, and I knew that I was happy (ecstatically so!) to be married, but these comments were still in the back of my mind. I wanted to show those people that I could work, finish my degree, and make a home for the two of us as well. These were the people that I felt were silently judging me, and setting expectations for me. And I was killing myself trying to show them that they were wrong.

At this point in my life I had decided that I didn't want to be a "career woman" anyway. That is, I didn't want to have to work long hours, and become the ultimate business woman. The creative, carefree side of me felt strangled in the business environment, and working a rigid schedule set by someone else exhausted me. I had no energy left to pursue anything I was actually interested in.

It was about this time that I began to explore the idea of becoming a professional photographer. I had watched the photographers at our wedding, and I realized that I could see myself doing that as a career. I've always loved photography, and I began to toy with the idea of starting my own business. I knew it would take a long time to develop a portfolio, to build up a clientele, to prove myself. But it was something I was willing to put the time into.

Lover encouraged me to follow my dreams. He did the research on all the hard stuff, while I devoted myself to learning my equipment, doing some practice shoots and trying out new techniques. As I spent more and more time on my photography, I realized that at some point I would not be able to work an office job and devote the necessary time to my budding business.

I began to consider the idea of not working a 9-5 job, and just pursuing my business. Then, I left my office job for a job with a mortgage company that fell through, and suddenly found myself without a job.

Kitchen Valance Tutorial

As promised, here I am with a step-by-step tutorial of how I made the cute little valance that is now helping to prettify my kitchen window.

Materials you will need:

• Dishtowel


• Curtain rod (or spring rod like I used)


• Bias Tape or Ribbon


• Thread

Tools you will need:

• Sewing machine


• Iron, ironing board and starch (optional)


• Measuring tape


• Bulldog clips and/or pins


• Seamripper


• Scissors

I started out with a dish towel (the smooth, thin kind) from Big Lots that set me back $1.50. The colors were warm like the colors of my kitchen, and I have a coffee/cafe theme going on, so the little cappuccino cup worked great.

1. The first thing I did was rip out the seams from the top and the bottom of the towel. These are the narrower ends of the towel, and I just used a seam ripper to yank those little threads out. Leave the side seams intact, as they will save you a lot of extra sewing! Once I had the seams out, and had ironed the towel flat, I began measuring the towel.

2. My window was 31" wide, and the towel was 16" wide and 27" long. I decided that I would cut the towel into three parts, each about 9" tall. (1a) The middle part would have the cappuccino cup on it, and then a plain piece would go on each side. Once I had each piece cut out, I matched the right sides of the side seams together and ran a straight stitch down one side and then the other. (2a)

Then I pressed the seams open so they would lay flat.

3. Now I had one long piece, hemmed on both narrow ends, with a raw edge on top and on bottom. Using the previous hem as a guide, I pressed the first 1/2" of the bottom up, towards the back side,

then rolled that over again to make a nice neat hem for the bottom of the valance. I ran a straight stitch all along the bottom of the valance to make an even hem.

4. I had some oyster colored bias tape left over from a different project that I used to dress the valance up a little bit.

If you have ribbon you could use that as well, or you could leave this part out entirely. :-) I measured the length of the valance (now 48") and cut about a 50" length of bias tape. This will allow enough tape to wrap around the back of the valance so that the cut end doesn't show. This is like the closure on a bag of coffee, where you pinch the little twisty tie back over itself to seal the bag. Same idea.

5. I positioned the bias tape just above the hem I had just created on the valance. Using white thread and a zig zag stitch, I attached the tape to the valance. If you are using ribbon, and it is wide enough, you could also use fusible hem tape to simply iron the ribbon onto the valance.

6. Next I pressed the top of the valance down about a 1/2", towards the wrong side of the fabric. The next step will be to make the pleats, so this way the top has a nice smooth hem to work with.

7. Here's where you will need to do some math. I knew that I wanted the cappuccino cup to be centered on the valance, and the design was about 8" wide. From there I decided the pleats would be about 2" worth of material, and then figured out how many more pleats would fit based on the width of my fabric, and the width of the window. For my valance, that meant two 4.5" panels on either side of the main panel.

8. Here's a little diagram of the measurements for the pleats, and the order that you should iron them in. Use plenty of steam, and starch if you want, to make the pleats very crisp. They'll be easier to manage if you do.

9. I used little bulldog clips to hold the pleats in place across the top until they were all done and I was ready to sew them in place.

Then I ran a straight stitch across the top of the valance, making sure that each pleat was laying down flat and smooth before stitching across it.

My fabric was very light, but if you are using a heavier weight fabric I would run a second seam beneath the first to help the valance hold its shape.

10. Next I cut seven 4" sections of bias tape for the loops that would attach the valance to the curtain rod.

I folded them in half and attached them at even intervals along the back of the valance. I sewed them on by hand so that the thread would not show through on the front. By the way, isn't the engagement ring my lover got for me beautiful? I love it. :-)

11. You're all set! Slide the loops onto the curtain rod, and hang in place! Enjoy your custom, frugal valance that you made all by your onesome!

Linked to DIY Day over at A Soft Place to Land. :-)

October 2009 Recap

For my recap for October, I am going to do something a little different.

We are still making progress on our listed goals for 2009, but I have nothing new to report on that end. I'm still reading non-fiction books, still working on new piano pieces, still sewing some projects. We're still saving, still spending time with family, and still working on the missions trip to Spain.

We've accomplished a lot of our goals for 2009, and we've also worked on the house a lot. This month we've been focusing on the basement renovation, but we are still working on demolition and garbage removal. It is a huge task. We're also still tweaking the floor plans, there is a lot we want to include in the space downstairs, and it is taking some master planning to be able to include everything.

A few weeks ago I listed my goals for fall. So far, we have:

• FINALLY finished Project Curb Appeal. Watch for some awesome before and after pictures at the end of the week.
• Finished the fall cleaning. Just in time for my brother to move in, and I feel like I have my sanity back, now that my house is sparkly clean.
• We had a small birthday party for Lover at the beginning of October. It was a fun day with family, and he got some great gifts.
• We carved a small pumpkin on Halloween, in between handing out candy to little ghosts and goblins.

I'm still working on some of the other goals;

• I've purchased all of the supplies for the Christmas gifts I'll be making for the nieces and nephews, and our siblings as well.
• I've also purchased the fabric to replace the lining in my winter coat. I am totally intimidated by this project, I will letcha know how it goes.
• We're working on stocking the freezer and pantry, although it is definitely harder with another hungry man in the house!
• We're hoping to go to a corn maize before it gets freezing cold. Our weekends have been really busy, so I'm not sure if it will happen.

And of course, we are still looking forward to lots of yummy food at Thanksgiving! That is, of course, if we can figure out who we'll be spending the holiday with. It's definitely a blessing to have so much family, but a challenge as well!

Don't forget to vote today!!!

Kitchen Valance

My kitchen needed some dressing up, so I decided to get creative and add a pretty little valance. Unfortunately, there aren't any valances that are my style, so I had to make my own! Ultimately I end up liking what I make myself better anyways, so I'm glad that the big box stores didn't have the perfect piece of fabric.

I used a dish towel, some binding tape and a spring rod to add a touch of soft fabric to my kitchen.

Here is the before,

and the lovely little after!

My computer is acting up tonight, but come back tomorrow to see how I converted this little dish towel into a pretty little valance! :-)