It's time now for another episode of ACKHMFOJOPTD

That's "Amber Can't Keep Her Mind Focused On Just One Project These Days." I was catching up on my blog reading, as I'm wont to do these days since I can't read them as regularly as I used to. I was drooling over Rhoda's new plate wall, especially loving her little M plate.


image from Southern Hospitality


image from Southern Hospitality
I've always loved vinyl letters on white dishes, and it's a project I've been wanting to do for a while. Then I remembered: I had both things downstairs in my kitchen, just waiting to be used!



I picked up these little white saucers for only ¢10 each at a Knights of Columbus flea market back in North Carolina. Of course I picked up the tea cups that went with them, but over the years the saucers held up better than their mates. I never had the heart to toss them out and now I'm glad I didn't!

I'd ordered three little letters spelling out E-A-T from Leen the Graphics Queen probably over a month ago. My plan had been to make some Anthropologie inspired cups to hold some silverware.


The thought didn't exactly come through as planned, so I've been hanging onto the little letters, hoping that I could find another way to use them. Well...I think you know where I'm going with all of this...









I wasn't sure if having identical plates was going to look right, since most plate walls are done with a mixed assortment. But since each one of the fonts is different, I think by using matching plates it helps keep it somewhat in line. Different plates and different fonts might have looked too haphazard. I have some Disc Hangers on their way, so now all I have to do is decide where to hang them at! I might have a spot all picked out, but we'll see. When your entire downstairs is an open floor plan, hanging cute little crafts like this becomes a test of your skills.

Stay tuned!

DIY-vintage totes

What's not to love about Layla's reading room at The Lettered Cottage? The stripes, the gorgeous natural light, all those fabulous little trinkets! The whole rooms begs you to crawl inside and snuggle! I saved a picture of her old reading room (they recently did a revamp) where she had a shelf hanging on one of the walls. You can't see it very well, but it's on this wall here.


(photo courtesy of The Lettered Cottage)
I loved the raw wooden texture of the shelf.


(photo courtesy of The Lettered Cottage)

But even more so, I loved the little market tote she had hanging from the pegs.


(photo courtesy of The Lettered Cottage)
Now, I knew that what I wanted did not exist. I wanted something with a hint of Irish to it (because you know I have to have a little something in every room). So I decided to make my own! First I started in Microsoft Office PowerPoint and made this graphic.



I chose to use the name of one of the oldest hotels in Ireland (The Beaufield Mews). Then I found out what street it was on (Stillorgan) and used the Gaelic word for street (sràid). Since the hotel is in the county of Dublin, I made sure to include that as well. And of course, No. 19 is thrown in there because it's the day we got married! =) But I wanted to make sure that once it was printed onto the tote it looked nice and aged. So using the good old fashioned paint program, I used the "spray paint" tool and went to town!



All that was left was to make the tote. I chose to use Zazzle, but you could use Café Press or any other printing company. I had some merchnadise credit so the tote only cost me $5 out of pocket. And this is how it turned out in real life.







I love it!! Best thing? It was incredibly simple to "make!" Now I have the perfect tote to hang on my hook rack. I just need to find some magazines to fill it in !

my $5 side table

My ambitions got the better of me when trying to create a side table to fill a large empty space between our couches. I knew anything store-bought was going to be ridiculously expensive and most likely be too small. Then I got the brilliant idea to build one myself! HA! Easier said than done, my friends! I met difficulties every step of the way, the biggest of which was the issue of the legs themselves. Home Depot sells table legs in two sizes: 15-inches and 29-inches. I wanted my table to be about 22-24-inches. So either way I was going to be either 7-inches too short, or 7-inches too tall. I made the executive decision to go too tall.



Thankfully, I had the foresight to try it out before I added trim and painted. This just wasn't what I had envisioned. So it's now become my garage work table (I needed one of those anyways!). But now, with basically $0 left for this project I was floating up creek about to lose my paddle. Then, it hit me!



Yeah, those are TV trays! They've been taking up space in our coat closet for months. We hardly ever use them and the little stand that holds them has a broken foot. It sways this way and that anytime the door opens and a slight breeze goes by. Now they get a new shot at life as an end table! All I did was cover them with an old white table cloth I picked up at a flea market in North Carolina, and covered that with some sweet seersucker fabric that I picked up from JoAnn's. I got two and a half yards for $5! I loves me some sales!



Then I added a few accessories...



...and my side table was done! I can't believe the solution was sitting in my closet the whole time! And seeing how we got the trays from Wal-Mart five years ago, I'd say they've more than surpassed their life expectancy!



The gorgeous lead glass lamp is from Bed Bath & Beyond. It's a total match to one they carry at Pottery Barn for almost $180 without the lamp shade (the one from BB&B was $100, and I used a 20% coupon). I can't find the PB lamp online, but they were carrying it in our local store when Mom and I visited last week.



I have two projects left before the big reveal! One is drying in my garage as I type and the other is just waiting to be sewn!

I'm linking up to:
Trash to Treasure Tuesday @ Reinvented
Transformation Thursday @ The Shabby Chic Cottage

don't you love when that happens?

You know what I'm talking about: when those little design dilemmas fix themselves without much work on your part? Yeah, don't you just love when that happens?

After I finished shooting the wall unit, I dove right into filling up some of those cubes by shopping the house and deciding what I might need to buy. And since I was ordering things, I went ahead and started to order the zinc tray I've been wanting for the coffee table. Thankfully, I had the foresight to group the items together that would accommodate the 11"x20" tray. Once I was happy with their layout, I got out my Home Depot yardstick and measured. This is what I started with:


(The Ella Canister from Pottery Barn is holding narcissus bulbs and river rocks.)

Hmm...not exactly what I'd pictured. The canister looked way too big and was taking up prime accessorizing space. So I removed it and replaced it with a few items I had sitting on my insanely cheap new Ralph Lauren cake stand. The mason jar is also holding a narcissus bulb (if anyone's keeping track, that's now four mason jars in our home).



Much better! I'd like to figure out how to prop my apple up a little higher so it's not the exact same size as the twig ball, but that's a project for another day. But now what to do with my vase? Well...I do have a big empty cube on the bottom of the wall unit.



Now I need to fill in all that extra space! I probably could have talked to my blooming flowers and heard myself echo in that cavern. After a quick post on my favorite Nest board--ahem! Decorating & Renovating, woot!--I had a plan (thanks Tarheel&Rebels!):

stack the vase on a few books to give it height

find some branches of some kind to fill in the vertical height

add a couple knickknacks

The books were easy, since we're total geek-tastic bookworms literary geniuses. The branches had to be store bought because unfortunately, living on the beach only nets you sand, seashells, and the odd palm frond (plus, our house is so new, we only have saplings in our yard). I bought two of these bundles from Save-On-Crafts so it will be a nice full bundle. However, I didn't like the idea of having their bare bottoms showing (pause for immature chuckling from yours truly), so I grabbed my galvanized tin bucket that I purchased on my last brainwashed shopping spree trip to Pottery Barn.


(Okay, so just imagine that bucket full of warm natural twigs.)

I've really been trying to use books that have some sort of meaning to them while decorating. I love these two. The Southern Mysteries book I bought when we were moving to North Carolina. The West Point book was the first book I ever bought Jason (for Christmas, from Tuesday Mornings!).



Now we're getting somewhere! But what of the knickknacks? I'm in pink puffy heart love with porcelain or milk glass figurines. But I didn't want to put anything too precious that close to the ground. On the very very rare occasion we have children in our house, I'd hate to think of the hellfire I might rain down on my friends if their precious baby broke my antique knickknack. (<--- we're definitely not ready for kids yet, can you tell?) Then I remembered something I'd recently seen on etsy.



Oh God, is that not shabby-chic scrumptious?! Maybe it's not everyone's style, but I love it (if you love it too, you can see it at Family Attic). The only problem is I have no place to put it. It's too large for the walls in our house (which are mostly lined with windows--not that I'm complaining). So I figured I'd make a small one for myself using some leftover wood scraps and modge podge.






(Find these fonts here and here--they're free!)

Isn't it cute? And didn't it fill in that front gap perfectly? All I did was paint a little 9.5"x2.5" piece of scrap wood with Rust-Oleum Heirloom White. Once it was dry I modge podged my little paper sign onto the wood (I find this is a great alternative if you don't want to buy vinyl letters, or can't afford a Cricut machine like moi). Once everything was dry, I distressed the corners, went over it with my Ralph Lauren glaze, and hot glued some wood dowels on the back. Easy peasy.

Now all I need is my twigs, my filigree cross, and to figure out what the heck I'm going to do with the top right cube, and I'll be set! And I'm open to suggestions! ;)

I'm linking this little project up to:
Saturday Night Special @ Funky Junk Interiors

lots o' wood trim

When the fellow in the Home Depot lumber department mentioned "iron-on veneer trim," my curiosity was immediately piqued. Especially since it turns out our Home Depot is the only one that doesn't carry decorative wood trim. But for about $5 I got 25 feet of trim, and unless I'd been digging through the scrap bins, there's no way I'd have found such a deal.

When deciding that I was going to refurbish the hulking monster we call a wall unit, I new I wanted to bring it out of the eighties and give it some more charm. I knew I wanted to apply some sort of backing to it, but that meant I had to turn the unit around, since the front edges curved; I figured their natural overlap would create the perfect foundation to apply a simple plywood back (hopefully to be covered by bead board wallpaper). And oh. my. god. taking the measurements for each of those cubes was suuuuuch a paint in the arse!



But before I could delve into any of that, I needed to finish off the raw edges at the back-soon-to-be-front of the piece. Enter "Veneer Edging."


Sorry for the empty packaging--I was too excited to try it out and forgot to take a photo of it all wrapped up.

It's pretty straight forward when it comes to using it. You just roll out your desired length, trim, and iron on using an everyday household iron! I know! Weird! You just set your iron to the cotton/linen setting (no steam) and go to town. The glue on the back of the wood melts from the heat, adhering it to your project. I'm sure my neighbors were wondering why the crazy lady across the street was ironing a huge hunk of wood.


I swear I didn't iron this piece on crooked; it hasn't been attached yet.

It really does look like wood and it can be stained or painted once it's applied. It will need some sanding (it has rough little edges, so watch out for splinters--I've had three so far), and I'll probably use a tiny bit of wood putty to hide the seems from where the separate pieces meet up. I'm pretty sure that it saved me many hours of work (sawing and mitering corners of real wood trim), and probably a pretty penny (or dollar!) since I would have had to buy almost 32-feet of trim to complete this beast.



It makes a huge difference in the appearance of the raw edge. I can't wait to see how it looks all primed and painted. I thought our dinning room table and chairs were a huge undertaking in themselves, but I pretty sure this piece is going to be my pièce de résistance. Y'know, if I can get my vision to come to life.

restuffing the couches

I figured while I'm busy cleaning and doing the more tedious parts of the living room overhaul, I'd share one of the projects I'd previously worked on for it.

About three months ago, we paid to turn our feather-down couch cushions into foam couch cushions. We went local, got a quote, paid the price, and I started questioning the decision immediately. Not because I didn't love the new cushions. But because we paid over $400 to have just the back cushions re-stuffed. We hadn't even switched out the seat cushions yet. Granted, $400 is still cheaper than buying a new couch, but if the price was going to be similar, we could have easily purchased a new Ektorp sofa system from IKEA. But, these are hand-me-down couches from my mom and I'm attached to them for some silly little reason. Give me a few more years and I may be ready for a full replacement.

Here you can see how badly the seat cushions were sagging in their covers--they look almost deflated.



But in the meantime, I still had half foam/half feather couches. We've known for a long time that we wanted slipcovers from Surefit. I'd spend hours drooling over how pristine the couches looked in some of those slipcovers. We finally took the plunge and bought a set. It was then I knew we were going to have to find a simple solution for those sagging seat cushions. Little did they know, but Surefit actually gave me my answer: I'd stuff the cushions myself! The best news? So can you!

SUPPLIES:

Sofa, love seat, or chair cushion to be re-stuffed

Polyester fiberfil
SIDE NOTE: Do not buy your fiberfil at Michael's if you can help it. They sell 1 pound bags for $5. Wal-Mart sells a 10-pound box for $20.

Slipcover

Remove your first cushion. I gave my couch a good vacuuming as I removed each one. Flip it around so that the bottom is now facing up, and the zipper is now facing out. Unzip your cushion cover.



Hopefully, whatever your couch is filled with is enclosed in a casing of some sort. Mine looks like a pillow case. Open your box of fiberfil, and begin stuffing it into the back, sides, and corners of your cushion cover. You're filling in all that extra space the sagging has created.





Once the cushion cover is taught on the sides, begin filling in the center with fiberfil. I found the best way to do this was to just shove a bunch in there and work it around with my hands. Be sure to "tear" the fiberfil apart to help eliminate lumps and bumps (no matter how good you are at this, you'll still wind up with slightly lumpy cushions).



Continue stuffing towards the front.

Depending on your material, cushions size, and a whole lot of other factors, you may stop stuffing in a different area. I stopped about an inch before the zipper.



Zip up your cushion. This may take a little work, since your cushion cover is once again full.

Sit on it. I know, "Happy Days Reference." Seriously though, take a seat on your newly stuffed cushion. Does it feel firm? Are there any "holes" where you may have missed with fiberfil? If so, continue stuffing. If not, repeat these steps with each cushion.

Here I have two of the three done. You can see what a big difference it made!



Once your cushions are stuffed, dress your couch with your new slipcover. This may require some cursing, crying, and a lot of huffing and puffing (if you're like me), until your husband steps in and tells you to go upstairs while he makes it look all pretty. Contrary to what SureFit says, these things are not the easiest to get on!



Now all it needs is some throw pillows, a throw, and to be steamed (and the rug will need to be vacuumed thanks to all those fluffy stray bits of fiberfil)! But at least these puppies will last us another few years--and it only cost $20 for the stuffing rather than $400 for the foam!

This tutorial will be placed in the HOW-TO'S section for furture reference.

I'll be linking up to Funky Junk's SNS #15.

pier 1? more like, pier $1!

Apparently, I'm a $2 whore.


How many of you came running out of reader to see what the heck I was talking about?! ;) Actually, these are what I'm talking about.



I know I've blogged about that estate sale warehouse I love to go to. I even took my friend Katie there last week. I've been trying to fill up my shelf with candlesticks to make a full vignette of nothing but candles (but I need some ivory and white tapers in there with all that green). I'm focusing mostly on glass and metal to give it some kind of depth.

The reason I call myself a $2 whore?



All my candles either were, or average out to be exactly $2! And some of those are the heavy lead crystal and the Clue-type candlesticks (you know? The ones you could whomp someone over the head with, and there ain't no way they're getting up?).

Now this little guy:



Was actually from Pier One. The $15 price tag was still affixed to it when I picked it up off the table! I just love that it looks like a little flower on a stem. When I got up to the register, the estate sale hadn't put their own tag on it, so the proprietor just say, "Eh. A dollar." OKAY!

All it takes to get those brassy tarnished candlesticks from "estate sale cheap," to "vignette chic" is a fresh coat of primer and Rust-Oleum Heirloom White.


(Forgive the awful flash--but you can see the way the light bounces off those glass sticks.)

I want to buy up a bunch of short fat ones to fill in some of the gaps, but this is a work in progress collection.

Also being painted over the weekend were some old wooden candlesticks from World Market that I owned pre-Jason (and they still sell these today)! Here they are in our fall decor.



They look great topped with pumpkins and surrounded by leaves. But there was one glaring issue. Once that big entertainment piece gets painted black, those candles sticks are going to blend right in. Heirloom White wasn't going to work either because then they would have blended in with the white wall behind it. So I just let them sit, waiting for inspiration to hit me. And then, it did!

Remember this post on our new found affection for green? LIGHT BULB! I ran out to our laundry room, grabbed a can of Rust-Oleum Apple Green and went to town!





Now, granted, they look very nekkid up there with no accessories, and they look slightly odd with that honey-colored wood. But once that thing is black, these babies are going to pop!

And I think that may be one of the next big things on my DIY list. I'm pretty sure I've figured out a way to do it that won't require me buying or renting any special tools. Stay tuned!

I'll be linking up to Reinvented's Trash to Treasure Tuesday.