My Nails

Oh sigh, I took my acrylics off, here are a few before and after pics. You really can't tell a huge difference, well maybe in the length but otherwise? The pictures don't tell the whole story. I don't have regular nails like other people, mine are super thin and always have been. If I want to keep natural nails I have to layer 5 or more coats of polish and they still end up bending and breaking and peeling and just generally hurt.  

Which is why I always go the fake nail route. But it's been a while since I went and had them done, as I can usually fill them myself. So when I had one pop off recently I decided screw it I'm taking them off and trying to grow them out on my own. I'm thinking that I have a better diet now so maybe they will grow in healthier? Ok doubtful but I'm gonna try. So anyway here are my most recent polish jobs for your entertainment/ motivation/ yeah something to look at lol. 

I should really try taking pictures in better light now that I look at them :( oh well enjoy anyway! 

Dots as a French. Super easy and was cute. 

Glitter alone, hated it, added a pink jelly layer, needed more, added another layer of glitter yay! Ok I liked this, but it was a pain to take off. 

Something different. Used a few yellow hex glitters and this didn't last but a few days, not sure why but the polish peeled off my nails, I don't think I had them roughed up enough after taking my fake nails off. 

Dots, I like dots they are easy and cute and not enough women try them. ;) 

Coffee Table awesomeness!

Before of my table, actually this is a before/after shot, this table used to have plain square legs, and I had another table with these pretty legs, and had my husband switch them out for me ( he's a good guy, puts up with my crap, helps me with all my projects, etc) lol so yeah this is the after/ before  shot. 

Over all not a bad table.  Perfect height for putting your feet up, but wasnt very comfy, so when i found wonderful pinterest and started seeing all of the beautiful upholstered round tables all over the place, i thought man that would make this table awesome! 

It had one spot on top I don't know how that spot got there, but this used to be our kitchen table and it came with the husband so, who knows...

And the after! OMG Squeel! Lol yep I love how this turned out! 

I had these grand plans for lots of buttons, but after coving and putting on the first round, you can't even see them, so I didn't bother putting any more on. 

This has a 1" foam padding on it under the material, which is just enough padding to keep my feet comfy when I put them up. At some point I plan on DIYing a tray to cozy up the look of it, maybe add some candles or what not. That will be in the new house, for now though, I have one more project I plan on doing this week, and I hope to post by next weekend, it includes more black spray paint and more of the canvas drop cloth I used on the stereo cabinet JOY! Love crafting projects! 

Some details about this project

Table: Free repurposed

Material: $10.64 for 1.5 yards at Walmart

Foam padding: $16 @ Walmart and I did have to cut it and piece it together to make it fit! 

Paint: already had it so again free

Total cost: roughly $27 + tax 

 I bought spray adhesive to attach the foam to the table, it wasn't the best bond, but it worked as a temporary holder. I followed Pinterest tips and sprayed outside, so no overspray stickiness issues ;). 

I then turned the table upside down and used my electric meat knife to cut the foam, it was so easy! I highly recommend doing that!

Then I sprayed the top again and laid out the fabric and smoothed it out, if you are using plain fabric I would probably iron it before using it. 

Once it was smoothed and semi attached with the spray adhesive, we flipped it back over and I used my handy dandy staple gun and stapled it down really good, if you have never done this before start with a staple on each side, then go between 2sides and staple in the middle of that, basically you want to work small areas and pull the fabric a little taught before stapling. It creates less wrinkles and puckers this way. A good thing about fabric with a print like I chose is that it covers almost any mess up! 

I also added some buttons, there are 4 in the photo above. Yep I couldn't see them either and after covering those I quit. It was a decorative element that was for aesthetics only and since I couldn't see them I didn't waste anymore time making more.  

I still want to get a scotch guard type spray and seal this before it gets dirty, but basically that's it. Lots of staples. And I am thrilled to pieces at how it looks! 

Thanks for reading! 

Finished record player revamp!

So remember the before brown plastic molded into a cool funky design... I liked it. 

The after: black and cream..... Do you like the metal in the middle painted cream, or should I have gone all black? These are my last minute projects before we move, and need something to do because I am going crazy all my stuff is packed away! 

And a view of it opened, we did not paint the inside, it seemed a lot easier to just edge it and leave the faux wood veneer alone, it's still in good shape so why mess with it? I used canvas drop cloth in front of the speakers, my main design is going to center around tan, black and white. With lots of color pops thrown in the usual places. I can't wait to see it all come together counting down the days! 

And another shot closed, I like it. Actually I think I am going to love it in the new space, and I already use it a lot.  So :-) JOY! 

Details: 

Console : $40 (ouch) but vintage lovely and I love it already! 

Spray paint : $12  (4 cans black, already had cream paint for front deco pieces) 

Canvas $15 ( only used a tiny little bit so lets say I used $2 worth) 

Total: roughly $54 plus tax

Husband again helped immensely took it all apart, helped me carry it outside, did most of the painting, I guess he wanted to help, so he checked it a lot more than I did.... I didn't tell him that I had planned on long dry times between coats. So anywho, it got done and he even put it all back together today. Even though I again had planned on a few days for the paint to cure. But all is good, it's sitting downstairs open and curing, and beautiful! My oldest even came in and says " oh my gawd mom it's beautiful!" 

JOY! :) 

Record - 8track - Radio Console Revamp to fabulous!

I am so excited to introduce you to my newest project, this is older than me and still works! 

Ok it's in pieces. I forgot to save a good before Picture before the husband tore it apart for me. And before I started trying colors on it.  But here were my "trying it on shots" I used an app for iPad called home styler, you can do basically what I did below, plus use it on walls and add furniture etc. I like it for trying different colors on things before I commit to painting. :) 

Try to ignore the mess in the background, we are in the process of moving and this is our walk out basement and everything non essential to daily living is already packed and in this area ;) 

So I got it down to either blue or black..... The handles came off the front and there is material behind the side mounted speakers which I am going to swap out too. Right now it's red fur type material. So 70's! 

So which do you think I should have done blue or black? Stay tuned for the finished reveal! Yay I love new projects! 

4th of July nails

4th of July nails, super easy to do. Just use a pin head for big dots and a tooth pick for little dots:) 

Why I have fake nails in case you care. 

I don't know about you all, but I used to love doing my own nails. What I didn't love was the time it takes. Let me back up by saying I have acrylic nails, I have been blessed / cursed with thin hair and nails. My whole life my hair has looked greasy 10 minutes after it gets washed, and my nails have been non stop breaking as far back as I  can remember. So after I got older I realized I can change shampoos ( I still look greasy after 12 hours,no matter what shampoo I try) and I can get acrylics to grow out with my real nails and I no longer have to deal with nail pain! Yay a solution! 

What else have I tried? Gel on my real nails, was the same as just using polish. Using a lot of layers of polish, they still broke off and hurt like hell, cause the breaks were low on the nail bed and didn't just break a little they broke a lot.  So acrylic nails work for me. 

Measure It Up Ruler

My kids are older, ages 11, 18 & 19, but when we moved here 7 years ago we started keeping track of their height on a pole in the basement ( my desk used to be right beside it so it made sense at the time) Now that we are thinking about moving I had to figure out a way to transfer those heights to a new house.

Did you know I LOVE Pinterest. Did a quick search for Ruler growth Charts and wow they are everywhere!  And so I conferred with the husband and he was kind enough to procure a board for me AND he even stained it a light golden brown! WOW!

All I had to do was pull out my normal size ruler and make the marks. I made it easy and only marked inches, and doesn't it look awesome?

Quilting Inspiration

We are in the middle of trying to sell our house and I am in between jobs, and there is only so much packing you can do before you are "done until you actually move" and once most all of your extra stuff is packed away and there really isn't a lot of clutter because all the pretty clutter is packed away, well the cleaning gets really easy after that and takes a lot less time to tidy up now. and I am running out of things to keep myself busy. I have 1 crochet granny stripe blanket I am working on and another cable knit blanket I am working on, but I've gotten to the point in both of those where I think I am getting carpel tunnel from the weight and cant work on them long before my wrists starts to seize up and cry when I drag them out for more than 15 minutes at a time. Wow this is a rambling post isnt it? lol Sad too considering I am not even 40 yet and already have knitting and crochet woes.

So anyway I started a hex quilt a while back, I've got my little travel box of material, and work on it a little at a time ( See below for pics ) . So I spend a lot of time on pinterest and flickr groups looking for inspiration and I found a blog tutorial on how to make really easy hexs that are quilt as you go and join and done..... SO now that I found this sure easy way to do it, I've now told the hubby that he gets to drag out my sewing stuff from the storage room cause I want to start on one ASAP. I even plan on going to wally world and hoping that they have a hex ruler for me to use as a template. I will post pics as I get this done. but until then I wanted to post a link to the tutorial and to a few other sites that are awesome for quilts =)

Sew and Flip hex's at Jaybird Quilts Blog

mrspeeksfarmhouse.blogspot.com for pretty flower quilt above

My travel box =)

I made this little quilted style wrist pin cushion for traveling, makes it so much easier to not lose needles while cutting threads and switching between hexs!

So far this is all I have, I think I am going to make a pillow out of them since I found an easier way to make a quilt =) PS a lot of my fabric is recycled. If I go to the thrift store and they have a special going on I will look at womens dresses and mens dress shirts, lots of fabric for little money =)

These are the card stock paper pieces I use, I think I bought them on ebay. but they are affordable and she shipped them super fast so I highly recomend her if you can find her online =)

My stack of WIP =) 

Making Butter

K so I saw this thing pinned on Pinterest, making butter in a mason jar. Super easy and if you have a bunch of people around it makes it even faster.  I bought the heavy cream the other day with plans to do this myself. The hubby suggested I use child labor and get it done today. So we did. 3 kids in the house a few mason jars, a pint of heavy cream, and a little bit of shake shake shake and butter was made =)

So we have pint mason jars, this makes it easy to store cause you dont need to transfer from one jar to anything else. fill the jar about half way with cream. and start shaking, when you get tired pass it to the next person. it really does take right at 20 minutes and you dont have to work hard at it. when the butter starts really seperating and there is obviously liquid  and butter in the jar, stop shaking and use another jar or the carton the cream came out of and pour the liquid out ( save that its buttermilk, use it in other recipies like pancakes )  use a fork to stir up the butter and pour a little cold water on there and shake a little more, keep doing this cold water mix and shake and pour till the water is clear. then add a little salt stir , shake and refridgerate you are done ( OH and taste it) awesome right?

We made 2 kinds, plain salted butter, and dill salted butter. So yummy! Not really that cost effective but not bad, we figure its about 2 sticks of butter per pint. But yummy and the kids thought it was cool =)

Flip Flops

Okay so who out there LOVES Pinterest? Yeah me too, I've got a bunch of boards and even got the hubby started on it. he's got his own which seem to revolve around home improvement and cooking. While mine revolve around decorating and crafts =) Good thing he is the cook of the house, we'd all die of food poisoning or obesity from tater tots and chicken nuggets if the cooking were left up to me =) ( read sarcasm and yeah I hate cooking in that last statement)lol

So ANYWAY.... I am subscribed to a bunch of stores email lists and JC Penny sent me one that I actually looked at for a change, they had their flip flops on sale $1 a pair until they run out. so seriously they might still have some go look. And I went and bought like 6 pairs. Yes I did. then I came home and got so super excited because I just knew pinterest would have all kinds of exciting things to do to decorate them..... yeah not so much. So I went my own route....

Ok so I had a pair of really cute blinged out dressy type flip flops that were so flat had NO support and really just hurt to walk in them, so I cut the jewels off them and put them on the red pair of flip flops below. I think next year I might get a black pair for these jewels. I just used craft glue and fishing line and tied them on.

For the pink pair I took some more craft glue and glitter and they turned out pretty but I should have used modge podge cause glitter goes EVERYWHERE when I wear them. live & learn right?

Close Up

Close up- glitter is hard to photograph am I right?

Then these cuties I knew I wanted ribbon and I wanted bright, so I thought this might match a few things I have. I took the ribbon and sewed the little ripples in it and then hot glued it to the flip flops. not sure if I like the middle bow but the rest looks good to me. I suggest you go to wherever you buy your ribbon and I swear inspiration will strike you just like it did me =)

Update: hot glue did NOT work, I wore these out of the house and before we even got where we were going the ribbon started flopping off, it did unstick very quickly from the flip flops where they were glued down, but I will have to re glue will try plain craft glue and see if that holds up:) 

Baseball Bracelet

I know there is a link somewhere for this on my Pinterest page, and if I can get time I will find it and put it on here, but for now, for the sake of getting this done....

Edit: The Original I have pinned

I saw this on Pinterest and thought that with baseball season coming up this would be a super cute project,  and it totally is!

All I did was take an old beat up baseball, and cut around the stitching with an exacto knife.

then I peeled that piece off and found where the stitches started, I folded it in half and cut it into 2 pieces.

then I cut and unraveled the string from the leather, I recommend you do this like 5 stitches at a time until the strings are long enough to tie. I then did a really basic square knot on one side so that the strings will slide and then glued a piece of felt to the back to "finish" it off.

Only took an hour, it was easy and look me and Wes have matching baseball bracelets =)

My First & Second Dress Recycle!

I'm so excited, but I have to back story a little. I posted before about my daily dress inspiration from Marisa over at New Dress a Day. Please go check her out, you will learn so much!

Anyway. So I am getting older and wider yes I said wider lols, and have a shit ton of tank tops ( yes I cuss occasionally I'm not going to edit myself for blog land, get used to it, how I talk is how I type.) So anyway Websters dictionary would describe my tank top collection of well over 20 different colors a shit ton. Yep its more than that but I'm not gonna go count them now soooo.... anyway I'm getting wider and I no longer appreciate how I look in them around my middle =)

So I thought what can I do. Then I started noticing the new trend in stores is skirts attached to tanks which if strategically placed will cover the erhmmm excess in the middle lols.  JOY AND YAY!  So I went to goodwill and found a few dresses I liked for the fabric, and after being an avid reader of Marisa, and after doing a little more homework on Pinterest I got serious and finally made a dress actually I've made 2 this week, so I will just post them both here =) the 3rd is giving me pains but hopefully will turn out beautiful in the end!

before: perfectly OK, but nothing I would even consider wearing on a daily casual basis, which is how I like my dresses. If I can find a tutorial on how to make peplum shirts I will have to turn the top part of this dress into a peplum shirt.... might be worth it.

after shortened it up a bit too =)

The before on this dress was indecent around the boobage area, so this is the after. I think they both look better in person, but yeah they are kinda like sacks and skim my body instead of hugging the curves. =) Oh and they are very comfy and totally casual for wearing around the house and even to Walmart lols =)

My Nails

Sometimes I get inspired to do my nails, usually this happens when
a) I get bored
b) I am too cheap to go get them filled
c) I think I can wait just 1 more week then go get them filled
d) I'm too busy to go during the day but feel my nails need painted at 7 pm thereby requiring me to spend the next 5 hours messing with my nails and ignoring the rest of the household (I get that way so sue me)
e) all of the above =)

So instead of a post each time I do my nails I will just post all the pics at once. like this week I went and got a new set of nails put on so it'll be a while ( 2 weeks tops) before I feel like messing with them again lol.

Yep inspiration only I follow a bunch of nail blogs there are a bunch on tumbler.com just search for nail art =)

That's my umbrella for anyone that wants to think weird thoughts about what i am holding =)
Pink and made my own dotting tool by taking a sewing pin and pushing it into a wine cork. perfect dotting tool and free out of stuff I already had at home =)

Again used my home made dotting tool made 5 little dots then used a pointy end of my nail file and dragged little lines through the dots. I thought this was super cute =)

Hated this it stayed on less than a day. I bought the little hexagons on eBay  I've seen really cute manicures done like this, too bad I wasn't able to do mine cute. blech gross looking!

Stamper aka Konad stamper plates, just messing around, wasn't one of my favorite manicures

Aww Prom Corsage

So the oldest has Senior prom coming up, and he's doing it cheap this year, and by cheap I mean he bought slacks and a pair of black converse tennis shoes and plans on not spending a ridiculous amount.

Why would he decide this you may ask? Because mom (aka me) decided she wasn't spending a few hundred this year like she did last year. I basically told him I would drive him if needed but that's it. He's responsible for the rest. I did volunteer to make the corsage and boutineer,  if he wanted to pay for the materials. He did and these are it. aren't they so pretty! 

(Bonus he needs interview clothes anyway so Boom that's done!)  

And the back is simple just an elastic tie. I figure its probably going to get lost or thrown away anyway. The girl he is taking is "just a friend mom" so ehh there ya go.

My Super Cute Disney Shirt

So on a budget we went to Disney at Christmas, and yes it was horribly packed but I am told it would have been worse during the summer ( I'm kinda doubting that but hey I'm not posting about our trip or my maniacal OCD type planning.... yes I have a touch of OCD don't judge ) Anyway I am going to start posting my crafts. because I now have SO MANY completed ( YAY!!!!) that I feel the need to pass on the crafty goodness to who ever stumbles across this and cares to read it.

So back to the reason lols, we went to Disney and I wanted a t-shirt to wear. So I started looking online and seriously WOW at the prices out there. so being crafty diva that I am I looked for ideas and found a few similar photos and no I didn't save links, all they were is photos and I'm not re posting them so I don't feel the need to credit 20 people for the same idea.... anyway... search Google images for mickey silhouette or mickey applique. you'll see a bunch of ideas. and here are a few of my pics to show off what I made =)

All I did was cut out 3 circles , put the shirt on and pin the circles where I wanted them, and used a zig zag stitch on my machine to attach them to a t shirt i rarely wore =) I also did this to a sweatshirt but no photos of that sorry!

The really fun thing about making your own is that you can choose whatever fabric you want, I recycled a t shirt and some material, so it was free! YAY!

Yes I had to buy ears, its a splurge if you will wear them you should definatly buy some! and the dork acting asleep is my oldest Kenny and we were on a ride at the time lol!