Here they are before paint..

And after….

They came out sooo cooool.

Here they are again with this camera that I bought at goodwill for $2. That turned out awesome too.

Next I primed them all with Valspar.

Then came the color!!

This is what I used on the camera.

Look how cute they are! They have some weird texture in the paint. I cleaned all the dirt off of them before I painted them so there might have been a texture on them before I painted. Or maybe I didn’t shake the can enough. Either way they are still cute.

And AFTER…..

I made the Love and Create words too. Yes that does say Love and not lave or Joe. When I wrapped the yarn I kinda combined the o and the v and it looks like an “a”. It is on my list to redo.

And the camera AFTER…..

For now the camera lives on our buffet. I haven’t really decided if he will stay there or not.

Have you taken something ugly and old and made it beautiful? I’d love to see what you did.

Sherry over at young house love and Katie over at Bowerpower have whipped up the third pinterest challenge. The idea of this project is to get you to stop pinning and to finally do a project.

I saw this picture through pinterest and I’ve been wanting to do it for a while now. The original post is here. Instead of either of our dogs (I have no good pictures yet) I have chosen a picture of my cat. I have plans to hang four pictures (Oliver the cat, Thomas the cat, Pepper the dog and Bella the dog) together in the hallway.

My supplies for this project were a 10 x 10 canvas and yellow paint that I purchased at JoAnn Fabrics. It was $5.39 with a 40% off coupon and the canvas was on sale. Wooo hooo. Ya can’t beat that!!

First I went to my computer and printed off this image. I caught Oliver and Thomas checking out a squirrel and making chirping noises at it.

Then I cut it out, taped it to the canvas and traced around the picture.

Take off the image and this is what you get.

Next I painted the outside area yellow and Oliver in white. I don’t know why I bothered painting it white because it was already white.

All done!!! That was so easy! I absolutely love it!

Have you done this before? What have you used for your silhouette?

This project I saw on pinterest and though I really should give it a try. It is a diy lightbulb bud vase. Cool right?

Saturday I had my friend Tracy over to help me with this project. She decided she’d rather watch instead. I guess she realized it didn’t look as easy as I made it sound.

Originally this was intended to be a tutorial but it ended up being an “OMG this was harder than I expected” post.

First you take the little metal disc off. Once I got that off I had to break the black piece of glass at the top.

I hammered and hammered and pounded and CUSSED! A LOT! “#@!**# stupid thing won’t come off!” Grrrr.” The tutorials made it look so easy. Finally it was off. Now for the little tube inside. Easy right? NOPE! More cussing was followed and then even more cussing was followed. Nathan and Tracy started snapping pictures at this point and laughing.

It was pretty funny really. Finally the piece was out and the glass remains of it were chipped away. Now to get the white bulb white. Tracy said to me “How do you get that off?” I say “Oh it’s simple. You just wipe it out!” Haha. Cue more cussing. #@!** The tutorial I watched said to use sugar or salt in the bulb and shake it around to remove the white powder. I shook and shook and shook and more #$** followed. This was not a powder inside. IT WAS WHITE SPRAYED IN!!! Ughhhh.

I had such high hopes for this project too. I am so bummed. Next time I will buy the clear ones and make a vase that way. Then maybe I will have a real tutorial.

Yep it finally happened. It falleth over.

When we bought the house in March we noticed that the mail box was really tipsy. No no no. Not that kind of tipsy. Hehehe. How could a mailbox drink? Well anyway… Whenever we would close the lid the mailbox would lean really far back. We both thought “Greeeaaattt, now we need to dig a big hole and put this in deeper.”. The pole was actually rusted clear through. There was just a little part that was still attached and being in the ground was holding it together. I am sure I made it worse when I pushed it waaaay back to see what was wrong and how far it would go back.

I told Nathan that we had to fix this ASAP. There is no way that either of us wants to try to dig a hole in the middle of Winter. I had just mentioned how we needed to make a trip to Lowe’s for this. Saturday Nathan went out to get the mail, shut the door and then it happened. The mail box “Fell down go BOOM”!! OK maybe not really boom. Maybe more like “ting”. I was out in the garage and I witnessed the whole thing go “down”. Nathan just stood there motionless and in shock. He yells to me “All I did was touch it with one finger!! ONE FINGER!!! That’s all it took!” Hahahahaha. Off to Lowe’s we went. It was either that or the Mailbox goes on the grass until we get a pole. We had a neighbor do that once and the mailman just threw his mail on the grass.

We got a wooden fence post to put in the ground. He did most of this work and I took pictures. I have terrible aim and I would probably end up breaking something or hitting Nathan. I did help dig a little though.

This picture is funny so I couldn’t resist posting it. I am sure he is saying “STOP TAKING MY PICTURE AND GO AWAY!!!“

There we have it. A nice new post. And yes…. I just did a whole post about a mailbox.

Finally! It’s all done. I think it is pretty. Now I just have to get it into a frame. That will take me forever!

The last one that I made, the wax was running off the side of the board and I wasn’t to sure how to hang it and I have been wanting to make number 2. I decided that this was something that my bff Tracy and I should do together. We haven’t done a fun craft together in some time. She was game. Her boyfriend didn’t see the point in this project. What does he know??

Time to get all the supplies together:

1. Glue (Elmers glue works fine)
2. Foam core board or canvas. (We chose Foam core) It was a $1 at the Dollar Tree
3. Crayons of assorted colors
4. Hairdryer (You can also use an embossing gun or a heat gun)

Next you want to cut your board to size. If you have a canvas then obviously you can’t do this. The foam core that we got at the Dollar Tree didn’t have a glossy service and I think I like that the most. One the first piece that I did the foam core that I used was glossy and it made my piece very fragile. Don’t drop it. The wax will break and fall right off the piece. Anyway…. Lay all of your crayons in the order that you like. If you want to frame your final piece you will want to leave some space along the side and the top. I didn’t have a lot of crayons left since we were both doing our own piece. You might want to lay more crayons along the foam core.

Time to Glue: All you need is a little strip of glue on the back of your crayon. Like this….

I got a little messy with the glue as I went along. That won’t hurt it though. Once you have all of them down, let them dry for a little bit. I am impatient so I only waited like 5 minutes. Here are all my crayons all glued down and ready to be melted. Oooooooo, this part is so much fun!!!

This is Tracy’s piece. She laid hers out a little differently than I did, but I like it a lot. This process is time consuming. Start by turning the hair dryer to high heat and run it along the crayons. Move it back and forth. Leffttt to riiiiighhhttt. The top of the crayons will start to get soft and shiny and the tips of the crayons will start to drip down. Oh yeah, you must hold your board at a slight angle. We held it at an angle for a while and then we held it straight up to let the wax drip down. Once the wax started to melt at the top, we ran the hair dryer along the tops of the crayons and all the wax melted over the crayons. I think that looks kind of cool. Then we held the dryer at the tips of the crayons some more. If you get splatters then you have the dryer too close or you might want to turn it on low heat.

Once the wax starts to melt it will really start to DRIP!!! When it started to drip, we laid the board down all the way to stop the drips. Then we let it dry for a bit and started this whole process over again to get more drips. Finally we had plenty of layers to call it all done. She finished hers, but I did not yet. I will have the finished piece on here tomorrow.

Back to mine….. Look at all the pretty wax.

When you are finally done with your piece, do not let it get cold. It will dry and crack. I wanted mine to dry fast and I stuck it in the fridge. Bad move. The wax started to curl up and come off of my foam core. I had to run the hair dryer over the wax to melt it back onto my foam core.

When you are done, sign your name if you would like and frame it.

Now go make yours!!!!!

1. Nathan

2. ME! I must have hit follow and now I am following us.

Whats even worse is that I decided to write a post about this and no one is reading it. Well not yet at least.

This should have been one of the very first projects that we should have posted back in April. We bought the house in March and hated the carpet on the steps. It was so hard to clean because of all the dogs (we had dogs over non stop that I was pet-sitting for) and cat hair. Bleahh. That hair is a pain in the butt to clean up!! Let me tell you, it is not easy to take the vacuum to the steps and try to move it all around and sweep up that pet hair. I don’t understand how the women on the vacuum boxes look so happy doing this. There is no way that either of us wanted to lug that thing up the stairs throughout the week. So as you can imagine, the steps were a little hairy. We have two black dogs. We finally had enough, so at the last minute, UP CAME THE CARPET! Here is the progress.

Pulling up the carpet was easy. I know it looks like I didn’t do a lot of work. OK, well maybe I didn’t. I took pictures and I helped pull the nails out of the stairs. So yeah, that counts!

Off comes the padding. Next we took out the nails. What a pain in the butt. Literally. I think I sat and maybe leaned on a few. OUCH! The nails were all nailed on this wooden strip that held the carpet down. I have no idea what the technical term for that thing is. Then we used a crow bar to lift that off the steps. Ok… it’s not a crow bar. It looks like one. Its a mini crow bar. ??? Well that thing left some marks in the risers. Bummer. I was hoping it wouldn’t take pieces of the wood out. That now also needs to be filled in. 

Now look how pretty these are. We love them. They are not finished yet. Next we have to strip all of the stain off, fill in the holes and then re-stain. This might be a Summer project. Let me tell you though, the steps are sooooo much easier to clean. Oh speaking of that…. I think I need to sweep the pet hair off of them tonight.