In the year 2000 (and 11)

I’ve been reading some other bloggers “year in review” posts and I couldn’t not write one of my own.  It’s crazy to look back over the year and follow along with what happened.  Join me on a magical tour to a land far away…January 2011.

January — Celebrated our first New Year’s Eve in Omaha by hanging out with some friends, playing board games, and Just Dance.  I also got and started my job in Omaha and we breathed a HUGE sigh of relief.

February — We spent the entire month house hunting, putting in an offer, not getting the house and hunting some more.  Wow, I forgot how draining February was, moving on.

March — We got our house!  We also moved in and lost the keys to our Uhaul (don’t worry, we found them, though sadly not in the same month that we moved).  Coincidentally, I also started this here blog in March!  Hi ya’ll!

April — We got new carpet, hosted our first family holiday, and embarked on our first real “fix” to the house (our white painted fireplace)

May —  I tried my hand at a super easy chair makeover, I planned my first ever bridal shower, and we finally got Steve a workbench for the garage.

June — We started our bathroom makeover that we hoped would only take us a weekend….obviously, it took the month of June and then some.  We also road tripped to St. Louis for a wedding.

July — The half bath makeover was wrapped up, Melissa and I had our first ever craft night, and I made a vintage hankie scarf from some family heirlooms.  I also celebrated my birth, whoop whoop.

August —  We spent August working on the outside of our house…it beat out June for the most exhausting month of the year.  We headed to Wilber, NE for Czech Days.

September — Finished up the exterior of our house and bought our first tree.  I also took a road trip with my BFF to Minneapolis for a little retail therapy.

October — We celebrated our one year anniversary with a Omaha vacation and entry way makeover.  For our gift, we bought ourselves a new mattress and that thing is still heaven.

November — I spent the month travelling for work.  Destinations include: Orlando- FL, Gillette -WY, Lenexa- KS, and Dallas TX.

December — We celebrated our first Christmas in our house.  It was so fun to be able to decorate and start to feel our house become homey.

Thanks all for an awesome year and I can’t wait for 2012.  We don’t really make resolutions over here, but we’ve declared January “unfinished project” month, so we’re hoping to make a lot of progress in some of the things we have scattered about this house.  I’m pre-declaring February as organization month, so look forward to that as well  Are you doing a year – end recap post? Who else looks back and doesn’t know where the year has gone??

Happy New Year’s EVE!

Blue and I know it

Remember the dining room inspiration I posted awhile back?  While, I was able to take advantage of the nice weather to tackle our chandelier.  We started with this brass wonder…I liked the chandelier, just not the brass-i-ness.

My original inspiration was to do the chandelier white, so, I took it down and headed outside to give my chandelier a face lift.

Yeah, I just laid it down and sprayed it…I was really not lovin’ it.  Not even a little.  So, back to the drawing board (and by drawing board, I mean spray paint aisle at Home Depot).  As I was walking through the aisle, I saw a can of navy spray paint by Rustoleum (who else??) and decided that was a better direction to go than my current white.  I also discovered that this was not the best way to spray a light that would hang, I got drips in weird spots…so after a bit of sandpaper on those parts and another light coat of white primer, we were back in action.

I had Steve help me whip up this mini painting studio in the back yard…he mounted the light for me like it would be on the ceiling and then I covered the ladders so they would avoid a blue fate.

A half coat in and I LOVED it, navy chandelier, you’re not just a chandelier…you’re my….friend!  (name that tune)

So, I sprayed away, and it took the entire can of spray paint to cover.  It was a bit windy out so I ended up with a sort of blue face…it was however, well worth it and I just scrubbed like crazy later.

Then, the best surprise of all, I came home and it was magically hanging in my dining room.  Thanks hubby for being awesome.

I decided to switch to round bulbs instead of the candle shaped for a more modern look, I left one candle bulb in this picture for comparison…sorry for the glowing-ness of this photo.  I never have a spec of natural light since I work all day.

I still can’t decide if I want to leave the base of the “candles” white or if I should spray them blue…I’m leaning towards blue, but since I probably won’t have another perfect spray paint day for awhile, we’ll leave ‘em white for now and noodle on it.

I have to say, my little blue chandelier makes me want to (finally) get cracking on the dining room.  So many ideas that I need to get moving on.  Lucky for me (and you all), I have declared January unfinished project month.  We have a lot of them around here so hopefully we’ll start making some progress again on the little things.  It just feels so good to get it done!!

Anybody else spray paint over Christmas?  Do you have a fun colored chandelier??  If so, link me, I want to see it!

Making a Cameo Appearance

Christmas came early over here…you see, we have a tradition of opening our gifts together and having a mini Christmas.  We spend actual Christmas day with one of our sides of the family (rotating because they live too far apart) and like spending some time together with our own mini Christmas.  I have been SO EXCITED because I figured out what to get Steve, he managed to not buy it himself before Christmas, and he forgot he wanted it so he was surprised!  Woo hoo!!  What you ask?  A GPS running watch.  His old one met a tragic end last summer when he forgot it on the roof of his Jeep.

What did he get me you ask??  A Silhouette Cameo!!  For those of you unfamiliar, it’s a crafting/scrapbooking mega machine and I had been having dreams of all the delightful things I could make with it.  I was pumped that he remembered I wanted one AND ordered it!  It was super easy to get started with and I’m complete enamored.  After some learning and practicing with paper, I decided to dive into my first project.  Etched glass.  I thought I’d start small in case I messed it up and grabbed the Qtip jar from the bathroom.

First thing first, I pulled up the Silhouette Studio to design my logo.  One of the (many) cool things about the Silhouette is you can use any font you have downloaded on your computer in the designs.  I spent a LOT of time on free font websites when we were doing our wedding invitations, so I’m excited to reprise that practice for my crafting!  For this, I went simple and selected the Bodoni MT Black.

The cutting area was set to 12″ x 12″ and I guessed on how big I thought my jar was….I probably should have got out a ruler to actually measure my jar, because I ended up way to big.  So, once I had my design, I sent it to my machine bestie to cut it out.

I was too antsy to order Silhouette vinyl and wait for it to arrive, so I headed to Michael’s and picked up some vinyl designed for the Circuit.  It cut beautifully, next up, I think I’m going to try contact paper since it’s cheaper, but that’s a digression.  I loaded it up and it went to work.

Since I was way off with my guess, I decided to just go with a Q on the Qtip jar because I liked how the Q looked, simple as that.  With my vinyl secured, it was off to the laundry room sink.  I got some Armour Etch at Michaels.  If you are going to etch glass, Armour Etch is pretty good, but it’s pricey.  Luckily I had a 50% off coupon, but it was still $15.00 for a 10 oz. bottle.  Not my usual bargain basement pricing….

It’s important for this step to put the etching creme on very thick.  If it’s not thick, the etching won’t look even.  I left it on for 6 minutes.  After the time was up, I simply washed it off (safety alert: wear gloves because it’s acid and you don’t want it to burn your hands.  There is also a warning on the bottle about only rinsing it in a stainless steel sink so it wouldn’t impact the finish…moral of the story, read directions first).  At first, it really didn’t look like anything had happened, but once I got it all rinsed and dried off, I had this:

As a side note, it’s very hard to take a picture of double sided etched.

The Qtip jar in action.  A super easy project and a great way to get started with my new machine BFF.  And yes, expect to see a lot of Silhouette projects coming up because my imagination is running wild.

Anyone else celebrate Christmas not on Christmas?  Any other Silhouette lovers out there?  Have you ever etched glass? I think I might need some more practice…

Santapaws

I didn’t really MEAN to take the month of December off from blogging, but it just sort of happened.  In life news, I got (and started a new job).  I still work for the same company, just a new role.  I’m loving it so far, but it’s been a whirlwind.  In between the chaos that is life, I’ve been working on Christmas shopping and merriment.

I really wanted to try my hand at some personalized gifts this year.  I love Christmas gift giving and I wanted to put a fun spin on it.  I decided to tackle pet silhouettes for my bff Melissa  (don’t worry, I already gave them to her, so I’m not ruining any surprises).  They were pretty simple, I found some photos of her furbabes on facebook, enlarged them using nothing more than Microsoft Word, printed them, cut them out, and then traced them on to black scrapbook paper.  I cut them out again (nothing fancy, just a regular ol’ scissors) and used some Mod Podge to adhere them to the canvas.  I decided to cover the canvas with another piece of scrapbook paper to better match her house color scheme.  Wrapping the canvas was a bit tricky, but I basically wrapped them just like a present.  I decided to personalize them a bit and include their names.  I think they turned out pretty fantastic and they were SUPER easy to make!!

Check ‘em out!

Supply list:
5×7 canvas
Black Scrapbook paper
Printed scrapbook paper
Mod Podge
Foam brush

See?  Super easy!!  Is anyone else making any crafties  for friends or family??  Do you get nervous when giving someone something you made??  Merry Christmas week!!