finished product

This project had been lingering for a while. When we moved into our town home 2 years ago we acquired a back patio that faced out to nice private woods. Having a little piece of nature was a big selling point for us especially since your privacy is somewhat limited when  living in town home communities. Never having any outdoor space before caused us to not have any outdoor furniture. We were given a wonderful hand-me-down dining room set so our little table and two chairs that we used to use as our dining room furniture were suddenly without a need. They sadly sat in our living room for months not knowing their purpose until one day while thinking about how expensive outdoor furniture can get I realized that I could possibly make those over into our much needed patio furniture.

Don’t let the image above scare you away! This is a “good news” post… my first project is complete! It was fairly small, but still an item I can cross off of my checklist! This first looming project that needed to be finished was a “re-vamping” of an earlier project: my homemade over-sized doggie bed

Projects sometimes fail. In this case, the inside of the bed was the failure. Over the past few months the blankets that I used as the cushion for the bed started to wear down. I decided that I needed to find something to replace them. Luckily, I inherited a very useful trait from my mother when it comes to working with in a budget; resourcefulness. I purchased a new mattress and was about to throw away the foam “egg carton” top when I thought that may be something I could use to cushion cole’s bed. I threw it in my guest bedroom and it sat there for weeks… until now.

At first I tried to sandwich the old stuffing inside the foam but it did not fit into the cover. So I bagged that idea and realized that the size of the foam itself fit perfectly in my outer envelope that I made. Just a few folds and some smooshing and viola!

Cole is a very happy puppy these days!

The lesson learned from this first completion: Always keep a resourceful eye out for something that can be re-used and once you have the idea actually follow through! If you let it sit for too long your motivation will dissapear and the only thing that is left is clutter in your living space. I’m glad my motivation came back for this one (I know Cole is happy too!)

What a beautiful flower I received from one of my piano students at our recital last Sunday! I just had to share.

A new year always brings resolutions; how are you going to make your live better this year, seriously this time. This new year brought a lonnnng to-do list for me. 2010 is already set to be a big year in this household; a long vacation in the spring, a wedding in the fall, a honeymoon in the winter, and TONS of planning in between! That being said, it was a big ol’ slap in the face when that ball dropped that I need to start organizing!!

My M.O. has always been that I never finish ANYTHING. I scheme up these grand ideas, start them, but then nothing ever gets done. Ever. My house has turned into a graveyard of my past ideas. Cut fabric, saved scraps of furniture, old paper, all waiting to be used to make something beautiful. I can’t throw them away because I know one day I’ll get around to them and when that complete project is revealed it will be my best masterpiece. Well, that day never comes and my house is still littered with these unfinished projects. There lies my resolution: FINISH. My goal is to finish every project I’ve ever started before I go out and start a new one. This has already been hard for me. I have a new project brewing in my brain as we speak and I’m having to consciously keep my excitment contained. So, as a little sneak-preview, below are a few of those unfinshed masterpieces that you’ll see FINISHED in the upcoming weeks (hopefully)…

Getting married next October means that I’m starting (very slowly) to plan our big celebration! One of the very first items on my checklist was to figure out a way to gather my 8 best friends (yes 8!) from their various homes across the country to come down to Raleigh to party, play, and pamper with me. I wanted to make a very special invitation for them since they are such important people in my life and almost automatically I remembered the most precious DIY invitations from one of my favorite wedding blogs, Once Wed. Using that as my guideline I put my own little twists on it and my sister and I had so much fun making them!

See more photos after the jump!

Didn’t even know, but my printer can print on envelopes! What a happy surprise!

I found these stamps a few months back on clearance and had to buy them because they were so cute! My fiance’s last name is Gull and my last name is Byrd so it was too irresistible not to use these stamps on something! (I put them above the return address on the back flap of the envelope!)

*To make a cheap envelope look fancy cut your favorite piece of paper the size of the inside, slide the paper in and glue stick it to the top flap! Viola!!

I wrote the names of all the girls on their sash across the doll as well as customized their hairstyle and color. The colors used in the whole package are going to be the color scheme of my wedding.

What a fun little project and such a great DIY find on Once Wed!!!

ps – the girls LOVED them!!

My latest project is for my precious puppy, Cole. I’ve been wanting to make him a doggie pillow for a while now and just got around to it this past weekend. Since Great Danes have all kinds of bone/joint problems as they age I wanted to start early trying to keep Cole’s long legs as comfy as I can. I know how expensive doggie beds (especially for his size!) can be so I decided to try my hand at coming up with a cheaper yet still functional solution. Read my step by step instructions after the jump!

My restrictions:

• Cover has to be removable so I can wash it
• Material on the inside cannot bunch up over time
• Thick enough to be comforting for his joints

First the Inside:
Cole (as many dogs do) LOVES to chew on blankets. He will sit for hours and just gnaw on any blanket we give him. Knowing that I wanted this pillow to have no characteristics of a blanket. It had to be thick enough where he could tell it wasn’t a blanket and it also had to not bunch up, as material like cotton stuffing tends to do, over time. My solution was taking an old comforter I had that was taking up space in my linen closet and folding/cutting into the correct size to fit into the pillow I wanted to create.

I then wrapped a blanket around it to make an envelope and stitched it closed.

I then took a large needle and threaded it with embroidery thread to do a very large blanket stitch to hold all of the layers together.

Now the outside
All I did was create an envelope pillow case. I cut a rectangle the size I wanted the pillow and put it aside. I then cut two panels the same width but half the length for the back envelope. Make sure that you add about 3 inches to each side to create that overlap that holds the pillow inside the case.

On the two rectangles, double fold a hem in on just the side that will overlap, iron them down, and then stitch them together. Then all you have to do is pin the large rectangle right sides together with the two back panels (making sure you remember to create that overlap) and stitch it all together.

When stitching is complete, turn it inside out and stuff your already assembled inside pillow into the envelope!!


A little extra…
I had some leftover fabric and decided to use it to sew a dog bone onto the front! Always be thinking of little extra ways to make something even more unique to you!

My fiance and I bought our first townhouse fully equipped with white walls in every room upstairs. Both of us, having lived in white-walled rented spaces for years, were ready for some color! Our house is flooded with amazing sunlight throughout the day so we decided to go with a vibrant color palate that could soak in that sun. After gathering countless color swatches and spending hours pacing in the paint aisle at our local hardware store, we came up with this…

He calls it our M&M house, chocolate hallway center with candy coated rooms. Needless to say, I crave chocolate constantly!

This was the master before…

and after (with orange bathroom to match)…

This was our guest bedroom before…

and after…

This was our hallway before…

and after…

We LOVE it! Here’s a breakdown of colors plus more photos…

Hallway = Chocolate Brown
Master Bedroom = Blue
Master Bath = Orange
Guest Bedroom = Lime Green
Guest Bath = Yellow
Office = Red

After three coats of sealer (I don’t want ANY mold getting in!) the tile is complete!! The total cost for this whole project was only $78!!!!! With a little resourcefulness and willingness to get dirty an extremely custom tiling job can be done anywhere!

Enjoy the final pics after the jump:

Well, it is actually happening… there are tiles on the wall!! What a journey I’ve had with this project. Laying tile is not at easy as it may seem. Follow the steps I took to lay the tile after the jump!

First you have to spread the adhesive to the wall, then you have to lay your panels onto the adhesive.

Since the side of the tub was so narrow, I had to mosiac it by hand to make sure everything fit perfect.

After I adhered everything I had to let it dry for 48 hrs. I came back and then had to go back over everything with grout.

A HUGE time-saver that I figured out with this project was using a freezer bag to grout with! Because the spaces that I needed to grout were so small using my finger or another tool to spread the grout did not work. I then thought of putting the grout into a plastic bag, cutting the corner and squeezing it out like icing on a cake into the creases. It worked amazingly; saved me so much time!!

The final thing looks spectacular! I have to wait another 48 hrs until the grout is completely dry then have to go back and seal it. I want to save the final photos as a surprise for my next post when I can actually say it is COMPLETELY done! Stay tuned…

STEP 1: I start by finding tile pieces that have straight edges and I edge one side. I then put two larger pieces on the seams at the other end to hold everything in place as you mosaic the strip.

STEP 2: Then you just work your way over adding in pieces as you go!

A helpful hint… find pieces with straight edges and edge your strip first and fill in the middle second. It is easier to fit in awkward shaped middle pieces after everything is edged. Its like a puzzle!

STEP 3: Finish your strip but don’t put it aside yet…

STEP 4: If your project requires you to make multiple strips and put them together like I am doing I have found it helpful to continue mosiac-ing the seam of the two strips. This helps for a much nicer transition between the strips when everything is installed. You’ll need to make up another set of drywall strips and connect it to the unfinished side of your previous strip. Then overlapping the tiles start to tile along the seam.

You can see how the tiles are overlapping when the two strips are broke apart. Once you have a good seam made you can disconnect the strips and put the finished one aside and continue working.

So why not just mosaic one long strip?? There really is nothing stopping you from doing this. But I find 1 foot sections a lot easier to work with then a 5 foot long section. My professional (ha!) opinion would be to follow the steps above with a more manageable length.

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…and finally an update on the project…

I’M FINISHED!!! I’m planning on installing it tomorrow (hopefully!). You’ll see a gap on the top. That side will be the far wall at the back of the tub. The wall is flanked by 90 degree angle corners on each side. This makes it very tricky to get an exact length of tiles. So I am going to install from the corners inward and then free-hand the mosaic tiles between the two so that I don’t have to worry about the strips of drywall mosaic being the wrong size. I am also doing free-hand tiling down the sides of the tub because of the same reason as above. I don’t want to worry about fluctuating widths and lengths.

I’m SUPER excited to actually install everything; hopefully I’ll do it correctly! I’ll keep you posted.

(above) the after!!

My parents are coming from PA this weekend to visit so Thomas and I decided we needed to spruce up our back patio a bit. Our poor dying rose bush was taken out and two beautiful planters were put in. We went to the store not knowing what we wanted and came out with a beautiful array of lavender and gold flowers.

We wanted to have the planters pop against our white fence so we chose some vibrant petunias and a great maroon accent plant for each one. To contrast the purples we chose some bright yellow marigolds and a sweet potato vine that will grow to drape over the edge of the planter. Even though we put them together in the rain (poor day to decide to garden!) they turned out perfect! Over time they will flourish in their little planters and fill up the space. We were so excited about our back patio that we went out and got a tiny $30 charcoal grill to have friends over and show it off! What a great way to make our small outdoor space a little more inviting. Yay to gardening in the rain!

As promised, some pictures of Thomas’ beautiful landscaping in our backyard…

… and also some progress on my mosaic-ing. I’ve been working on putting the tiles on the adhesive sheets and came across a problem. The sides of the tub are not even (of course!) so I’ve decided when I put the tile adhesive up I will just quickly mosaic right to the adhesive. The space is only between 2″ and 3″ wide so it isn’t that much to just tile right on the wall. Lets hope I don’t mess up when it comes to that point though!! Thomas and I were thinking it would be a lot better because there is no real exact way to measure that inconsistent width.

This is what my table in the living room looks like…

Part of the border is going to be a gradient from blue to yellow to striped tiles. You’ll see above part of that gradient. I’m getting EXCITED!!

Also, a few months ago Thomas did a little bit of landscaping off of our back patio and our little bushlets (as my friend Emily from work calls them) are flowering!! Its so exciting! I’ll take some pictures of those as well and post them tonight. Be on the lookout!

Okay, so here is my idea. I want to tile a 6″ border around the tube to give the bathroom some personality. Some would argue that its orange paint job is all the personality it needs, but I want a little extra something. Here is my plan (ignore the bad quality, I need to perfect my “blog-picture-taking” abilities)…

Going to Lowes to look at tiles launched me into depression. The prices of tiles were outrageous! Having a bit of my mother’s resourcefulness in me and Thomas’ encouragement I went to the flea market to look for some old ceramics to bust apart. No luck there. On my way home I stopped at the Dollar Store for some carpet cleaner and found exactly what I needed in my price range… one dollar 10.5″ plates!

I went out on our back patio and took a hammer to them! You’ll be surprised at what you can get out of 20 plates.

I went back to Lowes to get myself some backing to glue the pieces on. I did this because I thought it be a lot easier to just tack up strips of the already mosaic-ed tiles instead of doing everything while I’m racing the drying time of the tile adhesive. To my luck I found self-adhesive drywall tape that is working SUPER well. I just peel the backing off and stick the tiles right on, no tedious gluing quite yet! (that will come later i’m sure!!)

I’m doing them in 1 foot by 6 in strips. I got 3 1/2 done last night (which is one of the shorter walls). This is going to take me a LONG time!!