quick diy advent calendar

P's birthday was a few days before Thanksgiving and this year I had no idea what to give him. Then  it hit me, why not take him out to dinner at Peter Luger, something that was on our list for years. I made a reservation and crafted a gift card but still needed a good idea how to wrap it in a cute way. Because I was able to get a reservation for December 1st I thought giving him the dinner as part of an advent calendar would be fun. With only a couple of day lefts to finish the advent calendar I went to The Container Store for some inspiration and quickly found the kraft paper coffee bags. Initially I wanted to write numbers on them but then I found these tree gift tags and an idea was born. The bags were so easy to make, I just used doubled sided tape to add the trees to the bags. All in all it took maybe half an hour to finish the calendar. As the bags are pretty sturdy I will be able to reuse them in the next years, they would also make cute gift wrapping for smaller items or cookies. Most of the bags are filled with chocolate, some contain messages on these dry erase bubble magnets and some contain wooden animals. I thought the animals would go very well with the woodsy theme of the calendar and look cute if they were added one by one to the "forest on the mantle. 

Do you have an advent calendar or made one for a special person in your life?

PS. In case you are wondering but this post has not been sponsored by The Container Store, I was on crutches and was only able to visit one store so I needed to choose wisely ;)

PPS. No need to worry P does not read the blog and I won't spoil it for him with this post...

have you heard about the bird - diy birdfeeder

Back in September I showed you my list of unfinished business, four projects that are lying around unfinished. One of my photos showed an old glass globe lampshade and pink rope and some of you were wondering what I would do with it. Now I finally finished the project and the old lamp shade became *drumroll* a birdfeeder.

The lampshade was left over after I switched it out with a smaller one because it was too big for the space, it made it almost impossible to open our backdoor without hitting the light fixture. Because I cannot throw anything away that is not broken I hung on to it and when I came across a DIY tutorial on The Art of Doing Stuff on how to make a birdfeeder with a glass shade I knew I wanted to make one for myself. Instead of a white rope I bought bright pink rope and the third item needed for this little project was clear waterproof silicone, which I had on hand from a previous project. Because I had the lamp shade and the silicone on hand I spent only $4 on the rope. Not bad, right?

Items needed:

-globe lampshade

-rope

-clear waterproof silicone

-I needed an extra set of hands and made P hold down the globe for me while I ran a bead of silicone around the rope

Since it was not my DIY idea please click over to The Art of Doing Stuff for the full tutorial. She deserves all the glory for coming up with the idea. It is such a simple project, it took only about 10 – 15 minutes to create my birdfeeder and I let it dry for a day to make sure it will hang safely in the tree in our front yard. Now I am waiting for the birds to show up for their fancy feast. 

Do you have any plans of doing a DIY project this weekend? Whatever your plans are I hope you will enjoy your weekend!

 

vestibule - new diy floor

Sunday the 12th of August I finally painted the interior door frame of the vestibule and decided to lay the carpet tile, that I brought home from work about a year ago. They were all samples for one client and since we did not need them anymore I figured I could turn them into a nice looking carpet tile mosaic in our vestibule. I had already drawn up a sketch in Auto Cad how I wanted to position the tiles, now we just needed to make a decision on what tile would go where. We laid out the different tiles on the floor and worked up our pattern from there. That was actually the most fun part of the whole project.

Next step was drawing a line that was somewhat parallel to the front door. From there I laid my first row of tiles and then the next two. To make the tiles stick to the floor I bought a roll of  carpet tape, which is basically heavy duty double sided tape. Those three rows were pretty straight forward and didn't need much cutting but the rows on either door opening needed to be exactly measured and cut to size. I did not take any good photos of the process besides this grainy photo with my cell phone because I knew if I'd stop working I would call it a night...

All in all I spent about 4 hours on my knees and my legs were sore for three days straight but I think it was worth the pain. The new floor really makes the space look finished. Not looking too shabby for only spending $8 on the whole project. Next on my list is getting the vestibule door fixed up and re-hung and also installing new glass panels in the transom above.

Have any of you fun projects lined up?

let me rope you in

I'm a little behind my schedule as I'm preparing for my upcoming vacation. So many things need to get finished before we leave for LA on Friday, where one of my friends will be getting married and from there we will be heading to Bryce Canyon and Lake Powell for some hiking and hopefully some relaxing as well...

After Erin posted a rope doorstop from Zara home about a month ago. I became obsessed with it and started browsing the internet for more things made out of rope. Now I need a cottage by the sea to squirrel away some nautical inspired gems...

  

1. Atelier 688 Manila Rope Light 2.Stonk Knots Towel Ring 3. Knot Bag by Shigeki Fujishiro 

4. Doorstop By Ballard Design 5. Blockshelf by Amy Hunting 6. Mirror by Anthropologie

Of course my favorite one, the rope knot bag is too expensive for me so I had to search for some cool rope DIY options and share my favorites with you. When you click on the links below you will be directed to the tutorials. I also found a tutorial for a rope doorstop/bookend (#4 above) by Mindy at Heart Main Home. I think I might give the rope vases a try soon, they seem to be a fairly easy project. Not so sure if anything that involves knots will be a project for me because I already have problems to tie my shoelaces properly, they are always to loose and open itself constantly. As if I need another tripping hazard...

 

1. Nautical Vase by Bayside Bride 2. Rope Shelf by ReCreate 

3. Rope Basket by Heather Davidson via Design Sponge 4. Mirror by Martha Stewart

5. Towel Holder by On My Honor 6. Rope Light Fixture by Ashley via Design Sponge

guest post at homestilo

Today you can check out my second guest post (ever!) over at homestilo. Santa is currently on vacation in Turkey and lined up a bunch bloggers to fill in for her while she is away. You can see a little hint about my post below...

getting framed

Crossed another small project off my list. Yay! And it didn't even take long to finish it. P had these two pucks he got a after NJ Devils hockey games that one of his coworkers had gotten signed by three Devils players. Two of them are still with the team and currently trying to beat the NY Rangers in the playoffs for the Stanley Cup. (Let's go Devils!) For those hockey fans among you the players that are still with the team are #8 Dainius Zubrus and #26 Patrik Elias.

I had promised I would frame the pucks and got shadow box Ribba frames at Ikea a while ago and then I totally forgot about them. When I finally started on the project it took me about 15 minutes to get it done. Unwrapping the frames, finding the center of the back panel, drill a small hole, find center of puck and then drill a small screw through the back panel and into the puck. Hang the frames in P's office. Done! And the husband is happy too :)

another neon post - diy

Remember when I spray painted my candelabra hot pink in February? If so you might also remember that I was already looking for something else that needed a neon makeover. After seeing some cool neon necklaces while browsing the internet I thought I could make my own. I bought two necklaces on sale at a Burlington Coat Factory store near my office. I liked the shapes and at $3 per necklace I could justify to give spray painting them a try.

The supplies I had already at hand from previous painting sessions and I followed the same procedure as I did with the candelabra, just omitting the mistake with the dark primer and using white primer in the first place. One necklace got a yellow makeover and the other one was transformed with fluorescent pink spray paint.

I have to say both necklaces came out better than expected and really brighten up my wardrobe. What's your take on the neon trend? I already had a neon phase in the 80ies but feel it is different now. Back then I liked the combination of midriff baring and neon. I've already seen cropped shirts again in magazines but this will be a trend that will not make it back into my closet.

woman vs chair - round 9

I did it! The chair is finished, I am sitting on it and writing this post. It is so comfortable but I might be biased after fighting with it for nine rounds. I'm even jumping for joy :) Can you believe that in mid-February the chair still looked like this?

Did you finish a project that made you really happy lately?

2 years - exterior

Thanks so much for taking this little journey down memory lane with me during the last two weeks!

Last but not least in my two year recap is our exterior. We've only managed to work on the front and the roof so far. The backyard is still concrete and ugly, it looks pretty much as it did when I posted photos last year in May but we plan to change that eventually. After we got a new roof I wanted to spruce up the front door and already had assembled the materials over the course of a couple of months. Unfortunately the existing door had completely rusted away under the kick plate and we decided to get a new one. Two months later I finished the project. I really like how a little pop of color makes such a big difference. Before the house looked kind of blah, after it looks so much friendlier and welcoming...

2 years - fireplace

As promised here is a post about how our fireplace developed into what it is today. We had hoped that we could just open it like the one in the dining room, which is non-functioning because the previous owners cut off the chimney and it stops in the attic. Not a good idea to start a fire in that one. Our hope was to be able to create a functioning fireplace in the living room as the chimney is still intact. After tearing down the row of bricks we discovered lots of dirt and our boiler exhaust. Big bummer! I guess that's why they put up the row of bricks in the first place. At least we got rid of the ugly and not symmetrical stone on the floor. What was up with that? We'll never know...

We had a friend who is a contractor close the opening, build us a mantel and lay down marble mosaic on top of the original marble hearth because unfortunately it was too small for the new mantel. I searched the internet for an old cast iron fireplace cover/door to recreate the look of a working fireplace and quickly discovered that they are quite expensive if they are in a good condition. So I started looking for something I could restore myself and found a nice looking one on ebay with a starting bid of $30 and it was located in NJ, so we could pick it up ourselves. Nobody else bid on it because on one of the corners a piece had broken off, it didn't bother me because I thought I could come up with an idea on how to fix it. First I stripped the paint off of the fireplace cover, which took me months to complete. The big pieces were easy but the intricate parts were pretty time consuming. I also had to take a break from stripping the thing because I spent way too much time in the basement working on it. When I finally finished stripping and sanding the piece I started to built up the missing corner (more details here) and finished it off with a couple of coats of black spray paint.

2 years - living room

Next part of my little recap on what we've been up to during the two years owning our house is our living room. The living room had great bones, just like the dining room, but needed a little bit more work than just a coat of paint. We didn't like the closed fireplace and wanted to open it up to look like the one in the dining room and thought we just get rid of the row of bricks covering the opening and call it a day. Unfortunately it wasn't that easy and it took a while to figure out the best looking solution. Because it took us quite a few steps and a long time to make the fireplace look nice I will be giving the fireplace makeover it's own post next week. 

See the door on the left side of the fireplace? It didn't make any sense to us because it leads to a small hallway that had 4 doors (one from the living room, one from the main hallway, one to the guest bathroom and one to the guest bedroom) and not much room for anything else. So we closed the door opening and put a coat rack for our guest on the other side and will be hanging pictures on the living room side. Also we won't see our guest running to the bathroom when we are sitting on the couch. Guests have their own little private space now. Big improvement! We already owned all the furniture you can see except the bookcase which is actually the IKEA Bestå System. When we moved to the US we brought some of our furniture with us (it was paid for by P's company) and because we didn't bring a coffee table we used my metal storage boxes as make shift tables and nine years later we still don't own a "proper" coffee table. We'll see it might change, it might not.

And yes I took a stone sculpting class and made both sculptures in the living room. I really enjoyed it, to me it was really relaxing to chip away at the stone and turn it into something new. After finishing those two pieces my teacher teacher moved away and now I don't really have time to do it anymore. Maybe I should pick it up again...

Have a great weekend!

2 years - dining room

Today is my second blog anniversary. Can't believe it has already been that long. Thanks for taking this journey with me, without you it wouldn't be the same!

Second in my two year recap is the dining room. It was a pretty easy transformation, especially compared to the kitchen, we just painted the walls, ceiling, window and door frames, crown and base moulding and called it a day. OK, now that I wrote down what we painted it sounds like a lot of work and it also took a while to finish it all. Of course we also swapped the chandelier for a more modern light fixture and the stained roman shades needed to go as well. The chandelier was the same model than the one in the kitchen, there was also a smaller one like that in the hallway. I managed to sell all three of them at a local flea market for $30. Yay! Tried to give it away for free on craigslist before but nobody came to pick them up...We already owned all the furniture except the chair and the side tables in the window nook so we didn't have to spend much on this room. The little side board under the orange poster I brought from Germany, I found it sitting next to the dumpster of my student dorm. Even back then I picked up furniture from the street. We managed to finish the dining room just in time for Thanksgiving 2010 and hosted our first Thanksgiving dinner for a group of friends...

 

2 years - kitchen

Usually I have a post about my previous week on Mondays but this week is a very special week, two years ago we closed on our house and two days later I started this blog. Last year I shared a photo of our house circa 1938 (?). This year I want to show the progress we have made so far. Let's start with the kitchen...

I can still remember when we drove to the house after the closing, vacuum and other cleaning supplies in hand to clean a couple of rooms and prep them for painting. Well we didn't have any power because the previous owners didn't pay their bills in a while. It was a Friday evening and of course we couldn't get power until Monday but we still managed to paint two rooms over the weekend. We wanted to get done as much as possible before moving in a month later. In early May my parents came over from Germany to help with the house and the move. One thing we wanted to change as soon as possible and before running out of steam was the kitchen. P and I both didn't like anything about the kitchen, it was not our style and we didn't like the colors either but a kitchen renovation was not in the budget and the cabinets were still pretty new and in good shape. So I planned to paint everything. First the kitchen needed a good scrub, everything was super greasy. We cleaned the top of the cabinets three times and they were still sticky. The area above the range had stalactites out of grease dangling from the ceiling. Yuck! My parents were nice enough to sand all the kitchen cabinets and doors so I could paint them which took a couple of weeks (or months) to finish. I even painted the tile backsplash and contrary to all the negative things I had read about painting tile it still looks like the day I finished painting. You can find some pictures of the whole process here.

All in all we painted the cabinets (doors and visible parts), tile backsplash, walls, window and door frames, ceiling, base and crown molding, changed all the handles, replaced missing hinges, switched out the light fixture, as well as the range, microwave and the dishwasher. Because there was too much unused space in the middle of the room we later added an island that we snatched up on sale at IKEA. Quite a change from the before...

woman vs chair - round 8

Last week I managed to staple the seat cushion and some loose bits of fabric on the backrest. The only thing left to do is to add the finishing touches. First I will have to add a dust cover under the seat cushion which will hide the wood and cover the uneven edge of the fabric. Also I will be adding more grey fabric to the underside of the backrest, so all exposed parts will be covered. Can't wait to attach the legs and admire the finished chair...and of course sit in it.

happy easter!

While "wasting" some time on Pinterest last week I came across some cute ideas for Easter. Here are my three favorites. We don't really do anything special for Easter but the message in an egg is so cute I might try it out next year and send it to friends as an Easter greeting. And who can say no to s'mores, especially if they were made with colorful peeps. Do you have anything fun planned this weekend? Whatever your plans are just enjoy your weekend!

1. message in an egg via Poppytalk 2. peep s'mores via eclectic recipes 

3. no dye easter eggs via Better Homes and Gardens

woman vs chair - round 7

The last round was all about finishing the backside of the backrest. I used a flexible metal strip (ply grip) and stretched the fabric over the little teeth, trimmed the access and folded everything over. Than I gave it a little whack with a hammer to ensure everything was tightly folded over (as seen in the 5th photo). Next step is finishing the seat cushion and polishing the legs...

woman vs chair - round 6

Another successful round in the fight woman versus chair. Last Thursday I was able to start stapling the fabric for the backrest back onto the chair. It involved using a pneumatic staple gun. So much fun! Next Thursday I have to attach the fabric on the backside of the backrest with an invisible tack strip. Not sure what the professional name for this strip is but I will find out on Thursday. Hopefully I'll be able to work on the seat as well. Anyways the chair is coming together nicely...

woman vs chair - round 5

As mentioned in my previous post I lost the last round against my chair but my inner Tim Gunn was telling me to make it work. So I packed my sewing machine and drove over to a friends place and let her mom guide me through the sewing part. Under her guidance I pinned and sewed all the pieces together myself. Unfortunately we couldn't get the lower thread on my machine to work properly so we had to use her machine, I need to read the manual for my machine and figure it out later. Phew! I did it! And it wasn't even as hard as I thought. On Thursday I will start stapling the fabric back onto the chair and as long as I did my sewing correctly it should be smooth sailing from here. Guess I will find out on Thursday...

For the photos I just put the sewn fabric loosely over the plywood pieces just to give me an idea what the chair will look like once it is finished. It is not looking too bad actually. Can't wait to sit in it!

woman vs chair - round 4

The chair finally did it and knocked me out during last weeks class. I had trouble piecing the pieces back together because the lineup marks I made didn't line up. Weirdly enough they matched the original marks and the original pieces fit together perfectly. Argh! I guess it was because the old fabric was stretched out pretty badly. So last Thursday I only accomplished to pin the back and front pieces for the backrest together. If I'd been a contestant on Project Runway Heidi Klum would have sent me packing with her You're out! Auf Wiedersehen! But I had my trusty Tim Gunn (aka our upholstery instructor) at my side that kept telling me to make it work...So there is hope for the next round.

diy felt elbow patches

In my week eight post I already showed you the items I picked up for a new DIY project. As Erin guessed correctly I was attempting my own version of a diy felt elbow patch. I saw a picture of it on Pinterest and thought it would be a great way to salvage my favorite cardigan that had a big hole on the right elbow, basically my elbow was poking through. Already had bought leather elbow patches a while back but they were just too big and I wasn't quite sure how to sew them on. First I traced the picture of the elbow patch back to the blog it was originally posted on and turns out it even had a tutorial on how to do it. The blog is called honestly wtf and I couldn't stop clicking through it. Even discovered more droolworthy diy projects. I'm not good at crafts like knitting or crocheting but this was super easy and I could even get rid of any frustration I had by stabbing my needle into the foam like a maniac. Good stress reliever!...Did anyone of you pinned something on Pinterest and you just had to recreate it at home?