The Man in the Mirror

Like most of you I have an addiction to this little website called Pinterest.com. I love her, she loves me, we have a relationship. It's getting pretty serious. Well on one of our late night dates I found starburst mirrors.

After clicking on an embarrassing amount of links they were running in the $200-300 range. If I'm paying $300 for a mirror it better roll over kiss me in the morning, get up and make me some sugar glazed bacon! After doing way too much shopping I said the words, the words that so often get me knee deep in supplies and frustration, "I can do that." How hard could it be right? How long could it possibly take? Mmm hmm.

Actually compared to some of the other projects that were tackled last year *cough* the bathroom *cough* the tea room, it wasn't too bad.

Plan A: Bamboo as the long attachments. Alas Klamath Falls, you let me down. Small town = no supplies.
Plan B: Wooden skewers used at BBQs for shish kabobs. Mmm shish kabobs. Mmm summer. Anyway! Turns out they are seasonal.
Plan C: Floral sticks used in bouquets. Bingo!

Just grabbed a mirror, oodles of hot glue, a cross-stitching ream, picture hangers and champagne colored metallic spray paint and primer in one. You know how I roll with the paint and primer combos. Heaven knows I hate myself some primer like I hate losing Words with friends by one flipping point!

Got all my supply goodness and I was ready to go! So I found the middle of the back of the 7" mirror...a few times...and made a mark so I knew where to make the rest of my measurements. I have a queen size bed and knew I wanted my sunburst mirror to take up most of the area above my bed. I cut my floral branches all 15" and then glued the branches 2" in from the edge of the mirror. Here is where the tricky part came in. Do you know how many 2mm tiny sticks it takes to go around a 7" diameter mirror?! A ridiculous amount that's how many! Oh and they turn your hands red. Oh and everything you touch red. Oh and it lasts for days. It looked like I had just killed a man. Note to self; next time I kill someone don't blame the a-a-a-a-a-alcohol blame it on the floral sticks. On it!

After all that was done I thought it would be a good idea to attach the picture hook so it would adhere to the back of the mirror itself and not the layer of spray paint over the back of the mirror. Then I just did some quick gluage of the sewing ream to the front of the mirror for a more complete look. Please disregard all of my straight "middle of the mirror" lines. That's how awesome I am.

I sprayed the back first as more of a test than anything to make sure it would cover alright. It did after a little coaxing.

After three coats of paint to that backside and four coats on the front side here is what I was left with.

Not too shabby right? For 90% less than the retail price on the mirror I really wanted, I would say that this will work awesome. Oh what?! The bedroom walls are a different color? Of course they are! Can I keep any room the same color for more than a year? Haha! Is the pope Jewish?! Wait...that's not correct is it? Oh well you get it. More on the redecorated master bedroom coming soon. You know you're excited.

Seizure Sewing Table

After eating a fantastic 10 pieces of bacon while grabbing my gut and hoping this one nights mishaps won't make me gain back the 15 pounds I've lost, I decided to post about my recent furniture mishaps and success.

Slowly and surely the new room is coming along. I was going to wait and reveal all the accoutrement at once but I just can't. So I'll make a few nugget sized posts instead. Woot!

I got this sewing table after saving this girl's life at a garage sale. So I guess she wasn't actually dead. She had a seizure and was non responsive but it acts A LOT like dead. That's another story for another post but I got it for free regardless. This is what it used to look like.

What a sad little piece of unloved furniture.

Then BAM!

Lookin' saucy! Not as saucy as those Victoria Secret commercials that randomly come on the TV and our men pretend not to look at, but pretty dang fine.

Things not shown in these pictures:

• Spilling Dark Walnut stain ALL OVER our deck, the dog, my legs and more importantly my 'bidness' a little north of my legs. Note for future stainers--WEAR LONG SHORTS AND DON'T SIT SPREAD EAGLE!

• Carrying my 70 lbs. Golden Retriever with wood stain on her paws while trying to take giant leaps in my husband's flip flops to the bathroom as not to get stain all over our new carpet.

• Blowdrying the desk after a week of not completely drying.

Yes, this was supposed to be my easy project after the dresser...it wasn't.
Looks pretty good though. Eh?

Stripe Tease

I wish I was a little less excited about this reveal alas I'm not. It was my first furniture project and so I was SUPER slow at it and went a little crazy with making sure everything was great. I love the way it turned out. First a little bit of history.

This dresser belonged to my great great grandmother. She used it most of her life and passed it down to her children, who passed it to their children who gave it to their kids and grand kids. Needless to say I was a little worried to tryout my new hobby on a piece that means so much to many people. I hope they like it. If not they can rush my house and steal it out of my tea room. Bring it.

Before I show ya'll the results I have to share my favorite part of the dresser.



That is my great great grandmother's handwriting on the back of the dresser. I can't tell you how many times I have run my hand over that signature and wondered about her history and the stories this piece could tell.

When I was 13 I wrote a message on the bottom drawer hoping that someone would find it and run their hands over it and wonder about my story. This seems doubtful but darnit I love my rose colored glasses.

Alright here we go. Hope you like it, If not...good thing it's not in your house.




BEFORE








AFTER



It literally took 3 or 4 hours just to sand the top down enough to stain it. I learned a few things during that time mainly I HATE SANDING. It gets everywhere, on everything and that noise makes me feel like I need to go see my dentist. However the wood absorbed the stain beautifully and the Dark Walnut stain looks amazing.



Notice the smile on my face at the BEGINNING of this project. Oh and how long my hair was!

I wanted to do something fun with the drawers but didn't quite have the guts to go all crazy tiger on over a hundred year old wood dresser. Call me crazy! I thought the stripes would bring it up to current day design without offending my vintage taste. I just taped off a few straight lines with plain old painters tape and BOOM! Stripage.



I purchased new knobs to better support the continual pulling motion since the little handles were starting to wear on the wood. The knobs were the most expensive part of this whole project it also took almost 2 weeks to get here! But boy are they heavy and solid! She's a brick house is playing in my head right now. Aren't they pretty?! She's mighty mighty, lettin' it all hang out...sorry.



We are using the dresser/buffet to hold our DVDs right now but I have high hopes to keep this dresser in our family for another century. Which means it probably has many restorations coming her way. Little nip here, little tuck there. Hopefully she doesn't turn out like Lisa Marie Presley. Whoo! Poor girl.

Goodwill and Peace on Earth for Ashlyn

I have had my eye on this white ceramic flower at Target for oh, too long!




I could never justify the almost $30 + shipping to have it placed ever so perfectly on my end table in my new parlor (more on that when it's finished.)




Alas, today I felt the need for a few crafty remodeling sessions and everyone keeps telling me that the local Goodwill has quite a few workable finds. My apologies to all the Goodwill gals out there but, it must take a trained eye to scout for new projects.

HOWEVER I did find this hot little number!



Not an exact replica but for $3.99 it will feed my lust for ceramic floral home accessories. For now at least.

COMING SOON--Dresser remodel

Not Your Mama's Door Handles.

I woke up about 3 months ago with a creative side. I know, I was scared too. All these ideas started popping in my head about cute little things to do around the house to put a little more ASHLYN in our home and a little less IKEA and TARGET. I started out slow with a few of my favorite books strategically left out here and there. I was still comfortable. Then I worked on center pieces for the dining room table. I was still comfortable. I pulled some color into the kitchen by stitching and hot gluing ribbons onto my plain white cooking canisters.



Like I said...baby steps.




And you know what? I was still okay!

I have had a love for antiques since I was a child. Something in me loves the idea that an object has a history just like we all do. I know totally corny right? Too bad! I love it. I have all kinds of small and large antiques that I work somehow into my self categorized "modern colonial" decorating style.

I was at Habitat for Humanitie's ReStore in town and found these super awesome old door handles.





I made an impulse purchase (3 handles for $2.99, whew big spender) and brought my new little project home to a confused hubby. It took me a few weeks to decide what to actually do with them because I knew they had to have a spot where everyone would see how great they are. Well this past winter I tried to make a headboard for the guest room. That ended up being an epic fail due to the fact that just the foam is $15 a foot and I needed about 10. I don't need a handmade headboard as much as I need a vehicle to get me to work to make more money for more projects.

BACK TO THE CRAFT. I really needed something to even out the wall weight in our guest room. Enter fun old door handles. I took just a scrap piece of wood that we had from one of our MANY other home projects and painted it white with the new Behr paint and primer in one. Then my wonderful manfriend (Joe) used a spade bit to drill holes for the handles to go through. Here comes the hard part. I had to pick out pictures of our nieces and nephews to go in the tiny picture frames I bought.



Harder than it sounds people. Then I used some ribbon we had leftover from our wedding to tie around the frames and attach to the door handles.



TA DAH! Okay so it's not without flaw and I might add a little somethin' somethin' later but it helps balance out the room and its a fun discussion piece.



Yet again...baby steps.

You can't see it very well but the front door handle is laying strategically on the dresser. There is a picture of the Portland LDS temple behind it and I thought it was a cute way to kind of just say "Enter" in the literal and metaphorical sense.