Sunday, November 24, 2013

Holiday Decor

The past few days I have been a busy, busy girl! Getting ready for my family to come for Thanksgiving means I need to clean my house and most importantly decorate my house! I used to not be big on Christmas but since I started doing all the decorating at work I think I've gotten into it a bit. So naturally I wanted some Christmas-y things in my house and I knew I didn't want to really spend money on it all. So I went to pinterest and started looking at holiday decor and I got a few ideas that I turned into my own versions. Here are a few simple and cheap ideas for you to do!

First off is my very awesome Winter Wine Bottles! They are SO INCREDIBLY EASY to make! I bought some Epsom salt, spray adhesive, and white spray paint and set to work. I already had wine bottles so I didn't need to go on a drinking binge to empty some. I scrubbed off the labels on the bottles (soak wine bottles in the sink in hot water for 15 or so minutes, scrape off the labels with a knife or scissors. I used scissors so I wouldn't accidentally cut myself.) Now we get down to business one bottle at a time. Spray one bottle with adhesive and then roll it in Epsom salt (you're going to make a mess so be prepared) make sure you cover the whole bottle in the Epsom salt. Do this with the rest of the bottles one at a time. Then take then outside or somewhere well ventilated so you can do the spray painting part. Spray all sides with the white spray paint and let dry for several minutes then add another coat. Let the spray paint dry over night, after that the bottles should be good to go! Some of the salt will fall off if you continue to move them or bump them or touch them so out them in one place and leave them there if possible. I then added some little extras to the bottles to make them more festive.

Here they are drying.
Here is the finished product! I must say they look pretty awesome!!

My second idea (which I love) is a window with ornaments. I had four windows laying around awaiting me to hang them and add pictures so I just used those windows for this project. All I bought for this project was ornaments and fishing line. Hang your windows on your wall however you like then add the ornaments. Cut the fishing line to various lengths and tie the ornaments one to each piece of line. To attach the line to the window just use masking tape, cut any excess line off the top once you've decided on what lengths you want. Really this project was super easy!! Oh and super cheap!!!
Here are my windows that I intended to add pictures to
Here is one window done!!
All four windows done, although I'm still contemplating adding some tinsel garland to the top of each.

So there are just a couple of my Holiday Decor ideas. As I think up of more things I will be adding them, I promise. But for now I'll leave you with a sneak peek of my Christmas Tree, oh and my adorable pup!

My Bri-zy looking cute in her Holiday Collar
My Christmas Tree All Done! (for now at least!)
The totally AWESOME ornament I found! (I'm obsessed with Mustaches!)

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

Upholstering Chairs

So I've been procrastinating, well in all honesty I have been putting this project off for as long as possible. It's not like I thought upholstering chairs was going to be difficult or time consuming I just really had no ambition to do this project. But as my luck would have it I HAD to finish my dining room chairs because my family is having Thanksgiving at my place and well they need to be able to sit at the dining table! So here are my chairs after the paint but before the actual upholstering.

Chairs after paint but before upholstering


Awesome, I know!! My color scheme for my Dining Room (along with my Kitchen) is Green, Black, White, and Grey, I painted my dining room table white and my chairs black and green, my walls are grey so it all ties together!

So let's get started! First step is to take off the seats of the chair and dispose of the fabric and cushion (I already did that before I painted them.) Then lay out one of the seats onto cardboard or anything handy really (I used a heavier paper that I had laying around) and trace around the seat (add an extra 1/4th inch on each side) after that cut out the template of your seat. Use this template for all your foam cushions, trace it and cut the foam to size.

 This is how to make your template

 Here are all FOUR of my cushions waiting to be cut out.

So cut out all your cushions and gather all your seats because now we use spray adhesive to make the foam stick to the seats. I used Loctite and I'd say it worked great but you can use any brand you'd like. I followed the directions on the can though, spray the seat and then spray the foam and wait 1 minute before applying them together. After the minute I stuck them together and honestly, I jumped on them to make sure they stuck! I also did all the spraying on a plastic sheet that way my floor wouldn't get sticky (my socks unfortunately got sticky,) I already had the plastic sheet down because I am painting my dining room table. 

Foam, Spray Adhesive, and Seat.

After that process I measured out each cushion to see how much fabric I would need, I measured across the top and added two inches because of the thickness of the foam. After that I added 3 inches to each measurement I got and cut the fabric. My measurements were 18x18.5 plus two inches for the foam part so it was 20x20.5 I then added 3 inches for 23x23.5. Looking back I wish I had added one more inch just so I wouldn't freak out that I didn't have enough fabric (which I had enough but it was close.) Now here is the super easy part STAPLES!!! Lay the fabric down and then the seat on top of it and pull the fabric over, tight but not too tight and then staple, staple each side once first then from there staple one side then the opposite side then one side and then the opposite side.




Then you get to the corners, trickiest part let me tell you. Cut off most of the excess fabric from the edge leaving just enough to staple to the chair. Corners are really up to you how you want to do them just remember the method used so you can get the same corners on all your chairs. After that just screw the seat back to the chairs and you are DONE! Now pat yourself on the back like I did! Hopefully you now realize how SIMPLE this really is, I'm not sure why I procrastinated as much as I did with this, I really dreaded this project and now I think it was one of the easiest crafty/home-maker things I've done so far! Good luck with your chairs and hopefully this helped you!




I know it looks like ripples in my fabric but once I ran my hand over it the ripples disappeared!I know it looks like ripples in my fabric but once I ran my hand over it the ripples disappeared!