Home: DIY Christmas Tree Skirt

Add this to the category of "things I DIYed but could have paid less if I bought off the shelf." Also add this to the category of "things I meant to post about before Christmas but didn't and yes today is December 30, so I am getting this one in right under the wire."

Back at the beginning of the holiday season, I made a Christmas tree skirt.  And by "make" I mean simply cut some felt and trim, and glue the trim onto the skirt.  Super easy, but not super affordable. But I love it, and it's totally my style, and I made it with my little girl, so I guess that is priceless.  At least that is what I am telling myself.  Here's the skirt!

I saw this gorgeous tree skirt on Design*Sponge last year, and it seemed easy enough.  My old tree skirt was very simple red scalloped felt -- something I grabbed at Target just because I needed something to cover the bottom of the tree (my mom had made one for me before but I think it got destroyed or lost in a move or it's possible it's still being used by my ex).  So when I saw this gorgeous, textured number from Design Sponge that was a DIY, I thought it was perfect.  

I printed out the Design*Sponge tutorial, which was my shopping list and got my supplies at JoAnn's.  I bought a big piece of ivory felt that was in their scrap bin (they had several of these) and then spent some time with the trim picking out exactly what I wanted.  Ummmm, it was super expensive.  I almost died when the cashier told me the total (which was close to $100 ...) but decided I was committed to this project and would see it through.  This was last year.

On the morning that we put up our tree (which was the weekend after Thanksgiving), my little girl and I made the skirt by following the directions on the tutorial.  It was very easy.  The hardest part was choosing which trim to put where on the skirt.  First, we cut a hole in the center.  Easy enough.

Then, we glued the tassel/brush trim around the edges and in the middle.  In order to make the skirt look nice and neat and not like a roving band of preschoolers did it, I used a ruler to make sure that the trim was at least somewhat uniformly placed around the skirt.

There was no science to it. We chose which trim we liked and where it should go.  I regret not buying more of the thick sequined trim.  We ran out of that and could only do one strip of it.  Sad face.  

The skirt is a little small, but my tree is also a little small, so the scale works.  If I do this again (and that's a big "if" given the cost of the supplies), I would make sure to get a very large scrap of fabric for the skirt.  Here it is complete and under the tree!

Whew! Just under the wire with the Christmas craft.  I hope you had terrific holidays. The new year is upon us.  Time for fresh starts, resolutions and renewed hope that this year will be the best one yet. 

DIY: Stylish Dry Erase Board

This was a fun little project.  I blogged a few weeks ago about how I plan my outfits for the week:  on Sundays, after watching the 5 day weather forecast, I go through my wardrobe and put together outfits and then write them out on a post-it note, which I stick in my closet.  I love doing this because it takes away the time pressure angst of "what will I wear today??" and makes it so much easier (not to mention more fun) to put together creative, stylish outfits.  

The post-it, though, needed to go.  I decided to make a DIY dry erase board for this purpose.  I have a spot in the corner behind my door and next to my closet where it could go.  I knew I did not want a standard dry erase board, though.  I wanted something a little more glam.  I used the frame that I bought at the Christmas Tree Shops on clearance for $1.25, some wrapping paper and white paint.

This project was so easy.  I used some white paint that I had on hand and painted over the frame.  It took a couple of coats.  I could have spray-painted, but it's cold here and I did not want to do it outside or inside.  Here is the frame once I painted it.

Then I bought some wrapping paper.  I loved this striped paper from Target, and loved even more that it would have five horizontal stripes -- so each stripe could be a day of the week!  

I just framed the paper, hung the frame, and added a dry erase marker.  And ... voila!  Here it is.

Same function as the little post-it, but a whole lot prettier.   And you can see that each day of the week gets its own stripe and the dry erase marker is hidden at the top.  Over the top organization tied up in a neat little (pastel stripey colored) bow.  :)

See you swoon,

Closet case ...

I sat around this past Saturday trying to find something to do with myself.  This doesn't happen often.  I rearely slow down and typically have massive to do lists that are completely unrealistic for any human being to finish in a week let alone two days.  See, of course I could go out shopping or buy materials for projects I have in mind but I am trying to save some dough right now so I had to come up with a task that would cost close to nothing...or free. 
At about 3:00PM I decided I would tear my closet apart and try to find a way to create space for hanging clothes, kind of late in the day to be starting a project but I jumped in anyway.  I have a small closet in our middle bedroom to hang dresses but right now my wedding dress resides in this space so I have a limited amount of room for anything else.  I need more closet space!  I know that some people reading this is probably saying, "typical", but no really I needed more room to hang shirts and pants and it was time to take matters into my own hands.

I started ripping things apart before I took pictures so excuse the insane looking shelves, this is not how they normally look on any given day.  This is a sort of shot of what the closet looked like before.  The previous owners had made this closet and built the walls around the shelves (I learned this the hard way, more on that in a minute).  Not many of the homes on our street have any closet space so I was thrilled to have this in our bedroom.  It worked well for the first year here but I really did need more space for hangers.

This was Kelly's side...and some of my side (I needed his space too, mostly for shoes)

This takes me back to my early pre-teen years when I would be so dramatic about having to clean my room that I would tear the whole thing apart.  Makes me laugh thinking about that now especially because I did it for fun this time!

These are the brackets holding up the shelves.  My original plan was to take out the smaller top shelf and move the larger second shelf up.  Midway through ripping these out of the wall my husband suggested just hanging the hangers from the shorter shelf.  OOOOH man I did not want to admit this at first but this was a much better idea.  I was creating a lot more work for myself than was really necessary. 

Now, here comes the issue with the previous owners building the wall around the shelves.  They are way too long to come out of the closet in one piece.  Yup.  Learned that after I had one hanging and jammed between the two walls.  Out came the Dremmel.  This actually worked out better because I could cut two of the shelves on my side creating hanging space and leave the shelves on my husband's side for his clothes.  He was happy he wasnt losing his shelves in this project (he also has a second closet with a dresser and hanging poles so he didn't need the space like I did).

Here is my side all done!  I always knew I had a lot of gray, white, black, and navy clothing but this really showcases that huh?  I need more color in my life STAT!

I do plan to get matching hangers but like I said, this was a last minute project so I had to work with what I had at the time. 

This is the other side with my husbands clothes...and still my shoes but I NEED that side!  Good thing he doesn't need it, thanks for sharing :)

Have any of you tackled closet projects lately?  Are you looking for a new more functional closet design to fit your life?  Tell us all about it!

See you swoon,

DIY Chalkboard Menu - what's cookin?

Hi! It's Tuesday, which for me is the worst day of the week - next weekend is still far away and last weekend is way behind us.  I always do my best to muddle through to hump day.

Anyway, up today is a fun little project I recently tackled.  It's practical and cute and (for me) cost just $1.50!  A DIY menu board for my kitchen.  Here's the finished product right up front:

I absolutely needed this.  Because I work outside the home and because I am the one who picks up the kids from school and is in charge of our meals, I have to be organized with the meal planning in order to make healthy, homemade meals for my family.  This means a coordinated grocery store trip/meal plan for the week.  What I had been doing for years is to write out the menu for the week on a yellow post-it and put that on the fridge.  It always bugged me, but I never did anything about it.  Until now. 

Jamie recently posted about her Pottery Barn knock-off mail bin, which she removed from a larger organizational system that she grabbed at Home Goods.  As soon as I saw that big board with chalkboard, I knew I wanted it.  I asked if she had plans for it and she said nope - it was all mine. Yippie!  [We do this all.the.time ... like with my old mirror!  We give each other our cast-offs.  Fun!]  Here's the board before I got started:

The first thing I did was spray a fresh coat of chalkboard paint onto the chalkboard part.  The chalkboard that came on the board was really rough and I knew it was going to be an issue to write on.  I knew I was going to paint and prime over the frame so I didn't bother taping it off. Next, I puttied the holes where the mail bin used to be and sanded them nice and smooth.

When I sanded, I started to dig the distressed finish ... and for a few minutes I was considering just hanging a very distressed, vintagey looking menu board on the wall.  Like this:

But I went back to my beloved white paint and decided to stay the course.  It was time to prime.  I used my favorite Zinsser primer and then did 2 coats of Dover White (who's surprised?).  Looking good!

There was a pretty big space under the chalkboard.  I decided to put it to work. First, I added a cup pull that I had in my stash and turned it upside-down to act as a chalk holder.  Cute!

Then, I picked up some mini clothespins at Wal-Mart (8 for $1.50 or something) and glued them on the board with the glue gun.  I figure these can hold recipes or clippings or even coupons.  I painted them one of the grey paint samples from the den/kitchen - I think March Wind (Sherwin Williams).

Finally, I decided to write "menu" on the board, which I think is kind of fun.  I used black paint I had on hand and lightly brushed/dabbed the paint on for a more rustic and distressed look. I was inspired by this piece from Z.Gallerie ...

And here is mine:

I did a screen shot of the Z Gallerie chalkboard and enlarged it so that I could use the "menu du jour" as a template.  I free-handed it and took my time and it looks OK ... I wish it were a little more polished but maybe it's charming?   And here's the whole she-bang once again!

What do you think?  How do you keep tabs of what's cookin' each night?  I'll share my meal planning tips in a future post.  Now who's hungry? 

See you swoon,

Tutorial: A chair rail tale

Oy.  This was a doozie and this picture of Shanna says it all.

Our first attempt at chair rail ended up looking something like the picture below and this actually looks tame compared to the eight foot piece of chair rail we blew through trying to figure out ANGLES!  Angles are now my enemy, my brain works in straight lines only I have come to realize.  I thought adding chair rail to my staircase would be a cinch.  Bing, bang, boom, three or four mitered cuts and voila.  Bahahahaha, did I have another thing coming.

I started by creating a painters tape template just to get a visual.  This went all the way up the stairs so I could get a feel for the height I liked and moulding ideas for the bottom half.

Shanna and I pretty much got hung up immediately, we spent two hours cutting as many angles as you can imagine just hoping to stumble on the angle we needed.  We were praying for a miracle that never came.  We watched you tube for help and read articles and to our complete surprise, no one had a tutorial on how to get these angles to meet up at the top and bottom landing.

I have to give a lot of credit to my co-worker who is pretty handy and he helped me draw out pictures that I could use at home.  Once I had the stairs drawn out:

The easiest thing to do to find the angles for the chair rail is to make this diagram on the wall.  Lay the chair rail across the vertical line where you want the two chair rail pieces to meet.  Our angle ended up being 22.5" mitered cuts, funny we couldn't figure that out since that's common cut on the saw!

You can see it a little better here.  The chair rail will cross over where you see the dotted line and then you can just draw that line directly onto the chair rail:

You will do the same things at the top landing to find that angle as well:

Once you find the angle to cut the long straight piece going up the stairs, the small boards for the landing are much easier.  They are cut on the same degree but you will have to move the miter saw to the other side so the two angles match up. 

I also made a smaller version of the chair rail once I figured the angled cuts that I needed to make to help me keep the visual in my head and use the smaller pieces as guides when I kept running to the basement to cut the new pretty pieces of chair rail.

If I can give one piece of advice it would be to practice.  Its OK to mess up and you may have to buy a piece that will be come scrap just so you can practice but this is much better than nailing something to the wall and the realizing it's wrong.



After all the measuring it was time to get started.  We literally made four cuts to fit all the pieces together.  We used construction adhesive and painters tape to hold the chair rail in place while the glue dried.  This was originally the only thing we had planned to use to keep this attached to the wall because this is a cement party wall.  We weren't sure nails would actually go through the cement. 

Apparently my walls are nowhere close to flat so we had to try nails to hold everything close to the wall.  The glue kept separating and leaving very large gaps:

 

Finally!  All of it is up so now you can caulk any gaps and cracks.

Once the caulk has dried you can paint-yahoo!  I chose a white semigloss that matches my trim.  I wanted the illusion of beadboard and I liked the contrast against the rice grain colored walls. 

Here is it with the new mirror :)

You will have another after as soon as I hang my Ikea Ribba frames up the staircase.  I have decided that I am not going to make moulding boxes to avoid over-doing the framed look.  As always, stay tuned!

If you have any questions about angles or how we did this project let me know, I am happy to help!

See you swoon,