A painted baby..er...I mean back door

It has been a rainy day in southern California today! I'm pretty sure we might float away if it doesn't stop soon! Well, since the weather has made any gardening or outdoor projects off limits we have hunkered down inside. I'm pretty sure I saw a paint brush in Charlie's hand earlier putting touch-ups on our back door re-do that we did two weeks ago when the weather was gorgeous. I think I'll share that with you today.
First of all, here is a before pic. (Again, I forgot to take a good one and this was the best I could find!) The doors look ok in the pic, but trust me, up close they weren't that pretty to look at. See that white "line" between the two doors? That is paint. When we moved into this house last July it had a TON of terrible paint issues and this was one of them. The exterior of the doors are painted white to match the outside of the house and whoever painted also painted the insides of those door getting paint on the interior side also.

Here is a pic of the room. Please ignore the mess! (no judging!) We originally painted this room blue, but it wasn't quite what we were going for, so after a few weeks we quickly re-painted it the color you see now. If you ask me, the jury is still out on this. While I like the color, I find that it combined with our dark sofas, end tables, tv console, ottomon (not pictured) etc make the room feel very cavernous. This should be the part where I tell you, that my husband absolutely hates to paint. So when I mentioned that I wasn't too thrilled with the color...lets just say he wasn't too thrilled with me. Ha! So, in order to save my marriage (entirely kidding!) and because all of the trim and crown moulding are painted a beautiful creamy white, I decided that the doors needed to fit in too. Maybe this (and changing out some accessories) will help "lighten" the look of the room??

I began this project by quickly taping off around the door trim and I started to tape off each window panel before I realized that was way too much work. I'd rather paint over it and scrape it off later. I'm impatient like that. Oh, and by "I'd rather...scrape it off later"  I mean Charlie. He's a great hubs and although I was totally on my own where painting was concerned, he took the doors off  to make it easier for me to do my thing. It was a gorgeous 80* Saturday and I cracked my paint can, poured some into a paint pan and set to work.

Life was good. I was outside soaking up some sun, I had a big glass of sweet tea and I was making something ugly beautiful. I laid on my first coat, sat back and smiled with pride, then headed inside for some lunch. What a perfect day for such a perfect project. What could possibly go wrong?

This, my friends, is what happened next! Someone, who shall forever remain nameless (ahem) set her GALLON of paint on the ground after pouring just a tad of it into her paint pan. You see the ripples in the paint? Almost wave-like! We had a small lake of paint in our back yard. And a son who apparantly thought it tasted pretty good. He definitely loooooved splashing in it! (Those were brand new summer clothes too!)

So after this, um, hiccup. You can now see (and empathize) why it has taken us until now to do the touch ups! In case, you were wondering...Litte Man was napping. DIY has taught me a few things at least!

PS- I'll post an after pic later this week. While the door were off, I also took the opportunity to hang the curtains higher which meant I had to patch and re-paint over the previous curtain rod holes.

PSS- Anywhere in the PS section that I said, "I" I mean Charlie. Except the posting the picture part. I'll do that. Maybe.

Long sunset walk on the beach...

Happy weekend everyone! We're homeschoolers and since we've got Grammy visiting next week and a day at Disneyland planned, we're going to get ahead a bit and do some school work today. I hope everyone is having or planning to have a great weekend.
I thought I'd share one of my favorite photos of my little homeschooler and her Daddy. We just took this picture last weekend when my brother and sister-in-law were visiting.

Special Daddy/daugher time makes my heart so glad! My little girl is so blessed with an amazing Daddy that loves spending time with her. And he is so blessed with a little girl that views her Daddy as her prince. These two are so much alike (read: stubborn) that they can, and do, often butt heads when they don't agree, but wow the love between them is huge! I am such a happy Mama!

Antique glazed frame

We spent last Thanksgiving with Hubs family in San Antonio. One morning, after changing a less-than-pleasant diaper I took it to the outside trash can. When I lifted the lid on the completely full can, laying right on top was a true treasure! I snatched it up and ran back in asking my MIL if I could have it. What was the treasure you might ask? It was a very heavy, wooden, carved ornate frame. It was missing the glass or any backing, but it did still have a wire hanger. It was beaten up and had two somewhat large chips in in. Somewhere along the line it recieved a hideous gold paint job and the knicks stood out terribly, but I just knew I could do something with it. Sadly, I don't have a before picture. Agh! I hate when I get so excited to do the project, I forget the before pic! Well, here she is now!

I painted it with Annie Sloan chalk paint actually. Then I glazed over the top. I had read a warning that if you rub the glaze off to hard, it'll take your paint off too. When this happened accidentally, exposing some of the original gold, I loved it so much, I went with it and did it on purpose! I added a felt flower and I am so pleased with how it turned out. I plan to stencil our last name initial on burlap and staple inside the frame.

So, have you ever found treasure in the trash? Have you ever glazed anything? This was my first glazing project, but I'm sure there will definitely be more in the future!

Blessings,

Courtney

Unplanned Hiatus and a New Wreath!

Hi! Well, that was an unplanned hiatus! Oh, there was lots of DIY and crafting going on, that I will definitely be updating y'all on and posting about. There was also sick kiddos and precious time with my brother and sister-in-law visiting. A friend of mine recently wrote on FB something along these lines- "I didn't get any pictures, but sometimes making the memories with my family is more important." I couldn't agree more! But, I did manage to take several photos of the happenings around here during my hiatus that I can't wait to share with you.
First up, is a wreath that I whipped up earlier this week. After taking down my XO Valentine wreath I had grand plans to make a St. Patricks Day wreath that quickly evaporated. It looks like an Easter wreath may not be in the picture either. We'll see though, I may still make it happen.

This wreath was put together from several inspiration wreaths on pinterest and various blogs that I follow. It couldn't be more fitting for my house either. Our house is situated on a corner, the problem is though, that the street my house and driveway and garage face is not our address! The street address to our house will lead you to the side of our house and a gate to the back yard. Pizza delivery men almost always call when delivering, and unbelievably we've even had UPS packages delivered and dropped off inside the gate behind our house! I'm taking behind, folks...meaning we didn't find them until weeks later. No joke. Anyway, because of this serious street planning/address faux paus (in my opinion) our house has no house numbers on the front. Enter, adorable wreath!
It's a very simple yarn wrapped wreath and didn't take much time at all. I decided to utilize another idea I found on another blog and use a pool noodle in place of a wreath form. So much more economical! I paid $1 for this pool noodle as opposed to $9 for a 16 inch wreath form at Joann's. Bargain! As you can see from the cute model and wreath assembly assistant in the picture below, we cut off the ends at and angle and then taped it together. I found the angled ends much easier to work with rather than the blunt, straight, un-cut ends.

I purchased pre-fab wooden numbers from Joanns and sprayed them with a couple of coats Rustoleum oil rubbed bronze spray paint. Then since I had the white paint out anyway, (that's a project I'll share in a few days) I took my barely wet brush and just lightly brushed over the oil rubbed bronze. I'm thrilled with out they turned out!

Then, I had the most fun of this project and that was making those fabulous felt flowers! I have seen so many tutorials on felt flowers, but the one I loved the most was this dahlia tutorial at holidash. I added a few rolled felt rosettes on either side and called it a day.

I am thrilled with the way it turned out! And maybe now the pizza man (and the UPS man, sheesh!) won't get quite as confused!

Blessings!

Courtney