Kinley's Bedroom Make Over

My 4 year old had decided the other day, that it would be a good idea to take my scissors and cut into her bedding. She got in very big trouble and has lost her privilege of using scissors for quite some time.  I was very frustrated with the fact that she had decided to tear up her nice things, but a part of me deep down jumped at the fact I could now have a very good reason to redo her room since it had been bothering me from the day we painted it pink! 

I knew I didn't want anything little girlish, I wanted something that would last and would grow with her. So here it is.. still a work in progress would like to frame some of her art and add things to the wall but it is so much more relaxing and tranquil and I very jealous of her bed spread; however, I don't think Adam would go for something like this in our room. 

Sorry for the bad picture my camera wouldn't capture a wide enough angle, but this is from the outside looking through the door and really does no justice for the room. and please ignore the mattress under the bed. We are waiting for little man to get big enough and it can be moved into his bed. As of now it's the only place we have for it. I painted the wall in mineral by bher. and moved in a grey rug that had been in our room. would like to find something else but it will do for now.

Her bedding is from Urban Outfitters and I love it! It adds enough pink with out being over baring. The pillow is from target. 

The small dresser I bought from a local antique store and painted white and destressed it. The doll house was her birthday present and a labor of love. 

This is a chair my dad made and my mom painted for me when I was little. They are now Kinley's and I love them even more now than I did then. 

Kinley had a black Melissa and Dough Piano that she loves to play with, however it stuck out like a sore thumb so I painted its one of the colors I had used on her ombre dresser. 

This is the ombre dresser I had worked on for her. I still need to do something with her photos, like maybe update haha, and would like to spray her lamp, just haven't decided on a color yet. 

All in all im pretty happy with how it is turning out just some fine tuning and I think it will be super cute! Kinley loves it and has promised to never cut her bedding again. we shall see. 

How to Make a Super Simple, Super Cute Pelmet Box

Thanks to Beth Feigner, for pointing me in the direction of such a creative idea. I'm currently in the process of redoing my 4 yr olds bedroom. I was wanting to a make a pelmet box for her window but wasn't sure about the best way to do that. Beth had some amazing one's in her daughters nursery and pointed me to Jenny's blog where she explains her idea. You can find her tutorial here. I thought since I was working on mine I would snap a few pictures and give a little more detailed tutorial along with some of my recommendations. So here it goes.

Firstly you can do this as cheaply or as expensively as you want most of your cost will be determined by your fabric. Most fabric ranges from $2 to $30+ . My suggestion is to go with a sturdy decorator quality material. Or a nice linen fabric. Mine was about 25$ a yard and I got it 50% off. I was able to use 1.25yrds to complete both of mine. My windows were 43in and 46in. 

Secondly consider the print of your fabric or lack there of. If you chose a solid you may prefer to use a contrasting trim such as Jenny's or make a fun shape to yours. I used a geometric pattern so I wanted that to be the hero and used a simple box shape. I would recommend avoiding stripes or directional fabric, busy patterns will look better. Its very hard to keep straight lines straight when upholstering. 

Materials:
Foam board
Tape
Staple Gun 
1/4 or 3/8 staples
possibly liquid stitch
Fabric 
Batting
curtain rod or wall hangers
tacky glue
hot glue gun 

I first measured my windows and cut my foam board to the length needed. I used 3 foam boards total. I cut mine in half so mine were 10 in wide. I had to tape my two halves together and then cut the end pieces from the excess. I cut them 3 1/8 wide.  

 I first added glue to the bottom of the side piece and glued it to the back of the front piece. 

Lay your fabric right side down (print side facing the floor).

Sandwich you batting between your fabric and foam board. Make sure you align your board with the print so that its not crooked. 

Starting in the middle of your board pull your fabric up and around and secure with a staple to the back of the board do this all the way down. Making sure not to shift your fabric.

When you get to a corner pull your fabric in a secure with a staple in the corner. 

If you have a lot of excess batting, you can cut it away to make it easier to turn the side fabric. But don't cut too much.

For some reason this corner side would not take a staple. So i used some of my liquid stitch to secure it. Its basically a fabric glue. This brand holds pretty quickly. 

Here is the glue. 

Staple your side piece. I found it easiest to put my knees behind it for back pressure, Just be careful not to staple your knee ouch!

Here is a picture of the other side that took the staples. 

Here is what your first side should look like. 

Start working on you other side. Now is when you want to gently pull your fabric taught. You don't want to over stretch it but just make sure its smooth and not puffy underneath. Staple as you did the first side. Again try not to pull so much that you shift the pattern of your fabric.

Your done covering your pelmet box!

I chose to use the curtain rod to hang mine. I felt it gave it more support. But you can also use Jenny's technique see how she did it here.

I went and hung my rod up on the rod hinges. I marked the length it needed to be and taped in in place. 

I hot glued the rod in place. I glued it about an inch down from the top of the pelmet. Now would be a good time to trim your excess fabric. 

Hang your pelmet and stand back and enjoy your beautiful new addition! 

How To Make An Old Fan New For About $17

I recently have decided to update Kinleys bedroom. I had repainted her dresser in a fun teal ombre and painted her walls a neutral grey. Her ceiling fan looked outdated. It was brass and ugly. However it worked wonderfully and was so quite.

My husband refused to let me get a new one. "There is nothing wrong with that fan." and "your an impulse buyer". Which maybe true, but none the less, the fan was not going to flow with the design so it hit me, why not just spray it.

Here is the fan before and after...

Before

After... also a peak at the much more pleasing neutral wall color.

I think it looks like a brand new fan! Very happy with how it turned out. 

here is what I did if you are interested...

First flip your breaker to make sure the electricity is off to your fan. Then I  had my hubby disconnect everything, although its pretty easy. I had to put it back up and reconnect everything. It's a good idea to mark you wires if they aren't already...

Then I took most of the fan pieces apart and taped anything I didn't want to be sprayed. I use frog tape. 

Adam hung the light socket part and the other hanging part so that I could spray it more evenly from two saw horses with a 2x4. Everything else I just laid out on some cardboard I had from in my garage..

Here is the paint I used. I got mine at Home Depot...

It's better to do light multiple coats to avoid drips. I used just a little over 1 can. If you spray carefully you may be able to get away with just one can. I let it dry for about 3 hrs and then was able to reassemble everything. Super easy and looks like a new fan. I reattached the fan, connected the wires to the matching colors, flipped the breaker and had a great looking working fan!

Kinley's 4th Birthday Celebration!

So the day came and went! I can't believe my little girl is officially 4. I had so much fun working on her party! She had requested a Doc Mcstuffins party. We had two of her best friends come I had done several special things for each little girl.  

Firstly the party girl! The Doc is in!

For each little girl I made doctor coats out of white mens dress shirts I got for 3.50 from goodwill. here is a tutorial if you need one on how to make them. I used my serger but since its just for play sewing with a regular sewing machine would be fine, you could always zig zag stitch the seams. I also made doctor badges with the girls pictures and names and put 

toyologist as their speciality.

 

 I bought the little shot cups from the dollar store and filled wit skittles for the "medication"

 Wish this picture would have turned out better i worked very hard on her name banner and it was so cute in person.

These lanters were purchased at hobby lobby and were hung above the kids table.

  I  had put up a canopy made of plastic table cloths from walmart that were about .97 each... after a very crazy look from my husband and some resistance he graciously took down the ceiling fan and managed to complement me on a job well done once he saw the finished project. And trust me this was so worth it.

Kinley's priceless reaction to her new doll house! 

Kinley's Doll House Birthday Present!

      First blog post ever!Please excuse the mess I'm sure this will be as sleep deprivation and typing doesn't seem to go hand in hand too well for me. 

This project was such a labor of love I wanted to document it some how and seeing as Im not a blogger, I really didn't consider it at first.... That was until I got into it way more than I planned. I had set out with the intentions of getting a doll house, buying some furniture and that was that. Well dang ol' pinterest stepped in and introduced me to the wonderful world of mini's (doll house miniatures that is). Why is it that the tinier something is the cuter it seems to be?... puppies, babies, fiats? is it just me? anyways I plan to start this blog detailing how all this came about and my true surprise at my ability to make the things that went in, and even more so the genius behind most of the things I made.

After deciding I wanted to give Kinley a doll house for her birthday, I jumped on craigslist and what would you know, not 30mins earlier a lady had listed this....

By the next morning this lovely was in the back of my car headed home. Ill try to go through with lots of pictures and explain what all I did along with links to where I got ideas and tutorials. 

 starting with the outside. I repainted the white with delta creative, oyster white, I purchased it from hobby lobby. For the grey trim I used Annie Sloan's chalk paint, I had wanted to try it out and thought this was perfect trail run. I bought a sample size of French Linen and have a ton left, it goes very far. The roof and door I stained with BRIWAX, tudor brown. Adam helped me reattach the roof in the back where it had been broken off. I also attached the door as it had been broken off.

Firstly let me share where mostly all my inspiration came from Kris Compas. She is a genius and her things are so amazing! please check out her blog! she has wonderful ideas and is a master at the art of creating super realistic mini's. you can find her blog here

 here is the back, you can see near the top where I still need to figure out how i want to finish the part that was broken on the beam... and I'm not crazy bout the raw edges, but will get to that a little later.


The Kitchen: I made all the furniture in the house except for the fridge, stove, range hood, and sink and lower cabinets. The upper blue cabinets are made from mat board and a frosted paper for the glass with pins for the pulls.  Not sure if you can see it but i also made a small roll of paper towles that are sitting on the counter by the sink with paper and a small dowel rod. 

The table and chairs  are made from mat board and knitting kneedles. And the kitchen hutch is made from mat board with the pulls being pins. 

Here is a peak into the living room! I love this room! wish I had taken a better picture. The deer is one of my favorite things I made. It is so fun! I made it out of a pink cardstock I found directions here, and just sized down the pattern on my computer. for the curtains, I used a dowel rod and bought some very small eyelets at Joanns. After making several of the pieces from Kris, I took a leap and made the sofa table, its a replica of an Ethan Allen, I then made the chair and sofa, based of a Ballard Designs. Ill post more photos of those below. The lamps are made from paper.I used Kris's idea of cutting a long triangle with one straight edge and then wrapping and wrapping to form the base, it is attached to a button and I used, kris's idea for the lamp harp. The ceiling fan is from Hobby Lobby and would be workable if I had wired the house. It was just too much money. (p.s. Ethan Allen and Ballard designs give you measurements so it makes it easy to convert to 1 12 scale) 

Here is a little bit better look at the sofa and back of the sofa table. You can't really see here but the magazines are so cute I took cover photos of some Better Homes and Gardens and Living and printed them on shiny photo paper then scored and folded them in half and glued down. (set printer to max dpi to get best results)

I made the pillows using no sew glue.

Here is a not so great look into the up stairs bedroom. I re-papered the whole house using cute scrapbook paper I bought at Hobby Lobby. I found the best way to get all the angles was to to take computer paper and just gently align it in the area and then use my boning tool to make a crease where the paper needed to be cut. I dry fitted that until it was a good fit and then cut my cute paper.  The bed is made of mat board and cardstock, the mattress and box spring is made of foam board and a little felt for padding and then covered in cotton fabric.... also a tutorial from Kris. I made another paper lamp but this time made both side of the triangle angled. The yellow piece is modeled after a wonderful primitive piece, it was actually the first piece of furniture I bought for our married life. Ill post a picture farther down, but to make it more personalized I stitched a K for my daughters name on the white pillow shams and added a scrap book sticker K to the decorative pillow. I will be replacing the carpet and will need to finish off the raw edge. 

Another look at the yellow piece I also printed of a picture and stuck it in a frame to go above the fire place. The frame was originally gold and had a very not so cute picture in it, but you can buy them at Hobby Lobby. 

The nursery.. so I lied earlier I forgot about the things in this room... I didn't make any of them except for the curtains and I printed the picture which you can't see either. I did re-wall paper, make the mattress and baby quilt. I found the metal furniture at an antique store along with the wooden rocking horse. I would like to add more to this room maybe a changing table but that will have to be in the future. I still have her birthday to get done.... next blog perhaps? 

Oh, I forgot on the out side I put small flowers, just little piece I pulled of of bigger fake arrangements and added the light (hobby lobby) 

here are a few more close up photos these were as I was finishing at 3:30am so the lighting is terrible and they are iphone pics so I apologize. Hope you enjoyed it! Sorry I know it was long! If you have any questions or would like a tutorial on something I did let me know and I can see what I can do! Thanks! I hope she loves it Ill update with her reaction.