Poor Neglected Crafting

Yup. That title pretty much sums up why I have not blogged since V's birth. Yikes. My sewing machine is collecting dust, my craft store mailers are ::gasp:: trashed once expired, and I'm no where near pinterest much; unless it includes gathering ideas for family adventures. 

This season has not really allowed for down time, much less in front of my craft supplies. And I'm okay with that, for now. I know I'll pick it up again at some point. The boys' birthdays are coming up soon so I'm actually planning a trip to the fabric store this week. A sign that I might be a little more out of survival mode with three wee ones?! Perhaps. ;) 

I just got the invites in the mail and I'm kinda giddy over them. Time to figure out T's decor and gather baking supplies. My sweet lil' tornado toddler will be TWO!!!

IG ::Sharing the Love::

Those who know me know I kinda love Instagram. Kinda alot. It's basically the improved twitter since it's a feed of pictures with captions, although I never did twitter. It's a little peek into whatever the person is seeing, eating, buying, cleaning out of the carpets from their kids, etc...you get the idea. Even better are the fun filters and the square size. Truly, Instagram is so square.

Not too far into my discovery of this fun app, I started to venture beyond friends and family that I knew. It was kinda scary but I liked their style and taste so I thought it would fun to enhance my feed a bit. I started with bloggers I follow and it kinda spread from there. Now there are a few favorites that I pretty much love every single picture they post and they are quite inspiring. Yet they have no clue who I am or maybe even that I'm following. Maybe it's their photography, style, products they like, or ideas they share. 

Wanna know a little trick? If I see something I like, I take a screen-shot so it's saved into my photos. Maybe it's a paint color they used to paint their living room, or a new product they just bought, or a latest DIY project that I want to show W. And another trick I use to find new people is the "Following" section in news. It shows you who loved or commented on others' IGs. I've found a few more random people to follow from that.

So here are some of my "you don't know me in real life" IG-ers that I personally love along with a few of my favorite pictures. I found as I was making this that I'm 90% vintage and only 10% modern, preppy or classic. Guess I'm drawn to the whimsy, old, and hodge-podged. All that to say, these may not inspire you, specifically, but perhaps it'll just be an encouragement to use IG for inspiration. Find people who share things you love but take it up a notch.

I'm gonna get that 10% over now... ;)

IGer: Glitter Guide

She's got expensive and glamorous taste. And every once in a while there be something she shares that I could potentially put on a wishlist. ;)

On to the 80%...

IGer; Cubby Graham

Just started following him and can't even tell you how I stumbled upon him. But he does great things that make you wonder how come your iphone doesn't get shots like these. He does have a waterproof case which allowed for that first picture. I also learned about the trends of photoidgrams and ollograms..which uses that small extra lens for a special effect.

IGer: Miss Sew and So

Australia based with a cuuuute cottage house. She does great beach pics too.

IGer: Denise Bovee

IGer: Kirsten Rogers

Big following of over 9,000 people! She's a photographer by trade so you know her pics are going to be great. She also homeschools her kiddos so its fun seeing their daily adventures.Truly beautiful everyday living. It was hard only picking four.

IGer: Joy Prouty

So I've left my favorite for last. She's also a photographer by trade in Southern California. In fact she posted about a garage sale she was having and it killed me to watch the feed that day and the days leading up to it. Would have loved snagging some of her vintage finds! She gets asked all the time if the pictures she posts are taken with an iphone. They are hard-to-believe good. And her love of farm life and wide open spaces make my heart skip a beat! And with over 3,500 pictures, she keeps her followers happy with all her artwork!

So, do you follow anyone whose "follower" numbers triple or more the number they are following?! Anyone whose pictures you look forward to seeing? Perhaps you found a few more to add to your feed if you use IG. 

oh, ps... I'm thats_sew_swenson on IG! Come find me! :)

{disclaimer: don't worry, Mom. I'll show you how to use it again soon!}

Recently Purchased Pretties

So, I must confess...I'm not above retail therapy. I've been a very good girl up until recently on that front. We've already declared as a family that this year will be a fallow year as we re-build our savings, W focuses on his first year at the firm, and I caring for two little ones which includes a very dependent baby. That trip to Hawaii will have to wait until next year. So these were very small purchases, but fun ones nonetheless. I needed a little bit of fun...fun pretties in the mail will do the trick.

I'm looking forward to some packages on our doorstep these next few days...

 

I bought this fabulous card for W for love day. When I saw this, it just screamed perfect! The pipe, the hat, and the saying...fits W to a tee. :)

Theo told me he'd rock this hat if I bought it for him. So did I hesitate to press purchase? Heck no!

We're cooking up something memorable for Mama Judy's 70th birthday so these vintage style envelopes will come in handy. I'll have some extras so I'm excited to mail to friends! How fun to send something in one of these in place of a boring ol' white one.

This delightful little pair proves that sponsorships really do work. Ha. It's my first purchase off someone's blog--there was a 10% discount so I thought "why not?"

What's brightening up your winter?!

Sneak Peek: Progress!!

We all should have projects that we love, but also haven't kidded ourselves into ignoring the fact that the easier way would have been...well, easier, right?! Isn't a project like that suppose to be on the life 'bucket list' or something? You know, life lessons we're all suppose to re-tell to the kiddos?? Well, I'm sure my mom has a good few stories about that. She used to DIY often. ;) Now, I have my own as well... {read about the start here}

This is after one solid, committed day of work {read: max. about 3 hours, collectively}:

{still haven't touched the other two sides yet}

Can't bail out now...in too deep...

Proof I've been hard at work with my little paint brush and cup o' paint! That was before sitting down with some soda, my hubby, and Alias Season 3 for the evening. ;)

  Can I just take a moment to lament textured walls? They are awfully uncooperative in getting straight lines or curves!!

 To keep sane with this insanity of a project, I laid a few ground rules down:

-stop at any time I wanted to

-keep the time spurts short and sweet

-trace stencil by day, paint by night

-never do this during E's nap time since that's also become my nap time...and I'm not giving that up!

-manage expectations: I publicly declared {to W & E} that I would give myself a week's time to finish this project...and I don't think it'll take me nearly that long. It'll be done by the end of the weekend! Yippie!

On Color, Stencil Choices, and Crazy

During the weekend, W proposed a great idea. Well, I should say that W already recommended this idea before I went wild with green samples, but at that time I just didn't want to listen. After my painful tries, I was all ears. He reminded me that we already had some green paint. Our upstairs guest/boys bathroom is a green color but it's a very bright, sea foam-ish green with hints of blue. W also reminded me that it would look entirely different in a darker space. What the heck, why not? 

In our bathroom:

In the pantry:

Of course, this third-try coat was so much nicer than what was in there before. It was softer and looked great! It also helped that we had plenty of it and was our favorite price: free!

With that problem finally solved, it was on to my next... how to get a pattern on to the wall. If you remember, I was leaning toward a Moroccan style pattern from my idea board. Then I read House of Smith's entire pantry redo post and fell in love with her Quatrefoil pattern. Of course, this is so last year in DIY blogland since it's replacement with Chevron, BUT that means many projects and resources are already available to late-comers like me! Woot woot! 

While checking out others' projects, I found a few options:

1) Purchasing a stencil-- the most recent project I saw was AtoZ's foyer. She was given a Royal Design Studio Stencil to try out and review. If only I was so lucky! The stencil is a perfect pattern, but it's $44 and I was worried it would be too big for our small space. Plus, I'm impatient and didn't want to wait for shipping and gathering supplies.

2) Purchasing vinyl-- House of Smith used this method and I found a seller on etsy who was superbly sweet and helpful. It simply goes on like a sticker.

3) Making a stencil on my own-- wanted to avoid this option at all costs as it just sounded like it would take for.ever. Welcome to Heardmont just completed a long closet using this method {and it's beautiful!!} so I knew it was do-able. BUT it took her a collective 10-12 hours to do it all. She's got the luxury of time without little ones, I simply don't.

So which option did I pick?

I went with #3. Sheesh. I was really wanting to try out the vinyl, especially since it seemed like the easiest method. But I just couldn't justify spending $280 in such a small space when we could still really use a new downstairs rug or breast pump or awesome Nikon camera I've had my eye on.

I got my free printable stencil here. Printed it out on card-stock and then cut it out using an X-acto knife. I cut while over a cutting board to avoid ruining any surfaces. Worked out just fine, especially since I already had all these supplies. 

So, since I had already painted the bottom part green, I took the crazy route to getting my stencil on that wall: tracing my stencil with pencil and then hand-painting the whole thing. The exact thing I wanted to avoid because: I don't have time for this! Really, don't try this at home.

Here is my trial run results:

{taken with an iphone at night, no less...}

{This took me about 30 mins}

But, am I excited? Am I loving the results? HECK YES! And surprisingly, it has gone much quicker and painlessly than I thought. I think finding the green caused more of a head ache. Although I will confess that when I was doing the trial run of tracing and then painting, I kept telling myself how ridiculous and extreme this was just to get a stinkin' pattern on a wall who's door will be closed 95% of the time...All in the name of DIY, eh?

Still Waiting On Me

Over the weekend, W and I did some awesomely-massive-long-overdue cleaning. Did I mention it was awesome? Nothing like having dinner guests over to get the ball rolling on tidying up. It was made clear that it's been way too long since we've invited anyone over. But we got a lot done and even had time for some R & R too. Bonus!

After deep-cleaning the fridge with me, W got to work on our pantry shelving! Finally, some positive pantry progress..heh.

First project using his new jig-saw; Father's Day gift!

W went with a sort of 'block C' shape for easier access to stuff in the back. This pantry is actually a coat closet so there isn't not much space to move around in.

I helped him prime and paint the shelves with our leftover trim; Snippet of Tannin. One of our quickest building projects ever.

So, they are totally finished and ready for installation...which leaves the rest of the work up to me.

Perhaps it's all the cleaning motivation that has me even attempting this...

Making my own stencil?!

When people say it's long and tedious, they are absolutely, one hundred percent correct. And I haven't even started the paint part of it yet. It's still too early to tell if I'll give up or see this crazy idea through. You may never see a tutorial for this. :) Let's just say the chevron pattern is looking like a mighty fine alternative right about now....

This week's goals? Head to store for a small foam roller to try this puppy out as well as get supplies for some of the nursery decor projects.

Did I mention our due date now less than a month away? Can we really get these two spaces done in time??

Garage Sale Tales

Saturday morning rolled around and we were ready to get our garage salesman on. Our fabulous DIY-in-training must have also been excited to get out there because he turned out to be our 6:15 alarm that morning. So early! But we had work to do; setting the rest of our treasures up and out for all the shoppers to see. The only bummer part was we didn't really have any 'big' or 'really desirable' pieces-- most of it was what I would call 'fluff' decor. I honestly think that much of it sold because of the tips we used.

Garage Sale Success... Oh, let me count the ways...

1) Staging-- totally, utterly completely true! We got several comments from our neighbors that they all loved the way it looked. It reminded them of a boutique or antique fair set-up. Success #1!

I rolled out the rug, pulled out an old chair and a few tables to try to get multi-levels going and make things more appealing. I also used baskets to hold books, CDs, and DVDs in. A coat rack held the small number of clothes and jackets we were selling. And I used our backyard chalkboard as a "welcome" sign too. Just small touches.

We also found it helpful to hang up tarps in the back of the staging to cover the rest of our garage...that was not for sale.

2) Free Box

Definitely had people looking in it, until a family took the entire box's contents early on. But I guess that was the point: getting rid of all the stuff in there. I could have put on the sign to only take a few items, but it wasn't that big of a deal. I just had to laugh because I didn't expect one person to take it all at once..and so early on! :) I also put my years collection of Real Simple out for free and a woman took them all but paid me for them. That worked well too! Success #3 & #4

5) Refreshments--My parents stopped by in the morning to take E on a walk and brought us some donuts! We put the extras out for free and then W got the fabulous idea to sell some bottled water and sports drinks. We sold quite a lot of them throughout the morning and got rid of our extra donuts. People seemed to be happy--so were we! Success #5

6) FUN--In addition to getting rid of a good amount of stuff and making some money, we had a great time with our neighbors. We're really lucky: our neighbors are a lot of fun.There were about 8 houses participating.

W did some pre-sale perusing with E and came back with this! Our neighbor didn't get it sold, but E had a blast on his first "Mo-mo" ride. I got a free bulletin board from another neighbor so I can actually do the burlap project now. And another gave us all the newborn boy clothes she had. Success #6

The sale ended with us all hanging out and kids playing before a few of us headed to the pool for a cool down. I think a neighborhood BBQ is officially in the works now!

Now, we still probably have a good truck load of stuff left to haul away, so sadly, our garage isn't completely clean just yet. And by the following day, I was completely exhausted and good for absolutely no activity. But we made enough on fluff for a sweet date night-- as well as covering the dump fee for whatever we can't donate!

Honorable Mention

We're back from a wonderful, fun-packed vacation and were absolutely giddy to come home to this...

Our latest stripe project was featured on T&J's DIY inspiration weekly post earlier this week. We were so delighted to see it while checking out all the other inspiring projects. W loved all the striped and stencil wall projects-- here's hoping that we can try it out soon!! ;)

My Next Victim

The Swenson family hit the garage sales this past weekend. I must pause here to lament that we do not have any great thrift stores or discount stores in our area for furniture or home goods. I can get lucky on occasion at Marshall's but it's usually just small decor items. There's a serious lack of big, beautiful furniture pieces waiting to be recovered around here. Or maybe I'm just not looking in the right places?!

Anyway, I was really hoping to strike it rich when a local town was doing a city-wide sale with multiple families participating. Sweet! I wanted to find some potential end tables to fit in with our master redo, but I quickly learned that by having purchasing guidelines, I was also gambling. There was a big possibility of ending the day empty-handed. Win some, lose some, eh?

So, I was really happy to stumble upon this beautiful, mini table that was in a set with dresser. It's not a fit for our master, but I know the perfect little place for it in E's room. This was our only treasure from that morning. But definitely still worth the time, driving, and donuts it took to discover it.

We plan to spray paint it. It's a small enough piece and I already have the colors to choose from. So W will do some sanding and I'll do some spraying...just as soon as I commit to a color! Seriously, the biggest problem I face every project!!

In the meantime, I've been spray painting other items that will go into our master once they liven up a bit...

Happy Monday!

Update: Progress!

{Archive from 4.20.11}

To say we've been tired lately would be an understatement. Last weekend, W & I had a date night...at home. We got take-out and stayed in. Boring, I know, but so nice sometimes. And I'm sure this exhaustion has nothing to do with the fact that we've been going to bed so late {without very good reason} these past few weeks.

Anyway, we're still chipping away at our project "to-do" list and have recently been working on E's bookshelf/window seat. It's almost done and was actually quite easy to make. But, this only being our 3rd DIY project, there are a few snafus that may need to get fixed down the line. All part of the adventure!

 {Bam! Those are some hot man legs!!}

Working on getting the top screwed on then a final coat of paint...

There's also new paint on E's walls and our master! So excited about the colors and getting the rest of the rooms together. I've also discovered that I'm a horrible DIY-er and forgot to take before pictures of the rooms before the painter dressed them up in new color. Oops!! And that's my favorite part when blog-hopping; the before vs. after. Yeesh!!

My next craft/sewing project consists of these materials:

And that's all the progress for now! Is it nap time yet?!