Valentine Subway Printable

I always love a good seasonal printable! They are so fun to have on hand to print out and frame and then swap out when a new season or holiday approaches. I decided to try my hand at making a Valentine Subway Printable. Subway art has been so popular lately. I may be late in jumping on this bandwagon but I still like the look of it so I wanted to share some with you today!

This is a 5X7 printable....click HERE to download it and then you can print it and frame it (or just stick it somewhere)! Sounds easy right?!

ENJOY! I would love to hear from you if you decide to use it!

Lovebirds Pillow- Valentines Decor

We are not huge on celebrating Valentines Day....since it is just a few days after my birthday it seems to fall through the cracks after birthday festivities. We normally do a little something to celebrate and exchange a small thoughtful gift and that is enough for us! I do love the idea of a day that encourages you to tell your loved one how much you love them!

I hardly ever decorate for Valentines Day....maybe some conversation hearts and other candies in my apothecary jars but that is normally about it.

This year, I decided to make a little something in theme with Valentines Day that would still work in our decor for weeks before and after. I do not decorate with much red or pink so typical Valentines Decor could not stick around for long.

I was inspired by a blog post by Silhouette Blog where they made lovebird artwork. I thought it was too cute! So cute in fact that I thought it should be put on a pillow!

I know you guys are so tired of me ranting and raving about dropcloth and freezer paper but I used those materials for this project! I just never get tired of dropcloth and freezer paper is so easy to use!

I start by using my Silhouette Software to build out my design but I did not use the Silhouette to cut the stencil. I printed the design out and traced it with a sharpie onto my freezer paper (slick side down).

I then cut out the inside of the design.

My final stencil looked like this...

Then, I ironed the freezer paper onto my drop cloth (which I precut to be the front of my pillow).

Once the stencil was sealed from the iron, I started painting... (you can be so sloppy here! I love not painting inside the lines!)

Once the paint was partly dry, I peeled the freezer paper off. I am pretty impatient so I typically pull it off almost immediately. The advantage of waiting for the paint to dry first is that you don't have a huge piece of freezer paper to handle that has wet paint all over it (it can get messy!).

Once the paint was dry, I sewed the two sides of the pillow together (right sides together), leaving a slit to flip the pillow right side out.

Then I stuffed it and hand stitched the slit closed!

TADAA!

I think it is so adorable! I wish I would've painted the line a little longer so it disappeared off of the pillow but it isn't bothering my enough to do anything about it!

I am off to the flea market in the morning! Can't wait to bargain hunt! Happy Weekend!

Laundry Closet Clean Out

Last week I was inspired by my friend Amy @Eat.Sleep.Decorate's post about her Laundry Closet makeover! There are so many exciting ideas out there about laundry rooms but for most of them, you need a large laundry room. Lucky for me, Amy has a laundry closet (as do I), so it was great to see such a cute makeover on a smaller laundry room!

I wanted to share my laundry closet with you today....warning you though, it is not a makeover but simply a "clean out". I hope it to make it as cute as Amy's one day but for now I settled on clean and organized. I did not spend a dime on this clean out....just these changes alone have made my laundry closet much more inviting!

Here is the terrifying before pic (I did not clean up at all so this is my reality)....

In the after pics you will notice....
- I finally cleaned that pile of dirty clothes and moved our clean drycleaning to our closets
- I threw out all of the old empty detergent bottles and random boxes that were being stored in there
- I lined the shelf with a pretty shelf liner to make it more visually appealing
- I covered up out our dryer top with a runner and shopped the house for a tray to catch all of our fun finds as we empty pockets
- I also put a little chalkboard up (from Taylor's wedding) with helpful reminders (we wash a lot of pens and important documents!)

Here are some after pictures for you...

Ahh can't you breathe easier now? I can! I am going to hang some things up to make it a little more inviting! It may seem silly to decorate a space that no one else sees but I like making spaces inviting....I need all the help I can get in the laundry department!

Please go check out Eat.Sleep.Decorate's laundry closet makeover or inspiration on jazzing up your laundry room! It sure did help me!

DIY Rope Bowl

Ever since we finished our dresser (where I used rope for the handles) I have been looking for projects to use my left over rope. I thought it would help to tie the rope handles in with our bedroom decor if the rope was present in another way. I happened to be browsing Pinterest when I saw a tutorial on rope bowls by Ladie's Home Journal. I really loved the idea and knew this would be the perfect use for my leftover rope!

Supplies:
- Rope
- Hot glue gun and glue sticks
- Bowl to use as a mold
- Scissors

Steps I took:
1) Start spiraling the rope and glue as you go. Continue to spiral until you have a circle the same size as the base of your bowl that you are using as a mold. You will have to glue a little and then hold until it dries so that it is keeping it's form as you go!

2) Place the circle on the base of the bowl and continue to spiral the rope around the bowl gluing as you go.

NOTE: Once I got into a good rhythm I abandoned the bowl (It was really hard to remove because of the glue and I didn't want to wait to the end to try to remove it for fear of ruining the rope bowl and my ceramic bowl!).

3) Keep on spiraling until  you are happy with the size of your bowl. Cut the end of your rope and tuck it into the bowl, gluing to hold it in place.

Once the glue is cool and dry you are good to go! I am using mine on my vanity to hold my nail tools.

This was so easy to make! I think they would be fun in different sizes and different types of rope. Maybe in an entryway as catch all baskets?! There are lots of possibilities for these babies!

Window Gallery Wall

We have been moving a lot of things around lately. Most of it was sparked by our master bedroom redo. Since then, I have been looking for new places to put some things that were booted out of our room. We already had one old window in our hallway but I decided to shop the house for other windows to create a gallery wall of windows.

 All three of these windows were found at our local flea market. The one on the far left was originally red and already had the mirror in the pane when it was purchased. I painted it a light green color and it was previously over our bed. The one in the middle is not a mirror but a simple 6 pane window that I painted gray. The one on the far right was made into a mirror by a flea market vendor who painted it yellow. He did a great job of giving it a distressed look so I left it as is. It was previously over our guest bed.

I really love having them all together now, I have a thing for windows and I love being able to see them altogether as they line our hallway!

Dart Board Fun

A few weeks ago, the hubby came home with a dart board that he found on CraigsList. His plan was to put it up in the garage....but after further discussion, we came to the conclusion that it would NEVER be used out there. Who wants to go outside to play darts? Not me! We found a good spot for it in our living room instead.

We love to have friends over for dinner and games and this a great addition to our hosting possibilities. I was a little shocked by how high it needed to be on the wall to be "regulation". I was hoping it would be a little lower so it didn't immediately draw everyone's attention.

It was a cherry wood stained cabinet but the hubs painted it white so that it would blend in better with our decor. It made it's way onto a pretty skinny wall, but we are looking at that  as a good thing if we have players with bad aim, there is less wall to damage!

Gabe also painted the chalk and dart holders green....which I love :)

We are excited to have some friends over for our first "regulation" game!

Winter Wreath- Felt Flower Tutorial

I have been repinning lots of wreaths lately on Pinterest and I noticed a common trend that was drawing my eye....felt flowers. I have been reusing a grapevine wreath for a year now, simply changing out the decor every season, and I new it would be the perfect starting point. I also had a few sheets of white and gray felt in my fabric bin. Other than a glue gun and scissors...that is all you need!

I started by tracing out circles on my felt sheets (I actually only used one sheet per color- so 2 sheets total). I used different sized jars and glasses to make different sized circles.

After cutting out the circles, I cut each of them into a spiral.

Many of the tutorials I have read say to glue as you go. I decided to do the opposite, I rolled my spiral into a flower (starting with the center of the spiral circle) and then used my hot glue gun to drop the glue drops in between the layers. I felt like I had much more control over the flower this way, I would recommend this approach.

Once I had all of my flowers rolled and glued (I layered some gray and white flowers together to change it up- glued those together) I glued the flowers directly onto the grapevine wreath.

Then I hung it up outside!

Excited news! We decided that we are going to paint our house this Spring! I am excited to see this chipped orange door get a makeover with the rest of the house! In the meantime, this wreath is giving it a lot of positive attention!

Before and After Master Bedroom

I am so PUMPED to show you our Master Bedroom today!!! I am absolutely in LOVE with it!! NO joke!

I know I have never shown anyone our master before....and it is because I have never really liked it. When we moved into our house, everything that I did not like in the main living area ended up in our room. I want to show you a before picture first...this is from the MLS list for our house...

Then we moved in and made it look like this...

There isn't too much going on....the dresser really steals your attention because it is huge. The bedding is mismatched and not calming. I have been brainstorming for a while looking for inspiration. We decided to paint the room....which we completed last weekend. This weekend, my parents came to town and my mom helped me shop for the rest of the room! There are some things that we shopped my house for...and others we went shopping for. We got everything from HomeGoods and Target (except for a quick trip to Kirkland's). So HERE IT IS!!!

When  you first walk in, this is the first thing you see on the wall opposite the bed...

On the left when you come in, my vanity is set up for getting ready...

I am obsessed with this cozy corner!!!

We hung some special things above the chair. A drawing of our Callie (Gabe's grandpa did it!), a cross, and a drawing of a camp that I used to go to every summer.

We are loving the TV on our new dresser with some simple accent pieces...

The blue/grey curtains bring a lot of warmth to the room...

This mirror is on the wall next to the bed. I thought about doing a gallery wall here but when I saw this mirror, there was no turning back! :)

I could not be more in love with our bed!! We used an old room divider as a headboard with my burlap wreath hanging from it.

I am in love! It is sooo cozy!

Here is a look at the before and after pictures side by side...

Here is a list of where everything came from...

White Chair- HomeGoods
White Dresser- Thrift Store find with a makeover
Standing Mirror- Craigslist find that my hubby painted
Wall Mirror- HomeGoods
Vanity- Antique Find
Vanity Stool- Flea Market find with recovering job
Anniversary Pillow- Made out of dropcloth- tutorial here
Burlap Wreath- Tutorial Here
Head Board Shutters- Used an old divider
Curtains and Rods- Target
Standing Lamp- Kirkland's
Vanity Lamp- Target
Comforter, Bedskirt, and Euro Shams- Target (Comforter is made by Shabby Chic)

Thanks for checking out our room!!!