Entryway Mud Closet: Part 2

Yesterday we finished the mud closet! If you missed the Part 1 post, it will you give you a little background to this project. Like I mentioned in Part 1, my parents came in town for my birthday yesterday and we finished the mud closet with them!

Before they got here, Gabe did a few final preparations.... he removed the door and hardware and patched it all up...

Once my parents got here, we unloaded some things that Mom and I had ordered from Ballard Designs... that is where we got the benches for the closet...

Then we went shopping for everything else we needed....we shopped at some local shops and found a large mirror....it kind of looked like an old window or door....we knew it was perfect for the space we had. We also made a trip to Target and Lowes....picked up some hooks, a basket, and a battery powered light.

Here it is!!! I really love it! It is very minimalist by design, I wanted something visually appealing and functional without drawing too much attention to it.

This is the right hand side of the closet...

This is the left hand side....

My dad and hubby were so great at tag teaming all of the hanging and drilling...

We are so happy with the entryway mud closet!! Thanks mom and dad for a great birthday project! :)

Simple Valentine Decorations

I decided to add just a few small touches of Valentine's Day around the house. Two of the three things I did just involved changing out what my chalkboards have on them...

I did a simple play on "Be Mine" with a drawing of bee...

I did a quick heart design on the other...

The last thing I did involved a little more work but it was still really simple. I used my Silhouette to cut out a Love banner! I used a pennant design that is one of the freebies that comes with the Silhouette and I cut 4 of them onto red cardstock. I then cut out the letters to spell LOVE onto white cardstock. I glued the letters onto the pennants and I strung the letters together to hung them above the buffet!

 
That's about all I will do to decorate for Valentine's Day this year!

Entryway Mud Closet: Part 1

Last year at this time I fell in love with The House of Smith's entryway closet makeover. They transformed a closet in the entrance of their home into a nook to organize and store typical "mud room" or "command central" items.

I was immediatey inspired by their makeover and started thinking about how we could do something similar. We have a closet right by our front door that would be perfect for this type of transformation. We aren't going to be able to widen the space any, so I started looking for some smaller closet transformations and I found another awesome one by House Tweaking!

This past weekend we began the process of transforming our closet by cleaning out and painting the closet. We took down all of the previous shelving and hanging bars to completely start from scratch.

Here is my hubby hard at work prepping the closet:

Here is a quick shot of the closet with a coat of paint...

Here it is completely painted! We used the same Sherwin Williams 

Mindful Grey that we used in our bedroom!

This weekend, my parents are coming into town to celebrate my birthday and we are going to tackle the rest of the project together! I LOVE working on projects with my mom, she has such a great eye for design and is so creative! She helped me revamp our Master Bedroom last year. You can also her style HERE!

I can't wait to share the finished closet with you next week!!!

DIY Beachy Pillows

My in laws recently bought a beach house and have been working hard to get it completely furnished and decorated!

To keep the costs low, my mother in law and I decided to make some decorative pillows without much investment. We did purchase one yard of fabric from the sale section of Fabric.com. Other than that, we used dropcloth and paints that I already had on hand. We also used old decorative pillows from my in laws home as the inserts!

Using the items we already had made this a cheap project!

We used lots of freezer paper to create stencils of anchors and shells...then ironed the stencils onto the drop cloth.

Once the paint dried, we peeled off the stencils and we sewed the pillows! For a full tutorial on using freezer paper stencils, click HERE!

I can't wait to see the pillows once she takes them to the beach house!!

My Craft Cart

Like so many other people, I have been eyeing Ikea's RASKOG Kitchen Cart ever since it came out last Spring. They FINALLY made it available for online purchase, which is really exciting to someone like me, that doesn't live close to an Ikea!

 I have seen so many great uses for this cart around the blogosphere (kitchen carts, bed side tables, etc.). I decided to order one for myself to use as a craft cart. It is the perfect size to hold all of my essentials supplies. I am constantly carrying my gear all around the house to craft all over the house (our bedroom, living room, dining table, or the office)! This cart makes it so easy to just roll everything any where I need to go!

 

I am putting it to good use today! I will be posting again soon about what I make today!