nesting

I have really been enjoying making this new house of ours feel like our home.  Like I've mentioned before, we do not own this house, so we will be making very minimal changes.  I am not going to change out light fixtures, and I probably won't paint- much.  We have a goal to save, save, save, for a future piece of land and I'd much rather have my money go there.  With that said, we have been gifted with some lovely pieces lately that I've been reworking to fit into our space.

This is a very old piece that was given to us by a family friend (she also gave us a beautiful bed for Buddy).  I usually am drawn to more streamlined furniture with simpler finishes, but I found this piece to be charming and an upgrade from my garage sale cart that ( I'm using it in the picture below) I had been using to hold our record player.

I painted it with some leftover No-VOC paint from our bathroom at our old house (which I also used in our current bathroom).

Look how cozy our records are inside!  The whole collection fit perfectly!

Another poorly lit photo.

I really love how it turned out!   And I was able to finally hang the plates my sister and John gave me (they were in cahoots and had a big box of lovelies shipped to me from ModCloth).  I actually painted the chest that color specifically to match(ish) my plates.  I love them just that much!

$80 Headboard

Hey everybody, this is Mandi's husband John. I built a simple headboard for Mandi this past Mother's Day and thought I would share the basic step by steps of how it was done not because it was any great feat of construction (c'mon I build skateboard ramps) but because it's easy, quickly done, fairly inexpensive, and a perfect opportunity to use the finishing nailer you spent $100 on last March and seldom-to-never use.

1. Buy enough 2x4s to build a simple frame that will be tall enough and wide enough for your bed. In this case I needed 5 boards to make the headboard 73" wide and 58" tall. I doubled the legs at the bottom with 10" blocks to add strength and allow a perfect 4' for the bead board to attach to the frame. 3" drywall screws were used for everything.

2. Next take the leftover scraps of 2x4, cut some 45 degree angles on the ends and screw them into corners to make the whole thing stronger, tighter, and allow for more points of contact with the bead board that you just realized is much thinner and flimsier than you had hoped for at $15 for a 4'x4' area! (Notice I added an extra treated 2x4 I had lying around.) Now you're ready to attach bead board with that finishing nailer and 1 1/2" brads. (When it comes to bead board I like the 4" sections that are tongue and groove as opposed to the sheets that only look like bead board. It's too easy to tell the difference especially if it's for a small room or small project like this.) Bead board is sold in 8'x4" sections and all I had to do was rip them all in half with the miter saw and nail them down. Easy.

3. Once the bead board is down go around the sides and top with 6"x 1" pine boards that match the pine bead board perfectly. Then fill in the seams with 2"x 1" pine strips. Both are nailed in with the finishing nailer and 2" brads. (By doing this you've just covered up all the drywall screw heads so no need to use wood filler on this project unless brad heads bum you out.) The above picture shows the headboard after it was carried in and moved into position, ready to be screwed down and painted.

4. Secure the headboard to the wall using 3" 45's and 1 5/8" drywall screws. I used 4 45's total: one on the inside of each leg into the baseboard and one near the top on both sides of the window facings. Since the base is hidden there's no need to add trim or cover the 2x4's.

5. Painting is totally up to you. Keep it natural wood. Paint it. White wash it. Whatever. For ours Mandi wanted a white-washed look but with the same grey we painted our living room and dining room with. I mixed less than a cup of the water-based satin finish paint we had sitting in the shed with the same amount of water, stirred it up, and... painted. It went on easy, dried quickly, and gave it an interesting color but allowed the wood grain and knots to show through.

6. Once the paint's dry you're ready to push the bed frame and mattress against the headboard and attach them with a couple more 3" drywall screws. On our headboard the bed frame attaches with holes really close to the 45's holding the headboard to the wall so everything feels really solid and the thing is ready for the countless bounces and wrestle matches it will endure from Moonpie and Buddy. The final touch for our headboard was the two yellow cast iron birds perched on each end Mandi picked up at a local downtown furniture store.

7. So there ya go. A simple design and a custom fit that took less than two hours to finish and I'm guessing saved us a little $. Bye.

why d.i.y.?

my husband and i are definitely do-it-yourselfers. if we see something we want we first think about how we can create it ourselves. if it is out of the question we move on to how we can maybe get it used.


i love that we are raising up little d.i.y.ers too! the other day moonpie and i were admiring an item in a friends house and her response was 'let's make one just like it!'. you better believe that my heart jumped a just a little at those words!


sometimes (ok, most of the time) i can get introspective. i look at the things i do and enjoy and examine why i do them. what my motives are. and yesterday i was thinking on this, d.i.y. projects. what it comes down to for me is the idea of connection. grinding my own wheat to make my bread, knitting a little hat for a new baby in my life, making a dress for my moonpie...all about connecting with the people i love, people from my past, connecting with my present. doing things myself helps me stay focused on my present, and i like that. i need that. and of course there are other reasons we d.i.y. we really enjoy hard work. we enjoy learning. we enjoy working with our hands. we enjoy the feeling of accomplishment.



sometimes, when crafting for others, you have to really be comfortable in the accomplishment factor. because sometimes, the recipient isn't too impressed. enter- moonpie's blue bird dress:





moonpie: oh it's really pretty! thank you momma!

me: great! go put it on for church.

moonpie: umm...i was thinking of wearing something a little fancier for church.

me: but it IS fancy! look at the ribbon!

moonpie: i love it! but i was thinking of something a little fancier. you know, with puffy sleeves.

me: right, i don't know how to make sleeves. look at the knots! and the fabric! and look- i put a ruffle on the bottom and a little layer of rick-rack!

moonpie: oh yeah! it's really pretty! but, i was thinking of something fancier...

me: go put the dress on...now...

and she comes back 5 minutes later, dress on, accessorized with mardi-gras beads.

moonpie: now THIS is fancy!


if you'd like to make one like, you can find the very easy to use tutorial here. trust me- if i can do it, than you can too!