How to make a Drop Cloth Wreath

Hello!  Sorry it's been a few days since I've posted.  I threw a baby shower at my house today, and we've been dealing with a burst water heater! Yay!....yes I'm joking....It's in the attic and it flooded all of the walls in my laundry room and the base of the stairwell.You don't want me to tell you how much this is going to cost (even with the homeowners insurance claim)...I won't tell you, it will hurt your sensibilities.   We have no hot water right now and I've been furiously trying to deal with that while pretending everything is good and throwing a baby shower.  I've been a bit nutso this week.  So, one of the projects I did for the baby shower was to make a wreath to hang on my mirror.  I ended up adding a cute little banner on it that said "welcome Harrison" ....Harrison is the name of my dear friend, Julie's new baby boy.  I know there are probably a million tutorials on how to make one of these.....honestly, I've never seen one.  I just made this up in the spur of the moment, so here's how I did it!

How to make a drop cloth wreath.

Here's what I started with.  I washed, dried and then cut (ripped!  love how you can rip drop cloths and they stay strait! score) drop cloths into strips that were about 12 inches wide.  The length will be as long as your drop cloth.  It will depend on how big your wreath is, as to how much of the length you will use.  I ended up using two of my strips.
The wreath form I used is actually a Christmas light holder.  I found them at Walmart in their discount Christmas bins.  There were three of these circles in a pack and they fit together to make a globe that you hang your lights on....to sort of have a light ball.  I didn't have any need for that, but I noticed their wreath potential, so I bought several of them.  They were only 50 cents each!  But I know you all won't necessarily have the same kind of wreath form, so you can totally do the same thing with other kinds of wreaths.  I imagine it would work great with a simple cheap grapevine wreath, or a foam wreath form...or whatever you have.   The only other thing you need is floral wire.  I bought the white kind so it would blend it with my drop cloth, and it did, really well.



You begin by taking the end of your drop cloth and gathering it around the wreath form.  My floral wire was really long, so I cut it down into thirds and then wrapped it around the drop cost to secure it to the wreath form.

You twist the floral wire tightly in the back of the wreath.

Once you have the first part attached, then you take a length of drop cloth, gather it together and tie it on like you did the first time....only this time, bunch it up as close as  you can to your first tie.

I found that it was easier to pull the fabric out several inches away, attach it loosely, and then scoot it down next to the previous tie, after it was already attached....then tighten the tie to hold it securely in place.  It made it easier to wrestle with the fabric.

You just keep going until you either reach the end of your fabric or you make it all of the way around.

Mine did not reach all of the way around, so I had to add on a new piece.  I just trimmed the excess and added the new piece upside down.  I tied it on right on top of the tie that was the last tie.

After you attach it, you flip it over and keep on going like you were before.  

Once you get to the end of your wreath, you will need to finish it off seamlessly.  The way I worked out to do this was to trim the fabric to the length you need it to be so that it doesn't have a big tail hanging down after you attach it, but you still have enough left to make one more puff of fabric and then another inch or so that will tuck under to hide the ends.  After that, you gather it up and lay the wire down on top of it, like you see in the picture.  (assuming you are working from left to right) 

You then fold the fabric up and over the wire and hold in place.  After that, you flip the entire thing over so that the wire and the fold is on the underneath side of your puff of fabric....then you attach it right on top of the very first fabric tie you made.  I hope that makes sense.  Basically, you are rolling the wire up in the fabric before attaching it as you have been doing.  Yes, I know...you really like my jammy pants....

And that's it....your wreath is finished!

You can embellish any way you like.  I added another strip of drop cloth to the top to hang it by, and I made a cute little banner to go across the middle by gluing tiny wood letters to ribbon, and then securing them underneath the twisted floral wire ties.  

Here's a final shot of it hanging up.  I had lost all of the light by the time this was done, so it's not the best picture, but you get the idea.

again....please ignore the laundry....ha!

I hope that was helpful to someone.  I ended up giving this wreath away to my girlfriend.  She loved it as much as I did ( warms my heart...sigh...), so I gave it to her.  So, I am definitely going to make another one.  Let's see if I will be as motivated to make something for myself as I am to make something for someone else.  I really do love it!  I will show you guys the rest of the shower later, once I get the pictures from my friend.  I was too busy being hostess to take any pictures.....so my other lovely friend took care of that.  It was a lot of fun and an unusual, but awesome theme.  It turned out awesome!

Happy wreath making!
xoxox,
Anna

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chic on a shoestring
my romantic home
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a little claireification

House Goals

Hello there! How crazy is the stinkin' COLD weather!  I can't believe it was 12 degrees outside when I woke up today. Winters in South Carolina are schizophrenic and usually range between 35 degrees to 75 degrees and back and forth and anywhere in between.  Sometimes all on the same day.  It makes it hard to stay well, since you can't really get used to a climate.  I do feel fortunate, however, that we aren't in other areas of the country that have temperatures in the negative degrees.  My poor family in Indiana are really having a tough time.  I'm keeping all of our nation, especially the more northern states in my prayers.  I hope you all are able to find somewhere warm to be.

I wanted to share my list of projects and goals for my house in the upcoming year.  I already shared my personal goals here , but this will be a breakdown of what I hope to accomplish in this house and the order in which I plan to do it (don't hold me to it, but I'll try to go in order).

First up is the massive project I've been working on for the past few months (I can be really sloooow.  One reason I needed a blog to push me along).  I designed a fireplace unit that has a big fancy mantle, two bookshelves flanking each side, and a raised panel that is built out around our obnoxiously big flatscreen tv  that hangs on the wall above the fireplace.  As of today, it is completely built, except for a couple of little touches of trim that need to be added to the bookshelf section that is slightly behind my Christmas tree....yes, I still have my tree up.  Should I add that to this list?  Take the tree down....as one my house goals?  Ugh.  Hate doing it.  It's real, it's 11 feet tall and it's completely dead, so the pine needles poke and hurt you and go everywhere.  So, yeah....gotta do that.  -sorry for the tangent-  Anywho...I am in the final stages of priming, caulking, putty-ing, sanding, painting....and painting some more. I actually put the first coat of primer on today....well, on the bottom half.  I can show you a sneak peak of how far I am at this point.  I think it's going to turn out pretty awesome, if I do say so myself!

It still needs more paint, all of the cracks and holes filled, and the trim added to the top of the mouth of the fireplace.  I'm not exactly into the scalloped tile edge look, myself.  Also, ignore the dvds on the shelves.  They are just hanging out there temporarily since I moved their former home into the garage.  They will go in crates under a window seat that will sit off to the left of the fireplace.

So, after completing this project....which is getting closer on the horizon, the next order of business is to make some shallow bookshelves for the wall at the end of my couch.

Here is a simple floor plan of my living room.  It is an annoying rectangle, just long enough to make it hard to arrange furniture, but not long enough to create two distinct sections out of.

This is how I have it set up currently.  The plan is to add some built in bookshelves to the blank wall to the right of my couch.  I'm going to build them to come about halfway up the wall and go all the way between the entrance to the kitchen and end right before the coat closet.  I am in desperate need of this storage.  I have books in some strange places right now.

The next thing on the roster for the living room is to do a board and batten treatment all of the way around the room and re-paint the walls.  I want something just a little bit lighter.  I'm very bored with the swiss miss color we have in here now.

Other things to do in the living room are to create a big huge gallery wall on the large wall to the left of the couch, get a rug (I have resisted for soooo long, because my kids were pretty little and still tend to destroy eeeeverything, the hardwoods are so easy to wipe....but I think it's finally time).  I'm also going to scrap the current matchy matchy ottoman we have and DIY an awesome one.  I'd love to ditch the big chair too and get a couple of pretty smaller chairs in it's place, but I'm not sure how soon that'll happen.....sigh, it's on the list.  Maybe I'll get lucky and find something awesome I can reupholster. I'd love to rip out the ceiling fan and DIY a cool chandelier. I also need a window treatment for the one lonely window in this room.  I have been pretty lost as to what to do in this window honestly.....the other thing I want to do with that window is to build an L shaped window seat that is basically built in that attaches to the end of the fireplace unit.  What do you guys think?  I'm still debating that one.  I don't want to go too nuts with the built-ins....but I mean, come on!  who can resist a window seat.  We'll see.  I've definitely reserved that for last.

I have vowed to myself that I must finish this room (at least the construction stuff) before I move on to any others.  After this, on my list of things to do is:

• rip out the carpet on the stairs and paint/stain and get a nice runner.  
• repair and paint the walls in the stairwell and laundry room
• finish the several small things on my list for the girl's bedroom (theirs is closest to being finished) which include art for the walls, headboards, new bedding and building a  built-in toybox/reading nook into their closet.
• Completely overhaul and gut my boys' bedroom.  Add things like a chalkboard wall, built-in desks a distressed planked wall and build some solid nice dressers for them.  The poor boys are using plastic ones at the moment.  We play musical furniture around here.  
• Rip out the guest bathroom floor and replace with tile.  I actually already have the tile for this.  The biggest stumbling block to completing this project is the fact that the toilet has to come out to accomplish it....not so sure I wanna try that.  I know I could do it, just don't really want to.  I am also going to add a bead board wall in there opposite the toilet and I'm pretty much going to copy this in there.  I also need a new faucet and I'm going to do something to my vanity...we'll see.  
• after that, I still have the spare bedroom, the master bedroom and the master bath to contend with....but this list is long enough for now.  I also have my kitchen that needs some sprucing up, but since that room is the closest to "done" I'll probably pepper a few small projects in there, but leave the rest until after the other areas of the house get more attention.  It's going to be a busy year!  I'll take some before photos of these spaces as I go along addressing them.  Wish me luck!  

xoxoxo!!!
Anna

My Eating Plan

Hello!  We are back to the regular grind after a few weeks of chaos from Christmas and New Years...well sort of.  I actually thought my kids went back to school today.....we even got up and got ready for school, and then my son happened upon his school calendar in his book bag and it turns out they don't go back until Wednesday.  Crazy.  You see how "on top of it" I am....

Anyways, today starts me back to my regular grind and that includes going back to my regular eating habits.  I've been on a pretty strict diet since September, and I allowed myself a good two and a half weeks of unhealthy eating over Christmas and new years.  I didn't plan on it being that long.  I actually started to go back right after Christmas and I just realized what a lost cause it was after all of the plans we've had and functions we've had to attend.  So....I haven't weighed myself to see what kind of damage I've done, but I'm not too worried about it, I've got the whole next year to catch back up.  I'm glad I got to live it up for Christmas....but am equally as glad to get back to being myself and feeling good again.  

My eating plan is based off of a lot of research I've done over the past years.  I used to be an avid follower of the South Beach Diet and I lost a lot of weight doing it years ago before I had my daughters, and I've come to find that a low carbohydrate option is definitely what my body needs.  My dad and my grandfather both have type 2 diabetes and I have hypoglycemic tendencies, which I know is a precursor to diabetes.....so I'm not playing around anymore.  I swore off sugar and refined carbohydrates in September, and aside from my little hiatus in December and three days off for Thanksgiving (over which I had the stomach flu....ugh!) I have completely stuck to it.  I'm not calling it a diet, it's just my normal way of eating :)  I think it really helps mentally to do that.  

Typically I start with vegetables.....a LOT of them, and then I add in a low fat protein, like chicken or turkey or fish (sometimes ham....I hate red meat, but I'm sure lean red meat is ok too for others) and then I add in good fats....plenty of them.  I have found that the good fats really help you to feel good when eating this way.  Your body actually needs the fat to lose fat.  Coconut oil is one of my favorites.  It is SO good for you too!  Here's an article that tells you a lot about the benefits of coconut oil.  It's so funny, I actually use this on my skin too.  I was making myself some eggs this morning and I got some on my hands, and I thought, "hey, my face is a little dry" so I just rubbed in on my face.  It felt so strange, but since I've started using it, my skin has never been better.  I really like the articles posted by Dr. Mercola about health and nutrition and a lot of what I do is mostly along the same lines.  He does get a bit extreme for me sometimes (ick...raw eggs for example) so, of course, everything in moderation.  So far, I've been losing weight at a steady pace.  I lost the first 20 pounds pretty quickly and the second 20 pounds came off very slowly, but steadily.  Like 1 to 2 pounds a week, and it fluctuated.  I feel great and am not hungry at all. 

Here's an example of the stuff I eat every day....and beware I'm one of those people who like to eat the same thing day after day.  I'm boring and I know it.  

Breakfast: 2 or 3 eggs cooked in coconut oil

Lunch:  a big (BIG) salad.  Usually with whatever veggies I have chopped up.  I like celery and green pepper and green onions and a whole tomato in it.  I usually do half spinach and half iceberg lettuce.  I add an avocado if I have one (I try to keep them stocked, but they spoil fast, so it's hard.  Buying them at different stages of ripeness helps) I'll put a little bit of cheese in there, usually cheddar or feta.  And I love the Salad Creations sea salt/cracked pepper almond slivers. I also add a small amount of protein, whatever I have.  Chicken, tuna, lunch meat.  A lot of times I'll cook up a whole big batch of chicken in the crock pot and have it for my salads for a few days.  I don't always have all of this stuff at once, but those are the things I buy usually for my salads.  I make a quick dressing out of balsamic or apple cider vinegar, olive oil (which is great for you as well) and seasonings.  I really like the Cavenders Greek Seasoning.  I'm kind of addicted to it....and I add garlic and black pepper and fish sauce and a little Parmesan cheese.  Sounds like a crazy dressing, but it's super yum!  I don't measure, I just start adding it to a bowl and then whisk!  

Dinner:  I usually try to eat a variation of what everyone else is having, but over broccoli.  For example, if we are having tacos for dinner, I would take the taco meat, some cheese and a little sour cream and salsa and put it over a big bowl of steamed broccoli.  It's delicious.  Just as good as a regular taco.  You can do the same thing with spaghetti too.  Although, I only do that if I make my own sauce.  The store bought kind has a ton of sugar in it. I buy the huge bags of birds eye broccoli and I go through about 1.5 of those a week.  If the family is having something I can't modify, then I'll just take some broccoli, throw some meat in it, shredded chicken or something, shred a little cheese on top, add some spices and drizzle with coconut oil.  It's really delicious.  I used to try to switch up the veggies more, but honestly, the broccoli works the best.  It has a lot of fiber and really fills you up.  You feel like you've eaten a big meal.  It's also super convenient since it's frozen. 

 If I'm hungry during the day, I'll snack on celery sticks or a bite of cheese, or a couple of nuts.  The cheese probably isn't the best for you, but it's my one concession.  It doesn't hurt with a low carb diet, but the fat in the cheese isn't the "good" kind, so it's not the best for you.....It's just my favorite food, so I'm not giving it up!  ha!  I do have intentions to add back in fruit and a few super healthy whole grains, like quinoa and some beans after I lose all of the weight I want.....but for now I"m sticking with this plan.  It works really well for me.  

Anybody else out there eat this way?  Any issues/benefits you'd care to share?  

I wish I had a good before and after picture of myself.  I have one before picture that I posted here, but the after picture is just of my face.  I will try to take one after a few weeks of being back on the wagon, and I'll do another post.  The great thing about blogging, is that it keeps you accountable!  

I'll be back with a project tomorrow!  

Have a great day! 

Anna

New Years Resolutions

I usually don't really do much in the way of New Years resolutions.  I've just never really been one to plan that far ahead.  Looking back on 2013, it has been a big year for me.  Nothing major or super life-changing has happened, but there has been a lot of changes made on the inside.  I feel like this has been one of the biggest years for emotional and spiritual growth....and I also think I've grown up a little bit more too.  I guess that happens when you hit your thirties, huh.  Maturity and patience level go up and metabolism and butt firm-ness go down.

- This year I've made a lot of changes to my diet.  I have decided that I can no longer go on consuming as much sugar as I have in the past.  My plan is to continue to stick with my healthy new way of eating for the remainder of my life, so of course that is included in my plans for 2014.  I began this journey in September, and so far I have found the fortitude to stick with it through several holidays.  Although I have taken two weeks off for Christmas and have eaten pretty much everything I can get my hands on.  I have lost around 35-40 pounds depending on what time of the day I get on the scale.  Still have a ways to go until I'm at a weight I'm comfortable with, but I'm in no hurry, since I'll be eating like this the rest of my life.  I'll do another post one day about my diet and how I eat.   I happen to find nutrition and science totally fascinating....so I can go on about it for quite awhile.

             Me in September on the left (yikes, my arm is as big as my head)                          

 35 lbs later on the right (need a body shot)

                                   

-Another goal this year is to exercise more....or at least some...right now I'm not doing anything.  I have plans to invite some girlfriends over a couple times a week to do yoga in the living room to yoga videos on amazon prime, lol.  that should be interesting.  I always think I'm going to do it on my own, but I never do.  I used to have a membership to Gold's gym and I used to go at least three times per week, but I can't do that anymore since I babysit a little girl full time, so I let the membership lapse.  I would have to get up at the crack of dawn and go, or go in the evenings....and we both know that isn't going to happen.  I also have plans to meet another girlfriend of mine and go and walk the dam nearby.  Its about 3 miles and it's a beautiful walk.  We used to do it, but have stopped since it has gotten so cold....so that will start back up again.  I really want to start running again.  I used to be able to run for 45 minutes strait....now I doubt I could go for two minutes.

-I have started this blog.  I really want to make it into something worth while.  I want to be a contributing part of the DIY/home decor blogging community.  So my goal is to find an audience this year and to make sure I blog regularly....and get better at taking photos! 

-I also want to be more organized.  I am burning with the itch to completely gut my entire house.  Problem is, there really isn't enough time in the day.  My husband took off an entire week earlier this year for me to do just that (he watched the kids and handled my normal duties) and I worked from sun up to sun down the entire time he was off.....and I maybe got halfway through everything.  We have lived in this house for too long and have acquired too much stuff! I will get through it though.  I think the key is little, consistent, non-overwhelming bites, one at a time.

picture from imperfect homemaking

-I want to be better at teaching my children.  I often get so overwhelmed with the duties of stay-at-home mother-hood because I try to do everything myself.  I feel like I'm trying to dig myself out of a hole with a tiny spoon and all four of my kids (and sometimes my husband) are standing next to it with big shovels just tossing the dirt in on top of me.  It's so overwhelming sometimes.  I know my kids are old enough, and that I would be so much more successful and we'd have much more time if I could just master the self discipline of stopping and making each child do a job.  Teaching them how to do it correctly and making sure to follow up after them to be sure it was completed correctly.  My goal is to be consistent with making my children do chores and keep the house picked up.  A friend once told me that if you spend the time teaching your kids to do the chores, then you're killing two birds with one stone.  You are spending time with your kids and your house gets clean.  The way I'm going right now....I send them off to one room (away from me) and I clean it....then I go to the room they are in and send them to a different room (away from me) and I clean that.....and we go round and round the house, making rooms dirty and cleaning them.  It clearly isn't working. , and I"m not spending the quality time with my kids that I'd really like to be spending with them.  I've been looking up some fun charts and good ways to organize chores lists, so I'll let you know what I come up with.

-Quality over quantity.  I'm going to try to adopt a new mantra.  I'd rather have 1 nice thing that will last and be useful for a long time, than 10 pieces of crap...whatever the thing is, I think this rule applies. My goal is to remove all of the "crap" from this house and start saving up and stocking up little at a time for quality stuff.  No more melted plastic spatulas.....I need a nice set of glasses in my kitchen, instead of a bunch of 88 cent plastic disney cups from wally world.  We have some nice stuff, but altogether it's mostly crap.  

I really could go on and on with these, but since I plan to revisit this next January and see how well I did....maybe I should stop here.  I don't want to put too too much on my plate.  Besides I have a whole list of house goals to accomplish as well.

DIY Mudroom and Entryway....the how to

Our house layout is very very open.  We have one pretty large main living area and basically all of the other rooms open off of this one room.  When you first enter my house, you are in a very....very....small entryway.  It's probably 8 by 6 feet...if that.  It really isn't a separate room.  In fact the only thing that separates it from the main living room is a large doorway header.  So, we always had this sort of dead space behind the door in the entryway.  It was a prime location for crap to land.  Stuff that needed to go out to the car, shoes,the stroller,which would be on top of the shoes..book bags....you get my drift .  I had the idea to put a mud room style bench and locker system in this space.  It was the perfect size and the two walls on either side allowed it to be completely built in, which always makes it more awesome in my book.  I researched some different plans on .ana-white.com and I decided that I had enough information to design it myself.  I learned how to use google sketchup and I did my measurements and designed this thing from scratch.  This was the first thing I had ever built, so there was definitely a learning curve, but I was SO proud of myself and how it turned out.  I'm in love with it.! and completely solves our clutter problem in the entryway.

What my entryway used to look like:

this is a shot from the great room. This picture was on halloween YEARS ago...it's the only one at this angle I could find.  We had a bench in there for awhile.

and this one is of my sweet baby (she's three now)....oh the mess.  See the junk collecting in that spot....ugh

Here's my entryway finished!  :)

I began by building a long box that was two inches short on either side of the length of the opening it will sit in. (wall to wall) If you build it to fit exactly, you will never be able to get it in there... I know this, not by common sense, but because I totally made this error and had to take this bottom apart twice.  ugh..I used 3/4 inch plywood and counter sunk screws (drilled basically a shallow hole that the screws sit in so they are below the surface of the wood, so they can be filled in later...or covered up.  They have drill bits for this).  I screwed from the top and bottom to attach the side pieces to create a big rectangle and then I did the same for the inside cubby slots.  It's just really important to make sure all angles and joints are perfectly square when doing this.  If you have a took like the kreg jig to make pocket holes, this project would be SO much easier....I however, took it old school because I have no such lovely tool....

Next I built a base frame for it.  I used 2x4s for this.  It's ok that it's rough, because it will be covered with the baseboard when it's finished.  I just screwed in from the front and back with countersunk screws.  All of the measurements would have to be specific to your own location, so that's why I haven't included any.  

I added the base to the bottom of my box with counter sunk screws screwed in from the bottom floor of the box, I screwed them into both the front 2x4s and the ones in the back.  I was a dummy and inserted it into it's final resting place before I attached it to the base and had a really hard time getting my drill into the back of those cubbies to screw it down.  You live and learn....like I said, this was the first thing I ever built. 

(working on the bottom.....you can see the space it was built into in this one....and bonus for the adorable children...love them)  

Next I added the pretty top boards to the top of my bench.  I got 1x6 pine boards and just stained them with Minwax Dark Walnut stain and added a couple of coats of Minwax poly on top of it too.  I just staggered them so it resembled the way hardwood is installed, and used my nailer to nail it down.  The nails were so small, they disappeared into the dark stained wood.  

Next I started on the top cubbies.  These I made about six inches less deep than the bottom cubbies.....so you won't hit your head when you sit down on the bench.  I made these the same way as the bottom with countersunk screws, drilled in from the top and bottom on both the front and back.  

The next part was tricky.  To make the homework trays, I had to really think.  Here's where pocket holes would have really come in handy.  You can't join the top of them to the bottom of the cubbies because the dividers are in the way, and the dividers have to match up.  I took an additional board that was the same length as the box of cubbies, however I cut it about three inches less deep than the top.  Then I added five dividers just as I have in the cubbies above that are screwed to the long board at the bottom.  I added a decorative curve to the end of each divider that curved from the larger depth at the top to the smaller depth of the homework tray.  I used a jig saw to do that and just traced the finished one onto the others to get the exact same shape for all of them.  At the top of each divider I drilled holes in the front and back and inserted small dowels into each one with some wood glue.  

To attach the homework shelf to the top cubbies, I drilled matching holes in the bottom of the cubbies and attached it to the top cubbies with wood glue.  

After this I made some pretty wood dividers to create a "locker" type look.  I just freehanded a design on a long board of wood and cut it out with the jig saw.  I then took the finished board and traced it on the rest of them and cut them out with the jigsaw also. Please ignore that there are four boards floating in this picture.  There really are three....I don't know how that extra one got in there.  

Next, I ran into the same problem with how to attach the decorative dividers to the top cubbies.....again, a kreg jig would have been awesome.....but I went ahead and connected them with the same method as I did before and drilled holes in the tops, added wooden dowels and glue and matched them up to holes drilled underneath the cubbies, more glue and clamped it together.  Since this entire unit will be standing up and mounted to the wall, I figured that it was safe to have them joined in this way, because the weight of  itself will help hold it all together.  

Next we (I needed the hubby's help for this part) mounted this part on the wall with the bottoms of the dividers resting directly on top of the bench's surface.  He held it up, while I attached big old "L" brackets through the back into the studs in the wall.  You absolutely have to do this, because the three dividers are not strong enough to hold the weight of this structure.  You can totally see the "L" brackets and I painted them white, so they would blend, but I figured with stuff in the cubbies they wouldn't show....and guess what, they don't! We also added blocks to the sides inbetween the wall on each side and the end of the top cubbies.  We screwed the blocks into the studs and then screwed the sides of the top into the blocks.  It's very secure! 

There ended up being a gap all of the way around the edges of the unit because we cut it a smidge small, so we added trim all the way down the sides.  We also added some pretty trim across the front of the face frames on the top, and gorgeous baseboard all the way around the edge where the wooded bench meets the wall (and also wrapped each divider in baseboard....love that part).  We added baseboard that matches the baseboard in our house to the very bottom and fully integrated it as "built in."  I used paintable bead board wallpaper (the same stuff I have as my kitchen backsplash) and added it about half way up the wall, and the last thing I did was add some more super thick baseboard around the middle at the top of the wallpaper, but I installed it upside down. All that was left after that was caulking, puttying, caulking, some more caulking and then paint! (took FOREVER) I then got some hooks for each cubby.  Nothing thrilled me more than to add those hooks, let me tell ya! 

Here are some more shots of the finished product:  

I also have since made awesome wood crates for shoes that go in the bottom of these cubbies. Stay tuned for a tutorial on those.  You can see a couple of them in some of these pictures....I"m just not finished making them, that's why there are only two!  

I know this was crazy long!  

Happy DIY-ing! 

xoxox! 

Anna 

linking this post up to:

thrifty decor chick

home stories A to Z

Home Work

Yesterday on Tuesday

Between Naps on the Porch

C.R.A.F.T.

Craft-O-Maniac

making the world cuter

whimsy wednesdays

Pretty things for you

ginger snap crafts

someday crafts

polka dots on parade

seven thirty three

artsy fartsy mama

design dining and diapers

making home base

liz marie blog

the shabby nest

504 main

tatertots and jello

Chic on a Shoestring

my romantic home

remodelaholic

six sisters stuff

be different, act normal

too much time on my hands

a little claireification

the silly pearl

the chicken chick

life on lakeshore drive

titi crafty

rain on a tin roof

twelveOeight

the girl creative

under the table and dreaming

coastal charm

a stroll through life

my uncommon slice of suburbia

our home away from home

home coming

52 mantles

36th avenue

diy dreamer

the winthrop chronicles
not just a housewife
smart school house
clean and scentsible
savvy southern style
diy by design
the thrifty home
happy housie
two it yourself
made in a day
vmg206
living well spending less
jennifer rizzo
life in velvet
my repurposed life
from my front porch to yours
just us four
the shabby nest
craft dictator
my love to create
the idea room
too much time on my hands
classy clutter
It's overflowing
one more time events
nifty thrifty things
flamingo toes
pink when
three mango seeds
cherished bliss
house on the way
kathe with an e
east coast creative
miss mustard seed

Happy Newyear!!!

HAPPY NEWYEAR!!!!!!  We stayed the night at my in laws last night to ring in the new year with family, and we have a big day planned today.  All of our family gets together and makes black eyed peas and collard greens for new years day.  It has aspecial meaning to it. ....but I'm not sure what that is....ha!   We are also celebrating my eldest son's birthday today. He turned 11 yesterday. We always tell him all of the fireworks are for him.   Anyways, I hope all who may read this has a lovely new years day and an even lovelier new year!  I will be back with a post about how we built my entryway very soon.

Xoxo

Anna