Oh How Pinteresting - Jennifer Lawrence Style

I wish Jennifer Lawrence was my best friend.  I think that's the trend on the interwebs right now.  She just seems hilariously awesome.  And Pinterest is a great way to relive some of her best and funniest moments.


















I hope those brought a smile to your face!  Have a great Wednesday!

Pinterest Challenge: Paint Chip Coasters



It's time for another Pinterest Challenge!  That means that I find a Pin that I have been wanting to recreate, and actually recreate it!  The Pinterest Challenge is an idea thought up by Young House Love and Bower Power to get us all to stop pinning and start doing. 

This time around, I decided to do something that I pinned a long time ago.  Paint chip coasters.  I think I picked up the paint chips about a year ago from Home Depot and they have been waiting to be put to use ever since.

Source: craftycpa.blogspot.com via Kaileigh on Pinterest

I found some tiles at the Habitat for Humanity restore.  I splurged, $2 for 6 of them.  I'm out of control, I know.  Then I bought the big jar of Mod Podge, and since I got 40% off it was about $9.  Realistically I probably could have bought the smallest jar, but I didn't know how much I would go through.  Now I will just have to find things to Mod Podge in the future.  I didn't use spray acrylic, but I think it was something similar that Ryan already had.  So the whole project cost about $11.

I'm working hard, Pipsi is hardly working.

So I started putting the first coat of Mod Podge on the top of my paint chips and was having the hardest time trying to figure out how to get them to stick to the tile.  Ya, that just happened.  Try putting the Mod Podge underneath the paint chip.  Genius!  I'm new to this crafting thing.  I did let them dry overnight with a book on top and then put about 5 coats of Mod Podge on top.

The only thing I haven't done is to glue felt to the bottom.  I have to travel a whole kilometre down to the road to use my parents hot glue gun, and I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

They turned out alright I guess.  I couldn't get the edges to stick down to the edge of the tile.  If I could just figure that out I think that they would look much better.  But overall, not a bad DIY effort.

A Little Piece of Our Wedding

          

I can't even believe that it's Pinterest Challenge time again!  This actually couldn't have come at a better time, because the day that I was planning on completing this little craft, Katie and Sherry announced the new challenge!

For those who don't know, the Pinterest Challenge is Katie Bower and Sherry Petersik's way of getting us to stop pinning and start doing!  I was supposed to take something that I have pinned and recreate it in my own way.  And so I did just that.

So here is the original:

Source: christyrobbins.blogspot.com via Kaileigh on Pinterest

 It's a tree ornament that has an wedding invitation inside.  It's a great way to do something with old wedding invitations!

I started by cutting up the invitations into strips.  I used a paper cutter to get straight lines.  I tried to make each strip have a line of words on it so that you can peep through the ornament and be able to see what some of them say!

Then I wrapped the strips around a pen and held them for a few seconds.  They curled fairly easily.  I did two ornaments, one with my own invitation and one with a friends.  One thing I did find is that it worked better with thinner strips.  This might be unavoidable though because basically your strip width depends on the font size on the invitation.

Rolling, rolling, rolling!

The whole project didn't even take that long!  I added some teal scrap booking paper to mine to add some colour.  Then I finished it off by tying some fancy ribbon so that you can hang them on the tree.

Do you see what I see?  

Oh look, she likes them too!

I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.  I could have used a smaller ornament, but when I was buying the ornaments I had no idea how full the invitation would make them.  It's a nice memory ornament for our tree.  And I gave the other one to Michaela for her tree.  The whole thing cost me less than $14 (well that was my total receipt at Michael's), and I have 2 ornaments and lots of ribbon left for future creations!  Next person to give me a wedding invitation that can be cut into strips gets a free ornament.  Challenge complete.

Oh How Pinteresting!

Here is a link up I've never done before.  But I do love Pinterest.  So here are some of my favourite things lately.

These little DIY Halloween monsters.

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Smore Dip.  Need I say more?

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Pizza Dip.  Yes please.

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Engagement pictures as a wedding guest book.  I wish I had thought of this sooner.

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Big Plans

I wish everything could be done all at once!  I've been thinking about the house a lot lately, and have come up with some great plans for the entry, the laundry room, the rec room.....but I have these time constrains and money constraints...

I wanted to decorate more.  But even though decorating items may not be overly expensive, they add up.  I want a bench, or a hall table for the entrance way and some sort of art above it.  I want to make the laundry room pretty.  Flip the door so it opens the opposite way and add some organizational shelving in there.  I want to make the rec room more homey, add some nice bar stools, art, side tables. 

Homes aren't decorated in a day though.  We did a pretty good job turning our house into a home in a couple months.  It's just these small details that I just want to get done.  Realistically, it will probably take years. 

But here are some things that I am dreaming about for my home.


A bathroom redo




Huge book shelves, I have a lot of books




A console table for my entry. This one is from Sears.




A gallery wall




This exact kitchen




Organization for my laundry room




This comfy chair for my basement from Pier 1




This sectional for all my (I mean Ryan's) friends in the basement from here

All other pictures are from my Pinterest.  Oh Pinterest, you make me want all the things that I don't have.
Oh and an area rug for under my kitchen table.  But a 6x8 area rug seems to be hard to find.

So it's only a few items that I desire! Is that so much to ask for?  I think not. 

Pinterest Challenging!

I learnt from my past mistakes and decided to not tell everyone I was participating in the Pinterest Challenge until I actually completed my project.   Well I did one! Yay for me. 

First off, Pinterest challenging isn't as inexpensive as I would like it to be.  I'm kind of cheap, and I don't want my crafts to be expensive.  I think that maybe when Sherry and Katie do it, they are crafty and have most of the stuff in their house already.  Or maybe they are just more economical than me.  I wanted to do a challenge that required 3 different colours of spray paint, spray primer and some top coat.  That would be like $50! And I would probably screw it up huge.  No way. 

I found this project on glass etching. Now in this one, she was making them for portion control purposes.  I planned on giving my project, if successful, to my friend as a bachelorette party gift, and let me tell you, Michaela is not one to care about portion control when it comes to wine.  So I just wanted to make a nice design on it.

The glass from Pinterest

First of all, I headed to Michael's to purchase my necessities.  I bought some Armour Etch and some Over 'n Over creatable stencils.  This was just one big sticky sheet that I had to cut my own stencil out of.  They had real stencils, but they didn't really have what I was looking for.  I also bought a small paint brush.

First I tried sticking some circle stickers on a glass and etching around it, hoping for a neat design.  FAIL.

My first attempt - a big mess of etched glass

So I decided to try something new.  To create my stencil, I first cut out a circle, using the inside of some painters tape as a guide.  This ended up being a lot bigger than I expected, but what can you do.  Then I printed the letter W off of Microsoft Word in a font that I liked, and traced it onto the stencil.  I found out after I was supposed to use an exacto knife so that I didn't cut through the backing.  Oops.  Live and Learn.  I'm new to this arts and crafts thing.

I stuck my circle stencil on a glass, and put the W in the middle.  I was ready to go!

I just layered on a heavy coat of Armour Etch.  Make sure it's heavy or else it will end up looking streaky.  I figured that out with my practice glass.

It said in the directions to leave it on for a minute.  I think I probably left each one on for about 3 minutes, just to be safe.  Then you just rinse it all off and take off the stencil. 

I made up four of them.  They didn't turn out too badly either! I'm impressed for my first real craft attempt.  And I gave them to the Bride to Be later that day.  They aren't by any means going to be her good crystal, but extra wine glasses in the house are never a bad thing.

 Of course I had to throw in a picture of Pipsi photo bombing.  It's what she does best.

Oh and if anyone is interested in the cost of this little project, I lucked out in the shopping department.

Armour Etch - on sale at Michael's  $7.99
Stencil - on sale at Michael's           $4.99
Paint Brush - Michael's                    $0.89
12 Glasses - on sale at Zellers       $11.99

For a grand total of $25.86 plus tax.  And I have 7 glasses and some Armour Etch left over, so I can always make some more!   

Pinterest Challenge Failure

For all of those people waiting for a post for the past week (aka my mom), my internet has been down. This post was written on Wednesday....I really don't have an excuse for why I did not complete the challenge between Wednesday and Saturday.

I am a Pinterest Challenge Failure and it is upsetting.  Note to self, don't make a committment to get creative when:
a) You are not creative
b) You are too dang busy (I had one week, from last Wednesday to this Wednesday, I had an exam Saturday morning so nothing was done before that, Saturday I had a birthday party, Sunday was a write off, Monday was my birthday dinner....so that left last night)

I did attempt to make something last night.  I tried to make this.  A dry erase calendar made with paint chips and a picture frame.  I have most of the items required, but was missing a ruler, so I could not for the life of me get proper squares cut out of my paint chips.  I'm still going to work on it, because I have bought a frame and bristol board and I can't stand the thought of spending that money for no reason.

So hopefully in the near future I can share my creation.

For future pinterest challenges, I am going to preplan, and find items that I really want to make and do it.  This one I kind of chose because I thought it was neat, but also easy enough to do in a week. (In a normal week, not in this past week).

I can share a Pinterest idea that I have started.  It's called the $5 savings plan.

Basically any time a $5 bill makes it into our hands, it goes into a jar.  It's an easy way to save money.  Was kind of difficult when I went to Tim Horton's the other day and they gave me 3 $5 bills.  All into the jar they went.  But hopefully at the end of the year we have a nice little clump of savings that we can buy something with or put towards a trip!

Guess What Time It Is!!!!!

Ever since I saw Sherry's last blog post on this, I have been excited for the day when I had my own blog and could take part.  You don't actually need a blog to do it, but I think it's more fun.  So I was pumped when this was the post over here today.

PINTEREST CHALLENGE TIME! If Sherry and Katie say do it, I will.  Ya that's right, I'm on a first name basis......ok not really at all. 

Basically for the pinterest challenge, you choose something that you have found on Pinterest and do it! Stop pinning and start doing!  Otherwise Pinterest is just a lot of great ideas that never make their way into your life.  I haven't decided what my challenge item will be yet, but when my 2 exams are finished this weekend and I have a life again, I will complete my first Pinterest challenge!  According to Katie Bower, I have only one week to complete this challenge.  But if I blog about it I'm committed right?