Girls Craft Night #8: Decorating Pumpkins

Last night I got home after midnight.

I drank wine.

I indulged in yummy food.

I hung out with some awesome girlfriends.

I laughed my butt off.

And I left with a craft.

Awesome, right?!

I'm telling you, if you like to craft a little, and have some friends that do as well, get together and have a Girls Night In! We have SO much fun, and we joke that the craft is just the bonus - it's a great excuse to hang out, relax, unwind, laugh, and it's just plain nice to be around grown-ups for a while;) My friend, Michele, hosted it last night so we could all see her newly renovated kitchen (be on the lookout for a blog post soon!), and it was a BLAST! Thanks so much, Michele! (And the kitchen is GORGE!!)

This month, we went seasonal and decided to make some fun pumpkins. We all bought those craft pumpkins you see everywhere - even Target has them this year. We each brought materials for our particular pumpkin project (I need paint, a brush, a pencil, others needed scrapbook paper and Mod Podge, you get the idea).

I took one look at my Country Living magazine and knew what I wanted to do:

A Chevron pumpkin!

I started with a cream pumpkin, and decided to just wing it with the lines. I used my pencil and started zig-zagging.

I used a teeny tiny brush and outlined it with orange craft paint. Then I used a larger brush to fill in (so it wouldn't take me ALL night!). That's it!

Not exactly as precise and perfect as CL, but really, who's gonna rival THAT, right?! ;) Good enough for me, I say!

Here are some of the other projects...

That was a black pumpkin, and my friend bought scrapbook paper with this pretty pattern. She cuts pieces of it and mod podged it on there. Cute!

The bottom left is also the same technique - scrapbook paper cut in strips and mod podged on the pumpkin. (All the white dries clear, so don't be afraid to slather it on there! If you look closely, you can still see some of the white Mod Podge. It ALL goes away though). The bottom right is just sharpie markers in different colors, and different fonts of handwriting! All words about Fall. Cute, right?! A couple of the girls left before I remembered to take pics of their projects, but they turned out cute too!

So that was our fun night last night! Pumpkins are everywhere; in fact, I think I might just make a couple more. Don't think you've seen the last of crafty pumpkins from the ND;)


Miss any of our previous Craft Nights? Here are the links! They're all pretty easy, inexpensive, and quick enough to complete in a couple hours, for those of you who are interested in starting your own group!
Craft Night #1: Cinnamon Stick Wreaths
Craft Night #2: Berry Letters
Craft Night #3: Tile Coasters
Craft Night #4: Love Button Art
Craft Night #5: Moss Letters
Craft Night #6: Patriotic Wreaths
Craft Night #7: Canvas Art

Happy Crafting!

DIY Sisal Lamp Shade and Painted Base

Ah, more Family Room stuff...I know, you're sick of hearing about it, right?! That room and all that goes in it has consumed my decorating life at the moment. I just want it all done before we get too close to that hectic/crazy/wonderful holiday season, and as us busy people know, we're gonna blink and it'll be here.

I had this blah lamp in our old family room. It was a cheapo base from somewhere - I think maybe Walmart years ago? It was fine, but I wanted to jazz it up a bit. And the shade, which I also bought from Walmart, had seen better days. There was a tear in one side, and a paint drip on another (oops;), and it has a sheen to it that's not exactly the look I'm going for in here. Here's what it looked like:

Of course, I knew I wanted to spray paint the base some light color. I decided to go with white. I taped up the top of it that I didn't want to get painted, as well as the cord, and took it outside for a spray down.

I used Valspar Satin White. Just a few very light, quick coats and it was done. That's the key to good spray painting: quick, light coats, and never stay in one spot for long. If you just keep spraying one spot, it'll run and drip. Think of it like hair spray - all over and fast. ;) Wait a few minutes, do another coat.

Once it was finished, I thought it needed a little somethin'. I stared at it, and noticed these little rims that went around it...hmm...maybe I could paint them?

I grabbed some leftover Sheffield Grey from the bookcase fiasco, a teeny tiny brush, and hoped for the best.

It turned out pretty cute!

Then for the shade...I took the same technique I used for my Sisal Vase, Sisal Tray, and Sisal planter (wow, think I have a sisal problem?!) and applied it to the shade. Hot glue, some sisal rope from Lowes, and started wrapping from the bottom up.

Keep dabbing and wrapping...dabbing and wrapping...dabbing and wrapping...

Done!

Let's take one more look at the before and after, shall we?

Love! One more project crossed off the family room list;)

Fixing a Huge Fail: The Painted Bookcases

Whew. I dodged a humongous fail this weekend with the bookcases. If you're up-to-date with the whole Family Room Makeover happenings, you know we recently moved the tv to another wall, painted the fireplace white, and purchased two Billy Bookcases from IKEA to flank them. Our plan is to fancy 'em up, add molding, paint the back a darker color, you know, kinda mimic the whole built-in look without actually   getting built-ins. But I had the genius idea to line the backs with beadboard wallpaper first..or so I thought it was genius. Sure, add some more texture, it'll look awesome. AND I even had some leftover from the kitchen backsplash. Perfect, right?!

Not so much.

The backing of these bookcases is that cardboard stuff - basically you get what you pay for, at $60 a bookcase. It's not entirely flush, you can see the fold of the cardboard. I figured that wouldn't really matter much with the wallpaper, right? Apparently it DOES. Or maybe it's because I decided to be an arrogant somebody and decide I didn't need to prime it first, LIKE THE INSTRUCTIONS SAY. Could be that, I suppose...whatever the case, the wallpaper, while looking adorbs, wasn't 100% flush against the back. Couldn't tell at all when it was white...

Here's what they look like orginally (minus all the shelves):

Plain Jane. Here's what they looked like with the unpainted beadboard wallpaper:

Looking good, right? So next step: painting. I picked out a gorge color: Sheffield Grey by Olympic. I LOVE this color. It's a perfect darkish grey/blue - just what I wanted. So I taped them up...

And started painting. Here's where I had my first (yes, first) ACK! attack.

Crossed my fingers, hoping that once it dried, it wouldn't look so bumpy. Nope. Just as bumpy dry. Apparently that little bit of not gluing flush against the bumpy back of the bookcase was even more evident with a dark color on there. Yikes.

So I ripped it all down.

I decided to just paint the backs. I had read blogs where they painted these exact bookcases, and just need to prime it first, and the paint will go on great. Perfect! Sure, the beadboard would have looked great, but this'll look fine too, right?

WRONG.

It would. not. stick. You know when you try to paint a super glossy surface, and it just disappears in spots, and won't stay on? Yup. That was happening. All over. It was not pretty. I looked at my husband, who was so sweetly watching football at the time, and he was encouraging me, but later told me he didn't think I had a chance in you-know-where of these turning out! We both kinda thought we'd just have to put beadboard wallpaper back up there and just not paint it. Turns out the glue from the wallpaper made this surface pretty much unpaintable. I tried cleaning the surface, hoping to remove the residue, but it wasn't working.

But I was determined.

So the primed surface wasn't working. The cleaned surface wasn't doing the trick either. Hmm...CHALK PAINT! YES! That stuff sticks to anything!

I added a little plaster of paris to my paint to get the homemade chalk paint going.

It started going on a little bit better, but not much.

I then came up with this bizarre technique. A minute or so after I applied the disastrous first coat, I took a paper towel and sorta smeared the paint around. I let it dry, hoping it would somehow act as a base coat and the paint would stick to it.

And wouldn't you know it? It WORKED.

Sorry for the night shot - here's one taken in the daylight...

(Please ignore all the cable boxes, wires, painter's tape, etc;)

Things I've learned from this near-epic fail:
1. ALWAYS prime your surface if the instructions say PRIME YOUR SURFACE!
2. Where there's a will, there's most definitely a way. Especially if you're a little cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, like yours truly.
3. These bookcases might be the death of me.
4. These bookcases are gonna look freakin' awesome once the molding/shelves are put in, and they're all styled.
5. I will be ecstatic when that day comes. ;)


So there's the story of my crazy painting Fail-turned-Success. It was a little iffy for a while there yesterday, but it all worked out in the end;). We bought the molding to get started on that next weekend! Yippee! Keep ya posted!

Football Sundays

I was never into football as a kid. Maybe it's because we didn't have a football team in our hometown during my childhood (yes, my dad could have chosen another team to root for on Sundays, but he's STILL bitter about the whole Colts thing decades later, so that was never an option;).

Then I met my husband.

The man LOVES football. In our early dating days, he explained the game to me. And for some reason, I found myself actually interested. (The things we'll do for love, eh? ;) I learned about yards and downs and extra points and punts. I learned about fumbles and interceptions and sacks. And Sundays changed for me. Now that I knew what was happening, it was kinda fun to watch. Trust me, no one was more surprised than I was!

Shock of all shocks, we started a family fantasy football league that year (10 years ago - and it's still going strong), and I created a team! ME! The family started coming over on Sundays, sometime in the late morning to watch the 1:00 games, and would stay well into the 8:00 games.

And Football Sundays were born.

We eat. We eat. And we eat some more. We don purple and black and yell at those who don't dress accordingly. We have a few drinks. We play cornhole at halftime. We eat a little more. In between all this, we laugh A LOT. I cook my behind off, and don't end up actually watching  most of the game, but it's all good. Even though I do like watching it, I love entertaining more. It all starts on Thursday nights: I grab my favorite cookbooks, and now my laptop since Pinterest is FULL of yummy football food now, and find a handful of munchies to try...

(I'll link up some of my favorites at the end of the post)

I go shopping on Friday for all my ingredients. Come Sunday, Paul and I are on a mad dash to make the house look like we don't live in filth in about an hour, while our kiddos usually look something like this:

Coloring away. Thanks so much for the help, kids!! lol;)

I get the menu up...

...start cooking, and do anything I can ahead of time, like frying bacon, or in this case, grating cheese:) (I'm annoyingly organized when it comes to cooking - I hate feeling frazzled to do 8700 things when the guests start coming in - but I swear, it really does help keep you stress free if you have things started ahead of time).

If you knew me 15 years ago, you'd find it hilarious that I'm now getting things like football aprons and dishes like these for birthday and Christmas gifts...

But I do, and I love it!

So then the guests start arriving and head downstairs to our half Ravens territory/half kids playroom;)...

Ha! See the little Book Nook on the right there? Yeah, we could use a bigger basement on Sundays!

Kickoff begins and we start to stuff our faces...

When halftime hits, we head outside for some cornhole competition. Not to toot my own horn or anything,  but my partner and I were a force to be reckoned with. Right, Joel?!

Won 2 games, then had to head back in for the second half and more grubbin'.

the 1st Day of School Cookie in the shape of a football

Football Sundays. Who knew this girl without a football caring bone in her body would one day love and host a day all about it? I guess that old saying is true: If you can't beat 'em, join 'em! ;)

Now if you'll excuse me, there's a game on tonight and I still have yet to put my Fantasy players in...better get to it! I've got Tom Brady as my QB playing against our beloved Ravens - what to do, what to do...(for the record, it still cracks me up that I say AND understand sentences like that one;)





Some of our favorite Game Day munchie recipes:
Cheesy Potato Rounds
Stuffed Crust Pizza Snacks
Pepperoni Pizza Puffs
Hot and Cheesy Spinach and Artichoke Dip
Super Nachos
Hot Reuben Dip
Meatballs
Ham and Spinach Pinwheels

Early Fall Centerpiece

Well, I did it. I made my first official Fall Craft of 2012. If you read my Holiday Decorating Conundrum post, you know I've been struggling to get in the Fall spirit. But I'm trying;) I call this an "early fall" project, because it's good for those late summer/early fall weeks, when it just seems too soon (at least for me) to bust out the Halloween decor. When it's early September and I'm still in shorts and a tank-top, and my kids are playing in the sprinkler to keep cool, I just don't feel very Halloween-y;)

I spotted the prettiest fake sunflowers when I was at Michaels yesterday. And at 50% off, I had to pick up a few. I'd have picked up 20 if I could, but decided not to spend a fortune on fake flowers and settled at 3. Normally I'm not a fake flower fan, but these are particularly pretty, aren't they?

And they're substantial. Super long stem, and their regular price is $7 a piece. Sunflowers have been my favorite flower since I was a kid. I grew a garden of the monstrous ones when I was young, and decorated my entire childhood bedroom - floor to ceiling - in them;) So maybe that's what drew me to these too...

I also picked up some packets of leaves for less than a buck.

Didn't really know what I was going to do with them, but I figured what the heck and threw 'em in the cart.

Got home, and it hit me. I grabbed some stuff from my craft (DISASTER of a) cabinet - 3 large mason jars, some leftover burlap, jute, and all purpose glue.

I cut out three strips of burlap - long enough to go around the mason jar once.

I decided to pull a few strings to fray the edges.

I dabbed a little bit of glue on the jar, and wrapped the burlap strip around.

Then add some glue along the other end and secure it.

Now you have a burlap covered mason jar. Cute in and of itself, right?

But we're not done there;)

I gathered up a few leaves and sort of stacked them together. I placed the jar on top.

Cut a couple strings of jute to tie around it, and lifted it up.

Repeat three times, and stick a sunflower in each one.

Although cute, these three jars weren't enough for a centerpiece. So I got to thinking...and rummaging through my stash of yard sale goodies...and found this old mirror.

I mixed up some homemade chalk paint in white (for the recipe, see this post). With chalk paint, there's no need to sand, or prime, just slather it on. My kinda painting;) I taped it up, gave it two coats, and once the paint dried, took it outside to sand it a bit. Give it a little aged, distressed look...

Wiped the dust off it from sanding, placed the sunflower jars on top, and voila!

We have a nice little Late Summer/Early Fall centerpiece for the dining room table! And hardly cost me a thing:)

It could use a few little votives, maybe, some more "stuff" around it, but we'll get there. Baby steps, people! And this mirror-turned-tray will be perfect in the winter, for some snowy/Christmas-y decor to sit atop it! Pretty happy with the way that turned out.

So there. I did it. I faced Fall 2012...ok, ok, doesn't exactly SCREAM Fall, but it's a start, right?! :)