New Curtains- A Start
My day off yesterday was productive! My entire kitchen and dining room have a face lift from one day of work. What did I do? I made a few simple curtains. We have been complaining about these old fruit and strawberry curtains since we moved in (sorry, I forgot to take before pics! But you can get some glimpses here):
See what I mean? They were so bad we tried to keep them out of all of our pictures! But these three windows got a face-lift yesterday.
Just to let you know, I am not a seamstress. Not even a little bit. I used “Sewing in a Tube” for all of these curtains. And, by the way, this wasn’t much easier. These curtains are by no means perfect! But, they did give the rooms a more updated and bright feel.
I started with the small window in the kitchen. I wanted simple, black curtains. They are now the right length and when we get the cabinets painted they will go great in the room.
Isn’t that so much better? Black goes well with the shade I did for the door, too. I am going to make a black top for the shade next, but ran out of fabric. They were not intended to be tied back, but the material was too stiff to stay in place, so this was a temporary fix. But, we didn’t mind it, so it might stay that way for a while.
Next, I tried some sheers for the big dining window and dining room door. These were very difficult to do with the sewing glue. But, they came together and look pretty good now. The panels in the window are so small because I plan to add another color here. I am not going to make these! 🙂 I have tried my hand and now I’m done. The rest will come in a package from a store! I would also like to paint the curtain rod a cream color to blend better. But, overall still a big improvement.
What do you think? Pretty good start! Wait until you see the light fixture I ordered for this room! 🙂 Stay tuned.
Our Backyard
Our yard is a mess. The landlord kept it full of leaves, twigs, branches, logs, compost piles and even garbage. We are tearing all of this up. Slowly but surely we are cleaning up the mess we inherited, and making a pretty, and useful yard. So, over the weekend we plugged away at the daunting yard. We have, of course, started by picking up and disposing of his garbage and old broken items. The other items such as old pots, tools , and yard items were collected and stored neatly away in the already packed shed. Here was where the real fun began. We had already started to rake and remove the massive amounts of leaves from the back yard, but so much more remained.
This weekend is when we started working on a fire pit. This way, once this chore is finished, we can move onto the chore of burning the branches and debris that remain. Tony dug a very nice, large, circular hole, and we started with placing the first ring of bricks. We then layered the bottom with rock (the landlord also had much random rock to be picked up from the middle of the yard!). The pit is unfinished, but looking gorgeous already! Here are some pictures:
Here is some of the mess left in our yard.
Here is a bit more of the mess. We are removing all of the compost, which is those lumps, and the twiggy looking trees are going to be moved from the clump he planted them in.
Here's the start of the fire pit. This project is going to be a fun one for the summer!
Some Color In The Pocket Office
Over the weekend I made a few tiny but fun changes to the pocket office. First, I added some bright red paper to the blah sides of the drawer set under the desk. It looked as if it had just been stashed under there, but now it looks as if it was intended to be there. I also tried to eliminate some clutter. I took down the picture mobile, arranged some of the hanging photos on the inspiration wire, and changed the art a bit.
I had seen online where framing simple art in a blank CD case can be easy to swap and add a fun punch to your walls for little money. So, I hung three of these CD case frames with some strange art in them above the desk. The art was small, cluttered, and mismatched. I changed the art out to something more simple and in the color scheme. I then hung them vertically to contrast with the inspiration wire. I think this is starting to look much better than my original office a few months ago!
The colored paper on the drawers.
The CD case art I made.
Doesn't it look so much better!?
And, the other side of the office, so you can see the pretty matching boxes.
What do you think?
Our House- The Outside
When we moved into our new home it was getting cold and dreary out, and I have yet to post pictures of the outside of our house or our porch. Until now, that is. This weekend was so gorgeous outside that I took some pictures of the porch and the newly covered bench, as well as the patio furniture that I had time to repaint. Here we go:
The front view of our house.
The little bench by the front door and our red vintage lawn chairs! 🙂
Our gorgeous chairs!
And on the other side- our lovely vintage ice cream table and chairs!
Enjoy our sunny pictures!
Office Storage
I love the matching office supplies my mom got me a year or two ago. There is a pencil cup, tray, two boxes, and a magazine box, and they are all in different forms of black and white damask with little bits of red here and there. I was thinking lately that I just needed a few more storage pieces for office things. I had recently seen a post online about making your own magazine boxes with cereal boxes. Last night I dug into this project as well.
I cut the cereal box top off and cut the sides on an angle. I then recovered the box by glueing some black and white skull material (I have a thing for skulls right now) over all outter sufaces. It was easy and cheap and I think it goes well in the office space. Now I have one more storage box. More to come in the future.
I didn't take a before picture of the empty cereal box, but here is the finished product.
There it sits next to the other box on the shelf of our pocket office.
Also, another little office update. Tony finally installed the frame for the projector picture. The wall at least appears empty for a reason now. I kind of like it. It almost looks a little purposefully quirky when the projector isn’t on.
A Pop Of Red
The black and white kitchen gets a pop of color! Red! While at the Salvation Army looking for items for a few projects, I came across the cutest little vintage sauce pan. And, it was red. I couldn’t resist. Now it hangs on the wall in our kitchen. So cute.
The pot wouldn’t hang the other way around, but it worked out ok. The bottom of the pan is decorated! It says Vitrex Gourmet and has some funky designs. With some research I learned that Vitrex Gourmet is a Spanish cookware company. Very cute, and very durable, too!
The little things truly do amuse me!
Need Your Expertise
On Sunday Tony and I visited my grandparents. My grandma gave me some dishes and also two antique picture frames. She didn’t know much about them, except that they are old. I’ll say! The back of one picture has some writing on it that says 1898! I know the frames are cross corner with leaves, and that they used to be quite popular. Do you have any more information on these frames or the pictures inside?
This is the writing on the back of one picture. We can't make out all of the words, but we can read 1898!
I would love to know more about these, so if you know anything, let me hear it!
Vintage Cuteness
The past weekend my dad and his wife brought us a little vintage present. They had been cleaning and we about to get rid of this find when they realized Tony and I would probably love it. Which we did! What they found was a set of eight drink glasses and a party dish in a carrier. The glasses have gold leaves on them. So neat!
Isn’t this great!? It was just sitting down there in their basement! This will be great for our next party.
Little Christmas Shelf
For Christmas, my Secret Santa (my sister-in-law-to-be, Jess) got me the cutest little shelf. We have been debating where to hang it since then! After we arranged some things the other day, we found the perfect place in the living room. The colors match perfectly! She also got me the little diamond studded candle and the LOVE sign that are sitting on the shelf. It was just so adorable I had to post it. Take a look!
I know its dark, but this is the shelf hung in the corner of the living room behind the Eames lounger.
My Christmas gifts from Jess!
Finally Framed
Last night we finally found some square frames for the vintage fruit crate ads we have been wanting to hang in the kitchen. Square frames are hard to find! We got these at Micheal’s (what a great place!). We hung the ads on either side of the vintage Absinthe ad we already had hanging in the kitchen, just as we had planned. The colors look nice and bright, and they do fill that empty space above the landing strip. But, we still feel like maybe there is something missing here. Is it that the desk still looks dwarfed on that big wall? Are the ads just wrong there? Hmm… we will have to ponder that for a while. But, if any of you have any suggestions for us, we are all ears!
This is pretty much what the "finished" landing strip wall looks like.
A close up of the framed ads
I love how bright and fun the ads are! What do you think?
Make Mine Eclectic 