Fall is in the air

The breezes are getting cooler, the leaves are starting to fall and football is on the big screen. Ahhhh, Fall. My favorite time of year. I love it even more so now that I live in the mountains...there is something magical about the crisp morning air and yellow aspen trees that makes my heart sing. Not to mention football. I LOVE football...always have, always will. It makes me weird to my girlfriends, yet pretty darn cool as far as the fellas in my family are concerned. When I am not busy dreaming about raking a big, fat pile of leaves and jumping in them I am busy decorating for fall! It's the "kick-off" to the best décor season ever: Fall, Halloween, Thanksgiving, then the touch down, Christmas!! These shots are of some of my current fall eye candy. I am in the process of making some cute DIY fall decorations and will post them up as soon as they are ready! What is your favorite season? Do you love Fall?

This is my DIY display box I made in the spring. It runs down the center of my DIY farmhouse table and I LUV decorating with it.



The acorns are the finishing touch.

I just adore these glitter pumpkins and gourds.

  Another Shot

  Pumpkin love

Quick & Easy Monogram Gift

I love anything and everything monogrammed. From coffee cups like this one found at Target:

I am lucky enough to have J for my first and last name!

 to giant carry all bags, like this one from Buckethead betties!

I use it all the time when taking the fellas to the pool

With Christmas fast approaching and the budget disappearing just as fast, I was brainstorming for cute gift ideas when I spotted the cardboard letters at Hobby Lobby. I bought a J (of course!) and started playing around. Here is what I ended up with:

A rustic monogram plaque that can be used inside or outside for a quick bit of classic decor! Cute, huh?

To make one of these you'll need some scrap wood or purchase some in the scrap bin at Home Depot (I used leftover 1X2's) some handy dandy Gorilla Glue, the cardboard letter of your choice, glitter (if you so desire), paint and a wee bit of burlap.

line the edges of boards with gorilla glue

Place in a vice or clamp of some sort till dry

While your boards are drying, paint your letter. You can choose any color...I wanted a monochromatic look so I used the FolkArt Metallic Paint:

After the boards are dry, you can paint them as well. Since mine were already brown, I opted to just brush on a bit of cream paint to give dimension and a distressed look when sanded. I used my hand sanded lightly over the front and around the edges.

As I've mentioned in previous posts, I love glitter....so I did a quick pass with the spray adhesive and used my favorite Martha Stewart glitter for a quick dusting:

Then I used glued on the J and wrapped a bit of burlap ribbon at the bottom!

A cute easy, inexpensive gift for neighbors, cousins, teachers, etc!

 

Spicing Up the Pantry Door

What is a girl to do with left over red paint from her front door? Paint her pantry door of course! I have been seeing all kinds of fabulous pantry door makeovers like this one from Clarendon Lane, and all the fabulous examples found on Remodelaholic! It's hard to narrow it down to just one, but I think two of my favorites can be found at House of Smith's and No. 2 Pencil....simple, yet beautiful.

Enough daydreaming.....

First step trimming out all the panels

....time to put brush to door! After putting on the first coat, I immediately knew that the white trim HAD TO GO! As you'll soon see, one design DIY always leads to another with me. My husband seems to think this is a problem, I think it's just the way a woman's Designer's mind works! So we cut the caulk bead around the trim and used a crow bar to slowly pull off the white trim.

 The white just didn't blend well with the red door and the wall color. And besides I've wanted the white gone since we moved in......just not a very rustic look.  In order to achieve the look I was after without breaking the bank, I decided to use 1X4's easily purchased at Home Depot for about $2 each.

new trim layout

After playing with the layout I decided I liked the look of a bit of an apron on the header. This look is very common in rustic home decor and since we live in the mountains I thought it was appropriate. After deciding on the layout we simply nailed the 1X4's where the old frame was. After all was in place I stained the new trim with Minwax Dark Walnut, the same stain as my wood floors.

I love the rustic feel the dark trim gives

I think this really highlights Mr. Moose

I am glad I finally took the plunge and updated my pantry door! Do you have a door you've been wanting to paint a fun color? (by the way, notice the white railing and white basement door? Yep! Those will be gone soon too!)

Thanksgiving Pumpkin Decoration

Hi all! I love love love to decorate with pumpkins and get sad when they magically disappear after Halloween so I thought I would make my own to have throughout Thanksgiving. I started with some scraps of 4X4 that we had leftover from building our fence.

Pretty plain and simple. Since they were already stained brown from the fence, I started by painting them. I used my trusty acrylic paints to begin the pumpkin look.

I used Delta Ceramcoat in Tangerine & Dark Goldenrod. The tangerine is the darker of the two. I brushed it on first using a foam brush and then layered the dark goldenrod over the top. Then I left them to dry. Next I used my hand sander to distress the edges. I love my hand sander for small, easy projects.

You can pick one of these up at Home Depot.

Distressed edges

Your sanding/distressing doesn't need to be perfect.....the less perfect the better in my humble opinion! Once the edges were distressed to my satisfaction, I took a look.....and decided they needed some holiday bling...otherwise known as GLITTER! I adore glitter!! 

I sprayed each "pumpkin" with Krylon Spray Adhesive first, then generously dusted with my all time favorite glitter, Martha Steward Crafts Glitter in Fire Opal. I love this glitter because it is very fine, (a little goes a long way) and it sparkles like no other. You can find this at Michael's or Hobby Lobby. It is very difficult to take a picture of glitter and have it show up, especially in the sun, but I did my best.

you can see the glitter a bit in the sun

I promise these are super sparkly....you'll have to trust me.Now they need some stems and some raffia to complete the look. I used scrap 2X2's, cut to various lengths, and painted them Hunter Green by Delta Ceramcoat and sanded the edges just a bit.

Before I added the raffia...they look naked

Finished Thanksgiving Pumpkins!  What is your favorite decoration for Thanksgiving?

(P.S. you can finally see the glitter!)

Front Door Update

Living in the mountains at 6,500 feet is rough on the exterior of a house to say the least. The snow build up and melt tends to make for quite a few Spring and Summer "must dos." Unfortunately with this summer jam-packed with baseball, our house took a back seat. As I was putting away the Halloween decorations and cleaning up the porch, this is what I noticed:

 Yikes! Peeling paint on the frame of the front door! As a designer, artist and lover of all things PRETTY, let alone a good neighbor, I could not have this! I immediately decided I must squeeze in an outdoor project in November....quite risky this time of year! I could have simply gotten my brown exterior paint out of storage and touched up the frame, however, that would have been too easy, I am a designer, artist and lover of all things PRETTY so I decided we needed a fresh new look.

Off to Home Depot I went in search of the perfect barn door, rustic, mountainous (is that even a word?) RED for the front door. Yep, I decided to go big or go home! Red it had to be..but not any red, mind you. I found exactly what I was looking for in Behr Paint's Cinnamon Cherry. It was love at first swatch!!
I purchased a quart in the exterior option of course, as well as, a quart of primer. Now to enlist my husband in the venture as I knew time was NOT on our side. Lucky for us, the weekend weather was in the 50's...not to shabby so we began.

First Step: Tape & Prime

You can tell it's a pretty fall day by the sunshine

We needed to let the primer dry overnight since we didn't finish till afternoon and since it was technically a wee bit chilly. Little did we know we would wake up to this!

Are you kidding me?!

Well it is November, after all! The front door sat primed and ready to go for a week while the snow came and went. I was beginning to wonder if my front door was going to look like that all winter when we had a warm spell. HOORAY! We quickly began to paint!

My faithful hubby & DIY expert helping me out!

It took a few coats and some patience but here is my beautiful front door! As you notice I can't ever seem to get a shot of the door/porch without a bright spot on the bottom of the picture from the sun...ARGGHH!! The end result was exactly as I had imagined. I am in LOVE!

TA DA! 

A comparison...what do you guys think?