Checking In / Christmas Signs

I received an e-mail from a sweet blogging friend last week wondering where I was!  I know I have been a little MIA this last week.  I had some self-imposed deadlines on some building projects, and I’ve been spending every minute in my garage!

I thought I’d share a few of the new Christmas Signs I have been working on.  Another symptom of how busy I’ve been is that none of these have been listed in my etsy shop (ugh!)…but then, these are BIG, HEAVY signs, and I worry that no one would want to pay the accompanying shipping charges!  However, if you’re local, all of these signs went either to Ruffles & Rust in Snohomish, or to Seaworthy Home in Pacific Beach, WA.

“It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” is a Pottery Barn knock-off, and it seems to be the favorite with people on my Facebook page!

The big signs are REALLY big—almost 2 feet square.  It was fun to learn a new skill in framing them in.

I made some smaller signs with my scraps….

This “Let it Snow” sign is my favorite of the smaller signs.

You can see the difference in sizes in the “Have Yourself a Merry little Christmas” signs.  The white one was by far the more popular one.

This one was super fun to make…it’s my version of this pinned sign.  Mine’s a little more rustic looking, I think.

I already have a “special order” for one of these signs for my sister, and I’m trying to decide which one I might need for myself!  Which one would you choose?

 

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Linking up here:

The Inspiration Exchange	Elizabeth & Co.
Primitive & Proper	Thrifty Décor Chick
Friday Remodelaholic	The Scoop!
Funky Junk’s Saturday Night Special	The DIY Show Off Miss Mustard Seed
Beyond the Picket Fence	Coastal Charm
Knick of Time	Domestically Speaking
Perfectly Imperfect	No Minimalist Here
Common Ground	My Repurposed Life
From My Front Porch to Yours	Mod Vintage Life A Little Knick Knack

Vanity & Dresser Refinish

Thank you for all the kind comments about my daughter’s bedroom makeover, both here and on Facebook!  It was so fun to get to work on this with her.  She is always my sounding board for the various crazy ideas I have, but this time she was truly invested in the project!

One of our first steps in her room remodel was finding some new furniture for her to use.  The $100 junky particle board set I bought four years ago (at her request, make no mistake about that!) was promptly sold—for the same price I paid for it!  There’s just no accounting for tastes, is there??

We scoured Craigslist for a vanity/dresser set, and finally came home with these for $150:

Only $50 more, and this time it was actually decent furniture!

Well, you can see the finish on the top was in REALLY rough shape.  But structurally everything was sound, and the veneer was in very good condition…a couple of chips here and there, but nothing major.

The “to-paint-or-not-to-paint” question was discussed at length, but Naomi eventually decided on “not.”

Since she wanted a darker stain, I decided to use my favorite miracle product, General Finishes Gel Stain (no, unfortunately they don’t pay me to say that) in Antique Walnut.  

You can see how I used it in my card catalog refinish here and a bedroom set here.

The great thing about this gel stain is that you DON’T have to completely remove the old finish.  Rough it up, yes—but if you’re going darker, you don’t have to go down to bare wood.  You can see how I lightly sanded the bottom half of the side of the dresser below.

I did have to do some more serious sanding on the top of the vanity.  Where the poly finish had worn away over time the colors were very splotchy—so I had to do a little more work to get everything back to the same tone.

But oh, look at what a difference ONE coat of gel stain made!

I ended up using two coats on everything, followed by two coats of General Finishes Polyurethane.

And oh, I think it was worth it!

The handles are original, I just cleaned them up a bit a lot!

And I recovered the vanity bench in a fun yellow and white chevron.

Have you ever used gel stain before?  What did you think of it?

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Linking up here:

The Inspiration Exchange	Elizabeth & Co.
Primitive & Proper	Thrifty Décor Chick
Friday Remodelaholic	The Scoop!
Funky Junk’s Saturday Night Special	The DIY Show Off Miss Mustard Seed
Beyond the Picket Fence	Coastal Charm
Knick of Time	Domestically Speaking
Perfectly Imperfect	No Minimalist Here
Common Ground	My Repurposed Life
From My Front Porch to Yours	Mod Vintage Life A Little Knick Knack

Vintage Aqua Bedroom

I have the hardest time gearing up to show projects that I complete within my own home.  I don’t have a really good reason for that…except that I never feel the pictures really capture the feeling of the place I call “home.”

And that may be the only explanation you get for why I am showing my daughter’s mostly-completed room makeover a mere 5 months after it was completed!

Here it is today….

 

And here’s what we started with!

OK, so the pictures above are already a bit of a work-in-progress 

But her room really was almost always that messy! (sorry, dear)

Everything in the room was boring beige, and that was a hard thing for my dear daughter to bear…especially considering that this is what her room looked like in our previous home!

Bright, huh?  She picked out that IKEA-look-alike furniture all by herself.  I never was that crazy about it, but hey, it was cheap.

She was dying to do something with her room in our new home, but she kept pitching ideas to me that included words like “red & yellow,” “retro,” and “bubble chair.”

Ugh.

When she finally adjusted her vision to something that included “vintage,” “aqua,” and “white,” then she found I moved a lot faster.  My children eventually learn that I get a lot more motivated to work on their projects if they’re what I want to do anyway!

If we’re all very lucky, I’ll come back and revisit the individual projects that went in to her room.  But for today…just pretty pictures…with the understanding that there are still a few things to do in here…like get more pictures up on the walls!

 

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Linking up here:

The Inspiration Exchange	Elizabeth & Co.
Primitive & Proper	Thrifty Décor Chick
Friday Remodelaholic	The Scoop!
Funky Junk’s Saturday Night Special	The DIY Show Off Miss Mustard Seed
Beyond the Picket Fence	Coastal Charm
Knick of Time	Domestically Speaking
Perfectly Imperfect	No Minimalist Here
Common Ground	My Repurposed Life
From My Front Porch to Yours	Mod Vintage Life A Little Knick Knack

I Love Washington table

Today is the one-year anniversary of the day my husband started his new job in Seattle, Washington.  Although the children and I didn’t join him here until just before Christmas, I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting on the changes we have gone through in the past year.

I’m happy to say that we are pretty well adjusted to life in our new home in a new state!  We lived in Utah for 17 out of 19 years of our married life, and we were in our last home for almost 10 years…so it was a big change!  But we have found Washington to be a lovely place to live (although there are a LOT more people…and traffic…here than I could wish), and we’re grateful for this new phase of our life.

That said, today seemed to be a food day to show off this little table I made over 

It was just a simple little pine table I picked up at a thrift store.  The lines were so simple that it needed a little embellishment to make it special.

After painting the table yellow with some diy chalk paint, I cut a stencil of the shape of Washington out with my Silhouette machine and painted it on.  A little red heart marks the approximate location where we live.

This little table was purchased by a woman who intends to use it as an end-of-year teacher gift!  I pretty sure it will be a one-of-a-kind offering!

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Linking up here:

The Inspiration Exchange	Elizabeth & Co.
Primitive & Proper	Thrifty Décor Chick
Friday Remodelaholic	The Scoop!
Funky Junk’s Saturday Night Special	The DIY Show Off Miss Mustard Seed
Beyond the Picket Fence	Coastal Charm
Knick of Time	Domestically Speaking
Perfectly Imperfect	No Minimalist Here
Common Ground	My Repurposed Life
From My Front Porch to Yours	Mod Vintage Life A Little Knick Knack