Paint and Twine are Magical

Paint and twine can transform a lot of things. Seriously. I've been using a lot of these lately. See?

Before:

After:

Ah. Already so much better. We have gold, reds, and yellows all over our house, and it is currently being changed (slowly... verrrrrrry slowly) to lighter colors and more cottage-y. So the gold had to go. I am just working on changing the shade now, and then it will be a whole new lamp!

Before: An old drying rack that we got from JC's mom's house. Not terrible, but the blue really did not fit with the new laundry room (which will be revealed soon). (Also notice my sweet puppies in the background. They are really loving this new spring weather!)

 After: All white. Much better.

Before: A poor old ugly wine bottle.

Nothing a little twine and some hot glue (and a few burns on my fingers) can't fix...

(Note: If you want to do this, remember to remove the label before you start gluing the twine on it. I had to stop about right here and work for ten minutes to get this stupid thing off.)

After:

Before: Miniature rolling pins from some sort of kid's church craft project. I had seen several people wrapping these around old vintage clothespins or spools. Sadly, I had neither of these. But I did have kiddy rolling pins, so...

After:

I put them in a jar on the entryway table....

Sorry about that crazy bright, blinding stream of light coming through. I always forget to take pictures when I'm actually supposed to. And that big silver plate is probably going to be moved somewhere else. Part of the ever-evolving Poole household.

Google Reader Overload

I really love Google Reader. It's a great way to consolidate all the blogs/sites you read into one place. It's easy to "star" items (essentially bookmarking) and label or tag them. But I have one issue: every single thing I like, I star. So I checked through my starred items a few days ago, and I had over 500 items! Crazy. There's no way I could do that many recipe/craft/decorating things. So I narrowed it down. But honestly, it's still probably too much.

Then, I read Kim's post today over at NewlyWoodwards. She discusses her similar problem and then makes a much shorter list of the projects she really intends to do. So I decided I should do the same. Here we go...

Wire Cloche

Songbird

Ballard Designs Knockoff Letters

Imperfectly Beautiful

Fabric Magnet Board

Creating ME Now!

DIY Tile Coasters (Great gift!!)

NewlyWoodwards

Paper Balls

The Stories of A to Z

Book Page Wreath

Living with Lindsay

Yaye! This seems like a good start. Hopefully I will be able to get through a few of these this weekend, as well as post one of my other projects I completed this week. What projects do you hope to complete soon?

DIY Fall Wreath

I love autumn, and I love wreaths. But I hate autumn wreath prices. Hobby Lobby's wreaths are $30 and up (and that's half off, usually). I can't justify spending that much money, but I wanted one--badly. So I decided to make one myself. I bought this wreath at Hobby Lobby for $2.50 (half off the original $5).



I also bought a leafy garland for $5 (half off $10) and some berry sprigs ($1 a piece). The garland was 20 feet long, plenty to wrap around the wreath several times. I then broke apart the berry stems and stuck them haphazardly in the wreath.


I decided to hang the wreath with a strip of burlap; I saw this idea here and loved it. Just cut a piece about 3-4 inches wide, drape it over the top of your door, and put tacks in it to hold it there (I had to put about 6 I think). I think it looks very "autumn-y".


In total, this project cost me about $9 and took approximately 10 minutes. Not too bad!