a home decor blog, making it pretty one space at a time
Last week was spent tearing out our old bathroom. We found exposed brick (fun!) and mold (not so fun). This week we’ve been putting things back together. It’s been a lot of boring behind the scenes stuff like new plumbing and replacing the wiring. You’ve gotta love an old house! So although it hasn’t looked better, it’s massive upgrades. While that’s been happening, I’ve been planning the decor. First up- a double shower curtain.
About two years ago, my husband and I built in bookcases in our master bedroom. It turned out to be the best decision ever. I spent months thrifting home decor books and then put them on the shelf in rainbow order. It looks beautiful, but more than that, this area has become a priceless reference library. I thought I’d share how you can start your collection by shopping online with 100 home decor books for less than $10.
If you’re new around here, you might not know that my 5 year old son is obsessed with Halloween. I don’t even know where he got it from. But in the past year he’s started to really gravitate to anything scary related. I like pretty fall decor, so going more true “haunted” is outside my comfort zone. But it makes him happy so I tried to find a compromise and do spooky and cute Halloween decor.
I’ve really loved the look of acrylic floating frames- they’re modern and that brass hardware- swoon! But they’re pretty expensive. I saw one on West Elm, but it was $180. Nope- that’s above my budget. So I thought I could make my own. I’ll be honest, I’ll struggled with this DIY acrylic frame, but I’ll tell you how to avoid my mistakes so you can easily make one.
One of the questions I get all the time is how I clean my paint brushes. Well usually, I just clean a brush that is wet with paint with warm water to get all the paint out. But then I accidentally left a paint out overnight and thought the brush was ruined. So I thought I’d try a bunch of methods and learn how to clean dried paint brushes. Want to see what I found?
I was at the hardware store last week, getting some paint, and I spotted a pack of quart paint stirrer sticks- basically oversized popsicle sticks. I saw the shape on top and thought it’d make a great scalloped edge for a craft project! Finally- one day it hit me, I could make a diy popsicle stick scallop tray. Want to see the process?!
I remember being in elementary school and putting together a time capsule. The whole activity pulled my romantic heart strings- who would open it? What could I add that someone would love? And then, 25 years later, we open the wall in our bathroom and I see an old newspaper from 1947 and I can’t help but want to leave a time capsule in the wall for future owners!
The newspaper didn’t seem like that important of articles, but it had the date. Maybe that’s when that bathroom was added onto the house?!
This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Cricut. All opinions are 100% mine.
This has got to be the strangest back to school year EVER! We were planning to send Don to Kindergarten, but for 1 million reasons, we’re red shirting him and he’ll be doing another year of preschool. Although things don’t look how I thought they would (and I know I’m not the only one), I still wanted to take cute back to school pictures! So I made some first day of school pennant flags.
Total Cost of Supplies- $29.25 (felt and iron on and dowel)
You can buy a set of six of these pennants for $100, so I felt pretty happy about being able to make them for much less!
Start by cutting the felt into a pennant flag. I made mine 8″ wide by 18″ long. These are really easy to make without a template once you know the right size. Note, you can get two pennants of this size out of one piece of 12″x18″ felt.
I ended up cutting enough pennants to make one for the first day of preschool, kindergarten, and grades 1-6. I thought it’d be fun to have the same style for each year! And it’s just easier to make them all at once instead of trying to remember what I did in a few years.
Next, I used my Cricut Explore Air 2 to cut the iron on vinyl with the free template I created on Cricut’s Design Space. Remember, with iron on to always turn the mat on (so that it prints backwards and irons on correctly). Put the material on the mat shiny side down. 
I wanted to note the fonts I used. There’s so many options, sometimes it can be hard to narrow them down. Hopefully this will help. For the number, I used Base Camp. For the “st” or “nd” next to the number, I used Quirky Script. And for “grade” I used Close to my Heart.
After the material is printed, weed out the extra vinyl.
And now, cut a binding and little ties for the end of the pennant. This detail really will finish it off. Usually, making a craft look great means paying attention to the details.
Finally it’s time to iron the words onto the felt pennants. For this, I used my Easy Press and looked up the setting on Cricut.com. For felt, it instructed me to set it to 280 degrees F and to hold it on for 30 seconds. That worked perfectly.
To attach the binding on, I sewed on the extra piece of felt and tails. I left the bottom open for the dowel. Below, you can see the pennant flag on the dowel.
I made 8 flags, but figured the dowel could be reused each year. That way, I can more easily store the pennants.
And here is my handsome guy on his first day of preschool! Isn’t the flag so fun?! We added some ribbon to make it extra festive.
We followed these instructions and made an extra pennant for the playhouse too! I love that they look a little vintage, but are 100% customized.
Don was a big fan of the flag (he even took it on a walk that night). Hopefully he’s as excited about school too!
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Last fall I scored the cutest $79 fireplace mantle from an antique store. I painted it white and then it sat, never really styled well. The thing is, I haven’t owned a mantle in 12 years- how do you even style one? So I did research, looked at lots of examples and thought I’d share my findings of howe to style a fireplace mantle with you! I came up with three versions!
Here’s how the fireplace looked right when we got it home, before we painted it.
After getting painted-
Every week I go thrifting at least once because I LOVE it! And also, I’m really enjoying the look of a layered home. I’ve noticed now, when browsing Pinterest that I’m not so into a “perfect” house where everything is new and shiny. I like a touch of modern, but really love a layered home with lots of personality. And so I thought I’d share my thrift haul of the week.
Thrifting really is the best way to add character. You find a unique item that’s been loved before and when it’s added to a home, it grounds the space. It adds age and interest and every room needs at least one thing that’s old.
