September 2014 - Yearning to Create

How to Hide the Laundry Room Uglies

This is my laundry room. Have you noticed that laundry rooms have some necessary things in them that are ugly? Like the tap/drain box and the outlet. You definitely need these at an easily accessible location, but they don’t add much charm to the room!

And since we all love doing laundry so much, we want our laundry rooms to be as cute and inviting as possible to lure us in!

So here’s how I hid my laundry room “uglies”. . .

. . . a cute towel bar and towel to cover the electrical outlet. Found the towel bar on our local “Buy and Sell”. I’ve never actually had a towel hanging in the laundry room before, and I use it all the time – how did I not have one before?

To cover the taps I used a long narrow basket that used to sit on my counter and hold the keys. I spray-painted it oil rubbed bronze to match my knobs and chandelier and stuck a fake plant in it. Fits perfectly and hides the lovely red and blue taps!

So much cuter!!!

I think the vintage washer and dryer add to the charm. We got these babies just before our first daughter was born, so they’re over twenty years old now. We’ve only ever had one minor problem with the washer. Yay Kenmore!!!

I love the wall colour {Grey Evening by Behr}. And I love my light!!! See the lines it casts on the walls – feels like water, which seems appropriate for a laundry room.

This is an interior room so there is no window. When I hung the mirror window on the wall it immediately brightened and enlarged the space. See that little brown bag sitting on the mirror ledge? It’s a bag of wild flower seeds that actually came from Green Gables in PEI. When I have a yard, I’ll plant them.

I really love my little laundry room. This is my view as I walk past it many times a day (it’s right beside my bedroom – very convenient!). See those white shelves in front of the washer? They’ll be going up on the wall over the sink someday. I’ve got more plans for this room – including a quote from President Thomas S. Monson about laundry!

Stay tuned (hopefully within the year!).

Here’s the quote from Thomas S. Monson:

“Rather than dwelling on the past, we should make the most of today, of the here and now, doing all we can to provide pleasant memories for the future…If you are still in the process of raising children be aware that the tiny fingerprints that show up on almost every newly cleaned surface, the toys scattered about the house, the piles and piles of laundry to be tackled, will disappear all too soon, and that you will, to your surprise, miss them, profoundly.”

Cards for All Occasions

Every once in a while, I go on a little card-making spree. I mass produce about a dozen cards that I store away to use for whatever occasion arises. These ones were super easy because it was only stamping – no extra papers or layers or bling.

This Stampin’ Up flower set is called Paint Prints, and the word set is called Sincere Salutations. I’ve used these two stamp sets way more than anything else I have.

So it just required some quick stamping (because I was going to a wedding reception soon) and a punched tag that I attached with a brad fastener. I stamped a few Best Wishes cards because I seem to need more wedding cards than anything else. But the rest are blank so I can easily stamp them with whatever message I need.

And just for variety, I did two different colour combinations!

It always feels good to know that I have a little stash of cards tucked away in a drawer . . . just waiting for the next occasion!

Bottlecap Magnets

I needed some new magnets for my fridge – to hold up all those things I love to get like pictures, quotes, wedding and grad invitations, etc. So I was at The Craft Store spending the rest of my Christmas Gift Card. (I love it when my guy gives me things like this – and he likes it too! The gift card comes with him babysitting too so I can go shopping alone and find things I really want!!!) So I was looking at their cute little bottle caps, but they were pretty pricey and so I passed them by – but I really wanted them!!!

My next stop was to the thrift store when SCORE!!! I found bottle caps!!! Way more bottle caps and other do-dads my girls will enjoy for way less than they were at the other place.

So I hunkered down that evening to create my magnets in the blues, greens and brown I like.

They had a few colours in the kit that worked, but mostly I just punched out scrapbook paper. I added a few embellishments to some of them and then covered them in the glaze that came in the kit too. Mod Podge would have worked fine also. Glue magnets on the back and it’s done.

And now I have some darling new magnets that cost me pennies. And I still have ten more for some future time – like kids lockers? Words and pictures would be really cute too.

Still can’t decide which one I like the best!

Now comes the fun of arranging them . . .

. . . recognize anyone or anything?

The fridge already looks different from when I took the pictures!

I enjoy my fridge photo gallery. Soon it will be loaded with Grad Invites, and other times of the year it’s loaded with Wedding Invitations (and I keep them all in a box once the event has passed!).

What do you prefer – loaded fridge doors or the clean uncluttered look?

The Maple Leaf Forever

I love our Canadian symbol of the maple leaf. It’s magnificent!

There is a song called “The Maple Leaf Forever”, and we really don’t hear it much. Sometime in my past I must have heard it, but the only part I remember was the title line at the end of the chorus. So I did what anybody would do these days: I googled it!

You can google it too if you want more info, but this is the chorus of the original version of the song (which was never our National Anthem, but was often played as if it was):

The Maple Leaf, our emblem dear,

The Maple Leaf forever!
God save our Queen and heaven bless
The Maple Leaf forever!

And here is the chorus of the more recent version, which was actually sung by Michael Bublé at the 2010 Olympic Closing Ceremonies:

Long may it wave, and grace our own,

Blue skies and stormy weather,
Within my heart, above my home,
The Maple Leaf forever!

Anyway . . . about ten years ago I made a quilted Maple Leaf wall hanging at a little quilting class in town.

I didn’t do too badly here in my first attempt at quilting anything, but don’t look too closely!

It’s thirteen squares across and down. I love the non-traditional flag colours.

It was easily quilted to look like veins in the leaf.

I even found little maple leaf buttons for the corners.

Long may it wave, and grace our own,
Blue skies and stormy weather,
Within my heart, above my home,
The Maple Leaf forever!

Rainbow Jello

My kids (and husband!) absolutely love this jello, but it takes a bit of time (like a day, but don’t worry, the fridge does half the work!) so I usually only make it for special occasions – like Easter or ward potluck dinners.

Choose your jello colours and get two small boxes of each flavour. I went with raspberry, peach, lemon, lime and blue – what is that, wild berry? In the past I’ve used a larger box and split it . . . but this seems like an easier method so here goes:

Make your first layer of jello!

Use 1 cup of boiling water and dissolve one box of jello powder. Then add 1/2 cup cold water. Pour it into your container and then pop it into the fridge. This is when you hope your fridge is level because you want your layers to be even! My fridge is not level yet (my guy apologized later for that and says he’ll level it up for me!) so I stuck a spoon under one side of my pan to make the jello sit evenly.

With the first layer chilling in the fridge, make your second layer:

Again, dissolve your jello powder from one small box into one cup of boiling water. Then add sour cream – I just did about two/three heaping spoonfuls. The whisk works nicely to break up the sour cream. Let this start cooling on your counter until the first layer in the fridge is good and solid – about half an hour. Then carefully pour the second layer onto the first. You must be careful that the warm second layer doesn’t break up the freshly set first layer. I actually pour it slowly into a spoon and let it diffuse out – moving the spoon location.

And then you just start over. Make the third layer while the second is chilling. Note here: I used peach because it’s what I had on hand, but I think orange would be a more vibrant colour. My sour cream peach layer looked a little washed out.

So this jello takes awhile but you can go off and do other things between layers. I like to have it all done a day before it’s needed for the dinner just so those layers will not melt into each other or all over the plate once it starts getting dished out.

While I was doing this, my guy and some of our girls were outside starting to build us a deck!!!

I enjoyed watching their progress through my kitchen windows.

Just before Easter Dinner, Jo made some whipped cream and spread it over the jello – gotta have clouds with our rainbow!

The light shining through the jello cups looked so pretty.

They were a special delivery for someone else!

Here’s the 9 x 13 Rainbow Jello all finished and ready to be transported to our family Easter dinner.

Here’s the Rainbow Jello after the family Easter dinner!

One piece left for me to take a close-up picture of!

And how was the deck progress?

They got the lower level all sheeted, and completed the rest of it on Easter Monday – took three days total. Next: duradeck and railings and stairs . . .

Good job everyone!!!

Indoor Snowballs

A Facebook friend of mine posted a picture of a bucket of snowballs she had bought for her family. (If you Google search Bucket of Snowballs, you can see what I mean!)

I saw her picture and instantly knew that my family would have a lot of fun with something like that. So of course I started thinking, “How can I make that?” The snowballs kind of had me stumped though because I wanted something light that could be thrown at anyone at no risk of injury, but I’m not much of a sewer and I didn’t know how to sew spheres and didn’t have time to learn right then, so . . . I kind of put that project in a dark recess of my brain to be recalled at some future time.

Then, one day, a few weeks before Christmas, I was in a dollar store (busy place just before Christmas!) and I saw some small plush baseballs. My mind instantly recalled the recessed snowball project and I knew that these baseballs were perfect. I emptied the shelf – all eight of them. Then I went to the isle of containers and found a suitable snowball bucket.
Then there were only two things left to do:
– spend about five minutes total snipping the red stitching off the balls so they wouldn’t look like baseballs anymore
– painting the word Snowballs on my bucket. I just free-handed it and painted it on with regular craft paint.

And this is what it ended up like . . .

Oh, I painted a few snowflakes on as well.

Doesn’t look like a baseball anymore – snowball all the way!!!

Vinyl lettering would have been perfect for labeling the bucket too.

I gave this to my family on Christmas Eve. No one needed pajamas this year so we opened this instead. I had taken Lee (my 14 year old) into my confidence and she wrapped all the snowballs individually for me. So on Christmas Eve, dad got to unwrap the bucket and the rest of us opened snowballs (except Mac – she opened her new pair of pink Princess slippers!). So we were all armed and he wasn’t!!! Dad got bombarded with snowballs and of course a big snowball fight followed. We even used the wadded up wrapping paper if we didn’t have a snowball nearby.

Here’s a Christmas morning photo – can you find the bucket? Dad seems to get pelted a lot!!!

We’re still having lots of fun with them – the novelty hasn’t worn off at all. Snowballs are always flying by. And I’m happy to report we haven’t had a single human injury – the bird did get knocked off someone’s shoulder once, but it fluttered to the ground with no problem! I’m thinking that I’m gonna have to be on the lookout for more plush baseballs – I think we need another bucket in the family room!!!

Beaded Curtain Tiebacks

Beads can make beautiful curtain tiebacks. It’s true! Especially if you use beads that have sentimental value to you (like Grandma’s old costume jewelry that you would never wear!)

So I went and chose some very sentimental bracelets from the dollar store. (Actually, I was just looking for colours I liked.)

Now, I thought this was brilliant . . .

. . . I packed up my beading supplies . . .

. . . and divided up the beads, to work on my project in the car! I had two daughters playing in a softball tournament, and I knew there would be some time between games where I could do some crafting (it was either that or Sudoku!).

The center console and my lap made the perfect work station (be sure to sit in the passenger seat so you don’t have a steering wheel to deal with!).

I just tied my string to a starting ring and started beading.

No pattern was the pattern, with a small pearl between each larger bead.

When I was finished with the beads, I simply tied a ring to the other end. I was almost finished the second one, and then the games began again. (This was the tournament where my daughter on the pitchers mound got hit in the eye during the final game – check her out here. And this was six days before her high school graduation!)

I finished the last two at home and aren’t they pretty!

Final step was to attach a little nail or hook to the window casing and tie back the curtains.

So much prettier than just hanging! Now they just hang at night.

This is an alcove off the master bedroom – a little room I really love! Right now it’s purpose is to be my baby’s bedroom – my baby who is two and a half! Someday it will just be my sanctuary!

And there she is – sitting there reading in her lovely little alcove – with the lovely new beaded curtain tiebacks!

Spring Wreath

Made myself a springy little wreath the other day and it only took a few minutes – yay!

Dollar Store flowers, grapevine wreath and a glue gun is all I needed.

I cut my flowers into small stems and placed them around my wreath.

Let the gluing begin – and yes, I burned my fingers! But that doesn’t bother me much anymore since I learned the trick: touch your earlobe with your burning finger and the sting immediately disappears. Your earlobe absorbs the heat – it’s the neatest feeling! Tip: remove the hot glue from your fingers first or your fingers might get stuck to your ears!

There we have it – easy little light and springy wreath.

Wreaths are great!!! Check out my Pinterest board called Wreaths.

How to Use Household Items as Wedding Decor

With seven daughters, we often get comments like “Hope you’re saving up for those weddings!” Well I am here to tell you that you can still have a beautiful wedding without spending a fortune. I was able to find some great deals in thrift stores and off the local buy and sell, and with a little paint and effort and imagination, turn some things into wedding worthy items. Add a few borrowed items, and items from around the house and voila, the decorating is done!

Here are a few things I found . . .

First item:

This little bench came from our local Facebook Buy and Sell group. The bottom part was all dark burgundy so all it needed was some paint in the right colour (Grey Morning – leftover from my laundry room). I left the top natural, just the way it was. Her colours were teal, lime and light yellow, with lots of earth tones thrown in too.

See it there peeking out behind the flowers? We placed the bench up on the food table, with the lamp on it to help illuminate the food. Three beverage dispensers were on one side, and the platters of food were on the other. It divided up the 18 foot long table (three six foot tables) very nicely! I had a 19 foot lace tablecloth that was from my little sisters wedding that I just kept packed away because we all figured we would have the next wedding in the family – and we did. Speaking of the tables, notice how one is taller than the other? There was no way we could get those tables even, so we had to put a little block under the leg of the bench and place that brown tile in front of it. The tile was a gift to the bride and groom from their stake president.

Choose your Love – Love your Choice.

The big flower arrangement also came from the Buy and Sell. I just took out the coloured flowers that didn’t match and rearranged what was left.

Our second reception had a slightly different arrangement, with my Willowtree figurine added in, and some Scrabble tile messages – check that out here. The lamps belong to the bride and there were four of them used in various locations at the reception.

Next item:

This little bench seat with the lift up seat also came from the Buy and Sell.

My original plan was to paint it white and antique it, but I literally ran out of time. From the time the ring was on her finger, we only five weeks and six days til the wedding day!!! Lucky for us, the groom asked our permission about a month before that, so we were already working on things before the official engagement. So all we had time to do with the bench was give it a good clean and re-upholster the seat in a matching wedding colour (fabric came from a thrift store!). Our bride said she was perfectly happy with it in its natural colour, and besides, it was going in the hallway!

This is how it ended up looking. The teal blanket came from my living room and the Mr. & Mrs. pillows came from my bedroom (check them out here). The little chest and flowers came from Michaels – always with a 40% or 50% off coupon. The little chest was on the end of season clearance shelves and cost me something like $1.77. My favourite little white ampersand came from Walmart, but I already had that too!

The bench greeted you as you came down the hall. To the left was a spot for gifts, and to the right was the entrance into the reception. I made those spindles from old stair railings. They were perfect for directing “traffic” – just like what you’d see in a bank or movie lineups, only prettier!

The gift area, featuring the first gift, and a handmade quilt by Aunt Diana over the couch. The bench did its job well and maybe I’ll tackle painting it this summer – then for sure it will be ready for our next wedding!!!

Last item:

I didn’t take a before shot of this radish picture in an ugly reddish brown frame that I found in a thrift store – but trust me, it wasn’t a pretty picture! I dismantled the picture and tossed the poor radish. Painted it, using my leftover Grey Morning paint again, then sanded and distressed the edges. We printed a favourite photo in black and white, and that was it. The perfect picture to hang over their favors table. We wanted a matted picture so the bride could write a message on it.

Here’s the wedding favors table. The table came from my dad – he used to have it in his storage room and they were shocked that we made it wedding worthy! The table runner and baby’s breath came from the thrift store. The green, yellow and blue baskets were already owned by the bride, and the wreath and holder were from my dining room – check the wreath out here.

The finished frame – so much better than radishes! The happy couple now have this hanging in their apartment, without the words though. Pictures are a great way to decorate – prints are very inexpensive and it’s amazing what you can do with old frames and spray paint.

Hope this has given you some ideas! If only I knew what colour schemes our next six weddings will be!!! In the meantime, I’ll keep my eyes open for any other treasures that could become wedding worthy!

Scrabble Tiles for Wedding Decorating

I saw this idea on Pinterest using Scrabble tiles as a wedding decor.

Check out the image I pinned here.

Elle liked the idea and so we decided to do it at her wedding.

Our church Cultural Hall has four little white shelves on the walls – they’re for holding hymn books. To decorate them we used a mason jar with a gold chair sash tucked inside it with the edges hanging out. The four bouquets from the bride and bridesmaids worked perfectly in the jars, and the Scrabble tiles sent out perfect little loving messages. We left the unlit tealight candle out in front and turned them on before the reception started and tucked it into the mason jar.

With the candle in place – they were adorable!

We made two sets of Time and Eternity and two of Together Forever.

(Yes, we had to borrow another Scrabble game!)

J-L, our photographer, played around with the tiles and took some cute ring shots too!

At our second reception, we didn’t have the little white shelves on the walls, so we simply put our Scrabble tiles on white routered pieces of wood and placed them in various places . . .