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Lunch Notes
I can’t believe that it is already August! And that means that the new school year will soon be upon us. Last year, I found some really neat little cards at Michael’s craft store that had funny jokes and motivational sayings on them, so I sent them to school with Pinky in her lunch box for a little midday pick-me-up. Unfortunately, they ran out not long after I opened the package, leaving me empty handed.
Not that there is anything wrong with writing a little something on a torn piece of paper and throwing it in with the peanut butter and jelly, (I love you is I love you no matter what you write it on,) but I tend to like my notes to be cute and fun, so I decided to whip up some of my own.
I chose a few cute literary quotes from my favorite children’s book authors that are both fun and motivational.
I also used the same designs to create some fill-in-the blank cards, so I can tell my sweeties how much I love them or wish them good luck on a test. Or a big work project. My husband loves jacks and bicycles. *wink*
And guess what? You can snag these fun lunch notes for yourself too! Click the images below for the free PDF link. Please download the file to ensure proper print sizing. When printing, make sure that Page Scaling is set to “Fit Printable Area” and Borderless Printing is selected.
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Range Hood Makeover
This month marks the four year anniversary that we have lived in this house. When we moved in, it was like traveling back to 1984, the year the house was built. We are slowly making updates to bring it to present time.
Our kitchen has changed the most. The cabinets were originally stained oak, in need of updating. First, I decided to paint them green. I didn’t hate the green, but it did look like Dr. Seuss lived here. A year later, my grey obsession took over and I repainted them. We had the grey for two years and were ready to brighten things up, so once again I got out my rollers and brushes and this time painted them white.
With white cabinets and black appliances, my 1980’s almond colored range hood suck out like a sore thumb. After doing a little research, we decided spray painting it was the best option for us.
This post contains affiliate links for you convenience. I was very hesitant to spray paint in the house, as I had never done anything like this before. So I tried to remove it. After about 2 minutes, I could tell that was not going to happen. I took a little break, gave my self a pep talk, and tried to erase the thought of black over spray all over my bright white cabinets out of my head.
Then, it was back to work as I cleaned, lightly sanded, and wiped off all dust on the vent. I covered literally everything near the hood with a plastic drop cloth, secured by painters tape.
After spray painting a couple coats, I removed the drop cloth to reveal my pretty hood.
Ain’t it purdy? Now if only I could figure out what to hang on the wall between the hood and stove. Any ideas?
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Glazed Herb Planter
I love to have fresh herbs around the house. Don’t you? Even if you don’t use them to cook, many times they are just lovely to smell.
My husband brought home a potted grouping of random, not labeled herbs for me from Trader Joe’s. I didn’t have a planter big enough for all of them, so I had to find something to put one remaining herb plant in.
Lucky for me, I found this totally-not-my-style pot at Goodwill for a song and knew I could make it over with my wicked awesome DIY skills. (Technically, I’m just good at trial and error, but whatever.)
I knew that I wanted some sort of hand dipped/glazed look, so I started out by spray painting it with Zinsser primer to cover up all of those splattered speckles. This gave the planter a flat finish and would allow for other paint to easily adhere.
Once it was dry, I used a paint brush to apply high gloss gray paint to the lower portion. Did you know that The Home Depot doesn’t sell paint samples in any finish other than flat? I didn’t, that is, until yesterday when I went to get some gray paint. And I wanted high gloss. Bummer. So, I had to be resourceful and decided to purchase some spray paint instead. I sprayed it into a puddle onto a piece of cardboard and dipped my brush right into it to apply my gray paint.
Then I waited for that to dry. Once it was ready, I filled the bottom of the planter with stones for drainage, added some potting soil and my lonely little leftover herb plant.
You can see here how my planter doesn’t have that perfect crisp edge where the color ends. I did that intentionally, because as much as I love the look of hand dipped pottery, I wanted something with more of an organic feel. The flicked brush strokes at the edge do just that, since they are more haphazard.
We love how it turned out, but I still can’t figure out what kind of herb this is. If you know, we would love to hear from you in the comments below!
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The Garage Files
At one point, I even tried my hand at stenciling in an attempt to spiffy it up and you can see how well that worked out. Oops.
I started out by giving it a good wipe down to remove the dust. And cobwebs, which don’t really go well with anything except Halloween decor. Next, I removed the drawers and sent them packin’.
Stripes are pretty cool and I knew I definitely wanted to put a stripe on my cabinet, but I also wanted to include some type of text. I figured “clean up” was pretty motivational for garage organization, so that’s what was printed on a large waterproof label. The problem was that I didn’t realize that the label I had just printed out on my inkjet printer was actually for a laser printer. Oops #2. The ink attached itself to everything my hands touched, as I struggled to cut it out. Smudgy Smudgerson.
However, I didn’t let a little ink stop me. On went the painter’s tape and the sullied words.
Using semi–gloss white paint, I carefully brushed over the words, being mindful of the tape edges. After a bit, everything was dry. When I removed the tape and letters though, I found that the paint had leaked through (under?) and messed up my cute wording. Oops #3.
So I used a handy dandy craft knife to carefully peel the excess off. It actually worked pretty well.
Then, my hubby helped attach four casters to the bottom, which would make it much easier to move our new garage storage around.
As simple as this project should have been, it ended up being a big pain in the rear because of all the little Oopsies. Luckily, they were able to be recovered, for the most part. (Sorry drawers. Enjoy your new life on the curb.)
The best thing about this project is that it was F-R-double-E. Free. In the future, we may add some sort of dividers along the top to help keep things more upright, but we are happy with how it turned out for now.
Linked up with East Coast Creative #cwts2014