DIY — A Familiar Path

White

January 23, 2012 by Melissa Filed Under: DIY, house

I made the decision to repaint all the areas of my home that had not been repainted since we moved in 8 years ago before Christmas. I dreaded tackling the job. My dining room, kitchen, breakfast area, back entry and living room are a continuous wall. There’s no stopping point so I knew I’d be doing all those rooms. I also wanted to do the entry and my office, possibly even the hallway. I decided on white pretty early even though several people tried to talk me out of it and everyone I told said, “White?” in a horrified tone.

You wouldn’t believe how difficult it was to make a decision on what shade of white. I assumed it would be easy. I was wrong. I went in and chose a color, came home and painted my dining room and hated it. It has a blue undertone and was wrong, wrong, wrong. I chose again, Roman Column from Sherwin Williams and it was right, right, right.

I had three helpers on Saturday and we got three rooms finished. I have lots left to do, but I’ve made a good start.

The red chairs are new (overstocks.com). I wanted something petite so we could squeeze more people around the table. I have three tables in my house and they are all full, overflowing and people eating on the living room chairs every Sunday. Also, I hated my wooden chairs that came with the table after I painted them white. However, I moved them in the living room (bottom picture) and now I like them again.

Ignore the guinea pig cage in the corner. My house will never look like a magazine cover because there will always be messes, pets, and piles of clutter.

I love the way my turquoise dresser looks against the white wall and also the children’s art (and one of Sara Mincy’s paintings) above it.

This is the living room with the Blonde paint that was everywhere. I don’t hate this color, but if I was going to repaint, I wanted a change. This room, hopefully, will soon be white too.

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front porch love

May 17, 2011 by Melissa Filed Under: daily life, DIY

We’ve been in our house eight years and we never poured a sidewalk until now. I can’t believe we waited so long to do it. Well, yes I can, it costs a lot of money. But we paid cash and finally did it, and I love it.

Before, our old white rockers were falling apart, the make-shift rock and brick sidewalk we had done ourselves was a bit of an eyesore and a hazard to guests.

We got some new furniture and recently added some colorful plants and now we love spending time out there. It feels almost like we’ve added another room to the house.

And it’s just as strewn with children’s toys and things as the rest of the rooms.

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A little business display

March 28, 2011 by Melissa Filed Under: biz, daily life, DIY

Saturday I attended a fashion show held at a local church where they asked women with local businesses to come in and set up a booth to display their goods and services. It was a great opportunity for me to get the word out about my photography business. All last week, I was busy getting stuff ready for this event. I had never set up a display table before and didn’t know quite how to go about it. I knew I wanted to do something interesting with my business cards and I love the idea of handmade business cards, so I took some mini moo cards I had made last year and sewed them to a plain Kraft business card.

They still looked kind of uninteresting. Later, I came across something on a blog that showed a picture of a wedding announcement card attached to a seed packet and it gave me an idea to use that with my business cards. I already had little vellum envelopes and I filled them with some zinnia seeds and stamped “zinnia” on the envelope. Then I used twine to tie the card to the packet. I also had some moo stickers I’d made before I got “branded” so they are a different style, but I used them anyway to seal the vellum envelopes (the marketing police will be after me now).

I printed out my current brand on some labels to attach to the back of the card.

Plant the seeds, keep the card.

I displayed my seed packet cards along with my Easter special cards and my regular business postcards in a box from Hobby Lobby.

Then I went around collecting images for display. I got Emily’s black and white pictures and my hair dresser’s standout prints and I had a few from my own stash to use.