Master Makeover: The Bed

So--- my excuse THIS time (for not blogging so much) is that I'm pregnant.  I'm actually almost 24 weeks along, which is why all of my blogging (including our family one) has suffered dearly.  He's a boy and due mid-September.  We're really excited, especially since I had two miscarriages last summer.

I haven't stopped creating (you could even say my body is doing the ultimate of creating right now, ha), so I have A LOT of past crafts to share (including travel ideas & a Star Wars Birthday Party).

Today's is actually a recent story.  Since Mr. Nag and I got married (EIGHT years this summer--- whoa), we have never had a great Master Bedroom.  In college, we started off with a full-sized mattress, rented from the school.  A few months into that we bought a barely-used queen-sized mattress for super cheap, since the couple we bought it from didn't want to lug in across the Atlantic (completely understand).  As of two weeks ago, we still slept on that mattress.

When we moved into our first home, one of the first things on my list (besides organizing my pantry) was to work on, little by little, our Master Bedroom.  I really like the Oriental-style of design, especially for a room that's supposed to take me away from the chaos of every-day life.  So, keep that in mind as we go.

Last summer, we painted.  Took the standard 'toasted almond' color out and brought it two shades of blue.

It made a world of difference.

Then, in March, we found out that Mr. Nag's step-mom was moving across the country and wanted to give us the California-King Master Bedroom furniture set my father-in-law and mother-in-law bought when they got married... 30 years ago.  It was even complete with a waterbed.  Totally 70s.  We really wanted it, but were slightly discouraged at how DATED it was.  Deep dark brown stain, brass/gold hardware, the works.  But, we were determined, all we had to do was chemically strip and sand the stain.  And by we, I mean, Mr. Nag because I was barely out of my first trimester and banned from helping.  My part of the help was picking out the stain color. :)

Here's the bedroom after the paint, but before updates. 

Megan--- Mule--- painted the kanji above our bed a couple years ago.  The color palette of the room comes from a Japanese picture we have hanging on the wall opposite our bed.

After a couple months of many nights in the garage, he completed the bed two weeks ago.  Here's the  in progress after (ignore my pregnancy body pillow on the floor):

We absolutely LOVE it.  He still has an armoire, dresser and nightstands to re-do; it's his 'before the baby comes' project.  When he does, I'll hound him more about tips & tricks he has to re-finish furniture.

A close-up of the stain:

To fix the bed, because we weren't about to keep the waterbed, we just updated the plywood-base and bought a new memory-foam mattress on Amazon.  We let it poof up right in the frame, so it fits perfectly.


Next: The new lamps.

Ex-Shower Curtain Birthday Banner

My little knight has a birthday next week---which means he has a birthday party this weekend. I've spent lots of my craft time getting ready for the party and finishing his homemade gifts. As part of 'getting ready for the party,' I wanted to make a permanent birthday decoration for our family: a birthday banner. I didn't want to spend a lot of money so I used an old shower curtain fabric sitting at the bottom of my craft bin and turned it into our new birthday banner.What you need:

• old shower curtain or a couple yards of home decor fabric
• 1/4 yard fabric for letters
• WonderUnder or your preference of fusible item
• 12- 6 inch ribbon strips
• 2 7/16 eyelets and eyelet tool
• Rope, yarn or string
• sewing notions

How to build it:

1. Create a Template for your triangles. I made my triangles equilateral with the bottom side 8 inches and the two other sides 11 inches. Trace 26 triangles (front and back for each letter of the phrase 'happy birthday') onto the wrong side of your fabric and cut out with pinking shears.
2. Create a template for your letters using a publishing software. I used Microsoft Word and I used the font 'Ad Lib.' Print out, trace on, and cut out on the letters fabric. Also, trace and cut out letters from the wonderunder. Remember to make sure the letters are backwards.Adhere WonderUnder using directions and then sew in place on the triangles. You should now have 13 lettered triangles and 13 non-letters ones.
3. Now take a non-letter triangle and place it wrong-side up. Take 2 ribbon strips and place them near the top of the triangle on either side. I didn't measure how much of the ribbon I put inside the triangle, just eyeball it. Make it enough so the ribbon stays after sewing.
4. Place the Letter 'i' triangle on top of this first one and pin it into place. Sew around the edge of the triangle. Working from the middle out helps to keep the ribbons in the right place.
5. Repeat this process with the other triangles until you get to the H for Happy and Y for birthday. These letters only need one ribbon to attach to the rest of the banner. Sew around triangles.
6. You should now have a banner, but no way to hang it. This is where the eyelet come in. Following the eyelet directions, insert one in the outside corner of the triangle, just inside your sewing seam.
7. Take your rope, yarn, or string and cut it long enough to fit the space you want to hang the banner and VOILA!

A Birthday Banner from an old shower curtain. Have fun!

Stay tuned; I have more birthday inspired crafts including a couple birthday presents and CARS party decor!

MAGNETIC Calendar Central

I've been wanting to take a crack at my own homemade calendar since I first saw it in the blog-o-sphere HERE. So, I took the new year as my opportunity. Instead of just making it dry-erase I also made it magnetic. All you need is: a large enough picture frame, fabric of your choice, a permanent marker, and sheet metal (we got ours from Lowe's).Then, I made magnets to differeniate Holidays, Church meetings, Dr. Appointments, etc. For those you just need Mod-podge, heavy duty magnets, and whatever you want to back your magnet with. I created ours in Word with images relating to the holiday, etc.It won't be complete until I have vinyl for it, but such is life.

I know--some of you out there are saying---I wouldn't make this because I don't have anywhere to write down future information. I solved that problem by creating a Family Planner/Journal for 2010.
All I bought for this was the book and divided it into 12 sections. Then I printed off the ONLY monthly calendar template (click HERE-projects page 3) onto full page of shipping labels and stuck it to the first page of the section.

The idea is to use the rest of the section to write down little (and big) things that happen in your family over the month. A really simple way to get some kind of family history done. Over the year, I'm really excited to see if the system works, I'll keep you posted!

Hair Clips & Holder

Before 'Princess' was born I went a little crazy making hair bows (a girl can never have too many) and all of these pictured went to VT sister who also recently had a girl, so I don't feel too bad for making so many:

Exhibit A

Exhibit B

Since I made so many bows, I needed to make a place to put them. Enter Exhibit C:

Here's what you need:

an old frame, ribbon and a glue gun---That's it!

Strip the old frame down. Throw away all the photo backing stuff and use pliers to take out the little metal pieces. Then flip the frame over and lay out your ribbon. Glue the free end to the frame, pull tight then cut. Glue the other end of the ribbon. Continue gluing ribbon until you reach the end. Then put the bows on the holder and hang it up for the world, your kids, to see.

Easy Halloween Jar Lights

At the beginning of October I made these to give to my visiting teaching sisters:

I got the idea here, and noticed my cousin and her neighbor made some at the same time I did (here). Instead of using stringed lights or a real candle, I put a battery-powered flicker light at the bottom and stuffed them with candy.

These are REAL easy to make, so if you don't have anything up for Halloween QUICK--- find an empty jar, some tissue paper, mod podge (or something similar), construction paper--- and MAKE ONE (or two)! Here are the steps:

1. Clean out your empty jar and cut the tissue paper into strips.
2. Apply a base coat of mod podge to a section of the OUTSIDE or your jar then GENTLY press the strips onto the jar until the podge is covered. Repeat until the whole jar is covered. Let dry for a few hours.
3. Using the construction paper, cut out a face for your creation. Once the first coat is dry, apply podge to the back of your face pieces and place onto the jar.
4. Wait a few minutes and then apply a even coat of podge over the whole creation and let dry overnight.
5. After dry, place your preference of lighting into the jar and enjoy!

I also made some for my family too, since they were so easy to make. My picture is on the camera and my transfer drive went into a hiding amidst the move, but I made a pumpkin, ghost, Frankstein and Spider. Frank was made from a tall Pace jar and Spidey was a jar of unopened baby food leftover from Little Knight's pureed days.

NOTE: Since we moved into our house, I haven't been able to get to any of my craft stuff. My darling husband says it's getting me ready for the couple months after Little Girl is born; I say I'm wasting my 'nesting' energy. (I'm actually using it to get a few things organized and decorated) :)

So, my goal is to get a couple more things done before Little Girl is done, but I guess, like everything else in our lives right now, it's a wait and see... so ya'll will have to as well!

UPDATE: Here are my jars...