UNO First Birthday T-Shirt

As I mentioned a few weeks ago when I posted the little gardener gift basket, I have a lot of parties around this time of year. Well, last week my youngest nephew turned one and I knew I had to make him a shirt I saw on Etsy that I had pinned here. The UNO shirt is sold for $25 (which really isn't bad when you look at some Etsy prices) but it can be made for under $5.

I designed my UNO logo on Sure Cuts a Lot software but you could do this using Cricut cartridges, Silhouette or if you have a steady hand, just designing on Word and cutting it out with an exacto knife.

I used a rounded rectangle and placed an oval on top.

I turned the oval slightly so it pointed to opposite corners of the rectangle. If you are using SCAL you now need to delete the oval from the rectangle by selecting Path, Back minus front.

 I  inserted the text and found that Arial Rounded MT Bold font was the closest to the UNO lettering.

Here is the most important part, I cut the design out on freezer paper with shiny side down. Once cut, your iron the freezer paper onto a preshrunk/washed t-shirt.  Let me tell you, I had a really hard time finding a plain shirt or onesie. I purchased mine at Walmart for $3 but I had been to many stores before I found it at the second Walmart.

Once the stencil was ironed onto the T-shirt, I used white fabric paint with a foam brush to cover all the exposed shirt.

 I also did his name on the back.

I used a glossier fabric paint this time and I realized that I should not let the paint dry completely before I remove the freezer paper stencil. In the past I have been too impatient and removed the paper when the paint was still wet. Well, this time I was distracted and I let it completely dry and I had a difficult time removing the paper. Good news for all you impatient people out there like me, let the paint dry slightly (or not at all) and then remove the freezer paper.

 Once all the freezer paper is removed, this is what I had.

 Cute huh!

 And the back.

Isn't it absolutely adorable on my nephew. (Sorry for the horrible photos, I only had my little camera in my purse and it seemed to be having some issues)

 

 

Super cute for $3!

What do you think? Have you ever made birthday shirts for your kids?

Have a great day,
Stephanie

Light up my life - Master Closet Light on a Budget

Work has officially started on my one major household annoyance...my master walk-in closet. By walk-in, I mean a closet that I can step into and turn around. It is not grand by any means, but it is bigger than I have had in the past.

I have dreamed about having beautiful built-ins though out the closet along with hanging a lovely chandelier from the ceiling. Until I, out of curiosity, priced how much it would cost for us to install the built-ins; I mean with us doing the work and buying them from a big box hardware store. Well that bubble of a dream was popped really quickly. Then I realized the idea of a chandelier hanging from our ceiling, where the is no room to get around and in a room where we get dressed (hence lifting our hands above our heads on a daily basis), wasn't really practical either.

Well my beauty desiring subconscious has been beat up and kicked to the curb by its evil nemesis, my practical subconscious.   So my plans for my walk-in have changed and gone to the dark side, practical!

The first thing I have finished in our walk-in closet is replacing the horrible light. When we moved in we had, what I called, upside down mushrooms in almost every room. Here is one for you to admire:

Nice huh!

I had Pinned a few ideas that I thought would be beautiful since I can't do a chandelier. These two images were my inspiration:
Embarcadero Mount sells for the extremely reasonable price of $278! It is nice isn't it but come on $278!?

Source Amazon

Then there was the Lithonia Lighting Linon Black Bronze Flush for the more acceptable price of $100.

Source Amazon

I loved the brown/black trim, the linen and woven texture of the fabric and the metal medallion in the bottom. However, I still could not justify $100 for my small, not grand walk-in closet. Who really could?

So one day when my husband and I were at Ikea picking up something else for the walk-in (more on that tomorrow), I saw this ceiling light for $30. I have seen it before and walked right past it thinking nothing of it. It is a great size at 14 inches diameter and 6 inches deep.

Source Ikea - Alang Ceiling Light

Well this time I saw it, I knew there was huge potential! A little grosgrain ribbon, a wooden disk spray painted and you have a close duplicate of the much more expensive ceiling lights.

 Materials:

Alang ceiling light - Ikea ($30)

5/8 inch Brown Grosgrain ribbon

2 x 1/2 inch disk -  painted Brown

Method:

I had the grosgrain ribbon on hand so I do know what it cost (I think I bought it for around $3 at Michaels). It was 5/8 inches wide and 8 yards long. I did not use the entire package to do the ceiling light. This is what it looked like.

I melted the one edge of the ribbon to prevent fraying. Be careful when doing this. I always do it next to a sink in case I need to run it under water.

 Here is what it looks like after you carefully put a flame to the edge of it.

I fired up my fancy hot glue gun, and started gluing the ribbon at the seam on the light. I could have used permanent fabric glue, but I worried if it didn't work then I would be out $30. But of course since I am sharing this, it did work well. Once I got the entire way around, I overlapped the ribbon slightly. Be sure to melt the other end of the ribbon too.

I had initially thought I would only do the top of the light with the grosgrain ribbon like my first inspiration photo, but when it was done and installed, I really thought it needed a second band like the second inspiration photo. Here it is with only one band of ribbon.

 

So back to the hot glue gun I went. I glued another row of grosgrain ribbon around the bottom.

I then had my husband cut a small disc of wood off a dowel we had laying around. It was approximately 2 inches in diameter and we cut it about 1/2 an inch in depth. 

 

 I then spray painted it dark brown to match the ribbon.

We located the middle of the base of the ceiling light and put a small dot with pencil. I again hot glued the disk to base of the light.

 

That was it! 10 minutes of work (plus drying time for spray paint) and I have a new beautiful light. 

 

I tried to do one of those fancy slip shots with the before and after images with my inspirational photo (left) with my end result photo (right) but it didn't work very well. You get the idea though that I did a pretty good job at getting them to look similar.

What do you think? Not bad for $30 and 10 minutes of work. I think this is my favorite DIY light so far...and I have done many. Click here for all my other DIY lights.

I hope everyone has a Happy Easter tomorrow and if I can find a few minutes, I will share with you what we are working on today.

Stephanie.

Do you have a love hate relationship with your house too?

Do any of you feel this way? I absolutely love our house; I mean I LOVE IT…but there is a lot I do not like. I know that sounds funny to say, but it is true. I love our neighborhood, I love the size and layout of our house, I love the open floor plan, I love the bones of our house but on the other hand there is a long list of things that I don’t like and that annoy the heck out of me. I would say things I ‘hate’, but I have taught my kids that “Hate is a strong word and should be used very rarely”, so I will keep with ‘there are things I don’t like’. I don’t like the white and grey brick that our house is built with, I do not like the color of my kitchen cabinets, I do not like the flow in my laundry room, I do not like my master walk-in  closet, I do not like my daughter room (just too much stuff and too pink), I don’t like the storage in my ensuite bathroom, I do not like how I have a big kitchen but absolutely no space in the cabinets, I do not like the clutter everywhere! Wow my list of do not likes is far longer than the likes…but I really do love our house. 

Spring has come here really early, so I think I might be getting the spring itch. You know where you want to purge, de-clutter and clean everything. So what I thought I would do this month is try to deal with some of these annoyances. I have not planned this, so I am not sure exactly how I will address my issues or what will come of it, but I thought it would be entertaining (if not embarrassing) to share my dislikes and the horrible little secrets I have hidden behind every photo you have seen. I will do this one annoyance at a time, and show you how I corrected them on a serious budget. I will throw in some crafts along the way but there won’t be a big focus on that this month.

Unfortunately, I will not be correcting major things like the color of our brick (that will have to be minimized with landscaping and there will be a lot to share about this soon… big things happening here). I am sad to also say I will not be redoing my kitchen in the next few months. It is in the plan but it is pretty darn low on my priority list, since I love the layout of it just don’t like the color. See why I can’t justify it? I still would love to paint the cabinets myself but I can’t tell you how afraid I am on doing that.

I really hope to tackle this month:

My master bedroom closet. The closet will need a fair bit of work, but I will not be spending a lot on it. I do not have thousands, let alone hundreds, in the budget to redo a room that no one sees and that is semi-functional already. I am too embarrassed to show you how our walk-in closet currently looks so I will just say we have one upper shelf that has clothes piles at least three feet high. There is loads of potential.

Master ensuite. I shared with you our mini-reno that we did with our master bathroom last year. The framing of the mirror, changing the sinks, counter and faucets made a huge difference but there were things that I did not show you. Joys of bloggers…we hide things. We have some odd shelves behind our door that are filled with crap, the cabinets are overflowing with stuff, we have no towel racks in the entire bathroom! Crazy I know. When we moved in there was 3 towel racks and I thought that was too many. But instead of putting just one back up, I put none. We also have horrible metal mini-blinds in there. I never knew what window treatments to put in there and those are what the house came with so they have stayed. I have tried curtains, faux romans..I still don’t have the answer.

When we bought the house this is what it looked like. Do you see the odd shelves behind the door? You can see one of the many towel racks too.

Really basic builder grade shelves.

See how it they become a disaster? Since I removed all the towel bars, so I now hang my towels with a hook over the door.

The laundry room.  I would love to make our laundry room a peaceful room that is beautiful decorated with a chandelier and fancy jars, but I am far too practical for that. I will be looking for functionality as opposed to glamor, as it is now and will always be a place to do laundry. If I can make my least favorite chore, laundry, slightly easier, then I will do anything. I have a feeling a chandelier and pretty glass jars will not make this horrible chore any easier.

 Here is how it looked when we bought the house. It has never been this clean since!

Dining room buffet.  I have a buffet in my dining room that has a sort of grass cloth front. It has got stained and discolored over time and I would love to find a way to clean it up, whether by recovering or staining. I also hate how I have decorated on the top of it and the wall above it. It seems to be a dumping ground for keys, receipts, school papers, etc.

Kitchen Pantry. We have a deep pantry that is like a black hole. You put stuff in there only to find it after it has expired. I need to find a way to organize it, track what is in there and keep it clean. This is a horrible shot and I am mortified to share this...but this is my pantry

Kitchen desk. I always thought I wanted a desk in my kitchen. I had this grand notion that the kids would sit there and do their homework while I work away in the kitchen. How 1960’s of me. Well, the desk and kitchen are in a direct view of our large screen TV. So if it is on, there is absolutely no work done. As well, the kids prefer to do homework on the kitchen table. So this desk has quickly become a space to drop everything in our house that does not have a home. I don’t think I have cleaned the drawer in this area since we moved in. It is so full, I can barely open it.

That is a mighty long list; I might or might not get to all of it.  I am already working on my issues with our master walk in closet, so I will have something to share really soon. I can't tell you how excited I am about one of the changes..it will light up your life :)

So do any of you have a love/hate relationship with your home? How do you deal with your dislikes or do you just live with them?

Hope to be back with more soon,

Stephanie

Little Gardner Gift Idea

This time of year is full of birthday parties for us. My adorable little nephew turned three last week and I struggled with what to get him. Between him and his two brothers, they have almost every toy a child could ever want; plus I really like to make gifts for them. So I thought I would make him one of those amazing poufs you see at Pottery Barn so he can sit in his room and look at books. I had a day and a half set aside to make one for him (and probably one for his older brother too) and then a wrench was thrown into my plan. Two back-to-back days spent at the hospital; one with my mom and the other my husband.  Everything turned out fine with both, but I no longer had my day and half to sew. What to do?

Well this is what we (my daughter and I) came up with. Since Brendan loves to play in the garden, especially when his parents are working in it, we thought we would make him his own gardening kit. Even though he is a little young for gardening per say, he still loves to get in there and dig stuff.

We started at the dollar store and got him a watering can, a knee pad and two pairs kids gardening gloves. All three were in his favorite color green. We then headed to our local hardware store and bought a gardening bag that had kid sized tools in it, a small plastic rake (they only had purple), some seeds (pumpkin, tiny tomatoes, snap dragons, etc) and a large pot.

 I created a design on my Sure Cut Alot 2 program to put on his container that said 'Brendan's garden' with a few walking bugs. He hates almost all bugs so I tried to make them as cute as possible. I cut the design with my Cricut out of vinyl (didn't use contact paper this time) so it would stand up outside.

We put all the items into the container, wrapped it all in cellophane with a happy birthday balloon.
 I had really wanted to make a little sign to put in the garden with chalkboard paint, but time was limited so this was all I could do.

 The total price was around $30 ($10 for the tool kit, $6 for the rake, $5 at the dollar store, $6 seeds and $4 for the container) but if I had more time and planned ahead, I could have done it for less. But that is what happens when I wait until the last minute.

Either way I was happy with how it turned out and he seemed thrilled to have the rake and the tools.

I have for many years planted vegetable gardens with each of our kids. They pick the vegetables, plant them, water them and harvest them. Even though we live in a pretty big city with smaller yards, we still feel it is important to grow our own vegetables and teach our kids how to do this. We personally love Tiny Tom tomatoes, larger tomatoes, red and green leaf lettuce, slicing cucumbers and all types of peppers. Do any of you do the same thing?

Perhaps I will share in May how we do our kids gardens. We can't plant outside until May 26th weekend this year, so I will have to wait a couple of months.

Happy gardening,
Stephanie