Superhero Capes

J and I made him some more superhero capes.  I found a font that is so Awesome! (Thank you Pinterest!) The font is called Hall of Heroes and it has pretty much any superhero emblem you can think of.  I downloaded the font, ordered some fabric from Joanns and got to work.  I found a couple tutorials online that helped me figure out how to make them.  The first one is on vanillajoy.com and it gave a great suggestion to use a skirt pattern to get the shape of the cape.  Genious! However, I found a pattern for the collar that I really liked on floatingworldviews.com.  I am not sure how the lady on vanillajoy created her collars, but I used the pattern from fwv and adjusted it to fit the shape of the cape that I created from my skirt pattern.  After I got the capes cut out, and the edged surged, I printed out the emblems; or "powers" as J calls them and cut them out in the different colors then sewed them on.  They turned out awesome and J LOVES them. 

 I even found an emblem with an R on it for the baby.  He looks pretty dang cute in it too.

Faucets

Well I ordered my faucets.  I got a pretty good deal off eBay, so I went for it.  I ended up going with the Brushed Nickel.  I think it will be a good contrast to the Oil Rubbed Bronze tub. 

Upcoming Bathroom Project

I just ordered the bead board wallpaper for my upstairs bathroom! Yay! I can't wait for this project to start to take shape.  I found this as I was browsing the web at freshhome.com and fell in love with pretty much everything about it. I hope I can make my little boys' bathroom look as cute.



I also found this faucet on eBay and I LOVE IT. Hopefully I can get me one.



I scored us a claw foot tub for $100 and my husband grinded off the outside then spray painted it the oil rubbed bronze color.  This faucet would look fantastic with it.  I will post more pics when we get this thing going.

Poster

I found this poster print on Allposters.com and I fell in love.

Of course I ordered it.  I thought I would try the same thing that I did with the prints of my babies.  I will build a frame and texture the print.  I am pretty excited!  It will look fantastic in my livingroom.

Framed Textured Poster Prints

I had these cute poster prints of my babies and I wanted to frame them in big thick frames.  Well, Big Thick Frames are not in my budget.  Seriously, if a frame is more than $20, I am not going to buy it, no matter how great it is going to look on my wall.  So, I thought that I would make my own.  I went to the hardware store and bought some MDF Moulding.  I painted it black and then cut it with the miter saw to get the angles.  I stapled each piece together (which is REALLY hard to do with MDF).  I think brackets would be the way to go were I to do it again.  I then glued my poster prints to a sheet of MDF using Mod Podge.  I did this by rolling the Mod Podge on the MDF with a small foam roller, then scraping it with a credit card to make it smooth and to make sure that I didn't have too much on there (I didn't want it to bubble).  I had previously cut their names out with the cricut on some vinyl and then placed in on the front of the picture.  Once I had the picture glued on the board, I got some texture cream (I got mine fromPoppy Seed Projects, but there are other places to get it) and rolled it on over the top of the picture.  I did a couple of coats of it.  It is nice because you want it to be bumpy and textured so you don't have to worry about making it perfect and smooth.  Because I textured the photos I didn't have to have glass in the frame.  The texture cream makes it look almost like an artists painting.  I love the way they look on my wall.  Plus, the babies just make it look so cute!

Growth Chart Tutorial

I mentioned that I was inspired by Pinterest on making these growth charts. I found them on dearlily and thought they were just so darn cute.  After reading up on ways to make them, this is what I did:

I went to our local hardware store and bought a 1x8x12 board.  I did this because they did not have a 6 ft board.  I had them cut it in half and this way I had enough wood for two charts.  I sanded it just enough to smooth out the rough spots and then I stained it by brushing on some stain then spreading it with a rag.  This is what it looked like afterward. 

After the stain dried, I took my tape measure and marked the inches from one end of the board to the other with a pencil.  I then took a square and made my lines longer.  For each 1/4 of an inch I made the line 2 inches long while the rest I made 1 inch long.  After I had them penciled on, I took a sharpie and traced it to make it look like this:

For those of you who don't know what a "square" is, it is that triangle shaped thing lying on the ground in the picture.

After I had the inches marked, I found a font I liked and printed out the numbers.  I traced the back of the numbers with the pencil and then traced them onto the board.  I have since laminated the numbers and created my own stencils my cutting the shape of the number out to make the process easier.  After tracing the numbers on the board, I again went over it with the sharpie and filled it in.

And that was it.  The board was complete.  Until I decided I wanted to personalize it a little bit.  I know most people use their last names for their personalization's, but I live around a lot of family and I wanted mine to be unique.  So, I used my husbands name and added "& Co" afterwards.  I thought it turned out very cute

When I mark the measurements, I use a super fine point sharpie after I take the initial measurement with a pencil.  It works quite well and it doesn't take up a lot of space on the board.

Can you see the marking at 3'3"?  That would be my 3 year old's height.  He thinks it is so cool that he is three and he is 3 feet tall.

Growth Chart inspired by pinterest

Can I just tell you how much I LOVE pinterest?  Seriously, it makes me feel like I can do anything.  So, when I saw a picture of this growth chart, I knew that I had to make one.  I love that it looks like an old school ruler.  I also love that I can personalize it however I want.

After I made mine, my sister decided that she wanted one, so one day we just crafted up a bunch of them and some of our friends wanted some.  These are some pics of some that we made for others.

Aren't they fun? I love how mine looks hanging on my wall and J loves looking at how tall he is.
 

Painting the Hutch

After I painted my piano, the poorly matched Hutch really stood out.  I have been meaning to paint this to match the room for a good two years now.  Since I had the paint out, I thought, "what the heck?" So I busted out the sand paper, roughed up the wood and began.  I primed the natural wood looking part with Bullseye 1 2 3 primer and let it dry.  Then I painted two coats of the glossy black that I used on my piano.  After I switched out the drawer pulls, it was finished. 

I can't believe I waited so long.  It looks SOOOO much better.

Painting my Piano

So I lucked out and got this piano for FREE.  A lady in town was clearing out her house and pretty much everything was up for grabs.  I snatched this puppy up before anyone else could claim it.  The only problem?  It was not very appealing to the eye.  Soooooo . . . . . After scanning Pinterest for a while, I found some sites that talked about painting a piano.  Painting? A Piano?  Isn't that against the law or something?  I am one of those people who gets sad when they discover that wooden furniture has been painted rather than refinished; so this was a BIG step for me to even be considering.  However, I knew that there was no way I was going to be able to make this scratched and battered wood look good.  So I thought that I would go for it. 

A lot of the posts I read had them taking the piano apart and sanding the individual pieces, painting it and then putting it back together. What?  I am FAR too lazy for that.  So, I just taped off the keys and the pedals.  I took a piece of 50 grit sandpaper and roughed up the surface a bit.  Not a lot, just enough to make the primer stick.  I then primed the piano with Bullseye primer.  I had the hardware store tint the primer with grey so that I wouldn't have to put as many coats of paint on the piano as I would have had I used a white primer (Thanks Patty for the tip).  After the primer dried, I rolled the paint on where I could using a small foam roller, then brushed it on in the small areas.

The piano is in my dining room which has this gorgeous black and white wallpaper.  When I decorated the Dining room my plan was to do black and white with a touch of red.  I originally wanted to put a red Chaise against the wall, but I could never find one that I loved.  So I thought, why not add some red to the piano? 

This is the final product, and I must say, I LOVE IT!