University of Florida Ribbon Wreath

I've seen quite a few Ribbon Wreaths on Pinterest and I'm obsessed.  I could probably have an entire board on just wreaths, I love them.  It's a weird goal of mine to have a wreath for every event/season.

My newest Gator decor!

With the start of football season I started a wreath for my team, the University of Florida.  Over the past few months each time I went to Michael's I bought some orange and/or ribbon.  It feels much cheaper if you spread out the cost of the ribbon over a few trips.  I also tried to get as much as possible while they were on sale.

In total, the wreath took me about 4 hours to complete, over two days.  I'm SO happy how it turned out, I'm not sure I've loved any of my crafts as much as I love this one.  Here is what I used to make my Gator Wreath:

1. 14" foam circle from any craft store or dollar store.  
2. Hot glue gun and glue sticks.  I used about 4 sticks on this project
3. 10 or more spools of ribbon, varying widths, colors and textures.  I used some thick ribbon, some very thin ribbon, some solid colors and some with patterns.  I also used some glitter ribbon (I made sure it didn't shed glitter before I bought it!)  I think the variety is important.  Pick one solid color for your base ribbon, different from any of your other ribbon.
4. Wood letters from the craft store
5. Acrylic paint

The first thing I did was to wrap the green foam circle in my base ribbon so all of the green was covered.  I used hot glue to hold it into place.  Then I cut my ribbon in to 4 1/2" to 5" strips.  To cover my wreath I cut 20 strips of each ribbon.  I found that I needed some shorter strips and some a little bit longer.  I measured once and then used that to cut all of the rest, nothing was too exact.  

With all of the ribbon cut I folded each piece of ribbon in half and glued it together.  I didn't make circles because I wanted the ribbon to stand up off of the wreath.  The cutting and gluing of the ribbon might not have taken the longest, but it sure did feel that way.  When all of the ribbon is glued and ready to go, it's time to start placing them on the wreath.  

You can see in the center of the wreath that I used an orange ribbon as my base.

I didn't follow any pattern when putting the ribbon on the wreath, I was only focusing on filling in all of the areas.  I would place the large ribbon first in groups of two then I would fill in with some of the smaller ribbon until it was time to place another large ribbon.  The part of the ribbon that was glued together is the part that I then glued to the foam wreath.  This part of the project took about 3 hours and I have about 5 burnt fingers, but it was worth it.  I also didn't go all the way around the wreath, only the front 2/3 that will show.

While I was finishing ribbon, Stephen was nice enough to paint the UF for me.  When they were dry I glued them to the fatter ribbons where I wanted them to sit and they were set and ready to go.  The last piece was the ribbon that hangs the wreath.  I didn't glue it to the actual wreath because I may use a wreath hook at some point to hang it, so I wanted the option of taking it off.

There you have it!  GO GATORS!

Why I LOVE Pinterest and How Pinterest Works

I'm not sure I can ever go back to life without Pinterest.  I don't want to go back to the days of buying magazines and tearing out pages for inspiration.  (But I still love magazines, especially food magazines.)  For example, I didn't buy a single wedding magazine while planning my wedding.  I remember friends planning weddings 5 or 6 years ago and going to their house to see the stacks of wedding magazines with dog eared pages and binders of torn out pages with ideas.

Not only is wedding planning SO much easier with Pinterest, but finding new recipes is easy too.  Form healthy to unique to gluttonous and wonderful baking recipes - the list is almost endless.  There are so many blogs out there with recipes that will never make it into a cookbook or website.  I love that I can find them now.  Let's not also forget cleaning and home organizational tips.  Pinterest is full of ways to make your live simpler around the house.  I had no idea white vinegar was so useful until I saw pin after pin of uses, several that I have tried.

Lastly, crafting.  OMG, the craft ideas are overflowing on Pinterest.  I have close to 100 pins on my Craft Ideas board.  Before Pinterest I had a few craft projects in my head, but with Pinterest I've been exposed to so many new things I never once considered to try on my own.  But with links to tutorials on basically everything I could ever want to try, the world has opened new doors to me.  I even registered for a sewing machine on our wedding registry so I can learn to sew to make items for around the house!

Pinterest works like this.  You set up an account and once approved you can search through other people's pins and add them to boards that you have created so you can come back to them later.  When you log in to the site this is what your main page will look like, below.  The pins update constantly and you can see what pins that you have added that have been pinned by others down the left hand side of the page.  Every time I go to this page it is different based on how active the people I'm following are that day.

Think of the boards as the folders you used to keep when you tore out pictures from a magazine.  You did that, right, just like me?  Each board is a different topic and you can have unlimited boards.  At least I think you can, I've seen people with more boards then I could even try to keep track of.  They must be professional pinners.  (Is that a job?  I want it.)  I have boards for Craft Ideas, Wedding Inspiration, Food and Drinks, Holidays, Books I want to read, and several more.  Here is a screen shot of what your account page on Pinterest will look like with your boards.  I have a few more that don't fit on the screen until you scroll down.

My Pinterest page

Into each board you add your pins.  You can see in the image above how many pins I have in each board.  Obviously this changes daily as I add pins.  Each board has a "cover photo" which is the large picture and you can set this to something or it is your most recent pin.  To get inside a board you click on one of the images in that board and it brings you into that section.  Below is my Holidays board.

My Holiday Board

Using my Holiday board above you can see that each pin is linked from another website, shown in the grey below the picture caption.  Each picture gets a caption which you can create.  This caption is seen by all of your followers and anyone searching for a key word that is in your caption.  When you click on one of these pins (photos) it makes it larger so you can see it in more detail and from there you can double click on it and it will open the original website with that content in a new window.  I have a few of my projects posted on one of Pinterest boards and it's fun to see web traffic to the blog from Pinterest.

You can add to your boards in two ways.  First, and the most fun in my opinion, is just browsing through Pinterest.  You can see pins from people that you are following or everything that is being pinned at that moment.  You can even search Pinterest for ideas.  When I put in the search box "red truck" below are the pins that show up for me.  Of course, if you go and search for the same thing it may look different depending on what has been pinned since my search.

When I was planning a baby shower I had a board dedicated to just Baby Shower ideas and I searched through tons of key words for inspiration.  Same for when I was trying to find ideas for how I would wear my hair for the wedding.  I'm pretty sure I pinned close to 10 different photos to my board and I showed them to my hair stylist when I went in for my trial.  Much easier than flipping through several wedding magazines and tearing out pictures or printing pictures off a web page.  It's great when you find a pin that you like and you go to the board where that pin lives and you find other photos that were inspiration to that pinner.

The second way to pin to your board is with a button that is loaded to the Toolbar.  It's so simple to use!  For example, I'm on a blog and the blogger has posed a new recipe that I want to try later.  I go to the "Pin It" button now on my toolbar and it pulls up all of the photos on that current page that I can pin to my board.  I select the picture that I want to pin (make sure it's representative of what the content is) then I add a caption and select which of my boards I want that pin to land on.  Easy as that.

Feel free to search for me and browse around all of my pins.  There is so much out there to see and do! A few of my favorite pins from the past few days:

What a fun trick for holiday decor from Dandelions and Dust Bunnies

A project I can't wait to try!  Using Mod Podge to create a giant "canvas" for the wall from Life as a Thrifter

A tutorial for no-sew bunting that I used recently from Corner Blog.  More on the project to come later.

 If you haven't given Pinterest a shot, don't be afraid.  All you have to lose is a few hours of free time!  Stephen said something that was pretty true yesterday during one of the MANY commercials during the Olympics last night.  He said, "Should I assume that if you have your ipad in your hand I should assume everything you say relates to Pinterest?"  Yes, he's right.

Pinterest does have an App for the iphone and ipad, but I'd rather use the website on my ipad instead of the app. The app never seems to work right for me.  I'm sure they're working on it.

Puppy Update

Goose continues to make us laugh as he tries to figure out how big he really is and how his body moves.  He's such a big boy for 5 months old, he has a lot of learning to do.  We have a chair in our living room that he used to not be able to jump on, when we first brought him home. We'd have to pick his little butt up and help him up to cuddle with us.  He now gets a running start and jumps over the arm of the chair.  Here is the chair and Goose when we first got him, about 4 months old.

Goose is very hard to photograph because he's so dark!

Last night he tried to jump over the back of the chair above and got stuck with his front legs on one side and his hind legs on the other.  Before I could get there to help him, he just rolled off the side and crashed to the floor.  I'm sure if we could see bruises on him, he'd be covered.

Goose is now noticeably larger than Mabel.  He's stronger than her now and their wrestling is much more evenly matched than when she first taught him some moves.

Sorry the picture is so blurry, you try getting both of them to look at the camera.

You can tell from picture #1 to the one above that he's definitely grown in the past month!  Sometimes I feel like he's grown while I was at work.

He is still working out that the outdoors are not a frightening place.  He hates going anywhere off the back deck unless it's into the backyard to go to the bathroom.  If we try to take him in the car or for a walk, it's a tug of war to get him down the steps.  We're not bribing him with food.  It seemed to work on the last car ride.

Mabel is still sweet as can be and is the perfect big sister.  She puts up with a lot of his puppy nonsense.

This is her "please throw the ball" face

Goose is learning to look at the camera, but I'm sure it will be some time before he poses like Mabel does.  

Sunday morning Goose vomited (yes, vomited) on the chair in the top picture.  My gorgeous, huge, expensive chair.  The chair that had I known I'd have two black dogs I would have chosen darker fabric.  I love that chair, so I freaked out.  We're already going to have to have a professional cleaner come into clean the chair and couch, but the stain was starting to smell.  Off the cushion cover went and into the washing machine.  As soon as the water started running in the wash, I noticed the warning on the chair that one mush NEVER remove the covers from the cushions and only have them cleaned professionally.  Perfect.  Well, it was washed and we hung it to dry.  Happily, it's back on the cushion and after a few more days of Goose jumping on it and me curled up with a book, it will be back to normal.  The corners look like they need a little more stuffing to move their way.  

As Goose continues to grow, I'll keep updating the pictures.  I found this canvas below on Pinterest and I can't wait to give it a shot.  

I'll make one for Mabel and one for Goose.  I'll wait until he's full grown and I have a better camera so I can try to get him quickly while he's sitting still.  Click here to see the full tutorial on how to make the painting from The Creativity Exchange blog.  

Cork Board USA Map Craft

One of my passions is traveling.  I'm not quite sure when it started, but I've always loved going to the airport and boarding a plane of packing up the car for a long road trip.  I love getting away from everyday life and experiencing something new.  Growing up I was fortunate enough to have grandparents in different states so every summer we were off to Maine or Wisconsin and once I got to middle school I was on a traveling club volleyball team.  My team with Orlando Volleyball Academy, OVA, was good.  I don't mind bragging about us because we were that good.  We never lost a tournament in Florida and we qualified for the Junior National Volleyball Tournament every year we played together as a team.  With the volleyball team I got to see places in the US that I wouldn't have without playing, at least not in high school.

My Grandfather worked for Delta for 40 years and it was always special to me to get on a Delta plane and think about him.  Dad would make us dress nice for our trips, the airport wasn't a place to look sloppy, this is where Grandpa worked.  I think a lot of that is lost now, actually I know it is.  I still like to look nice when I board a plane for a leisure trip or a business trip.  There is no telling who you are going to meet or when you might need to sweet talk the gate agent and I strongly believe that how you look has a lot to do with what they can do for you.

It's not surprising that this love of traveling carried over to adulthood.   Luckily, Stephen and I share the same passion and we have big dreams of seeing more of our beautiful country and the world.  He and I have been to so many cities I thought it would be fun to plot all of our trips on a map so we could see our experiences visually.

The project was a pretty easy one, the most time consuming was waiting for the different layers of paint to dry - my least favorite thing to do.

I started with a corkboard, map of the USA, some painters tape, acrylic paints in a bunch of colors, paint brushes and some pushpins.

I decided on my colors and started painting, working on the boarder first.  Helpful tip - put a pushpin under your object that you're painting so you can paint the edges without having to lift them up.

I put painters tape on the cork to keep it protected while I worked on the yellow.  It took two to three coats of yellow paint to cover the wood with the yellow.  I'm sure a darker color wouldn't have required as much paint.

Once the yellow was dried, I mixed my light grey color, removed the painters tape and coated the cork in paint.  Once dry (I left it overnight and all day the following day) I placed my map of the United States and pinned it into place so I could outline with my Sharpie Pen.

Next, once the outline was good and done it was time to paint the inside of the map.  I decided not to try to outline the individual states because the northeast could be pretty tricky and I wanted a nice, clean map.

Painting the map was time consuming around along the coasts.  The borders with Canada and Mexico were my favorite because they were pretty straight.

Now it was time for the fun part!  I painted a quote on the corkboard to personalize it and we started pinning our travels.  We chose red for Atlanta, where we live now.  Green pins are Stephen's for places he's been without me.  My solo trips are yellow and the white pins are places we've been together.  There are quite a few cities that we have both visited, but not together.  We have a lot of the East Coast covered and we're pretty lacking out West except for California.

I look forward to continuing to fill up our map with more and more white pins.  If we move from Atlanta, our new city will get another red pin.

I love Florida - a craft with thread

I love spending time on Pinterest and Etsy looking at crafts that people have spent blood, sweat and tears on to create.  People are so much more creative than I am.  Not just a few people, but a LOT of people.  I think I have it in me to be creative, but I never developed it as a kid (I get embarrassed very easy and any criticism as a kid kept me from trying new things).

I saw this listing on Etsy and fell in love immediately.  She does amazing work.  I am a Floridian living in Atlanta.  Not only that, I'm a Florida Gator living in Bulldog country.  As much as I wanted it, I don't have $80 to spend right now on art.  There are just too many trips this year, and it's only January!  I decided I would try to re-create her art myself.  You can see from my picture above, it's not as organized and precise, but it's close.  Close enough for my house.

My first step was to find the plaques.  I tried Home Depot, no luck, so I went to Michaels.  It was by far the most expensive part of the project at $8.  I then painted with some acrylic paint that I already had on hand at the house.  Once painted I printed out an outline of the state and placed it where I needed it on the plaque.

I began following the border with my nails.  I used nails 1/2 an inch long.  I drew the University of Florida's F on to the area above Gainesville and nailed there as well.  The HARDEST part of the project.  Once all the nails were in I thought it looked pretty great!

Then it was time for the string.  I found a 750 yard spool of orange thread to use inside the state.  I learned that my nails weren't deep enough into the wood as I needed them to be.  Once I started stringing the orange a few of the nails that had a lot of pressure on them started to lean to one side.  I had to cut it all out and restart.  Another note, nailing into the paper leaves little paper scraps once you pull it away.  You can't really tell from far away or in the pictures, but I know they're there close up.  Next time I'll probably try pressing the outline into the wood and following that instead of using the paper.

I love the way it turned out, however next time I'll probably choose an easier center object - maybe a heart.  Maybe something else.  I'll give another one or two of these a shot.  It's a lot of fun and they are pretty unique pieces of art.

Any thoughts on what I should make next?  I have three more plaques at home.

DIY Jewelry Organizer

I have a lot of jewelry.  Not the fancy kind, but the fun, dress-up-a-boring-outfit jewelry most likely purchased at Anthropologie or somewhere similar.  I love big, bright necklaces.  My jewelry box I've had since high school hasn't been cutting it and the jewelry tree that I bought to help store my stuff was at capacity.

I turned to Pinterest to see what other DIY options were out there.  SO many to choose from!  I dare you to run the same search.  I found this blogpost and it was exactly what I wanted, but on a larger scale.  My friend and I dedicated all afternoon on Sunday to our craft.  Our first stop was to Anthropologie to get some of their gorgeous knobs and handles.  They have SO many to pull from, I could have spend hundreds of dollars.  We also bought some knobs and handles at Home Depot and Jess made a stop to World Market to get one or two as well.

Once we had our knobs we went to The Home Depot to get some plywood.  We bought a 2'x4' board and had them cut it in half for us so we're both working with a 2'x2' square.  We decided to cover the board with some thick, solid fabric and a decorative ribbon so we headed to Hancock Fabric and Michael's.  I went with a grey/lavender fabric and some yellow and black ribbon.

I borrowed Stephen's power tools for this project - a drill and a staple gun.  I was working faster than Jess so I made a few mistakes that she was able to learn from along the way.

Construction Steps:

1. Layout all of your handles and knobs on the board.  TAKE A PICTURE OF THEM so you know how they should lay out once you move them to start drilling your holes.  I recommend spacing them out so your long necklaces can hang and have space.  Also, on the back of the board, mark what side is the TOP. 
2. Measure the holes precisely for your handles.  They were by far the hardest to put into the board once the fabric was in place.  
3. Once everything is marked on the board, start drilling your holes.  (you'll see in the photo that it can look like a big mess if you don't label them!)
4. Cover the board with the fabric using the staple gun.  Start with the top, staple it down, then go to the bottom and staple that side down, pulling tight.  Then go to the sides.  Don't trim the fabric until everything is stapled in place.  (I used one yard of fabric to cover my board.
5. This is where it gets tricky.  You'll have to mark the holes you made on the fabric so you can push through the knobs/screws.  I made marks with a Sharpie, Jess just pushed through a small screw driver from the back of the board through the front, through the fabric.  I recommend her technique.  

1. Then it's time to start screwing in your knobs and handles.  

This is what my Jewelry Organizer looks like with all the knobs and handles in place!  The handles will be used to hold earrings and the knobs will hold my necklaces and bracelets.  The upside-down drawer pulls are perfect holders for small earrings and rings, top left.  

I still need to glue gun (a new Christmas present from my sister!) the remaining fabric to the back of the board so it stays in place and add a picture frame hanger to the back of the board so I can hang it from the wall.  It's pretty heavy as it is and will only get heavier as I add stuff to it.  To prevent the screws from scratching the wall when it's hanging I'm going to cover them with my remaining fabric or some styrofoam.  

The last step will be to add the ribbon to the top for decoration.  

Calendar.... to Wall Decor

I hate blank walls.  They bother me.  A blank wall is yelling out to me, "fill my empty space!" and "you aren't creative enough to put something on the wall!"  Empty walls taunt me.

Above our couch we have a big, open wall.  I'd temporarily filled it with some paintings I'd done at Sips N Stokes, but they aren't big enough for the space and they aren't even framed yet.  They weren't working for me.


A year ago I bought a calendar of vintage travel posters with the plan that after the year was over, I'd cut out the pictures, frame them and make a collage on the wall.  That's right, I planned a year in advance.  And as fate would have it, I was planning months before I even met Stephen.

So that's what I did.  I picked my favorite posters, cut them out and put them in some cheap frames I found on super sale at an art supply store.  They look amazing.  

Stephen was great enough to hang them above the couch for me.  I'm so glad he did.  I would have spent 20 minutes measuring and adjusting and stressing out and he had them up in 5 minutes and they look perfect.  Exactly what I had in mind.  Now for some reason, I can't find the picture I took of them up on the wall.  

I have 4 pictures, all in 11 x 14 frames.  They are in a horizontal diamond, centered on the wall.  It was so easy to do and I still have 8 months remaining, I might try to find other, black frames (not matching) to fit the other pictures and add them to the wall.  We definitely have the space.  Such an easy project and they create such a focal point in the living room opposite the TV.  

UPDATE:  It took us a few months, but we bought a few more frames and also found a fun group of small, Italy pictures that we also added to the wall.  Here is the wall as it is now - before we leveled out all the pictures.  We were just so excited to take a picture!

Halloween: a little teaser

Stephen and I are hosting a pretty big Halloween party at the house this Saturday night.  The past week has been getting ready for that party.  Every evening after work we've been decorating, crafting and carving to get ready for the big event.  I don't want to post pictures of our progress or costumes just yet, but believe me, they are going to be worth the wait.

I didn't want readers to think I'm not sticking to my New Thing Everyday theme, so here is a sneak peak of what we've been working on.  Check back next week to get the full update with pictures of all of our decorations, how to details and party pictures.

You'll have to wait and see what my mason jars will be.  I got the idea from a friend who is very crafty.  I'm testing my abilities, but not disappointed so far!

We carved 4 pumpkins last night, here is my first one.  Pictures of the other 3 to follow.