MN Home Feature: Framed memories.

A guessing game ensued on my facebook page after I posted the photograph of this hot pink package that came from India last fall.

Now for the story…
Do Rang Decor readers remember the 'A tea party for three...' post about the creative get-together with the super-talented artists Aarohi Singh & Priya Sebastian before I left Bangalore in 2012.

Aarohi Singh gifted me her signature tea kettle with my favourite Frangipani flowers and Chai painted on it.

Priya Sebastian brought me the most beautiful yellow Liliums that day and she being the amazing illustrator that she is, she went ahead and illustrated the tea party in her bold artistic style!

I was blown away by this artistic rendition of our tea party. 

I wanted her work along with Aarohi's kettle to be part of our home here in Minnesota. 

So wrapped in her signature colour of hot pink paper came four vibrant prints of the illustrations of the tea party. 

A cosy corner in our Minnesota home is now a space that displays framed memories of the beautiful afternoon spent with friends.

The work of two artists I admire forms a lovely composition on this wall. 

Side view of the paintings and a vintage cast iron holder for the kettle.

A space dedicated to friends, chai, frangipanis and the warm memories…

Many quiet afternoons have been spent on this rocking chair, with a cup of hot tea, looking at the vibrant colours enveloping me:-)

Thank you Aarohi & Priya. Your art is a blessing and is deeply appreciated in our humble abode.

(Images by Archana Srinivas. Please do not use without permission)

Cleaning out

Hello all and happy weekend! Anything fun planned?

I have about 285 things on my list I’d like to get accomplished before Thanksgiving and instead the other day I spent hours cleaning up this mess out in the garage:

It needed to be done, obviously. But it is not on the list. ;) Food and cleaning this house are, however. But noooo…I focus on things like this. In my defense, it’s been driving me crazy for months. ALL of that wood is trim from the renovation. It was way bigger than this – we saved a ton of trim when we took down the wall so I used a lot to do the board and batten in the family room.

There’s still a good amount I’ll use in the kitchen – on the crown, base and board and batten. Some of the pieces I gave away and the rest I’m keeping for future projects. I hoard scrap wood – it’s my thing. ;)

Anyhoo, I finally got most of that area organized and then I kept going in the garage. Usually this time of year is when I organize our garage but usually this time of year isn’t 12 degrees with snow. So I’m doing bits and pieces and I’ll just have to wait till spring for the rest of it.

While I was organizing I realized the truly insane amount of painter’s tape I have. It’s from working with the lovely FrogTape folks – but there’s no way I can use all this tape myself. I LOVE this tape and have worked with them for years but a few months back I pulled out -- I couldn't think of worthwhile projects to do anymore. If I can’t make it worthwhile for you I don’t feel right doing it. So I definitely don’t need all the tape I have and decided instead of dropping it at Goodwill, I’d pass it along to you guys!

I have nearly 20 rolls to give away. I have three rolls of the chevron shape tape:

I’m not a huge fan of chevron but I did use this in a different way to get a unique look:

So even if you’re not a big Chevron person, it still can be used to make different designs!

I have three wave tapes available as well:

I think this stuff is super cute, especially for a bathroom. :) I made this art for my son’s bathroom and still love it!:

I think the scallop tape is pretty too. I have four of these to give away:

I used this on my candy corn bunting last year:

So cute!!

I’m clearing out some of my regular tape as well – I have six of these available:

This is truly my favorite painter’s tape. The crisp lines can’t be beat. I used it to make this pretty ombre wall in our guest room:

I’ve mastered the art of cutting in so I just don’t use painter’s tape as much as I used to.

And this stuff I’m really excited about – it’s FrogTape for textured surfaces:

I’ve never used this so I can’t speak to how well it works, but it’s worth a try! I have three of these to give away.

Here are the deets:

This giveaway is now closed! :)

I will be taking most of next week off to spend with my family. I may be back with a post next Friday but that will most likely be it. I’ll be back with CHRISTMAS when I return though. :)

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving! I am so thankful you follow along with my escapades every week!

The new back door

Happy Thursday friends, one of my favorite days of the week! I’m SO happy to share this final addition to our renovation with you today! It’s not done, so bear with me because there’s a lot left to do. But I’m excited about how it’s looking and that we’re done with this reno!

So if you’re new here – this past summer we took a wall down between my office and our family room to give us more space. You can see the completed space here. :) What we didn’t realize till we knocked down the wall was how much this was going to completely transform our kitchen as well.

So part of the plan was to tweak the bay window area a bit, where our back door used to be:

It’s now all windows and ready for me to build the window seat. Yum.

We decided to move the back door over to where the double windows in the room are:

It just made more sense overall – that window just felt like the logical spot for the door when everything shifted.

Here’s an idea of how where that window was in the old space:

(OH my goodness, look how little my baby was there!!)

The sectional sat up against it, which I didn’t mind too much but try to avoid if I can.

So here’s the thing – we ordered the windows for the bay area and the new door at the same time from Lowe’s. The windows were coming in in a couple weeks. The door was going to take 28 days. I never expected either one of them to come in on time, just because I’m no spring chicken. ;)

Well the windows came in on time but they never called to tell us, so on the fourth week I stopped by to check on the status of things. They told me the door was scheduled to be delivered that week, exactly on time. Whoot! I was so excited, so we picked up the windows and went ahead and had those installed.

Before they replaced our back door with the third window I called Lowe’s again – and they told me that the door would be in that day. So I had the guys go ahead, knowing it would only be a day or two before the new door went in.

We never got a call so I called again later and they told me again in was in…but it wasn’t. ;) It was delayed a little over a week, which was annoying but fine, not a biggie, #firstworldproblems. But a week turned into two, three…four. :) Finally this week it came in.

It took the guys just over half a day to get it in and when I walked into the room I LOVED it!:

It was worth the wait. :) It is exactly how I envisioned it – it makes total sense in that spot. Only one side of the door opens – the other is stationary. I just felt like this way would be more secure. I had dreams of having two doors opened up to the deck and having the warm breeze waft in…and then I woke up and realized we have four animals that we’d never see again. Ha!

You can see in that pic how much work I have left to do – they are framing out the door today in my Craftsman style trim and then I’ll paint. I also have to finish that wall to the right with the base and board and batten that goes throughout the rest of the room.

That speaker isn’t being used anymore so I need to patch that drywall as well. I think it’s going to look so beautiful when it’s all done! I can’t wait!

Our main floor windows are super tall, 72 inches. Because of that we had a big space to fill – instead of having them fill in the area above the door with drywall I had it made with a transom. It adds a nice detail:

Here’s how this area looked a few weeks ago:

And here it is now:

Sorry about light – I had to take the pics in morning (bright) light before the guys got here to work.

Although I think my favorite before and after is this one from a couple years ago:

It still is crazy to me how far our family room used to sit in what is now kitchen space for us:

Goodness, I’m so excited to finish this up and make it look pretty and I’m so excited that after today there will be no one working in our house for a very long time. Well, other than me. ;)

I have big plans for the outside as well:

The siding will go back up today when it warms up a bit. I want to build some kind of decorative cover over the door since the door opens out instead of in. I knew it would take up valuable floor space to have it open in. We didn’t have any coverage over the old door and it was fine but I think it would be nice. I don’t want to block the sun though, that’s the only thing.

I see this spot with big beautiful planters on either side next summer too. Can’t wait! We are also having a new porch light installed to the left of the doors. So overall we’ve added two additional lights to the back of the house and more light is always nice.

Of COURSE I plan on painting the doors black on the inside. ;) All of our interior doors (at least on the main floor) are and I know it will look stunning. The only problem is the panes on the transom are inside the window – but I think I have a solution for that. Stay tuned. :)

I can’t wait to get this finished up and start on the rest of the kitchen next year! Whoo!! Oh, and by the way, the windows were ordered were Pella and they came in right on time. This door is Jeld-Wen and I’m not thrilled so far. Not only because of the delay (it was an issue on their end, not Lowe’s). It’s a good solid door but they really cut corners on things like the trim. You can kind of tell in the pic above that the exterior trim is a mess – it’s all getting redone. Thankfully Lowe’s covered the cost of all the new trim.

At least we didn’t have a big hole in the house! Living without a back door for a month wasn’t a big deal. Have you ever had a reno mishap that you didn’t plan for? I knew this whole thing went way too well. ;)

EASY image transfer method

Hello my friends! I’m back today with a REALLY simple way to transfer words or images onto basically anything! I was so excited to find this tutorial because I used to do this by stenciling it – so I would use an X acto knife to cut out each letter and then use it as a stencil and paint.

This method is SO so so much easier, and much quicker. Whoot!

I did a little holiday message on our chalkboard to show how this is done. I found this tutorial on this YouTube page so if you want a visual be sure to check that out.

I started by figuring out what font I wanted for my words. I just use Word – easy is my key word here. :) For the advent calendar I showed you yesterday I used a sharpie for the letters, but I knew I was using chalk for this one so I wanted the letters nice and fat:

Obviously because they were so big the words were broken up on the page. You’ll want to cut them down so they’ll fit together on your surface.

The only problem with that is matching them up when you tape them to the wall or whatever else you’re transferring to:

I just eyeball it. The lettering on my advent is not perfectly straight but it adds to the charm. Or something. :)

So this where the easy comes in – grab some chalk. If you’re transferring to a light surface you can use colored chalk. For a darker surface white is perfect. Just flip up your image and “color” the back:

You don’t need to do the whole thing, just cover the letters.

Here’s how it looks after you’re done coloring with the chalk:

You can blow the excess off – you’ll still have enough to transfer.

Then flip it back down (I tape the other side so it stays put) and then just trace your letters or image with a ball point pen:

That’s IT! SO much easier! My surfaces were a little bumpy but the great thing is you don’t have to be exact. You can fix it later if you are tracing over it again. :)

Here’s a better shot of how I traced:

Again, if you mess up, not a big deal.

When you pull up the paper you will have an outline:

Brilliant. I was afraid all that chalky dust would be all over but it doesn’t transfer – just where you trace.

Awesome!:

So you can leave it as is – I actually love that lighter look. I wanted something that would stand out a little more for our chalkboard so I traced with a chalk pen:

Then I filled it in with real chalk to get that look.

I have a couple different types of these pens – the Chalk Ink are my favorite and I am pretty sure you can only get those online. Anyone know if they are in stores now? The Bistro version is at most craft stores and they are OK, I just don’t love them as much:

It still takes some time but it’s nothing compared to cutting out the stencil like I used to do. It took me maybe 30 minutes to do this one?

Now that I know how to do this I may actually put some cute stuff on my chalkboard from time to time!:

Side note – since that year I spelled Christmas as “Chirstmas” on our cards that went out to everyone we know I’m always looking at it 15 times to make sure it’s right. Haha!! 

I love it! What a fun way to add some seasonal fun to your chalkboard! I’m not great at free handing that stuff so this is great to know. And of course the possibilities are endless with wood – you could go crazy with fonts and do fun signs or art. And it’s practically free!

Here’s how the letters on the advent came out with the sharpie marker:

There you go! An easy and cheap way to transfer just about anything to just about anything. :) I hope this all made sense!

Have you tried this method on anything? Have you done this any other way? Do tell!

Knock off Pottery Barn advent

Hey all! Sooo…it snowed so much we need to shovel the driveway today…what. in. the?? I don’t mind winter but this is CRAY. Putting up the Christmas lights is going to stink. :) If it’s this cold already I’m really worried about the winter. Yikes.

Anyway, we spent most of the day cuddled inside yesterday and I worked on a project that I am SO pleased with! I told you I was going to to do it when I shared the advent calendar ideas a couple weeks ago.

This was the one that really got me:

I thought it was pretty cute, but what really got me was the price. It’s $150, on sale for $119 right now. For a piece of wood. Wood. And listen, if you aren’t a DIYer (or even if you are), I totally get it! Buy it! Sometimes I buy too – it’s nice not to do everything yourself. But I am a DIYer and that price hurt me a little because I knew I could make this for a fraction of that.

The bonus was that I had most of the supplies already – but even if you don’t this is easily a less than $25 project, probably less.

We have a TON of wood in our garage from the family room renovation. It’s a good thing I haven’t started Christmas decorating yet because I can’t even get to the bins. :) I need to get it all cleaned out but…COLD. That’s going to be a fun project. But anyway, when we took down the old fireplace I kept all the scraps – it was nice wood and it pains me to get rid of wood.

This long scrap used to be our mantel:

Helpers…always helping.

I cleaned it up a bit – pulled some nails and scraped some caulk off, then painted it. The PB advent is white but I wanted to do something a little different:

Aww yeah. Chalkboard paint!

I did two coats and then “seasoned” the board:

You do this so the chalk (supposedly) will wipe off easier when you write on it. I only did it because I wanted that chalkboard look – not a perfect black. I won’t be writing on this, but we could!

I already had the clothespins for another project, but if you need them they’re cheap:

I just used a bit of wood glue on the backs of each one. I thought I may have to nail them in as well to make them really secure but they aren’t going anywhere as they are.

For the numbers I totally lucked out and found these at Hobby Lobby:

Hello…perfect! You’d probably have to stamp or stencil them if you can’t find a set like this. I was looking at other scrapbook numbers but you’d need a ton of 1’s and 2’s to make this work – that would get expensive. These were $5 and I got them for $3 with a coupon.

Next up was the part I was most excited about – the lettering. I found a tutorial online on how to do this SO easily:

I’m going to share the how to tomorrow because I want to take better pics – this part was done at night. It’s worthy of it’s own post anyway. 

I thought it needed a little bit of Christmas color so I used the same technique to do the holly on each side:

I just filled those in with green paint and then used some sparkly stickers for the berries.

I absolutely LOVE how it all came together!!

It will actually hang in the mud room but this area has better light to show it off. ;)

I LOVE the chalkboard look – I think it’s a fun twist instead of the white advent like Pottery Barn:

I grabbed a couple of my holiday placemat pillows and the golds look great together: 

I loved the look of the little drawstring bags like on the original, but they were more than I wanted to spend. I found these simple brown paper bags instead and I actually love the look with the black:

I realized later (after I figured out how to do the letter transfer) that I could have just done the same with the letters – that would save a little bit of money as well. But I do love the gold accent. I think they add a little bling:

The bags are filled with little trinkets and some candy – I grab little things for the advent calendar after the holiday on clearance.

The Bub saw it without the bags so I can’t wait for him to get home and see it now. :) My total cost for this project was $8. A savings of more than $140 baby!:

I only had to buy the numbers and the bags (the bags came 24 to a pack so I had to buy two to get to 25, argh!). If you did this a pine board would be less than $10. Of course the color can be anything you want – that’s the fun of it. Red would be super cool too!

So there you go, yet again my wood hoarding pays off! :) I just love this – and I love that I saved so much money too! By the way, the Pottery Barn version is 10 inches by 67. Mine is 12 inches by 62. I think you could go long with this too – I almost did it vertical instead of horizontal since it’s so big. The point is to make it work for what you want – the best part of DIY!