Mason Lit Dining

I have had this room done for a while now, but I felt like it was still missing something. I am not sure what it is. Maybe a really stellar burlap table runner? Maybe something shnazzy for the table or something more on the shelves? I am not sure, so how about you let me know if you have an idea?!

So for the longest while I had been wanting a round pedestal table. I had swooned after them in magazines and on websites. And then one day the stars aligned and I found one on Craigslist for $35! SOLD! After borrowing a friends truck to pick it up (THANKS CODY)! I had the little lovely in my home. But I wanted to paint it and I wasn't sure what color I wanted to paint it. So...it sat in our living room, waiting for orders. Two weeks later I had time and an idea so I went to work. Here is what I came up with. Let me know what you think!

I painted the table a robins egg blue color. Then did some distressing to it. It has such a wonderful farm kitchen feel to it and I LOVE it!

The curtains are made out of painters drop. I put the stripes across them using textile medium and an acrylic paint color of your choice. I used painters tape to tape of where I wanted the stripes. (My stripes are not straight or perfect and I am okay with that. I think it adds to the vintage feel.) (This idea was borrowed from Diana, you should visit her blog!)

The chairs were black and I painted them "Almond". Then did the same distressing to them. The cushions are recovered using coffee sacks. They all have a different pattern on them.






The shelf on the wall is just an old book shelf that I found at the Goodwill for 10 bucks and then added baseboard to it and then painted white. Then hung on the wall using brackets. Make sure when you get the bracket you know the test weight that it is supposed to hold. This shelf isn't heavy, but I played it safe and go a 100 lb. test weight bracket. You can find the brackets at Home Depot or Lowe's in the hard wear department. (Diana gave me this inspiration, you should visit her blog)

The bushel in the corner with the red reed sticking out of it is one of my finds from the swap meet it was just $2. I LOVE the color don't you?

Found at the swap meet for $3 each. I love the blue glass Mason Jars!


Napkins that I already owned and wrapped with packaging string for napkin rings to add some color on my all white shelf.




The oar in the opposite corner is from the swap meet as well, it was $10. I love how it brings summer into the room. The black box behind it is an old type writer case. I found it in the storage shed clean out. The crate that is underneath this is very special. Throughout my whole life it has been called the camping box. It was the box my family took camping that had the plates and cups that we used for camping. My parents have had it since they got married and I feel totally honored that they let me have it!

The big project for the room was the light. I saw something similar to this at Anthropologie and loved it. So, I tried recreating it. Apparently after googling it, so have quite a few other people. So google mason jar light and you can find tons of tutorials. I took 5 pendant lights that were on sale at Lowe's for $5 each and got rid of the light cover. Then drilled a hole in the top of mason jar lids. The pendent the just screwed onto the Mason jar (perfect!). That was total of the design the next is the technical...The ceiling mount cord hole needed to be enlarged to hold all the wires so my dad helped me drill a hole bigger in that. Then, my dad helped again by wiring it all together. Now he progressively wired it, meaning he didn't wire it all together in one clump but more like braided all the pendents in one-by-one. I love it and I am forever more indebted to my pops.

We are loving the new room. It is much more comfortable than before...Oh, I guess you might want to see the before. I am not good at taking these so here is one that kind of gives you an idea of what we had to do.


See the black chairs? The plum curtains? This just didn't flow with the rest of our style! It needed a redo! Oh and by the way this glass table is for sale, if interested shoot me an email!

Do you like my redo? Do you think it needs anything else? Let me know! I would love to hear your comments!

Ruffles and Bubbles!

Hey! I hope you all had a great week! I know I am loving that it is Saturday!

This week I finished up a class for the summer. Goodbye Nursing Ethics, I will not pine after you! It is good to have it out of the way and one step closer to Master's degree, but I sure will not miss it. One more year ladies and gentlemen and I will be doneskies with schoolio...no biggie really I have only been in for the last 18 years ;)

Speaking of school, I thought I would try my hand at teaching you all something that I did for my bathroom. Let me know how you like it. Now you have to bear with me, I have never done a tutorial or a before and after reveal, so I am taking on a lot here. Be gentle with your judgement!



With that let's get rolling!

First the Before shot...this is a curtain I picked up at Wal-Mart one day for 8 bucks and thought...ehh that could do and it could not. I was never satisfied with it and in hindsight it was a total impulse buy without regard to the actual design...fail. I hate it when I do this. Oh and you may think that this curtain was never washed or ironed and you would be wrong. These wrinkles are resilient and horrendously irritating...





This is the after...



So what I did to the room and then I will give you a tutorial on how I did the shower curtain.
I painted the walls artic blue by Glidden in semi gloss. I also had to paint the ceiling because we were having some mildew issues (YUCK!!!). So I Kilz'ed that.

The box is one of my finds from the swap meet that I talked about here. It was $20, which is a little steep, but my amazing mama bought it for me for my birthday!


The mirror actually is nothing new to our home. I found it when T and I first got married at a garage sale for 2 bucks! It was a splurge when we first got married as we had NO money. It was a standing dressing mirror. When we moved down to Oklahoma the stand didn't fair well and then it was just a mirror...I had it sitting around the house despite T's asking me over and over again if we could take it to the Goodwill...I am sentimentally attached to it.




It was originally a dark cherry, but this bathroom is so small I thought it needed lighter colors to make it feel bigger. So I painted it antique white and then antique glazed it.



The little stool is perfect for when I soak in the tub, it is great for a drink or magazine to rest while you get situated :) It was one of our finds when we cleaned out those storage sheds.




So that's that with my before and after. We really love the change and the room does feel bigger despite the fact that it is so so small and our only bathroom in our house.

With that, let the tutorial begin!

I began by purchasing a shower curtain liner from Target just like this one...


I washed the shower curtain and dried it, no ironing required on this bad boy it didn't need it! Wrinkle FREE!


For the ruffles, I scored and found some old fabric in an off-white at the thrift store. SCORE!!! I cut the fabric into 3 inch strips and it look like a big pile of this...


Then I began making all those strips into ruffles...this may look daunting, but it isn't hard just time consuming. To make it easy on your sewing machine, set your tension high and your stitch length long and the work will be done for you. If your machine is not cooperating with you on this, you can make a modified ruffle by going slow on your machine and crumpling the fabric as it goes under the presser foot. (Not quite the same look but it is pretty darn close!)




When this is done you should have a big long strip of ruffle that looks like this...



Choose how many rows of ruffles you would like on the curtain. I chose 5 because that is all the ruffle that my thrift store fabric would make me, but I really like just the 5 rows to so it worked out for me. Then let the pinning begin...




Pin the ruffles to the curtain starting at the top of the curtain where the hooks go in making sure not to sew over them (you will end up making it so that you can't use the hook hole if you do this). Now this is where I learned a lesson in the project, only pin one row at a time. I thought I would save myself some time by doing them all at once...fail. It just made it hard to sew and I kept poking myself while sewing on the other rows of ruffles. Nothing major, just really annoying.

So you have pinned your first row, now you will sew right over where you made your ruffle stitch, in the same color you did your ruffle stitch so that the stitch will blend in.

Repeat these last two steps for as many rows as you want on your curtain. Then hang and enjoy!

Total cost of room?
Paint in Artic Blue by Glidden...$5 (It was a paint return at Home Depot)
Shower Curtain...$10
Thrift Store Fabric...$0.50 (It was half-off day at the thrift store)
Crate Box on Wall...$20 (Gift from my mama) so that make it $0
Stool...Free (Thank you Grandma McCord and Family!)
Mirror...Already had so we will call it free too!
Towels...Already had so we will call those free too!

Total cost...$15.50 with out the Crate, or $35.50 with it...either way a steal of a deal!

Oh and credit must be given to my stellar helper, Haywood. Thank you sir for laying on the curtain during the pinning process and pretending that the ruffles were squirrels. It helped so very much!

Mail Organizer

I have for the longest time swooned after wall organizers. I love this one by Pottery Barn, but our budget doesn't allow for it, nor do we have the space for it in our little home.



So I have tried a thousand different things that didn't work and have left me with more junk drawers than socially appropriate.


So, guess what this is! It is a cabinet door that had a metal mesh on the panels! Guess where I found it! Yup, the Habitat for Humanity Restore!



When I brought it home it was brown and had the hinges and such on it. I quickly took the hinges off and spruced it up with a little bit of spray paint! Then I had the mail box already so I fastened it on there and the hooks to right I did the same thing. I was lacking magnets that would work for this project but we had some old ones, so I took some magazine clippings, buttons and glued them on there. I also added a pouch for pens and pencils to go in. It was left over from a set of pillow cases that I had gotten a while back. I love my new Mail organizer. It is a catch all in our kitchen.




Because I paid $2 for the cabinet door and $2 for the spray paint, I felt like I could splurge on a little something else. So I got these lovely measuring spoons from Anthropologie. I love it when the ordinary can become glamorous and these certainly do that!