My desk is done!!!

Yay!!!! I finally did it! I bought this desk almost a year ago and it say in my garage and then moved to my new garage and oh boy I needed it.
I started it before I had school and I did not have enough time to finish it, so it took a while . Between classes and work I would do a little each day.
I painted it a light beige and I didn't like it, so I mixed in some black and came up with this gray I loved. Then I decided to do the white accents and the chevron chair, which was a pain. Whoever said chevron striped were easy!!?!?!
But anyways here it is!!!

I had a moment of panic while I was doing it when I realized I had picked up oil based primer, but after researching a while I found out it's ok to use any paint on it so phew!! that was a close one.
After the 2 coats of paint I gave 2 coats of polycrilic to the surface of the desk and the chair.
For the white details I used a concealer brush I had laying around somewhere. The chevron stripes were a pain to trace but I found a good tutorial on google and I followed it.

For some reason the different lighting affects the color in the picture but it is gray.
Here it is in my room all set up!!!

And of course the before and after!!!!

Stay tuned for more upcoming projects for my living room!
Cheers!

I'm on a roll

Sooo I seem to be motivated after my move. I have finished another PhD (Project half done).
This one I started right before I moved so it arrived to my new house half way done and it has been looking at me all along so last night I stayed up til midnight and I finished it.
I love it! Here is the old ugly print.

This set I bought 9 years ago when I was pregnant with my second child. I love it and it is the most comfortable living room set I have ever had, it is also in great shape, so instead of spending $1000+ on a new set I decided to reupholster them myself. Yes it has been a bit of an adventure considering I started in January lol, but slowly but surely I have finished 2, sort of.
Keep in mind between moving, divorcing and school it has been a bit crazy here.
So for this chair I got the fabric at Home Fabrics, I think I payed $5.99 a yard and I bought 6 yards to have a bit extra for pillows. This chair was a bit difficult because of the upholstered legs, but I figured it out by taking pics as I was taking it apart.
Here is the final result, I am pretty happy with it, there are a few wrinkles here and there, but it's ok since it is for me. My wign back chair turned out much better since it was an easier shape to do and no upholstered legs.

Here is a picture of my loveseat, which I started long ago and I finished a couple of months ago but never posted it for some reason. I still need to do all the pillows so only one pillos was made to try out the pattern and the rest are still with the old fabric on...oh well I will get to them lol.

And here is my upcoming project , this is my desk I got like a year ago lol and it's time to finish it because I need it!!! Hopefully I can do it before I start school on Monday .
Cheers!!

Just keep painting...

So yessss, I am all moved in!!! This has been so far the worst and longest move of my life! I started last Friday and I kept going back and forth even after work every day until we were done. What a hassle!
Of course I had a couple of project going on while we moved, yeah call me crazy but I needed a few new items ready for the new house.
First of all I had a dresser that my neighbor Jeanne had given me a few months back. My oldest daughter claimed it and I started painting it a while ago but I stopped and then I decided to finish it before we moved, nice idea! So I had painted the dresser part but I still needed to paint the mirror. She also wanted like a "washed look" with yellow and the hardware in a pastel color.
I went with Annie Sloan of course since it's fast. I did 2 coats of Old White on the whole thing and then I tried to "wash with Annie Sloan Arles but was coming out too dark so I mixed the Arles with some glaze and "washed away" . It turned out super cute!!!! She picked Krylon's Ocean Breeze for the hardware and we were set!! Look at how cute it looks!!

Here is the before, of course with all the craziness I forgot to take before pics so here it is half way done.

And here is the final result.

I love it!!

My other project was a dining set I picked up for $50, it has a half wood, half stone table and 4 matching chairs. I loved it , it is super heavy and very well built. So I started painting it before I moved and just finished waxing it today!!

Here are the chairs before.

  

 

 

And here they are after!!! I used Annie Sloan's Graphite for this project and gave it 2 coats of wax. I love it!! I really like the look of the stone with the chalky black.

 

More to come as I try to make my new home functional!!!

Stay tuned

Cheers!!!

 

 

And more party!

So a few people asked me about last year's birthday party which was Adventure Around the World themed, and I decided to post a few pics and tips on how I did it.
First of all I made the invitations, I usually do this since I like something unique and I am all about DIY. For this particular invitation I used my cricut and I cut some cards, I used a rectangular one and it had the open flap already done. I wanted to do a suitcase so I cut little "handles" and I pasted them onto one side of the "suitcase". On one side of the invitation I made a frame out of travel themed paper and I added a photo of the kids on the other side the flap "suitcase" opened and you found the info. I grabbed a travel image and used it as background and printed my info there. So the invitation had a few layers, I also decided to do board passes, I used the same papers and I printed the name of each child on them so they had to bring them to the party in order to board the plane for the adventure. Here are the pics.

 Here are the boarding passes .

 

 

As the kids arrived I gave them explorer hats, plastic binoculars, water cans and passports, all bought at oriental trading. Once they gave me their boarding passes, we "boarded" the plane. I was the pilot and we were ready for an adventure around the world.

We stopped in a few countries. We had China, France, Italy, Australia and Mexico. I enlisted the help of my teen daughter and her friends, my mom and the kids' dad. At each country we had to collect a trinket and they got their passports stamped. I used the stickers that came with the passports as stamps and for the countries I didn't have stickersfor, I bought a stamp online.

 After our trip we were so hungry!!! We even brought the italian chef with us and she made us pizza!

After we collected all the trinkets, we traded them for the big prize, which was a world decorated pinata, I just got a smiley face pinata at Zurchers and then I decorated it myself. We had a blast!

 The costumes I had before hand , and I tried to use the countries I had stuff for, or were easy to shop for.I also had the girls read some fun facts about each country so we learned a bit while we "traveled".

So that's all folks!! I hope you enjoyed and if you have any questions shoot me a message on my facebook page.

Cheers!!

Party, party,party!!!

So I have two July babies and I always do a big party for both of them. We have had Disney, Cowboys, Adventure Around the World and this year we went all out with a Carnival Party.
I am a DIYer, so I start early. Although since this year I'm moving I had to cut some corners.
I started by ordering my invitations on Etsy, these were super cute and by far the best price I found, they were $28 for 15 printed and personalized invitations. Everyone else I checked were between $12 and $18 for just the digital file, so yeah no thanks. Brightside Prints won my pennies. Here they are.

Next I had to come up with my booths, I decided on 9 different ones, I did a Photo Booth, took apart an old picture I had and painted the frame and decorated it, put out props and other fun things, I hang it on one of the trees in my yard and I used fishing line so it was invisible. The kids loved it.
Then for the Snacks station I decided to do easy food since I was going to be busy outside with the rest of the stuff, so I did strawberry lemonade, corndogs, popcorn, nachos (chips and velveeta) and some potato salad and broccoli salad for the grownups. I also got individual baggies of chips.
I wanted to use tickets so instead of giving tickets at the entrance I made it Chuck e cheeses style, they played, earned tickets and then exchanged them for prizes, so for my prize station I gathered a bunch of glass jars and filled them with all kinds of stuff, suckers, little sticky hands, necklaces, rings for 1 or 2 tickets and then I had bigger items like jump ropes, squirt guns, glasses and other stuff for 4 or 5 tickets, I labeled the jars with the amount of tickets and decorated them with red bows. All stuff I got at the dollar store and some twirly popsicles I got a oriental trading. For the signs I downloaded a Circus font and printed my own.

Then I had a balloon twisting station which my oldest daughter took care of, if you are new to balloon twisting buy good quality ones like Qualatex at Amazon, the ones at Walmart are bad and they pop easily when you twist. They also have a nice pump.
I also had a Potato Sack Race station, I got the sacks at oriental trading for $8 ( pack of 6).
Then I also had a balloon dart station, I put numbers inside the balloons to determine the amount of tickets the kids won when they popped them. Do not hang the balloons until about an hour before, because they pop!!!! We had interesting weather and it got a bit windy and half of my balloons popped , not cool, so I inflated them and kept them in a plastic container until it was time, then my helper put them up as they went on.
I also had a Duck Pond ran by my 10 year old son, I put a number under the ducks and you picked one and got the amount of tickets written under the duck, this was mostly for the little kids. Helpful tip, BUY WEIGHED DUCKS!! I got the regular kind and they do not float upright so I had to glue pennies under them, I used E6000 glue for this, but it was an extra step I did not expect. The weighed ducks are $5.99 for a box of 12 at oriental trading, shoulda, coulda, woulda ...

Then I had a Ring Toss, I used some old Coca Cola bottles and painted them red, and had some pool rings that came in handy, I painted the box red and white and that was easy.
For the Bean Bag Toss I had a board already cut from an old game so I just decorated it red and white and got the bean bags at Oriental Trading for like $5.

I even had a Wii Carnival Games station for the little kids.

 

 

Kids had tons of fun at the Photo Booth and ate all the treats.

 

 

The games were a success and everyone participated.

 

 

Then it was cake time! I have learned my lesson that kids do not like fancy and expensive cakes, so I always get my cakes at Walmart, here at my local one they have an awesome cake girl and she does whatever you like if you take a pic or something, I took the invitation and she did it that way, it turned out cute!!! I always just get white cake and ice cream and that does it for the kids.

 

 

Then it was present time!!! The kids were loving it.

 

 

After the 3 hours of fun and eating, we sat down and enjoyed the cool evening.

And here I am with The Help!! I got striped fabric at Hobby Lobby with a 40% off coupon and made some little aprons for the tickets, the bows I got at Zurchers ( party store) for $1.30 each. I asked my helpers to wear a white tshirt and voila we had The Help, I had to grab a couple helpers last minute who were out of uniform but oh well, it was fun!!
The weather was rainy and some of my pics are blown because the sun would poke out and I had to constantly meter my camera!!! But we had tons of fun!!!!
I hope you enjoyed the party with us!!!
Cheers!!!!

Feeling like supermom on a weekday 2 ( Indian style)

Soooo it has been a long while. Projects are still going here, I just haven't had time to post.
Today though, was the day. And here I am.
I got home from work and I was craving some naan or indian bread. I follow a cool videoblog on youtube called Majulaskitchen and she makes awesome food.
So as I was mixing a batch of naan I thought, why not make some rice and a dish to go with it?
So Manjula has a very yummy yellow rice recipe, so I made that and then I googled a few recipes on one of my favorite Indian dishes, Saag Aloo, which basically means spinach and potatoes.
I always have spinach in my fridge and of course potatoes, I skipped the chilies on these recipes because my body type does not do well with spicy foods.
So here are a few pics and the links to Manjula's videos which are awesome.
Naan
Naan recipe by Manjula
Fried yellow rice
Fried Yello Rice by Manjula

And for the Saag Aloo I used

3 tbsp sunflower oil
1 onion chopped
1 garlic clove chopped
1 tbsp grated ginger
1 tsp cumin seeds
1 tsp mustard seeds
1 tsp turmeric
Salt to taste
2 lbs fresh spinach chopped or baby spinach
4 potatoes cubed and previously boiled for 5 minutes.
2 tbsp cream or plain yogurt
Some people use chilies and lemon but I skipped both.

Fry the onions, garlic and ginger until onions look clear, add spices and cook until fragrant, add a bit of water if spices stick to the pan. Add spinach gradually letting it wilt to add more, cover and cook for 10 minutes, add potatoes and simmer for 10 more minutes. Add cream stir and serve with rice.

Valentina rolling out the naan, she was trying to make funny faces but I made her laugh.

Tadaaaaaaa!
That's all folks!!
Cheers and happy summer.

After a few stumbles, here it is!! The crackle desk!

So it was a busy weekend here and I finished 2 projects!! Woot! go me!!
Between work and these crazy last weeks of school things get out of hand here sometimes.
I was able to finish my boys' desk and my other dresser matching the one I did last, remember?
And yes I do have before pictures this time!!!

So first onto my dresser number 2, here are pics of the before. These dressers were in pretty good shape when I got them. I did use my stapler to secure the drawer bottoms though.
As you can see I had already taken off the hardware when I realized I needed before pics!!!
But I got them.

So same treatment as the other one, 2 coats of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint, one coat of Annie Sloan Clear Wax, and touched up with Gilder's Paste in German Silver. Voila . Dresser number 2 done!

And the before and after of course.

I love these dressers!!! I looked for so long for the perfect matching ones and my patience paid off.

Now onto the desk.
Since I did not use Annie Sloan paint on this one it did take a bit longer. This was kind of a trial and error project for me lol. It took me weeks, due to weather, wrong paint, crappy looking map and so on.
So I will let you in on a few tips, so hopefully you do not struggle as I did.
First of all I did prime this bad boy, I gave it 2 coats of Killz primer, and let it dry for a couple days.
Next I went to Lowe's and the person who sold me the crackle glaze told me I needed to use flat paint first and then satin. Well I have never liked Lowe's for some reason, I always go to Home Depot and it turned out this person was dead wrong!!! UGHHGHG
After I bough a quart of flat off white paint and painted my desk, I happened to read the instructions on the glaze container, well it turns out you need to use sating paint before the glaze and then flat so the paint will crack nicely. If you don't,it does not crack!!! OMG I was so mad!!
I had even picked up a gallon of oops paint at Home Depot and I planned on using that color.
So now I could not use it because it was satin paint and I needed flat. Luckily I had also gotten a quart of satin off white just to have it and I used it for the first coat ( if you can count, my desk has now 4 coats of stuff on lol)
So off I go to Lowe's and I forget my sample at home, so I end up getting a color that was too blue, I was pretty fed up by now.
So I go and exchange it, and they tell me they do not exchange paint ( what????) but will do me a favor this time, blahhh, so yeah I got the flat paint and I was finally able to finish this desk!!! Geez!
I proceeded to paint the desk with the glaze, someone at Home Depot had told me to lay it on thick if I wanted it to work, since so many people complained the cracks were not that big, I got a bit discouraged by that but I just went with the advice and used like half the container of glaze on the desk.

I let it dry for a few days ( weather, work, kids you know). Finally I was ready to paint!! I had tried the glaze on a small piece of wood and it seemed to work well.
I started with a nice big Purdy brush ( use a brush for the glaze and top coat) and I went at it. Let me tell you the paint dries very fast on top of the glaze, so if you try it, just lay it on thick ( not to drip but you get what I mean) and do not go over the painted area with the brush or the cracks get smaller, so in other words do not overstrech the paint. Be generous.
I was amazed at the crackle effect, as soon as the paint started drying ( like 10 seconds) it started cracking, it was awesome!!! And the cracks turned out awesome, even better than I expected.
You only need one coat on top of the glaze so this step was quick.
After this I let the desk dry for another few days. Now the hard part, the map.
I had purchased a map on Amazon that was a bit too dark for my taste but hey , I was going to use it.
Well for all of us Mod Podge amateurs here is a word of advice, do not attempt to Mod Podge a huge piece of anything without watching at least a few videos on you tube lol.
I pasted the map and looked horrible!!!!! OMG I was so upset, we tried rolling pins, even puncturing the bubbles with pins lol, but it looked hideous. So I ripped out, yes I ripped the map out , washed the surface and went online and ordered a new map at the National Geographic website ( nicer map).
So of course my desk took yet another week to be done. My kids were whining and moping, MOOOOOOOM when is the desk going to be ready????
Finally the map got here and after watching some videos I learned the map needed to be sealed with acrylic sealer for a better result. Well I got the Mod Podge acrylic sealer at Hobby Lobby and I sprayed the map like 5 times, just to make sure.
Finally I Mod Podged it, and it looked much better than the first one. A few wrinkles here and there but, hey, I was happy.
So the desk was finally done!! I gave it 2 coats of polycrylic on the entire desk to protect the crackle from fading and I gave the top 5 coats to make sure the map doesn't rip or come apart and for a smoother finish.
It stayed beautifully and I love it !!!!!! This cost me blood, sweat and tears but I am in love with, not even mention my boys, they are super excited.
So here it is!!! Before and after.

And the chair to go with it.

I am so glad these guys are done!!! Busy week!!!
Hopefully next week I will have finished something else....like my couch!!!
Cheers!