Well That's Pinteresting | Christmas Party Lights

Can I say that I just adore Pinterest?

I am so thankful there is a site where I can sit day to day and be thoroughly blown away by the creativity of people and have the ability to share things I love with everyone as well! That's where these posts come into play: real life pinterest recreations with tips and tricks on how it's done efficiently and inexpensively.

Just recently I saw a pin by Miss Mustard Seed showing the process of how to create very cute party lights with a string of white Christmas lights, dixie cups and scrap-booking paper.

I thought to myself:

Those are super cute and I bet you could make them specifically for

whatever party you are having by customizing the paper. 

I wonder how that would look with regular Christmas lights?

How would the paper hold up outside in the elements?

After checking out the visual instructions in the pin,

could there be an easier, quicker way to recreate this?

What I bought at Walmart:

1 bag of  Great Value 3 oz. 100 plastic dixie style bath cups - $1.98

I already had on hand:

An X-Acto Knife

A multi-color 100 bulb strand of lights

(if you needed to buy these supplies you'd be looking at about $8 total for both)

The first thing I needed to do was hang my lights up the way I thought they would look the best outside. I'm sure any 'ol way would work, but I draped mine across my front porch from one side to the next. I know they are kind of hard to see in the light during the day.

Hey check it out!!
There's my Christmas Gift Porch Decor boxes I recently posted about!
I really like the way they turned out, they look great outside!

I took my X-Acto knife and cut a half inch X shape in the bottom of the cups, that way the cups could stick right on to the lights with no problem. That's the end of a sharpie to give you a size reference.

I took all of the 100 plastic cups outside and for about 5 minutes quickly stuck them on every light (it was really stinkin' cold out there). They slipped right on and hung on pretty well, so it was pretty easy to do.

They could be Christmas lights, they could be Party lights, either way they turned out pretty nifty. I like the way the colors are projected through the cups. Instead of being one single dinky light it's a full cup of color awesomeness.

TIP TIME

1.
The reason I like using the plastic cups vs. the paper cups is they can get wet and they won't get ruined. The paper cups would work great for an indoor party, or even an indoor porch, but I believe this would be your best bet for something outside.

2.
With no cutting of a paper stencil to put paper on these cups it took no time at all to do this. It was super easy and cheap, especially if you already have the lights you want to use.

3.
You CAN write on these cups.
You can take a black sharpie and draw designs and make them more interesting than just regular light projecting plastic cups. With the lights flipping this way and that I wouldn't suggest letters. I wrote some on a few cups to see what it would look like and you couldn't read them.


There ya go! That was simple and fun, wasn't it?
I think I'm going to make these weekly posts on Friday's instead of Tuesday's that way you have something creative to work on for your weekend! Like you don't have enough to do right? haha!

Make sure to pin one of my pictures from this post please!!

Stay tuned for next weeks post when I start diving into household handmade cleaners!
It's time to take it back to the good old days and stop wasting so much money at the store!!

Well That's Pinteresting | Christmas Gift Porch Decor

Hello there everyone!

I've been spending some time on Pinterest lately and have found that there are so many good ideas and items that I can recreate myself for our home. I guess that's the whole purpose behind Pinterest, right? So I decided that I'll be sharing these things in weekly posts called "Well That's Pinteresting". I'll show you all the deets on how I recreated what Pinspired me, such as: the cost, the process itself, some tips, plus a few ideas and possible tweaks I come up with too.

First up, being the Christmas season and all (and moving into our new home with absolutely no Christmas decor other than a blow up snowman, so you know we need some stuff around here) I figured I would focus on some cute decor for the outside of the home. I saw this pin for these super cute wrapped Christmas gift boxes and I knew that I would be able to pull off something close to it and it be rather inexpensive. Here they are in all their cuteness:

I love the way they are stacked with a little bit of a tilt. I also know that I wouldn't really be able to pull that off because there are a lot of kiddos and toys flying around this neighborhood. I could see a pile of boxes on my front porch tipping over with a quickness. Plus, I'm not even sure how they did that without some type of Harry Potter spell. Looks pretty, and complicated, and I really didn't want to spend too much time working on something simple. Inexpensive simplicity is what I'm going for here people!! :)

Here's what I bought at Walmart:

3 staggered sized packing boxes - less than $3

One large shiny red bow - $2.50

One large roll of Christmas paper - $2.50

I already had on hand:

Packing tape

Trash bags

Two empty containers to hold water

Some left over Christmas paper from last year

Some red shiny ribbon from my wedding 3 years ago

First off I filled my bottles up with some high quality H20, as the Water Boy would call it. The bottles of water were to keep the boxes weighed down so they wouldn't blow off. Just because I knew the temps would drop outside then heat back up, I put the bottles in their own trash bags to keep the condensation from ruining the cardboard when/if any water would freeze and then thaw.

Here's the boxes stacked and taped. I would say they are about 40-45 inches tall or so stacked like this.

Here's the middle box wrapped in different paper than the bottom one in the background.

Check em out!!! Too cute!!!

Granted, they don't have the funky cool tilt and all, but they were super easy and cheap to make... way better than buying some pre-made stuff at a big box store.

TIP TIME

Here's the time where I tell you what I learned during this process, that way I can pass on good knowledge to you so you don't have any issues if you decide to make something like these boxes:

1.

Two bottles probably isn't going to cut it for weight in the boxes. I put just the two in the bottom box, an old gallon can of paint I didn't really want in the middle box (that way if it freezes and goes bad I won't care), and some grout we had in a bag in the top box.

2.

Buy enough paper and ribbon. These boxes are big and you'll need a good sized roll of both to cover everything. The average sized paper roll I bought was just barely enough for the bottom and top box. I definitely didn't have enough for the middle box so I used two different kinds.

3.

Be careful when you are putting the ribbon under the box after wrapping. You don't want to tip over whatever you have inside of the box weighing it down.

Aaaaand that would be it!!

There's not much else I could suggest other than have fun wrapping some pretend gifts and don't get a paper cut, those smart!

Make sure to pin one of my pictures from this post please!!

Stay tuned for next week when I tackle an outdoor Christmas light idea!!

Say hello

 ....to Thomas!

Wallace: "Would you like a drink 'ol chap?"

Thomas: "Yes sir, I don't mind if I do."

Ahhhh yes, the 'good ole days' when furniture was made well and had class.

If you don't know who Wallace is, he would be the little table on the left who is offering his glass to Mr. Thomas, just like old friends do. If you've been around awhile, you'll remember Wallace was a piece I completed from way back in May of last year. For some reason he never sold and my husband swooned (if guys actually do that...) over him forever and a day, so Wallace became a permanent furnishing to our home much to the delight of my husband.

Wallace is named after my maternal Grandfather, so how fitting was it to name this antique chair Thomas after my Hub's paternal Grandfather. At first the goal was this 100+ year old chair would be cleaned up and sold, but again the Hub's swooned over it (I guess guys DO do that). As much as I played it off like "I just coooouldn't keep it.. it'd be worth too much to clean up and sell"... little did he know that for hours I toiled over cleaning and oiling the wood and gears, plus bees-waxing the rest just to surprise him on his birthday with his new desk chair.

So now good 'ol Mr. Wallace and Mr. Thomas can stay together and share a drink and a cigar and reminisce of the days of yore when things were simpler.

:)

Say hello

...to just 1/4 of another vintage 1930's dining set I am doing for another great customer! This next set has this mini-buffet, a full size buffet, a large table and all the chairs to match. I honestly can't complain about working on these vintage pieces, they are fabulous with their leggy legs and great detail. 

Ms. L is in the middle of a marvelous kitchen makeover/room addition at her house in God's country. Her plan was to get a new dining set to compliment the interior face-lift her house was receiving. She had already ordered her cream colored kitchen cabinets and thought, wouldn't it be grand to have something that matched it all? Insert me here. So she found the perfect dining set, I picked it up for her, we pow-wowed for a min and then the adventure began. Ms. L is quite fond of the natural top look. After finishing this pretty little lady up with paint, I left the top original and wiped her down well with Murphy's Oil Soap to get the grungy stuff off. Then I gave her a good waxing on and off with a layer of  Johnson's Paste Wax. I delivered her just in time for Ms. L's daughters baby shower the next day. She used it as a centerpiece for her decor and it was a big hit with the ladies! Yes!!!

*fist pump*

Hope you guys enjoyed this little restyle!

I'm really busy here in the lab so stay tuned to the blog, more pieces will be poppin' out like a frying pan full of popcorn!!

XO,

Say hello

You know what I love about babies? 

1. They are uuuuber cute.

2. I can love on them like crazy and then hand them back to their parents.

3. I love how babies have the most stylish nurseries now a days!

4. I love creating furniture for aforementioned chic nurseries.

So when my friend Ms. T came to me and said, "Susan, you know I need you to make something cool for my bean." Well, of course I said HECK YEAH I'm game. So T found this pretty boring, yet seeping with potential, wardrobe on CraigsList for a really good price. She loved the robin's egg blue I used on Thelma and Louise, and granted I had like a ton of paint left over, so all systems were a go and this baby got a makeover.

And let me tell you this...

Little sweet Tallulah is going to love her new wardrobe when she makes her debut in 8 weeks.

I'm soooo excited to see her when she arrives!!!

:)