A "Knacktastic" Buffet

It's become quite an awesome tradition that every year for Christmas I thank Barb Blair from Knack Studios with a mini-replica of an authentic Knack piece. I do this because from day 1 when I began this process of restyling furniture, she has been there step by step encouraging me along and helping me when I get stuck in a pickle. If it wasn't for her taking her precious time out of her day to do this I would be L.O.S.T., and definitely not as educated as I am today about how to restyle furniture.

So this year I scoured her portfolio page on her website for the perfect piece, then I went to a local doll house store and sought out something relatively close to what I wanted to replicate. I knew it wouldn't be spot on identical, but I wanted the same type of style. In the end I picked her "Knacktastic" buffet and bought a long 3 drawer buffet from the store, some accessories, green beads and paint and went to town!!

If you are a fan of Knack you'll know that Barb just loves the odd bubble shaped vases to put single stem puffy flowers in. She also often uses books covered in white and different types of buntings in her furniture photo shoots. If you didn't know, Barb has a new book that is coming out in April called Furniture Makeovers that I know she is super excited about. Head on over to Amazon and pre-order it!!

I took all these inspirations, turned on the Photoshop, and recreated her book cover to fit one of the teeny tiny books and then downloaded a font to replicate the chalkboard so I could line the drawers. I then cut itty bitty triangles out of newspaper and hot glued them to some black sewing thread to make a miniature bunting. Then after some paint, some distressing and 3 green bead pulls later, I created this magnificent mini-buffet with the best decor accents ever!

How friggan' caaaayute is this!?!

It literally made my inner 5 year old girl squeal with glee, and as usual I had a hard time packing it up in a box and sending it to her. haha! I just loved it so much.

But alas, I wasn't done...

With the focus being on how absolutely adorable tiny things can be, I hit up my uber talented jewelry making best friend Ann Marie from Archaic Mementos. I snatched a super awesome miniature terrarium necklace with a grazing deer in it from her and added it to gift box for Barb. That thing is the bomb diggity and she has a ton more for sale on the Archaic Mementos website!!! Go snag one up before they are gone!!!

I just know Barb will "dig" her terrarium necklace, and I'm pretty sure this new mini-piece of heaven will be proudly displayed on one of the shelves in the display drawer I made last year for her. I hope you guys like it too!!

xo,

Thanks to Marian, Miss Mustard Seed herself, for the feature on

!!! :)

Watch Out 2013, I'm Comin' Atcha!!

That's right 2013, you better watch out because I have your number and I plan on owning you!! You are going to be a great year! Don't you forget it, or try to run astray, because I have so much planned...so you're gonna be a busy and successful year!!! No back talking, it's happening so you best just hush!

I'm so pumped, can you tell? I just can't wait to get moving!!

If you're willing to take the trip with me, lets reflect back on 2012...

*insert Wayne and Garth doing the "flash back" hands and sound*

At the beginning of the year I took some time off because I was utilizing a gift from my maternal Grandmother who passed away in 2011. This is her holding my now 7 year old son. She lived on the other side of the states so I'm so glad that we had this time for her to meet him. Who knows when we would be back to see her again.... Unfortunately she became ill and we never got a chance to visit before she passed.

Thanks to her generosity, I paid some bills, took care of an extensive amount of hail damage on my truck (like over 200 dents and almost $3k worth of damage) bought my Canon T3 and put some money into my business.

After all that was settled I finished up my annual "thanks for being awesome" Christmas gift for Barb at Knack. I painted her a union jack chest and made this display shelf out of a left over drawer. I was so excited because I knew that many more wee pieces of furniture would be sent to her and this would be the perfect item to display them in.

Then my friend C and I got together and made plans for her 1930's dining room. Since I started working on furniture I would drool over her set every time I came to her house so I was stoked that she finally decided it was time for a makeover. Even though it's taken longer than I expected (I have one last piece to go, which is the china cabinet) each piece turned out AMAZING. I have received the best compliments on the yellow table and the matching chairs, but the blogosphere lost it (in a good way) when they saw the orange buffet. It was featured all over the place, pinned like crazy on Pinterest and just adored by the masses. That made me feel SUPER special and made C quite happy.

When I first initially started my journey with her furniture I planned to whip right on through it, but life jumped in the way a few times and stalled me out. In March we lost our Pop, which is my husbands maternal Grandfather, to a stroke. Losing him tore our hearts in two. This is Pop with our kids 7 years ago.

Right after Pop passed at the hospital we went outside and I looked up and saw this heart shaped cloud, and before it blew away I snapped a pic of it. 

We love you too Pop.

I got back to work on C's furniture, but when summer came we decided it was time that we move on from Collinsville, IL and move back home to Missouri. So we bought our first home in St. Charles. It was hard saying goodbye to our rented home because it's where my dream of restyling furniture started, but bigger and better things called to us and in the end we are happier that we own now.

My good friend T, who I've known since the early 90's and who was our real estate agent, was pregnant through our whole house buying experience. In fact, I hadn't seen T since probably the late 90's and thanks to Facebook we reconnected. I was so ecstatic because I hadn't seen her in years and it was like time stood still and we were the same goofy kids from back then. After we moved in T wanted me to restyle a wardrobe for her baby Tallulah. It turned out very pretty and little Tallulah made her wonderful appearance the day after Christmas!!! She's B-E-A-yooootiful!!!

And as if the year couldn't have got any better, I was blessed to meet and work with a new customer Ms. L!! She had another 1930's set for me to work on plus other projects that are still up and coming!! This was the first piece completed of the set, a mini-buffet!

So throughout the year I had: hardships, losses, wins, re-connections, laughs, fun with friends, frowns, a few tears of frustration, a few days I didn't want to get out of bed, a few days where the bed couldn't hold me, aches and pains, excitement, feeling humbled, struggles, successes, praises, blessings in disguise... but even though there were so many ups and downs I'm still here. I'm still pushing on, persevering and determined to succeed and grow. 

I hope you enjoyed my walk through time. There was so much more I could add, but I'm sure you're groggy eyed by now. haha! I hope you stick with me through my journey in 2013, because like I said at the top of this post I'M GOING TO OWN IT. 

Have a safe and fun New Years and I'll see ya on the flip side!!\

Well That's Pinteresting | It's Spa Day for Your Shower!

That's right ladies, it's time for a spa treatment! Oh not for you, oh no... it's for your shower! Let's get those cleaning gloves on and give that dirty DNA water receptacle a good cleaning!

When I use to clean my showers I used Comet Bath Cleaner. Every single time I would spray it, even if I was covering my face with my shirt, I would gag and sneeze from the chemicals. So when I found this Martha Stewart recipe for a homemade tub/shower cleaner I just had to try it. Then I found this great idea on how to remove mildewy grossness from the caulking in your tub and thought, well heck... if I'm in here cleaning the shower I might as well put 5 more minutes of effort in and make it nice and sparkly.

There really isn't much to this other than simple house hold cleaners you should already have laying around, but if you don't, jog over to your local grocery store and grab what you need.

Supplies for your day at the shower spa:

water

1 teaspoon dish soap

1 cup baking soda

a dual sided sponge or scrub brush

a bowl

bleach

large cotton balls

Toss your 1 cup of baking soda in a bowl and add the teaspoon of dish soap and add just enough water to make it pasty. Not too thick, not too runny...it should look like this:

Now depending on the grossness of your tub (I know it's harsh to say, but common... some of our tubs really need this and you know it) you can either use a double sided sponge or a scrub brush. Even though mine was pretty dirty, I just used a sponge like this and put a heaping spoonful of baking soda mixture on it, then flipped it on the scrub side for abrasion. You will find that some will drip down into the tub, which is all good because you'll be using it down there too.

How dirty was my tub, you ask? This dirty. Not only had I just bathed my Sphynx kitty (she has major oils that come off of her which leave a nasty ring on the tub) I had dropped a bottle of shampoo and it sprayed everywhere plus there was the grimy soap crap on the walls too.

Here's the spotted dirty fixtures.

I used 2 heaping spoonfuls on the left wall, 3 on the large middle wall and 2 on the right wall with the fixtures, then a little more to clean the fixtures themselves. I would say I used a couple in the bath as well, plus all the stuff that dripped down. After a good rinsing I had a beautifully clean shower!

Hey look, there's me in the reflection!! So shiny!!

SOLD.

I'm never buying stinky chemical cleaners for my shower ever again.

Now on to that pesky mildew crud you see under my fixtures... (I do clean after midnight sometimes. haha!)

I poured some bleach into a small bowl (sorry Princess Jasmine...) then soaked a large cotton ball in it and stuck it up against the caulking to where I felt like it was snug enough to do it's job. You can use your fingers, or Q-Tips or whatever you want, just make sure it's nice and snug. Darn it if I didn't take a picture of this process, but I think you'll get the idea that you'll need to apply as many cotton balls to the area that is mildewed as you'll need. In the original pin the girl who tried this used the perm cotton strings you can get at a beauty supply store, but good 'ol regular cotton balls work too.

Here's my before pic. BLECH. GROSS. We just bought this house, so I'm getting use to its quirks, and that night whilst cleaning I found out that the water drips down the fixture underneath on the bottom and follows it down to the tub....hence the reason for the mildew build up right there. We have a couple other nasty areas as well, like the corners so I slapped some cotton balls there too.

Leave the cotton on overnight.

Awake in the morning, remove and toss your cotton balls and yell "BOOYAH" because the mildew will be totally gone.

Ahhhhhh... wasn't that spa treatment so relaxing?

Ok ok, cleaning is not relaxing, but rather satisfying instead knowing that you aren't spending a horrible amount on cleaners and you aren't damaging your lungs by breathing that nasty stuff in.

TIP TIME

1.

As you can see, my shower walls are tile and my tub is old school porcelain from the 70's. This concoction of baking soda and soap worked great in my situation. It should work well in yours too, if you have the same type of thing. I've also read that fiberglass shower/tubs will be ok and shouldn't scratch up using this mix.

2.

In the original Martha Stewart post they suggest using anti-bacterial essential oils like Tea Tree Oil. I didn't have any of that, and personally didn't see a use for it. And as for fiberglass showers, apparently essential oils can mar the surface, so I wouldn't suggest adding any to the mixture if you have a fiberglass shower/tub.

3.

I didn't even use all of the baking soda soap mix during this process, even though I was using heaping spoonfuls, so next time I think I might do 3/4 of a cup instead of a full cup.

I hope you enjoyed my shower cleaning day at the spa!

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

and have an amazing weekend!!