OCD Strikes Again

One little corner of our home has been bugging me since we moved in: the pantry. I could feel it repeatedly poking me, saying “Look how messy I am. I bet you can’t find anything. Hahaha you jerk, you tripped over something”. The pastas and rices were on all different shelves, the spices were everywhere, and there was simply no order. Also, I’m not the most graceful cook; when I dash into the pantry for an ingredient and I can hear dinner on the stove about to boil over, I panic, and I knock things over while flailing my arms. Imagine what a rogue gorilla would look like cooking. Insert my face. Bingo.

This is what the messy pantry looked like:

The long-term plan is to paint all of the grease-stained shelves white, but I didn’t quite have that amount of time. Something had to be done about the chaos, so I consider this a quick fix. I picked up a few rolls of shelf liner from Lowe’s and went to town. I got one cut perfectly to size and then I used it as a stencil for the rest. (Steve has been working extremely long hours recently which leaves me home alone a lot. This is me, left to my own devices.)

I didn’t think the liners would sit right but I was luckily, completely wrong. They sit flat and stay in place thanks to rubber backing. They’re also super wipe-able for easy clean up.

Here’s how my new pantry looks. All of the grains are together, the baking supplies, the cereals and granola bars, the canned goods, and the spices. Order. Calmness. Sigh.

One little item I’ve never mentioned before is that ice bucket you see up top. I scored that at midland for only $12 when my parents were visiting over Thanksgiving. It’s hammered aluminum and absolutely adorable. I can’t wait to have a party; you can depend on me for all of your ice needs.

I know this little pantry makeover doesn’t look like much to the average person. But knowing I can walk into this little mini room and pick up exactly what I need without searching for it is like a miracle to me. It made the world of difference.

I still need to get paint on the walls in there, yada, yada, yada… story of my life.

I want to wish everyone a very happy New Year. Have fun with your friends, get a smokin’ hot midnight kiss, and don’t drink and drive. Happy Friday!

 

 

 

 

Twinkle Twinkle Little Light Strand

I have a 10 minute DIY project for you today. I literally did this one while I gabbed on the phone with my best friend, Molly.

I was sitting on the couch looking at the fireplace and wishing that I had some sort of ambient light on the mantel. The candles look gorgeous when they’re all lit, but I don’t want to burn them every night. That’s when I remembered seeing vases filled with light strands somewhere on Pinterest and I knew I had a few extra cylindrical vases taking up room in my cabinets.

After I located the perfect vase I went on a house hunt for something to wrap it with so the light strand wasn’t visible through the glass. I probably could’ve just filled it with lights and called it a day, but all of my light strands have green cords and that just would’ve looked strange. Lace curtain? Too nice to cut. Ribbon? Not see-through enough. Leftover yellow chevron fabric? Doesn’t really fit in with the neutral mantel. That’s when I saw a bundle of twine and knew it would be the perfect material.

I started with a dab of hot glue — my glue gun is a very close second to my staple gun on my list of tools I want to marry — and just started wrapping.

Believe it or not you don’t need to glue it all as you wrap. As long as you’re wrapping it tightly enough all you need is a dab of glue to start it, and one more to finish it. (Let that first one dry completely before you start wrapping. It’ll take all of 30 seconds. OH, HOT GLUE, HOW I LOVE YOU.)

All done. See how easy that was?

I love how it gives off the same glow as a candle. I’m thinking about making a few more in different heights to even out the look. Having an outlet on the mantel is ingenious; thank you previous homeowners — you did something right.

That’s it! That’s all she wrote. She, being me. In case you didn’t pick that up. Only one more day of the work week and then it’s a nice long weekend. You can do it!

Fancy Schmancy Cornice

I can’t help but feel like an arrogant a-hole whenever I use correct terms in decorating. We built a cornice box last weekend. Then we sipped champagne and talked about that one time back at [insert name of Ivy League College here] when we got crazy and ordered caviar with red wine instead of white. OH, THE INSANITY.

Anywhoo. We did build a cornice box over Christmas weekend. And if you don’t know what that is don’t feel bad; I’ll walk you through it. The box part was built before we headed out of town, and the upholstering happened when we got back Sunday night. What can I say? Who doesn’t love a little upholstering after 5 hours on the road and a plate-full of Christmas cookies? We had some energy to burn.

FIRST AND FOREMOST — Steve got a table saw from my parents for Christmas! I wish you could’ve seen his face. One thing you need to know about him is that he would’ve been happy with a book of Mad-Libs and a new hammer. This guy never buys himself anything but I know he’s been longing for his very own table saw for years. He was shocked to say the very least. This cornice box project was the first time he got to use his new toy and he was pretty pumped up about it.

Ok, so back to this not-really-that-fancy cornice project:

My lumberjack sawed some logs for me. After taking measurements, of course. We figured out how far it needed to stick out from the window, and how tall it had to be to hide the blinds when they were drawn.

After screwing all the pieces together we held it up to make sure it fit right: LIKE A GLOVE.

The next step was to wrap the wooden frame with batting. I used the leftover medium-weight batting from my headboard project, and really, I used the exact same technique. I stapled it in the middle and then at the sides to get an even tautness. Is that even a word? Just roll with it.

You may or may not be able to see the beginning of a gallery wall getting curated in the background. And just so you don’t think we have a rodent problem, that is one of Olive’s stuffed toys sprawled out on the floor.

After the batting is all stapled on, flip that baby over and cut out a rectangle of fabric a few inches too large on all sides. (Same technique you used for the batting.) In the picture below you can see the brackets that we left exposed. Because of the way our window is configured we had to attach the bracket on the cornice box before we upholstered it. If you have to do the same, be careful about wrapping the fabric around it. You want it to lay flush on the wall.

We have got to fix our camera. Sorry for the wonky colors. Here you can see me stretching the fabric around the corners. There’s no scientific formula I followed for this. I just pulled it tightly and it sort of formed corners all on it’s own — It’s a little like wrapping a present. Just fold, tuck, and staple. (There’s a cross-dressing joke in there somewhere.) Repeat on all four corners.

Once you get all your staples in (Muwhahaha — I got to use my staple gun and it was AWESOME) go ahead and install that sucker. Ours slid right into place and stayed there with the help of a few screws.

Now for my favorite part: standing back to admire our work:

This was a good solve for us because there was really no other kind of window treatment that would’ve worked in this space. I didn’t want anything that hung down too low because I wanted all the light I could get. I’m really happy with the way it turned out. I still have about 1.5 yards of this fabric so I’m thinking about other ways to incorporate it in the space. I’ll probably throw some in a frame for the gallery wall. Everyone loves a good mustard yellow chevron print.

Whenever I get frustrated and feel like we’re not making enough progress with the house, I just look back at the photos from when we first moved in.

Even though we’re not doing groundbreaking renovations and smashing walls and floors, the little and affordable changes we’re doing are making a huge difference. Did I mention how much this project cost? ZERO DOLLARS. We already had all of the supplies laying around. So, high five for low cost / high impact projects!

I know, I know… will I just pick out a damn paint color already?

A House Drawing How-To

For many of you, by the time you’ll be reading this, it will be the morning of your first day back at work from Christmas Vacation. To prevent pissing you off even more than you already are I’ll just skip right over that.

I hope everyone had a delightful holiday weekend. Ours felt short on time spent with family and heavy on time spent on the road, but it was still worth it. We had an awesome Christmas Eve and Day with Steve’s whole family. My family is teeny tiny so it’s always exciting for me to feel the energy of a big family. Opening presents Christmas morning with Steve’s parents and brothers was so much fun. I even got my own stocking!

I’m psyched because I can finally share a fun art project I did a few weeks ago; I couldn’t spill the beans any earlier because it was a Christmas gift for Steve’s grandma. Aunt Shelley emailed me a few months ago asking if I could draw a picture of Grandma Hazel’s house, which was about to be sold. She wanted to frame it and give it to Hazel for Christmas, which I thought was an exceptional idea. I was more than happy to help and because I had already drawn Steve’s parent’s house for a Christmas gift last year, I knew exactly how to accomplish the task. (And I’ve never been commissioned to art anything before so I felt pretty fancy.)

Here’s the How-To:

First, Shelley emailed me a picture of the house. I converted it to black and white and then adjusted the lightness and darkness so it printed out with high contrast.

I taped the picture down (with painters tape — so it comes up easy) on a glass table, and then taped a piece of white paper on top of it. (NOTE: Don’t tape down the bottom edge of the white paper. Once you start drawing it’s helpful to be able to pull up the paper so you can see the photograph.)

Then, I placed a lamp under the table to create a light-box effect:

Here you can see how the photograph is seen with the light behind it:

Then, you just start drawing using the photo as your guide. I only used 3 different densities of drawing pencils: a very hard 2H, a medium HB, and a very soft 2B. Having a range of led helps to get the right lightness and darkness. Just go slow and steady, and move right to left if you’re a lefty like me.

Wowzers. My hands are pretty wrinkley. Thank you Macro Setting.

Once you get into it, and you have the basic shape down, it’s helpful to turn off the light and reference a second copy of the photograph for shading. I had an extra copy just sitting on the table so I could get an easy look if I needed it.

Steve couldn’t resist taking a picture of me hard at work. Notice how I fold up into a pretzel when I’m concentrating. Not sure why that is, but I’ve been like that ever since I was a kid.

All done!

After I mailed it to Aunt Shelley she put it in a gorgeous white frame / black mat combo that really complimented the drawing. I was so happy I was able to be there when Hazel opened her present. She adored it, and I loved being a part of it all. (I’ll have to see if I can track down a picture of her opening it.) A big thank you goes out to Aunt Shelley for unnecessarily paying me with OMG a GIFT CARD TO MIDLAND. Do you have any idea how surprised and excited I was? I may or may not have shed a tear. Or two. I will definitely be making a trip there sometime this week. Maybe I will finally find a credenza for the family room?

With some patience, and a little knowledge of drawing, you can commemorate your home. It makes a great gift, whether it’s for someone you love or just for yourself. If you don’t feel confident in your drawing abilities just trace that sucker with a fine point felt-tipped pen. It will feel less realistic and more stylized which could be just as cool.

As Bob Ross once said, “We don’t make mistakes, we just have happy accidents”. Good luck drawing your happy, little trees!

A Surprise Exchange

Let me start by saying to all of my Jewish friends: a Happy 3rd Night of Hanukkah to you! I did light candles the first night*, but missed the boat on the whole 1st night well wishes.

I guess I should start this story by telling you that Steve and I decided not to exchange presents this year because we’ve been putting so much money into the house. But because my husband is sweet as can be and knows it only takes a few bucks to thrill me, I came home from work yesterday to find one of my favorite photographs printed and sitting on the kitchen counter.

It’s a photo of Salvador Dali (my favorite artist) and a Rhinoceros that was taken by Phillippe Halsman. I love the mimicking angles on Dali’s hat and I adore the intense gaze into each other’s eyes. It looks as if they’re having an intense philosophical debate via telepathic brainwaves. I’ve tried find out more about what’s going on but couldn’t turn up much info; I’m not sure if this is a live rhino or a stuffed one. I would like to imagine he is alive and well and under Dali’s spell.

Because I am predictable I also got Steve a little something. He is ultra practical so I knew getting him a bottle capper for his beer bottle collection would thrill him. No, he’s not in college and yes, I knew about this collection before I married him. Having a collection of anything goes against all of my natural instincts, but if he can put up with my OCD than I can put up with a few hundred beer bottles. Yes. A few hundred. I’m getting anxiety just talking about it.

His criteria for keeping new beer bottles is it has to be one he’s never had before and he has to drink at least half of the bottle. It does add a fun twist to traveling; we’re always on the lookout for a new beer. He wants to build shelves to display them all, hence the need for the bottle capper.

I’ll be going into hibernation for the next few days; we’ll be on the road to see Steve’s family for Christmas. But I’ll be back next week with a few of those tutorials I mentioned in the wedding write-up as well as ::fingers crossed:: pictures of our new kitchen window treatment.

I hope everyone has a merry Christmas, a happy Hanukkah, and a festive Festivus For The Rest Of Us. I hope you get to eat lots of delicious food and get to be with the people you love. Happy Holidays from The Harpsters! xoxo

* If you’re confused as to if I celebrate Christmas or Hanukkah, the answer is I grew up celebrating both. Not the religious part — just the part where you decorate Christmas trees, light Hanukiahs, eat latkes, listen to Johnny Mathis Christmas carols, eat a big Christmas morning brunch, play the dradle game with chocolate money, and spend as much time as you possibly can with the people you love. All the good stuff.

Our Wedding: One Helluva DIY Project

With how busy we’ve been working on the house, I’ve sort of forgotten to share my proudest DIY project to date: our wedding!

There is so much to share — from beginning to end — so I’ll try to sum it up as cohesively as I can. Pardon my ADD if I start to jump around.

First, I’ll start with the invitations:

I emailed the save-the-dates so people would respond with their mailing addresses. That was my sneaky way to avoid tracking down all of the addresses right before I needed to mail the invites.

Then, about two months before the wedding our guests received our invitations and RSVP postcards.

All of the info was on our wedding blog (It’s no longer up): everything was included from hotel and venue information, to the story of how we met.

You’ve been patient, so now I’ll get to the good stuff: The Wedding Day!

Our wedding was at the home of our incredibly awesome family friends who just happen to have a totally killer, wedding-ready house. They are like a second family to me, so to have our wedding on their property was everything we had ever wanted. It gave us the ability to decorate exactly how we wanted, which made everything so warm and fuzzy. It was intimate, casual, festive, and every other single adjective that we were aiming for. To sum it up quickly before the water-works start, IT WAS OUR DREAM COME TRUE.

While my best friend, Molly, and I enjoyed a glass of wine before the festivities, our guests were greeted with this sandwich board sign that Steve and I made. I hand-painted a welcome message on one side, and a thanks-for-coming message on the other (I will post a tutorial on this project).

The short-but-sweet ceremony was held around the pool, with Steve and me standing on the deck. My mom gets full credit for making an aisle runner out of two tablecloths, and constructing the simple and stunning backdrop. The pretty flowers were left over from the rehearsal-dinner arrangements Steve’s mom had gotten made. It couldn’t have worked out more perfectly.

My handsome groom. Isn’t he charming?

After the ceremony our guests mingled on the driveway, where the reception was held. We had lots of activities to keep them occupied, as well as tons of yummy food.

Steve made Cornhole boards (tutorial soon) that got a lot of action.

We had a thumbprint guest book where we asked guests to “leaf” their prints. I need to post a picture of what it looks like all filled up. It’s incredible. My friends have some nice thumbprints, if I do say so myself.

I made a banner from decorative paper I found at Michaels and strung it around this gorgeous bird cage that my mom happened to have in her basement. This worked perfectly to hold cards; they slipped right through the bars.

We had a photobooth, complete with a prop table. Recognize the table? This got really fun as the night wore on. (Read: This got really fun as the alcohol kicked in.)

Two of my dear friends were unable to attend the wedding, so our other friends who did come brought photo cutouts of their faces so we could take pictures with them –BRILLIANT! Kelly and Mark ended up on the prop table when they weren’t cutting a rug on the dance floor.

We had the photobooth print doubles so we could have our guests leave a print behind for us. It was fun to see all of the strips hanging up at the end of the night. These boards were covered!

To make our initials I covered large cardboard letters with artificial flowers. It was a lot of plucking and gluing, but I’m happy with how they turned out. The boards were upcycled from old window shutters that Steve attached together. Then we strung hemp from one side to another and added hundreds of tiny clothespins.

And of course, our guests visited the bar:

The sign was made from an old frame I found at an antique store, and plywood painted with chalkboard spray paint. It really does work!

The map was probably my favorite project we made for the wedding. Many of our guests were coming from all over the US and I really wanted to somehow highlight that. This map was our little way of showing how much we appreciated the miles covered. With the help of a brilliant writer-friend, it was titled: “The Road You Tread To See Us Wed”

The map was a hit. We heard people proudly saying “That’s my pin!”

For the table centerpieces we kept things simple: brightly colored tablecloths and simple flower arrangements — that Molly and I arranged ourselves — paired with mason jars that I had been collecting for an entire year before the wedding. You can’t have too many candles.

Above our heads were strings of white lights and doily garland that I made by halving two different sized doilies over string, and then gluing together.

This is me, before slipping into my wedding dress, checking out the desert table. We had all homemade goodies instead of a single cake, which everyone really seemed to love. A big thank you goes out to all of our friends and family who baked their little hearts out. The dessert table was a hit!

I made the little “Love is Sweet” signs, and found that beautiful antique lace curtain on ebay, which perfectly framed the table.

Flip flops were a must-have; I think all of our dancing guests appreciated them. I scored these babies on sale for $1 a pop from Old Navy. I simply wrapped them with hemp and put size stickers on the heel of each shoe, which made for easy picking.

We danced our first dance to La Vie En Rose, by Louis Armstrong. I get teary-eyed just typing that out. You can imagine that I cried through the whole dance. I’m a softie.

My father/daughter dance was sweet, and it turned into a father/mother/daughter dance. What can I say? I’m an only child. They’re both my everything.

After all of the “first dances” we got the party started!

One of my favorite shots is one my photographer took on his way out. This picture most closely captures the mood of the night. We had about 400 twinkling candles, and the whole thing honestly felt magical.

Of course we had to cap the whole DIY Wedding Theme with thank-you cards that captured the spirit of the event.

FRONT

BACK

I designed vintage-themed postcards to send out to all of our friends, thanking them for sharing our special day with us.

I can easily say without hesitation that our wedding night was the best night of my life. We had everyone that we love in one place, and that alone makes for the perfect occasion. I also got to marry my best friend and the love of my life, so, yeah. Best. Night. EVER.

Fun with Postcards

Hello. Hi there! Guess what? I got to use my STAPLE GUN last night! Nothing is more delightful to me. Like Olive, I tend to be frightened by loud noises, but don’t think that stops me from enjoying every minute of staple gunning. And yes, I just turned that into a verb.

It all started because of a little online Christmas Shopping a few days ago. Since I was already ordering presents and I was already getting free shipping, I decided to throw in a little Christmukah present for myself. This Charley Harper book of postcards was exactly what I needed for an empty frame I already had. It was begging to be turned into a wall display. (Here’s my professed love for Charley Harper, if you missed it.)

I started with a texturally-beautiful vintage frame — that, like I said, I already owned — from an Antique Mall by our old apartment. Here is my lovely assistant modeling the frame:

Don’t let that sad face fool you. She’s having the time of her life. (She was actually just relieved that Steve finally removed my bra that he had clasped on her for about 30 minutes prior to this picture. These things happen in our house.)

I flipped through my new book, decided which pictures worked the best together, and then laid them all out to see how it was going to look.

I’m not going to lie; even though it’s a postcard book, meant to be ripped apart, it still felt sacrilegious to extract the pages.

After deciding on a layout I measured and marked where I needed to attach the string. I have to hand it to Steve: measuring really does work. I usually just eyeball everything which can lead to wonky work. He may be onto something with this whole Ruler & Pencil thing.

The next step brings me back to the beginning of this post. Wherein I told you I GOT TO USE MY STAPLE GUN. I’m not sure if I can even type that with lower case letters because that’s honestly how excited I get about it. Why, you ask? I have no idea. Just roll with it.

I lined up the string over my pencil marks, put in a staple, tied a knot around that staple, and then put in another staple (or 10). That technique seemed to work well to prevent the string from slipping out, or moving left to right.

I ran the string vertically so I only had to do three rows, instead of 4 horizontal rows.

I advise using two strings for each row, about an inch apart, to prevent the postcards from flipping around on you. After all the string was in place I simply taped each postcard on with one piece of scotch tape. This was the one step that I did eyeball, and it turned out just fine.

Sorry about the weird colors. The room was dim and our good camera is in about 14,000 pieces waiting for repair, so I’ve been using our small underwater camera and then attempting to lighten the pictures in Photoshop. I think you still get the gist of what it looks like.

I’m pretty thrilled with how it turned out, especially because fine art prints aren’t cheap. I think this was a great solve to get some wallet-friendly art on the walls. (Because I already owned everything but the postcards, this project cost me a whopping $8.76.)

I am in love with the dimension of the finished piece and the rich shadows it casts on the wall. Because the string is so lightweight the cards look like they’re floating in the frame. It’s like a magic trick sans the creepy magician. Something I love even more is when projects work out like you have them pictured in your head.

To keep with with the Charley Harper obsession, I’m thinking about recreating one of my favorites prints on a huge canvas I scored at Goodwill yesterday for only $12.99.

Can you tell I’m doing anything I can to avoid painting the walls?

Different shades of grey

The title to this post is referring to picking out paint colors, which is forcing my hair to sprout various shades of grey.

I’ve been using Valspar’s color visualizer to test out different swatches because that’s Lowe’s private selection brand of paint — which is wallet friendly. (So is Olympic, but they don’t have an online color visualizer.) I think this whole process would be much easier if I trusted the color of the digitally painted room. It looks completely different from my monitor to Steve’s monitor, to even a physical paint swatch.

I think everyone assumes that picking out wall color would be easy for me because of my art school background, my job as a designer, and just my overall artsyness, BUT IT’S NOT. DON’T LET ANY OF THAT FOOL YOU. And if I didn’t loathe painting as much as I do I would just tell myself “Self, I’ll just paint over it if this color sucks.” I want to get this right the first time. There will be no do-overs.

So, without further ado, here are the colors I’m aiming for. And YES, smartypants, I realize that about half of them look like they’re the same color.

(I have this Notre Dame swatch, which looks blue-grey taped up on my wall. That sort of makes me want to pull my hair out.)

I think I’m just going to have to approach this situation with conservative logic: get really drunk, close my eyes, and point to a swatch.

Either that, or I’ll just have to shell out the $2.50 for a sample of each of these colors, and then actually paint them on the wall in small squares.

Does anyone have any advice on picking out paint colors for huge walls? Anyone? I’m reaching unhealthy levels of desperation here, people.