just say Om...ombre diy canvas art

Sit down.

Cross your legs.

Close your eyes.

Breath deeply and say Om....

And then finish it with -bre because Kevin and I got our Picasso on this weekend and made a crazy awesome DIY ombre canvas art piece for our dining room wall.

After obsessively searching over the last year for the just right art and arguing the pros and cons of a funky gallery wall vs. a statement piece, I finally searched "DIY ombre canvas art" on Pinterest and used this blog post as our inspiration.

Not only will we save major cash, but perhaps this final decision will cure me of my insomnia.

We wanted the same color scheme as our inspiration piece, but changed our lines to horizontal. I also wanted the color to extend all the way to the edge of the canvas.

Just personal taste.

Fortunately for me, my software sales by day husband is a repressed artist by night. However, this really can be done by someone with stick figure expertise, such as myself.

Case in point: my recent artistic chalk rendition of Kevin getting tubed:

Now let's show off Kevin's abilities, shall we?

Measure your canvas with your brush to plan how many shades you need. We used a  2" brush on a 36x48 canvas. Our wall is 13 feet long and we wanted to have one large focal piece.

The most complicated step is making sure that you mix your colors carefully so you get the right gradation of color.

We followed the directions on the blog and started with the dark color, which was a deep forest green and then added white on each plate, starting with one drop on the next, two drops after that, three on the following, etc. However we now think we'd do it backwards. Start with white and add green. We had to go back to a few plates and add more white as the colors were not showing enough difference.

Kevin did a simple sweep for each row. Because we needed thicker rows, we used the same color on two rows.

 

 When we found that two colors were too similar, Kevin simply went over the row that needed to be lighter with some white streaks of paint.

I am so thrilled with the end result. I just may have done my happy dance and clapped with glee. And I'm just saying for the record, that having a guitar playing, paintbrush swaying husband is pretty dang cool.

Here's the final reveal...my house is always this orderly by the way.

Or not.

This room is half way there. Home decorating is a marathon. Now we're planning for the wainscoting, painting all the trim in the house white, and window treatments. 

Like all things in life; one step at a time.

Much love,
Katie

i've got that crafty feeling

I had my 4th graders make magnets as a part of their Mother's Day gifts. This is a perfect project for little ones, too. Charlie, my 5 year old, decided he wanted to make one and give it to his teacher. As a teacher, I can tell you that I can never have enough magnets!

Cut small squares of scrapbook paper. Paper with small prints and bold colors work best.

Let it set.

It works best when you have lots of paper options. You can also use pictures from magazines.

 Cut around the marble (flat on one side) when it is dry and then use glue to adhere magnet and let dry.

Final product...

I wish you each a very Happy Mother's Day!

Much love,

Katie

p.s. My lastest contribution is up at Beautifully Rooted. I'd love for you to stop by and give it a read.

christmas book box

If you have been following along for awhile, you know I am a freak for traditions.

I LOVE them and I may or may not drive my poor family insane by my inflexibility with them.

One of my favorite traditions in December is for each child to take turns picking out a Christmas book each night. We snuggle on my bed together and read.

Although our books are beautiful and well taken care of, I sadly cannot say the same for the storage box. I've always hidden the old Easy-Ups box in our entry way closet in the previous years.



However, I wanted to display our books without the cost of buying something new to store them in.

So I headed to the Dollar Tree (they should be paying me for endorsements by now) for packing paper. I found ribbon at Michael's, and a glittery candy cane ornament (50% off!) at Khol's.

I have total glitter phobia, so this shows that I really had a vision for the project.

I wrapped the old box and gave the left-overs to my younger guys, Charlie and Jack.



It kept them busy while I finished the box.

I then taped AND hot glued the wide red ribbon.



Next, I layered the velvet green ribbon and hot glued it as well.



The grand finale was hot gluing the ornament. I choose the initial of our last name.




The final product...



I love it. It was so simple and cost me under $10! Now I have something adorable and practical for our Christmas book storage.

Merry Christmas!

Much love,
Katie

Linking up with April.

diy christmas card chalkboards

I was inspired by my previous chalkboard project, to make small individual chalkboards for this year's Christmas photo.

I purchased the frames at the Dollar Tree. Yay!

I had the spray paint and chalk board paint on hand. Double Yay!



I simply removed the cardboard backing and spray painted the frames turquoise, granny smith apple green, and silver.



I dressed the kids, got my oldest to the barber, and jammed to the preserve.

The sun was already setting, the boys were accidentally erasing their words on their boards, and I may have issued a few threats to my oldest son who thinks it is embarressing to smile in photos.



I went home and realized that not one of the 200 plus pics turned out how I envisioned. There was not one with all 3 of them in it that would work for a card on Heather's site for raising adoption funds for a sweet family waiting to bring their child home. Boo.

But that's life so I rolled with it.



The card will have a combo of these pics:









It isn't perfect, but either are we, so all is good.



Much love,
Katie

Linking up with April at Gingerbread.

waxed leaves

Ever since I saw my friend, Greta, post her version of waxed leaves, I knew I had to give it a try. It just took me 2 years to finally do it. It seemed like it may be too messy for my taste, but it turned out to be easy and relatively mess free.

All you need is wax, which you purchase in the baking aisle of your grocery store (near canning supplies), an old pot or disposable cooking pan, wax paper, and leaves.

My kids had more fun collecting leaves than dipping them. They were searching for the biggest and most colorful leaves possible.





We melted the wax in the oven at 300 degrees. Keep your oven on and continue to rewarm wax every few minutes.

You have to do a quick swoosh...a little "one, two" and lift it up, let the wax drip, and place on your wax paper to dry.





If you leave it in the wax more than 1-2 seconds, a thick waxy coat builds up on the leaf=no bueno.

There are a ton of options for decorating with the leaves.

We took the easy way out and decorated the Thanksgiving table, including the kid table. Did you have kid table this year?



However, you can create a mobile, a banner, wrap twine around the staircase railing and clip the leaves with clothes pins (what I originally had planned), etc. The options for creativity are endless.

I hope you each had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

Much love,
Katie

halloween banner

I saw this on Pinterest.



I thought it would be a perfect rainy afternoon craft for the boys.



I was right.

My prior elementary school teacher mode kicked into high gear.

I precut the triangles and various facial features. I even bagged each separate face for the kids to complete.





Jack (3) found a way to keep himself busy as I prepped.



My 3, 5 and 8 year olds could have cut them out, but I'm a control freak and wanted it to look perfect.

All of that went out the window once Charlie (5) made his jack-o-lantern Tom Selleck.



Rumor has it that I even exclaimed, "pumpkins don't have mustaches!"

I even annoy myself with my perfectionism.

Of course they can have mustaches. To be honest, his is my favorite one hanging because of that killer stache.

I used sticky tabs to mount the web ribbon and stapled the faces on because I didn't have clothes pins.





I am apparently better at going with the flow when it comes to staples compared to mustaches.



Much love,
Katie

Photo/Label Link Tutorial

Due to the fact that I am a total tech loo-uh-zer I am sharing with you how you can create photo/label links in your side bar.

Don't thank me. Thank Blog Queen, Hannah, instead. She helped me when I got stuck after the 1st two steps.

Forgive me for my less than tech savvy terms.

Think of it in 3 steps: creating and sizing photos, making labels, and combining the labels and photos.

I first created my photos.

1. I edit in picnik. It is free and I LOVE it.



I resize my photo to 150 x 150.



It automatically formats like this for proportions and percentages.



Change it to this:



I also used the "text" option to create the words on my photos since I don't know how to do the fancy shmancy digital scrapbook tape (???) tabs. I also added a border to each of my 4 photos in picnik.

2. I save my edited photo in photobucket.





3. Go to your dashboard. Hit "design". Go to "add a gadget".






Scroll down to, "picture".



4. Insert the "direct link" from photobucket of the photo you want to use 1st (ex. Family) in the link section. Do the same for any other photo links that you want to create.





Now you have to go to "design" and click "add a gadget" again. Click on "labels".



1. Title your label.



2. Repeat as necessary depending on how many photo boxes you created earlier.

3. Go to "edit posts"

4. Select a blog post in edit format (html), scroll to the bottom and input the label you want (ex. family). Then, create a new label and do the same for that new label.

Make sure you are saving everything. You will have both the photo boxes and a section with "labels" showing on your blog at this time. You will later delete the label widget once you have linked the labels to you photos.

Now that you have your photos complete and your labels complete, it is time to transfer your labels to your photos so they become photo box links.

1. Click on a label on your actual blog home page . This will on your sidebar. Sorry, I already deleted mine so no picture. Example, click on "faith".

2. Copy the url link to that search.

3. Go to "design". Click on "Picture" in the sidebar.



Paste link into the corresponding photo link.



Good luck! Email me if you have questions and I'll do my best to walk you through it.

Much love,
Katie