yummy fall

Could a Saturday get any better?

A salted caramel mocha and pumpkin cheesecake muffin.  I mean, honestly...

Add that to an unexpectedly fun art project, crisp fall weather, sleeping in, and a movie date to see The Campaign, and it was a pretty awesome Saturday.

What was the best part of your weekend?


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Our Armoire Makeover!

You guys!  I'm so excited to finally show you our armoire makeover!

Remember when we scored this handsome fellow for $13 at a local thrift store?!?

Look what he became!  Yesssss!  We are in love.

This was our most time consuming project to date, and during the process, I was thinking I am never doing this again.  But by the time we had it inside, all the frustration was forgotten, and we think it was totally worth it!  I think that kind of means the armoire is our baby.  Yep, I definitely birthed a painted armoire.

Wanna give it a try?  Here's some suggestions of what you'll need.

Because this guy was laminate wood, we had to take some extra steps to make sure it would hold the paint, thus the special primer and throw away set of painting supplies (thank you internet and fellow DIY blogs for this tip!)  The oil based primer would be very difficult to clean, so we chose to buy cheap supplies and toss them instead of trying to clean them.

Some other extra things we had to do:  buy wood for an extra shelf and new backing, and use wood filler on some parts of the trim that had come apart a bit before painting.

Ready to get started?  Here we go!

We started by taking it all apart.  You could tape off the hardware if you prefer, but since we wanted to spruce those up with some spray paint, we went ahead and took everything off.

Next, we sanded it.  Here's another part you could skip (according to the primer label), but again, we decided to be thorough.

And then primed it all.  Twice.

We took a break after this step.  A two week long break.  Whoopsies.  But then we had a fresh start when it was time to paint the darn thing.  We decided on a white inside and greenish outside.  I have fallen madly IN LOVE with the color- Dusty Miller by Glidden.  It goes perfectly with our basement walls, which are a lighter greenish gray color. 

The hardware spraying contraption was all Andy, of course.  What a smarty.

After letting it all dry for a day, we Andy put it back together and we filled it up with all our junk nicely organized office supplies!

It fits perfectly in our basement, holds everything we need it to hold, and is a nice light piece of furniture in the midst of all the other dark wood we have in there.  Just ignore that top shelf that we still need to paint...

I LOVE being able to have all the cluttery stuff put away and hidden.  And those canvas bins in there?  Another thrift store find!  I think they were $2 each!  Amazing.

I think this whole project was completed for well under $100, which is an awesome price for a big armoire!  I mean those can break the bank if you buy one new.  Even other ones we saw at the thrift score cost $200.

So, what do you think?  Was it worth the hours and hours of work?  Has anyone else completed some furniture makeovers recently?

Happy weekend, everyone!

Linking up to:
Becoming Martha
Chic on a Shoestring Decorating
Simply Designing 
Homemaker on a Dime 
The Dedicated House

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charcoal, my new love

School update!

We've been learning to use charcoal to add value and shading to our still life sketches in drawing class.  There are a handful of us who have never used it before and were pretty nervous.  I've learned a lot, though, and now it's pretty fun and not at all scary.  Charcoal can be used in so many ways!  When I get my station set up, I have charcoal sticks, charcoal pencils, 2-3 kinds of erasers, white charcoal, a blending stump, paper towels for blending, and my sharpener.  I feel like such an artist while I'm setting up...

Here's my homework from last week.  We had to set up 3-5 objects and draw them either looking up or down at them, and then do a second one with the objects covered in a different texture. 

I like how everything turned out except for the leaves covering the table...  I was getting tired and running out of ideas, so yeah... you know how that goes.  That's when mistakes happen.  Oh well, it's okay.

I showed Andy and we both agreed the ice cream scoop in the real drawing is the best part.  And yes, I did wimp out and simplified the Hershey's bottle and skipped the polka dots.  Charcoal also looks better from farther back, so I should have zoomed out more.  But you get the idea.

Anybody out there love drawing with charcoal?  Got any tips for me?  



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i've been working on it, i promise

I swear, you guys, it's coming.  And it's going to be wonderful.


This week I loved:

Watching a squirrel cross a busy four lane street safely.

Seeing the "Welcome Back Art Students" sign at the local art store.

Overhearing a mother checking out math books from the library so she could work with her child at home.  Seriously my eyes may have welled up a little.  Go mom!

Catching up on the Housewives of New York episodes I've missed.  It's crazy town over there.

Eating those candy orange slices.  Could anything be more gross,  yet so good?  Okay fine, maybe they're just gross.

Opening the windows and letting in some fresh, almost fall, air.  Heaven!


Happy Friday, everyone!




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kittens in dishwashers...

You guys.  Art school is full of projects.  This should come as no surprise, but the amount of work required for 5 art classes is out of control (each syllabus says to expect 6 hours of work outside of class each week).  Thankfully, I'm still loving it!

Currently, my projects include:

Make a small book and include in it 8 collages that illustrate the 8 principles of design, including our own artwork.

3 still life sketches using charcoal, one that must have imaginary texture applied to the objects (like covering a glass bottle with feathers or carpet.

A photo montage using Photoshop, showcasing a decade of our choice as the theme, with text added to look like a poster.

A poster using InDesign giving information about a font family, in a 2-color design that includes the history, designer, all of the lower and uppercase letters, numbers, punctuation, etc.  

Choose a famous artwork and recreate it with our own interpretation using the drawing tools in Photoshop.  

Isn't school fun?!?!?  I'm so thankful to have the chance to be creative every day.  It's such a blessing.

I've been feeling like a bad blogger and blog friend these past few weeks, because I've been so busy.  I'm sorry to any of you reading if I have not commented on your blog recently!

And finally, because no post is complete without pictures, look at our sweet old man with litter all over his face, and some oldie but goodies of little Pepper the week we adopted her.  Awwwwww, right?

I love Baby's face in that last one.  Hahaha... he's like, is this really happening to me?



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More from our D.C. Trip

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my husband loves this stuff

Over the long holiday weekend, we headed out to Washington D.C. to visit family.  Our first stop was Andy's choice: to see the space shuttle, Discovery.  It's at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. 

It was so so BIG!  And pretty amazing to be standing a few arms lengths away from it.  I mean, this has been in space!  Crazy...  

I'm not into space exploration very much... it's one of those things that my little mind just can't fathom, so I just choose not to think about it.  I see pictures, I learned about the planets in school, I listen to Andy tell me what he's read, but then my brain just explodes inside when I really think about it all.  That's probably weird to say, but it's true.  Do you know how big some of the planets really are, compared to Earth?  It's nothing like those nice pictures from our 4th grade science textbooks.  Or how far away the sun really is??  Or how small our solar system really is compared to the universe???  And don't even get me started on how people ever figured out that we could launch a rocket into space.  And then they built it.  And then sent people in it.  And then those people stood on the moon.   Whoa.  Brain exploding.  But anyways, Andy LOVES IT.  So to the museum we went, and I have to say, I'm so glad we did.

If you love space like Andy, here's a good documentary I bought him for Christmas last year that you might be interested in.

Have any of you gone to see the shuttle?  Any other brains exploding out there?  I'd hate to think I'm the only one...

Happy Friday everyone!

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