Reusable Cotton-ball Santa Countdown

I got a Christmas project done today, technically two days into December, but better late than never, right...?

I saw this idea for a cute Christmas Countdown on the Crafts Unleashed blog. Where she shares her cute printable.  In typical fashion, I used her idea as a springboard, and took a left turn and came up with my own design. 

 I had all the materials on hand, so this project cost nothing. 

Excellent!

Here's how to make your own:

MATERIALS NEEDED:

1. Print off Santa pages.

2. Red, Black, skin colored, and blue paint

3. Glue

4. Glue gun/sticks

5. Velcro stickers

6. Canvas board

7. Cottonballs

8. Thick cardboard

STEP ONE: Print off the Santa pages and paint in the red hat, black eyes, and skin colored nose. 

At first I was careful to paint into the line, then I was like, "Hey, I'm cutting this all out, I don't need to be that careful."

STEP TWO: Using the cut out beard piece as the pattern, use it to trace around a circle on the canvas board. 

STEP THREE:  Paint on the canvas the skin-colored paint.  On the top-half is needed.  Blend in rosy checks, if desired.

STEP FOUR: Paint the rest of the canvas blue.  

I colored it all blue, then added dark blue and blended it in the bottom.  Then I added a little white and blended it in at the top. 

STEP FIVE: Paint in snowflakes.

Here's a look at how I did that. 

 

STEP SIX: Glue the beard in place. Then add the mustache, nose, eye pieces, and two hat pieces.  Glue everything in place.

STEP SEVEN: Using very thick cardboard, trace out 25 circles and cut them out.

STEP EIGHT: Hot glue Velcro pieces in place on the beard. I did them next to the numbers. (I used sticky Velcro, but they don't ever seem to quite stick as well, so the extra hot glue should ensure everything stays put.)

Hot glue cotton-balls onto cardboard circles.  Once cooled, hot glue the Velcro on the back of the cardboard.

STEP NINE: I made a tiny pom-pom out of gold yard, and glued it to a little squared cardboard, then glued it in place at the end of Santa's hat. 

ALL DONE! 

And from here I can't decide if I want to start at the top and go from 1 to 25.  

Or start at the bottom and countdown from 25 to 1.

Decisions, decisions.

MERRY CHRISTMAS and a Ho-Ho-HO! 

23 days to go!

My Painted Gallery Wall

This year my husband and I celebrated 10 years of marriage.

These ten years in many regards have just flown by, but there has been so much growth and changes that we've gone through together. When I think back to our early days, as newly weds, the time seems like forever ago.  

Isn't that life?

Last year when we purchased our home, we moved into a new master bedroom with lots of huge walls and blank spaces.  I was excited to use this space for a personalized gallery wall that I painted for my love.

This painting is definitely my favorite.  

This is the painting of the Salt Lake Temple where my husband and I were married for time and all eternity.

I painted it in oils and it took me about two months to complete.

Here's some iPad photos from my progress.

Here's some of the details.

I absolutely love the Salt Lake Temple, besides being married there, we used to live about five minutes away and visited there often.  It is beautiful and so special to us!

This is my second favorite painting. 

 I completed this painting in water color.  It is a minimalist painting of the beach.  For our honeymoon we went to San Diego, so it reminds us of that time spent there. 

 Plus the beach has always been a favorite place (California girl, you know). 

 The parts in the painting that look brown-ish are actually gold and shimmer in the sun.  It's a little harder to photograph.

This is my simplest, Love YOU painting.  It was done with acrylic paint, with the heart and You painted in my shimmery gold.  It was done on a small wrapped canvas.

This was a fun painting.  It is loosely based off this piece of art.  

I painted my wrapped canvas first all in this mixture I made that was blueish-greenish.  

Then I painted on the words and added the flowers around on the edges.

The Eternally is painted in with my gold, though it's hard to tell.

Lastly I added one darling photo from our wedding day.  

Photographed by the lovely Lemon Peel Studios.

What a fun project! 

I love the way it all came together.  

My husband really loves it too.  

How to do Easy Wainscoting

Last summer we bought our first home.  It was very exciting. There's so many things about being homeowners that my husband and I really enjoy.  But making the home really ours has been the most thrilling.

Early on we knew exactly what we wanted our dining room to look like.  However we had No Idea where to even start.  So I started my research.  I had no idea what wainscoting was.  I just knew I liked this look-- but what was that bottom wall stuff called?


Image Source

Eventually, with the help of Houzz I discovered what it was that I liked so much-- Wainscoting!

With that helpful keyword, I began my research.  I read tons of tutorials and pinned the useful ones on my Home pinterest page of how to do wainscoting.

But really, we used this tutorial by Make it and Love it (one of my favorite bloggers- anyways) and this one by Jenna Sue and mixed them up and made them our own.

We thought about covering the walls, like the Make it and Love it post, but our walls really aren't textured and we decided it was a lot of extra work that we didn't need to do.  It was then that we came across the Jenna Sue post and learned about using our original baseboards and building the thin wood on top.  It was just what we were looking for.

Here's how we did it!

Materials Needed

1. Paint
2. Primer
3. Wood Filler
4. Caulk/caulk gun
5. Wood glue
6. Poplar boards (1/4" x 48" x 2") = underneath chair rail and under the crown molding on windows
7. Poplar boards (1/4" x 48" x 3") = vertical slats
8. Poplar boards (1/4" x 48" x 4") = vertical window and door trim
9. Crown molding = above the windows
9. Saws = Miter and jigsaw
10. Sander
11. Brad nail gun

For those of you not too interested in reading all the details, here's the quickest explanation of what we did.

For the rest of you...here's the nitty gritty:

STEP ONE:  Prepare the walls.  

For us, this included taking off that terrible, faded gingerbread man boarder, and weird corner wall wood-things.  Then we had to decide on our wall color.

STEP TWO: Paint your top paint color going down far enough to where your wainscoting will be.

  We looked at many, many different hues of blue, but finally settled on Buckland Blue.

STEP THREE:  Glue and staple (using nail brads) the boards onto the walls.
We used poplar boards because they were smooth and worked great.  We used the 4" boards to trim the windows and the doorways.  We used the 3" boards for all our vertical slats.  The 2" boards were on top of our vertical slats (underneath the chair rail) and under the crown molding, on top of the windows.


We started with the 4" boards that were the trim to the doorways and windows, then we placed the horizontal 2" boards all around the room. We wanted a good level surface to work with so we were very careful leveling each horizontal board. We wanted our wainscoting to come up 38 inches, so after subtracting the height of the baseboards and the chair rail, we nailed the 2" boards 32.5 inches off the ground.

Once we had those in place, we cut the vertical slats and placed them around the room, 16 inches apart. We had to play with the placements a little to ensure it looked good going around the corners and so we had equal numbers on both sides of the wall. Sometimes the spacing was 16.5 inches to make a corner look good and other time it is 15 inches. But once it was done, you can't tell there was a difference in the spacing.We quickly discovered our floors we not perfectly level, so sometimes we had to cut a vertical slat 32 inches and other times 33 inches, even though the majority of them were just about 32.5 inches. So instead of cutting them all at once, they were all individually measured and cut. This added a considerable amount of time to the project.

STEP FOUR:  Wood fill all the staples and spots where the wood meets.

STEP FIVE:  Once dry, sand down the wood filler until smooth.

STEP SIX:  Any board pieces that are over outlets should be carefully measured and cut out with a jigsaw.

STEP SEVEN:  Measure and cut out the chair rail to fit in each corner, make sure the corner fit at 45* angles.
Then staple the chair rail on top of 2" boards.

STEP EIGHT:  Wood fill staples and sand smooth.

STEP NINE:  For the windows, measure and cut out the crown molding to be placed on top of the 2" boards.  Cut crown molding with a 45* angle to make a cap, with a miter saw.  Staple and glue in place.  Then fill in the staples with wood filler and sand down.  Any gaps can be filled with caulk.

STEP TEN:  Once everything is stapled in place and filled and sanded smooth, it's time to Caulk everywhere. Basically everywhere where there's a gap, it needs to be caulked.
 I liked caulking it with the gun, then using a wet finger to smooth it down and into place.  I kept a wet paper towel in a bowl and re-wet my finger very often.

STEP ELEVEN:  Prime everything!

Because I was covering red and did not ever want to see any red, or even a hint of pink, I ended up priming just my red walls twice.


Then I did a third layer of prime on the red walls and a first layer all over the wood.


With the primer over everything I could finally see a hint of what we were hoping for.  It was very exciting!

STEP TWELVE:  Paint everything!
I painted everything Ultra White, it was semi-gloss.  It was paint and primer in one, so I basically did four layers of primer (only necessary if you're covering red).
And guess who happily does not see any more red in my dining room?
  Yep, me.


All done!  Enjoy your beautiful new room.
  It really wasn't that hard, but a bit time consuming.


The room is so bright day and night it really is one of my favorite places in the home, now.




One last before and after to make me happy.

This wasn't the only place we added wainscoting.
Check in next week to see what we did to the living room.