Nautical Theme Bedroom

Finally, after weeks of working on my six year old son’s bedroom (I wasn’t at it 24/7 though) - I have the revealing! First I’ll show you the before pictures (clutter and all)...

As you can see, the colors are nursery pastels. The last I painted was when Ephraim was a baby. That’s long for me!

Now….the after….

 

I told Ephraim I might steal this room from him..I think it’s the ocean theme that is so attractive to me since that’s one of my favorite places to be!

We put in the carpeting ourselves and I basically painted everything else in sight, including the bedroom suite.

The thing that took so much time was the wall mural. I enjoyed doing it but discovered it’s very time consuming.This was the first step, painting a huge rectangle on the wall…

 

After many details later this was the result…

I had a map that I found online that I looked off of a little. Most of the pictures I also got online and transferred with carbon paper.

Hubby and I made this desk for Kenny a few years ago and I decided it fits with this room better than Kenny’s. (I promised him another)

I found these old fishing lures in the cabin down by the pond a few years ago and always had intentions of doing something with them.

I wanted a real old wooden oar and couldn’t seem to find one so this one will do for now.

I got this box a few years ago in Pat Catans and painted it black. I printed out this little fish and glued it on.

I made this rustic sign naming some of our favorite places.

The boat frame comes from The Flower Factory and the “E” from Pat Catans.

I found this neat fish basket in a local antique mall. The fish I got at Pat Catans. This idea of hanging up a fish basket I stole from one of my favorite blogs -

 My Pink Life

(Yes, I am guilty of doing that!)

Here’s another idea I got from that blog…

It’s not exactly the same, but similar. I used an old shirt of Kenny’s to make the sail. Thought it was kinda cool that the stamp on the shirt says “old navy.” I made sure that came on the sail corner. The red star was also on the shirt sleeve. I cut it out and sewed it on the top sail. I spray painted the twigs to make them show up more on the dark wall.

 

An old trunk that comes from my great grandpa.

I ended up making the quilt and sham. I searched everywhere online for a quilt with the colors I wanted and finally gave up and made one. I have a tutorial on this:

Simple Quilt Set Tutorial

Also on the tutorial are instructions on how I did this lamp shade and picture frame.

The paint is one of the many gallons I got at ORMES hardware for $3.99!! The dark color is Catalyst Steel and the light colored walls are white with a little bit of catalyst steel mixed in. It made a nice neutral grayish, tannish color.

Hope you enjoyed the tour! Next will probably be Kenny’s room… have a good weekend, everyone!

Simple Quilt set tutorial

When I redid my son’s bedroom I got so tired of searching for that perfect quilt and finally I decided to make one. We wanted to have a nautical theme for his room and I was looking for a twin sized quilt that had grays and whites and maybe some blue in it. The closest one I found that was what I wanted was a duvet cover from Pottery Barn…

Of course, I really didn’t want to spend that much money and it didn’t have quite the colors that I wanted so I made a trip to a local fabric outlet store and picked out the colors that I wanted…

I also got some thread (just the regular kind),some thin cotton batting, and white fabric for the back.

After cutting random sized strips (anywhere from 2” to 51/2”, I sewed them together. I didn’t follow any certain pattern when deciding what color to put next.

After I had the right size for a twin bed I put the white backing on the floor and the cotton batting on top of that. I then put the pieced quilt top on the batting and pinned everything together. Then I tried something I never did before..I quilted it on my sewing machine! To some of you that’s probably not a big deal but I grew up amish and we always quilted by hand…not my favorite thing to do! It worked great on the sewing machine and I would definitely do it again. After binding it, this is how it turned out…

Not the best picture, but you can kind of see how it turned out. Now, the sham… I also cut different sized strips of fabric and sewed together. I followed the same steps as the quilt and then I wanted to personalize it. I printed out the lettering I wanted from my computer and transferred it using carbon paper…

        

        

After I cut them out I sewed them onto an iron on interfacing and cut around that.

    Now they were ready to iron on. I made so
    they would end up on a light colored fabric
    making them show up more.

Now for a matching lamp shade and picture frame…

This was the shade before that I got at a thrift store…

You can’t tell so well in the picture but it is an ugly tan with gold trimming. I didn’t get a picture of the lamp which was a rich yellow color. I spray painted that with white paint. I gave $2.00 for it.

Again, I cut strips of fabric and sewed an iron on on the backs…

I then proceeded to iron the fabric onto the shade. I covered my hand that was in the shade with fabric so I wouldn’t burn myself…

I let the top and bottom fabrics stick out a half inch over the shade. I then used a fabric glue to glue and iron.

For the picture frame, I just covered it with one of the fabrics and stapled to hold..

A thrift store find for a quarter.

Great results for not a lot of money and time!

Chair makeover

How I love to go to garage sales and come home with “junk” that can be turned into something useful and beautiful! To me, it’s like giving the piece of furniture or whatever it may be, another chance, another purpose. Recently a friend of mine found such an item for I believe $5.00 in a garage sale. It was quite a drab chair that she brought to me to give a makeover…

 

As you can see, nothing too remarkable. I started by taking the seat off which was fastened by a few screws. (this was after it sat in the basement for a few weeks awaiting it’s turn)

I then took it out on the driveway and gave it a couple coats of paint. (do it best spray paint, white, semi gloss)

While the paint dried I reupholstered the seat and the little cushion with some neat fabric my friend had gotten at JoAnn Fabrics. I didn’t get any pictures, but it was fairly simple to cut out a square of material and wrap it tightly over the seat and then fasten it with staples on the bottom. For the little cushion I just made a cover that can be removed for washing. All together, I probably didn’t spend more than an hour to turn it into this…

I thought my friend did an awesome job of matching the fabric to the color of their bedroom walls.

It looked great in the living room too! So for all you garage salers out there, always think twice before walking past anything that looks drab, dirty, has an orangish glow,and is overall unappealing. It just might be a treasure waiting to be unearthed!

Café Espresso

 

One of the greatest things happened to me a few weeks ago… the paint at Ormes hardware got marked down to $3.99 a gallon!! They told me Do It Best came out with a paint n primer in one and therefore is discontinuing the original paint. (which I did think what if you actually don’t need a primer and are paying for one…) But anyway, I ended up getting about 10 gallons of paint! (I can always get them tinted later, thankfully!) Oh, and the only sheen they had for that price was their washable flat…so if you’re anti flat paint this would not be so exciting to you. I need to paint all our ceilings throughout the house and for me it’s so much easier to do walls too while I’m at it anyway and then of course, with that price I couldn’t resist! Some of our kitchen walls were a rusty red which always kind of bothered me because when I picked out the color I thought it would be a more red. After painting the walls with a color called stolen kiss, I fixed up the area by the beams with a café look…

I hand painted a sign using Microsoft word and transferred with carbon paper. I also added a few more things I had around here…

For this box I simply used Microsoft word to design a little café looking rectangle and printed it out. I used a glue stick to paste it on the box. (not sure how long it’ll last but thought I’ll give it a shot) The jars are actual coffee jars that used to come with coffee in them. I wish the old labels would still be on them!

I’m sure I’ll keep my eyes peeled for any old looking café décor in the future. For now I just used what I had which is nothing too great but it’ll work for the time being.

I’m always up for any ideas from you all so feel free to share! Thanks for visiting my blog!