Obsession and planning

So as we wait to hear about the status of our hopeful future digs, I've been basically LIVING on Pinterest gathering ideas for the decor and blog hopping on people's blogs once I see something I like on Pinterest. Feel free to check out my Pinterest boards and follow me here: http://pinterest.com/madcapfrenzy/

Anyways, among getting ideas on what to do with some of my DIY projects I have planned, but am waiting on actually doing them till things are more concrete in home outcome, I came across this cool site called Olioboard. For those of us who LOVE Pinterest, it is just another step towards planning your dream rooms. It basically is a place to put together inspiration boards (similar to what most interior designers tend to do). It also can calculate out what it would cost to get everything on that board and a great way to see if certain things work together or not (you can also upload or add products from other sites to your own collections). Here are a few of my planning boards for some of the rooms I'd love to do.

Living room: light orangy hardwood floors, dark chocolate brown furniture, olive green walls, with white, green accents and tiny hints of orange to bring out the floors.

Dining room: light orangy hardwood floors, dark chocoalte brown furniture, golden mustard walls, with orange accents. Basically I'm thinking of taking a warm feel with the dining space.

Kitchen: So our hopeful home has nice wood cabinets, but very orangy. I'm thinking stain them a little darker, paint the walls mostly creamy white to match the cream white countertops (and maybe a creamy white tile backsplash or stencil). Then bringing hints of chrome silver hardware to match the appliances, and pops of black and lime green. Maybe a green accent wall where we'd add a shelf breakfast bar in that little nook with my chalkboard frame above it. I loved the two color of wood in the ikea kitchens on this board. I can't decide which tile I like best, so I put a bunch up there. Also, I'd love a roman shade- I'm thinking lime green and white.

1/2 bathroom downstairs: Our hopeful home has a 1/2 bathroom downstairs that I think would look lovely in rich purple, black and white. Very royal feeling with the damask prints. Yes please!

Craft room: Painting the furniture mostly white (except the chairs as red with a fun seat cushion fabric) with polka dot curtains and dot themes everywhere. Lots of red accents with white furniture. Red boxes and organization. I haven't decided on wall color- maybe a creamy white, light yellow, or light gray. Not sure on that part. What do you all think?

Master bathroom: Yellow, white and gray. Yellow walls, white floor, chrome/gray fixtures, curtains and accents a mix of the three. Either gray or white vanity. Bright and sunny!

Master bedroom: Black and white with red accents. I love bold colors and already have basically everything similar but the lighting and the dresser. I'm thinking a gray wall color, a red floor rug over white carpeting, black furniture (I actually have 2 black chairs that were my grandmother's that look very similar to this black leather chair, that I plan on using in the room). Red accents all over the place. I'm thinking red curtains or maybe red and white or red, black and white stripe curtains. I love bold stripes!

My husband always laughs that my dream home is a rainbow room house. To be honest, maybe that is who I am- I love color and I always wanted (since I was little) to have each room a different color. I still need to put together a board for my "blue room"- spare bedroom I was thinking, and I'll be set on colors in the rainbow. haha

I also started looking at some cool things online/blog hopping and such,  and came across The Real Housewives of Buck County blog. I remembered them being featured in our newspaper a while back, and for some reason just now got around to following them- I'm kinda slow on jumping on the bandwagon I guess, or just was so busy at the time, forgot. Better late then never I guess. Anyways, I'm enjoying going back and seeing all their redos. But there is a certain guest blog post about a bar cart redo here: that the conversation is very similar to what I had with my hubs about our bar cart. I still need to fix mine up (its sitting in our spare room till I get the proper tools to scrap and repaint it). I just got a kick out of the conversation over it, and chuckled to myself how close it was to the conversation over the phone (with sending a photo via text) to the hubs about it. lol

Another thing I came across was this cute tray redo over at A Place for Us blog. I think I'm going to have to make a tray I got from a yard sale down the street a while back into that lovely thing. lol

Ok, enough blog hopping, I need to actually get SOMETHING done this week. lol
Happy crafting!
-M

Revamped and thinking...

So I haven't had much energy or time to do a lot of craft projects recently. I have however been spending way more time on Pinterest than should be humanly possible. haha
This has gotten me thinking on new DIY and revamp projects. Here are a few of my favorites that are on my To-Make list. The majority of them I have the stuff, I just gotta finish them! haha

1) Revamp/refurbish the old drink table cart I got- someone was throwing it out, can you believe it?! It is below. It is a little rusty and the one hinge needs some work, but overall it is doable I think.

Here is a link of someone's redone bar cart that is my inspiration for the colors. I love the white and orange, so I think I'm going to either paint mine all white with orange patterns on the main surface, or paint silver over the silver that is already there, and do a orange & white on the main surfaces. Enjoy Monica at craftynest's bar cart here: http://www.craftynest.com/2009/04/wallpapered-cart/


2) Headband holder made out of oatmeal/drink mix can. I saw this on Pinterest and immediately thought of my massive number of headbands just thrown in a box right now. I swiped my hubs drink mix can and covered it. here it is below. I still have to add the "stand" part. I hope to make another matching one (so I have 2 total- I have sooo many headbands) once we go through more tea mix so I can steal the can. I thought ahead luckily and saved the paper for another matching one. haha

Here is my original inspiration for it from Lyssa Beth: http://makeitmyown.blogspot.com/2011/11/day-18-im-thankful-with-lyssa-beth.html


3) Make a lampshade out of old slides. I got the idea from here: http://www.hgtv.ca/articles/articledetails.aspx?ContentId=2852&cat=2&by=5  at the HGTV site. I have 2 whole boxes of old slides that my work was going to throw out, so I took them home in hopes that someday I can make one of these beauties. :D


4) Family/friends birthday wall art. I got the idea from someone's pin on Pinterest here: http://media-cdn.pinterest.com/upload/83246293081772494_bgnr1GOM.jpg  I so want to do this awesomeness, so I don't have to rely on Facebook telling me people's bdays! lol


5) Sweater shoes made from old flats and an old sweater. I just recently cleaned out my closet (the newest closet cleaned below) and I saved a pair of old brown cheapo shoes that have started to degrade and a sweater that I don't like to wear much (fits funny) and I plan to make a pair of awesome sweater shoes like these awesome people here: http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=130913.0;all

Hopefully the few other sweaters I saved I can make into something else cool and felted.


6) T-shirt repurposed bags. I have a boat-load of t-shirts that I don't really wear much, or just wear them to bed. I would LOVE to turn them into reusable bags or other fun stuff. Check this person's awesome t-shirt bags here: http://www.moredesignplease.com/moredesignplease/2010/6/6/diy-recycled-t-shirt-tote-bag.html
Here is some other fun t-shirt repurposed ideas: http://darlingadventures.com/?p=574


7) Sweatshirt pillows. I have a few sweatshirts that just don't fit nicely anymore or are starting to fall apart. My goal is to make some sweatshirt pillows (especially my 3 college sweatshirts). I got the idea from this person here: http://remixedstitches.blogspot.com/2010/12/easy-repurposed-sweatshirt-pocket.html
I hope to get at least the 2 red sweatshirts made into pillows as they would match my futon nicely!


So there you have it. My top 7 to-make items (or in the process of making items). Hope this sparked something in ya'll to get creating. Happy crafting!
-M

S'mores party and other updates

So it has been a long time since I put any of my newest crafting adventures (like last I blogged was before Christmas). I have been doing only a little bit of crafting, mostly cat wrangling- my cat Wendy has been causing major havoc all over the house- jumping in Christmas trees, destroying plastic wrappers...but how can you be mad at this face?

So on the crafty note, to start things off, for Christmas I got a Cricut Expression. Already, I am in love with the touch screen and the much bigger size to my original Cricut.

(me on Christmas getting my Cricut)

New Year's Eve we helped craft an adorable game that was a marriage proposal for two of our good theater friends during our annual New Year's Eve bash- PJ themed this year. With sparklers at midnight and my fun lighted sign to show everyone where our house was. I also made a mini banner for the hub's cake!

On to after the new year, and I decided to have a S'mores party. I got this great idea to make S'mores-to-go boxes on my new Cricut, and they turned out so cute! Check them out:

Here's all the madness of chocolate and marshmallows and such. We has so much leftover, I ended up bringing the leftovers to work. lol

Right now I haven't had a whole lot of time to do crafting, but I did crank out a mini banner for our door for Valentine's Day and did this little "you just melt my heart" with a bag of ice melt, an ice scrapper, and "meltable" chocolate for my hubs v-day present. hehe

Next goals- to ramp up my www.frenzified.com site and put up a few new sets I have in mind to work on before Summer CHA. I want to be ready and have new stuff and new promotional stuff to give out. *crossing fingers* I get my act together. lol

Happy crafting everyone and hope you enjoyed this little update.
-M

Before and After: Mirror turned into Chalkboard

So I got this funky mirror from a work flea market. 25 cents! I decided after looking at the crazy stickers on it, that getting the mirror to look nice as a mirror was not going to work. I decided after looking at lots of cool DIY pins on pintrest, that I was going to make it into a chalkboard for our living room decor. I had leftover chalkboard spray paint from when I made chalkboard placemats for my nephews at thanksgiving, so all I had to buy was some white spray paint.
Here is the before and after.

And now for some of the process. I basically masked off the outside, sprayed the chalkboard paint.  (I think I did either 3 or 4 coats of the chalkboard paint)

Then I masked off the inside and spray painted the outside white. (I sprayed 2 coats of white)

Then, because the edges were a little rough, I added some paper borders and some bling to dress it up.

Tada! I'm so happy how it turned out.

What do you guys think?
Who knows, maybe it will end up on Pintrest. hehe.
Happy New Year and hope everyone's 2012 is wonderful!
Hugs.
-M

Holiday homemade

This year I wanted to try a few crafty things besides cards for the holidays. One of the projects is below. My mom LOVES tea, so I thought I'd take this idea I got off of Pintrest for a clothespin wreath. I filled it with tea bags and tada! She can also use it to display Christmas cards (that's what they did on Pintrest).
After doing the project I found out a few things.
A) Spray painting them green would of been SOOOO much easier than hand painting them all with acrylic paint.
B) Next time I need to use a thicker wire (like a coat hanger or something) because I used floral wire and it was so thin that the wreath kept flopping over. I tried to go back and double string it, but they kept getting hung up, so I did a back-way of doing the second stringing around by opening each clothespin and shoving the wire to the back of each.
C) You need probably somewhere like 40 clothespins to make a good sized wreath. Mine is a little small, but after I painted one whole bag of clothespins (24) I was so tired of the project, I just said to hell with it, its going to be small.

Anyways, hope you enjoy and get some insight into fun holiday gifts. Stay tuned for a before and after crafty makeover of a "garbage" pick. I love how it turned out, so Stay tuned!
-M

Christmas Cards

I know, I've been slacking on the blog department, but I do have some new Christmas cards to show you. I won't show you ALL of them, because that would take too long, but here are some newbies. Later in the week I'll show you a few DIY gift projects and one before and after project I did for the home.

Enjoy!
-M