Tween Bedroom Makeover Part II

Still working on updating my teen's bedroom for a more 'mature' look, the most expensive part of the makeover will probably be the bedding set. Her current bedding set was a pink and green polka dot quilted set, that she apparently hated since the day it first graced her bed. Who knew? I had no idea she despises pink, as always, I'm the last to know :)

So, I fell in love with this one I found on Overstock.com. After getting final approval, I made the purchase.  As soon as we put it on, it started to inspire me.  She had a completely blank, white, empty wall above her bed, so I wanted to cover that with something of a larger scale. I really enjoy large groupings of pictures and art, but I've found through trial, error, and a 'hole' lotta drywall patching, that I'm not gifted in that area. But I thought I could arrange squares evenly on the wall. Cost was, again, an issue, so after perusing a few stores, purchasing frames was out of the question. Even with a 50% off sale, I'd find myself spending over $50 in the frames alone, which I wasn't willing to do right away. Knowing it will likely be changed within the next year or two, I was looking for something cheaper.  Finally I settled on large pieces of foamboard, which I thought would hang pretty easily from the wall using Command wall hanging stickers. I hit Hobby Lobby on the perfect week, because Foam Board was 50% off and scrapbook paper was also 50% off. The  foam board ran me $5.99 for two large sheets I used one whole sheet and 1/3 of the other.  9 sheets of scrapbook paper ran me about $2.70 and I had the Command stickers already on hand.  I chose my scrapbook paper in various designs of black and white, to play along with the comforter in the room.

Here's what I did:
1. I started out by gluing the scrapbook paper onto the foam board using Mod Podge, which is usually my best bet for fast, easy adhesion. WRONG. A simple glue stick worked much, much better!

2. After gluing all the 12" by 12" inch pieces of scrapbook paper, I took my super sharp exacto knife and cut out around each piece. This I did extremely slowly so that 1, I didn't cut into my scrapbook paper and 2. my foam board resulted in nice, sharp edges, not crumbled up edges that look like a took a butter knife to them!

3.  I then arranged the pieces the way I wanted them to look on the wall and affixed the strips to the back of the boards and placed them on the wall, starting with the center tile.  One more thing I decided to do was to hot glue an initial that I had previously covered in scrapbook paper a few weeks ago.  It had been hanging out in her room with no purpose or function. 

WALL BEFORE:

(I'm hoping that showing the world how she leaves her bed will encourage her to start making it more regularly (: )

AFTER:

One more thing I did was to use some of the leftover foam board to mount a picture she had made in school. The picture was rolled up and tied with a rubber band, so I had to roll it the opposite way and glued it onto the foam board and hung on an adjacent wall. This is a picture just prior to me mounting it:



Well, it is a work in progress, and I hope to get the rest of it done soon. I'll keep you updated. Until then, stay warm and blessed!

Tween bedroom redo Part I

My oldest daughter turned twelve in September and at about the 6 month mark leading up to the big day, she began to become extremely mature and worldly, while I apparently regressed into an immature, uncool mom--all you moms with tweens know exactly what I'm talking about!


So, the pink polka dot-themed room just wasn't cutting it for her anymore, because it was "sooo babyish and immature" for someone as cool as my daughter. I mean, how could she invite friends over to a place like that?!?!


Since I'm on a limited budget, I'm doing bits and pieces, trying to upgrade the bedroom into something more fashionable, with out breaking the bank. I may not be cool, but I am sensitive to her feelings about change, since she gets it honestly...it's my husband who doesn't understand the constant need for upgrade and furniture rearrangement!


So my first project for her room was inspired by my love of wall decals and her constant singing the same song over and over again in the car. Her favorite song of the moment is "Love like Crazy", and of all the music out there these days, I figured that one had some value and merit within the lyrics. I wasn't crazy about 1) paying to have those lyrics custom-made as a wall decal, 2) creating those lyrics myself using vinyl shelf liner or 3) hand-painting the lyrics onto the wall. So, I sat on the idea for a few days and my inspiration came to fruition when I found large canvases at Big Lots for $5 each. I purchased two, thinking I would spread the chorus of the lyrics over two of them to cover more space on the walls.


Unfortunately, I forgot to take a lot of in-progress pictures--as always seems to be the case, I get so excited I get tunnel-vision.


Here's how I transformed two blank canvases into a piece of wall art:


1). I painted each canvas with watered down acrylic paint. I chose a gray in lieu of a color because I was going for a typewritten type of look.


2) While the paint was drying, I used a large paintbrush to spread Elmer's glue over the entire surface of several sheets of cardstock.

3) While the cardstock was drying, I typed the lyrics into Word, altering the font size and style on each word in the lyrics. I thought this would add some interest to the wording.


4) When the glue-covered cardstock was dry, I printed my lyrics onto the cardstock using the t-shirt transfer option on my printer. This way, the words printed onto the cardstock backwards.


5. Then I cut each word out of the cardstock and placed them on the canvas they way they were to look. Admittedly, I ran into a few problems with this step because I was just winging it and ended up with some words that needed enlarged or downsized to fit the way I wanted them to. (You may want to paint some extra cardstock for any mistakes you may run into. I don't think your paper will be a waste, because once you see how easy this is, you'll find more things to play with this print transfer!)


6. I painted the surface of the canvas with Mod Podge and placed my printed cardstock words on top so that the printed words and the freshly painted (wet) Mod Podge are sticking together. At this point, I was very careful to not let the cardstock shift around. I felt that it was important to stay in one place for a good transfer. I held it in place and rubbed the back of the cardstock really well to ensure adherence.


7. Let this dry overnight.


8. Carefully spritz water on your cardstock until it is saturated. Using your bare fingers, rub the wet cardstock, wiping the paper pieces away. This is the most annoying part of the project, because I felt like the cardstock didn't want to let go!! Use more patience/softness as opposed to fast/firmness--this will ensure you're removing cardstock and not printer ink.

9. When you've finished this, you'll be left with an image transfer on your canvas. Mine didn't come out as dark as I would have liked and I believe that is because my ink cartridge had been on low for quite a few weeks prior to my printing. So I actually went back over each word with my black Sharpie marker, because I wanted the words to be very distinct against my background. But I would do this with a steady hand and prior to your morning cup of coffee!!


10. The last thing I did was to paint the entire surface with a fresh coat of Mod Podge in matte finish. I used a 3 inch paint brush for this step, waited for it to dry, then hung the canvases side-by-side on the wall. Ta-da:

Yummy PB Oatmeal Cookie Balls

So this afternoon I finally got around to trying a recipe I had jotted down in one of my notebooks...a Chemistry notebook, actually. More Chemistry and less recipe browsing/surfing may have gotten me a better grade in that class!

I wish I had written down where I found this recipe so that I could give credit where credit is due, but unfortunately I didn't. So if you stumble across my blog and know where it came from, please feel free to comment!!

These tasty balls started out with a cup full of peanut butter. I choose to use a natural peanut butter made only of PB. Add to this 1 cup of honey and mix well. Next you'll want to add 3 cups of oatmeal and 1/2 cup of ground flaxseed. I mixed the oatmeal and flaxseed together first in a separate bowl (additional dirty bowl=yuck!) just to get a more homogenous mixture and to prevent biting into a clump of flaxseed later on! When that is nice and thoroughly mixed you can add other ingredients to your family's tastes. I added dark chocolate chips and walnuts to ours. You may also want to consider dried frut, raisins, butterscotch chips, or something along those lines. Get Creative ;-) From here you just pinch off about a TBSP's worth and roll into balls. You can stack in a container between sheets of wax paper, or put in mini-baking cups. Store in the refridgerator. These are perfect for packing in lunches, as an after school snack, or maybe if it's your preschooler's turn to provide a snack! Just please be considerate of any food allergies in your preschool classroom!!

Two thumbs up from my family. They are disappearing out of the fridge! I'm thinking next time I will experiment with almond butter. Enjoy!

Eating More of Whole Foods...

So one of my new goals in our home is to eat more naturally. Nothing faddish or extreme. I just want to know exactly what is going in our mouths and bodies. Maybe I just spend too many late nights reading articles and forum posts, but it's becoming really important to me that we move towards eating a more plant-based diet in conjunction with consuming foods which are as close to their natural state as possible. Did you know that the acids in our stomach which break down consumed meat are 1/20th of those of a carnivore?





At any rate, in light of my current goal I tried out a new recipe this afternoon, using my trusty immersion blender, which I purchased off Amazon. I washed, cored, sliced, and rough-chopped four nice-sized apples, threw them in my smallest crockpot, squeezed about a half a lemon's worth of juice over top, gave a quick stir, and then set them on low for 4 hours. When they were nice and soft, I threw my blender in the container (love not dirtying another dish!) and blended them thoroughly...skins and all! The skins have virtually disappeared and I feel great with my homemade applesauce. It has the vitamins contained in the skin (which my kids never eat) since I didn't peel the apples and there is absolutely no added sugar. I separated it into individual serving containers and cooled them in the fridge. We had some for lunch today and I must declare this one a success!!

Hello. That's all...

Welcome to my blog! I'm hoping that this post will be the first of many as I experiment with weblogging. As are we all, I am short on time, so quite possibly this will fall by the way side as does many of my hobbies, but I'll keep my fingers crossed that it doesn't! I'm a full-time momma, wife, student, and former military service person who now works from home as an Independent Contractor. I craft. I create. I experiment...that's really the purpose of my blog, to keep track of those extracurricular types of things!