In case you were thinking that I’m ready to start talking about Christmas, I’m so not! I do however want to let you know about an event that I’ll be selling at. Sugarplum Festival is St. Joseph, Missouri’s annual kick off to the holiday season held at the Albrecht Kemper Museum of Art.
Great shopping, a “Deck the Halls” auction, wine tasting and a lunch café will get shoppers going on their lists for gifts and décor. I will be selling my jewelry and a few other goodies including these wood slice ornaments.
I may be back later with a tutorial on these ornaments.
And now it’s time for A Little Bird Told Me where I share a weekly tip from my own bag of tricks.
Don’t you love it when you have a surge of creativity and you know that all you want to do is create something beautiful? Do you ever have days (or weeks) where you feel you’ve lost your creative edge? I certainly go through dry spells and wonder where on earth my creativity has gone. On those days I have a few tricks that I find helpful in shaking it off and getting the juices going strong again.
Today I’m going to share 7 tips that have helped me and might help you if you give them a try.
1) Sit outside with a cup of coffee or glass of wine, a notebook and no agenda. Drink in the beauty of nature and allow yourself to be inspired. Write down any creative thoughts you have but don’t feel pressured to think of any.
2) Walk through a fabric store and experience the different textures and colors. This always stirs up my imagination whether I’m planning to work with fabric, another material or even if I have no clue what I’ll do next.
3) Watch an episode of Project Runway, Cake Boss or Flea Market Flip with the volume muted. You’ll be amazed at how freely your own thoughts flow when their conversations aren’t influencing your thoughts.
4) Read. The Bible and devotional books are full of artistic imagery. Jesus Calling is the devotional I am currently using and loving. When I spend time in the presence of the One who created me, I never fail to feel a fresh infusion of creativity.
5) Go to a public place and people watch. Observe the way they dress, the way they interact, their hairstyles, their smiles, the way they laugh. Humans are creative beings and their passion can be contagious.
6) Light a candle and listen to classical music. I love Vivaldi. I somehow feel like more is possible as I thrill to the sounds of the maestros.
7) Take a walk with your camera. Use your artistic eye to find and take shots of things you find interesting. Don’t worry about whether you’ll want to keep or use the photos, just snap freely. This unleashes my creativity every time.
What do you do when you’ve lost your mojo? I’d love to hear your tricks! Share what works for you in the comments and you might help someone else out of their slump!
In Part 2 of my farmhouse kitchen reveal I showed you a rolling pedestal stand that I made to display coffee cups on. It is part of my coffee station I keep on the kitchen counter and it also makes a great serving tray. The antique casters give it an industrial feel that I love.
Hot cider season is coming!! With the changing seasons, I changed out the springy green pillow in my breakfast nook for this vintage crochet pillow in fall hues.
Back to the rolling pedestal stand. Today I want to share with you how I put it all together.
Here’s what you’ll need:
2 9″ plywood circles (found at craft and hobby stores)
Caning strips
White paint
Metal candlestick or other base with “legs”
3 small casters
E-6000 adhesive
Tacky Glue
Starting with a metal candle stand, I removed the center plate from it and
flipped it over on its other end.
I used 2 9 inch plywood circles that I painted white. I doubled them up
to give more thickness and stability.
Next I used some caning that I’ve been keeping in my craft closet for the right project.
I cut and glued 12 vertical 1 3/4 inch strips
and a horizontal strip around the circumference of the plywood circles using Tacky Glue.
I then glued a strip around the top to complete the border, securing it with clamps until dry.
I used my Drimmel to cut the posts off 3 casters.
Then I used E-6000 to glue the casters to the “legs” of the candlestick,
again securing with clamps until the glue was dry.
Once the glue on the casters was dry I flipped the base over and glued the tray on top with E-6000.
You can see Part 1 here, including some before pictures.
My vintage GE kitchen mixer found years ago at a garage sale for $10, and yes, I use it!
My mail center consists of a vintage scale, a metal basket from Hobby Lobby painted the same color, a jar to hold pens, pencils and letter opener, and magnets to hold important things like KC Royals tickets!
You may have been expecting to see my cabinets painted white, considering that I am moving toward a farmhouse style. Don’t think I didn’t think about it! I went so far as to mention the possibility to my husband who does all the painting around here. He was against it. Not because of the work involved (he actually enjoys painting) but because he likes the cabinets in their cherry state.
I picked them out fifteen years ago when we did a complete gutting of the kitchen, but I had started entertaining the idea of painting them. Well, he gets his way this time since he hardly ever does! He very rarely has an opinion on decorating and I usually get to make all the decisions!
This is what the top of my fridge looked like before the makeover. The wine rack was never meant to stay.
I’ll eventually have a matching cabinet above, but in the meantime I discovered that this little cabinet that I previously had in my living room fit nicely in the spot. And the wine rack is much more suited to its new place above the corner cabinet.
You may remember this box from a previous flea market finds post. I white washed it and set some succulent pots inside.
To the right of my refrigerator sits my all important coffee station. I wanted to put together a little coffee mug display on some sort of pedestal stand. After trying a couple of things I already had and even buying something new only to bring it home and not like it, I decided to create my own stand. As I envisioned what I wanted it to look like the thought entered my mind that it would be cute with casters.
Everything I used to put the pedestal stand together were elements I already had, with the exception of one caster. Later in another post I’ll share how plywood circles, cane strips and a small metal candlestick all came together to create my rolling pedestal stand.
I used a small, old, zinc paper cutter as a tray to hold “the fixins”. I placed a faux flower stem in an upturned glass funnel to add softness.
Thank you for taking time to look around with me. That’s just about it for this reveal. I just have one more area to show you in another post. It involves a favorite piece of furniture and a vintage collection. Come back soon!
Hello! Happy start of a brand new week! I’m very excited to finally be sharing the reveal of my farmhouse kitchen makeover. I have a lot to show you so I’m going to break it down into 2 or 3 posts to avoid photo overload.
Here we go!
And after…
The first thing we did was give it a fresh coat of paint. We used Benjamin Moore Crystalline, the same color we used in the breakfast nook.
While my husband painted I got busy on my window treatments.
Fifteen years ago when we replaced our tiny little kitchen window with this huge window, I was unwilling to cover the view at all. So I have not had any window treatments on it for all that time. The problem is, the window faces west and just about time to prepare dinner the sun is at its brightest / hottest. After pondering what to do to add softness to the window and provide protection from the sun, while not obstructing the view I finally came up with a solution I love.
I wanted something that I could take down completely rather than just push aside. I also wanted to add some rustic elements to the window. Step one was to focus on the center portion of the window. My husband and I stripped the green paint off two big window screens that just happened to fit perfectly in my two windows (one had to have some slight tweaking to the size.) Then I added old hooks from which I would hang fabric that I tea stained.
I can easily hang them at that time of day when the sun is an annoyance, as well as at night if I want privacy. The rest of the time I can hang them on a vintage coat tree in the corner where I keep a few aprons.
Once that issue was solved I started thinking about making Roman shades for the two smaller windows that flank the larger one. I found a great tutorial on making faux relaxed Roman shades using vinyl roller shades as the base. I knew I wanted a grain sack look so once again I tea stained some fabric and then painted on the stripes using painters tape to create straight lines in the widths I wanted them to be.
I can roll them up as high as I want and pull them down to the bottom when I want complete coverage.
I’m so happy with my new window treatments!
The other window in the kitchen / breakfast nook had the same story, so I used the second stripped window frame with added hooks to create a similar look.
And when I don’t need the fabric up I love the bare rustic wood frame propped in the window.
Here’s what it looked like before:
Just a few more shots before I conclude part one of my kitchen makeover.
I’ll soon be replacing these glass baby boos with the real thing from my garden.
I thought I’d show you the view from my desk since that is the next area of my home I will reveal in a couple of weeks.
This is what I’m looking at as I write you each week.
In part two I’ll show you the other side of the kitchen and some more DIY projects and vignettes.
Thank you so much for allowing me to show you around my kitchen!
The clouds have been taunting me this week. Every time I’ve had the chance to get some photos of my kitchen it’s been one of those days where just when I’m poised to snap the picture the clouds suddenly cover the sun. Oh, and then as soon as I give up the cloud goes away and the sun shines brightly until I’m ready to click again. Arghhhh! After some very frustrating days with the camera I finally got enough decent “after” shots. I’m editing and putting together part one of my kitchen reveal and will post it Monday.
This style was overwhelmingly preferred by my readers. But what did I do with them?
You may remember when I shared about my recent garage sale. Well we had 20-30 of these old green windows and window screens of various sizes and shapes. I sold almost all of them but nobody wanted the really large ones and I figured I’d get stuck with them. Well, luckily I did! I had a brainstorm one day while looking at my kitchen windows trying to come up with a plan for window treatments. More on that in the next post, but for now I’ll just say that they came in very handy. Take a look.
Want to see more? Come back on Monday for the bigger picture. Have a great weekend!