Tag Archives: DIY

Upcycling with Unicorn Spit

All of these items were upcycled with Unicorn Spit!

I hate when I find an item at the thrift store or flea market that is perfect, except for one flaw. Maybe it’s stained or the wrong color. I had been gathering a little collection of these almost-perfect items, but they had been gathering dust because I didn’t know what to do with them. Luckily when the folks at Eclectic Products reached out to me, I knew I had the perfect projects to upcycle. Eclectic Products, makers of Famowood have a new product called Unicorn Spit that is a gel stain and glaze can be used in a variety of different applications– including wood, fabric and glass.

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Budget, DIY, Colorful Guest Room Makeover

Daybed with dramatic curtains

We finally completed the guest room and it feels good! Well… to be honest, “Guest room” is kind of a loose term. Our guest room rarely functions like a guest room. We use it to store stuff for our business, pack orders and take pictures. So, it needed it to be light and bright, have good storage, and function as a room for the rare guest.

First, let’s take a trip down memory lane, shall we?

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One Room Challenge Week 1: A Rustic Modern Porch Makeover

Rustic Modern Porch Inspiration BoardThis year I’ve decided to take on the One Room Challenge! It’s a biannual event where designers make over one room over the course of six weeks. 20 designers take on the challenge and guests are encouraged to participate, as well.

I’m participating this year as a guest and I’ve decided to make over our porch! It’s not exactly a “room,” but it counts, y’all! We’ve done a lot of work on the exterior of the house, but I want to get a few more things done before it gets too cold, so I thought this would be the perfect kick in the pants! Continue reading

Our Small Bedroom Makeover

Small BedroomMan, this bedroom makeover has been a long time coming. As you may or may not remember, we completely ripped out all of the drywall in our home and took it back to the studs a little less than 2 years ago. Since then, we’ve painted bare drywall (which is a huge pain in the a**), hung new doors, put up lighting and a fan, built new closets, built the bed, built bedside shelving, hung blinds and curtains and created art. Not to mention all the cleaning and organizing! I’m tired just thinking about it.

But today, well today is a monumental day because today, I can say we’re finally finished with out bedroom! It’s only the second room in the house that’s completely finished, so this feels like a win. Continue reading

Design Dilemmas: Putting a bed in front of a window

Design Dilemmas: Putting a bed in front of a window

I’ve been pretty confident in my design decisions up until now. I know what I like, and I’ll search the ends of the earth to find it. (Once a librarian, always a librarian.) But the predicament in our master bedroom has me stumped. There’s no other way to arrange it, the bed in our “master” bedroom has to go in front of a window. The room is fairly small and I think the best arrangement will be putting it under the window on the left side of the picture below.

A Small Home: Before Pictures: Back Bedroom

The “master” bedroom, before we tore it to shreds

Ok, so that’s settled, right? Well, yes and no. Truth is, we’re running low on funds (a huge post on budgeting is coming soon), so I’m not keen on spending even a couple hundo for a bed. I also want a bed that is low to the ground, as to not block all the natural light from the window, so we’re going to build something ourselves. I’d like a bit of storage underneath the bed for socks and undies– a simple box with drawers will do. (Similar to what we built in the Airstream.) Buuuuuut, here comes the hard part, what should we do for a headboard?

Here’s the options I’m thinking: Continue reading

A Video Tour of Our New Small Home

I finally got this video uploaded and posted on YouTube! YouTube coupled with country Internet makes me want to gouge my eyes out. It literally took a full day to upload. Oh well, it’s ready now! I thought it might be nice to have a little walkthrough tour of the “before” version of the house. Sometimes it’s hard to envision layout and spaces in photos.

I hope that I can now move on to our progress shots which are scary, but encouraging. Ya gotta tear it up before you build it back up, ya know what I’m saying?!

As always, let me know what you think in the comments!
– Melanie

A Small Home: Before Pictures of Our New House

A Small Home: Before Pictures: Living Room

Living room from the front door

Ok ya’ll, so this is it. The interior before pictures. In all their glory. Since the pictures are pretty low-quality phone pictures, I must admit, the house doesn’t look that bad. But let me assure you, this was and still is one fixer-upper. Let’s point out some of the fun issues going on, shall we?! Continue reading

Our New Home

Our New Home!First things first: we bought a small house! That hunk o’ junk in the picture above is ours!

Ok, ok, I know this might seem like it is coming out of the blue, but it’s actually been a long time coming. Let me explain: the real, honest truth is that we purchased this house months ago. But I had a full-time job outside of this blog that I was trying to protect and I couldn’t tell anyone online because the house we bought is quite far from our current Airstream home– like 4 hours away. But I can now spill the beans because I recently quit my job and fingers crossed, we’ll be moving to our new location and our new home soon. Continue reading

20 Low-Cost Gifts to Make this Holiday

20 Low-Cost Gifts to Make this Holiday

How is it December already? Weren’t we just pumpkining all the things, jumping in all the leaves and carving all the jack-o-lanterns? Oh well. The holidays are almost here whether I like it or not.  I’m not making all my gifts this year. The handmade holiday challenge that I did last year was kind of insane. But I’ll still make a few gifts and I’ll still try to stay under $100, of course. If you are a fellow nut and want to MAKE ALL THE GIFTS here’s a few (or 20) ideas for low-cost gifts to make this holiday.

For the fashionista:

  1. A knotted bracelet
  2. A clay beads necklace
  3. Polymer clay hair accessories
  4. A holiday crown

For the foodie:

  1. DIY vanilla extract
  2. Upcycle a rolling pin
  3. Low sugar nuts
  4. Infused liquors!
  5. A personalized mug filled with coffee or chocolates

Can you knit or sew? These projects are super fun

  1. A knitted baby cape
  2. A chunky, knitted scarf
  3. A knitted scrubbie
  4. A leather clutch
  5. A look-alike, handmade American Apparel circle scarf

For everyone:

  1. Beeswax candles
  2. Pillows!
  3. A toy for your furry friends
  4. A clay bowl for jewelry, change or paper clips
  5. A hand-painted and customized ukulele
  6. And last, but not least, make everyone’s favorite gift (cash!) a little more exciting with this cash mobile.

What gifts are you making this holiday season? Tell me about them in the comments!

love,
melanie

Cheap and Easy Halloween Costumes for Dogs

Dobby Dog Costume

Since this is our first Halloween with Bambi, I wanted to make it special. I had planned to make her three costumes for her first Halloween. I am an unstable dog-mamma, obviously. I didn’t have time to make her three costumes, because, well, mama has a job, but I did manage to make her one costume and find a bunch of super cheap and easy Halloween costumes for dogs.

Easy dog costume - Dobby from Harry Potter! Bambi as Dobby
This year I made a simple Dobby costume. Dobby is a house elf from Harry Potter, in case you aren’t a huge HP geek like me. With her ears, I think she looks just like him! I took an old t-shirt, dyed it with coffee, let it dry, then cut up the neck and sewed up the sides to fit her. Easy peasy.

Here’s my favorite cheap and easy dog costumes from the web-o-sphere! I picked them with the my fellow procrastinators in mind 🙂

It’s raining cats and dogs!

Dying over this one– it’s Lamb Chop!

A Hostess Cupcake! 

Cotton Candy!

A M&M! Make this one even easier by using hot glue instead of sewing.

This is too damn cute! A chia pet!

Clowns can be creepy or insanely cute.

There’s no bones about it, this dog is adorable (and warm!) as a skeleton! 

A bat! This one is great for those dogs who don’t like wearing something on their heads.

A lovely ladybug!

Are you dressing up your dog this Halloween? I’d love to hear your costume ideas in the comments!

love,
melanie