If you’re a gardener or even just concerned about the flora and fauna in your area, providing a source of water for bees and other pollinators is one way you can help our pollinators. Here’s how to create an easy, DIY bee watering station for our fuzzy friends.
Continue readingTag Archives: DIY
Upcycling 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.
Continue readingBudget, DIY, Colorful Guest Room Makeover
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?
Continue readingOne Room Challenge Week 1: A Rustic Modern Porch Makeover
This 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
Man, 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
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.
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
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
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
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:
For the foodie:
- DIY vanilla extract
- Upcycle a rolling pin
- Low sugar nuts
- Infused liquors!
- A personalized mug filled with coffee or chocolates
Can you knit or sew? These projects are super fun
- A knitted baby cape
- A chunky, knitted scarf
- A knitted scrubbie
- A leather clutch
- A look-alike, handmade American Apparel circle scarf
For everyone:
- Beeswax candles
- Pillows!
- A toy for your furry friends
- A clay bowl for jewelry, change or paper clips
- A hand-painted and customized ukulele
- 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