Painted Flowers

This is an easy project that adds a sweet vintage look to a plain basket. You will need a hot glue gun, some small white silk flowers (the smallest you can find), some white ribbon, flat white spray paint, flat latex wall paint, a small soft paintbrush, and a basket of course.

Preferably everything should be white but I had these pink rosebuds already. The white flowers came from the dollar store.

 Use hot glue to glue the ribbon in a graceful swag design. You only have to glue it in spots.

Glue the flowers on using the smallest to cover the base of the larger ones.

  

 It doesn't take many flowers.

Spray with flat white spray paint. This stiffens them. Remove any strings of glue that show up.  You want them stiff because next......

You're going to paint them with flat latex wall paint. Really glop it on heavy. A small soft brush is best for this. You want the effect of gesso. You may want to give it a second coat because you want it on thick.

I used craft paint to paint the flowers and ribbon but I thought it turned out too bright.

So I sprayed it lightly again with the flat white spray paint.

 This took less than an hour, not counting the time waiting for the latex to dry. 

This works on anything you can use hot glue and paint on. Just remember to keep the flowers small.

*footnote - the Easter grass? It's a cheerleader's pom pom I picked up at the thrift store for 39 cents. Turned upside down it looks like regular Easter grass but it's all fastened together so no picking up strands all over the house!

Linking to these fabulous linky parties - The Vintage Farmhouse * Common Ground * No Minimalist Here * The Shabby Creek Cottage* Beyond The Picket Fence

Sugar Free Peanut Butter Cream Pie

If you've ever eaten peanut butter with a spoon you will love this!

I'm not really into collecting recipes but sometimes when I see one that uses an unexpected ingredient I have to try it. This extremely rich tasting pie uses cottage cheese mixed with peanut butter, vanilla instant pudding, and whipped topping. Using a food processor cream 12 ounces of cottage cheese (low fat or no fat is OK, also it's an old recipe I don't think they make 12 oz. cartons anymore, use half a 24oz carton) until it is smooth. Blend in 3/4 to 1 cup peanut butter (I didn't say it was low calorie). Then add a small box of vanilla instant pudding and a container of whipped topping. Pour into a prepared pie shell.   I added some chocolate hard shell topping so mine is not strictly sugar free. This is an especially nice recipe to have if you have family members or guests who can not have sugar.

It's Only Been Two Years....

We like to think about projects and "discuss" for a long time before we can agree. Over two years ago we redid the stairs by replacing carpet covered plywood with old pine treads. Of course the handrail and ballisters had to come down to do this. They were little ordinary spindles you can buy at any home improvement store and we wanted to replace them with something special. Something more in keeping with the style of the house. Only we couldn't decide what. I liked the idea of plain flat kind of mission style but JD had an idea for something he wanted to make.  We needed 24 of them and it just seemed like such a daunting project. Plus he was thinking of cutting them out of particle board and I did not like that idea. No matter how you paint it, it always looks fake. So after two years of apologizing to everyone who came in the house about the lack of a handrail; plus frequent discussions of how one of us was going to fall down the stairs, it was time.
 
This is what he came up with and I love it!
Every step was a slightly different height and each one had to be trimmed and fitted to each step.

We used a wipe on varnish to finish them.  I know most people would have painted everything white but I like a little black in a room. I'm torn between a cottage/farmhouse look and a log cabin/rustic look. I think this definitely has a cottage look, but it's not so girly.

Now I need to work on a picture gallery for the stairwell.

Sharing with Open House Party at No Minimalist Here* Coastal Charm Nifty Thrifty Tuesday * Common Ground "Be Inspired"* French Country Cottage*Funky Junk Interiors*My Romantic Home

My Little Corner of the World

It's been a long time since I've spent any time on my blog but I think it's time to catch up. I've been working on getting some ugly ceiling tile down forever.  It wasn't a suspended ceiling, the tiles were nailed to a framework of 1 x 3 pine boards that were nailed to the rafters. I spent many hours on top of a ladder with a hammer and crowbar prying loose the many many boards, not just in this little area but the whole downstairs.  I used some of them for the floor in my studio and still have a huge pile left. Unfortunately not enough to do the rest of the room so for now I'm stuck with the ugly blue gray commercial carpet which Lord knows I've even thought about painting or at least dyeing. Has anyone ever dyed carpet?

The blue cabinet is an old apothecary cabinet that now forms a wall between my studio area and the front door.  Our house was built in the twenties as a commercial building and the downstairs is completely open, one big room, so I've walled off this corner by the window for my painting area.

I also plastered the walls, which were grooved plywood paneling, with sheetrock compound and they turned out great. This old drawer used as a shelf is very special to me as it came out of my Dad's old workbench. I have three more of them and now that I see this photo I think I'll hang another one above this one. I wanted to keep it simple and uncluttered so I didn't put much in them. We'll see how long that lasts.

The apothecary cabinet is very special to me because it also came out of my Dad's workshop. I was a teenager when he got this and even then I fell in love with it.  Yes, it's missing four drawers but JD has promised to make replacements for me. It's from a drugstore in downtown that opened in 1878 and closed sometime around 1970 when the fixtures were auctioned off. My studio is small and I couldn't get back far enough to get a good picture of it.

It has 197 drawers. I quickly found out that you don't put anything in a drawer unless you label it.

Most of the drawers still have labels or writing on the side. This one held rolled sulfur (brimstone) at 30 cents a pound. I love love love the color and peeling paint. And there's room to hide everything out of sight.

I've always painted on a makeshift easel and even though now I could have a "real" easel, I don't see any reason to change. Here's how I hung the shelf on the ladder. First I screwed a two inch L shaped metal support bracket to the piece of wood.

I bent stiff wire to form two brackets like this.

They fit the ladder steps like this.

The metal brackets slip over the hook. the board rests against the ladder, and the whole thing is very secure. Believe me no one was more surprised than I was that this worked so well. The wire must be stiff enough to not bend with the weight of the shelf and what's on it.

I have one more baseboard to put in and the rest of the room will be finished. If I can get it in order I'd love to show you the rest. Linking to.... No Minimalist Here Open House Party My Romantic Home The Shabby Nest and...