valentine sweets for my sweet!

because of one thing or another related to my mom's death, my wonderful hubby and i have not gotten to spend the last 2 valentine's days together. this year, being as broke as we are, has tested the creativity a little more!

i had already wanted to make brownies and cut them into heart shapes and decorate them for us. when i remembered an idea i had seen from how about orange about making a coffee stencil, i thought it would be perfect for a little valentine's love brownie. i had actually tried a similar idea several years ago for M's birthday, when we were newly married and [also broke] and i didn't have a lot of cake-decorating-type things on hand. i can't believe i still have a picture of it!
by the way, this is what a powdered-sugar-stenciled cake is supposed to look like. i on the other hand, think i literally cut the letters out of a sheet of printer paper, set it on the cake, and sprinkled away.

so i thought i'd try a coffee/cupcake/brownie stencil for my heart-shaped brownies, seeing as how i already had the materials on hand... sharpie, x-acto knife, and a plastic lid [thank you, recycling bin!]
then i traced a design from online, traced it onto the lid, and cut it out with the x-acto knife.
now, if you're looking at this design and wondering how it would show up at all once powdered sugar was sprinkled on it, seeing as how it is so detailed, you would be totally right. i think it needed to be bigger to be read-able- it really didn't work at all, and i ended up tracing my smaller heart cookie cutter [though i realized right after that i could have just cut out the 'love' part from the middle to make a simple heart].
i set the stencil on top of the brownie, put some powdered sugar in my wire mesh pasta-drainer and tapped the side of it gently until my little heart was solidly covered. then i added a little red frosting border with a can of that red spray-frosting stuff that i hadn't opened during my christmas cookie making spree this year.
yay! you could also use this with cocoa powder on your latte or cinnamon on your pancakes, powdered sugar on your french toast, etc!

so it worked, but i thought it needed something a little more. i wanted to try a 3d chocolate letter idea i had in mind for K's birthday but never tried. i printed out 'love' in pretty script [it's important for all the letters to touch] put a piece of wax paper over it, and melted a handful of hershey kisses in a ziplock baggie in the microwave. then i cut the tip of the baggie and used it like a frosting piper to trace over the letters.
squeeze it out nice and thick if you want it to stand up when it hardens. i had some extra chocolate so i made a swirly heart.
i stuck them in the freezer for a few minutes to harden up, peeled them off the wax paper, and gently put them on my little valentine brownie cake. this is so fun! i may never make another cake/cupcake/brownie without a chocololate monogram/message ever again! [just make sure it doesn't melt before serving!]
ps- i think the heart-cookie-cutter brownie thing would work much better if the brownies were flat and fudgey, but it was actually M who mixed up the brownie mix, and he knows i love them cakey. if that's not love...

can't wait to present him with his love brownie!
::: edited to add:::
i had so much fun with these, i made a little heart brownie tower for our awesome neighbors, who had secretly left us cutely-wrapped heart sugar cookies earlier in the week. M made some fudgier brownies, which definitely worked better with the cookie cutters. we stacked a smaller heart on top of a big one [glued on with a little icing] lined the small one in icing, and did a powdered sugar stencil heart on the top. so fun!

inspiration: handmade furniture and doors.

someday, in some house we live in somewhere, i think it would be awesome to build some of our own furniture. i've always thought a big old farmhouse dining room table would be a cool way to start, but nothing prepared me for the awesomeness that was this tutorial for a huge table modeled after one at restoration hardware that cost $2750. this table is handmade, cooler looking than the original, and get this... only cost $10 to make. i'm seriously impressed, and seriously confident that my [amazing] hubs and i could totally pull of making one of our own!
in my imagination, i have an ikea expedit to hold all of our books, movies, cds, [and maybe our tv somehow?] etc nice and organized... but how much cooler would it be to build a ginormous shelf out of old crates to fill the whole wall?
the fun thing about making your own side tables is that you can make them out of pretty much anything, as seen at flea market trixie where she made a very cute little table out of a plant stand, a round top, and some random piece of galvanized metal junk! [i have an upcoming project similar to this one! side table on the cheap].
oh, and i still want to make this stair spindle lamp really badly! amazing what you can make out of cast off old junk!
a newer blog i've been reading has been doing a feature on making your own pottery barn inspired furniture... looks like a lot of work, but the results are stunning!

and by far, my favorite make-your-own furniture element is the humble shipping pallet. you know those wooden platform-y things that you can probably get for free at your local home depot? look what amazing things people are doing with them:

a wall-hanging plate rack as featured on apartment therapy re-nest:

and my absolute favorite, a toddler-sized day bed [loooove that big pouf of paper lanterns hanging above it!] incredible that that beautifully styled bed was made basically of a piece of scrap wood!

and yes, that is a door hung right behind it- which brings me to my next point...

i want to hang doors all over my house. in all the places you wouldn't expect to find doors.

there, i said it. go ahead and call me strange. but, look at all this beautiful justification for such a weird decorating move!

above the couch:

as a kitchen under-island kick protector thingy:

or as a headboard [gorgeous shade of green!]:
and my favorite, a screen door frame framing your picture frames [i'm wanting to do this over our couch so bad. i'm keeping an eye out for a free screen door on the side of the road somewhere!]:

the anthropologized wall letters.

in my imaginary shopping spree at anthropologie, one of the first things i'd stock up on is several letters to monogram pretty much every room in the house [i also have a big thing for ampersands]. i really liked the heft of these zinc ones, but of course, didn't want to shell out the $18.

luckily, i had a papier mache B just waiting to be "anthropologized" [haha!]. remember the letter from the middle of this wreath?
i pulled all the hot glued flower petals off of it, and flipped it over to the smooth side. i started with krylon brushed metallic satin nickel, just because it looked pretty!
it looked quite a bit like the original, but i wanted it to have more of a [faux] metal look rather than a spray-painted-silver look.
so i thought i'd try a hammered metal spray paint and see how that worked. there were three different metal colors in the store and i had a really hard time picking, so i asked my husband which one looked the most like real metal and he picked rustoleum hammered in dark bronze. i liked how it turned out much better:
but, knowing me, at some point i will probably get indecisive and spray it the lighter shade of silver again. my little collection of B's is growing!

as for the price, the letter cost about $2 on clearance because they're apparently not going to carry them at michael's anymore. i guess i'll have to order from joann's... or, here's a great tutorial on how to make one from scratch if you want a unique size or specific font! the spray paint was a little over $3 for the first can [bought with a coupon] and $5 for the second. already cheaper than the anthropologie version, but it could be almost free if you already have a big spray paint stash with options to choose from.

next, i want to try a padded fabric one for my little girl's room [also an anthro-esque idea] and there is a wonderful tutorial right here by prudent baby... and i want to get a ginormous one and cover it in twine for our front door in the spring. although, since i already know how long that kind of wrapping could take, after making those decorative twine balls last week, i might just "anthropologize" the big one too!

let there be light.

a little while ago, i realized that every lamp shade in our house was basically plain white, with the exception of the little tiny one in our daughter's room [a thrifted baby winnie the pooh one]. a couple of months ago, i decided this was a missed opportunity for colorful creativeness and went crazy with some orange ribbon. remember the moulin rouge effect it resulted in?
that particular lamp shade received a new home when we moved things around for the christmas tree. i swapped the shade out with a floor lamp that had a rather boring plastic collar-type shade, and i like it much better where it is now- it adds a bit of a pop of color to a corner that desperately needed it:
[i also hot glued some twill tape around the edges so that i could remove the inner ribbon and it would give out actual light rather than the orange moulin rouge-ish 'mood lighting'!]

i was really excited when k was given a really cute girly lamp for christmas, that i thought would be perfect in her room- but i wasn't crazy about the shade. so i had to figure out an inexpensive and creative way to make a new one!
enter this sweet little blue eyelet lace one i got completely free! i decided it should be easy enough to pull of the blue fabric and start over.
presto! clean slate.
after like 2 hours [i kid you not] of googling for tutorials/ideas/inspiration, i decided on some sort of collaboration between this ruffled ribbon shade from bhg and the pink payton lamp from pottery barn baby.

baby girl lamp before:
baby girl lamp after!
i took the naked lamp shade and recovered it in some sweet green gingham cotton [reference some great instructions!] with spray adhesive, and tucked the edges down nice and tight with glue gun glue.
then i raided my little box of scrap ribbon, pulled out some random yo-yos and a crocheted flower [all orphans from other projects here and there], and made a little crocheted leaf to go with it. i put the ruffled ribbon around the top and bottom edges, and then topped it with some tiny regular ribbon.

top edge:
bottom edge:
and made all the flowers and stuff into a nice little bouquet on a bottom edge. and that's it! i love love love how much better it matches her room! [the k's on her wall are still a bit of a work in progress.]
if i had known how easy it was to recover the shade with fabric and spray glue, i wouldn't have a plain shade in the house!


another light that i desperately felt like needed some work was the light fixture in our office that turned violently bright after my hubby changed out the bulbs in it for the energy-saving type. it provided lots of light, but it literally hurt to look at it.

before:
i found this amazing tutorial on design*sponge for a very anthropologie-esque for two cool pendand lamp shade effects- a ruffled felt shade [i've also seen this on pillows!] or a felt circle pendant lamp shade [similar to how i made one of my little winter trees] that i thought could somehow be done on the glass lamp shade 'cups' of our light fixture.

seeing as how we are renters, i wasn't too sure how kindly my hubby would take to me 'altering' our light fixture. so, my plan b started when i pulled out some white paper lanterns that i just happened to remember i had 3 of, to see if they were too big and/or could be finagled to fit over the lightbulbs! i found them for $2.50 each at michael's back in the summer [the same ones i got for k's room].
i took the glass 'cup' shades off, assembled the lanterns, and slid them up and over the light bulbs. they are just the right size that the wire armature of the lantern holds them in place on the bulbs! i LOVE how this turned worked.

after:
not too bad for a $7.50 fix, right? and it's totally easy to disassemble the lanterns [they even store flat for re-use later!] and re-attatch the glass cups later! the room is still just as well-lit but it is softer and more pleasant to be in now- it totally changed the atmosphere!

i would definitely call this lamp shade success.

and now i really want to try making my own lamp to put a lamp shade on!

the one where she made another hat.

i was so determined to use all these snow days for good and not evil and finish a project or two. when i saw this little mini tutorial for an appropriately titled snow day hat, i knew i wanted to make one for kenna. it was very basic in concept, and wide open for interpretation which was exciting, and i think it turned out adorable!
[i think it still needs a pom pom though. i might just go ahead and attempt one without a pom pom maker.]
since she out grew her little flower hat in about a day last year [so quickly that i'm not sure i even got a picture of her wearing it], i purposefully made this one a little big, hoping to get 2 seasons out of it. as long as you tie the ties securely, it works out! it took almost a whole ball of grey yarn, and i lined it with a bit soft pink fleece from a blanket machine-stitched right onto the crocheted block.
the back is just blanket stitched up to the pixie point with a bit of my favorite light brown yarn, which sadly, i think they have discontinued the color!
i so much love these sweet little cheeks and those sweet little fat rolls beneath the little pink ties.

i also took a bit of time to do a tiny bit of spring cleaning around the blog as well... when i found myself scrolling through my older posts for the bajillionth time looking, looking, looking, where was it that i wrote about that? where was that picture? i finally added a google search bar. it's right up there to the right, and makes life so much easier if you're looking for something specific! don't know why i didn't add that a long time ago.

i also put a bunch of tutorials [mine and others that i love] and some basic sewing how-tos, etc. all in the same place. you can click the picture of the little stampers there on the right, or you can go to this link right here. it was so fun to pull up pictures of bunches of older projects! i'll be adding more each time i write about one so they're always right there, easy to find, because if you're like me, the 'prep time' is what takes the longest about making something... gathering your supplies, finding that pattern online, check your email once more, and suddenly the baby is up from her nap and you didn't make anything! i love it when things are front & center, organized, and easy to find.