Don't Settle For Boring: Customize Your Belongings!

The renovation of our powder room, which almost killed us in the days leading up to Thanksgiving, was largely completed before the holidays, but we're still putting on some finishing touches. Yesterday we added vintage shelf paper to the front of this boring, utilitarian cabinet from IKEA. We bought it knowing that we'd never leave it white. I found the paper on Etsy and we finally got around to affixing it with spray adhesive. Now I love it! You don't ever have to settle for leaving furniture (or clothing or shoes or anything else) the way you find it. Customize it! Find the right adhesive for your project, whether it's for fabric or rhinestones or food safe or heavy duty, and make it uniquely yours!

Customized cabinet - just add shelf paper!

Treehabilitation

If you've known us for at least one Christmas you know we have Christmas trees. MANY Christmas trees. I love Christmas and decorating for Christmas and I never met a Christmas tree I didn't want to adopt. I stopped counting at 40 trees. Our house is small, but I can always make room for another Christmas tree!

As we were unpacking the Christmas kitsch over the weekend I noticed some of our trees were looking a little sad. Prelit trees were burnt out, pink and white trees were taking on a decidedly brown tinge. It was depressing. Getting rid of them wasn't an option. It would feel like tossing out a member of the family. There are memories associated with those trees! I looked into flocking them, but it seemed it was either going to be very messy or very toxic, neither of which excites me much. Then I got the bright idea: what about spray paint? I wasn't looking to paint every needle on the tree. I just wanted to give them a nice facelift. Well, I'm pleased to report it worked great! I used Krylon CoverMaster Paint + Primer, then finished them off with Krylon Glitter Blast. I'm so pleased with the results! And think of the creative possibilities! You can't find a pink, purple and silver tree in any store? Create your own! The world is your fabulous Christmas tree oyster!

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After:

I have one left to decorate! Stay tuned!

Easy Project!

I'm so thrilled to have my cookbooks on display and easily accessible, but the heavy duty bookends we needed to keep them from falling over were so ugly. Now they're fabulous, thanks to this easy project! All you do is laminate postcards and stick to bookends with double-sided foam tape. That's it! Easy and easily removed, if you want your postcards later for another purpose!