Forever Decorating!

5/06/2011

Welcome Surprise!

Here

your

hint...

With

SURPRISE!

Okay, I'm teasing you! Basically, I found a wooden tray at a garage sale for only $1. It was already painted black.

Instead of keeping it a tray, I decided to make it into a usable wall art!

First, I painted the word, "Welcome" with some vines and leaves in white.

I also attached these metal hangers to the back so I could attach ribbon for hanging.

So what is the surprise? It's the oval in the center...

I painted the inside oval with chalkboard paint. Now when we come home and enter through the back door from the garage to the laundry room, we are welcomed home!

Then I did a bit of tweaking...

I added a sweet yellow bird for whimsy

I have fond memories of a small chalk board at the back door entrance of my Grandma's house. As a child, I would sit on top of the washer and write and draw on this chalkboard and just get lost in the creativity of it. Do you have memories of something simple and small at your Grandparents home that wasn't big but you still remember it fondly?

NOTE: You should be able to click on most of the pictures to enlarge to see further details.
These parties I love to link up to or check out my Blog Parties tab
Party Time @ It's So Very Cheri
Metamorphosis Monday @ Between Naps On The Porch
Motivate Me Monday @ Keeping It Simple
Creative Blogger's Party @ Homemaker On A Dime
Making The World Cuter @ Making The World Cuter
Amaze Me Monday @ Dittle Dattle
Twice Owned Tuesday @ House Of Grace
Nifty Thrifty Tuesday @ Coastal Charm
Time to Shine Tuesday @ A Diamond in the Stuff
Tuesday Treasures @ My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia
Trash 2 Treasure @ Sassy Sites
Power Of Paint @ Domestically Speaking
Swing Into Spring Wednesday @ DIY by Design
White Wednesday @ Faded Charm
Wow Us Wednesday @ Savvy Southern Style
Piece of Work Wednesday @ Primitive & Proper
Good Life Wednesday @ A Beach Cottage
Open House Thursday @ No Minimalist Here
Strut Your Stuff Thursday @ Somewhat Simple
Transformation Thursday @ The Shabby Chic Cottage
100 Ideas Under $100 @ Beyond The Picket Fence
Show And Tell Friday @ My Romantic Home
Furniture Feature Friday @ Miss Mustard Seed
Remodelaholic Friday @ Remodelaholic
Frugal Friday @ Shabby Nest
Look What I Found Friday @ Vintage Revivals
Feathered Nest Friday @ French Country Cottage
Vintage Inspiration Friday @ Common Ground
Weekend WrapUp Party @ Tatertots and Jello
Saturday Nite Special @ Funky Junk Interiors
Strut Your Stuff @ The Saturday Morning Blog
Show and Tell Saturday @ Be Different, Act Normal
Sunday Showcase Party @ By Stephanie Lynn
Sundae Scoop Weekend Wrap Up Party @ I love Nap Time
Before and After Party @ Thrifty Decor Chick

5/04/2011

Oh How We've Changed!

These ads were so funny I just had to share with my friends! These certainly wouldn't be published in todays world...

5/03/2011

Eastlake is FINALLY Working for me

Hubby and I love architecture and its design. Hubby is especially good at knowing the dates when certain architectural styles were in fashion. One of my least favorite is Eastlake from the 1890's.

I took this picture from the Internet for an example of Eastlake style.

Recalling back to my Diamonds In The Rough! week 3 continued post (HERE), I showed you (below) a $5 Eastlake mirror surround, minus a mirror. I only purchased it because I knew what I could do with it and I also knew that Hubby would like it. Someone had done most of the work for me, because it had been stripped of paint and varnish. If you do this and then just let it set unfinished for months and years, the wood will dry out badly. So I had to chip off the areas decorated with burled walnut veneer because they had dried out and were warped and peeling off and just give it a good cleaning and sanding.

See how similar this frame looks to the one taken from the Internet? Side shelves and all! I didn't have a dresser to use this on, but instead a faux fireplace in our master bedroom was its destination. Since the fireplace was painted white, this wood frame would also get a white paint job without any distressing.

Now for the rearranging of the wall art. This is what the area around the faux fireplace looked like before I added the Eastlake frame.

I sent the antique birdcage to my antique mall booth for resale

Now, It just fit perfectly don't you think?

I picked up the antique rose oil painting on an antiquing journey for a song

Details at the top

Adorable side shelves

The decor - $1 framed glove from a garage sale last season

The lady then gave me the unframed glove mate free

A 'T' monogrammed hankie given to me by a friend resting on old pearls in a glass urn.

A collection of old purses hanging from tiny knobs

Then I did a bit more tweaking...

I added a bookpage rose to this picture

And more roses added to this other one

And I topped the gloved picture with a pretty resin scroll-work

5/02/2011

Carriage House Garage Doors Guest Post for Remodelaholic

For those of you that didn't see my guest post for Cassity at Remodelaholic, Here it is.

It's a pleasure to introduce myself. My name is Terry and I live in western Illinois. I am married and have two grown children and we are recent empty nesters. I am also fairly new to blogging since November, 2010 with my blog foreverdecorating.blogspot.com.
It has been a learning curve and I have begun to train myself to think about my projects with blogging in mind; ie: before pictures and tutorials.

I was raised with parents that made everything they possibly could and forced to sew all my clothes at the age of eight (now I am thankful). So it comes natural to me that, I could and would, tear into any home renovation or make anything I could (or maybe it's because I am cheap). It's a hobby, a lifestyle and a joy for me to do these things. I believe that if you want it bad enough you will figure out a way to have it. I am blessed with a God given creative gene that I am very thankful for.

I recently posted on my painted carriage house garage doors, but with this guest post, I would like to give more of a tutorial of how I did this and why.

These finished garage doors came about one day when my hubby announced that he wanted to replace our existing garage doors with carriage house style garage doors. First, I must stress that nothing was wrong with our insulated garage doors.

Granted they were bright white when the sun would shine on them, otherwise, no problems. We also have three huge windows in the front of the garage with the garage doors being side entry.

It had been raining the day I took this picture so the brick is off color

So we get plenty of light in our garage...no need for real windows in the garage doors. So I decided to surprise my hubby with the doors of his dreams on the cheap...just for the cost of the paint. I painted the white garage doors the color of the body of our upper story. It's called Ramie by Sherwin Williams. That solved the problem of the glaring white doors. Then I had to make two stencils, one for the hinge and one for the handles.

Easy to do. I had clear stencil sheets, so I just drew and cut out my stencils. Then I used black acrylic paint in those small plastic bottles to paint these on the doors. I mixed some white acrylic paint with the black to make the gray for shadowing and painting the details of the screws.

Here is what the doors looked like when my hubby came home from work.

He saw the doors and really like them and then said, "But I wanted windows!" with a kind of whining sound (Don't tell him I said that)!!! Okay, back to work. Using blue painters tape, I simply taped off four squares in each raised panel and painted the windows with black paint. When the tape was removed, it appeared that these windows had mullions to match the ones in our real windows. I then made the gray paint again and painted shadows.

With hubby happy, all I had to do was seal the acrylic paint with water based exterior sealer. It has been two years since I did this process and the doors look the same today as the day I painted them, so this sealer for exterior works great. It can be purchased at any hardware or paint store.

Total cost for this project was just the cost of paint and sealer...around $25. I'd say that's about a penny on the dollar of what real carriage garage doors would cost and hubby is happy!