As recently mentioned, we’ve been brightening up our main floor. On a recent trip to Home Depot with my toddler in tow the new adorable Disney paint chips from Behr caught my eye. And my little guy Chace’s eye too!

He started pointing out the colours – on repeat (he’s almost 2 1/2 so you can imagine that “green” is a very exciting topic with a high priority rating) and it got me thinking… Free. Excitable to little one. Colours… A perfect match!

So two each of select colours came home with me and now we have a free, new, fun matching game.

I chose very obvious colours – bright green, red etc so that the game was easy and fun for such a young guy. Making him match “persimmon” seemed a bit out of his comfort zone at this stage.

The new match game was an instant hit! “Mommy green mouse, green mouse, two!”. What a sweet sweet sound.

The other day we had my parents and sister over for my mom’s birthday (Happy Birthday Mom!) and while out grabbing some groceries I thought I’d pick up a few fresh flowers. I love making flower arrangements so generally look for whatever is relatively inexpensive and seasonal – I can often be heard saying “no need to wrap them, they’re just for me”. Then I come home and make a nice little arrangement for the occasion!

However, there were some pretty slim pickins’ the othe day and nothing was striking a chord. I thought I may get a few gerberas but at $2.49 a pop I’d have to get quite a few for any impact. And then low and behold I spotted one of the ready-made bouquets for $12 that contained eight of them! I did some quick math and headed to the check out… but not before I grabbed some baby’s breath too. YES, baby’s breath! Why? Becuase I love a challenge.

I can hear you all saying “baby’s breath? Are we talking about the same baby’s breath seen in 1980’s corsages along side a pink taffetta grad dress and mall bangs in a Sears portrait?” And to that I say “Yes. Yes we are.” You see, I had a vision – a vision to make you all baby’s breath believers. Convert you, if you will.

Forgive me that I don’t have a picture of the bouquet ‘before’ but I’m sure you can all envision your basic generic grocery store bouquet comprised of a few different blooms and a truckload of filler. And if you can’t then I beg you to forgive me anyway. Hey, I’m a new blogger, I forget to take ‘before pics’. Cut a girl some slack.

To begin I took a vase that I had on hand and filled it with floral preserve (the little packet your bouquet comes with) and water. Any vase will do but for this arrangement I pictured something low and ‘full’.

Then I made grid using regular satin scotch tape. The grid helps you plan out your arrangement as well as help hold your flowers up!

begin assembling (starting with your ‘main’ flower)…

Start to fill in your arrangement using complimentary blooms. If you don’t have an eye for this sort of thing then the ‘pre-arranged’ bouquets are great because they already come with complimentary blooms and colours. You can see here is where I started adding my BABY’S BREATH for bulk. I liked that it was so light and airy yet helped fill out the arrangement. Plus did I mention that I like a challenge…

The bouquet came with one LARGE frond that was very pretty but would not work with this type of arrangement so check out what I did…

Step one: Snip

Step two: gather together by pushing up from bottom along stem and then tape:

step three: stuff:

I got four bunches out of the one frond. Not bad!

Next, take some of the filler leaves (you won’t use them all most likely as these generic bouquets usually come with SO much) and add to the edges:

Another neat trick to making your bouquet look custom and designey (yup – a made up word for you) is to use a non-flower element. I had this little shimmery stick from Christmas that matched my palette so in it went!

Add some ribbon around the vase:

And you’re done! Not bad for less than $15!

Here are a few close ups:

Are you beginning to become a baby’s breath believer?

AND just to show you I’m not fakin’ it for fun, here’s another arrangement I did in the same vase back at Christmas.

Do you think you’ll give Baby a chance? As Patrick once said: “No one puts baby in the corner”. Happy flower arranging!

As you may recall from my deck post I had some big things in mind for our little back deck area. I really wanted to create that ‘outdoor room’ feeling so have a bunch of little projects up my sleeve on my ‘to do list’ that I can’t wait to share with you all!

First up was my pink chandelier and next on my hit list was some camoflauge for this fugly cement wall. We can’t really remove it unless we want to entertain our neighbours back yard on our deck if you know what I’m sayin’. As you can see, it has a tendency to get kind of grimey and could only be described as ‘pretty’ if pretty was a secret word for ‘redonculous eyesore of a stupid cement wall that we are stuck with’. And those are my nice words. I present you with Exhibit A taken from an earlier post…

So, fast forward until a month or so ago when my office was doing some botanical rejigging (technical term). In other words, they were sprucin’ up the joint and were getting rid of some old planters. They had a ton of these and put an email out to staff that they were selling them for $10 a pop. Great deal! I went to take a photo on my phone to email my hubby and tell him of my great plan and when I got back to my desk to send said email I got the ‘ol “all planters now accounted for” email. What!? Early bird what? Insert sulk here. Insert me forgetting about this master plan until a later day.

That later day came when my coworker mentioned that she had gotten two of the planters but had decided they weren’t going to work for her. What’s that you say? Why YES I’d love to take them off your hands. And that is how this stack came to be on our deck.

Now, don’t be alarmed. I am not a She-man who can magically turn over 100lb clay pots with as much ease as Snooki downs a beer (no, I don’t watch the show but it’s common knowledge that that’s got to be lightning fast isn’t it)? But rather these are fakeo terra cotta. They are really just feather light resin.

My plan for these pots was to spray them gloss black. I loved the shape (hated the colour) and thought they’d add a nice graphic punch while giving me a vessel to plant something TO HIDE THAT FREAKIN’ EYESORE OF A WALL! Sorry for yelling at you. I get passionate about dirty cement walls.

So, the first step was to clean the pots so that I started with a nice surface to spray. I actually power washed the deck and wall this past long weekend so I invited the pots to the spray party as well. Guess how quickly a power washer takes grime off a fake terra cotta pot. Hint: see Snooki comment above.

I used a high gloss black spray paint that was suitable for plastics and outdoor use. Each pot took one can each – about 5 coats. Multiple light coats will give you the best result and help to avoid any drips. Since the spray paint dries quickly between each coat it only took a few hours to do. Here is what it looked like after the first round of spraying.

Once they were both sprayed it was time to add some filler! I wanted something that would grow A) fast B) full and C) tall. Since I wanted to camoflauge the cement, this was key. I was thinking bamboo but after discussing it with my neighbourhood garden centre they suggested I go with some grasses as they met all my criteria as well as offered a nice texture. And the grasses cost less! Bonus. So I picked out some nice grasses that promised to grow to 42′ and also some ‘rainbow grass’ because it looks so great. There is a chance that the original grass may choke out the rainbow grass as it grows (supposedly quickly) but if so I can easily transplant it to my garden. For now though I like the texture it offers. One grass is light and airy and will grow up and over (like a big weeping willow) and the rainbow grass is straighter and thicker. I’ll update you all with some pictures as it grows!

But for now, back to planting and a tip! A good idea to keep your planter light and manageable (to move easily when full) is to fill the bottom with styrofoam, empty milk jugs or 2 litre pop bottles. What they do is take up space at the bottom allowing you to fill with one half the amount of dirt you would otherwise need to! No problem if you have a gardener/pool boy to move them for you but let’s be honest, I don’t have a pool. So styrofoam and an empty laundry detregent jug for me it is.

Once I had that taken care of I added my dirt and grasses and she was all done! Oh, but don’t forget to water generously as you should always do when you transplant or newly plant something. Doing so helps your new plant take root.

I can’t wait to watch these grasses grow! Come on grass… RACE. $10 to the fastest growing grass. NOW GO!

And here are the pair of them. What do you think?

The outdoor room is coming together and taking shape! … Should I invite Snooki over for a beer on the deck? Nah.

Raise your hands if you wanted to be like Molly Ringwald when you were little! Did you want to be uber cool and moody, yet aloof and misunderstood? Did you wonder what she saw in Andrew McCarthy? Am I typing with my inside voice again? umm… sorry ’bout that.

Okay, on to todays post. Mentioned here in my deck post I hinted at doing some big things on the deck! This past long weekend (Happy Canada Day eh) I was busy working on some of my little projects and plan to share them with you over the next week or two.

First up was my charming little candle chandelier. A birthday gift from the hubs back about six years ago, it had seen better days. Not too bad (used loosely) from afar…

but she hid a dirty rusty little secret. A close up for you…

Mama needs some new mascara. oy.

So, never one to leave a good chandelier out to rust (okay, so I am one to do that, did you SEE those pics) I set out to correct my bad.

In search of some new sandpaper I came across these new sandpaper ‘sponges’ which I liked for this job as I wanted to get into the crevices while maintainng a good grip on my paper. Using regular sandpaper sheets can be cumbersome for a job like this. And result – they worked great.

Here Molly is mid-sand (Yes, I just named my chandelier after an 80’s teeny bopper idol – so what?)

One she was all sanded I started the fun part – spraying! This is the part where you feign surprise about the colour.

Molly took about 367 8 coats to completely cover. The key to a nice spray paint finish is LIGHT coats to avoid the drippy droopy look. No one likes a drippy chandelier. Another tip is to make sure to turn her over and get in all the nooks and crannys for a really solid, smooth coating. The finish is really up to you but for something sparkly like this, a gloss finish is most appropriate.

And, now she looks like THIS…

Ain’t she PRETTY!?

I’m in love. My husband on the other hand exclaimd “PINK!?” Yes, Duckie Kev, pink.

One of my favouritest people in the whole world has a little girl who just turned two on Friday. The birthday girl’s name is Sophia but we all affectionately call her Miss S.

Since Miss S is (theoretically) entering the terrible two’s I thought we might as well teach her how to spell it. What’s better than art that functions as a teaching tool? Not much. (hold your sarcasm please) A teaching tool? Isn’t that like giving a 7 year old boy socks for Christmas rather than the toy he really wanted? Perhaps, but I think Miss S’s mommy will appreciate the gift and plus, a homemade gift shows how much you care. And it’s pretty too! Behold!

Now, I can’t in all conscience take credit for the great concept here. That will have to go to Destri over at The Mother Huddle. Gotta give props where props are due. Check her out. That girl’s got some mad skillz.

Anyway, first step was to find a stencil. I was thinking of doing a shape – butterfly, flower etc. but just was so in love with the alphabet that I had to go that route.

Next I grabbed a frame. Okay, question. Why do they sell white frames with off-white matts? Don’t they know that clashes and is highly annoying? Perhaps that is why this frame, instead of coming with the typical smiling family comes with this depressed looking chick. What’s her problem anyway?

So I decided to spray both the frame AND matt while spraying the stencil. Yes, I decided to spray the matt. Why not? I wasn’t going to use it as is so worst case, I ruined it. But guess what, I didn’t. (yay for trying something new and it working on the first try).

After those all dried the next step was to find some paper to go in behind the letters. I dove into my scrap booking paper stash and came up with this bright (hopefully toddler loving) palette.

And then because I am too lazy to cut squares (which would totally work) I used my circle punch and went to town.

Happy with my colours I started to lay them out over the letters. I laid them out face up and then simply flipped each colour over (these are the backs of each piece – the paper is double sided) and taped them all in place. Here is what it looked like at this point.

Now see that pesky hook/hole at top that messed up my chances of having this fit perfectly in the space created by the matt? My first thought was to trim that off and mount it on white paper. But as we all know, no white is created equal so it looked awful. Ummm, no thanks. So, a new solution was born – hence moving it all up and adding a cheery strip at bottom. Which, when it was all said and done, I think I prefer. Yay for happy accidents.

So there you go. A personal DIY gift that is functional, fun, easy and heartfelt.

HAPPY 2nd BIRTHDAY MISS S!