Before and After projects

So, my oldest two girls have been at their dad's for the past two weeks, which means I have been busting my butt to get stuff done before they get back on Saturday night. None of these projects really needed a whole blog post to themselves. I mean, you know how I feel about bloggers who post "Look! I changed my mantle candles from white ones to red ones! Here are 47 bazillion pics to show you what it now looks like, and a tutorial to show you how I lifted out the white one from the candle holder and placed in the red one!". Not my style. But here's a brief run through. 

I made some shelves loosely based on some that I saw on Just A Girl.  Mine are slightly different though. She used 1x6, 1x4 and 1x2 wood. I hit up my cull bin at Home Depot and found a bunch of nice 1x4 pieces of wood for 51 cents a piece. So mine are 1x4 wood (cut into 2 foot lengths) on the bottom and back, and a piece of wood trim I found for $3.88. Total spent on this project (considering I already had paint, glue, caulk, screws and nails)? Under $6. Woot. 


So here is Ava's book storage before and after. She was so excited to see her books, I think she had forgotten about most of them with them being stuck in a basket.

Another project? I hit up Ikea and bought the Expedit shelf for $60, and 5 baskets for $13 a piece. Turned it on it's side, shoved all of her toys in there and voila! So much nicer. I'm ordering some yellow and white chevron fabric to make a seat out of the top. I'm just being lazy and haven't ordered it yet. The baskets are 13x13, which surprisingly hold quite a bit. It was pretty for about 14 seconds before Ava pulled everything out, but what can you do.

I bought these tables off of Craigslist for $60. It came with one coffee table and two end tables. Before these, we had some slate and metal ones that I was so over. Hubby despised these ones, and kept saying I was bringing trash into his house, but finally relented and we went and picked them up. Originally, my plan was to stain the top a dark walnut and paint/distress the legs white. But even after stripping/sanding/conditioning/staining the wood, it would never get much darker than it was originally. So I painted the top white too. I have more plans for it, I just need to stuff I ordered to get here. And yes, hubby likes them now.

I got this ottoman off of Craigslist a billion years ago for $10. Completely hideous, but just the right size and price. It sat uncovered for over a year. I don't have a good picture of it before (probably because it was old lady fabric with frayed torn corners) but this is the best I could find. I bought two yards of dark teal suede feeling fabric on clearance and recovered it. I didn't make a skirt for it like it originally had, and it feels so much lighter now. 

We are due with Alli in September, so the two older girls are going to have to share a room. My oldest isn't excited about it, so I'm redoing all of the kids bedrooms to make it new and fun. Ava (my 22 month old) will be moving into Jasmin's old bedroom (Arielle has the largest room so Jasmin will move in there). Jasmin's room was pink and green, but Ava's will be pink/gray/black. Before I bought new curtains, I wanted to see if I could make the ones I already made for Jasmin work. So I cut out a stencil, and painted gray over the green. Hubby looked at me like I was crazy when I said I was painting the curtains, but he likes how they turned out. The finished picture is horrible, I apologize, but it's hard to take a pic in front of a window without blowing everything out.

Reason 47 of why I love having crafty friends. My friend Megan had a stencil that she used in her dining room that she was nice enough to let me borrow. So I painted Ava's walls white (which ended up looking like a light gray) and painted the stencil. The pink is tutti fruitti by Behr, and the gray is a shimmer color by Martha Stewart called thundercloud. 

 
I also painted our toilet room (is there a better name for that??) This one was out of necessity. I had really bad morning sickness with this pregnancy, and one time it was particularly violent and I missed the toilet :( And you all know how easily flat builder's paint stains, right? I planned on doing 12 inch stripes, but ended up doing I think 10 inches? If I did 12 inches, the top stripe would have stopped right where the doorway top is, and I thought it would look weird. If I was a good crafter, I would have measured out the wall, figured out how many stripes I wanted, divided my original number so all the stripes were the same size, blah blah blah. But I didn't.

I also had time to do a couple of other projects for people I love. One is a maternity belt that my friend Meghan asked me to make. I haven't met her in person, but this girl has had such an impact on my life. Her son, Avery, was born with gastroschisis (the same birth defect that my Ava was born with). After her son passed away due to complications from gastroschisis, she started Avery's Angels, a non-profit organization to help parents dealing with gastroschisis. She saw that there wasn't much information or support out there for parents, and her efforts have really filled that gap. She is having a baby soon, and asked me if I could make her a maternity belt for her maternity pictures (the ones the liked on Etsy were running $80 a piece, ouch). She sent me a couple of reference photos, told me that she'd love corals and blues, and this is what I came up with.

I also made a sign for myself, just like the one I made for my sister who just got married, based on one she saw on pinterest. This is one of her wedding sneak peek photos with the sign I made for her. I made it just how I made hubby's dad's fathers day sign.

So there you go. I didn't get everything knocked off of my to do list, but I'm happy with what I did do. What have you been up to lately?