Oh Good Gravy! The second month of the  year is over!

We have had a super mild winter which makes me look forward to warmer weather even more!  

I am hoping that the warm weather continues in March!

So what have you been up to this past month?

I cannot wait to see all of your fabulous DIY projects!

Here is a reminder of the party guidelines…

• Your project MUST be about DIY home decor or home improvement.

• Only ONE project per blogger, please.

• Your project needs to be from the month of February, 2012.

• Please enjoy visiting other great projects by other bloggers and leave some comment love. 

• Please link back to the party somewhere in your post.  (Only those with a link back to the party will be considered to be featured on my blog.)

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

I am so thrilled to host this wonderful giveaway from ART & Elements.

Stefanie is the creator of this amazing jewelry.  I was so thrilled when she said she wanted to advertise with me.  Her button is in my sidebar, so you can just click on it whenever you want to visit her Etsy shop.

Stefanie’s Etsy shop is full of unique and original designs.

Here are a few examples…

One of my personal favorites is the “Tree of Life” necklace

I also love her “Poetic” Initial Pendant Necklace.

This would make a wonderful gift for anyone!

Click on “READ MORE” to see more of Stefanie’s jewelry and to enter to win a $50 Gift Certificate to her Etsy shop, ART & Elements!

[Read more...]

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Well, I am back from an amazing time at Blissdom!

I hope to share some pics and info learned with you later this week.

But for now, I wanted to share with you my next project…

My sister’s laundry room.

Now I know that you are thinking, “Don’t ya have enough work to do at your own house, Traci?”  And the answer is YES! 

But a lot of what I need to get done at my house cannot be finished until the wiring and plumbing gets finished and approved in the addition.  So I am in a waiting period.  Yuck.

Being that I don’t like to sit still much, my sister has begged convinced me to help her makeover her laundry room.

(She wanted to straighten her laundry room before I took the pictures, but I wouldn’t let her.) 

We know for sure that we want to paint the walls a different color.  This is the paint color that was already on the walls when my sister moved into her home three years ago.

We definitely want to get rid of those wired shelves…

And replace to ugly rectangular light with different lighting…

We are going to get cute baskets to organize her supplies better.

And some cabinets to hide a few things…

I’m not sure why my sister collects egg cartons, but we need to hide those things!

And we also need to come up with a way for her to hang her clothes.

It should be a fun project!

We have some video ideas to take you along for the ride with us.

But we also need help with something else!

We want YOU to share your

Laundry Room Ideas with us!

(on my Beneath My Heart facebook page)

I am heading over to my facebook page right now,

where I would love for you to come over and link up some inspiration pictures

or links of laundry rooms with me.

You can add a link of your own laundry room from your blog, or if you have a picture you want to send us, that would be great too.

We need all the inspiration we can get!

And if you are going to be working on updating your laundry room soon, this will be a great resource for you too.

Some come on over!

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Hey Friends, Happy Friday!

Well, my sis and I made it to Nashville yesterday, and we are enjoying our time here so far.

I didn’t post yesterday because I was not organized enough (unlike Diva blogger, Myra) to actually write my posts before I came to Blissdom.

Oops.  Gotta work on that. 

It’s already been an eventful time.  My sister thought our (1st) room was too far from the conference, and she wanted to move to a closer room.  So she called and pestered the people at the front desk for about an hour until we got a new room.  (Yes, the front desk people know her by name now!)

She used our pregnant roommate, Myra, as a excuse for why we needed to be closer to the conference.  But really, Cyndi was the only one complaining about the hike of a walk.  (She is the oldest in the group, ya know.)  Ahem.

Anywho…

I was so excited to finally meet my friend Tonya, from Love of Family and Home.  Precious, precious girl.  She is rooming with me, Cyndi, and Myra. 

I feel so blessed to have such great roomies!  Although I don’t have a picture with Myra yet! 

I also made a new friend.  Susan, from Living Rich on Less.  She is sooooo sweet. 

She had emailed me and told me she was coming by herself to Blissdom, so I told her to find me so we could hang out.  I can’t stand to think of someone being by themselves at a conference.

Well, she is as cute as a button!  It’s so easy to connect with other home bloggers, ya know?

I’ve been taking good notes, and I’m hoping to share some of the blogging wisdom that I learn with you soon.

Until then…

I wanted to let you know that I guest posted yesterday at sweet Sharon’s blog, Mrs. Hines’ Class on The Foundation of the Home.

I would love if you could come visit me over there.  Just click on the button.

Please pray for my sweet husband.  Yesterday was his birthday.  We had cupcakes for breakfast before I left for Blissdom.  (The boys LOVED that!)  They’re basically like  doughnuts, right? 

Last night he called me, and he had a fever of 103 degrees!  I felt so helpless.  He’s doing a little better today, but his schedule is full of trying to take the boys to basketball practices and games this weekend.  So your prayers are appreciated. 

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

Happy Wednesday!

I am busy getting ready for my trip to Nashville this week for the Blissdom Conference.  I am so excited to spend great quality time with my sister. 

Lately, I’ve been thinking about some of my favorite projects that I have completed since I started blogging.

I was also thinking how a good majority of them were completed before the days of Pinterest.

To me, some of these projects were “pin-worthy.”  You know what I mean?

Do you have some of those from your blog?

Well, every now and then, I am going to re-post some of my favorite projects with a cute little picture that has a title on it.  Perfect for “Pinning.”  (hint, hint)

Sort of like this one:

Pin It

If you like the project, I would love for you to “pin it.”  If not, then don’t.  (I’ll never know.  hee.hee.)  Just be sure that the “pin” links to the direct URL and not just my blog URL, if possible.

Why do I think this project is pin-worthy?

1. It’s burlap.  (‘nuf said.)

If you need more reasons, here ya go…

2.  It solves a problem.  No more bed skirts that slip and slide from one side of the bed to the other.

3.  It’s easy.  (If you don’t make the mistake of buying sticky velcro like I did.)

4.  Very limited sewing skills needed.  You just  need to know how to sew a straight stitch.

5.  Looks great!  I know I am biased, but I love how beautiful my bed skirt looks. 

And now for the tutorial!

DIY Velcro Burlap Bedskirt

(Originally posted March 2010)

I am continuing to work on my master bedroom makeover.

A little progress has been made on my bedding. This part can be stressful. I am trying to come up with the colors that I want in my bedroom. I was leaning toward my favorite colors…tan, black, white, and red. But lately, I’ve been wanting to add a little bit of light blue instead of red to my palette.

I went to some fabric stores and found a fabric that I loved. It had some blues and browns in it, and I might make some pillows with it. Not sure.

But I did decide what material to use for my bed skirt. Brown burlap.

Ya’ll know that I love burlap.

And when I was looking at my inspiration fabric, I could picture it with a brown bed skirt.

I remembered that Hobby Lobby had some brown burlap on sale for $1.99 a yard. How can you beat that? I bought four yards of it and brought it home.

I tucked it under my mattress to get an idea of what it would look like and I loved it!

So here is what I did to make it. The burlap comes in a 45 inch width, so I unfolded the material and cut it in half. I will be able to make skirts for two sides of my bed with this.

Using one half of the material, I decided to make my hem on the outer un-cut edge by first ironing the edge over about a half inch.

Then I folded it over again about an inch and pressed it again.

Next I sewed a straight stitch down the hem.

Now I have to explain this great idea I had for making a bed skirt.

I wanted to make a skirt that I could just velcro onto my box springs.

I have made bed skirts before that are like the kind you buy in the store. The ones that have the material all the way across the box springs that the skirt is attached to.

It was always really hard for me to get the bed skirt to fit “just right”. One side was usually too long, and I would have to use safety pins to keep the skirt in place. Even bed skirts you purchase in stores can drive you nuts. They are always moving around when you put your fitted sheet on, or they will end up sliding over and drooping on one side. I can’t stand that.

So to keep my bed skirt in place, I decided to velcro it to my box springs.

I didn’t come up with this idea on my own. My mom was a professional seamstress, and she had told me about this idea. She hadn’t tried it herself, but she said she had seen other professionals do it. I have always wanted to try it, and my bedroom makeover was the perfect place.

So I bought some industrial strength velcro from Walmart for twenty dollars. I didn’t like paying that much, but it was a lot cheaper than the velcro I almost bought at JoAnn’s Fabrics. It would have been over 40 dollars there! I got it because it was two inches wide, and I thought that it would make the bed skirt more durable. (You may be able to find it somewhere else for less.)

Unfortunately, I didn’t notice that it had a “sticky” back to it. (I know…it says it right on the box! Duh.) The stickiness actually became a huge pain when I was sewing the material to it.

Now you might think I am crazy, but I hot glued the velcro to my box springs. I wanted to make sure it wasn’t going anywhere. :)

The velcro strip looked something like this when I was done. (I have pushed my mattress back to take this picture.)

The edge of the velcro was 17 inches from the ground so I decided to make the skirt 18 inches long.

The next steps are not easy to describe in a post, but I will try. The total length of my material from top to bottom was about 22 inches long (after I had already hemmed the bottom). I wanted the skirt to be a finished length of 20 inches…18 inches for the part of the skirt you would see, and 2 inches to sew onto the velcro strip and tuck under the mattress. I also created a one inch hem on each side of the skirt.

The next part made me almost lose my sanity!!! I was going to show you an easy way to pin the material to the velcro strip, but there was no EASY to it! The material kept sticking to the strip when I didn’t want it to. (I’m not going to go into detail of how I literally wrestled that strip of sticky velcro…it’s just too painful to re-live.)

I highly recommend trying to find non-sticky velcro for this project.

I finally decided to use the “stinky” to my advantage. I just folded the material over every couple of inches and pressed it to the “sticky”.

It still wasn’t holding together very well, so I ran to my sewing machine and began sewing. I sewed a straight stitch on the top and bottom of the two inch velcro strip and attached it to the box springs.

Though I wasn’t sure it was all going to come together… it turned out exactly as I had hoped. (I still need to iron it in a few spots.)

Isn’t she pretty?!

I ADORE the look of burlap.

I used a little less than four yards for this side of the bed.

I had to cut off about 6 inches of one end because there was a bad place in the burlap. Sometimes that happens.

I followed the same steps for the other two sides of the bed.

I had 8 total yards in the whole bed skirt which will cost me $16.00. So the whole skirt ended up costing me $36.00. I think that’s pretty good! (I already had the other supplies like thread and glue sticks.)

Here is a picture of my bedskirt in my completed bedroom makeover.

What do you think about a velcro bedskirt? Good idea?

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

A few weeks ago, our family had the treat of eating lunch at Olive Garden with some of our sweetest friends.

It was such a blessing to sit down to eat with some of my favorite people in the world and eat lunch in such a fun and relaxing environment.

The ladies sat on one end of the table and the men on the other side with the kiddos in the middle.

I loved catching up on “life” with these two precious ladies, Julie and Lori.

I am so blessed to have them in my life!

Lori has two beautiful daughters that my boys are especially fond of!

Especially Eli.

He says, “Taty (Katy) is my lady love!”

Brynn watched Adam play on his DSI before we ordered.

We all got to try the new 3 Course Italian Dinner for $12.95 that Olive Garden is offering right now through March 18th.

Want to see all the delicious options available with Olive Garden’s 3 Course Italian Dinner? Just visit Olivegarden.com/specials.

Everything on their menu is delicious, so it was hard to decide!

While waiting for our food, our wonderful waitress served us some delicious breadsticks.

Doesn’t that picture make you drool?

Most meals include unlimited breadsticks AND unlimited soup or salad!

Chris finally made up his mind and told our waitress, Samantha, what he wanted.

I have to give props to Samantha! She was so sweet and courteous. Our meal was served in a timely manner, which I was super impressed with since it was the Sunday lunch rush, and the place was packed!

When the food came, it didn’t take us long to eat it all up!

I think we tried everything on the $12.95 menu between the 7 of us , (the kiddos ordered off the kids’ menu), and each of us LOVED our meals! They were delish!

These meals were extremely filling! Between the breadsticks, soup, salad, and entrees, we were stuffed.

But we did have room for one more thing…

DESSERT!

They are served on the cutest little dessert trays, and Samantha served them with a smile.

(Yes, she probably thought I was a crazy person taking all these pictures!)

The desserts were so good, there is a chance my husband licked the dish clean, and I might have stolen a bite of Eli’s.

Just sayin’…

So are you starving after reading my post?

Well, here is YOUR chance to win a

$100 Gift Card to Olive Garden!

To be entered for a chance to win a gift card, courtesy of Olive Garden and BlogHer, leave me a comment telling me who you would love to take to eat at Olive Garden

Rules:

No duplicate comments.

This sweepstakes runs from 2/21/12 – 3/18/12.

You may receive (2) total entries by selecting from the following entry methods:

a) Leave a comment (see question above in bold)

b) Tweet about this promotion and leave the URL to that tweet in a comment on this post

c) Blog about this promotion and leave the URL to that post in a comment on this post

d) For those with no Twitter or blog, read the official rules to learn about an alternate form of entry.

This giveaway is open to US Residents age 18 or older.

Winners will be selected via random draw, and will be notified by e-mail.

You have 72 hours to get back to me, otherwise a new winner will be selected.

The Official Rules are available here.

Also, visit the Olive Garden page on BlogHer.com to check out the other blogger reviews and more chances to win!

.

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

I have finally been able to organize our pantry! 

Pin It

I cannot tell you how much I love this pantry!  It is so much more convenient that my previous pantry…not to mention prettier!

Do you remember my old pantry? Yep.  That’s Cy in there tearing it down while my kids eat dinner. 

Our previous pantry was small, dark, and deep.  Food got lost in there!

Now my pantry is big, light, and shallow!

I can find my food easily and quickly.

I admit that I do not keep my pantry as stocked as some people do.  I keep the basics in the pantry.  When cooking dinner, I usually go to the store that day to get the supplies I need.

My favorite part of the pantry is my little tin buckets.  I got those at Goodwill and put some chalkboard labels on them.

I had them in my previous pantry on the side wall.

I made some more chalkboard labels for my baskets.

Those labels are not only decorative, but functional.  It really does help the boys and Cy find things more easily in the pantry.

I put my cookbooks on the top shelf along with two baskets that hold my cloth napkins.

(Eventually I will be moving my cookbooks to a new area once Cy builds it for me.)  I hope to show you that soon.

I love my organized pantry because it is about the only space in our home that is organized right now!  Ha! 

My shallow, organized pantry also makes it easy for me to tell when I am running low on items.

For instance, notice how my cereal containers are mostly empty?

Guess what I’m gonna be buying today? 

So, does your pantry need organizing?

Tweet

Share on Tumblr

I’ve been looking on the internet for some inspiration pictures of decorating with ropes.  There are so many great ideas out there.  Ropes have such a natural feel, and I especially love the thought of incorporating ropes into the boys’ rooms in our new addition.

I think it would be so cool to make some bookshelves for the boys using some rope.

(Click on “source” below each picture to see where I found these pictures.)

source

I could make rope shelves for their bathroom or their rooms!

Click here to read the tutorial of how to make these rope shelves.

I know the boys would love to have their beds hanging from ropes!  I’m not thinking I will do this.

But look how beautiful it is…

source

Can you imagine the chaos that would ensue if I were to hang my boys’ beds from ropes!

Oh, good golly!

source

I do want to incorporate barn lights somewhere in the upstairs addition.  I love how this barn light is hanging from a rope, don’t you?

I would love a bright red barn light for one of the boys’ rooms!  Or even their bathroom!

source

In the above picture, there is rope wrapped around the “side table.”  Although I love the look, I don’t think I would actually create that look.

But I do like how this blogger’s side table was covered in rope to create a one of a kind piece.  What a great way to take a plain table and make it more up to date.

created by Jessa from Sparkle

Rope also looks beautiful around mirrors!

I absolutely LOVE a rope mirror.  Especially this one from Ballard Designs, although I can’t find it on their site anymore.

Anyone could take any mirror (like from Goodwill), and add some rope to it to create a beautiful focal point in a room.

Nate Berkus shares how to make a rope mirror.  Click HERE for the tutorial.

Here is another way of how to decorate with rope by Kate from Centsational Girl.  Isn’t this bowl gorgeous?!  You can read the tutorial by clicking on the picture.

I also found this great tutorial on how to make this rope light.  I love the way in turned out.  Maybe I could do something like this in my future office space?

Tutorial on how to make this pendant light.

Chandeliers also look great covered in rope.  I do not have almost $400 to spend on this chandelier, but this look could be replicated for pennies.  You could cover up an ugly brass chandy that you find at a thrift store with rope and get a whole new look!

$380 from jamieyoung.com

Layla added some jute trim to her chandelier to give it a special touch.  HERE is her post about it.

Speaking of lighting, Martha Stewart shares how to make a rope lamp. Click HERE for the tutorial.

I see lamps that shape at Goodwill ALL the time for just a few bucks.  This is such an easy project.  I’m storing this one in the back of my mind too!

And the last picture I had to share just because. 

How’s that for creative?! A rope covered mannequin. 

Etsy Shop

I am expecting that baby to go viral on Pinterest.  hee.hee.

Well, I hope I gave you some good ideas of how to add rope to your décor.  That is, if you WANT to add rope to your décor. 

I wanted to add real quickly that I got to have lunch yesterday with a beautiful new friend.

Carmel, from Our Fifth House!

We have been online friends for a while, but now we are real life friends.

Can you believe we only live about 10 minutes from each other?!

We had so much fun eating lunch at Panera and talking about lots of blog stuff.  She is beautiful inside and out!  We also figured out that I was her daughter’s music teacher a few years ago at the Mom’s Day Out program I used to work at.  So cool!

And oh yeah, my sister was there too. 

I LOVE every moment I get to spend with her.  I don’t get to see her enough actually!

It is so much fun meeting your blog friends in real life.  I highly recommend it.  That is why I enjoy going to blog conferences so much!  It makes blogging even MORE fun!

Carmel has a beautiful blog that you will enjoy checking out, if you haven’t already.

Her foyer is one of my favorite projects…

Be sure to stop by and tell her “hello!”

Tweet

Share on Tumblr