Guest Bedroom: DIY Drawer Liner Using Wrapping Paper

My next project for the guest bedroom was to put some drawer liners into the dresser and the night stands. I knew that if I was going to expect Jocelyn to actually put clothes in that dresser, the drawers were going to need to be lined since the dresser really isn't the greatest quality and no one wants to find little splinters in their clothes or have the wood pull at the clothes at all.

So, being the person that I am and not really liking to spend money, I searched Pinterest for some DIY ideas to make my own drawer liners. I found a couple ideas and the one I ended up going with used wrapping paper and clear contact paper. I got the contact paper from Wal Mart and the wrapping paper at Party City (It was the only store I could find wrapping paper that fit my color scheme).

To get the sizes I needed, I used an Observer to measure out the drawer sizes (The Observer can be used for SO many more things than just for reading!) and then used that to mark out the dimensions on the wrapping paper before cutting the wrapping paper down to size. It was easier to get the newspaper into the drawers than it was mark it out on the roll of wrapping paper.

I then cut the contact paper down to the length that I needed it to be, leaving some extra at the end so I would be sure that I had enough to wrap around the ends, and then attempted to get it started as straight as possible and rolled it over the wrapping paper (that wasn't always successful). 

After I had them all done, I trimmed them down where needed to so they would fit into the drawers and put all the drawer back in. Since both the wrapping paper and the contact paper were rolled up, the edges of the liners stuck up in a few places, so I ended up using some painter's tape to keep the corners down. I probably could have put them under some books or something for a while and gotten them to flatten out, but I'm impatient, so I went the tape route.

I think it cost me less about $8 for the supplies and I have wrapping paper and contact paper left over for other things as well.

Here's the finished product!

Other guest bedroom projects:

DIY Chalk Paint - Headboard and Night Stands

DIY Chalk Paint - Coral Dresser

The Weekend

Trent and I started off this weekend by going to a Creighton baseball game. We were given two tickets from my work and were able to sit in the UP Suite to watch the game. The weather was perfect, and it was so nice to be able to just sit and hang out with Trent for a few hours. It wasn't the most exciting game, but the home team won and life is good! :)

After the game, we picked up a few things so we had all the supplies to smoke a pork butt (and by "we" I mean Trent). Trent started it at about 10:00 on Friday night and slept on the couch overnight so he could get up to check it every few hours. Fifteen hours later, we had some awesome pulled pork to have for a late lunch. It is sooo good and really made it feel like summer! I am so happy that we have leftovers to last us quite a while!

Trent got to use his egg that was all set up in its new stand that his dad and brother in law helped him build for the first time during this as well!

This was also Trent's first chance to use his Meat Claws that he got for Christmas to shred the meat. He shredded the meat while I was out getting some chips, so I missed all the action, but he said they were awesome and made it so much easier, so I'll believe him! (And then I made him pose for some pictures!)

The day was even more perfect because the weather was so incredibly nice. I love being able to have the windows and doors open and hang out outside. It makes me so excited for it to be that nice every day!

Jocelyn and Mattie took advantage of the nice weather by taking a nap outside, too!

Sadly, the weather didn't stay that nice for long. By the time church got over on Sunday, we could hear the rain on the roof and the thunder in the sky. It was down poring when it was time to go to the car, and I had been the one to say that we didn't need to bring the umbrellas in to church... whoops! The stormy weather did make it a perfect afternoon for an indoor nap, though, so I'll take that! :) 

It was a nice and relaxing weekend and I'm glad we took advantage of the nice weather while it lasted since we're back to the cold and icy weather now!

Guest Bedroom: Coral Painted Dresser with DIY Chalk Paint

After I got done painting the headboard and night stands in the guest bedroom, I moved on to repainting this dresser:

The dresser came from my mom's house. It was in the basement of her house when she moved in last December. It wasn't pretty or even that functional, but I knew that I could make it work somewhere in our house. 

Again, I used the same recipe for chalk paint that I had used on the headboard and night stands but this time I used a coral color called Blaze Orange by Valspar. This worked out well so I didn't have to worry about sanding or stripping the dresser first. I just wiped it down to get rid of the dust and other gunk that was on it and then started painting.

Here is what the dressers after a coat or two of paint. 

This dresser took me quite a few coats as well. I think it ended up being 5+ coats (followed by 2-3 coats of polly). I think it took more coats with this dresser since the brown underneath was so dark color as the base and since the paint wasn't white this time around, the Plaster of Paris lightened the paint, so it took a few more coats to make it as dark and bright as I wanted it to be.

For the pulls, I just used the same flat black spray paint that I had used for the night stands to change their color. I thought about getting new ones all together, but I decided that I'd rather save the money and just used the ones I already had.

I put them in a box on nails to be able to paint them better.

In the end, here's what it looked like all put back together.

Stay tuned for more projects to come!

Other guest bedroom projects:

DIY Chalk Paint - Headboard and Night Stands

Guest Bedroom: Painted Headboard and Night Stands with DIY Chalk Paint

My cousin, Jocelyn, has moved in with us for eight weeks while she is on her final rotation for PT School. When she's done in Omaha she will be DONE with school and will be Dr. Jocelyn! How awesome!

Well, knowing that she was going to be moving in with us inspired me to actually do something with our guest bedroom and bathroom finally. Those two rooms have stayed the same ol' blah rooms that they were when we moved in for the past year and a half so I'm excited to change them up a little finally.

Here's what the bedroom looked like before I started making all the changes:

Not bad, but definitely nothing special -- that's for sure. 

I'm not going to show the finished quite yet, but I'm going to share a few projects that I've done for the room for now and then I can share what it looks like all put together!

First off, we painted the whole room. It changed from the "builder beige" it was to a gray color "Rope" by Behr.

Right after we were done painting the room, I got to work on painting some of the furniture. 

First up was the headboard. Trent had bought me the headboard for my 23rd birthday, my first birthday after moving to Omaha and living in an apartment that wasn't a dorm room. I felt kind of bad for wanting to paint it, but I'm glad that he gave me the go-ahead to do what I wanted to it. 

After I was done with the headboard, I also painted the two nightstands that were in the room the same color. I had bought the nightstands shortly after we moved into the house from some thrift store. They had gotten a bunch of the nightstands from an old hotel that was closing or remodeling or something like that. I was just happy to get two matching night stands for a pretty decent price.

I used a recipe from Pinterest and made my own chalk paint to paint these pieces (not to be confused with chalkboard paint). The most famous of chalk paints is Annie Sloan's Chalk Paint. This paint was a little too expensive to me, so I made my own using regular Valspar paint in Flat finish, Plaster of Paris, and water. I used my go-to white paint color, "Honeymilk" 

The benefit of using chalk paint is that it rarely requires any preparation of the surface such as sanding or priming and can be used on pretty much any surface including furniture that already has some type of varnish or something on it. It ends up with a very nice silky finish as well (I used poly to cover it, though, so it didn't stay that way). I also like it because, when it dries, all the brush stroke lines that are on it from the brush dry flat, so it definitely gets better as it dries.

I used the recipe of about 3 cups paint to 1 cup Plaster of Paris to 1/4 cup water. I mixed the Plaster of Paris and the water first to ensure there weren't any lumps and then mixed in the paint.

The paint is a lot more watered down with this mixture, so it took me about 4 coats to cover everything good enough, but it dried fast so I could pretty much just paint continuously without having to wait for it to dry and it was better than having to sand or strip the furniture before I painted.

After I got the number of layers on that I wanted, I topped it off with two coats of Polycrylic.

For the night stands, I just spray painted the hardware with a flat black paint and put them back on.

Here's what both of those pieces look like before and after:

You can kind of see in this picture below what it looked like after a few coats. You can still see the wood through the paint and you can see the brush strokes as well. I just needed to keep going until that was all gone. I got quite a few episodes of Damages watched on Netflix in the evenings while I was painting 4+ coats on 3 different pieces of furniture! 

Now I know that this wasn't a very exciting post, but there will be better before and afters after I get through all the little projects. :)

Stay tuned for more projects I did for the guest bedroom!

Girls' Weekend - Pinterest Party

This past weekend some of my bestest friends all got together and had our first Pinterest Party.

Everyone brought a craft to do and food to eat (most from Pinterest - hence the "Pinterest Party") and we just hung out and caught up while eating, drinking, and crafting.

Miss Harper Lee joined the girls' day for the first time this year. Last year when we all got together she was still in her mommy's belly. It was so nice to be able to have her entertain us all! She even had a mini photo shoot for us wearing a piece of fabric on her head in different ways. She was a good sport and sooo cute!!

After Harper's photo shoot, we got started on the crafts and busted out the wine and dug into the food. 

For our food we had Puppy Chow, Sangria, Cookie Dough Dip with Teddy Grahams, Beef Enchilada Dip, Strawberry Shortcake Rice Krispie Treats, Mini Cherry and Caramel Cheesecakes, and wine, of course! I was very impressed by all the food everyone brought. It was awesome to see so many of the recipes you see on Pinterest all the time actually be made and all in one place! They were definitely as good as they look on the internet!  Next time I'll have to remember to photograph all the food!

As for everyone's crafts, 

Mallory was going to work on some crafts for her wedding in June, like making the boutonnieres and a board for people to sign, but I think she ended up helping everyone else and talking the whole time, so I'm not so sure any of her crafts got done :)

Meghan made a glass gem covered night light jar for a friend like this one.

Carey painted some different quotes and sayings onto some canvases, 

Lauren painted some bird houses in fun spring colors, 

Bailey painted the first of many wooden boxes that will house all the pictures and other random things from each different place that they travel to (like these), 

Kaela used a frame and put a boarder of wine corks around the outside of it and the saying "Always carry a corkscrew and the wine will provide itself" it looks almost just like this - it turned out great!, 

and I painted some little pots, drew a herringbone pattern on them with a silver metallic Sharpie, filled it with fake grass and then put some jelly bean eggs in it for a fun spring/Easter decoration. They are almost exactly like this.

Here's a picture of one of my two pots close up. Again, if I would have been thinking, I would have taken a picture of each persons' craft close up... oh well...

The jelly beans seem to mysteriously keep disappearing out of the grass too... It makes me laugh!

You can't see everyone's items very well in this picture, but here we are with our crafts!

 

We ordered pizza for supper and spent most of the night around the table working on our stuff, eating and talking about everything that's been going on in our lives. 

Everyone hard at work

After our crafts were done, we cleared the table and played a game of Cards Against Humanity. We had a few laughs at some ridiculous and inappropriate things, but I was happy that everyone has a great sense of humor! Miss Harper even wanted to play for a while before it was her bedtime!

After we went through the entire deck, some girls needed to go to bed (like Lauren),

but a few of us stayed up until very early in the morning (I'm pretty sure it was after 3 before I got to bed). 

I loved having the time to just sit and chat with my favorite people. It was like college again - when we all lived in the same place and never had to go home - we were just in the next room or right down the hall from each other. Good times! I am so happy that we are all still good friends! I wish we could all get together more often and I cannot wait until we do it again!