Kitchen Night Light Idea

I made this a few weeks ago and forgot to post it! I saw this on a craft blog once and had to try it out. All you do is take an empty wine bottle, put Christmas Lights in it, and get some plastic grapes and glue them onto the bottle as well. Wrap it in some twine, ribbon, or whatever you like and you will have a cute little kitchen nightlight (for $4) instead of using your hood light above the stove. Pretty clever idea if you ask me! Excuse the cell phone and hair dryer cords in the pic :)

Homemade Wine Charms (because anything you can buy, you can make yourself)

This weekend, I am helping to throw a "Wine and Cheese" Wedding Shower for Kristina and Toby. I am in charge of food, wine charms, and my own little touch- a replica of their wedding cake (another thing on my "to-do list"). So far, I have almost completed the wine charms. These guys can be expensive when you have to buy 50 of them! So, I figured I could make some and personalize them a little bit.

Kristina is having "Nectar" as her Bridal Party color, and is also having green accents- so I chose 3 colors of shiny card stock to reflect that. I also bought a Martha Stewart Craft Punch (in the shape of a little wedding cake) at Michael's and crystal beads and wire rings. Then the process began. Sure it will take longer to make them myself, but it's cheaper ($15 for all 50!) and more thoughtful and personalized :)

Here were my supplies from Michael's:

I used my nifty craft punch (thank you Martha!) to make all these little wedding cakes, and then used needle nose pliers to feed a wire charm link through the top of each.

After adding the charm links to the card stock: Then, I fed a crystal bead on either side of the link onto the wire ring. TA DA!

I know this pic is light (I was making them in my bed while watching my HGTV I can't watch in the living room)....but I will take more tonight when I have them on the wine glasses to test them out!

More floors

Here are the finished floors through the entryway. The quarter round molding still needs to be installed, but it is looking SO good! Joel did the best job with the entryway....it was really tricky!

VIEW FROM BACK DOOR:

VIEW FROM FRONT DOOR:

Also, here are the two silhouette paintings of the pups....they turned out pretty cute!

CRAFTS (for Auntie)

Auntie loves to see my paintings and crafts, so I figured I post my latest from last night. I fell in love with these great dog silhouette prints on http://www.thisyounghouse.com (my favorite website). You can pick your dog breed and color for the background to match your decor. Only problem is, they were $20 each....and just a flimsy print. I thought it would be better to make them myself.

I bought 2 canvases at Michael's, and one tube of chocolate colored acrylic paint. I then printed out pics of a lab, and one of a boxer (these are what I used as a reference since my dogs don't sit still). I drew the outline in pencil, and now tonight I'll use the brown paint to trace and fill in the background. It should match our bedroom perfect. Lets hope they turn out ok. Here is a preview of what I've done so far...

COOPER (BEFORE)

STELLA (BEFORE)

Another thing I did last night was organize my jewelry. I got this idea from a friend, and it's a cheap way to display jewelry and fits perfectly in a standard vanity drawer. I bought a plastic organizer for nails and screws at Lowe's for $4. It has little compartments to store different hardware. See below...

So then all I had to do was untangle my jewelry, cut the separators and insert them to make small or large sections. I purged some of my old jewelry, and then divided my earrings, rings and bracelets throughout. And, since I can't sit still through an entire show...I did all this while watching American Idol- sweet!