Tomato Cages for the Front Porch

No, I'm not growing tomatoes on my front porch.  In fact, I don't like to use tomato cages at all for my tomatoes.  I was raised you string them up for ease, not cage them, but that's for a different post. 

So what am I going to use these cages for and why on my front porch?  Well, for quite some time I've been seeing them used as decoration, usually at Christmas wrapped in all things Christmas and lights strung on them.  But, being that it is April, I do not plan on using the cages for Christmas decoration, but for something similar that I saw in an issue of Lowe's Creative Ideas magazine (really good to get if you don't already!).  Here's what they did (link under picture):

http://www.lowescreativeideas.com/idea-library/projects/Tomato-Cage_Light_Display_0811.aspx


I bought the cages today at Rural King, but bought two different sizes and wire gauge size.  I'm wanting to put one on each side of my front door, so I didn't know for sure how tall I wanted to get it.  I also need to see if I have flower pots up in the attic or if I need to go buy some big cheap terra cotta ones at Walmart to use as a base.  Then to find the lights.  I like the big round lights they used here.


 I'll post the pictures of the finished product....whenever I get around to doing it!

Console Table Finished!

Yesterday I posted my console table almost complete.  Last night I was able to get it all glazed and put in the bathroom.

Here is the table before I glazed it:

 I used Valspar's Antiquing Glaze over the aqua color paint (don't remember the name of the color of the paint....).  I used the dry brush technique as I read a lot of people preferred that method over the damp rag the bottle suggests.  I brushed the glaze on in small amounts, the wiped it off.
 

Here is the table after it  was glazed:

As you can see, the glaze gives it an old/dirty look.  The table before glazing was very beachy and bright, which I liked, but not the look I was going for in my bathroom.

Here it is in the bathroom. Yes, definitely needs items on it.  I'll work on getting those this week.  

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with it.  It adds color I was needing in the bathroom and is a start to making the room look a little more finished.  And it beats the huge fake palm tree I had in the corner that got in my way every time we got out of the shower.

My Console Table

I had been looking for a console table to put in my bathroom under the TV and could not find anything I liked in the store.  Or if I found something, it wasn't the right color (I wanted it painted) or it was too much for me to spend only to paint over it.  I knew I could build a table rather cheap myself and pain so after searching, I found a plan I liked at Ana White's blog: http://ana-white.com/2009/11/plan-simple-cheap-and-easy-console.html.  (Definitely go to her blog to find some awesome plans for furniture, shelves, etc.)  I did tweak plan a little to add a shelf under the top and on the bottom.  I also made the table a bit taller and shorter than the plan called for.

Here are some of the pics of the table while in progress.  Once it gets done, I'll post the final product. 

All put together.  I used the nail gun and wood glue to assemble it.  Wonderful having the nail gun around!

I decided I didn't like the plain edges on the top, so we went to Lowes and bought a router to router the edges.  Yes, I could have borrowed my dad's, but it's just not as fun having to borrow someone else's!  This was my first attempt at routering and I think I did pretty well!  I didn't want to take the time to do a practice.  It was getting late and the kids were getting tired....

This is the table primed and ready for paint.

I have it all painted now and my last step tonight is to add an antiquing glaze to make a bit darker and age it.  Will post those pics hopefully tomorrow!

An Elmo Cake

Here is an Elmo cake I recently did for a little girl turning 2 who absolutely loved Elmo.

I made a 12" bottom and 8" top.  The head is made from 2 half circle cakes using my Betty Crocker Bake N Fill dome pan.  Arms, hands, feet and present are made w/rice crispy treats.  The cake is covered in a mixture of candy clay and fondant.  My house is very dry, so it did dry out and crack. The only all-fondant is the white eyeballs and the rest is made with candy clay.  I used the Wilton sugar sheets in black for the black in the eyes and the mouth.  I will say that was much easier than tinting fondant and cutting it out.  The stuff doesn't taste worth a darn, but makes it easy to do little things like this.

Thankfully the cake traveled well and made the 1 hour drive to the party.  With my husband's driving and bumps in the road, I was worried!  The only piece I didn't put on until we got there was the present and the #2.

Some more cakes!

Here are some more cakes I have worked on recently.

The Strawberry Shortcake is for my neice's 3rd birthday.  It was a group effort with my mom and sister in law.  I wish I had a better photo of it, but this is as good as I have right now.

This cake I finished yesterday evening.  It was for my husband's customer appreciation dinner.  He came up with the idea to use a trophy similar to those DeKalb handed out last week and mom came up with the idea to have it coming out of a bag of seed corn.

Next weekend will be an Elmo cake for a little girl who loves Elmo.  Will post pics once it's done!

DIY Ruffle Curtains

I have had curtains in my bedroom for quite some time that I just did not like, no matter how hard I tried.  They were nice curtains, just didn't look right.  So, since I've made this discovery of ruffle fabric, I decided why not use it for curtains!  If you haven't seen ruffle fabric, it's really pretty.  It can be a little tricky to sew as the ruffles like to move around and try to get in your way of cutting and sewing (and I never want to take the time to pin them back).  I purchased ivory 2" ruffle fabric from www.rufflefabric.com.  This stuff is so pretty and would make an gorgeous wedding dress!  I told my daughter I was making a dress for my windows. :)  Anyway, I sewed a pocket at the top (lined it so it wouldn't sag) and that was it!  The fabric needs no hemming and the sides didn't even need finishing.  Here's the finished project that took just about 1 hour tops to complete.

From looking at the pics above, I either have quite a bit of dust floating around (very possible!) or have quite a few ghostly orbs in the house!

Now I need to either cut the curtain rod a bit so it's not so long or move the holders to be wider.  I hate making more holes in the wall, but that would look the best.

There's still much to do in the bedroom to get it looking the way I want, but I feel like I'm making progress.  Next step will be to get rid of the big TV in the corner, but I'm so cheap, I hate to throw it out and buy new since this sucker still works.  Darn thing won't die!

Wedding Invitations!

I offered to do wedding invitations for my mother-in-law.  What I thought was going to be an easy process turned to something not so easy.  I had started out wanting to make something with a pretty design cut into the outside of the invitation (I got a Cricut and wanted to use it!).  I couldn't make anything I really liked, so I turned to the sleeve option and made a couple different ones (sorry, don't have pictures!).  Well, in the end, my m-i-l ended up seeing one of my "test" invites and really liked it.  I thought "no problem, I can do this easy".....Yes, well, after much frustration and headache, I got them done and here's what the finished product looked like.

It ended up being a sleeve invitation in the end.  It was going to be a fold over, but it just wasn't working out.

 I also did a RSVP card, map, and golf outing info cards as well.  I bought all the paper from Paperandmore.com - really great place to order paper from.  Everything was a pearlized metallic so it had a nice shimmer to it.  I even bought the envelopes from there.  Much cheaper than Hobby Lobby.  Actually, HL doesn't carry the pearlized ones!

So now the invitations are out of my hands and are in my m-i-l's to be mailed.  Can't say that I will ever do that again unless I have a week off with no kids to get them done!