little dresser, turned blue

This little dresser is plain wood no more! It is now fit for a sporty little boy's room.

Here is a close up of some of the drawer designs. I took some oops paint from the local home improvement store and used it to paint the base. Then using wallpaper boarder and spray adhesive, affixed it to the sides and top drawer of the dresser. The paper was a little large for the drawer fronts, so it was cut to the right size and a red and white boarder were painted to match the original boarders. Then a few pieces of sports equipment were cut and glued over the edge to make it feel more authentic. As a finishing touch, I added some of the blue paint to the edges of the balls, and such. Thus making a cohesive collage. Oh and the knobs got a little red paint along with a layer of clear varnish too!

--Tara

Smell that Broccoli!

I found a trick! When cooking broccoli sometimes it smells like old flatulence... especially when your broccoli is not super fresh. Last night I had the idea to put garlic salt in the water when boiling it... and Voila! Yummy smelling broccoli for dinner! I probably used 1/2 a tsp of garlic salt in the water. Not enough to flavor the broccoli, but enough to make it aromatically pleasing.

Tables... a decorative storage idea!

Looks like a table sitting there in the corner, right? Yeah, but it doesn't really have legs. In fact, it isn't actually a real table at all. That's just a stack of food storage buckets covered to look like a piece of furniture. If you look really hard, you might notice it... but nobody ever looks that hard. Trust me.

The idea is simple really...

Stack your storage items (I used buckets of wheat here, but I've used boxes, bins, just about anything stackable). If you're using a heavy storage item, put some cardboard down to protect the space around it - in this case, the wall, the carpet, and the pretty scrap of wood that's going to sit on top later.


Then just cover it! I used a bed sheet because I didnt have a beautiful table cloth large enough, and I really wanted this scrap wood to show... it already looked like a beautiful table top!

After trimming the cardboard that was sticking out underneath (which should have been trimmed before I finished putting the buckets down), I propped a chair in front of it. A pot of peacock feathers, a few pictures on top, and tada!

Can't really tell at first glance can ya?

This simple idea was a hit at college. Usually the boxes themselves wound up as the table top and the whole thing got a fabric cover. We used similar tables as night stands and sofa backers. Note this: if you're going to put lamps or other heavy items on top, make sure your box, bins, or whatever is strong and heavy enough to handle some good bumping around.

That's a Jannie-Original. Hope it helps you like it did me!

Crib Canopy for the Princess

My little girl needed something to dress up her room, and what better than a royal canopy? The problem was that all the ones I wanted were $100 or more. So here was my fancy little idea... I started out with a wire basket that hangs on the wall (bought it at Ross for $10), and spray painted it white ($2 at any craft/all-purpose store). Spray paint works best for a solid color because it gets in all those teeny tiny crevasses that your paint brush can't reach. If you're going for a vintage or shabby chic look, you may try acrylic paint and a foam brush.

Using some white toole (or sheer curtains called "Lill" from IKEA for $5), I poked the fabric through the base of the wire basket. To make it stay in place, you can hot glue it, sew it by hand, or just do what I did - safety pin it.

Then hang it on the wall...

...add a little color to the basket (I used stuffed animals, but it would look great with whatever you wanted to put in there)...

And there you have it my friends! A beautiful new canopy for your bed... or your baby's bed! If you're concerned about little fingers getting ahold of that beautiful sheer fabric and pulling it down, just use a pair of hooks or curtain tie-backs on the wall to keep it away from the bed and out of harm's way.

Giant Ruby Red Grapefruit

Remember that monster of a grapefruit I found on my tree? It ended up being over six inches tall and almost as wide.
I thought it might be sweet, but I really had no idea how sweet it was! No honey needed. Who ever heard of that? I tried a little salt, but that wasn't necessary either. My kids ate most of it. Goes to show that you can have healthy snacks for your kids. It probably helped that it was a novelty. I try to have seasonal fruit in the house to keep the kids interested. It's fun!