Guess who got a BEAUTIFUL camera for her birthday!?! Me!! I am still learning my way around my Cannon Rebel, but holy amazing — it is so much nicer than a point and shoot camera. I am in love.
I spent a few hours outside this weekend working on my lamp project that I shared yesterday and snapping photos of my pup and our neighbors’ pup. These two are simply hilarious together.
These photos were all shot at f-stop 3.5
These two are the best of friends — it’s always fun when they play together.
Happy one-year house anniversary to us! A year ago today we closed on our house — what an adventure it has been. Every room of our house has been painted, we did a massive family room overhaul, and tackled smaller projects here and there along the way.
My newest project is making our living room pretty, which started last weekend when we got rid of our old, grimy couch and purchased a pretty, new one!
If you are on vine or twitter, you can see the satisfying thud this ugly thing made when it hit the bottom of the dumpster at the local dump. So satisfying.
We didn’t mourn this couch long (or at all) — from the dump we headed to a local warehouse to pick up the clearance couch we’d purchased the night before. Not to brag too much, but we got our new couch for a steal!
AND IT IS ADORABLE!
The pillows that came with the couch were a little too Hawaiian for me, so I picked up the charcoal gray and teal pillows at Target! I also got a gray throw and snagged the light gray pillow from our bedroom. It is so pretty. I love it.
Now that I actually have a couch I like and something to jump off of from a design standpoint, I am going non-stop to make this room perfect. See, this is my room. There is no TV and no computer, just a big window and a comfy couch. I want to be able to read in here! I can during the day, but at night I am in a fish bowl. That’s why I am working to find the perfect curtains for our bay window. I ordered some online, so fingers are crossed that they work.
In the meantime, I needed some more light in this room. With just the overhead ceiling fan, the light in this room is just mediocre come night-time. I have a beautiful glass lamp that I bought for super cheap at Target because it was broken. I fixed that and just need a flashy shade. I need a few more lamps though, so I decided to make my own.
Using a shade I had from the thrift store and an old, large jar, I set off today to make another light for that room.
The first thing I needed to do was put a hole in the center of my jar lid. To do so, I had to find a drill bit large enough to fit my threaded pole (attached to the light fixture and to the nut underneath the lid). Once I found one, I carefully drilled through the lid while it was screwed onto the jar.
Originally, I wanted to keep the green lid for my lamp, but no amount of scrubbing could remove the “crayon” label from childhood.
Before I started to spray paint my lamp fixture, I figured out just how I was going to secure all of the parts of my lap. I ended up drilling through a mason jar lid with the same drill bit to use as extra support underneath the jar lid. I opted for a stack of washers on top of the lid to raise the light fixture up, and one washer and two nuts underneath for added stability.
I also used a lamp harp to support the shade.
Between the brassy harp, green lid and silver washers, I needed one finish for all of the parts of my lamp. I got out some metallic silver spray paint and lightly dusted all of the parts so they would match. I also did a coat of polyurethane.
When everything was dry, I assembled all of the pieces: Light socket & threaded rod > harp > washers > lid > mason jar lid > washer > two nuts. I tightened the heck out of everything, and when it was good and secure I placed the lid of the jar back onto the freshly washed and crayon-free jar.
I added the shade and the finial and put it next to the couch.
What do you think? It turned out pretty darn cute if you ask me. Now I just need to replace that old piano bench with something a little classier since my couch is so pretty now!
Did I mention I only paid $2 for the gorgeous shade?
I’ve had the pleasure of working on a poster for my friend’s fiance’s symphony’s (say that three times fast) upcoming performance at the end of October.
Occasional Symphony is a new symphony in Baltimore whose goal is to celebrate holidays by playing concerts at unique venues all across Charm City. For their performance of Halloween (which is on, yes, Halloween), they rented an old church and will be playing eerie music while showing the silent horror film The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The creepy tunes were created by local composers — too cool!
I was so excited to help, especially on such a unique project! I was able to grab shots from the movie — the copyright has run out — and tweak them in Photoshop using the dry brush filter. I added a brick texture to the background and found a super creepy font to use. I think it looks fantastic, and Rachel, Norman and crew are really happy with it. Yay!
Here’s what I came up with:
If you live in or near Baltimore, make sure you check out an Occasional Symphony show! It sounds like they will be doing some really cool things.
Oh, and because I think it is super awesome, look at the shout out I got on their site *squeals of excitement*:
A Smith of All Trades 