Tag: White

Craft Projects, Quick and Easy Crafts

White and Mint Metal Candle Holder

Jessica Smith

I really try to like colors that aren’t a shade of blue or green. Honest, I do. I bought a coral/pink candle holder from Target a few weeks ago on clearance that I thought would add a nice pop of color to my living room.

Console In the room

You can see it on the table, pulling the same color from my poppy pillow on the couch.

Console2And again on my console table pulling out the color in the maraca I brought back from our honeymoon.

I like the coral color on both of those pieces, but I hate it on the calendar. Seriously, it is awful. Every time I walk by our living room it jumps out at me. “Ha ha, there’s ugly pink in your rooooooom.”

Well, ugly pink no more.

Pink candle holder

I didn’t want to return the piece since I paid $5. It was a good price and I liked the overall look, just not the hideous color. I taped off the wooden based and, for good measure, a stripe to remain coral.

Then I rushed outside to spray paint the whole thing.

taped off top

Ahhhh, so much better already.

Once the white dried, I pulled off the tape… and still hated the coral. So I sanded down the line left from the paint and did the entire thing in white. I liked it, but thought it needed something special. Something extra.

candle holder sprayed white

So of course I added mint to it. I can’t help it… I just love mint green. And aqua and teal and blue and green.

I then slapped a light stain on the wood base!Finished candle holder

It looks so much better (to me anyway). And now it looks right at home on my new console table.

White and mint candle holder2

No more ugly pink staring at me in the room. I can breathe a sign of relief.

White and mint candle holder

So what do you think? Better before or after? If you are pink people, then you probably think I’m nutso. It was a cool piece to begin with. But if you are like me and coral pink makes you want to tear at your eyes, the after is much better.

Tomato Tally: 120

Home Improvement

Closet doors! (and other things…)

Jessica Smith

My life feels all sorts of crazy right now. I’ve been playing on a co-ed softball team that started in early April and taking an interior decorating class that started in May. Between my evening obligations, work and the holidays in between (birthdays, Mother’s and Father’s Day, weddings), I feel like I have lost all free time! That is hardly the case, but losing two evenings a week has made me surprisingly less productive. Instead of wanting to get things done in my free time, I want to relax… which is why our door project took from Mother’s Day to Father’s Day to complete!

Even though it took a little (OK, a lot) longer than it should have, I am still so happy we did it. And I am so glad it is finished! French doors versus sliding doors = biggest life improvement EVER.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

FinishedDoors

The doors were a pain to install. The hubby had many choice words during the process. MANY. We learned that we are not professional door hangers, nor do we really enjoy hanging doors. Unfortunately for him, we have another set of doors we need to hang… and I’d also like to replace all of our doors in our upstairs hallway eventually (they are plain, hollow boards with no design in them — boring!). We’ll see if he tries to veto that project haha.

We had to cut the doors down to size, re-glue in the bottoms, cut some more, hang, re-hang, move the hinges when the screws became too loose in the original holes… paint, re-hang, put on handles, put on a magnetic door latch…. yeah. Tedious stuff, folks.

Still, I am pleased as can be that they are finished and there are no more 1980s gold doors in my house anymore. The only remaining mirrored slider will live on in our bedroom, mainly because it’s the only full length mirror we have now. Plus, we probably don’t have enough room for French doors. Hopefully the hubby counts that as a win for himself.

Aside from the door project, I’ve been busy working on a bunch of other things. I’ll be sharing some fun tips from my interior decorating class after it ends this evening. We’ve made some furniture changes in our living room (finallyyyyy). Plus, I’ve been working on a fun graphic design project and have some exciting news in that realm.

Oh, and I made some jam from mulberries I didn’t know I had growing in my yard until last week! And it is delicious!!!! I’ll share that recipe later, too.

Enjoy your weeks!

Garden

Farmer Jess

Jessica Smith

Those of you who read my blog regularly know that I absolutely love to garden. I started my own garden with my dad’s help my junior year of college in the front yard of our rental home and I’ve been hooked ever since. My friends and family know how much I love it. My neighbors even call me Farmer Jess! Did I mentioned that my maiden name means “farmer” in German!?

This weekend was pretty much non-stop yard work and gardening. Brian and I started to tackle a huge project behind our fence, removing all of the branches, bushes, leave, etc., that we’d thrown back there the past two years and shredding it all in the wood chipper. We spent Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon and are about 2/3 the way complete. It looks so much better and our neighbors behind us even came out to say thank you and to introduce themselves! I found three snakes, all of which I tried to save from accidentally being raked and wood chipped :-/ But who cares anymore about yard work!  I want to talk about my garden!!!!!

I went to Home Depot after Easter brunch yesterday and picked up some perennials for our front yard. I also got some pink begonias for the front of the house. But most important, I bought veggies, and lots of them.

In my excitement to start my vegetable garden I didn’t think too much about quantity… so I went overboard just a little. I bought 18 heads of romaine, 18 heads of spinach and 18 heads of butter crunch lettuce. Holy smokes, that is A LOT of lettuce.

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We are gonna be eating a lot of salads this summer.

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I also planted a ton of red and white onions! I’ve never planted onions before, so we’ll see how they do. I’m intrigued to find out just how you know when an onion is ready to be picked since they grow underground.

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The hubby is excited about the onions — OK, he isn’t actually excited because gardening isn’t his thing at all (although he does like to harvest with me. Of course, the most fun part!), but he does loves onions.

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I doubled my gates around the beds with onions because my evil dog loves to 1. be in places he is not allowed to be, 2. dig — but only in dirt, not in grass, 3. be an all-around jerk in his yard. And onions are really bad for dogs. He was only interested in my garden last year when I was inside it and he was on the other side of the fence, so here’s hoping with two fences and no people inside them, he leaves the garden beds alone. I’ll have to do some onion monitoring this week to make sure he’s not sneaking in when we aren’t looking.

The last thing I planted so far was herbs! I planted oregano, tarragon, sweet basil, sweet mint and rosemary. I bought some hanging planters on clearance last year from Target, so I planted my herbs, then hung each planter on the fence. I love how this looks!

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I planted the basil with the lettuce since I plan on getting more of it later in the season.

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I am pretty pumped that I already have a ton of stuff planted and that I used a bed I didn’t use last year and the space where an old stump used to be, so I’m hardly in any of the prime tomato panting territory! Woo! I’ll definitely be expanding my beds in the corner of my yard this year, too… when the time comes. My strawberries seem to be coming to life again, and the blueberry and raspberry bushes I planted last year… well, who knows how they did this winter. Yikes.

My last exciting garden news, and wow you will all think I am a huge dork, is that my asparagus that I planted two years ago sprouted!!!!! AHHHHH I was so excited I ran to find Brian to tell him. And then I called my dad 🙂 The funny thing is, there’s just one! I don’t know if more will grow or not… but either way, I love my single asparagus and it is going to be deliciousssss.

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Anyone start their garden yet? If you did, what are you planting? I am thinking about planting broccoli in a planter on my deck this year. It always gets eaten in my garden, so if I don’t do a planter, I don’t want to plant it again. Too many worms.

As for the rest of my garden, I’m thinking TONS of tomatoes, cucumbers, squash/zucchini, and lots of peppers. Now peppers — Brian is excited for those. Hopefully this year he isn’t foolish enough to bite into a cayenne pepper, seeds and all. Ouch.