Fall Burlap Planters

 

Hello…hope you had a great weekend. I finally got my pregnancy nesting energy (better late than never) and have been “nesting” like crazy ever since. Saturday I cleaned & detailed my car did several loads of laundry and planted my fall flowers. That’s like more than I used to be able to do in a week, LOL!

All my planters have really seen better days…they have been beaten up or just plain weathered. I had to big pots on our patio in our previous home that one was left out in a great Midwest winter and was drastically weathered compared to the matching one. I decided to wrap them both in burlap so as to disguise the color difference and I love the rustic feel of burlap especially in the fall.

I picked up some yardage at Hobby Lobby although now I find out The Home Depot sells it for a roll of 3 x 20 ft for about $12 in the garden center so I would go for that that option if I were you. I laid out 1 1/2 yards per pot and pulled it up over and tucked it in at the top gathering it on the sides a little. For a finishing detail, I added some jute twine.

and here is our front stoop in the evening with the lanterns & my favorite outdoor candles lit up.  I told you about those {here}.

What have you re-imagined in your home to try to salvage it rather than tossing it and buying new?

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Home should be the safest place on earth…

You'd have to spend more than $3,400 to get the same amount of clean found in the Get Clean Starter Kit!

And, when you purchase the Get Clean Starter Kit you also make a positive impact on the planet:

Keep 108 pounds of packaging waste from landfills.

Eliminate 248 pounds of greenhouse gas.

Do you want your home to be clean, yet non-toxic?  Shaklee’s products do just that. They are the BEST I have ever used (and I am pretty darn picky). Try the Shaklee Difference for yourself!!!

To find out more, please email me: greenwaylifeandhome@gmail.com

Repurposed “Bookcase” for the kitchen

I wanted to share with you a bookcase we repurposed in our kitchen. My mom gave us this bookcase about 8 years ago. I wish I had a ‘before’ picture to show you what just some paint can do to transform, but it was your typical medium-stained oak bookcase. Blah, blah, blah

The makeover I had planned for it 8 years ago was to paint it black as a base and a tan crackle coat on the top. After seeing the crackle finish on the shelves and doors, I just didn’t like it so Jeff stripped all the doors and shelves for me to just paint it. There sat an unfinished project and then well, we moved shortly thereafter and then it sat all these years in our basement in the home we just moved from in IL.

I think I have mentioned before, we are short on storage/good cabinet space in this house so we have tried to get creative in where/how to put everything. I have tried to really think outside the box with how to utilize all of the furniture we moved with us (especially since we have a small storage area and no room to store ‘extra’ furniture). Not ready to get rid of anything until we buy a house and are able to access what we do & don't need for the space. This bookcase was a perfect solution for the kitchen!

When we realized we needed more storage in this kitchen, Jeff finished painting it since I was having all those contractions back in June. I found some cute knobs at Hobby Lobby 50% off, of course (who buys anything there full-price???) that I thought would work no matter what color it ends up being in the future. We have black doors on the first floor in this house (which I love, BTW) so staying with it black made sense for now and it was less work for Jeff to finish. Some of the crackle medium must of stayed on even after stripping, so the bookcase definitely has some areas that are distressed, but that’s quite fine with me.

Starting to do some fall decorating (need the rest of it to come out of the attic I may be tweaking these shelves once I see everything I have again). And, since I think the breadbox on the top is going to have to remain, I think it desperately needs a makeover! Nothing a couple coats of paint and a stencil won’t cure, but will it get done before baby arrives, that is the question!

What have you repurposed in your home?

Home should be the safest place on earth…

You'd have to spend more than $3,400 to get the same amount of clean found in the Get Clean Starter Kit!

And, when you purchase the Get Clean Starter Kit you also make a positive impact on the planet:

Keep 108 pounds of packaging waste from landfills.

Eliminate 248 pounds of greenhouse gas.

Do you want your home to be clean, yet non-toxic?  Shaklee’s products do just that. They are the BEST I have ever used (and I am pretty darn picky). Try the Shaklee Difference for yourself!!!

To find out more, please email me: greenwaylifeandhome@gmail.com

Mixing rustic & fine for a Fall Tablesetting

I am loving all the rustic with fine decorating that is out there lately. Pottery Barn has even coined the style as “Rustic Luxe”. The contrast makes a room so interesting. Gone are those days when a room is all formal or all casual. I love that! It makes them so much more useable…

Last Thanksgiving, I created a tablescape of similar nature with using my fine china and silver that I left the bit of tarnish on to make it a little more rustic (and yeah, no polishing) and then had more rustic elements such as dark metal chargers, a burlap runner and natural gourds. Minus the glass turkeys, this tablesetting could be used for any fall entertaining.

Have you tried this type of mixing in your home?

Linking up to:

 

Home should be the safest place on earth…

Do you want your home to be clean, yet non-toxic?  Shaklee’s products do just that. They are the BEST I have ever used. Try the Shaklee Difference for yourself!!!

To find out more, please email me: greenwaylifeandhome@gmail.com

Fall Decorating

I am soooo in the mood for fall! It’s my most favorite time of year!!!

Even here in the South, it is getting into the 50’s at night so there is a crispness in the air and leaves have already begun to drop! Things have been a bit busy around here with all the "getting ready for the baby" 2+ weeks away and preparing for Jeff’s besties visiting from IL this weekend that I just haven’t been able to start decorating for fall yet, I have to prioritize, I guess!

I know exactly what I want to do by our front door this year so I hope to be able to get that done this weekend.

I thought I would share with you a bit of the fall decorating on our front porch from last year.

 

So, have you started decorating for fall?

Linking up to:

Southern Hospitality's Fall Outdoor Decor

Home should be the safest place on earth…

Do you want your home to be clean, yet non-toxic?  Shaklee’s products do just that. They are the BEST I have ever used. Try the Shaklee Difference for yourself!!!

To find out more, please email me: greenwaylifeandhome@gmail.com

buffalo check crib skirt

Thought I would share a little peak at the crib skirt I made.

Please forgive the wrinkles…

After I finished the skirt, I ironed it with sizing to make it more crisp, but that doesn’t stay so good when you have to shove it down in between the sides of the crib, does it??? I will have to see if my steamer will de-wrinkle it more.

I ended up buying the Emmie Ruta twin duvet from Ikea since they were out of the same fabric by the yard. It only cost $29.99 so I thought I hit the jackpot getting all that buffalo check yardage, but didn’t realize the back of the duvet was just striped until I started cutting up the duvet {that’s my pregnancy brain for you…}.

I was really hoping to use the extra yardage to do a leading edge on the bias to the Ikea drapes I showed you, but I just didn’t have enough long yardage left to do that. So, now I am on to plan C or D for the drapes. LOL!

I found the ribbon at Hobby Lobby to edge the bottom of the skirt.

When I made Reed’s crib skirt, it was the perfect length only in the beginning when the crib was so high for a newborn and then I was pinning it up so it didn’t drag terribly on the floor and then had to pin it some more when we lowered it even more. Since the “newborn” height isn’t for too long, this time I decided to meet in the middle for length of the skirt. I ended up with a 17 1/2” drop.

It’s all getting there…more nursery decor to come.

Linking up to:

Home should be the safest place on earth…

Do you want your home to be clean, yet non-toxic?  Shaklee’s products do just that. They are the BEST I have ever used. Try the Shaklee Difference for yourself!!!

To find out more, please email me: greenwaylifeandhome@gmail.com

How to make pleated drapes from tab-top

Have I mentioned that I challenged myself to reuse what I already had as much as I could for the nursery? The drapes are no exception…

We bought I think 15 packages of the tab top pairs of drapes from Ikea last fall to create fabric walls in our basement to separate the storage from the indoor play area for Reed. I don’t love tab top, but the non-tab were double the price and we needed soooooo many of them, I had to keep reminding myself this was for the basement…They were seriously $19.99 for the pair, which really shocks me since the cotton has such a nice weight to it…but that’s why we love Ikea, right? We took them all with us when we moved so I decided I would at use 2 of them in the nursery but upgrade them a bit so they were more custom.

So step 1, making the tab-tops go away. I have heard of people just cutting them off, but I just wasn’t sure about that. So, I thought why couldn’t I just “stitch-witchery” the tabs backwards and then insert the rod behind the drape instead of through the tabs on top. It worked beautifully!!!

First I laid the drape out on the ironing board with the tabs up.

Iron all the tabs to the back on the panel to just flatten out

The only supplies needed are:

Stitch Witchery

Sissors

Hot Iron

Cut the piece of the adhesive to the width of the tab and place underneath at the bottom of the tab, iron until glued.

See how only the bottom of the tab is affixed? You can still put the curtain rod through.

Next, I will be embellishing them a bit to give them a custom look., stay tuned!

I am linking up to:

Frugal Friday

Get Your Craft On

Home should be the safest place on earth…

Do you want your home to be clean, yet non-toxic?  Shaklee’s products do just that. They are the BEST I have ever used. Try the Shaklee Difference for yourself!!!

To find out more, please email me: greenwaylifeandhome@gmail.com

Long Term “Diaper” Bag

We are down to a little over three weeks and counting…and I sure need every minute of it. I am really behind in getting things done with the nursery, but am still hopeful I can get it all done since I know I won’t be doing too much after the baby is born initially, you know, ‘survival mode’! I have hit a bit of a snag with my idea on window treatments so I am challenging myself to still use what I have and get creative. Besides doing laundry, laundry and more baby laundry, I have been getting the last of the gear I needed to replace from when Reed was a baby.

The bag I used for Reed’s diaper bag had become no longer usable, so I have been on the hunt for a new bag, but this time one that I could use long-term. I had used a chic (or at least what I thought was chic, ha ha) tote that had a stylized giraffe pattern on it from Maxx New York handbags, but the handles just didn’t last well and began falling apart. This time I was willing to spend a bit more for good quality in hopes to use it well beyond just baby needs.

When I started my hunt, my requirements were it had to be washable, either via the washing machine or at least be able to wipe it completely down and not just “spot clean” it, if it had a zipper that would be ideal and for it not look like a diaper bag so I could use it beyond.

Here are the ones I considered:

Pottery Barn Waxed Canvas Tote

Loved the look of this (it even has what looks like a navy & white stripe lining which was cute) but I just wasn’t convinced about the real cleanability of the waxed canvas and it isn’t sold in stores for me to really see the fabric in person

Vera Bradley Miller Bag

Loved the idea of being able to throw it into the washer and line dry, but not convinced if any of the patterns were really for me and since I wanted this to be a long term bag and all…

So, this is the bag I chose

Longchamp Pilage Large size

Both the inside and outside are completely wipeable and I chose a neutral color that suits me. This is a bag I would buy for myself aside from needing a diaper bag so it will be perfect!

Have a great weekend!

Home should be the safest place on earth…

Do you want your home to be clean, yet non-toxic?  Shaklee’s products do just that. They are the BEST I have ever used. Try the Shaklee Difference for yourself!!!

To find out more, please email me: greenwaylifeandhome@gmail.com