Janda's Art

I just finished two paintings for my sweet friend, Janda. The first was for Adyson, her 3 year old, and the second one was for Aubyn, baby girl due any day!!

This is what Ady's bedding looks like. Actually, this is what it was like, but she had it cut up and re-sewn into big girl bedding. The pattern is called Scribbles.

Ady's painting

I took these pictures at night in my bedroom, and they didn't turn out well. With the flash they were too bright, and without they were too dark......So when Janda gets them up in the girls' rooms, maybe she can send me some better pictures and I can post them! I put 1 Samuel 1:27 on Ady's painting at Janda's request!

little flowers on the sides; you can see the dark brown scribbles in this picture

And here's Aubyn's bedding....isn't it to die for??!!?? It's Cocalo Harlow Couture bedding. I love the color combination. They painted an accent wall in her nursery of hot pink, which looks amazing with the green and black.

This one's a monster, ya'll. It was 4feet long by 2feet wide. I have to admit, it's my favorite one to date that I've painted. Lots of tedious drawing, but worth it!

Another shot of the full length

I wanted a pearl look around the border, so I used FABRIC PAINT! I didn't know if it would work, but it did! Love how that part turned out.

The edges are striped, like on the crib bumper

Don't you love her name??

Can't wait for your arrival, Aubyn Elizabeth!

The Perfect Stockings

If you get Ballard Designs catalog, then you've seen these adorable stockings for sale for $35 a piece!!! Now I don't know about you, but I would never pay that for a stocking. That would be almost $150 for a family of four, just for stockings! But, when I saw them, I wanted them so bad. Enter my ever so talented mom! I bought some fabric, showed her the catalog, and within 2 weeks I had my very own adorable stockings. Check 'em out!

picture from Ballard Designs

And my beauties! I had the monogramming done here at a local place. It was $25 for all four monograms, $8 on upholstery fabric from Hobby Lobby, and $6 on leopard fabric and pompoms from Wal-Mart. Total cost of all 4 stockings = about $40 (mucho better than $150!)

so pretty

my mantel, complete now with our personalized stockings!

and here's gigantor tree.....this thing is tall and huge in diameter at the bottom, but we love her

Painted Ornaments

As soon as Thanksgiving is done, the Christmas decorations go up! This year I've had fun painting some personalized ornaments for our big tree in the living room. I just bought some unfinished ornaments from Hobby Lobby and painted them however I wanted! Here are the 4 stockings that I just finished. I picked these because they are actually pretty big, and we have a humooooongous tree. So, here they are...

Here are a few pics of my dining room. I just love the christmas tree in there. It's slender and rustic looking, with pine cones and sparse branches. In fact, it's the only tree we put up last year. This year, we did gigantor tree in the living room, and this one in the dining room. Sean says the feathers out the top are an ode to my maiden name....ha ha - Peacock!

Nativity scenes are one of my favorite things about this season. I love my wooden one. To add some fun on the sides, I filled apothecary jars with beads, wooden balls, and shiny ornaments.

This is what I came up with for a centerpiece. I like using a tray to hold all of my goodies, and this vase seems to be just right from one season to the next, so I've just been switching out the filler. I found fun beads and feathers at Hobby Lobby. I had the two topiaries from clearance after Christmas a few years ago, and threw in some natural looking ornaments on the tray. All I have to say is it's a good thing we don't live in the same town as a Hobby Lobby. I can do some serious damage in that store!

Sweet Dreams

I just finished my first canvas for someone who I really don't know. I was hired out.....I guess you could say! Anyways, it was a lot of fun and I hope to do more for people in the future. A little extra income is always good, and especially when it comes from something that you love to do! Here is the sweet fabric that I went off of............

And here's the painting.....this thing was big, ya'll. It was 2ft by 4ft, even though it doesn't look all that big in the picture. The wording is hard to see, but says "Sweet Dreams little man"

Stripes on the sides, with every other one having turquoise dots along the edges

I hope it goes well in the room!

Thanksgiving Plaque for 50cents

I picked up 4 of these golden beauties at a garage sale awhile back for $2. They're kind of flimsy foil, but I bought them with an idea to make Holiday plaques out of them. I decided to make one for Thankgiving to go above my cabinets. This is what it looked like before......

I painted it cream color and then roughed it up a little with sand paper, wrote a fun little phrase on it, and voila'!

a SUPER cheap tray to decorate for the fall

Family Rules

One of the blogs that I like to follow, The Pleated Poppy, posted a few weeks ago on how to do this adorable family rules board. She did hers on canvas, but I put mine on a big square piece of MDF. I made it for my dear friend, Janda, to hang in her daughter's (soon to be daughters') bathroom! I just love how it turned out. I had fun making up the rules, and borrowed or rearranged a few of the ones she had posted on her blog entry. It was pretty easy to do....just need fun scrapbook paper, paint markers, something to put it all on, and some mod podge.

the finished product!
I hand wrote the rules, but you could print them out if you are printer savvy - which I am not! Especially since my printer has issues with thick paper. I used fun scissors or tore the edges so each piece would be unique.

A different view

Switching It Up

The last few weeks we've been working on switching out some things around the house. We decided Sophia could go into one of our queen beds that we've had stored, and so we moved her daybed into the study. Now we have either a queen bed in her room for guests or the daybed/trundle in the study. Of course with moving those things around, I had to get some new bedding to coordinate!! And then, I needed some new decorations!! So, I went rummaging through what I already have, and updated some stuff in addition to making some new stuff. Here's what we ended up with!

These are some wooden corbels from Home Depot. They run around $9 a piece, but that's because I got big ones. When we put the daybed in the study, we had to move furniture around, and I didn't really want to re-hang the gazillion black and white photos I had on the wall. Instead, I wanted shelves to just prop them on. But I didn't want to pay for big black shelves, so I made some. Started with these corbels, and a free piece of wood we had leaning against the wall in the garage, and voia' la..............

I got these beauties! They are big and look perfect on the wall. It was super easy to do....I had dear old dad cut the wood in half, and I just drilled some holes into the corbels and screwed them into the wood from the bottom so there would be no holes in the shelf. Then I busted out my fave paint.....Behr paint-n-primer in one.....and painted away (2 coats). Now, hanging was another story, but I had Sean's help with that one.

Painted this old little side table we've had since we've been married. It was just ugly wood color, and now it's cute and black! Gotta get something fun for the vase still (which was a steal at an estate sale). Here is what the "new" side of the study looks like! The armoire is on the other wall now.

I wanted something fun for the bedding, and I found this bedspread at Wal-Mart on clearance for $17!! It matches perfect. I picked out 3 different fabrics from Hobby Lobby the last time I was out of town, and my talented mother sewed the pillows for me. I love the combination of the 3 fabrics together.
Now this mirror (this is a horrible picture by the way) was an ugly green, and it was given to me for free. I mod podged some fun Amy Butler paper to it and it's now sitting propped on top of the armoire. It needs a better home, but for now it's out of the way.

And Sophia's new "big girl" bed (even bigger than the last!) Her room is really fun. I just got her duvet in yesterday and put it on this morning. It's white with light pink polka dots from Company Kids.

Painting for Baby Hicks

Just finished a canvas for my sweet friend, Erin, who is due any day now with baby girl #2! She sent me pics of the bedding (super cute mix and match stuff from Target) and I picked up some receiving blankets last time I was there to match the colors better. Here's what the quilt looks like, plus some pics of the bumper, which is dots and stripes.

And.....here is her painting. It's on it's way to Colorado as I blog about this. She really wanted me to emphasize the brown, pinks, and greens.


I don't know baby's name yet, only that her initials are T. L. H. She asked me to do initials, plus a scripture, and the only way I could figure out how to do both in the middle was to overlap them. I was going for the initials to look like they are in the background, and the scripture laying on top.

Stripes for the sides

a little stitching around the pink rectangle to pull in the stitching in the pattern

Hope she loves the painting!