Silhouette Cameo

Have you heard of the Silhouette Cameo? It's the newest Silhouette craft cutter which is similar to a Cricut. The best part is that there are no expensive cartridges and you can just purchase images from their store for $1, or make your own images and cut them!  It cuts paper, vinyl, fabric and there are so many AWESOME projects and things to do with it! I have wanted one for quite a while and finally got an early Christmas present and bought one during a good sale on Black Friday!

There are so many awesome things you can do with a Silhouette and I can’t wait to try them all. I just found out that it should be waiting for me when I get home and I’m STOKED. I'm beside myself with excitement and I can't wait to make some of the awesomeness that I have seen in the blog world. I will probably be using to make some Christmas presents as well!

 

Temporary tattoos (Dan is really excited about this one).

Heat transfer to make your own shirts.

Etched glass

Fabric/paper bunting and banners.

There are tons of great ideas for all kinds of different things and the possibilities are endless! I can’t wait to get started…

Home stuff

 

I made some updates to our master bathroom forever ago, but I didn’t realize that I hadn’t posted any updates about it on the blog! When we moved in the bathroom (like the rest of the house) was dirty and the paint was horrible. But it was really big and had TWO SINKS. I was sold.

Dan painted the bathroom the same color as the lighter gray in our bedroom. I added a yellow stripe to coordinate with our bedroom and I love it. I also added a frame around the mirror using moulding. 

The frame makes a huge difference and makes the entire room look finished even though it’s not yet. I still need to add a clock and I’m working on putting the same moulding frame around the window in the bathroom and the bedroom. We just glued the moudling right onto the huge mirror like we did in our powder bathroom.

I made these simple shelves and I still need to put some “real” pictures in the frames on the bottom. i framed fabric for the top frame.

  One more look at our bedroom. We still love it!

I have also done some Halloween decorating. I really only decorate for Halloween and Christmas and this year I added some more fun things to our house for Halloween. Ignore the game on…I was watching my Utes finally win!

I got the spider cut outs from Michaels. They are from the Martha Stewart line which is awesome! There were a lot in the package and they were cheap too. I put them around our window mirrors and on our french doors. I made the spider web myself. I’m really hoping to get a Silhouette craft cutter this year so I can do a lot more crafts like this and not have to cut things out by hand or buy them!

I saw this ghost idea on another blog and copied it! I used frosted window film. I already had some because I used it to cover our bathroom window so we can open it more often without sacrificing our privacy. I love the ghosty on the mirror.

The bats are another fun idea I saw on a blog and they were easy and cheap. It just took a few nights of cutting out bats while watching our shows on TV. You can see Mr. Ghosty in the mirror as well :)

I made the spooky banner with bats using paper and twine and I added more spiders to the french doors.

This little table is in our kitchen and I want to paint it but I can’t decide what color! I love light and bright white to patch our window mirrors and TV stand, but white is also boring so I don’t know! Dan probably wouldn’t go for a bright crazy color because it doesn’t “match”…so any ideas??

I used cheesecloth from Lowes for the creepy white cloth and the skull on the stand is now silver and there is a silver pumpkin there too :) I have already changed things since I took these pictures!

  I just put stickers on the front of canning jars filled with candy corn. I have electric tea lights from the dollar store inside but I forgot to light them for the picture! Whoops!

Before and After: Yellow Chair

So it has been a long time, but I’m still working on finishing up our bedroom. Things have gotten pretty busy lately. Dan has 19 credits and he’s studying to take the GMAT next month and he works 20 hours a week. I just got called as 2nd counselor in the primary presidency (we have 150 kids in our ward eeek!), and we both started training to run the Wasatch Back. And I’m working full time :) Fun fun. But I’m still slowly working on finishing up our bedroom and bathroom.

My dad gave me these two sick chairs for free so I fixed up one for our bedroom and I’m really excited with how it turned out!

Here is the chair before: I used gloves when I took it apart because it was grody.

And here it is after! I sanded it really well, put new padding on it, and covered it with cute fabric. It’s not upholstery fabric, so we’ll see how it holds up. We don’t use it all that much though so hopefully it will be fine.

I ended up using a $5 stapler from Hobby Lobby to staple the fabric and padding on and it worked great.

There was so much gunk on the wood and the sanding took awhile to get it all off.

Sorry about my sick yellowing blinds…the previous owners put in cheap blinds so I’m going to try to paint them until we buy new ones.

So I still have things to do but they’re coming along. I decided on black frames above the bed so thanks a lot for your input everyone!

Decisions

Okay I’m still working on our bedroom..how many months has it been again?! Ugh, anyway, I need help deciding what color to paint the frames we’re going to put above our bed. I did some extremely bad photoshopping to get an idea of the colors we’re thinking.

Keep in mind that the curtains to the right of the bed are white with yellow, black and white panels at the bottom, and there is a tall long mirror with a thick black frame to the left of the bed.

Option #1 is silver..hard to tell in the pics! But our lamps are silver, the nailhead trim on the headboard is silver, the handles on the nightstands are silver, and the curtain rod is silver. The stencil is also silvery.

Option #2: White…obviously there is a lot of white in the room and I think it looks good in white.

Option #3 is black. We have black on the pillow, and the mirror to the left. We also have a flat screen TV hanging on the opposite wall that is black. There is some black in the panel on the curtains as well.

So please help me decide what to do with the frames! Any suggestions are much appreciated! Please vote in the poll at the top of my blog. Thanks everyone!

Thinking of a title is hard

Dan had a birthday on the 5th and he turned the big 2-4. Now my turn is next and I have a birthday at the end of the month! We had a lot of fun celebrating and unfortunately I didn’t take any pics :)

One of the gifts I gave him was tickets to the first preseason Jazz game on Thursday. We had a ton of fun and I loved seeing Dan so happy watching the Jazz play! Luckily they won and we got to cheer them on.

We can’t wait to see the Jazz play again!

I have also done a few more Fall updates around the house. I made this little wreath for only $3 using dollar store leaves, dollar store foam wreath, and dollar store ribbon!

 

I also made this cute Thankful banner and hung it up in our entry way. It’s really hard to see very well in this picture, but I think it’s cute!

I used the tutorial from Centsational Girl here and it was really easy and fun to do. I realize it’s still awhile until Thanksgiving but I don’t really care :)

Cute Halloween decor on the french doors.

This is another wreath I made and it only cost me a buck! I just bought a wreath from the dollar store. I had a ton of burlap and ribbon from the other wreath project. I painted the door hanger black as well.

I copied Cowboy Phraseoloy with the wreath she made here.

 

I love Fall!

Fall Fun

I seriously LOVE Fall. I know a lot of people do, but it just makes me so happy I can’t even explain it! There are so many wonderful things about Fall and here are just a few (in no particular order):

1. Sweaters
2. Halloween
3. birthdays! (Mine and Dan’s)
4. Crisp weather
5. Leaves changing
6. Football
7. Relief from summer heat
8. Boots

I put up a few Fall/Halloween decorations at our house and I really love it! I don’t have a ton of little spots to decorate which is good because I hate having clutter and knick knacks everywhere.

I changed a few things on this little table in our kitchen area. I’m going to paint this table soon…I’m thinking red to match our red wall in the family room. I “spookified” it by putting little skulls from the dollar store in a lantern, and using spiderwebs. I added little spider rings and skulls. The glittery skeleton is also from the dollar store.

I really love the front porch and I love even more how cheap it was! I had been wanting some cute fallish stuff for the porch but I saw it at Joanns and stuff for a lot of money! I almost lost my mind when I saw a whole bunch of houses in our neighborhood selling cornstalks, straw and other fall stuff!

We basically live on the shores of the Great Salt Lake (lakefront property hello!) but we love the neighborhood and also how “farmy” it still is. There are a lot of farms around and in our neighborhood and it’s awesome! It reminds me of Cache Valley…love it :)

Anyway, I picked up everything except the pumpkins on the stairs and the “Happy Halloween” sign for $8!! SWEEEEEEET! And I just had to wheel my wheelbarrow a few houses down. Awesome.

I still need a wreath and I’ve been making one but since I go to bed at 9, I don’t have a lot of time :)

This is the little shelf that you can see from the upstairs looking down toward the front door. You can see it from the front door too.

And here is another update on the bedroom progress. I was able to get the nightstands painted and they look great! I don’t have a pic close but they were honey colored wood with round knobs on them before.

I sanded them, primed and spray painted them bright glossy white. I also covered them with a clear glossy topcoat enamel. I put on new hardware and now they are updated and look awesome!

The room so far…I was too lazy to take the water bottle, alarm clock, etc off the nightstands just for a pretty pic :)

I obviously still have a lot to do in the room, but I’m loving it so far! Curtains are my text battle and I have decided to do something similar to this:
*from isabellaandmaxrooms.blogspot.com

I’m going to do the curtains white, but I need to decide what fabric to do along the bottom. Here are a bunch I have.

Please help me decide what color to do at the bottom of the curtains! I also have a chair kinda like this

I’m going to paint it white and then cover the cushions in fabric too. So please let me know what fabric I should use on the curtains and on the chair! PLEASE I NEED HELP :)

Thanks kids :)

Life update: I’m just finishing up my third week working at SunGard and so far I’m enjoying it! I love that I get to wear jeans and casual clothes! And working at the Gateway is really cool. Dan came and met me for lunch and we watched the circus parade where they brought the elephants down through the Gateway. It’s fun to be downtown and I take the train a lot too which is nice. I’m excited to have a good job and I like learning new things and I’m ready to know how to do my job and be done with the “I don’t know what I’m doing/training” stage :)

Dan is killing it at school and I’m so proud of how hard he is working and all the studying he is doing. School is not his favorite and studying doesn’t come naturally to him :) But he is amazing and doing great. And he’s trying to plan to take extra classes so he can graduate and start his Master’s program sooner! Yay!

We also bought some trees for our yard and they are great. Fall is a really good time to plant and buy trees since they’re all on sale. We got 5 trees and a few perennials and the yard is still coming together but we really like it!