Nerf Gun Makeover

So late on posting this, but here it is!

For Father's Day this year, I had a sneaky scheme. A month before Father's Day, I asked Chris to come with me to Walmart on a grocery trip and surprised him by telling him to pick out a Nerf gun. Of course he wanted two so I could play with him :) This is what he picked out.

The thing had an extra magazine so he can more effectively slaughter those who play with him. He even bought an extra pack of foam darts. It's the childhood he always wanted- at 23 :)

I let him have a good month to torture me and my sister with it before my fun, and the REAL Father's Day gift began.

Chris plays Warmachine and Warhammer so I had a brilliant plan to make his brightly colored Nerf gun into something that looked more like a life size weapon from his games.

First I took apart all the little attachments and used a black primer spray paint to prime the whole gun and magazine clips.

Then I used Rub N' Buff and an old artist brush to make the gun look like real metal and age it. The finished product turned out amazing!

I use gold, copper and silver Rub N Buff and different brushes for each color. I applied the Rub N Buff by dry brushing it onto the different section of the gun. I discovered that it looked better to apply a very small amount at a time and brush in different directions.

Chris was very please with his newly made-over Father's Day gift! His gaming buddies liked it too!

It's been too long!

So sorry for the long break. It's been non stop stress and fun since we closed on the house.

As of now we are completely moved in, save the few boxes in the garage that hold the miscellaneous junk that we can't seem to find a proper place for.
We are LOVING the house!! It's beautiful. I love my tray ceilings! And we have a garage! Chris and I never had garages growing up, it's so weird!
It's been so much fun decorating and organizing, I find it hard to sleep some nights. I just keep coming up with ideas.
I guess the first room that I would consider completely finished would be the kitchen.
My pretty little red kitchen.
BUT before it was a lovely red it was gold. I don't like gold. It gave me a headache.

 Now I just adore the space in my kitchen. Not a fan of the tile, but if it's clean, I can live with it until we can afford to replace it.
It took THREE coats of  the red paint to coat evenly. I thought it would never end! But it finally did and when we pulled away the tape this is what we had!!

 I love my little wine rack!

 I have fallen for tray ceilings! LOOOVE them!

 I smell a future crown molding project with that oh too industial light fixture... :)

My lovely sister, who helped me paint the kitchen and the rest of the house, gave me these super cute bar stools she scored at Goodwill a while back. Now I know this is corny, but these are the same bar stools that are on Hannah Montana and ICarly (or so I've heard...*blushes, no I don't watch either of those shows!*). I thought that was a cool fun fact :D

So that's my little red kitchen.More posts to come! Thanks for reading!

DIY Cardboard Owls

Found this adorable idea in a parenting magazine. Using an empty toilet paper or paper towel roll, make cute decorative owls. Simply push down the edges on one side making the top of its head, paint the tube, cut out the eyes, beak, and feet from construction paper and half circles for the wings from decorative paper, such as scrapbook paper. Voila! You now have adorable little owls! These will be going in Miss Salem's room.

Owls!

  I LOVE OWLS. I liked them before the owl craze that seems to be everywhere lately. I'm planning and brainstorming ideas for Salem's new room in the new house. And naturally, I want there to be owls incorporated into the decor. Chris says if I keep pushing owls on Salem, she's going to end up hating them.

Like I said, I liked them before they started popping up in Target on shirts, jewelry, and purses. My love for them began three summers ago when Chris was deployed.

As some of you know, Chris was in the Marines for 4 years. Thankfully he only deployed once, to Afghanistan. He was gone for 10 torturous months. It was the hardest thing I've ever been through. During the deployment, I decided to leave NC to return to LA to be around family with the hopes that it would ease my loneliness. I stayed with my inlaws for a few months, which surrounded me with memories of my husband and me back in high school.

The road he lives off of is a winding country road that runs along a river. It was on this scenic road one particularly lonely night, that I was driving home to my inlaws, extremely upset about God knows what. I remember being on the verge of tears, trying to pay attention to the road, when to the side of the road I saw this owl. Just a typical country owl, sitting on the side of the road, eyes glowing in my headlights. He stayed there looking at me until I passed, and the flew away. Being the sentimental-Disney-princess-loving type of girl I am, the pretty majestic owl made me cry. I had this feeling God put him there on the side of the road to cheer me up. I felt like God was saying "Here Steph, look at this beautiful creature. I sent him to make you smile."

So that's my story. I once saw an owl on the side of the road and thus began my love affair with owls.
SO, back to Salem's room...

  This is the painting I recently finished for Salem's room. I drew much inspiration from this pic I found online.

The painting is acrylic on canvas  and took probably 10 hours altogether.
(Of course that wasn't all at once, silly. It transpired over many nights while watching House with Chris after Salem was in bed.)
This is the first of many owls you will see in Salem's nature themed nursery.
So Salem, you're stuck with them in your room :)

First Post!

We close on the new house on Friday!! So excited! I will soon have so many projects to work on I will be in hog heaven :) There are several things I have all ready begun, but you'll find out later what they are.
To begin this new blog, this new undertaking, I would like to introduce my lovely daughter, Salem. She recently turned ONE.
Her birthday party was quite fun for me. I planned it all out for MONTHS ha! I spent way too much time online looking up theme ideas, cakes, etc...
I settled on "Candyland" for the theme. It was loosely based on the boardgame with more of a focus on bright colors and different types of candy in general. When it all came together, our cake table was every child's fantasy!

The "Salem" banner was made from left over scrapbooking paper :)

Cupcake tower!

Oreo Balls. MMMMMM!

Red Velvet Cookies!

The jars used were recycled jars from my G-ma :) Found the ribbon for super cheap at the dollar store, most of the decorations came from there.

A majority of the decorations were home made.

The pinata was made from tissue paper and paper mache. So much fun to do! Looking back on it now, I wish I had taken pictures of the full process.

I found a party hat print out online that I cut out and pasted over some discount party hats. Salem's hat got special treatment :)

My sister and I made pipe cleaner lolipops covered with saran wrap.

Her first party was a success!