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lights + birdcage = birdcage lamp

21 November 2010 by Andrea 11 Comments

I have a little birdcage that I decided to fill with mini-lights.  Mine is a decorative birdcage, but you could use a real birdcage as well.  However, the bird should probably not be still living in the cage.  And it’s just a recommendation, but if you’re using a real birdcage, you might want to remove the newspapers, bird seed, and of course the bird poop.  But you knew that!

So, I bought 2 boxes of white mini-lights – 100 lights per strand, for $2.49 each…

Because the plug on the mini-lights was too large to fit through the bars on the birdcage, I fed an extension cord through the bars.

To give the mini-lights a little height, I placed a glass jar (upside down) in the base of the birdcage, then messily placed the 2 connected strands of mini-lights into the cage around the jar and on top of the jar.  An alternative to using the jar would be to use an additional strand of mini-lights.

I put the cage back together and voila!

\

A quick and easy birdcage lamp!

Now for a couple of tips…

First, although you may be tempted to try LED mini-lights since they use less energy, I recommend using the traditional mini-lights.  The LED lights are super-bright, and not in a good way.  More like in a migraine-maker kind of way.  Ask me how I know…yup, I tried them, and the glare and color of the lights was way too harsh, then had to go back to the mini-lights.

Also, I have the birdcage lamp plugged into an outlet that turns on with a light switch on the wall, which is convenient, so I don’t have to be plugging in the lights.  Just flip the switch and the birdcage lamp is on.

If you don’t have the luxury of a plug controlled by a light switch, you can use an extension cord that has a foot switch.  No need to bend and plug!

Showing off this lamp at the White link party at Funky Junk Interiors.

numbers & letters

14 November 2010 by Andrea Leave a Comment

Oh how I love numbers & letters!  So when Donna over at Funky Junk Interiors posted a link party about numbers, I was inspired to share my little obsession.

No matter the font or the size, I just love them!

Last year at the Country Living Fair in Columbus, Ohio, I found some fabulous wooden printer’s block numbers.  So I searched until I found my house numbers…

They look vintage, but I think they’re reproductions.  Either way, they’re so cute hanging all wonky next to my front door in the foyer. Follow the yellow arrow to find them next to the door…

(Someday soon I’ll paint the inside of my front door an interesting color.)

Then there’s the number 4 on my mantle…

It took some serious convincing to get my dad to believe that the number 4 had no real significance to me, but that I had it just because I liked it!

But it’s not just numbers I like, but letters too!

Like the letter “a” my sister bought for me last Christmas, since she knows about my numbers & letters thing.

I also like putting letters together to make words!  One of my favorite words…

Dream!  I like it so much I have it in more than one place…

Numbers & letters & words!  Love them all!

twig decor

8 November 2010 by Andrea 1 Comment

A great low-cost decorating trick is to use twigs & branches that you can gather up on a walk in your neighborhood.  Imagine that – decorating as exercise!  That’s my kind of workout!

I picked up the large branch in this vignette after a windy fall day in our neighborhood…

The birch branch above our entertainment center holds some sentimental value for me, since I cut it from the lovely birch tree in front of our old house in California, because I wanted to take a part of that home with me.  Now it adorns our family room and I can see it every day.

With 2-story walls, the birch branch serves more than just a sentimental purpose. It also “caps” the vignette on the entertainment center, and grounds the whole thing, otherwise your eye would go all the way up to the ceiling, where there’s not a whole lot to see, aside from an occasional dust web.

And hey…don’t be too jealous of my Sauder entertainment center!  I keep fantasizing about replacing it, but a replacement entertainment center never seems to make it to the top of my grocery list!  Maybe some day a beautiful piece will find me when I’m out garage sailing or dumpster diving!

Don’t forget that you can also create a tablescape using twigs & branches.  This was from a past Thanksgiving, when I spray painted some gnarled roots & branches for a free but lovely holiday table display.

OK, I probably should have ironed the tablecloth before creating the tablescape, but it was all about the juxtaposition of sophisticated mod and rustic!

So don’t think you have to spend big bucks to adorn your home…just take a walk on the wild side and bring some nature indoors!

Showing off my twigs & branches at the sticks, twigs & branches link party over at Funky Junk Interiors.

benched

23 October 2010 by Andrea 4 Comments

Because I live in a land where backpacks, purses, viola, suitcase-sized-5th-grade-zipper-binder-almost-as-large-as-said-5th-grader, and other various & sundry items litter the kitchen table and the bar stools and the breakfast bar, I need some sort of storage solution.

We do have a coat closet with a shelf for each person, however, that is MILES away from the kitchen table! Well, probably only 12-20 steps away, depending on your size, but it sure seems like miles!

So, when blogger Ruth from A Trip to Holland came up with a backpack storage solution I was inspired, but still a little stumped.

Then I remembered the butcher block style grocery display counter tops that I have had sitting in my garage for a couple of years.

Got them for free from the grocery where my ex-husband works, and I’ve been contemplating how to use them for a couple of years.  Finally figured something out.

So, I purchased 4 legs & metal brackets to attach the legs…

First I drilled some pilot holes.  I marked the drill bit with tape to ensure that I didn’t drill through the wood.

Then screwed in the metal brackets…

Then I stained the legs…

When the stain was dry, I screwed the legs into the brackets, and voila!

A great looking place for all of that after school miscellany!

The only drawback with this project was that it wasn’t as cheap as I thought it would be.  The butcher block was free, but the legs were $4.88 each, and the brackets were $2.95 each, plus the stain was $4.95.  So it ended up costing around $36, which is more than I would have preferred to spend.

But it’s adorable, isn’t it?

I’m showing off this great bench at Funky Junk Interiors.

Funky Junk's Saturday Nite Special

basket case

9 October 2010 by Andrea 2 Comments

Or perhaps I should say a case for baskets, so you don’t get the wrong idea!

Baskets are a great decorating tool for containing things that might not look as impressive standing alone.  Since I have a lot of unimpressive things requiring containment in my home, I tend to use baskets.  Plus, my sister used to be a Longaberger consultant, so I got some awesome baskets as gifts and she was also kind enough to extend her employee discount to me.

(If you’re not familiar with Longaberger, it’s a family-owned company here in Ohio that creates artisan-quality handmade baskets.  Longaberger is BIG in Ohio.  Their baskets are beautiful.  And expensive.  All of my basket buying was before the collapse of the world [and my personal] economy.  If you like the baskets, but they’re out of your price range, be sure to look for them on eBay…plenty of them for sale there!)

Anyway, on to the fun part…the pictures!

A fruit basket (perfect, since it has a plastic protector, so juicy fruits don’t ruin the basket).

Coasters are one of those things that never seem to have a home.  Hence, the coaster basket…

Who wants to look at icky vitamin bottles, especially when you take as many supplements as I do!  What better place to store them than in a basket!

Extra pillows for watching TV and a cozy blanket for when it gets chilly…all of it fits perfectly in this laundry basket, plus it looks cute next to the fireplace.

Those of you with gaming kids and/or husbands know there is always the ubiquitous video game paraphernalia, which never seems to want to stay in one place, until the arrival of the faux rattan video game basket.  (Got this from Target, and sadly they no longer carry them.)

Since we live just two doors down from my sister, we have a near-constant flow of stuff going back and forth between houses…forgotten jackets, magazines moving on to their next reader, outgrown kids’ clothes being handed down to the next kid on the list, dishware from already eaten leftovers, coupons, books to share, toys…I’m sure you get the idea.  Needless to say, my sister’s family really needs their own basket at my house or things would be haphazardly tossed all over the house…we call it “The Outbox.”  The Outbox is a vintage-look wire basket at the base of the stairs that’s close to the front door.  Then every now and then I’ll empty the basket and load up some kids with goodies to take home.

So, I guess it’s true…I am a basket case!  Are you one too?  I’d love to hear how you use baskets in your home.

the writing is on the wall

26 September 2010 by Andrea 5 Comments

Literally.

It’s fun to have a designated spot to break the rules a bit and write on the walls.

Yeah, you heard right…write on the walls!

By the phone in my office, you can write messages and other stuff on the wall.  (And yes, I do have a pink payphone!)

With permission!

Graffiti is allowed…

Even sarcastic commentary is tolerated…

The teens love to leave their mark…

But that’s not the only place where there’s writing on the wall in my home.  It’s important to remind the kids to find out who is at the door, so I wrote it with a Sharpie around the peephole on the front door…

Even the dogs get some wallspace…

Are you ready to let loose and write on your walls?

Funky Junk's Saturday Nite Special

Sharing this post at the link party on Funky Junk Interiors.

robin’s egg blue

12 September 2010 by Andrea 3 Comments

Robin’s egg blue.  Sky blue.  Tiffany box blue.  I love all of those gorgeous blue hues.  But there aren’t really any rooms in my home where an entirely blue room would work well.  So I decided to create a little vignette at the bottom of the stairs that isn’t really part of any room, but the perfect place for a splash of robin’s egg blue.

And because I have a bird problem, when I think about robin’s egg blue, I start getting all literal, thinking about eggs and nests and feathers and birdhouses and branches…need I say more?  I’ll just show you…

I decided to create a vignette that brought a bit of the outdoors in.  Most of the items in the vignette I already owned.  Only had to purchase the nest, eggs, and feather, so this whole arrangement cost me less than $5.

This small square glass plate is from my old house, where I used it as a candle dish on the mantel.  I think it set me back a whopping $1.99 at Home Goods.

Then there’s this gorgeous blue & black floral bowl.  Another inexpensive Home Goods find.

My favorite part of the vignette is the nest with eggs, and the branch with a feather.  I simply hot glued the eggs into the nest, then tied a little floral wire on the back of the nest so I could hang it on a nail.

When I got the bug to do this project and needed a tree branch, I took a walk on the path that goes around our neighborhood, which backs up to a tree-lined corn field.  Whenever I ride my bike along the path, I have to dodge fallen branches, so I figured I’d find something good there, and I wasn’t disappointed.  I hammered some nails strategically at the joints of the branches, so I wouldn’t have to nail through the branch itself, and risk splitting it.

To give the illusion of a bird, I used a colorful feather, which is actually a Christmas ornament, tucked behind the branch.  Who would decorate their Christmas tree with bird feathers?  Me!  Guilty as charged!

Rather than try to hide the thermostat, I just incorporated it into the vignette, and it more or less becomes unnoticeable.

On the little black table sits a metal candy dish with a bird perched on it, a picture frame, and the lid from a china teapot.  Yes, that still is the fake photo in the frame from when I first bought it, even though I’ve had it for a solid 4 years!  Eventually I’ll get around to finding just the right photo!

The teapot lid has a story to it as well.  Someone – a child or pet, but I can’t quite recall – accidentally sent the whole thing flying across the room on a collision course with a tile floor, and I had to piece together the lid with ceramic glue…now that was a project!  But I loved it so much, I couldn’t bear to call it a loss and toss it in the trash.  It lives again in this fun vignette, full of robin’s egg blue.

Do you have something in your home that’s inspired by good ole’ Ruby Redbreast?

PS…this post was inspired by Donna over at Funky Junk Interiors…she’s having a Robin’s Egg Blue link party, so check it out!

Funky Junk's Saturday Nite Special

tween paradise

30 August 2010 by Andrea 1 Comment

The other day I was looking back through my old photos of homes and rooms that I’ve designed and came across the photos of my daughter’s old room in our California house, which I turned into a funky tween paradise, inspired by 2 sets of clearance Cynthia Rowley bed sheets from Target.

From 2 king sheet sets, I sewed the duvet cover and curtains for the window and on the wall behind the bed, then added even more pops of color and texture with zebra print pillows and an aqua faux fur throw, making for a funky, yet cozy tween room.

Picking up two of the colors from the striped sheets, I painted the room lavender on top half of the walls, and sky blue on the bottom.

White paper lanterns add light and texture, plus a touch of mod to the room.  Amazingly, I found a mirror from Ikea with stripes that matched the curtains perfectly.

A silver lamp with a striped shade was a lucky find at Target, plus more silver accessories from Ikea give the desk area a punch of mod.

Everything a tween girl needs…tween paradise!

PS…I’ll be showing this room off over the link party at Funky Junk Interiors.

best. project. ever.

22 August 2010 by Andrea 1 Comment

Do you have a project that was just your favorite ever?  I’m sure most of us creative types do.

That’s the question that Donna over at Funky Junk Interiors was asking this weekend.

And even though this may not have been my best design ever, or my hippest project ever, it certainly stands out as my favorite.  And the one that helped sell my previous house.

The fish bathroom.

Yes, that’s right, the fish bathroom.  I painted the kids’ bathroom in a light sea foam green, then started painting all manner of sea creatures.

What I loved about this project were the flat, two-dimensional sea creatures, who were embellished with three-dimensional elements, like buttons for the suction cups on the legs of an octopus and false eyelashes on the mermaid.  Perfect for touching, and we all know little kids love to touch texture.

Heck, adults like to have some fishy fun, too!  When we decided to move from California to Ohio, our wonderful realtor told us to leave the fish bathroom as it was, because surely some parents with young kids would love it in our neighborhood of starter homes.  This was true, however, it was a middle-aged gentleman and his wife who bought our home, and one of the reasons was that he loved the fish bathroom!

So here goes…my favorite project ever…the fish bathroom…

There was a whale hiding behind the door…

Topped by an octopus with buttons for suction cups…

A mermaid & “real” jewels spilling out of a treasure chest…

A scary shark…

A swimming bear (inspired by a swimming bear on a pair of my then-toddler son’s pajamas)…

And two of his tub toys made into the mix as well…

And many other crazy undersea creatures, like leopard fish…

Plus big goldfish & little goldfish…

And even a sign outside the bathroom door…enter at your own risk!

Oh how I loved that project!  Best. project. ever.

In fact, I loved that entire house.  It was our home for 10 years, and a lot of life was lived there.  It was a special place, and I miss it.  Perhaps I’ll dig back through my photo archives and share more of the funky designs that lived there.

when you said to frame it, is this what you meant?

17 August 2010 by Andrea 1 Comment

Recently, a dear friend who lives in New York came to visit me in Ohio.

After his visit, because I have a collection of masks like this…

And this…

He sent me these…

He suggested that I frame them, which I thought was a wonderful idea.  So I purchased this framed painting from a second hand store…

I paid $7.50 for it, which is more than I usually pay for something like this.  Free is usually more my price range, but I was motivated and had an idea of exactly what I wanted to do, and this was the perfect frame.  And although the painting was cute in a kitschy kind of way and very tempting to keep, I popped the painting out of the frame and began prepping to paint the frame.

So, it went from this…

To this, which resembles something from a bloody horror flick…

To this, which turned out to be cute & funky, adding a pop of color & fun to a classic office…

A close up of the detail on the frame…

What room in your home could use a shot of color & fun?

Showing off this project at Funky Junk Interiors…

Funky Junk's Sat Nite Special

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