Great Hall Interest Wall

I was flipping pictures and found some from when I put up the interest pieces on the hall wall.  For quite some time I have gathered pictures and ideas on what I wanted to do with the wall once everything was painted.  In between Thanksgiving and Christmas, we completely finished sanding and painting the wainscot and refinished the floors.  My hall wall was ready!!!

Here are a couple of my inspiration pictures:

Here is what I scrounged the shed and attic and found:

I laid it all out on a quilt in the hall to see how I wanted to arrange it all.  I disliked the different colors and decided to use some Martha Stewart metallic paints to unify them.  I also bought some black silk ribbon to hang some of the frames and painted some clothes pins with acrylic paint to match.

After laying it out and measuring the wall, I realized that I did not have near enough items to cover the wall. So, back up to the attic for a couple black shelves and a couple other misc. items.  I come back and find my daughter like this. She told me that she was “framed!”. It made giggle…

 

More items……more paint………more arranging………..and here it is:

 

I am looking for a small flat sign that says “FAMILY” to go in the top right ornate frame. I may either make or order a decal. I haven’t gotten that far yet.  The above picture was taken right after i got it all on the wall late November (I believe) and below is a picture I took today.  I need to fill in the empty picture frame. I really like the shelves. I have moved things around according to season and according to what I want to look at.  Overall, I was pleased with it.  You will notice that I did not repaint the pew. I think the color has grown on me.  Most of the frames I bought from garage sales or goodwill.  The black shelves I had in the study, but when we added the bathroom, they came down and I had nowhere to put them…until now.  Thanks for stopping by!

DIY utensil holder

Spring is in the air and summer will soon be here. Time for outdoor parties and summer BBQs. I ran across this adorable utensil holder idea here on Put It In a Jat and was inspired to make my own. Normally, I collect links and ideas with the hope that I will one day remember to do any of them. :). This time was different.

I remembered that I had a wood basket type caddy sitting in my giveaway pile and I have an embarrassingly huge collection of jars…old and new. Combine that with leftover spray paint and chalk tags from another project, I had a basically free utensil caddy.

Before:

After:

While digging through my pile of misc junk in the attic, I ran across another wood caddy. I now have plans to put all of the old bottles we found in the attic and other misc. bottles Steven has collected, in this caddy and display it on the living room coffee table. More to come on that later.

What I’m working on now is a long post regarding our front landscaping showing the realtor walk through pictures to present. Following that will be pictures on our Last Project (eeeek!), which is painting the back of the house. I can’t believe that we are completing the very last project on our six page list!!!

Stay tuned!!!!!

Pinterest Christmas Sign

I found this idea on Pinterest.

and made this with a leftover board and paints. I bought the letters at a local craft store. I have one in the works that will say NOEL and Ho!Ho!Ho! They are about four feet tall and I can’t wait to lean them up on the front porch.
I am glad I found some use for these old fascia boards and half cans of paint. I prefer to reduce, reuse, recycle before sending it all the a landfill. Soon though, I am going to have to clean up my yard and anything I cannot reuse will have to go. I have already donated what I can to Habitat for Humanity and to friends for their Misc. projects. We are thinking about renting a wood chipper and reduce the non treated boards into mulch. If that ever comes to fruition, I will come back with a follow up post. Over the next few weeks I will post some of the things I made with the construction leftovers.

Happy early Christmas!

Smith and Corona 1970s Manual Portable Typewriter

I went with a friend Friday to the Old School House Antique mall in Washington, Louisiana. Always a fun experience. If you have never been, you should check them out sometime. They have a cafe as well, so you can go and spend the day hunting for treasure and stop and have a bite to eat when you are ready for a break.

I was looking for vintage commercial wood spools and bobbins for a large jar on my living room mantel. I managed to find some and bought 19! Yay! I was very excited about that. I also picked up some anchor motif gold vintage buttons from Woolworth for some of my crafty projects. But, as evidenced by my blog post title, my biggest score of the day was a 1970s Smith and Corona manual typewriter. A lot of my online scrapbook friends own typewriters and they are definitely making a comeback across several different demographic groups, but I have been personally very skeptical about the practicality of owning a typewriter. I wondered how people stored them and if its worth the bother of getting it out to use. If you leave it out, how much room does it take up? Just a few random things that have crossed my mind.

I saw this little portable typewriter in its case and decided to check it out.

All of the keys except 2 worked. The carriage return drug a little bit and the keys were slightly gummed up. I decided that I would give the little typewriter a try and purchased it for $30 that was more than what I wanted to pay for something I knew would have to be fixed and ultimately may not work, but $30 was the lowest she would go. SOLD!! (To a sucker maybe? Lol)

I brought it home and researched cleaning it. Before I purchased it, I did look online (love smart phones!) to see if ribbon was available for it. I have made that mistake before. I bought a vintage camera to play with only to find out that film for it was obsolete… But that’s another story. I bought denatured alcohol and followed this tutorial on how to clean a manual typewriter, oiled the carriage wheel with a tiny, minuscule amount of sewing machine oil and plopped in a new ribbon. Steven was able to reconnect the “Q” and “2” (my smart mechanical techie guy–love him!!!) and I fiddled with some of the arms that were bent to get them back into alignment.

Cleaning it with the alcohol helped a lot. It flushed out a lot of small dirt particles. Dust is a manual typewriter’s worst enemy. That is also the reason many restorers recommend you do not oil the key arms because oil + dust=a gummed up machine. I only put a tiny bit of oil underneath the machine on the return wheel. While that did help the carriage return move a bit more easily, I see that there is something wrong with the backspace key and that is what is causing the manual return to drag. Everything else is all shiny and it works great!!!!! I can’t manually return it (push on the lever and it go back to the ready position), so I have been working around that, but Steven is going to look at it and see if he can reconnect/fix whatever it is that is causing the carriage to be sluggish. Anyway, this is probably more information than you wanted to know!!!

Annnnnnd…. Here is how it types:

I have already put it to use for my scrapbook. This so much fun! It should be illegal.

Cricut Chirp

This was an idea from the Cricut Chirp I received last week.  I thought this was cute.  Makes a great title!  Or decoration.  It does not necessarily have to be BABY.  You can use other words and shapes but with the same concept.  I thought I would share what is inspiring me this week!  I love to paper piece.

Andrea