Tony's {Almost} Electric Guitar

This is by far one of my favorite projects that Tony has done!!! I think it is because he came up with this idea all on his own and just created it out of nothing. He was sick of looking at the empty wall in his office and wanted some sort of decoration that would bring it to life. He loves playing the guitar (and is AWESOME at it:) so he decided to make one!

Here's a few pictures of the different stages. He wanted it to be thick so he glued two pieces of wood together. It was a little tricky cutting them to match up perfectly, but he did it!

The metal is a piece of tin we had laying around the garage from home depot. He cut it to fit the curves of the guitar and hammered it a little to add more character.

The copper pieces and old bolts were random things left in our garage when we moved in our house. I think the copper was some sort of piece to a roof? I don't know, but he cut them up and used them:)

 To make the guitar look like it had frets he used thick nails and cut them to size.

Doesn't it ROCK!?! I think it's amazing!!! And his office looks much better now:)

Ice Cream Cake

This year for my husband's birthday, I decided to make him an ice cream cake. I had never attempted one before but found lots of great recipes online and tried it out. I'm so glad I did because he loved it! And it tasted much better than normal plain cake and ice cream!

 He has always loved mint chocolate chip ice cream so I used that for the middle layer. The bottom layer is just a butter chocolate cake mix (with pudding already in it). I halved the cake box recipe and baked it as directed in a 9" round greased cake pan. Then I melted the ice cream enough to be able to mold it and put that into a foil lined 9" cake pan and froze it for 2 hours. When the cake was cooled I put it on the serving platter and added the frozen ice cream to the top of it. Then I put a thin layer of extra creamy Cool Whip on next and froze the whole thing for about 4 hours. I let it sit about 10 minutes before we added the hot fudge and devoured it:) It was super YUMMY!!!!

Branch Coat Hanger

A few months ago I saw a branch coat hanger on  Pinterest that I loved! I showed it to Tony and he said "That would be so easy to make!" So last weekend he made one as a gift for his Aunt & Uncle's cabin. The pictures don't do it justice but it turned out so nice!

He found some pine tree branches that had just the right notches sticking out. Then he drilled each end of the branches into a double frame so it's nice and sturdy to hang coats on it.  This size is 18x27inches. I can't wait for him to make one for our house now:)

Spray Painted Furniture

I love to spray paint furniture! It gives me a thrill to find something old and ugly and envisioning its potential.

 

I found this great chair at a Thrift Store for $10 and thought I could make it look a little better. So I bought it, some how shoved it in my car, and brought it home. I had it sitting in the garage when my husband came home and saw it. He said "EW!!! Why did you buy that ugly chair?"  I told him I thought I could make it look better. He didn't believe me, but once I got done with it, he ended up liking it:)

 

 All it needed was a little love and spray paint! I used the Krylon Ivory color spray paint ($3 at Walmart). The fabric was actually in really good shape so I decided not to recover it. I just put plastic over while I spray painted it.

 

It didn't have any cushion on it, so I covered a foam cushion with a king size pillow case from Walmart (since the fabric matched my curtains, which were made from sheets:). 

Once I was done, my husband liked it enough to allow it in the house:)

I also spray painted this little end table and the lamp. The lamp was one of those old bright gold/brass lamps that used to be popular. I like the shape of it but not so much the color so I spray painted it black to match in our living room. Then I found the lamp shade at Target on clearance for $3!

I found this little end table at a thrift store too (for $8). It was plain brown and had some hideous bell handles on it. I painted it with red Krylon spray paint and added these simple little black handles (from Home Depot) to it.

I really loved the way it turned out and it adds so much more color to our living room!

Happy Spray Painting!!!

Baby Blanket

 Last week I had fun making this baby blanket for my 2 month old. I found this cute brown (so soft!) Minky fabric at Hobby Lobby in the remnant section a few months ago, so I used it for the back.

 At first, I wasn't sure what to use for the top. But I noticed I had a lot of receiving blankets that are already too small for my baby. So I decided to cut those up and make this bigger blanket out of them. 

 Sometimes I like intricate patterns for quilts, but I wanted to get this one done quickly so I just decided to do squares:)

 It was fun to make and I am enjoying having a bigger blanket for my boy. Now if only, the blanket was a tenth as cute as my sweet baby:)

A Coat for Max

 A few months ago, I found a little coat for my 3 year old at Old Navy. It was so cute but I really didn't want to pay $40 for it. So I decided to try and sew one (which is something I never thought I would attempt)! I was about to donate one of my old coats to DI since I didn't use it anymore but I decided to hang on to it and make this one for Max.

First I took one of his jackets and used it as a pattern. After cutting it out, I decided that I didn't really like the color of my coat for Max. So I decided to cover each piece in gray, ha, using my mom's old windbreaker pants. Crazy, I know...but it was the only gray fabric I had and I liked the pockets and red accents on it:)

 I ended up using the pants pockets on the sleeves.

  It ended up being a little more work than I was planning on, mostly because I had to cover each piece of the coat. But I really ended up liking the gray!

Hydrangea Wreath Tutorial

 I have always loved Hydrangea Wreaths and wanted to have one. Unfortunately every time I found one I liked, they were about $50 or more! There's no way I could bring myself to pay that much for one, so I decided to make one!

 I bought this wreath a few years ago at a craft store and it's been sitting in our storage room. I figured it was probably about time to do something with it:)

 I found these blue hydrangeas at the Dollar Tree and bought 6 of them ($6).

 Then I clipped each individual stem off...

...and stuck it through the wreath. Then I wrapped the rest of the stem around it, so it would hold it in place.

When I finished with the hydrangeas it looked like this.

I wanted a little more green on it, so I pulled these leaves off of an old wreath that was too faded to use, and added them to my new wreath.

It was a super easy quick project and under $10!  And now my front door looks a little better:)

Bring on the spring!!! YAY!!!