Keep Calm and...Come Play with Us

Every time Christmas or her birthday rolls around, I never quite know what to give my grandma. This is the woman who babysat my brother when my mom went back to work, took us to the beach every summer, took my sister and I on shopping sprees for our birthday, attended every sporting event and awards ceremony she possibly could, and even paid for my college education. Basically, she is amazing so I want to make sure I do something that will make her happy.

The only problem is that like many reasonable people her age, she doesn’t really want more stuff. She has tons of interests and I could give her endless accessories for her house, but she doesn’t need any more seashell-themed things for her living room. She is beautiful and has a great sense of style so we do buy her some clothes, but we want to do more than give her a couple sweaters for Christmas.

This year, instead of giving her stuff, we decided to give her an experience. My grandma loves spending time with us (who can blame her?) and we sure enjoy her company too, so my sis and I decided to take her to tea with my mom this year.

But this is not a post about the tea party…because we haven’t gone yet (we’ve all been busy). We are planning to go this weekend.

This post is about the invite. The challenge with giving someone an experience is that unless you have tickets to unwrap, the whole gift-giving process is kind of dull.  I decided to make an invitation in Photoshop, although I think it would be pretty easy to make it in Word too.

The invitation was a play on the “Keep Calm and Carry On” British World War 2 poster that you see all over the place.

To make the poster, I downloaded the “Keep Calm” font from K-Type.com, which even the crown icon. First, I made the background color pink. Then I made I separate text box for the crown icon, “Keep”, “Calm”, “and”, and “Drink Tea” so that I could easily control how close together each line was. Once I sized everything properly, I arranged all of the items so that their center points were aligned.

Next, I created a new Photoshop document to be the back of the invitation. Using the same font (not in all caps) I wrote, “Your lovely granddaughters and daughter invite you to channel your inner Kate Middleton and join us for afternoon tea at Peacock Alley in the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC.” I didn’t specify the date because my grandma is a super busy lady and I wanted to see what her schedule was like first. And I kept the crown on the front rather than a tea cup because I mentioned HRH on the back.

I printed the invite on cardstock from a regular inkjet printer and put it in an envelope for her to open on Christmas day. 

She loved it, and we can’t wait to go get tea together. I think that the Keep Calm poster makes a great invitation, and you could use it in many ways—bridal and baby showers, birthday parties, etc.

Well Hello Pretty Ladies

For a year, my roommates and I sat in our living room with nothing hanging above our pretty big sectional besides a tiny picture I found at Home Goods. And for a year, I wondered what the heck to put there.

I pinned a lot of ideas for artwork over the wall to Pinterest but just wasn’t quite sure what I liked. One thing I was sure of? We needed large artwork of some kind and I needed it cheap.

We came close to getting one option: a series of four vintage Mademoiselle cover prints from Z Gallerie. But at $50, it was out of my budget and I wasn’t even sure if four pictures would like good enough in this space.

via 

While those prints were the right ones for us, I still found myself gravitating to vintage fashion prints. I love a pretty fashion print, and, like I mentioned with my Christmas tree, living with three girls is the perfect time to embrace something girly in our living room.

I especially liked this gallery wall that I saw on Pinterest:

Via Pretty Stuff (original source anyone?)

Then One day I saw this picture on Pinterest:

Via Layla Grace

When I clicked on the source blog I found that it was a gallery of vintage Barbie prints. And when I Googled “Vintage Barbie” (naturally), I found the Barbie calendar.

Ding! (That’s the sound of a light bulb turning on above my head).

This isn’t the first time I’ve used calendars for artwork. In college I took apart a calendar and put up all over my dorm room. When I did it then it looked ridiculous, but I always maintained, like many other bloggers, that calendars can be a great source of affordable artwork.

I picked up the 2012 Barbie Calendar at Bed Bath, and Beyond. I wasn’t sure how many of the prints I wanted to use – I was thinking 6 or 8 in large frames with big mats. I figured I would probably paint the frames because our living room is kind of lacking in the color department,.

It seems that framing section at Michael’s is perpetually on sale, so I figured I could get a pretty good deal on a group of their nicer frames. My first option was a group of six 12x16 frames. They were originally $30, marked down to $15. Which still sounded like a lot when I was thinking about buying six of them.

Not to mention, the price of mats big enough to fit in the frame put the total for each one over $20, making this project ring in to the tune of $150—a whole lot more than I was trying to spend.

My second option was a matted frame around the same size as option one for $12.99 each. When I did the math of six or eight of those babies, it was still pretty pricey.

Then I looked at the shelf above option two. There, I found a 10x13 frame matted to 8x10 for $5. I hadn’t really thought about displaying all twelve pictures, but at this price it was my cheapest option. So I took home 12 frames in white and oatmeal (since I was planning to paint them anyway).

First, I placed all 12 picture frames on the floor in two rows of six to see how large it would be.

It didn’t seem very big on the floor, but I wanted to see what it was like on the wall just to be sure. To do this, I used scrap paper and catalogs to make a template for each frame, and hung them on the wall with painter’s tape.

We call this photo "channeling our inner teenage boy".
Yes, those are pages of one of the 50 Victoria's Secret catalogs we receive every week. 

I decided I liked all 12 frames, so I proceeded with my plans to paint them.  I settled on a lavender spray paint with one or two frames painted a darker purple. First I took all the mats and glass out of the frames.

Then I placed the frames on a matt outside and painted the frames in shifts so that I could get around them easily. I decided to put a layer of primer on the frames because they weren’t real wood and I hope that the Primer would help the spray paint adhere.

Once I finished the frames, I moved on to cutting the Barbie prints out of the calendar.

First, I removed the staples from the centerfold of the calendar. Then, I cut each piece of paper down the fold with a craft knife. I had to keep reminding myself that the calendar pattern was on the back of half of the images in the calendar.

Many of the prints were actually bigger than 8x10 opening, so I broke out my high school yearbook knowledge and used the mat to crop each picture. I tried my best to include the feet as much as I could, but I ended up having to cut some of them off. I’m hoping that unlike a photo on a yearbook page, it looks a little bit artistic and not silly.

I cut the images slightly smaller than the whole mat so that I could tape them to the back of the mat exactly as I liked them.

Once everything was cropped and taped, I put the glass and mats and prints in the frames and began the very tedius hanging process. I tried to make life easier for myself and our walls by using 3M Command Strips to hang the frames. That way we would have fewer holes to patch when we moved out (we live in a rental) and it would be a lot easier to hang them precisely in a grid.

I started from the a top center picture and worked my way out until I hung 6 frames in a row. I used a combination method of a ruler and a level to mark where on the wall I needed to hang the frames.

Once I hung the top row, I moved on to the bottom, again making my way out from the center. Then I stepped back and looked at the whole thing and determined I needed to make some adjustments. Luckily the frames were easily to remove from the wall, so I eyeballed the adjustments until everything was straight.

Well...I wish it was perfectly straight. This is not a good project for extremely perfectionists because it seems almost impossible to get the entire grid to look right. But it’s good enough.

The first time around I had only painted one frame dark purple. Once everything was on the wall I decided it needed another dark accent, so I took a frame down, pulled the glass and print out of it, and re-sprayed it a darker color.

And voila! Vintage fashion print artwork gallery over our couch.

Some of the places that I found the Barbie calendar show it as art in a kid’s room, but I think it works here. In fact, most people have no idea that they’re Barbie prints when they see the arrangement. I know it’s super girly, but like I said before, when else will I be able to do something so girl in my living room?

I haven’t even told you my favorite part about this whole thing. The price!

Here’s the budget breakdown:

Barbie Calendar - $12

12 Frames x $5 each - $60

Primer Spray Paint – had already

Lavender Spray Paint x 2 - $7

Dark purple spray paint - $3.50

Artwork Total: $82.50

The Command Strips added about $20 to the budget, but they’ll save us money when we don’t have to patch holes before we move, and I would’ve had to pay for mounting hardware regardless of what art I bought. So for a little over $100, we have art above our couch.

$100 still always sounds like a lot of money to me, but I know that this is a great value for the price, especially considering that the price per framed print came in under $10 each. AND then there’s this fun piece of info.

The original Barbie inspiration piece? Well, I followed it to the source and found that the prints displayed on the wall sell for $100 EACH! And if I wanted to, I could’ve probably painted the frames a similar color to the high-end prints to make them like even more similar. There are definitely ways to dress these babies up even more.

So there you have it, a $1200 piece of artwork done for $100. Can I get a woohoo?

Has anyone else done something cool with calendars as art? I plan to keep using them and even recycle my 2011 letterpress calendar that hung on the wall in my cube at work. But that project requires more materials so it will have to wait until after No Shop January!

Speaking of No Shop January, today was a success! I was at work late and very tempted to pick up a pizza on the way home, but I resisted the temptation and cooked up chicken tacos when I got home.  Score one for me. 

Monthly Challenge: No Shop January

I decided that to aid in that sometimes-lacking feeling of accomplishment that can come with my quasi-grownup state, I'm going to take on some kind of challenge each month of 2012. Today I am declaring this month No Shop January. 

It doesn’t ring quite as well as “No Shave November” (which I did NOT participate in), but that’s what I’m calling it nonetheless.

Last year my old roommate, who loved to buy super cute clothes online, decided to do “No Shop November” to accompany her boy toy’s “No Shave November” and save some much needed moolah. Well…I looked at my credit card statement last weekend and realized just how expensive December was. And I also realized how much money I spend on impulsive purchases and projects every month. I don’t think my bank account can wait until November and I really want to get better at saving, so I am holding my own No Shop January to start the year off on the right foot.

I’m trying to set reasonable terms in hopes that I can be a little less impulsive in the following months, so here’s how this is going to work: I’m making a list of non-allowable expenses and making a few exceptions so that I’m not completely devoid of a life this month.

No spending allowed on:

• Clothing, shoes, and accessories
• Random makeup like lipstick or nail polish
• Random stuff from Target that I have a tendency to pick up when I’m grocery shopping there, including plastic containers and holiday decorations
• Sewing and crafting materials
• Tools (Anything I don’t have I will borrow from my parents—who will be surprised to read this)
• Wine or beer from the grocery store
• Fast food/restaurants when I’m eating alone
• Groupons/Living Social Deals/Flash Sales

Exceptions:

• Shopping with gift cards from Christmas is allowed.
•  I am allowed to buy the blender that I have been thinking about buying for a while so that I can make green smoothies.
•  If a Groupon or Living Social deal comes up for the yoga studio that I really want to attend but can’t afford, I am allowed to buy it.
• The boy and I are allowed to spend money out to eat for date night, but we should try to use my restaurant.com gift cards to snag a good deal.
• Groceries are allowed, but impulsive purchases of craving foods when I already have perfectly edible food in my house are not allowed.
•  I am allowed to buy materials within reason for a project that I plan to at least start in January. That means I should try to use paint that I already have, but if I decide on another color that would work best, I can buy the small quantity of paint. I can also buy a new foam roller if I need one and the hardware I need to retrofit this specific piece of furniture. The key is that this project is done within reason and that I take inventory of the materials I already own before buy more.   

Strategies for seeing this through:

• Delete flash sale and store emails immediately.
• Read Living Social and Groupon deals quickly and delete them if they don’t have the yoga place I’m looking for.
• Plan meals better so that I don’t need to eat out.
• Start and complete the project I’ve been planning to do instead of taking on new ones.
• Write blog posts about the projects I’ve already completed instead of taking on new ones.

In addition to a halt on impulsive shopping, I am also taking steps to get my finances better organized. I am plan to open another savings account or two – one for short term savings projects one for long-term, don’t touch, save for an emergency savings.

I am also planning to do more structured saving. I live in a spacious house with great roommates…in a so-so location for me. It’s close to my office but not as close to Metro as I would like, and not walkable to bars and restaurants I got to like I wish it was. I don’t really want to move because our rent is dirt cheap and I like my living situation. So, to make sure I am actually benefiting from the money I’m saving by choosing to live a bit farther out of the urban areas than I’d like, I am going to start saving the difference between what it would cost me to live in one of those places and what I pay now into savings, contributing a small portion for short term and a bigger portion for long term.

And so begins No Shop January. I’ll try to keep you updated about how I’m doing, what’s tempting me, and how I’m being resourceful and using what I have to do a few projects around the house.

Oh, and by all means, feel free to join me in this endeavor! I know I’m not the only Savvy Young Something who wants to get savvier by getting her spending under control. If you decide to join, leave a comment here or on my facebook page, or send me a tweet letting me know you’re taking on the challenge!

P.S. I’ll be back tomorrow with an update on a project I took on a little while ago. Hint: It involves this pretty lady. 

It's a Coffee Table Post...about My Coffee Table

Last year I bought a coffee table on Craigslist from a family with four kids, and boy did they leave a mark on it. Literally. It was totally beat up. But it was also only $20 and solid wood for the most part, so I scooped it up with the intention of refinishing it.

A word to the wise: Don’t buy a piece of furniture in October that you intend to refinish unless you are willing to live with it as-is until the spring…or however long it takes you to get around to finishing the project. We lived with our beat up coffee table for a year until I decided on a whim to try to finish it before my cousins came to visit.

So one day when I came home from work, the table looked like this:

And when I was done working for the night, it looked like this:

And I looked like this:

Caution: Don't try to live on the edge like me and wear flip flops while sanding.
Always wear closed-toe shoes when using power tools. 

It was a dusty endeavor.

When it comes to refinishing furniture, this ain't my first rodeo. A while ago I refinished my big girl bed, and I also stained a piece of wood to make a coatrack. To tackle this project, I took it into our backyard and went after it with my power sander (I own this Ryobi sander, but this similar Black and Decker sander would work fine too). The finish came off super easily, and I was able to sand through a lot of the scratches and dents in the surface.  I started with the tabletop and then moved to the legs. That’s when I realized that I would be better able to sand and stain the entire table more thoroughly if I took the table apart.

A lot of tables can be easily de-constructed by removing screws on the underside of the tabletop. After removing the legs from the tabletop and shelf, I finished sanding the tabletop portion and legs and called it a night. I left the drawer and the shelf for another day.

While most of the table is solid wood, the shelf is made of a very thin veneer. That means I couldn’t just take a power sander to it. To make sure I thoroughly removed the finish without hurting the shelf, I decided to strip the finish off and then lightly sand it with sandpaper.

But, I was doing all this in the fall, so by the time I got home from work it was dark and kind of chilly—not good when you’re trying to strip a piece of furniture. Luckily, because I took the table apart, I could use a water-based stain to begin staining the tabletop and legs in our basement each night when I got home from work.

To stain the table, I used General Finishes Water-Basedstain in Espresso, which I had leftover from a previous project. I applied the stain evenly in sections using a foam brush, and wiped it off using pieces of an old t-shirt. I think I applied four coats in all.

When the next Saturday rolled around I set up shop outside and used a disposable paintbrush to apply Citristrip to the shelf. I let it sit on the surface for about 4 minutes, and then used a plastic stripping tool. I didn’t let it sit longer because it started to dry after that point.

In order to prevent myself from damaging the veneer, I was very careful with the stripping tool, allowing it to skim the surface and remove the finish without scraping the wood.

After stripping off the finish and cleaning off the stripper residue (snort), I let the shelf dry overnight inside.  Then I stained it using the same technique as the tabletop and legs.

After all the surfaces were stained, I used a foam brush to apply three coats of a MinWax Polycrylic Protective Finish in Satin. I let it dry over night, moved table back up to our living room in pieces, and put it back together.

I picked up some drawer pulls at Home Depot thinking that they were standard and would fit the coffee table drawer. Silly me. It turns out that a lot of standard drawer pulls are 3” wide, but the holes in my drawer were 4” apart. I found some drawer pulls on anthropologie’s website (similar ones currently available) that were the right width, ordered them in 4 colors, decided on the ones I liked best, and returned the rest. 

The table is admittedly a little large for the space, and the finish is a bit darker than I'd like -- it looks almost black in certain light, but I still think it's a major improvement over its previous beat up state. And, I'll be able to sell it for more on Craigslist when I eventually decide to move or find another piece for the space.

I’ll be back later this week with more overdue projects!

Linked to: My Uncommon Slice of Suburbia

Happy 2012!

Hey friends! Happy New Year! Hope you guys had an awesome time. The boy and I had a great time scootin’ around DC in a limo thanks to one of his best friends. We probably spent an hour or less at the party where we planned to spend the evening, and rolled home around 4 am without any of the people we started with (except each other, awwwwww). It was what some might call “epic”. So yeah, I’m still pretty exhausted. And this is the only picture I managed to get of the whole night. With my phone. Can't wait to upgrade to an iphone next year. 

Today I took down a few of the Christmas decorations but left up some of the more wintery, less Christmassy ones. I plan to leave my tree up at least another week because I love it so much.

I loved this tray filled with mercury glass trees and ornaments for Christmas.
Today I put away the ornaments and left one of the trees for winter. 

Hope you had a wonderful New Year’s Eve celebration! I’ll be back later today with a project I tackled earlier this fall. 

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The Highs and Lows of 2011

Tonight I’ll be out with the boy and our friends up in Adam’s Morgan to bring in 2012. And I have to say—I’m ready for it.

At this point last year I was celebrating a pretty successful year. In 2010 I scored not only my first but my second grownup job, I moved out of my parents’ house, I installed a dryer, and really felt progress.  

2011 saw quite a bit of personal growth, but not as much in the personal achievement department. My biggest achievement by far this year was buying Fiona, my glorious little car and sign that I am indeed a grownup gal.

But 2011 was also a drama-filled year.

In February, the boy moved out of his parents’ house and into what can only be described as a stereotypical frat house with three dudes. At first the move was great, but it also began to expose weaknesses in our relationship that we had yet to conquer. In March, shortly after my 24^th birthday, we went on hiatus. Only, at the time it wasn’t a hiatus. It was something that seemed painfully permanent.

April, May and June saw lots and lots of running. Running so much that my knees hurt and I started reading about running injuries and ignoring good advice that you shouldn’t attempt to go from nowhere to running 8 miles three times a week because that was all I really wanted to do. I lost interest in my DIY projects around the house and spent way too much money on “going out” dresses. And I started eating Lean Cuisines for like, every freaking meal.  

Those months were also full of self-awareness and reflection. I knew that I had lost interest in things that I used to love, but I had some experience in the department and knew that it was OK—that I would emerge and find those hobbies again, and that it’s OK to dive into a period of both self-preservation and reflection when your life requires it.

Around that same time I looked at the Royal Wedding through an all too personal lens.

Sometime around June, July, August?—I can’t really remember—it’s all a blur—the boy and I decided that neither of us was happy with what we would decide was a hiatus. I missed him a lot, but, like Kate Middleton, I don’t regret the time we spent apart.

Over the 4^th of July my family went to see my Grandma in upstate New York. She is in her late 80s and has been so sad since we lost my wonderful Grandpa six years ago. She also has dementia. She still recognizes all of us but is more in-and-out than ever before, and she knows it. The day after we left her house, my aunt moved my Grandma into an assisted living residence about an hour away from where my dad grew up.  When my dad talks to her now she alternates between thinking we’ve institutionalized her and that she’s back in nursing school. I prefer the latter.

In August my old Camry broke down and I bought Fiona Fit. I got the loan myself (never done that before) got car insurance myself (never done that before), and even signed all the papers and everything without the help of my dad. The boy was there for moral support and to keep me company, and I was very happy to have him there.

In November, my mom and the store I grew up working in was featured in the Washington Post Magazine and I campaigned to collect as many magazines as I could from the people in my office who actually get the Post print edition.

I spent Thanksgiving at home for the first time in at least 15 years, and for the third time in my entire 24 years of existence. We used to travel to New York and stay at my Grandma’s house, but that wasn’t an option this year and all my cousins’ are growing up, so we had Thanksgiving with my mom’s family. I was happy to be home and have a bit of time off, but I was also a bit heartbroken. I know that in the next few years I’ll probably have my own family and start new traditions but this young 20-something age is a bit of a no mans’ land when it comes to ending old traditions and beginning long lasting new ones.

In December I bought a new computer and redesigned my little blog. And it is honestly the thing I do besides my DIY projects that makes me most happy. It makes me so happy that I stayed up till 3 am on a Friday night playing in Photoshop Elements just so that my Christmassy header wouldn’t be up too long like my Christmas Decorations inevitably will be (but I love them so who cares?).

A couple weeks ago, my cousin got engaged. I was so excited and happy for her and immediately overstepped my bounds by sending her an invite to Pinterest and the link to one of my favorite blogs, Oh So Beautiful Paper.

So this year has been one of many highs and lows. I think I know myself better than I did at the beginning of 2011 and I hope that to always be the case at the end of every year. But I am definitely looking forward to 2012. I am looking forward to entering a time in my life in which the end of eras will be more tempered by weddings and babies and new beginnings. I am looking forward to turning 25, and to continuing to figure out what I want to do with my life and career. I am excited to celebrate my siblings’ graduation from high school and college, and my dad’s 60^th birthday. And I look forward to reading this next year and reflecting on 2012.

Cheers to a New Year! May 2012 be your happiest yet. Thank you so very much for reading and I’ll see you in in 2012—with all the projects I’ve been working on, I swear! 

P.S. Here's a great song to bring in 2012!

Creating Your Own Christmas Traditions

Yesterday I posted about why your 20s are a great time to experiment with non-traditional Christmas decor. While I love the idea of playing with different types of Christmas decorations, I do still like the idea of establishing Christmas traditions while you're young. Establishing your own traditions can be just as comforting as participating in the ones you remember growing up.

This year the boy and I participated in a Christmas tradition together for the third Christmas in a row. And I'm not gonna lie, it's probably one of the most mature things we do together all year.

A couple years ago I was volunteering with the Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing's (APAH) annual Secret Santa Christmas gift drive. APAH is a great organization that owns 12 affordable housing properties throughout Arlington County, Virginia. I really like them because they build mixed use, mixed income properties, they preserve a lot of affordable housing along transit routes, and they provide community-based services for their residents. Oh yeah--I should mention that I value these things because I work in affordable housing as my day job (but not for a provider) and I very much support the targeted and well-planned work that APAH does.

Anyway, I was helping APAH's resident services coordinator sort gifts that were donated by families in the community who had adopted families in APAH properties. When we finished sorting gifts, we determined that there were three families who were not yet adopted. Although I was working an unpaid internship with another local affordable housing developer at the time, I called up the boy and asked him if he would be willing to adopt a family of three with me. He was down with the idea, so I got information about the family and we went shopping at Target for items together.

Two years later, we still adopt one of APAH's families for Christmas together. This year we got to shop for two little boys and their mother. We have our routine down--we try to get the kids a jacket or sweatshirt, pants or a t-shirt, one "big" toy, and one little one. For the mother, we get a gift card to a store depending on what kind of thing she said she needed. APAH recommends a budget of $25 per person, but we spend closer to $100 for a family of three when all is said and done. We try to shop at Target and get gift receipts because it is accessible by public transit from all of APAH's properties, so it's easy for the family to return things if they need to.

I'm really glad that we're able to give back to our community together every Christmas and I hope we continue to do it in the future. I totally encourage you to establish a Christmas tradition like this with your friends, family, or significant other. Stepping up and making donations to your community is definitely a grownup thing to do, and it is a great way to embrace your quasi grownup maturity together (for a little while at least)!

P.S. Props to Maizie from Chic Done Cheap for organizing a group of friends to donate gifts to the Salvation Army's angel tree gift drive. I was happy to participate in it and meet a bunch of new friends in the process!