Corner News-March 5, 2016

March 5, 2016March 4, 2016Leave a comment

It smells like rain!! Yay!! We haven’t had much rain this past month, so this is very welcome. The grass is so green, but now it needs mowed. The blossoms are almost gone from the trees, leaving behind the bright green new leaves. Lots of pretty color flowers too!

I received these sweet little flowers for Valentine’s Day from one of my students. She was so excited to give them to me! My kitchen window is the best spot in the house for them, plus I get to enjoy them a lot!

I painted this little crate this week. It was just unfinished wood, so I painted it grey with a little white dry-painted over the top. The flower arrangement was created by one of my girls many years ago when they were trying to earn a badge for a girls club they were in. Of course, I still have it!

I had this little fish tank in my classroom. I had the bowl and added the foamy fish. The kids knew the fish weren’t real, but the sure were confused about the turtle! It’s always fun to keep them on their toes!

Happy Saturday!!

Game Piece Pictures

March 4, 2016March 3, 201612 Comments

Do we have any gamers in the audience? Any kind of game: board game, video game, card game. Anyone?

Do you ever play a board game and find that there are pieces missing or there are extra pieces and you have no idea what to do with them? Yep…me too…

Well, a while ago, I found a box of game pieces that were at a yard sale and I purchased them. They ranged from chess pieces to checkers pieces to dominoes and colored blocks. There were so many pieces and I wasn’t completely sure what to do with them all.

And, I figured it out.

So I started with picking my pieces and picking up some frames from the Dollar Tree and started the project. I picked up three frames and wanted to use the colored blocks, dominoes, and wooden checkers to create my artwork. I figured that the easiest way to make this work was to use hot glue to keep the pieces on the framework. So, I took out the glass and added a piece of white paper on the back of each frame to get started.

Before doing all of this, I laid out the pieces on the frames to see what the pattern would be. I started with the checkers and knew that I wanted them to be in rows and using opposite colors. So, here is the design that I picked.

I worked on the dominoes next. I wanted to do something with the numbers lining up, but wasn’t completely sure how it was going to work out. So, I tried a few different things before I came up with this one.

Finally, I used the colored blocks. I didn’t have a clue on what to do with all of the blocks, and then I started humming the Tetris theme song. You know what I’m talking about. So, I made my own version of a Tetris game. I lined up all of the blocks to make sure that I would have enough, then started making my game.

So, after all of this work, I started hot gluing. It wasn’t too hard to put everything together, and it was a lot of fun to see how it all came together.

And without further adieu, here are my finished game piece pictures.

I think they turned out great! I love how they look together, plus they could be separate if wanted. And, they could be hung on the wall if I get tired of them sitting on the table. I may use the rest of the pieces that I have to make more pictures, but I like how these look together!

Springy Tablescape

February 26, 2016February 25, 2016Leave a comment

Hello and welcome to winteng…sprinter…wintering? Whatever. The time of the year where it is too warm for winter or too cold for spring. Where the mornings are perfect for sweaters, jeans, and flip flops; but the afternoons are greats for shorts, tank tops, and flip flops.

Oh the struggle is real!

But, nonetheless, it is getting closer to the springy weather and closer to pretty colors from all the flowers. So, why not get started early with a pretty table setting?

I really like how all of the colors came together on the table setting. I like the pink tablecloth and how the patterned plates add to the brightness and happiness of the tablescape as a whole.

These are the two different place settings. One is a floral plate on top of a plaid plate with a striped napkin while the other is a plaid plate on top of floral. They look great together and the colors compliment each other very nicely.

I added this adorable sign that I purchased for Hobby Lobby. I completely agree with this saying because who doesn’t like pink?

I added some pretty pink and white flowers in the centerpiece. They sit in a mason jar that mom decorated for me for my birthday two years ago. I also added a tree nut necklace with pink flowers that I bought in Hawaii. I thought that it added a lot to the centerpiece.

And finally, who could forget the cupcakes. I added some delicious cupcakes that have matching blue frosting to keep with the colors of the tablescape. They are a sweet blueberry. Yum!

So this completes my tablescape. I love how it turned out and can’t wait to see what my roommates think of my creation!

Upcycled Old Metal T.V. Trays

February 22, 2016February 21, 201620 Comments

Hello again! Did you all have a wonderful weekend? I pretty much just stayed home (saves money that way!) and worked on bringing some spring inside! We already have blossoms on trees and flowers blooming here. It’s probably too early, but it’s so beautiful, it’s hard to complain! I did get to work on a couple of projects too.

I have had these trays for years and could never really decide what to do with them. I have always used them for decorating outside because I felt like the floral design just lent itself to be outdoors. But they never had a specific purpose. I don’t know why this took so long to figure out, but an idea finally came to mind-at least for one of them.

I dug through some letters I have had for awhile and found enough to sort of make the word ‘garden.’ I had to add the leg for the ‘R’ and an extra line for the ‘E’, but I managed to make it work. I planned on doing the word ‘summer’ on the other one, but I didn’t have enough letters.

Now that I have my letters, I put a little glue on the back of each one and placed them on the tray. Probably a spray adhesive would have worked better, but I didn’t have any, so I went with what I could.

For the other tray, I tried covering the design with burlap and spraying around it.

With the letters attached on the first tray and lined up, I started spraying lightly over the top with white spray paint. I always use the Rustoleum 2X paint. Love this stuff!

Once I knew the letters would stick, I sprayed more layers of paint. It’s best to spray several light layers and let the paint dry in between. Once the paint was dry, I removed the letters.

I didn’t like how the second tray turned out, so I tried something different. I printed out 3 large flowers, laid them on top and sprayed around them. I didn’t like this either, so I am going to have to come up with a whole new plan. I will probably spray the whole thing white and then stencil something on top.

On the first tray, I sanded a little around the edges and over the top. I still wanted it to look like it belonged outside. After the sanding, I sprayed a clear sealer over the top to add some protection for the outdoors. I also added drawer pulls to the edges so it could be used as a tray for serving. At least one out of two turned out good!

I love how a little bit of the floral peeks through.

I wish it was warm enough to actually use this right now!

Hopefully it won’t be too long before we can enjoy a nice glass of tea out in the garden. Are you ready for spring? Have you started any spring projects yet? I would love to hear about it!

CORNER NEWS-FEBRUARY 20

February 20, 2016February 19, 20164 Comments

Happy Saturday! Always glad to have a weekend to get caught up on home stuff! I made a quick (!) stop at Hobby Lobby yesterday and found this cool whale’s tail book-end. Maybe it was supposed to have another end, but this part was on clearance, so I snatched it up. I love it! It fits perfect with my beachy theme, plus it’s neutral enough to go with anything.

I also picked up this wooden tree in the new spring section. Karianne, over at Thistlewood Farms featured these and a some cute wooden birds on her blog and I just fell in love with them. They are the perfect accent for spring! I LOVE her blog and her style! Her mantle looks so much better than mine. You can click on Thistlewood Farms above to take a look!

Guess where we just came back from?! Did you notice we seemed to be a little bit absent from the blog this past week? We were enjoying lots of sunshine and warm weather. Maybe this is why I liked the whale’s tail so much! I will be blogging about this soon!