Month: July 2016

chalkboards coming out of my ears.

Published on by Quandie7 Comments

Whenever I see really awesome old frames at garage sales, I tend to snatch them up.  Especially if they are bargain priced.

chalkboard hello

I love the gold frames with plenty of wear to them.  There is something about that shabby patina that draws me in.

gold frames

Through the years though, I’ve found that I rarely also end up with just the perfect sized piece of art to put in them.  That’s why turning them into chalkboards has been the perfect solution.

chalkboards 1

I buy a 4′ x 2′ piece of hardboard at Menards for a few dollars, then Ken cuts it to size for me.  I paint it with chalkboard paint, and voila!

chalkboards closeup 2

Always make sure to season a new chalkboard by rubbing chalk all over it and then ‘erasing’ it back off.

chalkboards closeup

It seems I have chalkboards coming out of my ears these days.  They are all going to end up at the Carriage House sale in October.  Unless any of you locals needs one now?  In which case just leave me a comment and I’ll get back to you with details.

a doll bed centerpiece.

Published on by Quandie16 Comments

Remember the fabulous vintage doll bed that I purchased at the Nokomis sales?

doll bed

I had visions of adding a bottom and then using it as a plant box, or as a centerpiece on my dining room table.  Well, before I left for the shore, I did turn it into a centerpiece.

Is it odd to have a doll bed centerpiece?  Maybe.

But I went ahead and sent it off with Ken to have a piece of wood cut to fit the bottom.  When I got it back I mixed up some MMS milk paint and tried to match the existing color as best I could.  I really just played around and added a little of this and a little of that until it looked about right.  I started with some Luckett’s Green, Eulalie’s Sky and Grain Sack.  That combo looked a bit light and washed out so I added some Kitchen Scale and then some Boxwood.

doll bed bottom

The color I came up with is actually fairly close.  It does look quite a bit ‘cleaner’ than the old stuff.  I could have added some dark wax if I wanted it to blend better, but I’m OK with it as is.

Next I cleaned the bed using a magic eraser and plain water, and then I filled it up with ironstone and placed it in the middle of my dining table.

doll bed side view

Still think it looks odd?

doll bed with ironstone

Would you use a doll bed filled with ironstone as your centerpiece?

doll bed angle

Please tell me I’m not the only one.

doll bed centerpiece

 

hooray for the red, white and blue.

Published on by Quandie17 Comments

hooray for rwb

Happy 4th of July!

And to all of my readers from other countries, happy Monday!

I’m probably sitting on a beach at the Jersey shore right now, but I scheduled this post in advance so you all wouldn’t miss me too much 😉

Earlier this summer I picked up a few kid-sized chairs at various garage sales.  I love painting these little chairs.  You can see others I’ve painted {here}, {here}, {here} and {here}.

Yep, I’ve painted lots of them and since I didn’t want to repeat myself I had to really give some thought to what I wanted to do with them.  I definitely wanted to go with milk paint for a chippy, aged look.  On the first chair, I started with Miss Mustard Seed’s Flow Blue.  I added an off-centered grain sack stripe in white using a stencil and some white acrylic craft paint.

bue chair

For the second chair I pulled out Miss Mustard Seed’s Tricycle.  I didn’t want these chairs to match, but I wanted them to coordinate.  Red seemed like a good choice.  Once I had the chair painted, I gave some thought to what sort of embellishment to add.  I didn’t want to do the same stripe as the first chair.  So, I went with a Swiss flag look.

red chair

I used frog tape and just taped off the cross and painted it with Fusion’s Limestone.

Then, since I seemed to be on a roll with the blue and red, and since the 4th of July was coming up, I decided to paint the third chair in Miss Mustard’s Farmhouse White.  I also added a simple little stencil to the seat.

white chair

Which gave me a trio of chairs in red, white and blue!

rwb angle

Perfect for a 4th of July blog post.

rwb chairs seats

I love the idea of hanging the chairs in a row on the wall to act as shelves.

rwb on wall

You could keep your vintage American Government book on them.

american gov

Wouldn’t this book be fun to use as a 4th of July table decoration?

I took the chairs, the books, and even the little sailboat off to Reclaiming Beautiful a week or so ago.  Hopefully they will find new homes from there!

down to the shore.

Published on by Quandie20 Comments

If you aren’t from around here, take a look at a map of the United States and you’ll see that the Twin Cities are located about 100 miles from the southern border of Minnesota and about 300 miles from the border that we share with Canada.  In other words, about ¾ of the state is north of the Twin Cities.  It’s fairly common for people who live in the cities to either have weekend cabins up north, or to spend their summer vacations at a rental somewhere between here and Canada.  Don’t forget, this is the land of 10,000 lakes, so there are plenty of gorgeous destinations to choose from up there.  Around here we like to call this going “up north”.

dock

(photo source)

But I’m not going ‘up north’ for the 4th of July, I’m going ‘down to the shore’!

ventnor

(photo source)

This was totally an impulse decision.  We had my sister and another couple over for dinner a few weeks back.  My sister and one of my other guests, Pat, started chatting about summer vacations at the New Jersey shore.  As it turned out, Pat still goes there nearly every summer!  I knew that my sister went all the time when she lived in New Jersey, and I also knew that she had a friend with a ‘shore house’ (in Minnesota we have lake houses or cabins).  As we were talking, I realized that both my sister and I had taken the 4th of July week off work already.  Hmmmm … it suddenly occurred to me that we had a free place to stay and time off work, all we needed were plane tickets.  Debbie and I did some googling and found tickets that were affordable.  So now, instead of a staycation over the 4th, we are going down to the shore!

We’ll be leaving Mr. Q at home to man the fort.  He’s not all that interested in an otherwise all-girls trip to the Jersey shore.  He’ll be going to visit a friend in NYC later this fall instead.

I’m looking forward to some quintessential Jersey shore activities like strolling on the boardwalk, watching the fireworks from the beach, and eating water ice.  I’ll probably have to get some salt water taffy too.

nj taffy

(photo source)

But the main activity that I’m looking forward to is this one.

beach

As you might have guessed from yesterday’s post, I am totally a beach girl at heart.  I love a day spent at the beach complete with salty skin and sandy feet (don’t worry, I wear lots of sunscreen).  Although I don’t expect the Jersey shore to be quite as fabulous as Jost van Dyke, it’s still going to be pretty great.

How about you?  Do you go ‘up north’, ‘down to the shore’, or is there some other summer vacation destination that is popular where you live?  I’d love to hear about it, so be sure to leave a comment about your favorite summer vacation hot spot.  I’ll draw a name from the comments and send that person some salt water taffy from down at the shore!