Anxious for Fall

Lately I've been wanting to decorate things, but we've sort of run out of places to do anything very big in our house. So I contented myself with new backgrounds for the blog and my phone. (Bonus: my phone feels almost new even though it's all cracked and sad. I shall need to keep this "trick" in mind for when I hurt my electronics in the future. New background = pretend it's not shattered!)

I'm kind of jumping the gun here but I'm really excited for fall, probably thanks to the colder, rainy August we've been having. Either way I've been thinking obsessively about a wreath I want to make with bright fall colors but I haven't gotten around to getting the stuff to make it yet. I did find one creative outlet in a little spot of the house. Behold, the majesty of the chalkboard wall:

...which is a quote from someone I didn't mention and which I also altered to suit my own nefarious needs (the quote actually says October eves, not autumn. I just didn't want to wait until October. Or Autumn, obviously, but we'll just pretend). My splendiferous cousin Kelsey got me chalk markers which is why I could make pretty, colorful leaves. The white is also the marker, it looks much sharper and takes a lot less effort to use than chalk. I love them.

And now I go to eat sour patch watermelon candy and write blog posts for my awesome job. Wreath shopping tonight? I think yes.

Pretty Rock Garden Markers

Well, craftiness has not been forthcoming for me lately, but today I finally decided to break down my creator's block and just make something. I have a pin on Pinterest of these really pretty rock garden markers. That seems easy enough, I thought to myself. So, I grabbed the bag of filthy rocks that I had collected from my cousin's yard a few weeks ago (which she kindly allowed me to have without even giving me any weird looks) and washed them off in preparation to make some super cute, cheap, easy garden markers. Turns out those little plastic tags that come with the plants don't have much staying power. Our garden has a nice little pile of identifying tags that have blown away in the wind. Sigh.

So with my freshly cleaned rocks waiting anxiously on my crafting table, I snatched up a newly purchased acrylic paint pen and got to work.

I have no pictures of the rocks before hand. You'll just have to use your super powers of imagination and envision a pile of ordinary rocks.

At first I thought I'd just grab my least favorite rock (yep, I had favorites) and just have a go for practice. It's a good thing I did, too, because my unfamiliarity with the paint pen thing led to a huge blob of white across the whole top of the rock...and down onto my desk. Good news, though! They are right about it being easy to clean up when wet. A damp paper towel got it off my desk and almost off the rock too. Once the initial flood of paint came out of the pen it worked quite easily, so I just practiced some swirly things and dots and got this:

Note the splotch of white from my spill. Bird poo chic, no?

Other than the blob smudge across the top it actually worked! For once my "this will be easy" thought turned out to be true. I went outside and made a list of the plants that actually still have markers and are thus identifiable. Since I am garden-ignorant, I couldn't figure out what the other things were so I only made markers for tomatoes and onions. To be honest, the only other thing we planted were peppers anyway. We're diverse here in the Galloway Garden. And here's the finished product. I love them! (Also, if you look at the pin I linked to you'll see I cheated and used some of her ideas. What can I say, they were lovely!)

This was my favorite rock. So flat and so smooth. Yeah baby!

I think this one ended up being my favorite after all was finished. I just like
all the different little decorations. It's fun and funky fresh. 

Another rock. This one was weirdly black on one side.
Rock mysteries--exciting stuff!

I really like how this one turned out. Sadly, my actual real-life
red onions are not doing as well.

The clan of rocks.

 These couldn't have taken me more than half an hour and they'll look so delightful in my garden. I'm planning on corralling Joe tonight so he can tell me what all his peppers are, and I'll make more for those too. Hooray for pretty things. :)

DIY Kitchen Herb Garden

For several months now I've been eyeing these lurvly herb garden planters I've seen on Pinterest. (Ah, Pinterest, you sly devil.) I didn't really know how to make it happen and I didn't have anything to put in it, and then our windowsill was laid siege to by our outdoor garden plants that we never had time to plant (until last weekend...seen here!). So I just ooh-ed and aah-ed and looked at the greenery in my window and hoped I would eventually make a kitchen planter so my sill may stay forever green. It's just too pretty to resist.

Finally this week the garden went outside, and a planter box came inside! I kinda just made it up, because none of the plans I found were the right size and because it's just a simple box and shouldn't be too hard.

Inspiration pics: 

TheBeatThatMyHeartSkipped

Migonis Home

Creatively Southern

Ana White

Those last two in particular, because they have handles. Isn't that just smashing? I love the color of the second one, too. If our wood had been that deliciously old and dark, I would have kept it natural. 

 Here's what I made!

Just ignore the fact that they're planted too low and you can see the unpainted insides. I ran out of dirt. I know, it sounds ridiculous but it happened. 

Anywho, here's what I did. 

First, the Joe and I traveled far and wide to find some suitable wood (Home Depot). We came home bearing two cedar fence planks and some wee screws. And also a new hand saw, because our first one was left here by the previous owners (very nice of them, it came in handy many times) and it was pretty dull and not a little bit rusty. So, with the help of our fancy new saw, I started cutting our boards to length. After one cut had been made, Joe noticed I was using the brand new saw and wanted to try it out to see how magical it was. I graciously stepped aside and let him finish doing the rest of the boards. :) 

Magical, indeed. We use buckets to saw wood because we're legit like that.

Our kitchen window has a mini-bay-window thing going on, so we could fit a pretty sizable box. The boards were about 5 1/2" wide. Our three long pieces were cut to 34", and our end pieces were cut just shy of 6 3/4". 

We screwed the long side pieces into the outside edges of the bottom piece first, then attached the ends. The wood split slightly in some places as we screwed it all together, but we just decided it would add to the "rustic" look of it all. Right? Poorly done = rustic. :)

It was also pretty rough wood, so before going any further I sanded it down to prevent woe-inducing splinters later.

It fits!

I forgot to mention the rope we got from the depot for homes. I had to have some cute handles! They even ended up being practical later, when I had to haul the giant, dirt-filled beast inside. Bonus!

I eyeballed a decent looking length of rope...

...knotted it inside some holes we drilled into the end pieces...

...and voila! Beautiful rope handles. Magnificent.

Joe happened to be painting some edges on our living room ceiling, so I borrowed his supplies to paint the box white. I like the natural wood look, but the cedar was kind of pink and clashed weirdly with our counter tops and windowsill. So white it went!

Then came dirt and herbs! I lined the bottom with a cut up, large plastic garbage bag to help with potential leaking, and the dirt pretty much keeps the water in everywhere else so far. Basil, chives, rosemary, cilantro, oregano...and a jalapeno, though success there might just be wishful thinking.

They're alive! (...for now)

I wanted to paint some nice phrase on the side like "herb garden" or "kitchen herbs", and set about doing it the hardest way possible, which was by printing out letters and cutting them out of the paper to make a stencil, if that makes sense. I could have just cut them out the normal way, traced around the letters on the box, and painted that. But, nah. Never occurred to me. After getting halfway through cutting the "H" (from "Herb"...as in "Herb Garden"...yeah I didn't get far) out of the paper around it, I decided to throw that idea out and buy some stickers.

Sadly, a trip to Hobby Lobby proved that letter stickers are usually pretty small. So instead, at the suggestion of my brilliantly crafty cousin Kelsey, I got some cheap cork coasters and traced/cut some letters out of those. I should have taken pictures of that, because it was a bit ridiculous and tedious. Luckily, Kelsey came over to watch the Hobbit with me as I crafted the letters one by one. I love the result! :

 Detail pics!

Am I a fan of how the letters and handles ended up matching? Yes, yes I am.

I'm eventually going to get some nice, nutritious dirt for the herbs so I can raise them up out of the box a bit more, but overall I'm pretty pleased with the result. I don't know how long it will last, but I do love having a box o' greens in my sunny window.

Homely Updates

We bought a washer!

Just kidding. Well, we did buy a washer, but I won't drag you through another thrilling appliance post. I'm not cruel.

(...but just know that it's awesome.) 

Instead, I'll show you a few other, awesomer things that have been happening around here! To begin, a few small "crafty" things, most of which you may have seen in my other social media:

My rosette topiary!

Which I loved so much, I decided to try for another one that was less...seasonal? I love this one too (of course. It involves burlap, after all.), but the rosette one is just awesome and can't be topped.

And we found this delightful shelf at D.I. and painted it white, then used it above the washer and dryer for laundry things! ... as you can see. 

p.s. there's a corner of my awesome new washer! yay!

Our dryer vent was just hanging out on top of the dryer. Classy. So it's nice to have it up and out of the way now :)

But the real project was one we didn't actually plan for. At all. I was painting the trim in the laundry room (I didn't take pictures of that. But you can see it on the window frame in the picture above) and Joe was looking at our kitchen wall. He hates those walls. They're covered in this thick, swirly white textured paint that was clearly put on there to cover up wallpaper lines, or something. I assume it was wallpaper lines because they are in every other room of our house.

So he said, "I really hate this wall. We should try taking off the texture and make it into something cool, like a chalkboard wall." And because I didn't know what I was getting into I shrugged and said, "Mmkay. Go for it."

So he did. Oh, he did.

Just the beginning...

As he began the first incision, we determined that not only was there a thick layer of texturey-paste-paint, there were also several layers of just-average-paint and at least three layers of....wait for it....wallpaper. Agh!

(So you see, I was right about the wallpaper lines.)

Joe spent the next several hours slowly chipping away at the arch part of the wall with a screwdriver and a plastic putty knife. After finishing, he wisely decided that we should probably get some better tools/materials for the process. Luckily we have some awesome friends/family close by who had pretty much everything we needed, so we were able to borrow almost everything. We did, however, buy some wallpaper remover and paint for when the wall was finished. I finished painting in the laundry room and came over to help. That's when the destruction began in earnest!

If there was an easier way to do this, please, no one tell us.

Handsome worker. Ow ow!

Inside of the arch all sanded and done. Getting ready
to start the big stuff. Last glimpse of the old wall!

Note the sunshine in the picture in the first photo compared to the dark pictures below. We were brilliant and started the main work around 6 at night. 

Slowly...slowly...chipping away the
paint on top of the wallpaper with a chisel. 

 We had almost everything off the top part of that wall when Joe chiseled his pinkie! Yay!

But he is a manly man, and so we were able to push through it and finish the top part. Oh, did I mention the bottom half was not wallpapered? So weird. And oddly enough, that made it way harder to get the texture off. Hm. 

The next morning, Magnus decided to be adorable and snooze, thusly:

...So I decided to surprise Joe by getting the rest of the textured paint off the wall. It was all good, because I got to watch A Knight's Tale, and that is always awesome. 

All off! Note Count Adhemar's herald being
inspired by Sir William Thatcher's bravery
and dedication in the background.

Patient pup. He only ate some of the paint chips.

 That night, we scraped away all the beautiful splashy wallpaper and covered all the (numerous, whoops) holes with spackley paste. 

Yeah.... we pretty much covered the entire wall
in spackle. Chisels are intense, man!  

But then! Oh Frabjous Day! We were able to paint our wall. With chalkboard paint!

Harry Potter helped us through most of this process.
Isn't that just like him? 

 And here it is....THE FINISHED PRODUCT. TAH DAH! 

I got a bit excited and decided to put something up for March using my artistic skillz, even though poor February, short enough as it is, still had a week to go. 

And because I'm a nerd....

And because I'm totes trendy...

If you made it through all of that, then I commend you! You are a true and loyal reader. :) And we love the new wall. We still have some changes to make to the paint colors involved... in the kitchen, on the other side of the chalkboard wall... we'll see. Right now I'm good for a little while....or am I?

Little Baker Woman

Here and there I try to be crafty, homemakery, and generally fill the mold of a good ol' lady housewife. Who also owns a dog. So a few months ago, I snapped these photos of the delicious and (obviously) adorable dog treats I made for Magnus. He practically inhaled them, so I am clearly an expert treat maker. Just pretend with me that he doesn't also eat plastic and other animals' waste. Thanks. 

The recipe for this is super easy. In case you're wondering, here it is!

1 cup peanut butter

1 cup milk

2 cups flour*

1 tablespoon baking powder*

Mix wet ingredients in a bowl, and mix dry ingredients in another, separate bowl. Then put it all together, knead, roll it out to about 1/4 inch and cut shapes! Put on a baking sheet. Bake 20ish minutes in a preheated, 375 degree oven, until they are brown and ready for canine consumption! Voila!

(*I have become aware from comments on the site where I originally found this recipe [found here] that many dog owners object to using flour and baking powder in their dog's treats, because they aren't good for them/are poisonous. After some research, I have found that indeed, baking powder is poisonous to dogs in large amounts, but won't affect your pup in the small amount that is spread throughout these treats. Likewise, flour is not the best for dogs but wouldn't have any bad effects once baked/cooked. BUT, if you are among these hesitant treat bakers, just omit the baking powder and use gluten free flour. The result is more or less the same, although the dough is a bit stickier. My dog ate both versions quite happily.)

So easy! I dutifully spread out the dough, rolling it with a bowl due to lack of a rolling pin (a situation which has now been remedied. Thanks mom!) Then, I used my handy dandy dog bone-shaped cookie cutters to make cute treat shapes! I got three for 6 bucks on amazon. 

Rolled out dough, in bone shapes! Yay!

Here are my cut out treats and the cookie cutters I used. Totes adorbs, amirite?

Yum. Did I mention these make your house smell like
peanut butter cookies? Bonus!

Joe wanted to help show off the finished product.

A natural-born model if ever there was one.

All my creations!

Magnus was at my feet the en-ti-re time I was making these. He even sat patiently while I took this torturous picture of him waiting! Aww, good little guy.

I should mention that these treats went fast. We used them for everything, because Magnus would immediately obey if he knew his peanut butter bones were involved. So the next time I made them, I did much smaller pieces so they would last longer. Like, ya know, normal treat size. It makes sense, really. 

Anyway, now you know how to make peanut butter dog treats. Yum! I wouldn't recommend eating them yourself though. They are definitely not Joe-approved for human use. 

Tara Gets Crafty (& Tutorial!)

Ok, so, I use Pinterest. And by that I mean that I pin a lot of ideas for crafts, recipes, and fashion, and do almost none of them in actual life. But not this day! This day I decided I would make this "no-sew" tree skirt that I found and really loved. I must admit I fully expected it to look horrendous afterwards. After all....

...But it worked!

I'm also going to present it to you in the form of A TUTORIAL!! That's right. If anyone reading this wants to make this awesome tree skirt, they need look no further. All instructions shall be included here. Are you excited? I know I am! Here we gooooo!

{Disclaimer: This project is super easy, but really tedious. Make sure you have a good chunk of hours to spend, or else be content with having to finish this in installments. I didn't realize it would take so long, and it was horrible to have to stop halfway through! But the end product was worth it :)}

First, here's the picture I saw on Pinterest -- the inspiration for it all! :

Isn't that nice? The lady who did this one used burlap from Walmart and some scrap fabric she already had at home. It's lovely!

Ok. Things you'll need:
- Fabric! I chose burlap and a kind of shiny red fabric because I love the contrast between the two. Ya know, sorta shabby chic meets refinement. Very classy. I got 2 yards of each and had some extra left over. {I've also seen some variations that use more than two colors of fabric. That would be awesome! I'd maybe get a yard of each if you do 3 or more colors/fabrics}
- Old, hideous tree skirt that you don't mind updating. Or just an okay tree skirt. OR a circle of felt or similar fabric that you cut into a tree skirt shape. I got an old tree skirt at a thrift store for a dollar.
- A hot glue gun
- A whole, humongous bunch of hot glue sticks. Like, possibly one of those big bags with like 40 in them will make it. No promises.

Step 1!
Cut your fabric into strips. The bigger the strips, the fewer rows you'll have on your tree skirt. I chose to do 3" strips, they just looked like a delightful size.

This is my cut up fabric. What can I say, I'm amazing. 

Step 2!
Heat up the glue gun and lay out the tree skirt! {I'd also suggest you pop in a movie to keep yourself entertained.}Start gluing on the strips starting on the outside edge of the skirt. I did a long stripe of glue on the tree skirt, then quickly laid my strip of fabric along it, ruffling the fabric as I went. Once I covered the glue stripe, I did individual dots of glue under the top part of each ruffly fold (where it would be hidden under the next layer), just to keep it laying sort of flat.

Tree skirt halfway finished! You may want to
have a snack handy, it can get pretty tedious. 

Step 3!
There's really no step 3. That's pretty much it. It's easy peasy!
You could thread some twine or leftover fabric through the part where the tree skirt is open to go around the tree, so you can tie it closed and keep it from moving as much. I didn't care, so mine was left un-tied. I wasn't very particular about how perfect my rows were either, and it came out a little uneven. But you can't tell under the tree, and I just made the last layer work with what I had left of the tree skirt. If you're more exact-minded, you can be somewhat precise about where you decide to glue your rows, and it will come out much more even than mine.

I love it!

I love my beautiful tree!

So, maybe this will be useful for someone. That'd be awesome! If not, you can just enjoy my tutorial and mentally praise me for my dedication and success in this craft. It really did come out way better than expected. Usually I botch these sorts of things impressively well.

Joe and I went with the Grierson fam to get our tree at a tree farm! Isn't it lovely? Post on that to come later...