Spice Rack

I have finally finished my spice rack! Yay! I think I have had this project planned for over a year now. I just haven't gotten around to it. So I finally took charge, and I decided I was going to get this project completed! Do you remember when I posted my laundry room and I posted this picture of my spice rack on the laundry room door?

 

Awful, right?!

Here is the new and improved, finished product...

 So, here is how I did it. First, I spray painted the spice rack. This was just one of those coated wire racks that you buy at Lowes or Home Depot. It was already on the door when we moved in. I used Krylon's Metallic Brilliant Silver spraypaint. I had bought the small jars at Michaels in the wedding section. They were actually made for wedding favors. I had seen the same jars at various stores, but they usually ran around $1 a piece. This pack had 18 in it. It has been a while since I bought these, so I am thinking they were somewhere around $18 (because I think they were the same price as everywhere else until I used the coupon) and then I used a 40% off coupon. Just a tip...never buy anything from Michaels, JoAnns, or Hobby Lobby without a coupon and you will save a ton of money! They always have coupons on their websites or you can sign-up for their mailing lists. So, I got a great deal on the jars. I bought the larger jars at the dollar store. For the labels, I used chalkboard vinyl that I bought at Hobby Lobby. It was $7.99 a roll before I used the 40% off coupon. I used a fine point paint marker that I had to write on the labels. I think it looks like chalk, but won't rub off when we pick the jars up.

I used my old rotary cutter to cut the chalkboard vinyl into rectangles. 

 Of course, I washed the jars before putting the spices in them. Plus, I let them dry for several days to make sure there was no moisture in them before I put the spices in them. 

I wrote on the labels, put them on the jars, and put the spices in and that was it! It was very simple. I'm not really sure why I have been putting this project off for so long! I am glad to have it done!

 

4th of July Shelves and Decor

Happy 4th of July...a few days late! I am a little late posting this, but I will say I have a pretty good excuse. I have actually had my 4th of July decor done for a couple of weeks now, but it has been raining every single day! So I haven't been able to take any pictures because the lighting in our house is terrible unless it's very bright outside. I was finally able to get some pictures yesterday afternoon! Now I am ready to share!

I started making this flag last year around the 4th and never painted it in time. So I decided, I was definitely going to finish it this year! I made it using four 1 x 6 boards. Once the boards were cut and put together, I painted the whole thing dark brown. I did this so that when I distressed it, the dark brown would show through. Then, I taped off the stripes and painted them. To paint the stars, I cut 50 stars out of vinyl on the Cricut. I placed them on the space that was already painted white and then painted over them blue. Once that was dry, I peeled the stars off and voila! Then, I used some steel wool to distress the whole flag. I love the way it turned out!

For the bottom shelf, I placed some American flags in the white pitchers that I already had. I bought the USA thing at Kohls on clearance a couple of years back. It was actually dark blue, dark red, and tan. So I repainted it. I made the picture using some red, striped paper that I had. I used the Cricut to cut out the United States shape. Then, I just placed it on some kraft paper and put it in an IKEA frame.

I made this pennant banner out of some paper that I had. I just cut out the triangles using a rotary cutter and attached them to some silver string.  I thought it turned out pretty cute. 

I wrapped some of the paper around my candles and tied some twine around them. Then I printed the Star Spangled Banner printable from Pinterest and put it in an IKEA frame. 

Some Kitchen Organizing

So I have been absent from my blog for quite a while now. Sorry to all of my loyal readers, if I have any left. I promise I am going to try to do better! The past few months have been incredibly busy! We have just finally been able to stay at home for a few weekends, and I have been able to work on a few projects that have been on my list for quite a while! 

I love for things to be organized! I am very OCD organized, especially when it comes to my kitchen. I have been wanting to build custom drawer organizers for some of my drawers for a while now. I couldn't find any drawer organizers that I could buy that fit my needs. So this has really been driving me crazy! 

So here are the three drawers in need of something!

In our silverware drawer, I had bought this silverware organizer before we got married, not knowing what type of drawer space we would have. We have huge kitchen drawers, which is soooooo nice! I put the little plastic baskets in the back to hold some extra forks and spoons that we have. What can I say, we use a lot of spoons! Ha! It drives me nuts, of course, that the baskets are different from the organizer and that all of the serving utensils on the right are just free to move around as they please.

This is about the closest thing we have to a junk drawer. This is located right between the oven and the fridge. So we keep all of the potholders, pens and markers, timer, a few little neccesities (post its, tape measure, hammer), and Ben's 536,720 koozies(Okay, maybe not that many, but it sure seems like it when I open the drawer and they go flying everywhere!) in this drawer! So my goal for this drawer was to have a little more depth than the current baskets provide. 

Okay, I think this drawer speaks for itself. This is an organizer's nightmare! Just a ton of free-floating utensils! You can see I always tried to keep them somewhat separated. Yet, as soon as my not-so-organized husband puts up the dishes, they just get completely jumbled! I do have to give him some credit. He is really good about putting things back where they go, if they have a specific place. Otherwise, he doesn't care. Haha!

So onto what I came up with. I used some graph paper, drew up my designs after taking measurements. I decided to not do an exact tutorial because everyone's drawers are different and you would just have to come up with your own measurements. I just took the measurement of the drawer and then decide what size spaces I needed based off of what was going in the drawer. 

When coming up with the measurements, don't forget to add in the thickness of the wood. I bought my wood  at Lowes. For the silverware drawer, I used the 1/4 x 3 x 4 Poplar boards. Then for the other drawers, I wanted more depth, so I used the 1/4 x 4 x 4. They also sell them in 2' strips, but the 4' worked out better for my measurements and was the cheapest way to go. 

I bought the wood and marked all of my measurements out and got Ben to cut them for me. Then, I sanded them really well. Now they were ready for assembly. I have seen where some people have glued their's together. I really preferred not to do this. My sister and brother-in-law have a brad nailer. So they offered to nail them together for me. (Thank you Ana and David!) This was so much quicker and easier than trying to glue them together. 

So here is what it looked like where David nailed them together. 

I decided to not use boards on the outside of 2 of them because they went all the way to the edge of the drawer and were stable like this. This saved me a little money. 

I filled all of the nail holes and seams with wood filler and sanded them. So now they were ready for paint! I primed and painted them white to match my drawers. 

Here is the finished product!

No more jumbled utensils or flying koozies, very uniform, and a space for everything! I am in love! Haha! It doesn't take much to make this girl happy! 

Meet Espresso

We added a new member to our family back in February. Her name is Espresso, and she is a feist/hound mix. She was actually our family's dog when I lived back at home. Ben had been wanting a dog for a while and it just happen to work out that we could give Espresso a wonderful home, while giving Ben his dog fix. So we decided to move her on down to Augusta! She is sooooo rotten already! Before we move onto the pictures, let me just say she is a BIG scaredy cat! So needless to say she is scared of the camera and it is almost impossible for me to get any pictures.

So this is my attempt one day to get a good picture....major failure. Haha!

She was so scared of the camera, she went in her crate to hide.

She spends a lot of her time hiding in Ben's office closet, especially during storms. Poor Baby!