Porch Table with Graphic

Last summer I painted the farm table on our porch to resemble a grain sack pattern. Here are the instructions for that part of the project.  Sometime in the fall when wondering around Hobby Lobby I came across a wall graphic kit that was marked down so far it was embarrassing so of course I grabbed it.  Then I sat it in the craft room sure that I would remember where it was when spring came and I could apply it to the farm table.  Well...I finally found it today and got to work on applying it to the table.  I'm happy with the finished look, this table is eight feet long so it really needed a little something more than just the grain sack treatment and I think this applique is a keeper.

This was all I needed to apply the applique.  Talk about simple.

The directions were very clear and took just a few minutes to complete.  This particular graphic came in two pieces, you have the option to cut it into more lines if you choose.

I couldn't get a shot of the whole graphic, its long, I've been out weeding in the heat all day and this is as good as it gets.  Not exactly a top notch attitude for presentation of a project but as my dear hubby would say "it is what it is".

I hope y'all are having a wonderful end of May day.

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Baby Its Cold Outside

This is an old photo I took a couple of years ago but it was taken in a snowfall and this much accumulated within about fifteen minutes.  Its a mini snowfall compared to what we've received in the last week along with a horrible ice storm.  If you check out Dawn over at  Cain Cabin  you can see some pictures she took of the ice storm.  I'm an hour north of her and we had a little more extensive ice and snow here but we were both without power.

Hopefully all will be back in order by next week and I'll have a post or two to share.

Happy New Year to Y'all.

The Barn Door

We recently had a tree removed from our backyard, it was a giant sitting in our small backyard.  Threatening at every storm to make a large hole in the bedrooms on our second floor, finally this year we decided enough was enough.  It was painful to loose the shade it provided and to spend my new granite counter money to have it removed but its done.

You can see by the pile of mulch for lack of a better word left after the stump grinder was finished this wasn't a small job.  The pile of mulch was 10' across and in some areas 4' tall, as I said it was a BIG tree to have removed.

With the yard being so small and fenced in the tree company was only able to bring in one piece of equipment at a time, first the cherry picker to get the tree down which was a day and a half of work, then the chipper to clean up the zillions of branches, trucks to haul all the wood away and finally the stump grinder to finish the job over the next two days.  At times the branches were piled over 6' high all around the yard.  As you can see in the background the small fence that had housed my garden was hit and will be removed, a small casualty in comparison to what could have happened in such close quarters including damage to neighboring homes.

As we have begun to try and repair the back yard and flower gardens back there another casualty has come to a sad end.

This is one of the barn doors from our small barn that we built when we first moved into this house, it is over 25 years old and sits beside the road waiting for the trash haulers tomorrow.  When we moved and replaced the first barn I took one of the doors from the old barn and tried my hand at one stroke painting.  I took a  bunny that I had cut out of wood and placed him at the bottom in "the garden".  Over the years this poor door has stood tall in a side garden like a good garden soldier winter after winter, but no more.  Rotted and tired it sits waiting for someone to pick it up tonight to repair and reuse in their garden before the trash hauler gets to her tomorrow.

Thanks for stopping by, I've been busy the month of July painting all the trim on the front of our house and I just haven't had much time for anything else.  Hopefully a couple of new projects will soon be finished and I can post something more interesting than a tree removal.

Lost in chair land

I'm still working on opening my porch for the summer and found that the furniture is in bad need of a fresh face.  I've started with the chairs for our outdoor table.  They belonged to my grandmother and spent many years in the barn of a cousin.  By the time I got them they were ready for the porch rather than the dining room.  There are eight of them and until today they were painted white. 

I've now painted them the lightest color of blue and although they look fresh and clean they also look boring and embarrassed.  I need some suggestions on what I can do to give them some life.  If you have an idea or suggestion please please help me, I'm at a loss.

The color just isn't going to show up well but hopefully this will give you some idea of what they look like.  The table is going to be painted an off white and possibly include some wide stripes of this blue on the top. 

 

This is what the table with chairs looked like last year, the table is currently black and a drop cloth tablecloth was covering it as it also needs a face lift.

Well, if you have an idea for my chairs please either reply here or email (chturner67@gmail.com) me and thanks so much for stopping by.

The Bike

This poor old bike has stood proud in my yard for many years.  Its been several different colors and the color for 2012 is lime green.  My time for decorating this holiday season is limited so I decided to keep it simple and just move the bike to the front yard, add a flood light, a mailbox and call it good.

UPDATE...It SNOWED this morning and the bike looks so much better and festive. 

The signage on the mailbox was done on my Cricut

I put a flameless candle in the basket of the bike, it has a time and comes on early in the evening. 

I have to admit that everything sure would look more festive with a little snow but for right now there isn't any in the forecast. 

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Front Porch Decoration

I seem to have paired down my outside decorating considerably.  This has been a wonderful December as far as the weather goes so there really isn't any excuse for me not to have done more than I have.  I've been waiting to snap a few pictures of our front porch until it snowed and made everything look like Christmas. It doesn't look like that's going to happen any time soon so today is as good as any for posting.  I have a flood light directed at the porch so my Santa suit does show up nice, it just would have looked more festive if we had snow to cover the porch.

The Santa suit was a Christmas gift years ago from a coworker.  It has the beard, shoe covers and gloves to go with it.  It was hand made, meaning not commercially sold and was machine stitched maybe forty or fifty years ago.  It usually hangs inside on one of my doors in the entry way but this year it got moved outside.  The wooden coat hanger that the suit hangs from is from Herpolsheimers, which was one of two large department stores in Grand Rapids and if you are familiar with the movie Polar Express you may remember a reference to this store as the training passes by the store windows all decorated for Christmas.

 The stand that I have the suit hanging from is actually the weighted base of an old fan, I put a wooden dowel in it to bring it up to a proper height.  Because its so heavily weighted it really takes a pretty stiff wind to send it tumbling no matter what is hanging from it.

This old tin kettle was a gift from my friend Sharon a few years back.  I painted it black and stenciled the lettering on one side with "Believe" for Christmas and on the other side it has "Welcome" stenciled.  It sits on one of the porches or in the yard all year.  It looks like its able ready for a new coat of paint!

There is also a wicker grocery basket with a lighted gift box and a small tree in it to the right of the suit.  I have to keep a little room for people to come to the front door so this is really only visible at night when the package is glowing and the flood light shows off the basket.

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Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween

Update on Summer Project and Repair

Earlier this summer I posted about using Command Strips click here to hang a picture and a clock on my porch wall.  This particular wall is the outside of our house and I knew that Mr. Hubby would have a fit if I were to put a hold in the siding to hang my treasures from.  In came the Command Strips and all was right with my world.  The picture still hangs today but the clock held about three weeks before the Command Strip failed and the clock fell.  The good news was nothing was broken, I took out a new Command Strip and tried again thinking it must have been the application as the clock isn't any heavier than the picture but within a few days the clock was down again.

Now I'm not the brightest bulb in the package but I knew better than to tempt the fates with another try so the clock has sat on the floor for awhile.  Yesterday I had one of those "craft moments" and came up with an idea based on a project Dawn at Creative Cain Cabin had posted.  She had made a wonderful message board out of a ceiling tile.  From her idea came an idea to get my clock back in working order on my porch.

I had a easel that was just gathering dust, and a 24"X24" tin ceiling tile stacked with some other treasures on the porch.  I came up with the idea of using a stretched canvas of the same size to put this project together.  I went to HL to pick up a stretched canvas but the one they had available in the 24X24 was $35.  Not gonna happen so I picked up four stretch bars at $1.79 each and made my own along with some leftover drop cloth that had been an attempt at a table runner (another day's story).

After I stretched the fabric over the stretcher and added a center bar for support on the backside I nailed the tin ceiling tile to the stretcher.  This gave everything stability, I added a screw to the center of the framework to hang the clock from and here is my finished project.  I may change the color of the ceiling tile eventually but for now I at least can tell what time it is as I sit on the porch dreaming of other projects.

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Five Minute Project

I've had this fold up piece of ironwork base for a long time, so long I don't remember what sat on it initially.  Whatever it was its long gone and consequently the bottom piece has just sat folded up and stored on the porch for a few years.  From time to time I would haul it out and put a big galvanized tub on it to hold beverages for a porch party but I knew it had a better purpose that I'd come up with someday.

A couple of weeks ago I was out treasure hunting at SA and I came across this beautiful large tray, its not vintage I think maybe it came from somewhere like Kirklands or something.  Anyway, for $1.99 it was mine and I knew I'd find a place for it somewhere.

Eureka!!!  With the base I had and the new tray I know had the makings for a side table for either in the house or on the porch.  The next task was how to marry the two pieces without making anything permanent in case I should change my mind later.  Big roll of eyes here.

The ever so useful loop tape only in this case what I had at home were the industrial strength (the only one I use) disks.  I took just one disk and cut it into quarters and the ironwork piece had small stems at the top to which I could adhere the tray.  One piece of each side of the loop take on each corner and I was in business.  Ahhhhh...that would be Izzy my rescue puppy trying to figure out if I had anything she could destroy at this particular moment.

I turned the tray upside down and centered the iron frame with the sticky loop tape on the top and pressed down until I felt it was secure.

And the finished product looks like this

The whole project including setting the little vignette from a couple of things I just grabbed off the porch to get the show took less than five minutes.  This was an embarrassingly simple project. 

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Porch Rocker

The rocker on my back porch has had the same old cover on it that I made when I used it in the house which was several years ago, its done in barn reds and didn't go with anything on the porch.  Roll eyes here regarding projects that need to be finished.  I decided that yesterday was the day, I would make the new cushion for the rocker and some pillows to go with it.  I got up, did some things around the house and headed downstairs to get to work, filled with anticipation of finishing a project. I sat down to the machine only to discover that  I was out of white thread...yes you read it right, a person who sews all the time didn't have white thread.  Off to the fabric store I go to buy WHITE thread.

This is the rocker in question.  I picked it up locally at an estate sale several years ago .  It is an old piece of wicker, very strong and with all the springs still intact.

First was the base cushion, after seeing the picture I guess I should have taken the time to smooth the back of the cushion out before I took the picture, its a very odd concave back so its hard to fit.  All the cushions and pillows in this part of my porch are done in blues, yellows and white.  This geometric print was a pretty periwinkle blue and soft yellow, for the welting I used a floral print from the back cushion.

This chair needs a back cushion because of the concave back and the wicker backing, otherwise its a back killer.  I love this print and got it for $2 a yard on a sale rack at JoAnn's.  The welting is the same as on the seat cushion which is this fabric.

Next came a roll pillow in kind of a reverse of the back fabric.  I needed to add this to keep the back cushion which I made for comfort with the odd back from looking like a very wide men's Speedo.  Once again, rolling eyes.

This last pillow is just a basic button closure pillow, I love the contrast with the other patterns.  I also used button closures on the back of the seat cushion for a change.  No one can see it but I liked the look.

So here is the finished chair, I love all the patterns together, trying to step out of my comfort zone in regards to always using one print and one solid.  I'll be back in the basement tomorrow making more pillows for the wicker sofa.  Our 2 year old puppy decided to use all the pillows I had from last year's porch for chew toys.  We've since come to an understanding about the new pillows...at least I hope she understood my rantings.

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Summer Fun

I don't know about you but I'm struggling to keep up with blogging this summer.  I'm working on lots of projects and every day I see a new idea I want to implement so its been pretty slim pinkins here this summer in regards to blogging.

I was cleaning in the basement AGAIN the other day and came across this big rangle of hose that was left over from a wreath project a few years back.  Since I didn't have time to make something fabulous for these summer months on the front door I decided to make it about as simple as can be.  I tied off the hose with one of those electrical zip tie things, added a fabric bow and this is it for the next month or so.

I hope you are having a wonderful carefree summer this year too!

Ice on the 4th.

I made a couple of ice stars for my porch to be displayed on the 4th.  As you can see from the pictures with the heat of the day and the candle heat they started melting pretty quickly.  I use this mold a lot in the winter and of course in my part of the country the stars can last for weeks.  Summer....not so much. 

I used cranberries to enhance the red white and blue theme of the 4th.

I'll spend part of today removing all the 4th. decorations and coming up with something new for the porch.  There isn't any cleanup from the stars hee hee, well except for the poor cranberries that were floating on the tray yesterday morning. 

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Tabletop Starter

I haven't had the time to get a 4th. of July tablescape ready but thought I would share the start here at Marty's Tabletop Tuesday.  I made a tablecloth out of a paint drop cloth yesterday CLICK HERE  and decided to use it as the base of my 4th. of July table. 

On top of the table cloth I added an old garland that I purchased off of ebay several years ago.

This piece is over eight feet long and had the standard gromets on it so I assume it hung from an upper balcony of a home or business at one time.

I have two of these bird house/flag holders that I purchased many years ago at a local store.  They were on the sale table and I knew I'd find a way to use them on the porch.

The silver tray is the start of a tablescape I have in mind but haven't gotten a clear idea of yet.  Hopefully something will come to mind very soon.

Looks like our black lab Maggie decided to take a peek out and see what I was up to.

End of Spring

We had a very cool spring here in Michigan and everything is blooming a little later than usual.

I lined the walkway to our front door with these Shepard's hooks and spring flowers for a baby shower I hosted. 

Could anything be more sweet that this picture?  I don't know who the children are but I was sitting down at the dam "people watching" when I snapped this one.  I was nervous because I didn't see any parents near these two sweet little kids and the area where they were standing was less than a hundred feed from the dam.

This is an old picture from my front door.  I've changed the door color to black now and the urns are filled with purple pansies but I still love this shot.

So....spring is on the way out and summer will hopefully be here in it's full glory very soon, happy Monday.