I recently found out that Disney On Ice’s latest was coming to the Bay Area and I wanted to come up with a clever way to pop the news.

I decided to leave a little note on the kitchen table so that when the girls came down they would find out.  But I wanted something a little more special than a plain note, so I decided to create some custom frames for each of them.

I am SO EXCITED to share today’s project.

I actually finished it about two weeks ago, but never got around to taking photos and writing about it until now.  But I just LOVE IT!

I have been obsessing about all the great marquee lights I’ve been seeing all over the internet, but now they have gotten so affordable and accessible in stores that I never felt like it was worth my time to make one from scratch.

At least not in the traditional sense of making a marquee light.

But then inspiration struck when I was washing out a set of old K-cups (I always save them since they aren’t recyclable and I have had project ideas for them in the past). I was lining them up on the counter and I realized how cool they looked when I started creating shapes. 
Of course, with Valentine’s day around the corner, a heart shape was the first thing that came to mind.

I thought about gluing them down and spray painting the whole thing so it was one color but three dimensional, and then I thought, “WHY NOT LIGHT THEM UP AGAIN?!”

And that is exactly what I did.   This time with pink mini-lights
There aren’t many projects where with each step you finish, you get more and more excited about it.. but this project was one of them:
So how did it come together?

Things are still in full “Valentine’s Day” mode at our house.  And the decor is slowly rolling out.   So I was excited when DecorArt offered me the chance to team with them** and create a project using a non-traditional surface and Americana Multi-Surface Paint.  This is the project I came up with, inspired by Christina’s intertwined heart made from old chair rail scraps.


I didn’t have any chair rail scraps, but I knew immediately what I wanted to use!  A set of old wooden shims I had leftover from another project.  I love how rough they are, with the knots and imperfections.   I also picked up a wood cut heart to us as the backer and a decorative script ‘Love’ from Michaels.

I love how in the finished product you can still see all the imperfections in the wood, giving it a rustic ‘reclaimed’ feel:

The first thing I did was line up the shims side by side alternating which end was the ‘thick” end and which was thin. Remember that shims are actually tapered to help ‘shim up’ things like cabinets and door frames etc.  So they aren’t flat when you lay them down flat.  I wanted the surface of the heart to be rough, so I got that look by alternating them.

Then I traced around my wooden heart with a ballpoint pen:

Next I used a coping saw to cut out the heart shape.  You could use a hacksaw if you don’t have a coping saw, but anything larger that that would probably destroy the shims.  They are super thin and want to crack. 
Once I had all the shims cut, I hot glued them onto the wooden heart and sanded the edges with course sandpaper just to knock down the splinters.  I didn’t sand the flat surfaces since I wanted the texture to show. 
Next I added some American Multi-Surface paint to a styrofoam tray. (I used the Cottonball, Lipstick and Pink Cadillac colors)This was the perfect paint of for the project because it sticks to almost anything! It was great for getting into all the crevices and cracks of the shims.

Like the other supplies for this project, Americana Multi-Surface paint is available in Michaels. Visit the DecoArt Multi-Surface website for more crafting ideas and inspiration.
 Because i wanted to let the wood grains and knots show through, I diluted out the paint with a little water.  It worked beautifully:

Next I decided to play off the rustic look by adding  burlap heart (I found that a Michael’s as well) and the Love woodcut (I had painted white.)

I glued a little piece of twine on the top in case I wanted to hang it, but I decided that I liked it propped up in a vignette much better.

It is so cute and rustic yet fits in well with the rest of my Valentine's stuff.

I think I'm going to incorporate it into this year's mantelscape.  If I ever get around to it!



**This post was sponsored by DecoArt and Michaels.  I received compensation for my time and supplies, but the project ideas, tutorial and opinions are my own.  I was not told what to make, or what to write. 

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I am not personally experiencing it right now, but I know most of the nation is in the throws of deep winter… and I am feeling you!  My winters in Boston gave me great empathy for everyone dealing with cold temps and snow.  These memories are forever burned into my brain:

Well, if you think YOU hate the cold temps, just imagine how you car feels..  Even if your car is garaged in the winter, the weather can still wreck havoc on your four-wheeled baby.  Since I have empathy for your poor vehicle, here are a list of 10 things you should check out before it to make sure you car doesn’t let you down this winter!

Car Winterization Checklist:

Today’s post is actually TWO recipe posts in one.  And if you like milkshakes, you are in for two times the treat!

We are big football fans (both college and professional.. I mean, who else decorates their mantel for football season?)  This year, as a special treat on game day I decided to create milkshakes for the kids.

We are huge cereal eaters in this house, I even love eating it by the handful out of the box late at night as a dessert alternative.  With that thought in mind, I knew I could come up with a great cereal dessert recipe.

I love chocolate toffee bark, especially with pecans, and I knew the crispiness of Quaker® Life cereal would create the perfect base to absorb the sweet buttery crunch of the toffee. 
The recipe itself couldn’t be much easier.  It only requires 5 ingredients:  Butter, brown sugar, pecans, chocolate chips and of course.. Quaker® Life cereal.

So, once again this year, the blogosphere is all aflutter with this whole “Word Of The Year” thing. This is where you choose a word which symbolizes your goals and hopes for the coming year.  Sort of an alternative to a resolution.. a yearly motto.

Now this is not to be confused with the Oxford Dictonary’s Word of the Year, which was recently selected at the end of 2014. Every year the dictionary people choose a word or phrase that has gained popularity and become more common in public usage over the past 12 months.  They aren't the same words of the year.

You will understand why you don’t want to mix these two up when I tell you the Oxford folks chose “Vape” as their 2014 word of the year. As much as I’m sure “quitting smoking” makes quite a few resolution lists every year.. I can’t imagine the type of person who would choose “Vape” as their annual mantra.
Well.. maybe I can...

image source

A book page project is one I’ve wanted to do for a long time but I never had a book I didn’t feel bad about cutting up (and I wasn’t going to go buy one just to cut up.)  But this winter my 9 year old picked out this copy of Ramona Forever (Ahhh.. Nostalgia! Did anyone else read Beverly Cleary books as a kid?) at the thrift store and while she was reading it, it began to fall apart.
So as soon as she finished it, I snapped it up and started brainstorming.    With Valentine’s Day quickly approaching I decided I would do a heart project.   These paper hearts are super easy to make (in fact, my 4 year old helped make a few) and require nothing much more than a paper cutter (or scissors), a stapler, and whatever type of paper you want to use.

If you are using toilets installed anytime in the last century (okay.. it sounds crazy when I say it that way.. but I mean “Pre-2000”) it is pretty likely that you are either using way more water than you have to, or are using outdated technology which conserves water but is not very efficient at flushing waste or frequently clogs.

The toilets in our house were 1988 monsters using almost 4 gallons per flush. (For perspective, todays standard of “low flow” is 1.28 gallons.) If you are using a toilet from the 70s, you could be using as much as seven gallons!  SEVEN GALLONS!!  That is the equivalent of flushing a modern toilet more than five times.  (Side note: if you are using toilet from the 70s.. it is probably pretty gross by now and you should change it anyhow!)

Today’s low-flow toilets are pretty amazing, considering that some of them use as little as 0.8 gallons of water and yet have astounding ability to flush a small pony down the drain (okay, maybe that is a slight exaggeration.. but they are much more powerful than their previous water saving counterparts.)

I’ve previously written about the pros of saving on your utility bills, and so this project was a no brainer.  And to make it even better, our utility district has a $50 rebate on any Water Sense toilet, so this project practically paid for itself.  (Most water districts do offer rebates, just check with your local company.)

In our upstairs bathrooms these are the toilets we had:

You can see how large the tank was in order to hold all the water.

It was just a huge WASTE even though they weren't in the most commonly used bathrooms.  I chose a new 1.28 gallon per flush American Standard model as a replacement.   I took a side by side photos with the new one (the ruler is for reference) to show you the difference in tank size when you covert to a water efficient model
You also will notice the tank is tapered, to give you more flushing power with less water.   Plus it takes up less space in your bathroom, which is never a bad thing right?

So how did I decide exactly which one was the best choice for me? 

When figuring out what kind of toilet you want to upgrade to, there are lots of things to keep in mind.

TOILET SELECTION:

2014 was a great year!  The amount of amazing projects floating around the blogs I read and love were overwhelming.   Yesterday I posted my own top 10 most popular projects of 2014 and that got me wondering what posts were the big hits for all the other DIY bloggers out there.

So I asked a few, ok.. more than a few.. a HUNDRED AND TWENTY of my favorite bloggers for their most popular posts of 2014 and I have assembled them all here. It always so interesting to see what piques people’s interest.

Because there are so many I have split them into categories. Please note, just because a blogger’s most popular post is in a certain category, that doesn’t mean their entire blog is about that subject. When visiting these blogs you should definitely check out their archives!