Now *This* Is Exciting Stuff!

Take a little lookie-loo at what I found at {Michael's} the other day...

Tulip Fabric Spray Paint

This stuff comes in a ton of different colors ~ which made it reallllly difficult for me to just pick up white and walk away, but I did! ;) This is a great {alternative} to using bleach. With the bleach t-shirts, you have no control over the color that you end up with on the area where the bleach is sprayed. Go back a few posts and take a look at the navy t-shirts that were bleach-sprayed...you'll see that the bleached areas are a purple-ish color. Green turns kind of a yellow-ish, red would turn pink. I wanted to make myself a Red Wings shirt and I didn't want pink ~ I wanted red and white ~ and the white spray paint worked {perfectly}. I used the exact same method with the freezer paper, etc. and it turned out great. SO, next time you're at the craft store grab yourself a bottle and try it out!

An Imperfect Improvement

When I upholstered the {fugly} headboard ~ which I'm still in love with, by the way ~ I started really looking at the rest of the bedroom furniture (b/c of course it was a full matching set) and trying to figure out what I could do to it to make it...better. After a great deal of inspection and an exploratory mission involving a screwdriver, I discovered that the drawer fronts on the nightstands and dresser could be very easily removed from the actual {drawers}. Hmmm... I thought about making new drawer fronts and then I thought ~ {why}? The existing fronts are, obviously, the right size ~ and they're {free}! So I decided to flip those suckers over & use the backs as the new fronts!

I forgot to take a {before} pic, but here you can see what the original drawer fronts looked like. Obviously, there was no way to just slap on some paint & new hardware for a fresh new look.

I decided to experiment with the nightstand that the tinier of the tiny people has in her room (we had to split the set so we could fit a stand-up chest of drawers into our {small} master bedroom...she got the extra nightstand) so that if it didnt' work I wouldn't be faced with figuring out how to fix it and make our bedroom set match again.

So I took off the drawer fronts, filled the screw holes with wood putty, and sanded all the surfaces I planned to paint. It took a few coats of paint, with sanding between, to get the finish nice & even. I know a lot of people love their {spray paint} but I'm a can & brush kind of girl, and I used white paint we had on hand.

The Hubband came to my aid in measuring, drilling, reattaching, etc. Good thing, too, because otherwise I'm certain I would've made an enormous {mess} of things. It's not perfect, but it's a definite improvement!

The Hubband did say that the measuring was a bit of a pain...but when you consider that the only thing I {bought} for this project was the hardware, I think it's well worth it! Less than $10 total for a new look...that's not bad!

We're still debating about doing the same with our own bedroom furniture... I'll keep you posted!

Little Girls are Sports Fans, Too!

You wanna know what's really {frustrating}? Trying to find "team apparel" for little girls that isn't grossly overpriced or pink. I mean, really ~ if our team's colors are blue & orange...or scarlet & grey...or red & white...why in the world would you slap that logo on a pink t-shirt? So earlier this week I took matters into my own hands and made some lovely bleach-spray t-shirts that have been floating around in blogland!

I searched online for the {Detroit Tigers} logo ~ gotta love the good old-fashioned {English D} right? I found a printable version on the Tigers' website, but it was made to be used as a template for pumpkin carving (how cool is that!?!?) so I kept looking. Lo & behold, I found exactly what I needed on Wikipedia of all places. It even had the logo in 4 different sizes, which was perfect as I knew the tiny people would require a smaller one than I'd need for my own shirt! Now ~ this might be considered copyright infringement....but the logo was made available by the official site, so they can't be too picky about what it's used for, I would think. Not to mention that I'm not using their logo for profit, so I'm okay with taking my chances. ;)

I printed the logos out on {cardstock} then cut them out and traced them onto {freezer paper}. This was the first time I'd ever used freezer paper and I was thrilled that it really does stick to the fabric when you iron it ~ AMAZING! Next, I took a spray bottle of bleach and went to town. **Don't forget to put something inside the shirt to keep the bleach from soaking through to the back ~ a plastic grocery bag works well!** Quick, easy, and {cheap} ~ as in $5 for each of our shirts ~ and we've got t-shirts for game day! WOOT! I showed them to the Hubband and his immediate response was, "Where's mine?" So...I'd better get on that!

Spring Broken

Ahhh, Spring Break. I had no first-hand experience with any such thing until I went to college. No, really ~ we never had Spring Break when I was in high school....let alone elementary. Both of my kids are mid-way through SB right now & it's wiping me out. Their little schedules are totally {jacked} and I have a feeling they're looking forward to school starting back up just as much as I am.

We just got back from 2 days in Ohio, visiting my mom...and tomorrow she'll be coming up here for the weekend. :) Should be fun. We're going to see {Straight No Chaser} on Friday night and I'm probably a little too excited. We'll also be celebrating the tinier of the tiny people's birthday on Sunday, so it's going to be a weekend full of excitement!

I left for my mom's on Monday afternoon with one project about halfway done, so hopefully I'll be able to finish it up this week at some point. Should be interesting with my very willing {helpers} at my side. Anyway ~ all this to say that I'm not sure how much I'll be around for the remainder of the week but I do intend to try...