Five on Friday

Happy Friday Everyone!!! Sorry about the lack of posts this week, our church was having VBS and I had rehearsals as well as some other responsibilities! I hope you all had a great week, and I'm sure you're ready for the weekend!

This past Sunday was my birthday, so as my Five on Friday I'm going to share 5 of my favorite presents! I loved everything I got from very dear friends and family, but there are always those things that you're not sure how you lived without them before! These are in no particular order.

1) Boxwood Wreath - you may remember me mentioning a DIY boxwood wreath here. This was a placeholder while I could find an inexpensive one, or properly make one that would stay preserved. Well my wonderful husband had a crafty friend of ours make this one for me! I love it, it's real boxwood, and it's so full and beautiful!

2) Essie "Haute in the Heat" - a friend got me this in a box of goodies! This is the perfect summer color. Once it's on it is this really deep fuchsia? almost red, but just pink enough!

3) Garden Stool - ok so my brother got me some stuff from Ross with the permission to return it if I wanted something else. So I technically got this myself, but I didn't have to pay for it which is always awesome! I've seen these garden stools at thrift stores for $100+ so I was pretty pumped when this one was there for only $29.99!!!

4) White Bowl - my wonderful husband knows how much I LOVE white dishes! I'm thinking for when I'm not using this to serve I'll get some beautiful hydrangeas to put in it!

5) Gold & Leather Necklace - a friend got me this from Forever 21, and I love it! I probably wouldn't have gotten it for myself, but I think it'll be one of those necklaces you can pair with anything! 

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!! I am linking up with Lauren Elizabeth, and Meet @ the Barre!

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Five on Friday

Well another week has gone by! I'm so excited about this weekend because this Sunday is my birthday! Unfortunately this is going to be a really busy weekend for us. Our youth group is running a concession stand at a local auction to raise money for summer camp on Saturday, and then afterwards a lot of the teens, and my husband will be running through our VBS skit. Sunday will be decorating day for VBS. You can't really skip any of that that when you're in charge of crafts, and your husband's the VBS director and Youth Pastor! I am so thankful for our church and am at least thankful that I'll be able to spend my birthday surrounded by a loving church family!   Here are some of the highlights from this past week and excitement about what's to come!

1) Father's Day - My parents and grandparents along with my brother were able to come up to my house for Father's Day, we were able to cook for them, and enjoy it at our new dining room table! I hate that we didn't get a picture together, but it was so good to have everyone together!

2) Birthday Shirt - Ok so it's not like every birthday I go out and buy a new outfit or shirt, but it's a good excuse when you see something adorable that you have to have! I had a few returns to make to Marshall's on Wednesday so I just took a quick browse to see if there was anything I couldn't live without. Then I saw this beautiful shirt!! Seriously, it's a button up, has ruffles, there's just enough bling, and it's chambray. What more could you ask for?! Since my birthday is on a Sunday, I don't even need an excuse to dress up. This shirt is going to be adorable tucked into a burgundy pencil skirt I have! Now I just have to decide on which shoes. . .

3) Elderberry's - Every once in a while I get to go pick up brochures when my department orders some. I always love it mainly because I get to leave the office and take an extra long lunch! The print shop is also close to where one of my best friends works and an Elderberry's! If you live in the Roanoke/Blacksburg area of Virginia you should definitely check this place out! Amazing wraps, delicious smoothies, and it's always decorated in bright blues and purples!

4) Birchbox - I got my 2nd Birchbox in and it was pretty good. You can check out my full review here!

5)My Birthday Weekend Begins in about 8 hours!!!

I'm linking up with Lauren Elizabeth and Hello! Happiness!

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Dining Room Chairs

These were a cakewalk compared to the dining room table! Mainly because we used acrylic paint! I decided to skip the priming step with these since they were already a dark wood. 

We have a field right outside our fence so I took the chairs and some cardboard out there to spray paint on, that way I didn't have to worry about it getting on our driveway or on our grass! We used spray paint primer to cut down the painting time, and since it was just primer we could use acrylic over it. After about 4 thin layers of spray paint it only took one coat of the acrylic paint. FYI we used Benjamin Moore's Atrium White on the table, chairs, and bench. Distressing is just sanding and then using a bit of antique glaze which is completely optional! When we took off the beautiful red leather from the seats we found an equally beautiful layer of brown leather. . . ugh! We decided to go with a white and gray damask. It will easily match a number of styles and it wasn't too obnoxious! Recovering the seats was as easy as cutting a square and stapling it to the bottom. Here are a few pictures of the process!

This is what we had to begin with!

Under that red leather was this beautiful brown. . . (read in a sarcastic voice!)

It was so easy to cover though. 

In the process of being spray painted. 

After I brushed a coat of Atrium White on. 

We got the sander out, and distressed them a bit!

Voila! We were done!

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Dining Room Table

Alright! The table is finally making it's way on here! We started this project in the first week of May, and have finished the brunt of it, we still need to distress the bench but honestly I don't even care about that right now! I am so thankful that I can eat dinner at a table! This past Sunday we had my brother, parents, and grandparents over for a Father's Day lunch. I cannot tell you how nice it was to have a big table where everyone can stay after the meal to just sit around and talk! 

This table started out as more of a challenge than we thought. We got the table from a lady, Lori, in our church who found it at Goodwill. She was the biggest help ever! She does this all the time, she either refinishes furniture or she'll paint custom pieces for people. This would have been bad without her!

The Long Road To A Dining Room Table: We brought the table over to our house and set it up in the dining room with the cardboard so we wouldn't have to worry about weather, we thought this project would only take a couple days. Lori came over with primer and paint, we started putting the primer on, but soon realized it wasn't sticking. . . so out came the KILZ. That stuff is intense I'm still not sure what it does, I think it's used when you're painting on a smooth surface and need your paint to stick. After KILZ I put a dark gray primer, then I grab the paint can that I thought Lori brought me. . . wrong! It turns out we had a can of the exact paint that we had used on our cabinets, but ours was oil based, and hers was acrylic. Now I had no earthly idea that would make a difference, so I probably would've used it even if I had seen the one word difference on the paint can. Man was I in for a surprise! FYI once you use oil based paint, you can't use acrylic anything over top of it! What probably made it worse is that we think after I had let a couple coats dry over night, I came back and did a couple layers in acrylic. This was obviously not the finest moment in my extensive furniture painting career! (read that in a sarcastic voice!) I came back and kept thinking "wow this looks terrible, it's a good thing we're distressing it!" So Lori comes over for my distressing lesson, and realizes she should have never left me alone with this table! To make an already long story mildly shorter, we ended up having to sand off the entire top of the table, and paint with only oil-based, which requires 24 hours to dry between each coat. Then we were able to finally distress and antique it! I also used a wax on the top of the table to protect it from spills in the future!

The only before picture I have. Ignore the mess! You can see that it was already a cream, and very dirty!

This is it painted completely white after we had to sand off the paint job I had already done!

I'll be sharing the specifics about the chairs tomorrow! 

Forgive the morning light, we got 4 chairs to go with the table, and Aaron built a bench for me. 

Here is a close up of the distressing we did. We used an electric sander, and then put a very little bit of brown antique glaze. 

Zeke photo bombed while I was taking pictures of the table legs!  

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Another Birchbox

I got my second Birchbox in! It was nice, not as amazing as last months, but still good! It seems like I got repeats of items, another lotion, another perfume, another SPF. I'm sure my profile indicates that those are the things I would be interested in, but I don't think I want those 3 things every month. I'll still probably use all of these things, and a lot of these it's nice to have them in travel sizes!

1. Cool Tinted Matte SPF 30 for Face - I like that this has a tint to it. This will be nice on one of those days I'm going to be outside and don't really want to worry about my make-up. 

2. Gilchrist & Soames London Collection Body Lotion - Another lotion, great to just throw into your purse on hot summer days. . . nobody wants dry legs! It does smell very nice, it doesn't seem as thick as the lotion I got last month from Perlier, but we'll see!

3. Joie Folle de Joie Eau de Parfum - Wow that took some work to type out correctly! This perfume is a little too old for my taste. . . I think maybe it had a little too much rose to the scent? O well!

4. Number 4 Hair Hydrating Shampoo - I'm excited about this, they also sent a conditioner that goes with this. It will be great when we take a quick weekend trip. 

5. Vasanti Cosmetics BrightenUp! Enzymatic Face Rejuvenator - This is supposed to be a "customer fave". It looks like a exfoliating facial scrub, which is always nice in the summer!

Good Birchbox overall. I might go and edit my profile, just to make sure I get a couple of different things this next time!

P.S. see that beautiful table the box is on? I'll finally tell you guys about it tomorrow!

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Five on Friday

1) We've had our first few rehearsals for Oklahoma, and already sounds awesome! This is going to be a great production!

2) I'm in charge of a small group within our Youth Group and this Wednesday our small group went out to a park for a devotional, scavenger hunt, and picnic. It was such beautiful weather and so relaxing! 

3) Our dining room is finally starting to come together! I'm getting an idea for what I want on the table in there and finally have our wreath. I will be so glad when everything is set up and in it's own place at our new house!

4) My husband gave me some "just because" flowers on Wednesday and those are always the best kind!!

5) I get to go down and see my parents & grandparents tonight! We'll be coming back tomorrow afternoon, but it will still be wonderful!!!

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The Easiest Ever Summer Projects

A few weeks ago we moved from an apartment into a rental home near the church my husband works at. We've basically got everything set up how we want, but we've done a few DIY projects to pull things together. I wanted to share a couple that I've done, that really don't even require tutorials! Seriously these are both so easy!

This planter came from Michael's I just grabbed some paint I had laying around. . . I didn't even tape it off when I put the gold paint around, painter's tape would help it look even better! I also painted the inside of the bottom gold for a little extra shimmer! You can get succulents at Lowe's, Home Depot. . . basically anywhere right now, they are so popular. . . not hard to believe since they're so beautiful and easy to take care of. Water them when the soil is dry and make sure they get plenty of sun. I've made 2 other planters 1 for my kitchen, and another for my office, they are the perfect low maintenance plant, and I've heard they purify the air? Not sure about that but it sounds good!

We put our sofa table against one of the walls in our dining room, still trying to decide what all to put up there. We did hang a mirror above it to get some extra light, and I wanted a boxwood wreath to put in front of it. Wow you guys boxwood wreath's are expensive! Even one from Target is $45. I wasn't willing to spend that so I went to Goodwill and found a beautiful. . . not! wreath. After I was done tearing all of the lime green and hot pink roses off I was left with a clean slate to thread my boxwood through! I'm sure many of you have a boxwood bush in your front yard, just go out there and trim off some branches and it's as easy as sticking them in the wreath! 

I kind of like it a little thinner, I love the look of grapevine. You can add as many branches as you want depending on if you want the grapevine to show. I've read that this wreath should last about 1 month before it browns, I'm hoping to find one on sale, or figure out how to preserve the boxwood before it dies!

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