Thanksgiving 2010 with Modern Printable Decor

This past weekend J and I went to visit my parents for an early thanksgiving dinner. It was the first time we had been to visit since the wedding and it was great to relax and not work on wedding plans every second of the weekend.

We had a very casual dinner on Saturday afternoon but we still wanted to make it special so I printed out some of the decorations that were posted on Hostess with the Mostess as part of Operation Give Thanks.

Here is what we came up with for our dinner table.

We used a white table cloth, and a green/yellow runner that my mom had from a couple of years ago. She has multi-colored fiesta plates, so I just picked out the orange green and yellow plates for us to use. A large orange candle served as a simple centerpiece.

I printed out the cute place cards and hand wrote our names on them. Place cards are always a holiday tradition in our house so I was happy to incorporate these. Sometimes we write what we are thankful for on the back and my mom saves them.

We also used the paper napkin rings to put together the silverware.

I printed out a few drink labels and stuck one on the water pitcher. There were some really cute yellow lemons floating in the water but you can’t see them in this picture!

I printed these cute little signs and taped them to a matching toothpick. They were double sided so they could be seen from both sides of the table!

My dad made homemade rolls and they deserved a cute little sign of their own!

Last but not least was the wonderful turkey my dad also made!

It was a wonderful weekend with my family and I can’t wait for Thursday when we get to do it all over again with J’s family!

Spray Paint Knobs

Another quick home update project for us!

After falling in love with the new knobs in the kitchen and what a wonderful transformation it made, I wanted to continue with the other knobs in the three bathrooms. I couldn’t find the knobs at Target again for the rain check price so I decided to try something new. I had heard about an oil rubbed metal finish spray paint and since I had 22 extra knobs laying around I decided to give it a try!

Here is what I started out with:

I had an old box lid, some type of screwdriver or something (to poke holes), the spray paint, and the knobs.

This specifically is the spray paint I used. I found it at WalMart for like $3 a can.

I flipped the box lid upright and started poking holes in the top so the knobs could stand up correctly.

From the underside of the box I pushed the screws in:

Then pulled the screws through so they poked out on the top:

Finally, I screwed the 6 ugly knobs onto the screws so they would stand up on their own on the box.

And finally, with a quick coat of spray paint they turned out like this. I didn’t even do two coats !

I was really happy with the dark finish but the flecks of gold in them. Honestly they are almost the exact same color as the ones I bought from Target! They look glossy here but they were still wet at this point. When they dried they are more of a “matte” finish.

Here is my bathroom before with the six creme colored ugly knobs:

another view:

Please ignore the ugly purple wallpaper, thats for another project!

And lastly, here is the final product!

As you can see its “almost” identical to the new knobs I put in the kitchen. The shape of these still dates the set but for $4 for as many knobs as I can paint versus $2 per knob this seems like a good compromise! I am actually so pleased with the color that I have been wondering what else I can spray with it. We have some really ugly brass door knobs…. hmmm….

Easy House Number Project

Currently the house number on our mailbox for our house is simply some of the white stickers with plain black numbers.  It doesn’t look bad, just basic, boring, etc.

Here is the before picture:

So I have been wanting to spruce this up some but needed a cheap way to do it. From the store I got the following supplies:

The board plaque I got from WalMart for $6. The numbers were purchased from Lowes for about $1 each, and the spray paint was left over from another project but its just the cheap $1 brand.

After I spray painted the board white (sorry no pictures, it was windy and I didn’t want to spray the camera!), I spaced out the numbers by eye and nailed them down with my basic small hammer.

Here is how the board turned out with the numbers nailed on.

And finally, here is how it turned out on the mailbox! I’m not sure why but the one number isn’t showing up great in photos.

After taking this picture, I realized there is another ugly sign on the other side of the mailbox. Guess I have to make another one of these!

New front yard patio

Follow up to the parent’s visit post here.

This past weekend with my parents was great. The ended up only staying Friday night and left around 7:30 pm on Saturday evening. Just over a 24 hour trip! Everything I said would happen of course did but it still was a great trip.

Saturday my dad was hoping to help us with a “project” so we started on some yard work. We have a large bed along our walkway to our front door that needed to be landscaped. The problem with this bed is that in the fall it is always full of leaves from the two giant oak trees that are right outside the house. The leaves combined with the shade and weird soil balance makes it very hard to get anything to grow there. After a little talking, we decided to put in a small patio!

The first step was to clean out the weeds and extra plants. This wasn’t too hard to do. We then worked to draw out lines of how big we thought the patio should be. We wanted it just large enough to fit two chairs and a small table.

We ran to Lowes and bought these 16″ pavers with an embossed brick like pattern in them. The large size made the patio easy to lay and helped with the stability. I loved the off white color that was very neutral and will help hide dirt. They were $4 each and I used a 10% off coupon.

J and my dad started working on compacting the dirt and making sure everything was level.

In about 2 hours the guys had the dirt compacted and the patio laid out. We cleaned off the dirt and it was ready for use!

I think it really helps warm up the front of the house. We are going to look for some white chairs to go with the trim of the house. Thanks Mom and Dad!