The Dragons Fairy Tail

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This post brought to you by CB2. All opinions are 100% mine.

CB2 and Novogratz Collection

Ok people, close your eyes and begin all that deep breathing you learned from yoga class, now begin to picture warm woods, beautiful accents, and bright colors in an exciting and playful dream house. You are surrounded by a brazilian landscape and everything for that moment is perfect.

Ok now open your eyes! and guess what! That dream can come true. CB2 which is a truly fantastic store is excited to partner on their latest collection with husband and wife design-duo Robert and Cortney Novogratz. and they are throwing a fantastic CB2 and Novogratz Brasil Sweepstakes where you and 3 friends can win a week long stay in the vacation home of The Novogratz family in the beautiful area of Trancosco, Brazil. Super exciting right? Also 10 other lucky winners will receive a CB2 gift card worth $100 along with a personal signed copy of the book, "Home by Novogratz". The Sweepstakes will run from May 2nd through June 3rd. You can enter at http://cb2.com/sweeps.

Now don't worry if you don't win! You can still create a beautiful dream house of your own with the new collection they have at CB2. Take a look below at some of my favorite pieces from the Novogratz collection.

Retro, Modern, and Vintage all thrown in one right? They really have some really great additions for any home wanting style, and a little attitude. My personal favorite is the luli table lamp but I also really love the soneca pendant lamp too which you can find at CB2 and Novogratz Collection and don't forget to enter the CB2 and Novogratz Brasil Sweepstakes.

I also want to make a shout out for CB2's social networks. They really are worth following and have some great design and collection updates.

Twitter: @CB2Tweets

Pinterest: CB2

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/cb2

This post brought to you by Miracle-Gro. All opinions are 100% mine.

Easy Wall Planters with the help of Miracle-Gro

First I want to talk about The Gro Project. Miracle-Gro has come out with something called The Gro Project which is a movement to bring out the green thumb in everyone. It offers great advice, tips, and ideas for planting. It is really helpful for those like me, who weren't born with a green thumb but really want to be a part of the growing movement. take a look!

Okay now, planting a garden or planting anything for that matter can be overwhelming. The idea of keeping something else alive besides my two boys and our very spoiled cat is a lot to think about at times. With that said, I have come up with a few easy ideas that will be great for beginners and those who don't have a lot of time, or are on a small budget.

One is my lettuce rain gutter garden which I started two summers ago and have posted about it a number of times because it has been such a success for our family and it was SO easy. I got some inspiration from Suzanne Forslings' when I created it. The lettuce hasn't sprouted yet but I'm excited in the coming weeks. What you will hearing about today are my easy wall planters that I've attached to my siding on either end of my rain gutter garden to add a bit of color. I grow lettuce, herbs, and green onions in my rain gutter garden but their's no color except green so I wanted to add some fun flowers on either end to give my backyard some excitement. This was such an easy and fun project. It took me about an hour to complete and it is for beginners. I ALWAYS use Miracle Gro products for any planting project I have. They are wonderful and quite simply, they work. They also have a bunch of fun garden projects for you to get some inspiration about. Please go check them out, see their pinterest boards because they are fantastic, and get some ideas for your gardening space, big or small.

Easy Wall Planters

Here is what you will need.

steel hanger strap coils (found at any hardware store)
power drill and some screws
2 small to medium planters
flowers or plants of your choice to fill the planters
some wire cutters, or sheers
Miracle-Gro Moisture Control Potting Mix
Shake’n Feed All Purpose Plant Food (OPTIONAL)

1. you will want to measure around your planters and and cut the steel hanger strap coil so that it overlaps a little to create a circle hanger. You will drill into both matched up holes as it overlaps into the siding where you want it. To cut the galvanized steel strap, you want to press with the wire cutters or sheers until it creates an indent and then fold the indent back and forth with your hands until it breaks apart.

2. After you have drilled the steel hanger straps in a circle hanger onto the siding, you will want to make sure your pot/planter fits snug into it and hangs easily.

3. Last is super easy, I added some Miracle-Gro Moisture Control Potting Mix along with my beautiful flowers. I chose marigolds because they are full sun plants and I loved the color. Whe choosing a plant or flower, be sure to think about how much shade the area will have and how it will be watered. Our sprinkler systems hits the rain gutter garden and the planters really well so we didn't have to think too much about getting it watered but if you have to hand water the pots and are nervous you will forget, you should probably choose a drought tolerant plant. After the plants are in, fill the rest of the pot with a little water and some more Miracle-Gro Moisture Control Potting Mix and also I would recommend adding some Miracle-Gro Shake’n Feed All Purpose Plant Food because it will keep the plants healthy and thriving. It's not needed but definitely a plus.

4. That's it! sit back, enjoy. drink some lemonade, browse at Miracle Gro's fun garden projects and their pinterest page and have a great day!

Alright so ideally, I would love to have my basement finished. It is planned for the near future but in the last year, the laundry room has been OUT OF CONTROL. I'm talking piles and piles of laundry that never end. Clothes that haven't made it upstairs for months and months because they would get stuck at the bottom of the pile. It was a mess. What also was a disaster mess was my craft stuff. It was starting to look like an episode on hoarders. This makeover was more of a cleaning, and organizing makeover than anything else but I am sure glad it's finally clean and organized. I am still working on the last finishing touches but it feels good to have a neat space where I know where everything is. In the future, I am hoping to make it even more amazing and useful when the walls and floors are done, but for now I am pretty happy.

The laundry room sign was painted with craft paint onto concrete. I free handed the letters but had a picture of kind of what I wanted it to look like and I worked from there. Start with pencil, their was lots of washing off the pencil. (I used a rag and water because it worked better than an eraser). From there, I traced the letters with marker, yes permanent marker. I then painted it a nice teal color. I added a little water to the paint so it's kind of like white washing or teal washing because then I could paint over the letters and they would still show up. It was just easier. I painted the letters white and then traced around them again with the sharpie to make them stand out more and yeah...that's it. It was a lot of fun and took less than an hour for me to finish.

My DIY craft table is now clear and ready for more work. I have drawers organized with some of my paper, mostly my photo transfer papers, laminating sheets, photo paper, and paper scraps as well. I also have stickers and stencils in the drawers. I hung up some of my fun decor that I have yet to put up anywhere but still love. It makes it a little more creative space I think. Oh also, the box below is my misc. craft stuff. I have bits of fabric and weird cardboard things I have plan to use. It's just the recyclable junk I hope to turn to treasure.

I stole logen's old table from his room and stacked laundry baskets on it to save space. This cost me nothing since I already had it and it wasn't much use upstairs. This will hopefully make it easier to keep the laundry piles organized and off the floor.

The craft shelf was something I also had upstairs. It had been organizing some stuff in a closet but we realized, we didn't need it there and it would be great use to us downstairs. I painted it a Martha Stewart turquoise. I first purged a ton of craft junk that had never been used. I used some of logen's Lego boxes to store things and labeled all the boxes. I also have a bucket you can get at home depot with some tools and craft stuff that can be portable and easy to take with me. I spent nothing on organizing this.

Jared added plywood boards to create shelfs for my scrapbook paper. I don't have tons because I am not a scrapbooker. I mainly use this scrapbook paper for birthday parties, making fun labels around my house, etc. I do have a lot of scrap paper in the rolling cart. I also have the shelf below with paint, rollers, brushes, drop cloths, etc. so everything is close and easy to find.

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Alright ~~drum roll please~~, i definitely believe i deserve something amazing as a reward because this has been a long project in the making. I started this project last fall in our master bedroom. It has been quite the journey getting this done but I am super excited about it. It turned out exactly as I was hoping. To start, you should probably see a few steps of this process so I have the tutorial, a little farther down....scroll away.

Making the white washed wall.

1. First, lets talk the wall. While I LOVE the finished wall, it was not the easiest project and mainly because of the prep work. We used wood pallets which are great because you can often get them for free and they give you that aged look that is awesome but I am not sure for this project, if It was worth using wood pallets because the prep work was a lot. You will need to take the wood apart from the wood pallets and then cut the wood pallets into pieces. Next, you will need to sand the wood pallet pieces really well and discard anyones that have holes, or look too worn. Then you will need to match pieces that have a similar width. We started at the bottom and went from right to left on the first row and from left to right on the second and continued to alternate until all of the wood was attached. We used wood glue on all the pieces and then you can put nails into the wall as well. I should mention that i dont think you need nails. we decided to do them and it was a hassle. they arent going into the studs and the wood glue i believe would have been enough alone. It would be much easier with a nail gun. We don't have one and so my husband drilled a little pilot hole into the wood first and then the nail could go through the dry wall after that a little easier. It was not the fastest method but it was effective. I also want to mention, I sprayed a polyeurathane coating on top of the wood and sanded it down a lot after putting it on the wall to protect us from any pesticides that can be put on the wood. While, I discarded any "falling apart" pieces and was careful to select wood pallets, some are sprayed with pesticides so you want to be sure and sand down the wood well before putting it on the wall. All in all, we love the wall and would do it again but we might purchase Home Depot wood instead next time because the prep work before putting them on the wall was very time consuming, we would lose that aged look though...hmmm

2. White washing is so easy. Oh man, this was my favorite and by far the most simple of task of this project. To white wash anything, you just want equal parts water and white paint. You need to get rid of everything around and lay down a drop cloth on the floor because it can get messy. I used a plastic latex glove (like medical gloves, you can find them in the first aid section of a grocery store) and an old sock on top to apply it rather than a paint brush. I use the same thing when I apply a stain to furniture and it works so well. I saw this idea on Rehab Addict (love that show). The latex glove underneath is just so you don't get paint all over your hand. Mix the paint and water together, than dip your hand in the mixture and spread it back and forth over the wood. Because its mixed with water, it will drip a lot. That's ok. Also because it has water, it will absorb into the wood and dry lighter than it looks when it is applied so be aware of that. Wood can only absorb so much at one time so you don't want to lay it on thick or else it will look streaky. Do a thin layer across the wood and then let it dry and then try again until you are happy with the results.

3. Now for the shelf, this was tricky because our wall was longer than one piece of wood we could find at Home Depot so we had to attach it as two pieces together and then lay some wood putty to cover up the line. We also had to be sure it was level when putting it all together as one shelf because it was two to begin with. Either way, it worked, just took a little more time. We use Ana white's $10 shelf tutorial and plan. We had to do about 3 shelf lengths in all so $30.

4. Overall, I love the look and turnout of this project even though it was a lot of work. I chose some fun black and white frames with fun memories of our family. If you have further questions about this project, feel free to email me and I will try to answer your questions. Justkathryn143{at}gmail.com

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Recent Projects

CB2 and Novogratz Collection

Easy Wall Planters with the help of Miracle-Gro

Easy Wall Planters

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