Very Pinteresting…

If you regularly follow my blog, you know that I love Pinterest and you may have seen some of my projects inspired by Pinterest, like my Mason Jar Light.

While I wouldn’t say I’m addicted, I’m a visual girl and I love the opportunity to curate ideas and pictures. Besides, if I admit to an addiction, does that mean recovery is just around the corner? Pfft…I’m not going down THAT road, thankyouverymuch!

I have my settings in Pinterest set to send me an email when people repin my pins. To date, the two most frequently repinned pins are the How to Tint Mason Jars pin,

Source: momtastic.com via FrouFruGal on Pinterest

 

and the marriage advice pin.

 

Source: thepinkandblueblog.com via FrouFruGal on Pinterest

 

There are a couple of things that I’ve noticed that has happened on PInterest that crack me up. One thing that amuses me is the popularity of some of my boards. I created a couple of boards to be more personal than public, but I didn’t mark them as private. To see that my boards for projects I want to do and my thinspiration board are my two most followed boards is funny to me. I didn’t set them up to give anyone else ideas, but it turns out that a lot of us want to create cool things and loose weight. Go figure.

I’ve organized my boards in order of popularity in case you’re interested in that sort of thing. One of the things I love about Pinterest is just the ability to dream and sigh over beautiful things. My MoPo board is set up for that very purpose. MoPo is an inside joke that I will not explain in a public setting, but if you’re dying of curiosity to know what it stands for, you can leave me a comment. I’ll reply as long as you have an email address I can reply to.

*Sigh* One my sisters says she doesn’t understand my obsession with shoes. Neither do I, Sis, I just enjoy it while it lasts. Here’s the thing, since my foot surgery, I’ve only been able to wear a couple of shoes, so it may just be a wishful thinking board. But, come on, look at the red shoes and the bows and tell me you’re not just a little bit in love!

Here’s the other Pinteresting thing that’s happened. When I do a post on one of my projects, I pin it to my Frou-FruGal Projects board. Mostly, I notice one or two people repinning my project pins, but not very often. However, I was looking at my blog stats a few weeks back and I noticed that I was getting a lot of traffic to my site from Pinterest. Being the curious gal that I am, I clicked on the link and was very surprised by what I found.

First, let me explain that since I have created my $25 Craigslist Buffet, that post has shot to the top of my most popular post list and has stayed there ever since.

It’s climbed up from around 7,500 hits for the last year. I don’t really look at my stats all that often, but best I can remember, my other popular posts were only about 4,000 hits or so. My tips on How to Score on Craigslist,

How to Fix Veneer,

my Ancestral Map Settee,

my Faux Mercury Glass Pumpkin

and my Blessing Gown from a Wedding Dress have all stubbornly held to the top spots on the list.

I don’t know about you, but I tend to judge the popularity and interest in my projects more on the number of comments I receive and less on their actual stats. So I’ve had projects that I felt had fallen flat in Blogland because they didn’t generate very many comments or hits. This doesn’t bother me, because I realize not everything thing I do is going to appeal to people. Comments act as my gauge to help me know what people want to see from me.

So color me shocked when one of my lesser known posts started garnering some attention. Want to know which project of mine has taken Pinterest by storm? Okay, maybe not by storm, but it has certainly shot to the top of my leader board thanks to Pinterest. My post on How to Emboss on Wood – Piping Style has taken off!

In the last 3 weeks, this project has shot from 1,300 or so hits to 12,455 hits all thanks to Pinterest!

I was going to do a series of posts about how to emboss on wood using a couple of different techniques, but because this project didn’t garner much attention, I let that idea go. Maybe I will do the follow up. Who knows?

A couple of other projects of mine have also jumped into my top ten projects thanks to the Pinterest Phenomenon, like my Knock Off Pier 1 Ping Pong Letter Balls.

My Chairs Turned Bench

and my cane-back chairs with the Aged Silver Finish have also jumped in numbers,

but both of these projects have been seriously helped out by the Tip Junkie who featured both projects on the same week! However, with Pinterest, their numbers have been steadily climbing this last week.

I didn’t really mean to turn this into a Greatest Hits post, but I wanted to share with you the power of Pinterest. When I first joined Pinterest, I thought it was bad form to pin my own stuff. Like I needed to wait for someone else to say, “Hey, this is cool. I want to pin it.”

Pfft….silly Suesan. I got over it and I’m happy now to Pin my projects with pride. I’ve worked hard on them and if someone else finds enjoyment or inspiration from them, then I am a happy, happy girl.

If you want an invitation to join Pinterest, leave me a comment, WITH an email address so I can reach you, and I’ll be happy to send one your way. If you don’t follow me on Pinterest, why don’t you click on over and see what I find Amusing, check out the great collection of map projects I’m gathering, or just see my Inspiration for my little Sis, Dani. Feel free to follow me on Pinterest.

Have you had any pins take off on Pinterest?

Suesan

Craft Organizer

Back in the summer, Hubs called me from work one day to say that his office was liquidating some office furniture and did I want any? We decided to buy a couple of pieces, one of which was a 2-drawer lateral file cabinet, similar to this one.

(This is not the actual cabinet, but is, in fact, a picture I swiped off the internet).

I know, bad Blogger. I could have sworn I took a picture of the cabinet before I started working on it. Imagine this: the same putty color, only with a slight film of newspaper ink to dinge it up. The manufacturer plate has been pried off the top edge, and there are a couple of dings on it, acquired after 30 years or so in a pressroom.

It was $15 bucks. I wasn’t going for a fashion piece. In fact, I thought I’d just stick it in a closet and call it good. However, I was hip-dip in projects when Hubs brought this home and I had no time to think about it other than I thought I could put it to use.

Want to see what I ended up with? Okay, before I show it to you, I want to put out the disclaimer that my office walls are still pink and the bunny wallpaper is still firmly in place, owing to the fact that I have misplaced the wallpaper remover tool no fewer than 3 times now. Don’t judge, ‘kay? The scorer tool has been found and I’ll be putting it to use this weekend.

I started out by spray painting the cabinet, but even after doing that, I realized I couldn’t hide some of the flaws.

I Mod Podged some fabric over the file cabinet to camouflage the problems. The design of the fabric does a good job of distracting your eye from the dings. I didn’t take any pictures of the Mod Podging process, but I painted some onto the cabinet, smoothed the fabric over it, painted more on, repeat until done. I used an Xacto blade to trim off the excess fabric. I painted over the fabric with Mod Podge to give it a little more protection.

I used 1.5 yards of fabric for the cabinet, which is 36” wide. It was just barely enough with a few scraps to spare.

Here is the before and after of the front, top right side of the cabinet.

This is the before and after of the back, right side of the cabinet.

I purchased the fabric from Wal-Mart for $4.44/yard. They have a couple of different prints in this fabric family. I may get a coordinating print for my curtains. I’m not sure yet.

I’ve used the drawers to hold fabrics and various sewing supplies.

In all honesty, this is not my entire fabric stash. This is just the fabric I had in the house. I may or may not have 2-3 tubs out in the garage. Baby steps, people. Baby. Steps.

The top half is your basic 9-cube organizational unit you can buy at Target/Lowes/Home Depot/etc for around $50 or less. Mine is from Home Depot for $46.97 and the fabric cubes were $6.98/each.

There were a bunch of Mason jars out in the barn, so I cleaned some up and put them to use to hold my threads, sewing notions and the like.

My knitting needles and crochet hooks are now sorted out. See that big blue crochet hook? Can’t tell you how many times I’ve lost that one!

Assorted ribbons and trims.

Embroidery Floss and various fibers.

Want to know what those fibers looked like before I sorted them all out? Sadly, this was just the first pile.

I used my Silhouette SD to cut out some paper bobbins. If you want a copy of my Silhouette file to make your own, leave me a comment and I’ll send it your way.

Then I sorted and de-tangled my heart out. Once I had a strand free, I wrapped it around the bobbin.

I refuse to admit how long my threads have all been jumbled up like this, but let me just say that when I showed the Daja a picture of the floss like this last night during a Skype call, she nearly passed out from shock. Again, we’re not judging, ‘kay?

There are jars for the sewing threads, too.

I also put a little silver dish to use.

I used a rusty chicken feeder that I bought at a garage sale to hold my buttons.

The drawers hold all my yarn.

In sorting and organizing my supplies, I’ve come to the realization that if I’m in danger of becoming a hoarder, it’s with my craft supplies. As I was sorting out all the floss and threads, I seriously debated just tossing the whole lot. It’s not like I’ve done a ton of embroidery in the last few years.

However, just having the supplies out where I can see them, has since spurred my creativity to the point where I actually embroidered a recent project. I think being able to see my supplies will help me find ways to use them.

I love having things organized and being able to get to them as I need them. My craft room/office is still a work in progress. It was a happy accident that the blue in the fabric is a perfect match to the Double-Wide Dresser.

Remember my desk I made out of a couple of doors? It’s well used.

My list of To Do’s is long:

1. Remove wall paper
2. Paint walls
3. Board and Batten? I’m still trying to decide, but I’m guessing yes.
4. Install baseboard
5. Make Curtains for windows
6. Make desk skirt for back of desk to hide cords
7. Organize closet space

Closet space? Yeah, I may not have shown you that disaster area.

Fine. I’ll show it, but you know the drill by now…this is a judge-free zone.

I’m pulling out the wire shelving system and moving it down to Kiddo’s room. I’m thinking of moving the double-wide dresser into the closet because I have plans for space where it resides now.

For now, I made a customized craft storage piece for a reasonable price.

Cost Breakdown:

• File Cabinet – $15
• Fabric – $6.66 (1.5 yards @ $4.44/yd)
• 9-Cube Storage – $46.97
• Fabric Cubes – $27.92
• Spray paint, Mod Podge, Mason Jars – Stash on Hand

Total Project Cost: – $96.55

Estimated Project Time – About 5 hours to paint, Mod Podge fabric & assemble cabinet.

Suesan

If you want the Silhouette file for the bobbins, please make sure to include your email address in your comment, if it’s not tied to your account. Thanks!

DIY Hangover

How was your weekend? Good? Oh, I’m so happy for you. Mine was…you know, I’m not even sure how to sum up this weekend. Productive? Check. Exhausting? Check and Check. Frustrating as all get out? Checkity-check. I’ve got a serious DIY hangover.

Is there some sort of ghastly drink I can choke down to make it go away? My head is pounding, my body aches. I’m tired, nay, I’m exhausted and I even went back to bed for a nap at 8:30 after all the peeps were out of the house. I still struggled to wake up at 10:30 11 a.m.

Here’s how my weekend went down. It started with this list:

Okay, it may be hard to read, but I’ve got a running list of projects I need/want to do in this house and I was anxious to knock some of them off my list. One of the things I wanted to do was get the laundry room put together a bit.

When we first moved into the house, we moved the laundry room from a very small, narrow room to the larger room that had been used as a pantry. We basically flopped rooms. But, this was a lot harder than it sounds. Why? So glad you asked.

Cinderblock. Right behind the drywall. Which meant for a lot of holes in the wall to figure out where to put things. Also, Hubs had to punch through the cinderblock to put in the electrical for the dryer. Much swearing ensued from this project.

However, we finished the laundry room in a few days, but the holes have been there since August. I decided to get this off my list. Hubs had already patched a few of the holes, but the one above and one by the light switched needed to be finished.

No problem. I patched those suckers right up.

For the record, I HATE patching drywall. It’s the root canal of home repairs, in my opinion. In retrospect of how the rest of my day weekend went, the drywall portion of the program was surprisingly pain-free.

I taped, mudded, sanded and then got ready to paint. Here’s where my weekend took a sharp turn into Ain’tNothingEasyVille. The paint. Paint has been my nemesis in this new home. Imagine me saying “Paint” in the same tone that Seinfeld reserves for “Newman.”

Yeah. The paint didn’t match. It was off just enough to be noticeable for touch ups, but was close enough that you wouldn’t notice the difference on adjoining walls. Which meant I had to paint the whole wall. Um…I may have cheated.

What? If my washing machine hadn’t decided to die, you’d never notice.

Well, I got the paint finished, but I needed to get the utility sink working in this laundry room. One of the “joys” of caring for my sister-in-law, Katie, is that she is not always capable of cleaning up after herself. I needed a working sink to soak clothes in.

We needed a faucet and the drain pipe. I had a faucet, but I wanted to use that one in the kitchen. It has a single handle turn on, which is much easier for Katie to use. The current faucet is two-handled.

I replaced this faucet,

with this one.

I just made that sound really easy, didn’t I? Don’t be fooled.

Remember where I took that left turn? Yeah…still there. What I’m not telling you about is the missing part that I KNEW I had put in the same box as the faucet, but didn’t show up until after I was on the phone with the hardware store for 15 minutes trying to explain the missing part to see if they carried it. I looked in that stupid box no fewer than five separate times, but it doesn’t show up until then? Nice.

Nor am I going to mention the, not one, not two, but three times I got a face full of water during the process. Nor am I going to tell you how the 45 minute job that took twice as long, or that I still have the handle part twisted wrong so when you turn the water on, it goes straight to hot.

I’m not talking about it.

With the old faucet off, it was time to install it in the utility sink.

Would it surprise you to know that this was the easiest part of my day? Once I got the right drill bits from the barn, that is. It only took four trips out there. Hubs says we have the fanciest utility sink he’s seen. We are a far cry from fancy. It’s a decent faucet and a sprayer and I need that with the things I need to clean up.

Hubs helped me install the shelf in the laundry room and I called it a day. I’ll show you more of the laundry room another day.

On Sunday, I decided to tackle Kiddo’s room. He had the room that needed the most attention. Sunshine yellow wasn’t really his color. And remember how I say “Paint?” This room was no exception. No one had ever bothered to do the cut work at the ceiling through four different paint jobs. I covered navy blue, gator orange, celery green and sunshine yellow.

I had to skim coat the wall under this bulletin board, because nothing could be easy this weekend.

Besides the millions of push pin holes, there was a bunch of foam squares that would not come off.

I also caulked all the baseboard, after I secured it tighter to the wall with some additional nails. I love having a nail gun!

I did all of this by myself because Hub’s weekend wasn’t any easier than mine. He helped someone move, which turned into a five-hour ordeal. Then he went to fix the muffler on the Suburban. He fixed the muffler, but then had to fix the brake line that got nicked while he was removing the muffler. The broken brake line kept us home from church, since it was in Columbus this weekend. Our car is too small for all of us and an hour drive.

Then, he and the boys finished the stairs they are building. I’ll do a separate post on the stairs. He’s amazing, that man. I’m so glad I have a guy that can fix/build/design/repair things. We still have some landscaping to do, but the stairs are done and it’s much easier for the boys to walk up the drive from the school bus.

So, remember how I told you I have a DIY hangover? Well, now you know why. Want to know how bad it is? When I got up from my nap at 11 a.m. I got ready for my day, or so I thought.

About 20 minutes after my shower, I went to shake out my hair, as per my usual, and felt something odd. Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

Yeah. I forgot to comb my hair. But, that’s not all. As I was walking back upstairs, I thought the girls were feeling a little free and loose. Um, I may have forgotten to put on a bra, too.

D’oh! It’s been that kind of day.

Good thing I fixed both of those problems before the mailman showed up with another box for Hubs. I think I need to go back to bed and sleep this one off.

How was YOUR weekend?

Suesan