Painted Door

Hello Dearies!
 Hope you are all having a great week. Let me start by updating you all on our house. Our plumbing (done by my dad) is the only thing that hasn’t had any updates. He’s a busy truck driver and farmer and with harvest going on, I really have no idea when he’ll finally get over to the house and hook things up for us. That being said, We were very productive this past weekend and the rest of the house will most likely be done NEXT WEEK!!! I’m so excited! We’ll still be stuck in the old house until the plumbing gets hooked up but at least we’ll be able to start moving most of our stuff in. Ok so for todays project, I did another awesome thing this weekend. One of my favorites… And now I’m just realizing that I refer to a lot of these projects as my favorites. Haha! I can’t help it. I’m getting my dream home and my excitement is off the charts :) So I painted my door. My favorite Aunt (she knows it!) has always painted her front door a fun color. I always wanted to do it but my hubby was never on board with the idea. The other day, out of the blue, he asks me what color I’m painting the door. I didn’t remind me that he hated the idea, I just told him I needed to shop for colors. And then I did! I picked out an amazing orange! I’m so in love. Everytime I open my screen door (which is plain white) and the orange pours out at me, I just get so giddy! Ok so for the details. The was not an easy slap on the paint job like my awesome yellow chairs, this took some prep work. For this project I used *Screw Driver *Wood Filler *Sand Paper *Painters Tape *Razor blade * Paint. Since this door is my front door I used an outdoor paint. First, I uninstalled the blinds from the window. If your door has no blinds, you won’t need the screw driver. Then I gave my old door a good washing. It was super dirty.
 
 This door is really really old, and has a lot of wear to it, so I had to use wood filler to patch a whole lot of little holes and scratches. After the filler dried, I sanded and sanded and then sanded some more. Haha!
 
 Then I taped up the windows. This part was the worst. You’d think since the windows were all straight line and the tape is a straight line that it would go together really smoothly. You’d be wrong, This was a giant pain in the bootie! But worth the hard work because it looks great now.
 
 A smart person would remove the door from it’s hinges at this point but I was all alone and the old door was crazy heavy so I left it all hooked up. I probably should have taped up the hinges too but after taping up the windows, I though “screw it, I’ll just be careful.” And I was. And it turned out just fine. Haha!
 
 The first coat was a bit streaky so I did a second.
 
 Wait until the paint dries to remove the window tape. Use the razorblade to cut the tape out. If you just rip the tape off, you could rip out a lot of paint with it. It took two coats of my pretty orange to cover the door. AND I have lots of paint left over so I can paint something else orange too :)
 
 Please ignore the horrible floor. My living room is the only floor in the house I haven't done yet. I've decided to do it last because the boys are messy and I don't need them ruining my new floor while they are building the banister and framing out the windows. It will be pretty when we move in! Feel free to ask me any questions at all and as always, I’d love to see your projects! Please share a link in the comments below or tag me on instagram @images_by_jessie or on twitter @imagesbyjessie

Yellow Chairs

Hello Dearies!
I hope your September is going well. We are getting closer and closer to finishing the new house and I wanna share another fun project I did. So this may be the cheapest project I am doing for the entire house. These painted chairs cost me 3 bucks! No, I’m serious, just 3 dollars. Let me tell you my awesome deal finding story! I got the chairs for a dollar a piece at a local garage sale. These chairs are going to sit up against my stair railing and be extras for when we have company. Originally I was going to paint them blue. Then I thought with my big blue wall, I had too much blue in my living room. Then I thought about spray painting them silver for some sparkle. But when I saw this amazing yellow in the “mistake” pile at my hardware store for only a dollar, I freaked out. I literally did a happy dance in the store. I knew right then and there that my chairs would be beautiful bright yellow! Now for a normal paint job on wooden furniture, you have to strip off the original paint first and then sand like crazy. While I’m normally not afraid of a little work, this time I really wanted these pieces to be grungy looking. So I scraped off some of the already pealing paint but I left the rest to give these chairs some character. I only sanded down two small spots that looked like they might splinter. I did two coats of yellow and I think they look absolutely amazing! I already have cushions and pillows ready for these bad boys. I cannot wait to show you how it all comes together!
 





 These two are sitting in my back porch until we are ready to move them in. Oh and that nasty dresser behind them will be an upcoming project! Watch for that one to be posted in the next few weeks :) Feel free to ask me any questions at all and as always, I’d love to see your projects! Please share a link in the comments below or tag me on instagram @images_by_jessie or on twitter @imagesbyjessie

Happy Birthday to Me!

Hello Dearies!
 Today is my favorite day! Haha ok actually Halloween is my favorite but today is pretty cool too. I am older, wiser, happier than I have ever been. I feel like I’m finally getting to the point where I can “adult” successfully. Haha! We have been going full time over at the new house. Things are going really well. I have one floor entirely finished. Woohoo! I can’t wait to show all my before and after photos here. Since we’ve been so busy at the house I didn’t get to finish a project this week so I’m going to show you some birthday inspiration that I would have used for my own party. If I had time for a party. Haha. After the move we will party hard I have pretty eclectic tastes. I like dinosaurs, Star Wars, Halloween, Mermaids, and Doctor Who… so as you can imagine, my party will be Cray Cray! Haha, Ok I’m sorry and I promise never to say that again Enjoy these links and if you have any awesome party ideas you’d like to share… or had your own epic party, I’d love to see/hear all about it! First I wanna show you my favorite cake my hubby has ever gotten me… from 3 years ago… he needs to get his act together. Haha!
 
  http://mylitter.com/recipes/mini-caramel-apples-recipe/ http://www.livinglocurto.com/2015/01/coke-cupcakes-free-party-printables/ http://stylecaster.com/cool-birthday-party-ideas-for-adults-from-pinterest/ http://www.viralnova.com/new-years-party-ideas/ http://www.momontimeout.com/2014/03/rainbow-pretzel-wands/ http://catchmyparty.com/blog/star-wars-party-ideas

Crochet Fun

Hello Dearies.
Do you crochet? Knit? Maybe have no interest and prefer to buy your stuff at the store? Haha, it’s ok. I used to buy everything premade too. Sometimes I still do :) Even though it isn’t getting cold yet, now is the perfect time to start your winter knit and crochet projects. If you’re like me and have almost NO time to sit and focus, starting early is best. My goal is to have everything I want to make for my family done by the end of September right on time for the chill. I have 2 places I love to look for yarn inspiration. One is of course pinterest. The other is ravelry. You can find both paid and free patterns and some amazing, amazing ideas! I can’t show what I’m currently working on since it’s a present for a friend that claims they read all of my posts. Haha. But I wanna show a little bit of the fun stuff you can do once you learn to crochet.
First off, for those of you wanting to learn. Hit up Youtube! Like Now! There are some amazing tutorials on there. My grandma first tried to teach me to crochet and knit back when I was in college. I forget everything she said in a couple months. When I later decided I wanted to get back into it I went to Youtube and learned everything I know. I cannot say enough good things about they women that make video tutorials. They rock! I make all sorts of item but my favorites are hats. Lookie!
 
 Some of these hats were designed by me, some by other people. You can find all of these hat patterns through my project page on Ravelry. As always, I’d love to see your projects! Please share a link in the comments below or tag me on instagram @images_by_jessie or on twitter @imagesbyjessie

Stamped Photos

Hello Dearies!
This is a project I’ve been wanting to do ever since I first saw it online but I can’t find where that was originally. If you know, please tell me so I can give credit for this super fun idea. Searching for photos for this project was hard and has taught me a lot. First off, I don’t take photos they way I thought I did. My husband and I need to take more photos together. The one I choose was from 2013. 2013!!! We’ve taken a few selfies since then but I wanted something posed. I can’t believe it’s been so long. Also it turns out, I never take photos of just my daughter. I thought I did. I am constantly sneaking photos of my older son because I thought I had no good photos of him. Turns out I have hundreds of him and only a handful of her. I have a lot of photos of her posing with other people but almost none by herself. I guess it’s not so bad but I really wanted solo shots for this project.
Ok Ladies and Gents, This project is quick, easy and has the potential to be messy. What fun! :)

What you’ll need: *2 copies of a black and white photo. Size is totally up to you. I printed these myself with normal printer paper. I’ve also done this with photo paper and it works well but the stamp ink takes FOREVER to dry on the glossy photo paper so you have to be very very careful not to smudge them. Photos with simple backgrounds work the best. As you can tell the photos of my kids have simple backgrounds and turned out really well. The photo of my husband and I looks a bit messy. We may have to get someone to take a new photo for us. Ha! *Scissors *Ink pad in whatever color you would like. Black ink works too but I think color is much more fun and really pops with this project. *Rubber stamps. I used fun pattern stamps for this but you could also do something fun with words. Start by picking your stamp and ink. You want to plan out where you will stamp ahead of time. I am only stamping the backgrounds in my photos so the people in them will stay black and white. You can do a fun rainbow of colors but to keep it simple, I am just using one ink color for each photo. Even though the photos are in black and white I used the original colors of the photos to inspire me in picking my ink pads. For example, my son’s shirt was red so I used red ink in his photo. The original background of my daughter’s photo was a lush green park scene so I used green ink. You can pick out your ink however you would like. One of your photos will be stamped on and the other will be used as a template to protect the areas you don’t want stamped. Take one photo and cut away all of the background so all you have left is the subject of your photo. Line it up perfectly (or as good as you can) with the uncut photo.  Hold it into place and start stamping. Remove the cut out piece after you are done stamping the photo and you’ll see your subject sticks out beautifully.









We are not in the new house yet but this is the idea I’m going for when I finally get them framed and hung up. I will post photos when we get it done :)

I hope I explained everything alright. Feel free to ask me any questions at all and as always, I’d love to see your projects! Please share a link in the comments below or tag me on instagram @images_by_jessie or on twitter @imagesbyjessie