Giveaway winner and some awards!

I have been truly blessed lately. I have been given some really wonderful awards from people I really admire.. Beth from Aunties with Advice gave me this fantastic  award..

 And the very sweet and creative Sandy Toes from Shell in your pocket gave me this pretty one.

 A creative blogging award!

 Bella at Bella Casa gave me this perfect  fall decor award (Who has some great fall decor herself!). The Crowned Casa (who always leaves me the best comments and also has such creative things on her blog) honored me with this award.. 

And finally the FABULOUSLY talented  Kari and Kijsa gave me the "Designing for Life" award!

  I am so honored. I find you all so talented and the fact that you want to pass these awards on to me really means a lot. Thank you. A girl couldn't ask for a better set of friends.

I am going to think about who I would like to pass these onto and do it in another post.. :)

Now for the Big give-away winner...

The winner is number 52!

Crunchy Green Mom!

Congrats!

I had so many people enter, I decided to draw three more names for sets of note cards!

They were Donna from Keeping it Real 

Thrifty Decor Chick

and

Crystal!

 Congratulations!

Please e-mail me your address so I can send you your goodies! I want to thank everyone who entered as well; I am looking forward to visiting all of your blogs!

Have  a Happy and safe Halloween!

 ~Jen

Bloggy Giveaway and trip reveal...

Welcome to the Bloggy Giveaways and thanks for stopping by~! 

My treat is I'll be giving away a personal  writing center; it includes 

a personalized hand-papered and painted box(similar to this size.. but you pick the colors and motif) to hold ALL OF THE GOODIES,

a set (6) of note cards with one of my colored pencil drawings (above), paper, pencils and some other fun surprise bits and pieces tucked inside( worth $60 +  ! ). To enter, leave a comment on THIS post. I'll close the drawing on October 30th and announce the winner on Halloween! 

Now there's a treat! ;)

Also, check in on the other bloggy giveaways to win some great stuff! 

And for any one that guessed I am going to Kentucky.. you're right!  I am going to be participating in a holiday home show this these two fabulous, diet-coke drinking bloggers at her gallery...  (which can I tell you is my dream studio?).

It will be November 14th and 15th, so if you're in the Kentucky area please stop by see all of our wonderful holiday goodies and say hi! 

Good Luck! :)

~ Jen

A very special trip....

I have been busy, busy ,busy painting and papering all kinds of things...

Boxes...

  My hand-papered journals and all kinds of other knicky-knacks... 

I am going on an adventure with some old  friends to meet up with some new friends..

To a very special place to participate in a holiday gift show...

Some place I've been before and am very happy to go back to...

Can you guess where?

By the way, I'll be participating the the  bloggy giveaways on Monday! Stop back to see the goodies and enter!

~Jen

Updated buffet

I thought this buffet had a great shape, but the color was really dated...

I left the handles on and painted over them.

A little black and gold paint and some distressing and...

It's much more current. Today, I had to go back to my booth and take a picture to show you, I almost forgot! Here are a few others:

~Jen

Ragamuffin garland directions

If any one is looking for directions to make a ragamuffin garland; you can find them in the article I did for the local paper here....

But I also have to tell you that Nichole at The Pumpkin Seed did my project and out-ragamuffined me! 

Her's is way cooler than 

mine. She has  a really cute blog and lots of great projects!

~Jen

Halloween blog party

Living Locurto is having  a Halloween blog party so I thought I'd join in.  I though I would enter my pumpkin party, but I found a few extra photos in the Halloween stash that I don't think I've shown before.

So stop on over and say hi or even join in...it's going to be "spooktacular!" ;)

~Jen

Antiqued table

I had a client a few years  go who wanted  a table antiqued, and she wanted it to resemble one she had found in a big name department store. This is the before.

One of the secrets behind aging something is when picking your base color, you have to remember what ever brown color you pick for over the top is going to not only darken it, but effect your final result because it will change the base color. This before picture already has the base color on.

This is after. See how much more yellow the brown glaze has tinted it?

And the trick to doing a table when it has  an extra section for extending it? DO the main table first and then add the leaf in and match it up. If you do it with the leaf in it, when you take it out and close it, the two sides won't match.

I have been trying to get back to every one who's left a comment; but we had a small family thing going on, so I am a little behind. I hope to talk with everyone soon! :)

Have a great weekend!

~Jen

Books, books, earrings, and more books.

I won an Amazon gift card at Bella's blog and I finally decided what to order. Do you want to see what a geek I am?

The first book I can totally justify. 

These books by Dover are awesome books to make a patterns and get ideas from. 

Now these books are for pure entertainment.. and I can get my geeky sci-fi fix on. Especially since the series in on hiatus.

  It's a great British show if you aren't familiar with it and believe me.. the guy who plays the main character makes the show easy to watch ;)

Thank you so much Bella! 

And a while ago I won these cute little earrings a drawing from Karla and lost the picture when my computer crashed. Now I want to say  big THANK YOU to Karla for being so patient and for picking me! They are adorable! If you haven't been to her blog she's an artiste extraordinaire!

And as a blogger who is striving to be a much more serious writer, I LOVE this book and if you get a chance to pick it up, you should ( You can also listen to her podcasts.)...

 I am not much for all that book learnin' and once I tried to figure out all of the rules for the semi-colon and I almost lost consciousness...But, the author makes the tips interesting, easy, and has great mental tricks to remember many of the rules. One thing that finally sunk in after all of these years is ALOT is not a real word. it's A LOT; no matter what (how 'bout that semi-colon use ;) ? Even though spell-checker constant corrected me I still always did it the wrong way. Now, I finally get it and correct myself.  

 If you blog, even if you don't consider yourself one you are a writer, so get yourself ejumacated and  check out her book. I found mine at the library first and it's been a ton of help.

~Jen

Blog Action Day

Today is Blog action day to fight poverty. While we don't always have much ourselves, some people have even less....Bella has a video on her blog if you'd like to check it out. I think there are so many ways we can donate besides huge buckets of money. A dollar here or there will help. Clothing donations even that stray can on food into the grocery store bin helps. And they say times are tight for us, but even tighter for those in need. 

***

I have to mention Free Rice . It's a fun word game you can play that feeds the hungry. It's a small action we can make that takes nothing but brain power.

~Jen

Two make-overs for the price of one

In preparation for a move  to a "big girl bed", we had to move the room around so both beds would fit. They used to be on opposite ends of the room, but in such a cozy room, they seemed to fit best next to each other. Where two night stands worked before now it looked like, well, you know... (Do you like how I took a picture of the room at it's messiest so the change is really dramatic? My favorite thing is that this is the damage little girls can do in a short period of time.) 

I found this night stand for $35 and snatched it up. Do you know how hard it is to find a really nice 3 drawer nightstand? I jumped on it when I saw it! 

 But of course it wasn't  fancy enough.

 So I added some appliques and painted it the pinkest of pink. Little gold accents and this is what I ended up with.

Of course I did the top too, but more on that later. With such a special piece of furniture, I couldn't just put any old knobs on it.

I  found the knobs for the top drawer at this fabulous  dreamy boutique in St. Charles. I also I love to read her blog and she has a great little on-line shop where she also sells the knobs. I went to her anniversary party and I was an hour early (how rude!). Did you know she graciously opened the doors for me any way?! How wonderful is that? Even though she was so busy and hectic  she was still really gracious. She also gave me some  lavender sachets which have become one of my favorite things in the whole world (More about those another post though ;) ).

Aren't these knobs amazing? They are glass flowers.I am still looking for handles, hence the old yucky ones still on the bottom drawers, but you know how sometimes you just feel particular about something? I know I will find the perfect handles! And I will not settle for less ;)! I might even go for another visit at Lola B's  more  knobs and just drill new holes.

 Well,it ended up being such a great little piece I couldn't put that old, gross lamp back on there, so I found this cute little guy for $6! But I didn't think he was very fitting.

 I kind of wanted  a lamp with a wider base, but I loved that he was a rabbit.

 So he got a coat of cream paint and I glued two of those pre-cut round wood pieces that you find at Michael's or Hobby Lobby with Gorilla glue. I painted them as well after drying and it was ready to go. You could do this for almost any lamp as long as the wood is wide enough to not make the lamp wobbly and the cord is free and clear.
I added a bit of a bow tie,

And  a new shade and we were ready to go! 

Except, which side of the duvet should I use?

 He happily gets to sit on top of his new home, 

that is probably going to stay covered for a little bit. :)

Total tally?

night stand $35

lamp $6

wood rounds $6

Shade $11

2 Knobs @$8

Total :$64

But the best part is is I put the night stands in my booth for $40 a piece. So I actually made money on the make over.

And we can finally have some room for that big girl bed!

~Jen