Hot Chocolate Bar

We hosted a party at our house this weekend and had a hot chocolate bar. The kids loved it so much. I opted to purchase the traveler box of hot chocolate from Starbucks. It comes with their festive holiday cups, lids & stirs. I included recipes for Salted Hot Caramel and Peppermint hot chocolate.

For the peppermint chips we used the Andes peppermint crunch baking bits. For the caramel I used the caramel chips that are available in the baking aisle by the chocolate chips. I served them along with chocolate sprinkles in recycled frappucino bottles.

For the decor I hung white snowflakes from Target and the Dollar Tree. I mixed them in with white tissue pom-poms. The mini white fans are from Party City. The snowflakes holding the "recipes" are from Crate & Barrel.

A little taste of Christmas at our house...

Here are a few pics of our Christmas Decorations. Hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season. We are hosting a Polar Express night party at our house for our church group this weekend. I will be posting about that in a couple of days.

DIY Salvage Wood Nightstand Dresser Restoration Hardware Style

We purchased our bedroom furniture at Z Gallerie probably about 8 years ago. I never loved it completely but it we got the floor model for a very good value. It was time for a change and I figured since I didn't love it - if I messed it up it wasn't the end of the world.

I used a regular old paint stripper. The stinky kind you let sit and then scrap off. The glossy finish came right off. I had to repeat several times but eventually that natural salvage wood like I wanted appeared. Since my furniture had a cherry finish there was a lot of pink left in the wood. I cleaned it with Soft Scrub bathroom cleaner with bleach (I know what was I thinking???). However it worked. I then used a basic water based cleaner to get the rest of. I kept wiping until the paper towels were no longer pink. I also removed the feet because there were a couple of loss ones and they made it unstable.

I am so pleased with the finished product. It has the exact Restoration Hardware look I was going for! Best of all, it only cost around $30 for all the stripper.

My Inspiration - St James Closed Nighstand from Restoration Hardware


The Old Nighstand


The DIY Salvage Wood

DIY Sunburst Mirror

I got the idea of a DIY Sunburst Mirror from the Isabella & Max Rooms Blog.

There are tons of DIY ideas all over the internet, but it is a pretty easy project. I purchased a mirror from TJ Maxx that was not the prettiest in the world. If you are going to cover it up get an ugly one - it will be priced more reasonably. Some people have used craft mirrors. I decided to get a decorative mirror so it would already have hanging hardware. I have had a glued mirror fall before and since this was going to be over my bed I decided to put safety first.

I used Bamboo sticks that I got from Michael's. Cut in varying lengths depending on the size you want. I went to a couple of websites and found some starburst mirrors I liked to get an idea on sizes. I trimmed the Bamboo sticks with scissors and then "painted" them with Rub n Buff in Gold leaf. Then I just glued away with my hot glue gun.

Materials:
Bamboo Sticks
Mirror
Rub n Buff
Glue Sticks
Hot Glue Gun

The finished product:

DIY Picture Frame Wainscoting

I have been absent from blog posting because ALL we have been doing in any spare moment we had is putting up molding for the last 2.5 months. What a job but we are so pleased with the end results. I don't have photos of the project while we are working on it - my hands always had too much paint, caulk or liquid nail on them to take photos :)

The top paint color is Vapor Trails by Benjamin Moore (matched at Dunn Edwards). We used their Velvet Finish (slight sheen from the side but looks flat from straight on - great for cleaning). Bottom "wainscoting" portion is painted Dunn Edwards Swiss Coffee in Semi-gloss.

There are so many DIY instructions out there so I won't bore you with all the details, but here are some quick tips that helped us. Please don't hesitate to comment or contact me with questions.

Cut spacer bars that you can insert in between your chair rail and molding so you dcrease the amount of measuring. We used a 4" spacer between the chair rail and in between frames.

Use Wood filler on the gaps where the chair rail meets and around the corners. We also used it on the nail holes only in the chair rail. You can sand it and you get a much smoother end result than caulk.

Use caulk on top and bottom of the places where the molding/frames meet the wall.

Use spackle to fill in the nail holes on the frames. Much easier to fill them with spackle than caulk. You could use wood filler but we had such a mass quantity that we would have never finished sanding all those small holes.

DIY Sphere Wine Whisky Barrel Hoop Chandelier

I have wanted a sphere Chandelier for a while but couldn't find the exact one I liked. Z Gallerie has the Eclipse Chandelier for $499. It is very pretty and elegant but I wanted a chunkier look. For the size I need the prices just skyrocketed from there.

My original plan was to order Whiskey or Wine barrel hoops. If you are interested there are many different sources - ebay or internet stores. They are fairly reasonable. However I was walking through the garden department and stumbled on this, which is essentially the barrel hoops just already attached. And it was around $26.



I found this chandelier at Lowes:


First I coated both the hoops and the chandelier in a pearl white paint to give them the Zinc look. This is not a necessary step however, the hoops were a bronze color and the chandelier was black.

Next drill a hole in the loop so you can feed the chandelier wires through. It is now ready to hang.

DIY Ombre Dip Dye Dress

I really wanted this dip dye dress from Modcloth but it is sold out. I had this older white shift dress from Banana Republic that was in my donations bag. I figured why not give it a shot with a DIY dip dye.



I purchased RIT liquid dye in Navy Blue. Start by trying on the garment and getting a good visual on where you want the dye pattern to change. You can mark it with a straight pin or just eyeball it. Warm up tap water in the stove or microwave. Dump the warm water in your bucket or sink (I used my kitchen stainless steel sink - be careful of fiberglass sinks - the dye might not come out). Wear protective gloves making sure to keep one glove clean and dye free to hold the light end of the garment. Dip the whole garment in if you want the bottom to be a lighter shade of the dye, if you want it white then keep that section of the garment out of the dye. Keep the middle section in about 1/2 the time of the darkest top section. Keep in mind fabrics will take the dye differently so keep your eye on it and judge accordingly. When the color desired is achieved rinse the fabric until no more dye comes out. Clean your sink up with bleach when done. Then wash garment by itself according to the garment's directions. I washed mine twice just to ensure I had no color transfer on my car seats/sofa/etc...





Make sure you give yourself plenty of time. My dress ended up being purple instead of navy because I ran out of time to keep it in the dye bath. However it worked out great for me because I have way too much navy in my closet and the purple is a welcome addition.

Let me know if you have any questions or tips.