Sorry Homer...

Oh AOK, you gotta love him, but his decorating skills have to be harnessed and let go in one place only- his workshop. Otherwise I come home to this:

While I love Jack, The Situation, Homer, and especially Mr. Dough-boy, I'm not sure my kitchen above my pretty dishes is the place for them... I had to think quick, before they took up permanent residence here.

I remembered a couple of months back when I visited a thrift store in Houston I picked up some cute vintage yellow plates, not really knowing what I'd do with them. But for $3.99 I couldn't pass them up!

They have a sort of modern look to them, and I got the GENIUS idea to vinyl them up! I asked my lovely boss (who blogs here) if she would cut me some vinyl lettering using her silhouette machine. AND she did!

I chose a modern font, all caps, and what better word fits in the kitchen then "EAT?" Usually my go to hanging method is hot gluing a saw tooth hanger to the back of WHATEVER, but I thought for these plates I should do something different. I bought some of these & found they would work quite perfectly, I just had to be a little smart for them to work for me.

Obviously with these plates I had a clear top & bottom, these hangers get STICKY quick so I knew I wanted to just put them down on the plate once. I thought it would be best for me to mark the top of the plate with tape so that when I flipped it over I would know exactly where to put the hanger.

Then I flipped them over & attached the sticky hangers knowing exactly where to place the hanger.

See how the hooks match up to the tape?

Then all I had to do was take off the tape & hang them up using my trusty, life changing, hanging method that I've shown you previously. AND VOILA!

Much better, don't you think? Sorry Homer, to kick you to the curb, but I'll find you a new home soon enough.

I love it! One of my favorite projects to date and it cost me about $8 for the plates & sticky hangers.

Have any of you called out your man and thrown something of theirs to the curb?

Happy HUMP day!

Linking up here this week: Craft & Tell over at Cherished Bliss, Show Me What You Got at Not JUST a Housewife, Running with Glitter, Passionately Artistic, Tuesday Tutorials at The Kurtz Corner (love her!), Creative Juice Thursday at Momnivore's Dilemma, Show & Tell Party at For Mamas and Hookin' up with HoH over at House of Hepworths!

Valspar Virtual Makeover

So, have you ever wanted to “try on” a color before actually painting it on something? I change my mind constantly because I’m not exactly totally sure what the end result is going to be. This is not the case anymore. Valspar’s website to save the day!

Did you know you can upload your own pictures to Valspar’s website and virtually paint your room, cabinets, mailboxes, heck even your hair color?! I’m in love, it’s totally helping me “try on” some paint colors. Here’s my little tutorial on my most recent virtual paint session. I need your help deciding too! (click on the pictures to make them larger)

First- Open up the Valspar website and under Explore Colors, select Virtual Painter.

Next- Upload a photo of your room or whatever you want to change the color of…

I want to change the color of the shutters on the front of our house plus the mailbox to “match.” The brownish orange tan rust color really dates our house I think and we kind of have a modern thing going on. Here are a couple of pictures of the front to give you an idea:

I also will end up painting the front door as well. It’s been a dream of mine to have a red front door & figure the shutters/mailbox have to go together. But I’m also digging blue right now and color in general so I wanted to do a full researched virtual paint session. Valspar has a bajillion paint colors to choose from.  In the upper left hand corner you can select different color groupings to pick your one color to paint your picture. See here:

When I first went to paint the shutters this is what happened:

So I had to use the selection tool to draw my paintable area. I just selected the entire shutter to paint and drew a rectangle around it using this tool option shown below. Just make sure to completely close your shape so that only the inside will be filled with paint:

Then just filled in my selection with various paint colors. Which is your favorite?

Blue:

Red:

Green:

Yellow:

Grey:

Definitely could use your help deciding because AOK told me to just leave it a lone & that "plain is better!" Have you used a tool like this before? Can’t wait to do this project. I think I will add a planter box under the window too, to make it a little more homey!

Happy HUMP day!

Hookin' Up over at House of Hepworths today. Allison by far has one of my favorite home blogs. I feel like I know her so well and feel closer to her because we both live in Texas :-D Go Texas Girls!

HOL(e)Y TOOTHPASTE!

Hey there!
Told you I'd be back today with something to share! This will be a quick post- but let me tell you it will be life changing. At least it was life changing for me... I'm so dramatic. But for real, life changing.

A friend gave me some CUTE letters awhile back that spelled out "home" and in the process of getting our back porch ready for AOK's birthday party next weekend I decided I should probably hang them up. I also wanted to try a trick I saw on Pinterest a few weeks ago that involved toothpaste of all things. I am notorious for guesstimating when it comes to hanging things on the wall. I am too lazy to get a tape measure and do it a logical way and then usually end up with 5 millions tiny holes in my wall. Oh not anymore, I had this hung up in less than 5 minutes, with only the necessary holes!

If you put just a dab of toothpaste on the back of the picture, mirror, letter, wall hanging, whatever on the spot where it will need to be hung, like so... see the tiny dots of toothpaste on the hooks?

Then put it on the wall where you want it to ultimately hang, if you look close, you can see two tiny white dots, from the toothpaste. Then just put your nails, pins, etc., into the toothpaste dots.

And VOILA! It's hung, with only the necessary holes in the wall and so quick. If I were using my guesstimating technique, this probably would have taken me 30 minutes at least. I did it in about 5. Aren't these letters adorable?

Here's a wide angle, you can see AOK's shop in the background & all the stuff I was organizing on the back porch!

And here is the other angle. Those two windows go into our living room. That is our back door- it will get a paint job in the distant future. That's on the "ultimate" to do list!

We had a productive day around here. I told my sister she would have been so proud. I am sort of a girly girl when it comes to chores and what not. I do not really like doing things outside admittedly. But I had some surge of energy and wait until you see what I did. Watch for that post this week!

Happy Picture Hanging! (and Happy Weekend too!)

Hookin' Up Over at Dittle Dattle today for Amaze Me Monday. I love her blog because she incorporates Motocross into some of her home decor designs. AOK appreciates this just as much (if not more) as I do! You can find her link party button over there in my side bar if you want to participate :)