DIY Display Bow Tie Storage

My Bestie Dannette came in to help me nest this last week.

She has come in my last trimester for about a week for each of my three pregnancies.
She comes probably because she knows I'm losing my mind trying to get everything ready.

She also comes to pamper me like crazy and words will never express how sweet it is to be loved by her! She came. She cleaned. She pampered and… she crafted. A lot.

It was kind of like crafting boot camp as I tried to cram all of my last minute projects plus all the ones I've been wanting to do for her into the few days she was here.

We accomplished a crazy amount of things.

While I should probably show you all of them and be a good blogger like that…
I'll just show you the one that we had to really think out of the box for.

Bryan and I went with a "Little Gentleman" theme with our third bambino's room and I have had the best time designing it and figuring it out. Here is a sneak peek!

Big shout out to my friend Sarah who made that wooden mustache sign for me. It is absolutely flawless and I feel so loved by it since she use to come to ME for wood sign advice!! She's a mad pro now. 

Back to the Room - One thing I wanted was to have some little man bow ties.
One of the first projects Dannette and I did was make about ten little bow ties that would be spread out between our four boys. Five of which we made infant size.

I wanted to incorporate the bow ties in my design scheme for the room.
And after working like half a day on them I wanted those puppies displayed for sure!

I knew I was going to put them on wood. (Of course… I mean really, did you think anything else from me?) 

I cut a 28 inch board and stained it to my liking. Yet, the tricky part was figuring out how could I attach the bow ties to the board and be able to remove them anytime I wanted to use one?

We bought some cup hooks… yet that was a fail because the hooks were curved and you couldn't curve the bow tie middle around it and keep it on.

As we were thinking about it we were discussing how we could get some clips to help make the toddler bow ties for the other boys. I pulled out some old hair prong clips from some of my first projects and I'm not sure which genius (My husband or Dannette) said it first but the clip suddenly became our answer.

What if we hot glued a hair clip to the wood and used that to slide the bow ties on and off on?!

Yep. That simple. 

After sadly dropping Dannette off to the airport today, I ran to a Sally's Beauty Supply and picked up some hair prong clips for $1.67. These looked so good they might also even work for the bigger bow ties we made for our older little guys. Maybe. I'll have to let you know. :)

I grabbed my glue gun, my tape measure and my bow ties and went to work!

It awesomely took about five minutes. While I tried to measure them perfectly out, that lasted for about a minute and then I just did it by sight.

Here is a photo of how the bow ties slide on and off of the prong clips. I did not glue the bow ties to the prong clips. I glued the bottom half of the prong clip to the wood and made sure the top half could still open and close.

This is the piece of wood with just the prongs attached to it. 

Then with all the colorful bow ties! Instant awesome functional decor! 

It's adorables! Plus they slide off so smooth!!

I am super excited about it and can't wait to try each of those little bow ties on our new little boy.
Only six weeks left!

Still have some stuff I'd like to get done but NOTHING that if I didn't get it done would make us not ready for Ezra! Whew… I can breathe. :)

Hope to share some more with you real soon!

God bless and Much Love,

 Jessica 

Our Map Wall Reveal!

Remember when I did that Herringbone Stripe Wall back in January and the fun insanity that led to me even doing that in my laundry room?

It may have taken me six months but I got some more work done on it!
The Lord has been so kind to teach my "I need to get this done now so I don't lose my brain" mind to chill and it is totally fine if projects take months.

Living life in between finishing projects is totally worth it.

As well as having an awesome loving husband who cares about my mental sanity so makes time to help me finish said projects.

For some reason I have poured a lot of decorating into one of the smallest rooms in our house:
The Laundry Room.

I mean, I like laundry. I love to wear clothes, definitely wouldn't make it in a nudest colony. It doesn't bother me to do laundry… it's just I forget that I started to do laundry so I'll go to do another load and find one already sitting in the machine from who knows when. Oops…

So, logically… if I made the room beautiful it would help me stay on top of laundry!

I know. I laughed out loud at that absurd thought too. Oh silly me…

But seriously what is the harm of making a room for chores into something beautiful? Yea, nothing.

First I painted the entire room BRIGHT WHITE. We are taking white out white. I'm not great at picking whites and I picked this one white thinking I would use it to paint all the rooms in the boy's wing.

To be practical I bought a five gallon bucket of this BRIGHT WHITE cause it was on sale!
My husband was horrified and even more horrified when he saw the color.

Fail. We've used it enough that he hasn't thrown up yet and since the room was really dark the BRIGHT WHITE really brightens it up.

By now you saw my Herringbone Wall that I put in there. It was a ton of fun to do and really added the pop of color it needed.

Next I needed to organize…




It wasn't terrible… it just wasn't neat and kinda looked thrown up there. Which it kinda was.



I wanted some basket storage and found the top two baskets at Goodwill for $4 a piece. Then I got the other smaller baskets at World Market for $7 a piece. They were yellow and the bigger ones were brown so I spray painted them all gray!

Spray painting baskets is a great easy fix and baskets take the color extremely well. If you wanted to try out spray paint for the first time, grab a basket and go nuts. It will be very gratifying.

The yellow tin on top I ordered from Crate & Barrel. Eventually I will paint "SOAP" on it.
One day I'm sure.

The wire basket holding white lint cloths is from the Container Store and the Nellie's White Brightener for whites was from World Market. That stuff works like no body's business. Though White Brite works just as well and is $3 cheaper. When my tin of Nellie's runs out I'm sure I'll just buy White Brite and pour it into it cause the tin is adorable.

The brown crate was something I had rescued from a Fossil Mall Dump. Yes. I went looking for boxes to use for packing and Fossil was getting rid of tons of wooden crates and goodies they had used as display pieces. They even loaded into my van for me. Giant Win.

That happened after I had just complained to a friend that all these bloggers find all this amazing stuff and it is so insane and yea… the Lord is still working on me folks.

People aren't really kidding when they say basket storage makes things look so much better.

Looks so much better doesn't it? It makes me feel accomplished to have a clean space… anywhere… in the house so when I pass this it makes me sigh with a bit of relief.
Not all the world is chaos.

The next step was the one I had waited FOREVER to tackle.

Our Map Wall.


I wanted to do two around the entrance doors. One door leading to the garage and the other door leading into the house. Currently we only got around to one wall. It took us a full day to cut the paper, glue it down to the wall and smooth it out.

But… it is my favorite wall almost ever and I get to see it every time I come home!!

Joy.

If you want a tutorial on it… I would not be the girl to teach it to you. I will tell you that yes, it looks daunting but seriously… it is a giant cut and paste craft. If you have an exacto

 knife, a wallpaper sponge, a wallpaper smoother and some Zisser Paste, you my friend have the tools of a wall paper master.

Ok, not really but for our Map Wall that was all we used and all our maps ordered from Papersource.Com. They weren't wall paper but rather thick wrapping paper sheets.
They worked perfectly.

Here is what we started with:

Bryan measured the wall and made a replica of it in Painter's tape on our dining room floor.

We used it to arrange the maps and decide which one went where.

Then we started cutting

and pasting

and on the wall it went!

Thankfully our sweet monsters were a huge help during this process by keeping to themselves…

And it only took us maybe five hours… it would have been faster if the wall had been level and I wasn't married to a perfectionist engineer. But I am and I adore him and he let me use a big paint brush to play with sticky glue. Always fun. :) 

And there you have it. 

One stunning wall that makes you sigh with happiness every time you walk in. 

Well, it does it for me anyway.

It's special to us in the fact that we have actually traveled together to each of those maps pasted on that wall save one: The British Isles. We will get there one day but until then we have had quite some adventures and now we get to be reminded of them every time we come home. 

We have a few more projects to do in the laundry room including the other Map wall and all of my wood projects so stay tuned! 

You never know what will happen next in the McCarty House. 

God bless and Much Love,

 Jessica 

This is linked up at Motivational Monday, DIY Dreamer & Work it Wednesday!

I Live!

Hi.

Long time no see. ;)

For the last three months I have been swimming in the awesomeness of Vacation Bible School.
I had somehow convinced our Children's Church Coordinator that we should totally write it from scratch and it would be super crazy easy…

It was not super crazy easy. It took an insane amount of planning, work, people and crepe paper.
But it was a blast and a beautiful success. Completely worth it.

And now that VBS is over… it is time for me to Nest. 

I think if Nesting was an Olympic Sport I'd be on that team in a heartbeat.

My nesting includes building closet storage, painting four rooms, making bedding from scratch, finishing any project I've left hanging this year (since the baby took me out for two months and then VBS for three) and oh having a baby.

It's so exciting! 

Ezra Nathaniel will be here in less then 3 months (seriously longest pregnancy EVER) so it's time to get in gear!

It's also time to catch up with you! We've pulled our way through a few projects during these last few months and I can't wait to show you them. They aren't done but that's projects for you…

It is a part of the journey! It's ok to be really on top of projects and it's ok to let them fester for a few months to focus on something more important.

Whenever you get them done is whenever they will need to be done.

I'm also blessed to be reading a new book this Summer call The Meaning of Marriage by Tim Keller.

Let's be honest… marriage is my favorite thing ever and it's something I will never know everything about. I mean it's another person with their own thoughts, feelings, dreams, goals living with you who helps you make little tiny versions of you and him together and it's this crazy awesome ride that is always in need of attention and time.

But it's also one of the two beautiful ways Jesus uses to describe His relationship with us.

Marriage & Adoption are used throughout the Bible to help our feeble minds understand how much the Lord has done for us. How he plucked us out of nothing and made us His own. How Jesus laid down his life for us like He lays down his life for the church.

Doesn't it make you all tingly inside?

No? Not yet? No biggie.

It will one day. :)

So, have a fantastic week and I'll check in again this week with what I have somewhat finished these last few months.

God bless and Much Love,

 Jessica 

DIY Gold Confetti Curtains

I love curtains.

They help make a room.

When I was in the planning stages of my dining room in my head I knew I needed some statement curtains. I looked for a bit online but knew I wouldn't find what I was looking for…

I needed gold curtains and not solid gold curtains.

The gold would tie in with Bryan's grandparents china that his parents had given us.

It is beautiful china and it needs a great curtain to tie to it.

If you are going to make your own curtains I can not suggest enough starting off with Ikea white curtains. Seriously. They are fantastic. They are thick, beautifully done and under $30 for two.

No joke.

All my curtains in my house are Ikea Curtains that I've embellished in some way. Check it.

For the dining room curtains my first thought was of course stripes. I like stripes and stripe curtains are  super doable. I have them in my living room.

Yet, looking around my house… I don't think it needs anymore stripes. Drat.

Then I thought maybe one big accent stripe and I even found fabric and bought it.

But… I just wasn't sold on it… if only there was something new and fresh and fun and…

ooo…. Hello. Gold Confetti. Bet I could put that on a curtain… DING. 
But how...?

I'm not a fan of painting curtains. They say it's way easier but… it doesn't look way easier.
So, when I decided to do gold polka dots I thought of cutting out the dots and fusing them onto my curtains with an iron. Yea… cause that is WAY easier.

I was explaining my plan to my husband and I could see him start to pale.

Hubby: "How many circles would you need?"
Me: "Maybe 200?"
Hubby: "You… want to cut out… 200 little circles and then iron them onto curtains?" 

Well, when you say it out loud… yea it sounds really stupid and horrifyingly time consuming.
That gold fabric is just going to have to sit in my filing cabinet till one day I can do something with it.

I was stuck now. Couldn't make the circles, wasn't a fan of painting them… I was in a pickle.
Until one day I ran across this lady's blog about the best paint for fabric: screen print paint.
It doesn't dry hard. It holds it's color and STAYS IN PLACE.

I gave it a try on some Wifey T-shirts and let's just say… I'm IN LOVE!!

Off to Hobby Lobby where I bought about five bottles of it and now I was ready to go!

Here is what I needed to get started:

• A big flat surface to lay down the curtains.
• The Curtains. I bought 118" Ikea Ritva curtains. I needed 3 panels so I bought 2 packs. 
• Gold paint. I used Simply Screen Print Paint in Gold Dust. 
• A paintbrush
• Something to make my circles. 

For all you mason jar lovers out there, as it so happens the mason jar opening is the perfect circle size. 

Win. 

While I love this paint, it does go through the fabric. No biggie. Just make sure you have something under it. Something as awesome as my put together work space. Yes, those are cardboard boxes and a giant cutting mat. Epic. I know. It works. 

Since they are confetti curtains there is no rhyme or reason to the dots. They aren't perfectly spaced so no measuring is required. I do want them to look cohesive so I put two side by side so the dots would trail off around the same spots.

The best way to do this is to make a bunch of circle outlines then go back with your paintbrush and fill them in. You will use a lot of paint but when you put it down, it stays in place. It never bleeds. 

Seriously amazing. 

Start at the top with more circles. Don't be afraid to overlap. As you head down your curtains just start putting more space between your circles. It's all up to you and how you want it to look. 

That's the best part of it.

Once I finished one I moved it over and started on my next one. 

My husband jumped in and helped me paint the last two since it is a bit time consuming but if you put on some music during nap time and have some eye candy hubs to look at from time to time…

It goes by super fast. :) 

I let them dry over night then my husband hung them up the next day and I promise I heard people singing when they rested in their new home…

Granted, it was my kids singing but it was still epic. 

There you have it! Gold Confetti curtains! 

With the mint and the gold and the awesomeness… Happiness. 

That they are my husband's favorite curtains in the house = happiness x 10. 

Painting curtains is definitely not as hard as I thought. You should give it a try. 

Especially gold confetti ones… super awesome. 

God bless and Much Love,

 Jessica 

Well, aren't you Mint-tastic: Dining Room Reveal

When I find myself in a busy season the first thing I cut out so I can breathe a bit is... the blog.

I don't make any money off of it but it's more of a fun little hobby that I hope can inspire people to know God more, love their hubbys more or maybe pick up a new skill.

When I finished my first craft ages ago in 2010 it was a lame little hair flower. 

It was. We don't have to be nice about it. But… I made it. Even though it wasn't super easy and needed a lot of work that was the fun part of it! Learning and growing.

So, if you read my blog and it inspires you to even try a new coffee flavor (which I have no idea how you got that idea from reading this blog but I digress…) or kidnap your husband for a date (that seems more likely) that's exciting! 

Because if you have read anything of mine you know that if I can do it… ANYONE can at least attempt it! 

While I haven't had much going on these past few months since I spent the first trimester napping and trying to eat… I have kind of gotten off the couch the last two weeks and made a few signs but I have been neglectful in showing you projects I have completed. 

So, in honor of the fact that I am hosting my first ever Family Holiday for my side of the family this coming Sunday I thought I'd show off a little bit of work that I completed. 

Now, I've hosted my husband's family for Easter and Christmas but this is my Mom and Sister. 

I have some big shoes to fill to follow in my crazy amazing Mom's footsteps. 

Hopefully this dinning room will help -- 

If you've seen my Facebook or previous posts I've mentioned the elusive "Dining Room" with the Mint walls and gold polka dot curtains… I've had this room in my mind for months. 

Yet, this mint color…

I'm not going to lie to you…. took forever and it wasn't fun. 

Colors are sometimes not our friend. They aren't. We have a color in our mind, we go to the paint store and is that color there in the exact perfect shade?

Uh no. 

I looked for this Mint color for six months. 

Six. Months. 

For a color… I mean really. 

I tried them on a board first so I wouldn't have paint splotches on my wall for months.

After I ran out of board… I just went to the wall anyway. 

Look at all those color variations…. 

After buying every Mint color I could find (12 different samples) I started mixing my own.

There were two colors I liked but one was too dark and the other too light…

Bleh…

But eventually we found it. 

It was Mint-Tastic and when I painted my dark gray next to it in the entryway it made it shine even more. 

Bryan and I had gone back and forth about painting the entire entryway/dining room Mint. 

Yet, Bryan hates mint. I mean the poor man really does not like that color. He has dragged his feet the entire time I've wanted to paint that room Mint and when I finally gave up and was like, "Ok we will paint it gray," since the man wants EVERY ROOM gray… 

He said no. I wanted Mint. It should be Mint and that he would just close his eyes when he walked past it. It's so sad and so romantic all at the same time… I seriously love that man and I do not deserve him.

But I'll keep him forever. 

So, it got painted mint! 

Now while Bryan may hate the color… he loves my Gold Polka Dot Curtains… that I will share tomorrow! 

God bless and Much Love,

 Jessica