Book Jackets

I have loved my living room built in bookcases, but never found a way to style them that I liked. There is actually a funny story to this. Mr. JCrew learned what triggers me to make me made… move around items on my bookcase! He says he has never seen me madder than when someone rearranges my bookshelves.

We had the shelves made because that was one of Mr. JCrew’s few requests for the new house. He wanted a place for all his books. He loves books and buys so many. Our bookshelves were almost not enough space!

I see many style their bookshelves with little to know books. They look great when there is not a lot on them. As pretty as they are, I see wasted space!

Source: Young House Love

There is nothing wrong with displays on shelves. I love how they look. But when I struggle with "looks vs functionality," the functionality wins. I was looking for a way to make my functionality on the shleves look more pleasing.

I arranged the books to be in different spaces. I put some up and down and stacked others. It gave some variety. But the multiple colors were distracting. Mr. JCrew doesn’t buy pretty books. They are nerdy and have bright colors.

I liked the idea of sorting books by a color spectrum, but it wasn’t going to work.

Source: Rue

After I redid the other side of the bookshelf with different boxes and baskets for the kids toys, I fell in love with the color pattern.

Their toys are really hidden in there. I love it!

So, I searched from brown paper, grey paper and white paper. I was going to make jackets for the books. I used the contractors' paper they use to cover up floors for the brown. I found a white wrapping paper and the grey was bulletin board paper.

I spent a lot of time wrapping the books. I did this in October/November timeframe and the boys thought I was wrapping the books to give as presents. They knew Christmas was coming. I wrapped a few each night.

I then wrote on the spines, in fine pen, the titles. I didn’t want the titles to be seen from far away, because I thought it would be a distraction from the simplicity.

Some books are from my childhood, and are a little girly for my boys to read, but I didn’t want to throw them away. People buy books they don’t read just to be fillers on their shelf. That’s what my old books could be.

I really like how it turned out. It is much more soothing than all the random colors of the books. They are grouped in categories, which is more helpful for Mr. JCrew when he is looking for something. If I had arranged by color, he’d be on the hunt for a book forever.

I still have the top left shelf to recover. They will be in wrapped in the brown paper. I think it will really balance the white box in front of them. 

Shelves are hard. I am not good at styling them. What my eye is drawn to, is not something I can create. But I'm heading in the direction I like. Even after writing this post and adding pictures, I can see more changes I can make. Always a process, and enjoying it.

Door Threshold Fix

I’ve had a lot of little projects going on, and I finally have time to write about them.

First up, a little update to the threshold of the door that leads to the garage.

The way our house came, there was nothing under the threshold in the garage. I didn’t know there needed to be, but if you put your foot in just the right spot, it would sink a little. I wanted to find a pretty solution so that it wouldn’t become a problem in the future.

My sister-in-law had beautiful brick under her threshold in her garage. I have it under the threshold leading out to the back porch.

I took some extra brick I had from lining my flowerbeds and stuck them under the threshold.

It has sat like this for 3 years. The threshold is slanted, so the brick only fit in the middle and to the right, but not the left side. I knew I needed to cut them, but didn’t want to mess with cutting brick.

I then thought if I was going to cut brick, I might as well cut them in half to create the look of the brick outside.

It wasn’t until last month, that I decided to buy a piece of pressure-treated wood that I could cut and paint.

It’s just what I did. I painted it white to match the trim around the door.

Now it looks polished and complete. It has function and looks pretty.

Little JCrew helped of course. Wearing a bike helmet protected him from losing his balance.

The wood was $3 for an 8-foot piece. I had the saw and the paint, so this was an easy and cheap project.

O Christmas Tree, O Christmas Tree

I jumped on the train, a little late, but I’m on it!

I saw this idea many years ago and said I would do it when my kids were old enough. I could have done it last year, but I was still a sleep-deprived new momma and had no energy.

It wasn’t that hard. Maybe took me thirty minutes TOTAL!

I bought a yard of green felt in the fabric department and then got felt pieces in the craft department. Although, I just saw at Target last Friday that they have a felt tree in a box already ready to hang. It was $10, but they had a 50% off coupon. 

My fabric was 37 inches wide and I made an executive decision the tree would be four feet tall.

I’m a symmetrical gal and my shapes need to be near perfect. My tree would have four tiers (each 12 inches) and the top tier would be 12 inches wide. I then was looking for how wide the middle two layers needed to be. I wanted them to evenly and gradually get bigger.

I used a Magna Doodle from the toy basket to write my fancy calculations. Mr. JCrew jumped in and our brains work so differently. We both got the same answer, but we went around the pole in opposite directions.

I didn’t mean to, but my edges came out “edgey.” Went perfect with the look of branches on the tree.

I used a puzzle piece to cut out the ornaments, and a plate to get a curved line for the garland.

I then used Commmand Strips of Velcro to get the tree on to the wall. The boys LOVE it.

Little JCrew lined up most of the ornaments. My little organizer, melts my heart.

Mr. Brigglesworth loved it, too. I’m doing a daily count of the ornaments to make sure the little guy doesn’t make off with them and throw them away. (He is so good, too good, at throwing things away.)

Actually, I'm not having to watch Mr. Brigglesworth as much as I'm having to watch Kates! She pulls those ornaments right off. Her favorite are the green candycanes. If it's low, she just goes up to the tree and bites it off.

We already have a little tree the boys can’t touch, but now they have their own that they can mess up all day.

Cookies

My tummy hurts! It’s a good hurt. 

Last weekend was full of cookies and sweets.

I made a Pumpkin Roll and I’m still eating it this week.

I love those things.

It was a normal cookie exchange, but I provided some non-cookie things to balance out the sugar.

I never get to hang with the ladies, and it’s hard to find babysitters, so we made it a playdate. The kids had sooo much fun. There were 15 of them!

We even had crafts to make and my boys have them displayed on our windows.

Haven’t figured out where to put our manger scene.

And while we had the chance, the moms got their picture taken.

You can tell the kids that love their momma’s! Except my children are swapped. Little JCrew is a Daddy’s boy. Mr. Brigglesworth was too busy being busy to notice what we were doing. Little JCrew was interested in the camera.

I love getting the kids together. Any excuse I can come up with, I will. Such a great group of kids. Thanks, Ladies!

Black Cat Pumpkin

Little JCrew loves all things orange, and he knows about pumpkins, so this is his current favorite time of year.

The first time we were in a store and saw the orange pumpkins, we got one. Then we got another.

I decided to paint one black. The intention is to paint it like a cat for Halloween, and then repaint it for Thanksgiving.

I used the black paint I had on hand from an earlier project (I never throw away paint!)

I used my craft white paint to paint on the cat face. Bad idea.

It decided to rain two days later and the face melted off.

Back to my original plan of using the Kilz primer. That stuff will stay on in the rain.

And it has. Now the cat face it back to normal.

It's cute. It goes along well with my ghosts made out of milk jugs from a few years ago.

Ha, I'm not the best artist, but it came out decent..

That's as crafty as we got this Halloween. I hope everyone and their kids have a safe holiday

Finding Homes for My Electric Lanterns

I had four lanterns that I madeelectric. They now needed homes.

My mom already had the same lanterns on her side porch, and I decided to give her one of my small ones to replace the light fixture by her front door.

Their previous lantern is just like mine on the front porch, I’d love to replace mine, but I need a little light there because of the storm door that hits it when open.

All I had to do was cut off the plug and actually hook up the lanterns to a light switch!

I just took down her old light and hung up the new one.

We bought a switch plate with a small hole to cover up the electrical box and allow for the cord to come through.

I think it looks lovely!

With my remaining small lantern, I put it back where it was on the back porch.

I drilled a hole in the mortar.

Then cut the plug off the cord and fed it through the hole down the wall.

It wasn’t as easy as it should have been. I couldn’t take the box out of the wall, so I was trying to fish the wire somehow.

My mom let me borrow a light. It was pretty cool. It let me see better.

I still couldn’t see the cord!!! I then taped a magnet onto the end of the wire and fed it back into the hole in the wall outside.

The light I borrowed had a magnetized end.

Back when I added the lanterns on thefront of the house, I didn’t have to worry about feeding the wire through the wall. I just made a hole in the garage.

With the two big lanterns, I rearranged my porch furniture and put a lantern on the side table.

The other lantern, I put back on the wall where it use to be.

I taped the white wires with electrical tape, to blend them in.

Then Gorilla tape to securely keep the wire close to the lantern.

I then bought a brown extension cord and a cover connector and buried the cord along the edge of the patio.

The two lanterns are connected to a timer. It is a dusk-to-dawn or 2-hr, 4-hr, 6-hr, 8-hr timer for only $10.

Because it has a photosensor, I couldn't hide it like I wanted it to, but I drew attention away from it with the plants.

I’m really excited about my new outdoor space. We were toying with the idea of screening in the porch, and luckily it didn’t work out.

I really like not being confined to the porch. And the new arrangement of furniture is currently in the way of where a wall would be.

They provide just enough light at night. They come on everynight for two hours.

With the other lights on, the place it lit up very well.

Even without the other lights, it's nice to have a light on  in the backyard, too.

I was really excited about turning my lanterns into something that worked, and now I’m even more excited I found a home for them!