Road Trip!!

I've had so much going on these past couple weeks from projects to planning a mini vacation. I'm getting ready to go back to sunny Florida! Thank goodness because I am NOT a cold weather person! Virginia winter weather is depressing.

I love road trips. I love everything about them from the scenery, to the junk food, to flipping radio channels, and of course the gas station slurpeeeeees! There's just something adventurous and exciting about road trips. We are driving to Panama City, Florida where I will be staying with the fam while the BF is doing some Army training in Georgia. He's got quite a ways to drive, Lord bless his heart. I'm not going to lie and say that I help a lot with the driving, because I don't. I might drive a couple hours here or there but most of the time it's him behind the wheel. He says he can't sleep when I'm in the drivers seat! I'm not an awful driver...I think.

It's going to a long haul but totally worth it once I get to see my parents and little (well not so little anymore she's about to be 14 and taller than me!) sister!

Anthro-Inspired Mirror try!

I found a great tutorial online and had to try it.  I tweaked it according to what I had on hand at the time so mine is a little different but you can find that tutorial here.

I've had this mirror for awhile now...I painted it ivory and distressed it to match the shelf below it which you can't see....the original tutorial calls for fabric to cover the frame of the mirror as well as the back however I surprisingly didn't have any fabric that I liked for this particular project. Instead, I opted to leave the frame painted as is and use scrap book paper for the mirror back. I took the mirror apart and followed the tutorials but I left my oven cleaner over night. At first I left it on for a couple hours but it just wasn't coming off as easily as I liked so I resprayed what I had touched and walked away. I came back the next day and couldn't find the scrubber I had been using so I crumpled some tinfoil into a couple balls and used them to scrape off the silver backing of the  mirror and it came off SO easily! I was very excited! Then I just taped down some scrapbook paper onto the back. (I taped it because I might be moving soon and I wanted to make sure that I could change the paper so the mirror would go with whatever decor I have next)

After all that I put the mirror back together and voila! It's hard to take pictures of a mirror believe me so these photos hardly do it justice...it has a very antique-y and smokey look to it. For my paper I used a damask print with ivory, tan, and soft blue.

I'm going to keep my eyes open for some great fabric and another mirror though because now that I know how easy this project is I'd love to try it again more along the lines of the original tutorial!

DIY Dry Erase Frame

 I found this large frame at a thrift store the other afternoon. It had a cheesy picture of a flower in it..it looked like something out of a waiting room somewhere. It was gold but I painted it ivory and sanded it down in some areas to create a distressed look. I loved it because the gold just peeked through.

Anywhoo all I did was take the back of the frame off and removed the flower poster. I turned it over to use as a base for my sheets. I tore pages out of an old Thoreau book that I had from school and taped them down all the way around the poster. I then took two sheets of antique looking scrap book paper, that happened to be lined, and taped them down in the center of the poster on top of the Thoreau pages to create a framed look. Then I just put the back of the frame back on and that was it! Super easy and super cute!

 It is not pictured here but at the top left corner...you can see just a hint of it...I put a small piece of velcro on the top of the frame and another piece of the sticky velcro on a dry erase marker that way it has a home and is always easily accessible.