Kitchen/Living Room addition a.k.a. Canning Jar wall storage

When we bought this house, we really liked that it was so open; the kitchen and living room were basically one room.  Among other things, i.e. - outdated and dark cabinets, many walls painted mint green and Pepto Bismol pink, after living in our house for a while, we discovered a few other things:

1. When anyone sat on the couch, they would usually find themselves sliding right into the kitchen.
2. As we ate any meals at the kitchen table, crumbs would inevitably find their way under the couch - only to be discovered weeks, if not months later in disastrous states
3. And most importantly, we found that without a wall between the kitchen and living room, our ceiling was sagging a little.  The wall down the center of the house is, in our case, a load bearing wall.  

Luckily, my architect father-in-law came up with a fantastic plan that would still allow us to have the openness but would give support to the ceiling, keep crumbs from the kitchen out of the living room (more or less) and would keep the couch from meandering into the kitchen: A Half-Wall. 

My husband, father-in-law, brother and myself all spent time on this project.  We bought two wooden pillars from our home-improvement store, wood enough for shelving, Sheetroc for the one side of the wall, and lots of caulk and paint.  We borrowed a router from my brother-in-law.

After assembling the wall, which I wanted for additional kitchen storage, I had family hunt for antique canning jars (this was before they came out with the remake of the pretty blue ones).

Here's the kitchen side of the finished project:

Now I can keep all sorts of things in the jars.  I have coins, marbles, legumes, baking goods, candy from Santa....the possibilities are endless.  I LOVE it!


The living room side:

No more couch sliding, crumb spreading, kitchen/living spaces in this house.  Yay!

A Very Merry Christmas Frame Wreath

Anyone can make this simple and fast Christmas decoration just by using an old frame, some burlap, Christmas ornaments, string and a computer!  

Last year on Pinterest I was intrigued by the amount of door decorations that were actually picture frames.  I also LOVE burlap, so after perusing my basement for the right wooden frame and promptly painting it white, I stapled some burlap into the frame.

Luckily at I also found some beautiful vintage Christmas baubles when someone was getting rid of them at church.  They were strung with some green taffeta string, and also stapled onto the frame as well.

Next, I cut out little triangles from scrapbook paper and put sticker letters on the triangles spelling out "Have a very merry Christmas" (but you could just type it out in a word document and put it through your printer too).

I then took the string and strung it through each triangle and then "sewed" it through the burlap.

All finished!  It was easy and fast and it was made with stuff that I had just hanging around the house.  I LOVE my Christmas Frame Wreath, and bet you could make one too!