Whatever Wednesday: DIY Family Tree Wall

 

A while back my friend, Tracy, contacted me to ask if I could help her put a family tree on her wall.

Originally I was thinking it would be something along these lines:

This was shared with me on Facebook; I don't know the original source. If you do, please feel free to let me know.

You know, this picture is on a small flat wall.  Cute, minimalistic and elegant.  

That type of wall is what I was imagining when I agreed to go help my friend.  Complete with an oak tree, sycamore or some other hard-wood type tree. 

When I got to her house, she pointed to the wall where she wanted to tree; right up her stairwell!  

Gliding up the stairwell with an oak tree just would not work.  So, I checked out drawings of willow trees and wind blown trees on Google images.  

And came up with this drawing on paper for her space: 

Then started to sketch it on the wall with a pencil.  

Tracy and I debated for a while about what type of paint to use.  Initially she bought brown craft paint, but she had some really great blue-green accents in her house, so we ended up with a dark teal. We also decided that using semi-gloss wall paint would be best. And it's a good thing we ended up with a pint of wall paint instead of two bottles of craft paint - because we used about half of the pint or more!

This was a really fun project! Mostly because I got to hear so many fun and interesting stories about Tracy's ancestors.  Overall the project probably took about 6 hours to finish.  I couldn't really time it well because we were having too much fun looking at chatting and looking at photos to decide which one could go where.

PS - The pictures are in order.  Her progenitors on are the trunk and her ancestral lines climb up the stair wall.  

Make a Mix Monday: Onion Soup Mix

Last Monday I posted a recipe for brown gravy mix - which I have since used again, and it was, again, delicious and easy to use!

Today, since I also needed Onion Soup Mix for my grandmother's cabbage rolls, I am posting where I got that recipe, how it turned out and whether or not I thought it sped up the process of cooking time.

I found the recipe over at Raining Hot Coupons.  I liked her recipe because it didn't have turmeric in it, like some of the other recipes I'd found.  Not that I have anything against turmeric!  I just don't always have it sitting in my cupboard, waiting to be used.

The recipe was super-duper easy to make and in the cabbage rolls, it turned out fantastic!  Also, I only had beef bullion granules and not bullion powder, but it turned out just fine anyway.

I thought I'd share 10 great recipes to try with your onion soup mix (the first eight are crock pot recipes!):

1. Root Beer Roast Beef Sandwiches
2. Slow Cooker Turkey Breast
3. Creamy French Onion Pot Roast
4. Slow Cooker Classic Meatloaf
5. Slow Cooker French Onion Soup
6. Ranch and Onion Pork Chops
7. Pot Roast Tacos
8. Crockpot Beef Stroganoff
9. Easy Cranberry Chicken
10. Tender Onion Baked Chicken

Furniture Fridays: Wing Back Chair

While we were going to university, my husband worked in the alumni center.  During that time the department was renovating and offered some of the furniture to us.  So we got this really nice mustard yellow wing back chair. Seriously, nice; as college students it was probably one of the nicest things we owned! 

(Heh, this is Christmas morning and my husband's arm - the only before pic I could find.)

We kept it the lovely mustard color for about three years until I took an upholstery class and needed a project. 

Nate liked red and gold, so below was the end result.  Sadly, we don't own it anymore but it was a very nice, comfy chair and it was a great project to learn how to upholster.  

(And yeah, that's apparently the storage space for our iron. lol)

And you know?  I think that, now, I would like the mustard color better.  Crazy how you change your mind about things, eh? 

Whatever Wednesday: Pallet Flower Garden

 

Are you ready for spring?  Yeah, me too!! With how cold it was this winter, I am so excited for spring this year!  Last year at this time we were getting our house ready to sale.

For curb appeal, we needed to spruce up the area in front of a very long part of our house.  It had two beautiful bushes, but water was pooling around them and getting into the basement, so we ripped those out and were at a loss as to what to put in their places.

After browsing Pinterest I saw so many fun gardens using old shipping pallets that I thought I'd jump on the band wagon and give it try. 

My husband and I (and the new owners of our house) really liked how they turned out!  It was a fast and simple, yet pleasing, project to spruce up our front yard.

Make a Mix Monday: Brown Gravy Mix

Today I'm focusing on the Brown Gravy Mix I used to make my grandmother's Cabbage Rolls. I found the recipe for the mix over at My American Confessions.

Pros: 

• It smelled great and tasted wonderful!
• It only uses 6 ingredients
• Is super simple
• Since I didn't have a store bought gravy mix on hand
•  I feel like I saved myself money
• Saved a trip to the store (which now that I live out-of-town, is a savings of around 20 minutes)
• And saved my family from a few unknown preservatives.   

Win-win-win!

Cons: 

• It took about 5 minutes to make; so slower than store-bought.  Except, of course, that it is faster to make than to drive to the store and back. 

 

Although, for the unknown ingredients, I should look into a substitute for those Wyler's Beef granules - but one step at a time.  I feel like I'm still just a new-by at trying to keep recipes simple and from scratch. 

Anyway, check out the recipe over here. 

Furniture Friday: Staining the Easy Way

Some projects were finished so many years ago that I don't have before pictures.  But all of these pieces of furniture were the same color as this shelf:

My husband and I don't particularly like this color of wood, so we picked up some dark walnut stain and used some sanding deglosser 

 To make these in dark walnut:

After using the sanding deglosser, with a sock, I applied the dark walnut stain.  Set it out in the garage for three or four days and they were finished!

So. Easy!

No sanding.

Just wiping. Then staining.

Whatever Wednesday: Upholstery Webbing St. Patrick's Day Banner

I loved the Valentine Banner made from upholstery webbing so much that I decided to use the leftover webbing from my green chair to make a St. Patrick's Day Banner.

It took a while to figure out what to do to make it unique.  I had found the cute burlap hearts and the red ones from Micheal's. But sadly, their selection of St. Paddy's day stuff was not very impressive.  I considered just stenciling each letter of the word "Adhmorort" on a cut piece of branch, but all the branches I could find were either frozen or too wet.   By the way, Adhmorort is the word in Gaelic to convey "good luck to you".  I like it's sound better than "Erin Go Braugh" but I don't have a beautiful Irish accent, which I'm sure would make that sound fantastic!  Well, I ended up not using words at all for this banner (though I do hope to make something soon with the word "Adhmorort" on it).

Instead I was browsing for something else at JoAnn's and found their St. Patrick's day stuff 1/2 off and found a cute felt, place mat surrounded by clovers.

 When I got home, I cut out as many clovers as I could without damaging their shape. 

Then, stitched three of the clovers together for the very center of the banner.  

Cut the burlap webbing and strung them with some green jute twine. 

 And hung it up to enjoy.

 I kinda like it's simplicity.

 

I was going to save the cut portion (above) of the  place mat for another project, but my daughter wanted to embroider this word poem that she made up.