DIY TUFTED HEADBOARD

Hi everyone!  Today I am going to be sharing my - DIY Tufted head board.  I must say, I'm happy to be back after over a month of no blog posts.  It's been a little busy around our home.  My husband and I both got sick at Christmas.  I missed all the Christmas parties; and it took me a good three weeks to get back to normal health.  Two weeks ago, I started a new job; and I've been in the process of working more hours with orientation.

For those of you who have reading my blog for some time, you may recall our son and daughter-in-law got married a year and half ago. I shared the DIY wedding rehearsal dinner that we did for their wedding.   As a wedding gift for our children, my husband has made a piece of furniture.  The couple gets to select what they would like.  They usually find a photo of the piece of furniture they like; and my husband builds it for them.  While preparing for the rehearsal dinner, my sister and brother-in-law were talking to my husband asking if he would be interested in a walnut tree that went down in their grove.  Of course, we jumped on that offer.  There was, however, quite a delay when the tree went to the mill. While at the mill, the owner had a fire and had to rebuild his kiln....thus we had to wait for the wood to get milled for almost a year.

Once we had the wood, my husband went to work preparing the wood. He then built the wood part of the bed.  Once he had that completed, we invited our son and daughter-in-law to help us assemble the tufted part of the bed.

We made the tufted headboard using the same technique we used when we made our tufted headboard back in 2010.

VINTAGE SLED DECORATED FOR CHRISTMAS

While getting ready for an outdoor 40th wedding anniversary party this summer, my sister ran across an old vintage sled.  It had been sitting outside in the elements behind the garden shed for years.  When her and her daughters found it, they all wanted it to decorate for Christmas.  My sister was not about to give this treasure away, at least not yet.

Fast forward to December ~ I received a phone call from my sister asking for my help in decorating her sled.  Of course, I said YES!  A chance to work on a fun diy project, while spending time with my sister.  

I also had visions for a sled decorated for Christmas.  It was one from my childhood, and the one our children used for many years.  I had it all ready to load onto our moving truck back with our move in 2012.  It was while standing there that our daughter (a children's photographer) spotted it.  I agreed that she could keep it in Washington to use as a photography prop.  My husband said we could enjoy it in her photos; and we've been doing just that.

Here it is with our sweat grand daughter sitting on it for a Christmas card photo shoot.

I know you're wondering about the sled we made over, but I couldn't resist sharing the photo with you.

Here it is ~

BALLARD DESIGNS TINSEL BRANCH KNOCKOFF

Christmas is fast approaching and with that comes decorating your home for the holiday.  I will be sharing my Christmas home tour with you very soon, but today I wanted to share with you a little project I just finished for the kitchen.  It's a Ballard Designs tinsel branch knockoff.

 Making my home sparkle at Christmas is always fun using glittery ornaments and tinsel. I also love adding natural items here and there.  When I saw the beautiful glittery tinsel branches that Susanne Kasler created at Ballard Designs, I knew I wanted to make one of these pretty branches for my home.  You can purchase the champagne colored branches at Ballard Designs for $19,  but I knew I could make my own for less.

While shopping at Mernard's with my husband recently, I found the tinsel that would work for this project for a mere $1.29.

POTTERY BARN JINGLE PILLOW KNOCK OFF

I started a few projects back in November and I'm happy to say I can finally show you one of them completed.  The project completed is my Jingle Lumbar Pillow.  I  loved this pillow when I first saw it some time ago in the Pottery Barn catalog, however this pillow comes with a price tag of $39.50.  That price is just a bit much for me, and I knew I could make one for a lot less.

Here's my version....

You can view the inspiration for this Pottery Barn pillow here.

DIY SNOWBALL VIGNETTE

I started working on a new diy project for our Christmas decor back in November. It was interrupted when we had a family member in the hospital for a week.  We then went right into thanksgiving, so it's taken a little bit to get back to the project.

I'm amazed how a quick, off the cuff, spur of the moment project can be the number one hit item on this blog.  Can you guess what it is?  It's my DIY Epsom Salt Candle and Ornaments.   It receives more page views than any other diy project I've shared with you.  It's been featured at Redbook, Epsom Salt Council, along with a few other blogs.

Using the same technique I used when making my Epsom Salt Ornaments/Snow Balls, I created another SNOWBALL project.  Today, I finally get to show it to you .

I basically did the same technique for these snowballs as the ones I made previously.

ADDING SOFT AND COZY WINTER ITEMS

The cold winter weather has hit us the past few days. Our temperatures have dipped into the teens and we woke up to snow falling this morning.  I decided it was time to add some soft and cozy winter items to the living room.  I'm not moving out my fall decor just yet, but just adding a few winter touches.

I love the chunky cable knit pillows that Pottery Barn has.  The drawback to the Pottery Barn pillows is the price tag they come with  - $59.50, on sale for $45.   As you may know, a few DIY's have come up with their own version of these pillows using recycled sweaters. You can find many of the tutorials on Pinterest. Since I had an old sweater that would work perfect for this project, I decided to plunge in and make my own too.

GIVE THANKS PILLOW ~ DIY

Fall is a wonderful time of the year and with the weather cooling it is a great time to work on a few projects indoors. I recently worked on a fall diy pillow. I showed it to you in my fall home tour .

 I love the Pottery Barn gather pillow, so decided to make my own pillow and change it just a bit using the words give thanks.  Today I'll  show you how I made it and then you can make one for yourself if you'd like.

The first thing you will need is fabric.  I used left over drop cloth fabric for this project, but duck canvas or cotton fabric would work also.

DIY FALL ARTWORK - PAINTED PUMPKIN

We had a very hard freeze here this past Friday night, now that brisk feeling is in the air each day.  I'd say it is safe to say that fall has arrived.  With the cool weather here and the gardening finished for the season, I've had a little more free time.  I've put out a few of my fall decorations, but I like to add a few new things each year.

I really like the white pumpkins along with the blueish gray "Blue Moon" pumpkins.   I tried to find some this fall, but found them difficult to find.  I then remembered  a blog post I read last year  "You can paint a pumpkin canvas, art skills not required" by Jennifer Rizzo.   I decided if I painted a pumpkin, I could enjoy it for the fall season.  I've done a few art and painting projects before but I'm not a pro.  I found Jennifer's instructions very helpful.

So here's my Canvas Pumpkin Artwork.

It's not perfect, but as the Nester says, " It doesn't have to be perfect to be beautiful"!

DIY WEDDING ~ WEDDING WEDNESDAY

It's been a while since I've posted on Wedding Wednesday.  My husband and I were involved in a wedding last week.  It was a wedding for a couple in our church and the family is good friends of ours. My husband was the pastor who officiated the wedding.  I had fun helping with some of the diy decorations and flowers.  I thought it would be fun to share some photos from the wedding on Wedding Wednesday.

As many of you know weddings can be very costly and everyone has a budget to keep.  Doing things yourself along with the help of family and friends can help defray the cost of hiring someone to do it for you.  I had the privilege of being one of the friends who got to help.

The wedding took place right next door in our church.  One week before the wedding the mother of the bride asked me to help decorate a wagon for the flower girl and ring bearer to ride down the isle in. 

The wagon was John Deere green with wood planked sides. We knew we had to do something to cover it up.  The colors for the wedding were black and ivory with accents of red.  Here's what we came up with.

 How we went about creating this cute little wagon ~
We first wrapped the wagon with a black sheet, and made the lining using a ivory table cloth.  We then ran a ribbon all the way around the top of the wagon, adhering it with pins to stay in place.

We then measured the height of the wagon and doubled that measurement. Using that measurement we cut ivory and black tulle.

Once the tulle was cut we tied it onto the the ribbon on the wagon.  We formed a knot that looked somewhat like a rose bud.  We then secured the knot with a straight pin.

On the back of the wagon I made a "Here Comes the Bride" sign.  My husband cut a piece of mdf board to a pattern I had drawn up for him.  I then glued card stock paper to it, with the words Here Comes the Bride.

The sign was hung from a piece of tulle.  At the top of the tulle a faux set of wedding rings was placed.

We wanted to cover the green tongue of the wagon too, so a black satin ribbon was wrapped the length of the tongue.  A small ivory tulle bow was then placed on the handle.

The next thing I helped with was the flowers.  I helped take off the thorns and protector petals on the roses.  We decided to keep the protector petals and asked the bride if she would like to use them as decorative accents.  She thought that sounded like a good idea, and we were able to save two large bowls full of petals. 

A florist friend put all the arrangements together, but she was leaving on vacation.  So the morning of the wedding, I trimmed the stems of the bouquets and wrapped them with satin ribbon.  The ribbon design I used was a ballet slipper pattern.  It adds a little extra touch to the bouquets, rather than the normal ribbon wrap.

Bouquets all ready for the bride and bridesmaids.

Here are the floral arrangements in the front of the church.

A bouquet of roses was place on a table in the entry way of the church as well.

 The rose petals that we saves I scattered along the isle tulle.

  
Petals were also placed on the unity candle table and in the tulle that draped down the front of the table.

The happy couple at the unity candle.

Petals were sprinkled on the guest book table too.

As well as on the gift table.

The book shelf behind the gift table needed a little something as well.  I went and shopped my house and found a few things we had used at our daughters weddings.  The bride had a photo of the couple to add to the display.  A few rose petals were placed on top of the tulle, around the LOVE sign.
This was a budget friendly display that added a little extra touch.

There was an ugly cork bulletin board that was just behind the guest book.  I again shopped my house and found a piece of black sheet fabric to cover the board with.  The Mr. and Mrs. and Love were left over from our daughters weddings.  The friend/florist was working on the bouquets at the time we were working on the bulletin board.  She quickly whipped up a pretty bow to hang on the board. It added the finishing touch that the board needed.  Once again a very quick and easy budget friendly display.

In this photo you can see the bulletin board in the background behind the guest book table.

  
The board was used as a backdrop for photo shoots.

All of this was done with love for this happy couple.

Come back and in my next Wedding Wednesday post I'll be sharing a few more photos from the church and the reception hall.

DIY GRADUATION GIFT ~ COLLEGE SURVIVAL KIT

Graduations season is in full swing and along with it comes graduation gifts.  This past week we had five graduations to attend.  I love to give something a little more personal as a gift and a gift  that you make yourself does just that.

Of the five graduations we had to attend, two of them were for girls.  I decided to make something special just for them - A College Survival Kit.

Here's what I did to make the college survival kit .....

DIY SPRING ARTWORK

Can you believe it?  It's April and we have a major winter storm advisory for our area today and Friday.  They are even saying that we may receive up to an inch of snow a hour.  I'm so ready for spring to come.  With that in mind, I've started to add a few touches of spring in our home.

You may recall my spring artwork that I created a few years ago.  It's one of the most visited items on this blog.  It's seems a little crazy to me, the things that get visited the most often at Thrifty Parsonage Living are often items I've quickly put together on a whim.  The other visited often is my Epsom Salt Ornaments and Candle.

If you would like to see the full instructions on how I made this,

HOW TO MAKE LINED CURTAINS {DIY}

I'm finally back after a little bit of recovery time following my oral surgery. In a previous post I share our guest room makeover. I promised to share the  tutorial on how I made the curtains for this room.

Let's start out by talking about the fabric I used for these curtains.  

DINING ROOM TURNED OFFICE BY DUO VENTURES

Hi everyone, you might be wondering why you haven't heard from me for a little while. Well, I had unexpected oral surgery and haven't  been up to much, other than trying to recover.  

I thought I would take this opportunity to have a guest post from Mel and Nader at Duo Ventures.  If you have not read their blog you've been missing out!  I love pretty much every makeover and organizing idea that they have shared on their blog.  They are a young husband/wife team,  who blog about design, DIY projects and organization.  You can head over and read more if you enjoy this post from them at Duo Ventures.

In the post below they'll tell you how they turned their dining room into an office.... enjoy!

 All the  images and content below are courtesy from the Duo Ventures.

Turning a Dining Room into an Office: Part 2

Well, we're happy to say that a lot has changed in our former dining room!  Several months ago, we made the decision to utilize our formal dining room as a home office instead.  We left off in Part 1, where we outlined our general plans & inspiration for our future office.  If you follow us on Instagram you might have gotten a couple of sneak peeks along the way.  There are still a couple of small projects that we need to complete, but for the most part the room is finished!  

AN UPDATE FROM THRIFTY PARSONAGE LIVING

Hi everyone!  I just stopped in to tell you that I haven't forgotten you.  It's just that I've been very busy with things here.  I was sick and then was busy with some projects.  I'm now working on items for our Woman's National Day Of  Prayer.  Our church is hosting the event this year and it will be held next Friday, March  7th.

Once I'm finished with the work for church, I'll be back here and writing a few posts.  One will be a tutorial on how I made the curtains for our guest bedroom.

I'll be looking forward to tell you how I made these curtains on a very limited budget.  Hope you'll join me.  Until then have a great day!

                                                         Joy

GUEST BEDROOM MAKEOVER

Can you believe it's a year ago today, we were on the road moving from Washington to our new home in Minnesota. Time sure flies by quickly.  Looking back over the year, I realized that I have not shown you all of the rooms in the new Parsonage.  Over the next weeks I plan to do just that, along with showing you the projects completed in each room.

Today, I will start with our guest bedroom which is in the basement of our home.

Now this room looked nothing like the photo posted above.  In fact the room looked pretty tough.  All the carpets had been ripped out of the room a few years ago because of water getting into the basement.  At the time of the water issue, they had to rip up all the carpets in the entire basement and lay tile.

OLD RECIPE CARD ART

I'm glad to finally be back after a bit of break. We made an unexpected and quick trip  to Washington.  We were pleasantly surprised with a suggestion from our church council, to go out to see our children and new grandchild.  We are so thankful for this lovely trip.  We were able to celebrate a belated Christmas with our family, my husband and son's birthday, have breakfast with friends and welcome a new little grand daughter into our lives, all in three days time.

We're so thankful to the Lord for her safe arrival, she is such a precious gift.   We are now the proud grandparents to three lovely granddaughter's.  Lord willing, we looking forward to adding another grandchild into our lives in July.

The only downfall of the trip was that the other two granddaughter's were sick while we were there with bad colds.  Well, guess what I took home with me?  You guessed it.... a cold with a bad cough.   I haven't felt up to much for the past few days, but today I'm feeling like I'm on the upswing and starting to get over it.

I actual got some cleaning done around the house and a small project for my kitchen.  Several years ago my husbands 95 year old grandmother passed away.  After her death the family started sorting through her things.  One of our nephews thought her old recipe box was a treasure and took it and it's recipe cards.  He was to young to understand the sentimental meaning to these recipes and started to scatter them about.  My husband manage to save one of them.  He has had it tucked away in a file for the past years.  I'm also a sentimental person and have enjoyed having items from our grandparents displayed in our home.

I had a piece of Christmas art on our kitchen backslash and removed it while cleaning today.  It left a nail that I wanted to cover up, and thus came my inspiration of some new artwork.

Remembering the old recipe card, I removed it from the file.

SNOWFLAKE PILLOWS (tutorial)

We awoke to record cold temperatures today in Minnesota. It was -17 degrees on the thermometer, with wind chills of minus 40 to minus 55 degree Fahrenheit.  Now I'd say that is COLD!  It's a great day to stay inside where it's warm and cozy, and share a winter craft.

You may remember seeing my snowflake pillow in my Christmas Home Tour.  I've had several people ask about them.  Today I'll give you a tutorial on how I made them.

I was inspired to make snowflake pillows when I saw the cute pillows Anna at Noodlehead made.  She gives a free template for the snowflake.

HOT COCOA BAR

I had a wonderful and blessed Christmas and I hope you had the same.  It's hard to believe Christmas has already come and gone. Today I thought I'd share my cocoa bar from our Christmas party. We had a large party of twenty five guests for Christmas at our home. I set up a Cocoa bar as part of our beverage serving area. I got very busy with last minute preparations before our guests arrived, so I only got a few photos of the area. They may not be the best photos, but a least you can see what the bar looked like.

You may recognize the snowflake buckets from my Christmas Home Tour.  They are filled with candy canes, peppermint candies and jingle bells.  The counter had snow flakes purchased at the Dollar Store scattered around on top of white quilt batting.

DIY CHRISTMAS CARD DISPLAY

I created a new display for our Christmas cards this year. You may have seen it in my 2013 Christmas Home Tour.  A few years ago, I used a made over shutter to display my cards. It worked out great for that year, but we've been receiving more cards this year and I needed something larger to display our cards on.

Here's what I came up with.

OH HOLY NIGHT CHRISTMAS CANVAS ~ twinkling stars

In my recent Christmas Home Tour, you may have noticed several projects that I created ~ DIY.  One of these projects can be seen as soon as you come in our front door ~ The Oh Holy Night Canvas.