Monday, September 15, 2014

Collette's First Birthday - Party Favors

Since Collette's birthday falls in December I thought it would be cute to do party favors in theme of the season. 2 years ago Anthropologie came out with mason jar "snow globes" and my mom and I made our own and they came out great. So after seeing some pink bottle brush trees on Etsy I had my inspiration. 


I found some little jars online at TomKat Studio, ordered the trees from Loveitshabby on Etsy and made a stop at Michaels. Initially I thought we would just do the jars but after recalculating our guest list a final time I came up 8 favors short. So while at michaels I found these empty glass ornaments and thought it would be perfect! My mom came over to help, we thought we'd just start them and ended up getting them all done in no time.


All you need is some "snow" glitter. Martha Stewarts is more expensive but after using it I thougt the bigger glitter flakes and color were prettier. I used a little jewel it glue for adhering the trees to the glass ornaments and jars, some ribbon/twine or any decorative touch you'd like! I also used a little jewel charm tied to the ribbon for some extra sparkle. The needle nose pliers were used because the trees.. even being only 3" were a little too big for the jars. They fit but it looked squashed so we used the pliers to separate them from the wood base, cut the trees wire a little bit and then reattached them to the wood base. It was an easy fix. The trees fit much better after. 

The trees were a little tricky getting into the ornaments. The wood base barely fit through the glass opening. First I straightened the tree, I applied the glue to the wood base, then carefully pushed the base through the opening, I used the pliers to lower the tree into the ornament and place on the bottom. I pressed on the tree until the glue squished out around the wood base and then in went the glitter. I used 2 bottles of glitter for 20 favors but I like a full look, you could get away with using less.


They turned out so cute. I made little tags and attached them to give the favors a personalized touch. I actually ended up "favoring" ... (too cheesy? Lol) the ornaments, the more I thought about it the more I liked them. Every year when we decorate our tree we will be reminded of Collette's first birthday. That year filled with firsts for all of us and the fun party where family and friends celebrated together.I hope it's the same for our guests.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

Finishing Up The Trailer

The cabinet doors are finally back on. We decided to reuse the old hinges. We spray painted them with the same bronze spray paint. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Above the dinette I decided to do something a little more custom. I removed the mirrors with the gold flowers from the cabinet doors.  I started by braking the mirror and then I cleaned all the edges with a razor blade. It was fairly easy and not too time consuming. I found these graphics on Etsy from Vintageretroantique. Then I used Printmoz and had them printed on backlit film the exact size I needed and then siliconed them in place with a piece of glass in front of them. The clear silicone worked perfect. The graphics were around $15 and I think I had them printed for around $48, the glass was $12. I'm happy with how they turned out. Sometimes your vision doesn't come to life quite like you wanted but thankfully I didn't have that on this project! I still need to take a picture with the lights on in the cabinets at night. It is such a pretty glow and gives off just enough light.
 
 
 
We cleaned the floors and laid down the vinyl peel and stick which we got from Lowes for a very reasonable price. The floors are Antique Woodland Oak. We also used a glue prior to laying the peel and stick plank after reading some reviews about it not adhering well since the camper is subjected to extreme heat and cold.
 
 
 
 
We love this key/mail holder. After our first trip, asking ...where did you put the keys a million times we knew it was a necessity. This one is great because it hold both our cellphones too. I also ordered this from Etsy by Masterworks888. << I have an obsession with Etsy if you havn't caught on to that yet.
 
 
 
We had some trouble with the metal bar that holds all the spices in the kitchen as you can see. We have finally installed that but not at the time of the pics. We also mounted a small TV. It has a built in DVD player on the side and works great!
 
 
 
I ordered the table and legs from ebay. The table came in damaged so the company gave it to us for free and we were able to salvage it. Beats spending $100+.
 
 
The bathroom still needs some updates, I really wanted to install a new toilet when we were doing the flooring but we decided it could wait.
 
 
 
The Before and After Pics
 
 
 
 
As you can see we have yet to recover the sofa/dinette so I'm hiding most of the sofa under a Pendleton wool blanket lol. We don't plan on doing those until next year but I can hardly wait, I already have all the fabrics picked out! Before our first trip we also put up all the old window coverings (not in the pictures above). We plan on replacing them with night shades... my parents new trailer has them and i'm jealous. They are excellent. Keep an eye out for my post when I redo the valances. Another day another DIY project.
 
 
This is our baby CC on our first camping trip with the trailer redone. It was a really nice trip, well ok the first night we barely slept and had to drive the baby around from 1am-3am since she wouldn't stop crying and we were afraid the whole camp site would hate us! But the second night....not a peep and it finished the trip off on a high note!