Living Room {Before and After}

Hello! I am one of the two sisters from The White House Boutique. I wanted to share some of my home makeover with you all! My hubster and I moved into our {1st} home a little over a year ago and I've just recently FINISHed my wallpapered fiascled living room. It is a 1890's house with no straight walls and or straight windows {so it made re-wallpapering quiet difficult}. My living room was covered with this pink flowery not so cute stuff (see picture below), that I couldn't paint over it. After several painstaking months upon months of taking this flowery stuff off, I realized I couldn't paint the wall as well, due to all the imperfections this old house blessed me with. Wallpaper my friends {which I now believe should of never been invented} is tougher than it looks. Every wallpapered room I now enter I have a lot more respect for. So lets get down to it.

Here is the before {like the waaaaayyyy before, previous owners that is.}

The During

I do have to admit I'm a bit embarrassed by this photo. Our house looked like this for several months!

 Although the wallpapering may not be perfect. I do love my new living room. And all the imperfections of my old house.

One of the downfalls (as seen in the two pictures below) of a old house is the wiring. My husband or I aren't electricians and the closest we know of one is my father (whom can literally do everything I swear). He said the best way to get my chandelier in the room is to hang it from the ceiling and plug it in. So now I have this ugly cord thing in the center of my wall (we are planning on fixing it) but for now I'll take the chandelier glistening in the room any day even with the ugly cord!

 

 The fun thing about this room (which is the same in all my rooms) is that I got 98% of this stuff at a thrift store (and I'm proud to say  I am a cheapy) and or DIYs. My favorite thing in this room is the yellow couch, I scored it at a second hand store for $275! The rugs? Wal-Mart for $30 each! The chandelier? 50$ at a garage sale! The piano? FREE! The chevron chair? $2 at a thrift store and I reupholstered it for under $7! Book shelf?- 10$ at garage sale! Owl lamp?-$5 garage sale! Map wall art?-$1 garage sale! I could go on and on my friends (it makes me so excited) haha. :) 

{DIY} Hose Wreath

This one is the simplest of simple!! You need 3 things:

A hose 

Fabric/rope/ or in this case I used twain

Flowers {fake or real} 

I saw this idea and I had to recreate one!! I found this hose at a yard sale for $3. 

Okay prepare to be amazed! Just wrap around in circle to the size wreath you want. Grab the twain and tie around the wreath. I tied it around in 3 different spots just so it would keep a nice organized circle. I added the fake flowers and tahdah! You have an adorable spring/summer wreath. The one I saw had dark pink tulips which was pretty darn cute!! Thanks for stopping by! Xoxo Katie 

Polaroid Coasters {DIY}

I am in LOVE with these! White Tiles turned --Polaroid Wannabe's--Slash Coasters! Ha, say that 5 times fast!  They were so so easy and so inexpensive {that's our favorite part}!  I purchased roughly 40 coasters at our local Restore home store for $2.50! No Joke! 

What you Need:

White Tiles {the ones I grabbed measured roughly 4 1/4" x 4 1/4"}

Mod Podge {I used the antique style Mod Podge}

Computer & printer

Scissors

Paper cloth or rag {if you use the antique style mod podge}

Ruler 

First step is to print off your pictures of desire!  I searched for ones that had a little bit of artsy flare to them! A couple of them were from a talented photographer in the area {with her approval of course}, some I found on Flickr.com, & some were from my own photo library!  How fun to even use old photos from the family or all black and white ones!  So many possibilities! Ahhhhh I love it!  So once the pictures are saved to your computer I just used Microsoft office word {I am sure there are other programs to use but I found this the easiest to print of a picture in the exact size I needed} I then opened up a new document and inserted my picture of choice!  Once it plopped into the document I re-sized it to resemble a Polaroid- leaving a little space on the edges {top and sides} and of course leaving a larger white area on the bottom! This is where your ruler comes into play! I literally held the ruler up to the computer screen measuring each picture out so it gets to be the right size!  It prints actual size that's on screen! I am sure that there is a ruler that you can pull up on your document but I am not that computer savvy! Print these suckers and then start cutting them out!  

Now it's time to get down and dirty!  Add mod podge to the bottom of the picture so it sticks to the tile and you can line it up!  Once in place and air bubbles are pushed out add mod podge to the top of it {pressing  out all air bubbles}!  Once you have completely covered the top of the picture and along the edges this is where I grabbed a paper towel and wiped off the access glue-{the antiquing mod podge has a yellowish tint to it and I did not want it on the white edges so it would lose it's polaroid effect}

Let dry and Bam!  You have your Polaroid Coasters!  Too fun for words!  I think these would make great gifts, a fun craft to do with friends!  Share you thoughts and comments!  We would love to hear from you! xoxo The White House Girls