Home Hack: Concealing Cords

I'm back again today with another home hack - how's that for fun?

One of the things in home decor I hate the most is cords. They are such an eyesore but in our technological world, they're a necessary evil. Wouldn't you agree?

In our living room we currently have a wall that is bare. After we switched the TV from that wall to the nook, it left us with an empty wall and an ugly black cord. The cord belongs to our router which is cleverly hiding behind our curtain panel on the right. The router has to stay because it's the wall where the Internet cable connects to the router. So until I decide on a decorating solution to fill the wall (and hide the cord), this ugly thing has been staring back at me for months.

Call me crazy (because I am) but it was driving me so crazy that I just had to do something about it to hold me over until I could throw a piece of furniture in front of it and call it a day.

My solution? White electrical tape!

Pretty ghetto fabulous if I do say so myself. But pretty ingenious too. 

The cord doesn't disappear entirely, but it's much less an eye sore with the white on white. It's totally a quick-fix that I can live with in the meantime. 

Do pesky cords bother you that much too? Tell me...on a scale of ghetto to fabulous - where do I rank? 

Home Hack: Rug Pads

I'm really excited to share with you this awesome little home hack I just put to use a few weeks back. I have absolutely no clue if someone else has already discovered this and blogged all about it but I thought I was pretty bad-a$$ when I thought of this and wanted to share the awesomeness with you too!

It all started when my Mom took me to a fabric shop here in Orange County that was having a store closing sale. Not only did I walk out of the store with some great fabrics that I cant wait to do something with but I also walked away with a great vintage-looking rug. When I bought it, I didn't have any idea where it would end up in my house, but at $13 - who could pass it up? No one! That's who!

After bringing it home, I realized that it was the perfect fit for our guest bathroom. I've been wanting to switch things up in there and thought that adding an unexpected rug would take things up a notch in there. The only problem? The rug didn't have that rubberized non-slip backing typical of normal bath mats. The new rug (sans backing) and paired with a slick (and ugly) lineolum floor was a recipe for disaster.

I knew that in order to keep this rug from slipping and sliding all over the floor that it definately needed a rug pad. I went looking for rug pads and discovered that I'd have to purchase a $20 rug pad and cut it down to size to fit my odd size rug. It just seemed like a waste of money and rug pad when I quickly realized that the non-slip rug pads are the same product used to line drawers in a kitchen.

After a quick trip down the kitchen aisles, I left the store with a $5 roll of drawer liner. For my rug, it needed the entire length of drawer liner and required absolutely NO CUTTING! Plus I saved $15. Two thumbs up!

The drawer liner was the perfect substitution for a rug pad and has kept my pretty vintage-looking rug from slipping and sliding all over the place.

The dog tested it out for good measure too.

So maybe this little home hack is old news or maybe you're just discovering it too for the first time but now you know and what's that saying about knowledge is power?

15 Minute Fix: Updating Dollar Store Vases

Hey there! Sorry for the brief hiatus...it's been a busy, but productive, few weeks (ahem...patio! I'm talking to you!). The patio makeover has literally eaten me alive but I'm rounding the home stretch and can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel so for now I don't have any other patio updates except to say that the chairs arrived and they're all kinds of tooshy heaven, but I wanted to pop in and share a quick little project I checked off my to-do/want-to-do list recently.

 

With summer knocking on our door, or at least here in CA it is, I'm loving the longer daylight hours and what that means for the blog and the endless amounts of projects I have going at any given time. The extended daylight hours sure make it easier to work on projects and photograph them after a long 10 hour day at the office but even with the added convenience that Daylight Savings brings, sometimes all I really have time for after work, traffic, dinner, clean-up, and all that jazz is a quick 10-15 minute project. Anyone else feel the same? And heck...let's be honest...sometimes I have no desire to do any of the aforementioned tasks and instead just plop myself down on the couch and watch HGTV on repeat. Feel me now?!

 

If you're anything like me, your brain never shuts off and there's always a to-do list a mile long. When I sat down to actually write out what I wanted/needed to accomplish, I realized that a lot of these items were quick, easy, and something I could easily get done in 10-15 minutes...if only I actually set aside those minutes to actually do them. What a concept! Sometimes something as easy as putting pen to paper puts things into perspective and makes all those to-dos a whole lot more manageable.

 

So because I thought many of you might be in the same boat as I, I thought I'd start a new series of sorts with quick 10-15 minute projects straight off my own to-do/want-to-do list that even you might find useful when time is limited.

 

Please don't judge me on my to-do list prioritization because as you'll see when you come back for the next post in this series, I chose to paint dollar store vases first before I tackled the disaster that is my purse because obviously gold vases are way more important than organized purses. Moving on...

 

Over the years I've managed to accumulate close to 50 (#youthinkimkidding) dollar store vases. How? I have no idea, but yeah...it happened. If you need a few vases, holla at your girl! They're the perfect vessel for so many things around the house and because I have so many, I thought I'd have some fun with a few.

 

All I did was tape off a portion of the vase using some blue painters tape. You can get all kinds of crazy or creative with your pattern, just mask off the area that you don't want painted and leave the area you do want painted exposed. For my vases I just taped off an asymmetric line. Sorry, no pics of this! Then just spray the vase whatever color you fancy. I chose gold...because well...duh...I'm obsessed with gold.

 

Once the paint is dry, remove the tape and ta-da! Dollar store vases look like they cost $1.50 now!

 

 

This is literally the easiest project on the face of the planet. I didn't re-invent the wheel, this project isn't going to break the Internet, and you've probably seen it done a thousand times a thousand times better, but it's been on my want-to-do list for-ev-errrr and now...it's not.

 

 

That's all for today - just a quick little 15 minute project for ya! Enjoy my friends! And be sure to check back soon for the next installment of 15 Minute Fix...or if you're lucky, you'll get a patio reveal soon!

 



30 Day Entryway Closet Check-In & a Quick Little Project

Hi friends!

 

I'm back today to give a 30 day check-in of our entryway closet organization project and to let you in on what's worked, what hasn't, and how I addressed it.

 

Remember a month ago when I shared this before and after?

 

With a few organizational additions installed and some visual de-cluttering, it's amazing how so little can go such a long way. However, as we continue along our organizational journey, sometimes things could use a little tweak, a little umph, to really take it to the next level.

This little closet organization project has done wonders for our family but after using this space for a month, I realized that one area of this space, needed a little extra organizational help.

I have a confession...

We suck at mail. We pay most all our bills online and who doesn't get truck loads of credit card offers and junk mail? So needless to say, we procrastinate when it comes to opening and sorting through the mail and as a result, we would just shove all the mail in the inbox until it couldn't hold no more.

See?

The inbox on the door was/is an awesome idea, and really, truly has worked wonders. It just needed a little help to help us be better at sorting the mail. My solution?

I took some generic binder clips that I had on hand, added some washi-tape to the front & back, and labeled them with a permanent marker. Now we can clip the mail with these washi-tape clips into self-explanatory categories.

 

They've really helped to corral the mail and prevent it from getting out of hand. So easy to make too!

 

And when we're not using one of the clips? They easily clip to the edge of the basket just waiting to be used...like so:

 

 

The only other addition is a chevron file folder that holds all our coupons and gift cards that staying in the "Outgoing" mail box that we can quickly grab anytime we're heading out the door.

 

 

With these 2 small additions/tweaks, our coat closet is working like a dream and we're no longer combating a messy inbox and overflowing mail.

 

 

I love quick and simple projects like these washi-tape binder clips. I wonder where else I could employee these cuties? Any suggestions? Where would you use some in your home?

 

 

 

Gallery Wall Changes

 If you're anything like me, then you love a good gallery wall and that also means you're a frame hoarder too. I'm guilty as charged. In our small apartment alone, we have 4 areas where gallery walls have emerged and 4 gallery walls means A LOT of frames.

 

Gallery walls can make a huge statement and bring life to blank apartment walls but they can also go very stagnate, very fast. That's what I'm currently struggling with at the moment. In my haste to hang something, anything, on the walls when we first moved in, I did so without much thought or intent and now I'm left feeling meh about most of it.

 

I haven't quite landed on my ideal design solution for any of these areas so while I'm pondering over my options, you know I just can't leave well enough alone. So! I decided against ripping everything down and starting from scratch, but believe me I considered it, but then where would I store all the frames? Instead I just decided to tweak a few frames throughout the house and see what sticks because who knows...maybe I'll end up loving it all over again.

 

So while I'm busy giving my gallery walls a mini-makeover I thought I'd share with you a few quick and simple ways to tweak a boring ole picture frame.

 

Ready to see the results?

 

The first frame tweak I worked on was this "all of me loves all of you" print I had framed in my go-to Ikea frames. I downloaded this print from an Etsy shop a while back and I think the bedroom is the perfect place for a print like this. Just not sure I'm digging the whole composition of the gallery wall above the bed just yet...I have nightmares about giant earthquakes and the gallery wall crashing down on our heads as we sleep blissfully unaware.

Just as a reminder, here's what the gallery wall above our bed looked like pre-tweaks:
 

 

The print had a white background and basically just blended right in with the white mat, which for me was no bueno, so I took the mat out and gave it few thin coats of my favorite gold spray paint. Although I love the look of this gold spray paint in other applications, I'm not so sure I love it here. But hey...it's just paint, right? And speaking of paint...did you know that mats can be painted for an instant new look? No? Well now you do. And not just with spray paint...with any paint! Just be sure to let your painted mat dry ample time before re-installing it in the frame. This frame tweak was easy-peasy!

 

 

The next tweak happened in the kitchen and although these frames aren't technically part of any of our 4 gallery walls, they were still fair game.

 

To jazz these bad-boys up I picked up some cheap flat corner braces from my local home improvement store and screwed them into each frame corner for an instant campaign style look. Just be sure to remove the glass before doing this to ensure you don't accidentally crack the glass as your brackets are going in. For less than $5, these cuties were looking better already.

 

The verdict? Dig the frames, hate the kitchen. Faux maple cabinets with dark speckled granite countertops? Bleh.

 

 

 

 Next up...

 

A pop of color! Using my go-to Ikea Ribba frame, I painted the inner edge of this extra deep Ikea frame a coordinating pop of color to match the print I downloaded here. The pop of color gives the print an extra layer of dimension and interest.

 

This extra deep frame from Ikea has a square insert that can be removed or kept in place to allow for different picture display options. To achieve this look, I removed the insert, primed it with some spray primer, mixed up some pink, red, and white craft paint to mimick color of the flamingo and then painted all 4 inside edges of the square insert. I let the insert dry for a few hours before re-installing it.

 

Here's the result! You like?

 

 

 

I'm loving the pop of color this little update adds to the space. Can't believe it took me this long to make such a simple & easy update to a boring frame!

 

All 3 of these "tweaks" took me less than 10 minutes to complete, not including dry time. While I'm not head over heels in love with the gold painted mat, it's an easy enough fix, and these tweaks may just hold me over until I figure out what to do, or not do, to these spaces.

 

What do you think? Will you try any of these ideas out in your own home? Do you love gallery walls just as much as this girl?