Fireplace Mantle redo

The fireplace surround in my living room is stone. Well, fake stone but whatever. It's pretty and I love it. BUT, the mantle is also stone and doesn't stand out and it is teeny. It is about 6 inches deep and really hard to decorate with much of anything.



A little closer? It blends too well. I love the stone but I hate that thing. It should be a couple inches wider and deeper.



Add a box? Yes, I think so. I was sitting on the couch with my sick child and decided I was sick of looking at it. So I went to the garage and grabbed some MDF and made a little box around the mantle in the size I was thinking of.



Clearly I did a very patient job of it, too... Ok, not so much. Don't laugh too much, please. I did go back and counter-sink the screws later, though, so they wouldn't stick out.



I cut the bottom piece around the supports (that took a few tries of taking it back out to the garage to trim here and there).



See that nice extra depth? A couple inches should be much better for decorating while not overhanging enough to sag in the future.



Now, to be completely honest, I made the box around it and then left it there. For WEEKS. I did buy the trim for the face of it but I got a little lazy and didn't finish it. BUT, this weekend we are having people over and it's on that list of "things that will embarrass me if the company sees it". Especially since these are people that I work with and we tease each other about everything anyway. So I figured out how to use the tilt function on the compound miter saw so I could have some pretty corners. I messed up but luckily not badly enough that a little wood putty couldn't mostly hide it.



I nailed the front on with a nail gun (that didn't work very well and I ended up having to grab the hammer to finish the job anyway). Then added a little wood putty to the holes, sanded and spray-painted and voila! I now have a mantle big enough to put things on, one that will stand out a bit from the rest of the fireplace. And if I ever tire of it (and let's be honest my design mind changes constantly) then it will just slide off because it is in no way actually attached to the fireplace. Oh, and speaking of changing minds, what do you think of the white? I want it to stand out but is that the right choice? Would you use something else? I'd love to hear your thoughts on it.

If you can't say something nice...

I wanted a centerpiece for a spring mantle. My kids need a lesson for being nicer to each other. I figured, why not combine them?

I grabbed a piece of MDF that was hanging out in the garage and used some turquoise paint left over from the bookcase I built last year. I traced Thumper in the corner with a pencil and then drew over it with a blue Sharpie marker. Then I explained to my kids who Thumper is because I have apparently never bought that movie and introduced my kids to Bambie (which I will remedy this weekend).



Then I used my Silhouette machine (really love that thing!) and added a few nice words to my board.



Now we have some lovely spring color and I can point to it when the kids' words to each other aren't very nice (which is working already. yay!).

Thor

Back in 1998 I was walking around the Saturday Market and there on the grass was a couple of hippies with a box of puppies. They were all crawling over the top of each other and stepping on heads and tails. And in the middle was a beautiful golden puppy who didn't really look like his half pit-bull litter-mates (we never did know what the other half was). I was instantly in love and, though I had no plans for a dog, he came home with us.

We brought him home and we had trouble picking out a name. He was a very lazy puppy but he was half pit-bull so we knew he might not always be so lazy. We needed a name that would suit him either way. A friend jokingly suggested that if he was so lazy he should be named Thorazine and I said that Thor could work if he grew out of the lazy (he didn't) and he was so named.

When he was a few months old he accidentally knocked my small niece down and got a scolding and ever since that day he scaled his playing to the human's size. He would be tough on an adult but he was incredibly gentle with children. They would pull on his ears and try to sit on his back and he would just look at us with eyes pleading for it to stop but he never nipped. Not once. If the kids jumped on the trampoline he was right there with them, hopping along and loving it.

If you left your drink (especially a beer) anywhere he was, it was guaranteed to be knocked over and drank. Food on the floor was his domain but off of a table he just didn't touch it.

When I brought my son home from the hospital Thor spent the entire night trying to investigate this new and strange noise. He almost tipped him from the crib a few times, tried to cuddle him anytime he was down low and cried when you locked him from the room. Thor and Joe grew up together and that dog was loved.

Never was there a more faithful companion. He was a dear friend of many years. And yesterday we lost him to those years. Thor had a good 13 years and I am thankful for the friend we had for so long.

Thor 1998-2011

A Little Love

I got in a bit of a creative mood this week and here's what I have to show for it so far:

Felt owls. Since the owls are actually attached to the front of the frames I can trade the background fabric out all year round. For now a spot of pink for Valentines seemed appropriate (while keeping it a little subtle because I don't want to go too overboard on hearts around here).



And the silhouette machine was just begging to be played with so I chopped up some wood to make holiday blocks. I figure after valentine's day is over I can use the backside to put together some Patty's day love.



I also have a puzzle bookcase assembled in the garage and awaiting paint and I'm tinkering with ideas for a murphy bed again. Also, since Joe decided that he is "too big" for little boy rooms (and "little kid" everything, really) I have him helping to pick out something suitable for an almost 10 year old. He is really digging navy blue for the walls but he keeps waffling to orange and back again so I guess we'll see. Should be fun!

Really Easy Bread Cornucopia

A couple weeks ago Amy at the Idea Room posted about an she idea found for a Bread Cornucopia (originally from Taste of Home).

It looked really simple and I really wanted to give it a try. We're headed over to someone else's house for Thanksgiving and I wanted a nice display for some nuts and grapes for pre-dinner munchies. Now, I took the easy way to do this. They actually made their own dough, let it rise and used that, which would undoubtedly be better. But since I'm managing small children and dog-sitting at the moment I bought some in-a-can breadsticks (I know, shame on me) and used that to wrap around the tinfoil form and it was done in about 10 minutes for two of them.

Want to see how easy this is to make with just some dough and tinfoil? Take a look over at the Idea Room.

I love how it turned out and now I'm thinking maybe there are some uses for this I can do for Christmas. How about making a bread bowl for dip but shape it like a star or snowman using a tinfoil form? Then the veggies can be arranged around the outside of the shape. I think it would be pretty cute. For a snowman it could even have bread dividers in the middle at each snowman "layer" to seperate different kinds of dip.

Mine didn't brown as nicely as Amy's but it still cooked through well.


My cheater dough: