DIY Christmas Decorations

It's the most wonderful time of the year and I am celebrating it in every possible way. I had a bunch of extra wood lying around the house so I decided to paint them to decorate for the holidays. I can't wait to find more wood and do some more projects.

DIY Office Desk

First, let me start off by saying that I have the worlds BEST dad. Last weekend my sister, Shauni, and I decided that we wanted to build office desks. We have been searching for the perfect desk, and then I finally found free plans for the most adorable DIY desk from a Shanty2Chic pin on Pinterest. 

Without even having to beg or bribe him, my dad jump on board to help build our desks. And when I say he help, I really mean he did all of the building while we "supervised". 

The first desk took about 3-4 hours to build. Although, once he had the hang of it, the second desk popped up in about 45 minutes. My dad always amazes me with his talent and knowledge when it comes to building all our many projects we throw his way. 

After he built our desks, we just had to sand and paint them and they were done!

I absolutely love how the desks turned out. The hardest part for me has been deciding on how to decorate mine. 

I have settled with this for now, but if you know me at all, you won't be surprised when I change my decorations in a week or two. Until then, I am in LOVE. 

100 year old windows

Tyson's grandparent's have a 100+ year old cabin on their property up on Kolob that used to be on Zion National Park for people to rent out. This past weekend I was lucky enough to be up on the mountain when they decided to pull these out and get rid of them. Of course the Pinterest side of me kicked in and I saw the wonderful potential in these gorgeous windows and couldn't just let them be thrown away. I was so excited that I took all 8 windows in hopes that my girlfriends would be as thrilled as I was about this G.N.O. (girls night out) project ahead. 

    

This project was so much fun to work on. All we had to do was sand the old green paint off to the original wood and then we added our fresh new coats of paint to finish the different looks we were going for. 

I loved how everyone's turned out.

Now comes the hard part....finding somewhere to hang it and talking Tyson into letting me put big screws in the wall. Wish me luck :)

DIY's

The girls in my family are pretty big into DIY projects. We may not be professionals but we do our best with what Pinterest offers us as far as tips to the trade. In the end we usually love our finished products. Here are a few I've done recently and just adore now!

The first one is this old high chair I scored at a local yard sale for only....wait for it....$10!!! What a deal right?! It was originally stained a darker brown color, but I stripped it down to this lighter brown with lots and lots of sand paper. A special thanks to my sister, Whitney, for helping out with that part!

My super smart, and very helpful husband decided the best and quickest, most efficient way to paint it would be to hang it up and spray it with his spray gun. He's a genius and was right! It was super fast and easy.

And here's the final product of all that hard work. I decided to just go with a white paint, that way it will work for a boy or a girl high chair.

Check out how cute it worked out for my cute little nieces birthday party.



 My next project was this adorable mirror I also found at a yard sale for only $10 too! I just love yard sales. One man's junk, is another man's treasure....or in this case a woman's treasure aka mine :)

This one was pretty easy. No sanding, just a quick spray of paint and it's done.

As soon I finished the mirror I loved it, however I felt like it needed something cute to go with it and later that week my sister found a cute pattern for a small entry table. So we had a girls night out and each made our own. First my dad cut out all the measurements for us. Next we sanded, and sanded, and sanded some more.

 

Once everything was sanded and stained, my older brother was nice enough to spend all night with us nailing our pieces together. I hate to admit this, but I'm scared of nail guns, so I'm really glad he helped out!

I really loved this roughed up stained look but I decided to add some white so it matched my mirror better. Plus when I was staining I accidentally stained some pieces with a darker stain than the rest, and I was too lazy to re-stain it all. :)

I'm so glad I added the white!



The last thing to do was add some cute nobs and decorate, which was my favorite part. Here's the final result, until I change my mind (like I always do) and re-arrange.

 As if I haven't asked enough of my husband while I was at it, I had him paint a few other odds and ends lying around to match the basement colors.









None of them are completely done, but at least they are started. I have some really cute ideas for each one that I can't wait to try out. Although any and all suggestions are welcome :)