Tutorial: EASY Graduation Cap Decorations

I had never decorated any of my graduation caps before, mostly because I either didn’t remember or the task seemed too daunting. I mean, who wants to compete with caps like these:

For those of us that can’t paint like Van Gogh or bedazzle with the best of ’em, I suggest some scrapbook supplies and fabric glue…

I threw this together in about 15 minutes, which is especially handy if you have a needy 3 month old at home. No hand-ruched fabric. No gluing 18,000 rhinestones. Just pick something that you like in the scrap book isle (Which could actually be the hardest part. There are so many great choices!) and stick them to your cap. In hind sight, I wish I would have added more flowers, but overall I’m happy with the concept.

Now I just need to graduate again so there’s another cap to decorate…

Congratulations to all of the 2015 graduates, and go Gators!

Christmas Newborn Shoot

The most important part of any shoot is a good assistant. You might recognize this guy from my post about photographing the terrible twos….

I don’t know if photographing a newborn is any easier than a two year old, actually, but they are equally adorable.

Could he be any cuter?

Bicycle Commuting For A Month

That’s right! 31 whole days of only using my bicycle for the daily commute to work. In other words, 22.2 miles round trip, or a little over 500 miles in total. Not only did I get in my exercise, but I saved money on gas and I got to be outside to watch the beautiful sunrise every morning. Here are a few tips that I’d suggest if you want to try to ditch your car, like I did.

1. Go to bed! When the alarm goes off in the morning, that’s where the biggest struggle always is. You might have every intention of getting up in the morning, when it’s the night before, but you’ll think of every excuse possible to justify not getting out of bed when the time comes. Take away the excuse of, “I didn’t get enough sleep last night.” It’s one less argument you’ll have with yourself the next morning.

2. Be mindful of the weather! I don’t just mean the rain either. Cycling in the rain is nothing compared to pedaling home with a headwind! Seriously, it’s amazingly irritating. The weather variations we have in Florida are just really hot, hot and raining. All of which call for shorts and a t-shirt. Too much wind, on the other hand, calls for leaving the bicycle at home and driving yourself to work. When the going gets tough, the Tough get going. Whether or not it is windy dictates whether or not the Tough take the car or a bicycle.

3. Before you try cycling to work, drive your route and make sure it’s safe for the entirety of your journey. Bike paths haven’t always been on the forefront of all city-planners minds. You don’t want to get halfway to your destination and discover you can either ride your bike in the street dodging semis or on the grass dodging potholes.

4. If you’re going to use headphones, which I do, don’t use ear-buds or anything noise cancelling. If you’re listening to music or an e-book to pass the time, you definitely still always want to know what’s going on around you. Pay attention. Pay attention. Pay attention.

5. Give yourself plenty of time, especially in the morning. You don’t want to start your day full of stress about being on time, or arrive to work covered in sweat because you were pedaling like a crazy person. Get up early enough so you can take your time, enjoy the morning, stop to take some pictures and still have time to cool off and settle in once you get to work.

If I can go a month without taking my car to work, I can run a marathon, right? Time to start training!

Now park your car, get out the bicycle and start building those leg muscles!

Skunk Apes Eat Bigfoot for Breakfast

You’re driving through the the Everglades and you see a sign that says, “Skunk Ape Research Facility.” Do you stop, or do you keep going thinking, “What kind of person goes there?” The answer to that question is, “I do!!!” You are missing out if you don’t. The research facility is on hwy 41 in the middle of the Everglades. If you’re road-tripping down to the Keys, it’s the perfect place to stop for some leg stretching.

For those that don’t know, which is most of us, the Skunk Ape is the Everglades version of Bigfoot. It’s a large primate type thing, that allegedly lives up in the trees, feasting on deer liver and beans. I can promise you that I’m not advising you to stop to see a bunch of hazy pictures of grown men running around in ape suits. What you will see, though, is a lot of really cool animals and exceptionally helpful staff.

That nice gentleman is the main caretaker for all of the animals. He will happily stand there and tell you about each individual creature’s personalities, quirks and preferences. He will also feed many of those large birds dozens of cashews right out of his mouth. His immune system must be impressive.

We went through the whole animal tour without even a slight mention of the Skunk Ape. That was until I walked outside and asked a group of locals, “So who knows about the Skunk Ape?” Apparently, the world’s leading skunk ape expert was one of the men standing there when I asked. I got the full skunk ape tour complete with YouTube video clips, a book, personal stories of encounters from the man himself and more information than I could have ever wanted about a creature that almost certainly doesn’t exist. It was an adventure. I would recommend the stop 100%. Admission is only $5 and it’s worth every penny!

Dome Top Steamer Trunk Repair

First, let me start by saying, “What a lot of work!” Especially compared to the first trunk I refinished. Secondly, I am so excited to write this post. I’ve had this thing for months and I’ve only been able to work on it a little bit at a time. Let’s go back to the beginning, shall we? You can see the original in the before and after picture. Apparently someone thought they would try their hand at refinishing it by painting those awful green stripes and white accents. First I tried to see if I could get the paint off by sanding, scraping and paint thinner…

After a good hour of that nonsense, I gave up and decided that painting over it would be the next best option. In the picture above, you can see I’d already given up on getting the green off and started filling in holes and taping off the wood areas. That pretty much covers the next step in the refinishing. I used regular spackling past to fill the holes and larger dents. I left the old leather on the trunk until after I painted it and covered the areas where it had already crumbled off with newspaper and tape. This part was the most tedious. Not only does it take a long time, but it doesn’t get any prettier while you’re doing it…

Things started looking up after the first coat of spray paint, though…

Finally, no more ugly green…

Few things are more satisfying than peeling back clean paint lines. Look at that, what an improvement already. The paper peeled off really easily, but I had to use a box cutter and screw driver to get the leather off. There was also some glue residue left, but a little sanding and scrubbing with a wire brush took it off pretty easily.

Next came the stain. Minwax, Colonial Maple…

Even better, but it needed more shine. I found a gallon of polyurethane for floors at the Home Depot in the secret little scratch and dent section in the back for $9. I googled as much as I could about it, and I couldn’t find anything about using floor polyurethane on projects other than floors. I figured, “What’s the worst that could happen?” It could look absolutely fantastic, that’s what!

After the first coat, some of the edges and knots soaked up the shine, but the second coat took care of that. The last thing that needed to be fixed on the exterior was the feet. I got a 50 cent piece of wood from the scrap section in Home depot and some furniture sliders.

I also used more power tools on this project than I ever have before. First it was my miter saw to cut the scrap wood down to the right size, then electric drills to attach the wood and sliders to the bottom of the trunk. I was pretty proud of myself…

The reason I had to make a new base was because one of the metal feet was missing and I have no clue at this point about how to replace it…

Also, I can’t imagine the trunk sliding around on those metal knobs would be good for anyone’s floors. I thought about adding wheels instead of sliders, but they were all ugly. It seemed like it would just look awkward. This covers everything that I did to the outside. I have some ideas for the inside that I’m really excited about, but that’s for another post…

What project isn’t complete without some help from the cat…

An Excuse for the Beach…

There are two benefits from thrifting for beach equipment. 1. What house doesn’t have a few things that were bought for a family beach trip, used only one time and then stored in the garage for the next however many years? This means you can buy those things, barely used, and at a fraction of a cost. 2. Once you have it, you have the perfect excuse to go to the beach!

For example:

$2 for both of those watermelon umbrellas. They aren’t just regular “Stick them in the ground and hope they stay put” umbrellas.  They’ve got nice clamps on the end, so you can attach them to your beach tables or chairs.

$1.50 for the beach blanket / tablecloth. Much nicer than a towel because you’ll have room too move around and set down your things without covering them in sand.

In the event that the weather turns gloomy while you’re out at the beach, as it did with me, don’t worry. That’ll just give you time to check some of the local thrift stores where you’ll find things like super groovy cowgirl boots…

A large, shaggy, pleather jacket…

Or a nice straw hat for your next beach trip…

Happy Summer!

32 Minutes or So…

I hope everyone had a fun and safe St. Patrick’s Day. The Shamrock Run and Pub Crawl was even better than I thought it would be! They haven’t posted the official results yet, but my time was around 32 minutes.

My mom was about one tenth of a mile before the finish line taking pictures, but she didn’t see me until I passed her.. Then I ran past my dad at the finish line and he didn’t see me either! Ayiyi. Thanks, Family!

There’s everyone, complete with the dogs, and boy were there a lot of dogs there!

Of all shapes and sizes..

This was one of the most fun races I have done. The costumes, the food, the music… All of it was wonderful

There was dancing..

I got some use out of two t-shirts I made 2 YEARS ago..

One says, “I’m Irish.. but don’t kiss me.” The other says, “I’m not Irish… but you can kiss me.”

The food was delicious. Fresh fruits, every kind of sandwich wrap imaginable, cookies, drinks, granola bars and sweet potato chips..

I was also really impressed with the band! I have no idea what their name was and I can’t fin it online, but they were great!

If anybody knows, please tell me!

That’s about all for now!

Vintage Steamer Trunk Repair

I found this steamer trunk at an estate sale a few months ago. I really liked the dark green and brass colors, but it had this big glob of tape residue on the top and a water ring.

I thought I could get the white stuff of with some Goo Be Gone, but apparently the tape residue was as vintage as the trunk and it would not come off. It didn’t even think about coming off. It was pretty discouraging, actually. I didn’t originally want to sand it, because I was worried about messing up the finish that was still good. At this point though, the rest of the finish didn’t matter if there was a huge white chunk of ugly on the top. I had pretty much given up on restoring it, so the whole thing turned into more of an experiment. After a lot of sanding and scraping most of it was gone and the top was still really smooth. Unfortunately I slacked on taking a picture of this step. I found a paint color at Home Depot that was almost an exact match to the green, so painting was the next step. I wanted to paint the bottom side of the trunk first, so I could see how close of a match it actually was and if I would still like it.

The bottom had some wear too, so I sanded it a bit and then painted. I thought the color was great, so I set about doing the most annoying part of this whole project, taping off EVERYTHING. UGH! So tedious.

This is the bottom again. I used a little bit of filler to get rid of a few scratches and dents. Again, it’s always best to experiment on the side where no one will see it if you’re displaying it in your house. I did this same thing on my dresser though, so I figured it would turn out fine.

Much better right? I intentionally didn’t want the paint to be 100% perfect, because I like the worn look. After I repeated this whole process 5 MORE TIMES, to finish all the other sides, It was a huge improvement. Something was still missing for me though. I decided to try something I’ve seen on Domestic Imperfection, she calls it the “Dirty Cowboy Treatment.” Basically, you just add some stain or glaze to it, to give it the nice worn look. I put it across all of the painted surfaces, with extra in the edges and corners. I think it’s perfect now!

Somehow I wrote this whole post without noticing the cat in the picture below… it’s so nice to have company when I’m working outside! You can also see Keen ears poking up on the right side of the box… silly animals…

Right now it’s just stacked in my room as a make shift end table. I’m not sure where it will end up, or if I’ll even keep it, but it was a good learning experience!