We have been working on many projects here in the Gagnon house. The largest of which is upgrading our kitchen. I say upgrade and not remodeling because – if we were remodeling…. We would have gutted the whole kitchen and started over. However, our budget is such that we are doing what we can to spruce it up without spending a lot of money.

So here’s what our kitchen looked like before:

Did you see how dark it was… Blah! Depressing! So after doing a quick photoshopped image of what it could look like:

Much nicer isn’t it! Once we saw what it could look like – it made taking the leap to paint the cabinets a little less intimidating. So we have now officially finished painting the cabinets, spray painting our hardware …

and stripped, spackled, sanded and painted the walls…

And so far we’ve only spent about $75.00 on the whole thing! Not bad if you ask me! We’ve still got to paint the trim again (brighten it up), paint the ceiling, replace the floors (we’re thinking a wood simulate), replace the counters and the kitchen sink, and put up the tile back splash. But we’re in no hurry. The trim and backsplash will probably be next.

Are you working on any projects around your house? I’d love to see what you’re doing!

Have an awesome Wednesday!

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I can’t take credit for this idea… I found it on a DIY Blog called MaryJanes & Galoshes. But I loved this beautiful wreath so much I wanted to give it a try and I enjoyed it so much I thought I’d share it with all of you! So what you’ll need:

• 1 Foam Wreath Form (I got mine at Hobby Lobby for $5)
• Brown Lunch Sacks (you can use old ones – but if you need to buy them, you can get 50 for $1.50)
• 2″ Paper Punch
• Old Paper
• Hot Glue & Glue Gun

Okay so you’ll start with your lunch bags. You can use any kind of brown paper bags you like. I stuck with the school lunch sacks though because they were a little thinner than a grocery store paper bag.

Then you’re going to take your 2″ whole punch. And get as many little circles out of each bag as you can. here’s what my punch looks like:

You’re little paper bag cutouts should look something like this:

Now you need you’re foam form. Mine is about 11″ wide:

Now you’re going to take one little circle cutout at a time and wrap it around a unsharpened pencil, like this:

Then you’re going to add a dab of hot glue to the center of your circle, like this:

Then you’re going to push it onto the wreath form. You’re going to want to hold it in place for a few seconds to make sure the glue sets. And make sure you bunch each piece REALLY close together.

Here’s what one bag looked like on my wreath form:

Here’s what the whole form will look like when you finish. It took me maybe 12-18 bags and a few hours, but you could easily do this while watching tv

Now you can do whatever you want. Add a pretty boy and hang it or add some flowers. I decided to add some pretty paper butterflies I cut out, and here’s my finished wreath!

Ta-Da! Now just find an awesome place to hang or display your new lovely art piece! I hope you enjoyed this fun little project! I’d love to see what you come up with for you finished project!

Have an awesome Wednesday!

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So today I thought I’d share a project I’d been wanting to do and finally finished for myself. I’m a huge fan of DIY projects, and so I’m often undertaking little projects around the house I want to do. This past week I’ve been working on making one of those fabric covered bulletin boards for inside my dresser.

So before you go thinking I’m weird for decorating the inside of my dresser – let me explain… I’ve been wanting an inspiration board. Something that could have personal little motivational things on it for me, like scripture verses, pictures, and quotes. I wanted it to be somewhere that I would see it everyday but that not everyone who comes into my house would see. Thus the inside of my dresser became a perfect solution.

So here’s my dresser:

Please ignore all the clutter you see on top of the dresser (I’m working on a couple other projects and things have just collected here). But you can see i have two doors on my dresser. The insides of which…

are the perfect space to create an inspiration board. See that little recessed shape? I made my inspiration board fit right in there.

So here’s how you do it! You’ll need:
• Thin sheet of wood (I got two sheets of an 1/8″ thick board from Menard’s)
• Quilt Batting
• Fabric
• Ribbon
• Staples (and Staple Gun)
• Upholstery Tacks
• Hammer
• Optional Gorilla Glue

1. So first I cut my boards into the shape of the recessed part of my dresser. I took a bunch of measurements and drew it onto the board and then used a Xact-o knife to cut it out. Remember you’re going to be wrapping quilt batting and fabric around it so you’re going to want it to be a little bit smaller than the opening… not to snug. Here’s what my board looked like:

2. Okay so once you get your shape cut out it gets really easy. The first thing you’re going to do is wrap your board in quilt batting and staple it in place using your staple gun. I wanted my board to be a little puffy – so I wrapped three layers of quilt batting around my board. Make sure you stretch it nice a tight before you staple it… you don’t want it to be loose and get puckers and wrinkles in it.

Here’s what it looks like after I staple it in place from the back:

And here’s the front. See how there’s no wrinkles. It’s still got a puffiness too it, but the batting has been stretched pretty good.

3. Now that you’ve got the batting in place you can add the fabric. I spent a while trying to decide what fabric I wanted… but I’m a huge color freak and I’m picky when it comes to color selections. In the end I decided to go with a blue abstract fabric because we’ve got a blue, brown and cream theme in our bedroom. The abstract pattern is a good idea if you don’t want to have to worry about keeping stripes or patterns in a straight line. Since my board has curves to it, it seemed like a better option to me.

Once you pick your fabric and get it home, you’re going to want to iron it. Get all the wrinkles out of it you can. Then you’ll wrap it around the board and staple it in place just like the quilt batting. Make sure this fabric is tight when you staple it in place too.

Here’s what the front of my board looked like after I stapled it in place:

4. I didn’t get any real pictures of the next step. But what you’re going to do is place ribbons diagonally across the board. You’re going to want to space each ribbon evenly so you create nice little squares in between your ribbon. I just stapled these ribbons in place on the back side of my board as well. Here’s a picture of a board with the ribbons already done:

5. You’ll notice in the previous picture, I already have a few upholstery tacks in place. There are all kinds of upholstery tacks out there you can choose from. I went with small round brown tacks to go with the color scheme in my room. You’re just going to place them at each point where the ribbons intersect. For these round tacks – I just pushed them in place with the heel of my hand. Other tacks can be set using a nice little tack setting tool. Here’s a close-up of my tacks:

Here’s what a finished board will look like with all the tacks in place:

6. The next step for me was to set my new boards into my dresser doors. So I removed my doors from my dresser, and laid them flat on the floor. We wanted to be sure that my board stayed in place so we got some gorilla glue and placed a dab on each upholstery tack sticking through the backside of my board:

7. Once our glue was on each tack we flipped the board over and lined it up with the recessed section of the door. We started at the bottom of the door and worked our way up, hammering each tack into the wood of my dresser door. (I had Ryan help me with this part because I tend to be a little too gentle with these things for fear of breaking them…)

8. We let the doors sit for a little while after nailing them to make sure the gorilla glue had time to set up. Then we just installed the doors back in my dresser:

Ta-Da! I love it! It’s a nice pop of color for me every morning when I open my dresser! Now I’m just working on the pictures & quotes to put on the boards. I slipped a few loose pictures into my board so you can see how it works, but I’m super happy with how it turned out.

I hope you found this at least a little fun and interesting. I really enjoy making things and sprucing things up in practical way. I’d love to hear your thoughts or questions about my little project! I’d also love hearing about any project you may have put together too!

Happy Monday!

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