DIY Christmas Tree Skirt

Better late than never right?!? I stumbled across a picture of this ruffled Christmas tree skirt at Miss Mustard Seed and absolutely fell in love with it!  Then, after I found out that it was a NO-SEW Christmas tree skirt...yes, NO-SEW, I was determined to squeeze this project in before Christmas. I followed the tutorial over at HGTV and completed the skirt, just in the nick of time. Something about it is just magical and makes really love the Christmas season.

Have a lovely Christmas!

 

♥ Natalie

Kitchen Makeover: Before & After

Hello Lovelies!

The kitchen cabinets and countertops are complete and I FINALLY have some before and after pictures to show you all! 

Before:

After: (Notice the stove & extended bar!)

Before:

After: (Notice the stove, subway tile backsplash, countertops, and hardware)

Before:

After:

Although we only have a few little things left to do to make our kitchen absolutely complete, we are going to take a break for the rest of the year and get back to work on the final touches in 2012. The only things really left on the list are to paint the walls a light gray color, get new kitchen bar stools, new lighting fixtures above the stove, and add some window treatments. Since Matt and I both love our instant gratification, we typically rush into everything and get the first thing we see. Since it's the start of a new year, we decided that a good New Years resolution will be to take our time in selecting the anything new we buy. 

And, just because I can't get enough of it, here are some more after pictures:

Hope you enjoy the pictures! Doesn't it look like a whole new kitchen?!?! We ♥ it!

Have a lovely day!

 

♥ Natalie

Kitchen Makeover Part 4: Hinges, Knobs, & Pulls

I did a ton of research for the EXACT kitchen that I wanted. I looked at picture after picture of all different types of kitchens. I even printed out pictures of kitchens that I LOVED and hung them on my fridge so that I could stare at them every day to make sure that I wouldn’t get sick of them. Obviously, I had to compromise a little since we weren’t knocking out any walls or actually getting new cabinets. But, I must say, with all the hard work we put in and the updates we made really gave us the feel of having a new kitchen.

The hardware we picked really helped add our own personal style to our updated kitchen as well. We got the inspiration just by looking at pictures of other blogs and on Pinterest. Then, we went to Home Depot and looked at all the hardware they had in their store. We were shocked at how much hinges and hardware were, so we decided to buy everything online because we knew we could definitely find a better deal elsewhere. 

I think we were the most surprised by how much the hinges were. Our hinges were super old and gross, so we definitely needed to buy some new ones. Since we were doing black and white, we needed white hinges for the top and black hinges for the bottom. We had to buy a total of 21 pairs and at Home Depot these babies were about $2.80 a pair. We ended up finding our new hinges on eBay at $1.58 a pair, which included shipping and tax! We basically saved 40% by getting these online! 

The hardware we found at Home Depot was SUPER crazy expensive. The pulls we wanted were $6.29 a piece at Home Depot. This sounds fine, but when you have to multiply it by 5 drawers, it came out to be more than I thought and it seems kind of silly to spend over $31 on just the pulls. After searching around, we ended up finding very similar (if not better) pulls on Amazon for only $2.19 a pop. We also had to get the knobs for all 20 cabinet doors. The matching knobs at Home Depot were a whopping $2.99 a piece, but we lucked out because the seller we bought the pulls from also sold matching knobs for only $1.89 a piece.

At the end of the day, a little research went a long way!

	Home Depot	Online
Hinges:	$58.80	$33.18
Pulls:	$31.45	$10.95
Knobs:	$59.80	$37.80
Totals:	$150.05	$81.93

Total savings for hinges and hardware was $68.12. Not too bad, if I must say so myself!

After we put these bad boys on, the hard work will be over! I can't wait to show you guys the finished product!

Have a lovely day!

 

♥ Natalie