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Haven Conference 2013

August 6, 2013 By Erica Deuel 22 Comments

I can now say I have been to a blog conference. It was everything I thought it would be and so much more.

For those of you who might wonder what a blog conference is, it is an event over a few days where bloggers come together to learn, network, and inspire one another. I went to the Haven conference in Atlanta that was geared towards other DIY and crafty bloggers. It was awesome.

I roomed with one of my really good friends, Erin, at DIYontheCheap. We had a blast!

For 2.5 days we ate really well, were around gorgeous decor, and learned so much. I met so many incredible people and hung out with some of my favorite bloggers. It was like a dream. I am so thankful for this weekend.

Going into it I felt a bit drained from all the travel, foster care training, and getting back from the beach the day before. I felt I didn’t have much time to prepare, although I did have my business cards ready to hand out. I was tired, knew another homeschool year was coming quickly, and was wondering how I was going to balance it all.

I knew the weekend was going to be huge when I felt my heart opening up in the first session.

Ana White was the opening speaker and I love what she said. One thing that stuck out to me was “be good at one thing…good enough at everything else.” It’s so easy to get discouraged and over whelmed at all the components of having a blog. When she said that, there was an immediate freedom for me.

I went to lots of sessions where I learned so much. My head is spinning-in a good way. I’m still processing all I heard, and I have lots of ideas and a to do list a mile long (that I am excited about). One of my favorite sessions was a hands on session with Ryobi power tools. Getting hands on with some tools gave me confidence and took some of the intimidation away that powerful tools can bring. I can’t wait to use my new miter saw! Stay tuned to hear more about it.

After two days of hearing and absorbing information, staying up late talking, mingling with other bloggers, and eating lots, we were a group of tired bloggers. I think every blogger in that conference left tired yet excited and inspired.

I came home with so many goodies that I can’t wait to start using on some new projects! The sponsors of Haven were incredible and blessed us all with so much!

I actually won one of the giveaways from Home Depot, and I literally squealed with excitement! I got an incredible basket of products that I have already started using. I am obsessing over it all, but the solar mason jar is my favorite!

As I went about the conference, I was constantly encouraged by other bloggers about my story. I had friends new and old ask about my family, homeschooling, and our journey to foster care. My heart was uplifted. I can easily question our life style on hard days, yet this weekend I was encouraged that our way of living is inspiring others to go for their dreams as well.

The closing talk for the conference was a challenge to use our gifts and skills for good. It was all I could do to not cry through the whole talk. It felt like everything that I had been feeling and processing all weekend was brought together.

I love to craft and do fun projects, but more importantly I love to inspire. I have a renewed sense of purpose. I am excited to continue to share my projects and ways I decorate our home to be a warm welcoming place, but I hope through it all I can share parts of our story and journey that inspire you. We are not perfect but we are trying to live simply. walk humbly. and love Jesus and people. Thank you for caring and being in it with us!

Thank you to Haven and everyone who attended for creating and being apart of something so marking on me. Thank you to YOU for being in this journey with me!

Now, a little something for one of YOU! I mentioned in my Haven Is Coming post that I would have a way for you to win some of my swag. Here is the deal. On my instagram feed during the conference a fun conversation started on “how many bloggers does it take to use a saw?” Enter the answer in the comments below to be entered to win some of my swag: Ryobi Flashlight, Rust-oleum Spray Gripper, and a roll of 3m painter’s tape! I will use random.org to pick the winner on Friday!

If you went to Haven, and we didn’t get to meet, I wish we had! There were so many people who I wish I had gotten to meet. We needed two more days 😉 Please introduce yourself, so we can kind of meet here!

Give Thanks Blocks

November 9, 2012 By Erica Deuel 6 Comments

I have been so excited about today! We are getting back to our Project Spotlight with these festive Give Thanks blocks. At the bottom of the post I’ll reveal our $50 Dancing Zebras giveaway grand prize winner!

Last week, we started our thankful tree, and it has been a lot of fun.

Every night at dinner, we go around the table and say one thing we are thankful for. I write down these things and hang them on our “tree”. It has been so inspiring to hear what each child is thankful for and to talk about these things together.

Even little Reagan is involved. I’m sure she has no idea what she is saying, but when we ask her what she is thankful for, she always says something. One of my favorites was when she screamed “Charleigh” this week. Charleigh is one of her sweet cousins, who is in town visiting this week! We are so excited to spend some good time loving on this little girl.

I wanted to make some blocks to put in front of our tree that would help remind us all day, and not just at our dinner table, to give thanks. Here are the steps with on I came up with our give thanks blocks.

I started by getting a 2 x 3 board from Home Depot and measuring off 2″ slots. I cut along those measurements and ended up with a bunch of rough blocks.

I sanded the blocks till their edges were smooth, and then I painted them a pretty fall color.

After they were a nice burnt orange, I decided I wanted to have a leaf outline on them as a watermark behind the letters.

I took a plastic leaf (I found a bag of these at the Dollar Tree and we are using them on our thankful tree.) to stencil around to have the outline of a leaf on my blocks. Using the Antique Gold paint, I lightly dabbed the paint brush around the stencil and edges of the block to create a subtle backdrop for the leaf. Once I had done this step, the blocks looked like this…

I made the leaves wrap around the blocks and painted them, rotating at different angles, with parts of the leaves “falling off” the block. I love how they came out. Next, I wanted the blocks to say “give thanks”. I am not the best at hand painting fonts, but I decided to give it a try with this project.

I printed out my ideal font, and eye-balled the letters. To finish them off I lightly sanded around the blocks to give them a more vintage look. Finally I gave the blocks a coat of Mod Podge to seal everything with a slight sheen. They aren’t perfect, but I think they came out cute!

I love how they look in front of our tree.

Feel free to give these a shot for your Fall decor! What’s a special thing you do around your house to celebrate the Thanksgiving season?

Ok, it’s the big moment we’ve all been waiting for! Drum roll, please. The Grand Prize winner of the $50 Dancing Zebra Giveaway randomly chosen by Rafflecopter is, Kali Mallard! Congratulations Kali! I will be in touch with you on the details. In the meantime, you can go to my store and start window shopping for what you might like to have!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Six Month Bedroom Makeover

October 12, 2012 By Erica Deuel 13 Comments

I am so excited to share with you the process of our bedroom makeover. This process began in May, and we are now in October. Life with three young kids might be part of this six month process, but i like to think it was more about dreaming and creating to MAKE our favorite things ourselves.

I look at this picture and I am blown away that our room used to have a more “haphazard” and “messy” feel.

The dark wood headboard created a much darker feel in our room. We originally painted this room with a $5.00 can of oops paint from Home Depot five years ago. We didn’t love the color, but we were planning on moving and knew a “clean” coat of paint would be more appealing than the dingy beige we had before. While painting the green, we decided to use another left over paint to create a brown accent wall.

It was a mess, and as we have stayed in our house and not moved its been a goal of ours to fix up this space. Unfortunately, it has been low on the list of priorities. We finally had time and space to start fixing it up, and it started with this beautiful mirror my husband made for me for Mother’s Day.

That is the one of the best presents I have ever received! For our eight year anniversary, we gave each other a new bed. We upgraded our queen to a huge king size with nice firm mattresses.

This new bed helped me complete my king size rag quilt. I made it on a small budget and yet it has an anthropology, bright, fun feel without costing a fortune. It has become one my most prized projects ever.

Our room is small with only one wall without windows or doors. The only way for us to both have a dresser is to have two tall dressers side by side. Still trying to fix this wall, although we are attacking the piles on top.

We needed a new headboard, since we only bought a metal frame with our new mattress. You got a glimpse of the DIY headboard that we created on last week’s Friday Project Spotlight.

I have posted a few pictures on Twitter and Facebook this week showing glimpses of how it looks hanging in our room! I have been so excited to share with you all of these pictures.

We picked Rain Water from Behr paint as our new room’s color. With all the bright color in our mirror, quilt, and headboard, we knew we needed a subtle color on the walls to let everything else pop.

It took two coats, but we got it painted! I am a mess when it comes to painting. Fortunately there’s no shortage of blue tape and brown paper to help keep me in line!

Oops! Who paints in jewelry!?!

The color goes on looking pretty close to white. I was at first a little nervous that it was too light, but as it dried it became a really pretty light blue. I love the color!

Seeing my headboard on the wall might have made me just a little giddy! I have a feeling this room could become one our more used rooms. 🙂

Everything really does pop more and have a more feminine touch without hopefully feeling too girly! Caleb was pleased that we chose blue for the walls since his “daddy has to sleep under a ‘girl’s’ blanket.”

That shag/t-shirt rug I got on clearance at Kohls sometime this summer for $4.00!?! I bought it in a heartbeat and didn’t even know what I would do with it. I just knew it was a great deal and I loved it. Don’t you love finds like that?

Another find for me was that purple/turquoise chair. Do you remember seeing it in my Ohio Auction post? It was a great free find that looks so much better with a coat of spray paint.

We all love to hang out in our room now! It is so fun that every one of our rooms is starting to feel like “us” and as “complete” as crafters can ever say. I think I need to post a tour that is more professional than our last home tour.

Thank you so much for checking in on my Friday Project Spotlight! Do you have a big project you are in the midst of working on?

Update: I have since added some new throw pillows to our bed, and I love all the color they bring!

DIY Headboard

October 5, 2012 By Erica Deuel 12 Comments

I have been wanting to create a new headboard for our bed ever since I finished my king sized rag quilt.

It has been a long time coming, but we finally created one! (I say “we” because Matt was largely involved. My projects often involve him. What an awesome man.)

I love how it turned out and I can’t wait to hang it in our room!! Would you like how I came up with this piece? Stayed tuned! First off, I did lots and lots of scouting on Pinterest for inspiration. Out of everything I saw, here are four of my favorite boards…

I love the simplicity of this look with the sweet branches. I thought the stained wood would look good with my bright quilt too.

I loved the way “love” was painted with the stain look, but I couldn’t decide if I wanted it to be such a bold piece.

I loved the way this “love” was painted smaller, but then it seemed like “not enough” for my taste.

So, I was a mess wanting something “simple” and yet “striking”.

I loved this rustic door and “love” mix. We looked for a while and couldn’t find an old door for cheap. Junk places realize what they have and price crazy old doors starting at $100? You can buy new doors cheaper. I didn’t want to pay that (cheap I know!), and I didn’t have an old barn in the back yard that I could “stumble” across such a treasure.

We have been getting caught up on How I Met Your Mother. Amazing show if you have not watched it! Every time I saw Marshall and Lilly’s bed, I wanted it. I loved the bold color.

I ultimately decided I am a “color” kind of person. Why not have a fun headboard to go with a fun bed quilt!?! So, this is what I came up with…

I mixed the simple branches with the word “love” on top of a fun color. I love the result! The only thing is my room is currently painted green.

This beauty totally clashes. 🙂 Hence, it gave us another “project”. We have already bought the paint. My room is getting a makeover little by little!

Would you like do to this too? Here are the steps…

We bought six boards at Home Depot – (4) 1×6 and (2) 1×4 . I laid them out in the order I wanted. I didn’t want the two smaller boards together.

We measured and trimmed off some of the ends. We wanted our headboard to be about 80 inches long once we were done. We cut the boards a little shorter than that, since they are overlapping each other to create the overall 80 inches in length.

We then chiseled, chipped, sanded and hammered to create a rustic, ripped look on the ends of the boards.

Our boys love “project days” and jump right in on their own creations!

Reagan loves all the commotion and everyone hanging out. It is a blast these days.

Once the boards were roughed up we laid them back down and drew a chalk line, so we would know how to line them back up while attaching them.

Matt attached them with lots of screws and wood glue. We don’t want any part of this falling on us during the night.

Here is where I got to start playing. All that hard labor stuff led to the fun stuff. Life. I painted a light coat of my teal blue. Don’t worry about covering it evenly. It makes sanding later much easier!

I then used a burnt orange acrylic paint to paint the word “love”.

I then painted the branches in a creme acrylic. This is where I left it for a couple of days. I had to decide if I liked it, by staring at it. This occasional walk by and stare session was to make sure I didn’t want to add or subtract anything.

This can be the hard part for an impatient craft-er like me, but it is so valuable. There would be nothing worse than to totally finish this project and not love it by always “regretting” one step.

I decided I loved it, so I sanded it down. I wanted the newly painted touches to look more rough like the teal background.

Don’t you love seeing how we work outside in our car port in these pictures?! My professional wood working brother is usually right there with us, which we take full advantage off to ask all our questions.

Next, it was time to stain! I love this step. It’s so quick, yet the effects are huge!

Doesn’t the stain just finish it off? Check out the sanded image verse the stain image up close…

It makes it look complete in my book. I can’t wait to hang this up above my beautiful bed!

Up next, we have to paint our room. This weekend’s project, Matt???

Thank you so much for checking out my Friday Project Spotlight! I hoped you enjoyed seeing how we created our headboard, and you might be inspired to try it yourself!

We had all the materials except for the wood which was about $50. Cheap for a headboard!

Let me know if you have any questions we can help you with!

I hope you have a wonderful weekend!

I linked this project up at: One Project Closer and The Ugly Duckling.

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