The Intrepid McKenna's: Empty Nesting

This Blog is being brought to you by the letter E.
E for elbow grease.
E for empty nest.

While Chris is driving back from Washington with our belongings I tried to fill my time with some craft projects. I have so many pinned on my Pinterest boards I went through and found a few that would be useful and inexpensive.

And I am on Day 3 of my right hand feeling totally normal! Not my new normal, but both hands feel exactly the same. It doesn't hurt or tingle:) It feels pain :) And I am totally going to abuse it and make it wield a hammer today. After 2+ weeks of numbness and tingling, I'm going to excercise this damn hand!

This blog will be mostly photos. You can click on any photo to make it larger.

First, I love a glass jar. I have them in the kitchen and the bathroom. A good ol' fashioned Mason jar is my favorite. But since our new apartment has no recycling facilities what-so-ever ( le sigh), and I can't stand to throw recyclable things in the garbage, I had a few glass jars. So I turned them into even cuter jars with the help of a can of spray paint and some candle holders from Savers Thrift Store. Total cost : $4 plus some spray paint.

Spray paint your candle sticks and lids.

Make sure your jars are clean and dry then attack them to the dried bases with hot glue or an epoxy.

Voila! Adorable apothecary style jars full of your chosen candy. We like Jelly Belly's and Almond Roca :)

Second, I love old mercury glass. And there is a very popular pin that uses Krylon Looking Glass Paint to create a faux mercury glass look on any glass surface. Well I went to 7 stores and couldn't find that specific paint. I did however come across a blog where another crafter had the same problem and used a Rustoleum Metallic Silver paint and the effect was the same. Plus it cost <$5 compared to Krylons $12. The trick is that you spray your item with water and then spray paint over it. You are supposed to use clear class but I tried it on a few kinds of glass and yes, the best results were on clear glass.

I used a green champagne bottle, a jones soda bottle, a mason jar, and three candle holders. The candle holders turned out awesome. The rest, eh.

Gather your glass items, spray bottle of water and spray paint. It takes a few coats to get all the sides of the items. Plus you need to let the water evaporate and paint dry.

The Candle holders turned out pretty awesome.

Close up of the texture

... and with candles

Bottles by themselves

... and arranged with flowers. We can't afford to have fresh flowers all the time and Chris hates fake flowers. So I usually make tissue paper flowers, which he really likes.

Thirdly, I found some awesome chairs at the Thrift Store last week. My Mom ID'd them from the 1970's but I was just impressed by how immaculate they were. The cushions were stained but the wood had no scratches or chips. They are very solid and I knew Chris would like them. He is into antiques and old items like I am.

Today I bought some fabric to re-cover them and busted out a staple gun :) I liked them before but now I love them. They look expensive if you could see them in person. All for $4 worth of fabric. Which makes the total cost of the 2 chairs $35.

The original form of the chair. This is how I found them at Savers. So much potential.

And this is the fabric I chose to recover them in.

Side by side :)

And lastly, our apartment come equiped with an alarm. Or at least the panel of an alarm. It's in the entry way and I hate it. I want an welcoming entry way where we can hang out coats ( theoretically, it's bleeping hot here) and kick off our shoes. I found this great bamboo table at Ross and it has been lonely for a few days. Chris is on his way back with the coat rack for the corner but I wanted some art work for the corner too. In our last place I made some inexpensive DIY fabric panels for our bedroom and decided to do it again here. A $2 frame from the thrift store, some fabric and a staple gun is all you need.