COASTAL FALL THEME

Normally, I would hesitate to stray far from the traditional Fall/Halloween color theme when decorating my house.  I stepped outside the traditional box this year and got my new craft room (which will be revealed in a post soon!) buzzing with a coastal color pumpkin painting extravaganza!  After perusing Pinterest for a few days and taking a trip to Michael's and the Dollar Store, my creative juices started to flow.  First, I mixed up a homeade batch of chalk paint using some blue color sample paint I had leftover and adding plaster of paris and water.  Before going into any detail of what products I used, I wanna show you my favorite pumpkin creation.

This was done using a plastic orange pumpkin from Michael's, which was thankfully on sale the day I bought it (sheesh those things must have gold flecks in them or something!).  I bought a roll of the cheap rhinestone mesh ribbon and cut it into long single wide strips for the spider webbing.  I glued that on with a glue gun.  I had this plastic halloween spider, which was black.  I painted it with silver paint and added glitter to the body (it doesn't show up in this pic very well) and also touched the legs with blue sparkle elmers glue.  Then to finish my coastal creation, I painted the stem with some brown craft paint and after it dried I rubbed some gold rub n'buff on the stem to highlight it.  So I ended with a somewhat coastal classy version of creepy.

But I didn't stop there - oh no!! My craft room looked like some sort of weird pumpkin cult for about a week.  I just started painting all these little guys with different coastal colors that I had (lie! In addition to what I had,  I went and bought a few fun new colors for this project).  By mixing different finishes like metallic, pearl, chalk and glossy, I think it added some texture and interest to the displays.

I Wrapped My LED Candles in Burlap

This  Effect is Done by Sprinkling With Epsom Salts

I Added Twine and a Burlap Bow

Brushed with ModPodge and Sprinkled With Epsom Salts

Now I can enjoy the Fall without giving up my coastal colors for an entire season.  If I was really brave, I'd extend the theme to Christmas.....maybe I'm not that brave yet...

From my View From The Fog,
                          Deb

SPRING BREAK TRIP TO PALM SPRINGS

My hubby and I were recently trying to find a good place to take a few of the grand kids (ages 15, 13 & 7) for a long weekend during their spring break. We wanted something that was fairly close to home and that we could drive to, but different from the usual places we go.  We ended up going to the Palm Springs area, which is pretty close - just a pesky mountain range dividing us.  We've been there before for a convention for work, but this time, since we were on vacation and were out to enjoy the whole experience,  we took the scenic route through the mountains.  It was a beautiful weekend and a beautiful ride. 

Driving up CA Hwy 74

Beautiful mountain views

Now if you've ever just driven through the desert on I-10 and whizzed past the exits for Palm Desert, Indian Wells, Rancho Mirage and Palm Springs, thinking it was the end of the earth and hoping you got out of the dry harsh terrain alive, well you're missing out.  It's really quite beautiful once you exit into the land of planned beauty.  We were a bit nervous that our resort would not be very kid friendly and that we'd be shushing the kids and trying to make them act like adults the whole time.  Now, don't get me wrong, they are great, well-behaved kids, but after all it was spring break and kids just wanna have fun (my hubby being included in the kid category!).  Not to worry!  The place was crawling with spring break families and our resort went out of it's way to be kid accommodating. 

Koi pond at our resort

Beautiful landscaping at our resort

It was a great time and my recommendation for first timers like us would be to definitely take the Palm Springs Aerial Tram  (Gondola) up to Mt. San Jacinto (elevation 8500').  It's a really fun ride up and down and the views from the top are amazing!!  The gondola car rotates 360 degrees continuously on the ascent and decent.

Riding on the gondola

Looking up at San Jacinto Peak

The second recommendation is to go spend a day at Joshua Tree National Park - but not in the summer due to the heat.  We had a blast there and the 7 year old earned her Jr. Park Ranger Badge the day we went.   By the time she took that pledge with the ranger at the end of the day, the whole family felt like they should get the badge. It was a ton of fun but she worked hard for that little plastic badge! 

Some park views

Climbing Boulders

Some of the 2 million Joshua Trees

                            

Larry Lizard followed me from home

Looking down at Palm Springs

OK, now for the not so fun stuff; traveling with Fibromyalgia can certainly be challenging and painful.  I was a bit frustrated because I was supposed to get a steroid injection in that annoying  bursitis hip of mine before we left, so that I could enjoy the hiking at Joshua Tree and the swimming and biking at the resort.  As it turned out, there was some  conflict with scheduling at the doc and I went sans shot.  As I always do when we travel, I brought my yoga mat and did plenty of in-room stretching to ease the painful hip and FM muscle pain  (my grand kids are used to seeing me in down dog, thank goodness).  Oh yeah, I almost forgot to mention my pillow collection came along for the journey too.

By the second day I had gotten into my groove of "working" the menus at the resort restaurants so that I could be sure the food was gluten free, and also friendly to my many food sensitivities.  The key is to be vocal with the staff and ask lots of questions and make lots of special requests.  Of course, I had plenty of healthy snacks packed too:)   It still really irks me that there seems to be such a vast disregard for healthy or vegetarian options available out there:(  So, to make a painful long story not sound painful, the trip was a ton of fun and my discomfort was fairly minimal and definitely worth it to make such wonderful family memories.

From my View From The Fog,

                           Deb

PAINTED THRIFT STORE COFFEE TABLE

I just finished refinishing this coffee table for my family room.  My hubby and I recently got new chairs and sofa in our family room and the maroon leather ottoman we had just didn't go with the new look.  I loved that ottoman too!  Ah well - since it's now living at my Son and Daughter-in-law's house, I can visit it any time.

Just a little background on our new coffee table...We like to "discuss" our projects a lot before starting.  And I mean A LOT!  Lots of discussion went on at our house about what kind of look we wanted for our new coffee table.  Should it be round or square or rectangular or oblong?  Should it be wood or tile or iron or concrete?  (I'm still thinking about that concrete idea, but that's gonna have to be for another project)  Anyway, after several trips to some of our favorite haunts, I finally stumbled on this rather plain Jane table at my favorite consignment store.

I know - kinda BORING!  But I had a vision!  First of all, I sanded that table real good.  I started off with a palm sander and then eventually ended up with good old fashioned elbow grease and sand paper.  Then I decided I'd like to have a little gold showing through.  A quick look-see through the paint cabinet in the garage and also through my craft room.  No gold metallic paint.  Off to Home Depot, where I decided on the 10 oz. Martha Stewart Metallic Paint in Vintage Gold. I painted 2 coats of that gold on the table  (it acted as my primer also).  

And this is the table after both coats of Gold

The next day my vision continued.  I decided I wanted the base color to be a sea glass aqua kinda thing and I thought I had just the paint handy.  So I painted one of the legs with the Glass Tile color I had left over from my downstairs bathroom.  FLUB!  It was way too light because I planned to put chalk paint over that and it needed more contrast.  Another trip to Home Depot and I came up with this gorgeous color - I think it's called Edge of Forest.  I failed to save the paint chip and the can doesn't even reference the color name.  It's Behr though.  Isn't this color pretty?

I was half tempted to just leave it like this.  But on with the vision... I read a lot of blogs about using chalk paint and decided to try a go at making my own.  I had some white paint and mixed it with plaster of paris and water.  I measured about 2 to 1 of plaster of paris to paint.  I added a splash of water and started stirring.  And then I added a little more plaster of paris.  And another splash of water.  And I stirred a lot!

Then I painted my table using a brush.  I wanted to wipe off the chalk paint, as I was going to make it look like a whitewashed effect.  As I was painting and wiping (with cheesecloth) I realized I could go ahead and wipe really hard to get through that blue to the gold.  I got my cheesecloth damp and it worked really well.

My neighbors across the street were working on a project in their garage, so they came over to check it out. I think they thought I was a little crazy with all my paint layering and wiping off.  I called it a day.  The next morning I had a little time so I decided to sand over the whole table with some fine sandpaper and then used some course paper for a little more distressing.  Once again, I almost decided it was good.  But on with the vision....I got some Minwax stain out in Provencial and stained that poor little table all over.  And I wiped it off and I stained it again.  And I wiped it off.  I have to say, my heart was pounding I was so excited!  My vision was coming into focus and I Loved it!

Off I went and left that little table to dry.  The next day I checked it and was a bit nervous because that stain was still tacky.  So off I went in hopes that I had not screwed it all up by putting stain on it.  The NEXT day it was really getting good and dry.  I decided to wait one more day and give some thought to whether I was going to wax it or use a polyurethane on it.  It seemed like waxing would be easy, but did I mention I have 8 grandkids?  I thought maybe the polyurethane would be my best decision.  So I had some Modern Masters Clear Urethane from Sherwin Williams, but it is water based.  After researching online, I decided the best option was to wipe the whole table with Mineral Spirits to kinda "cure" it so I could use that water based product.  It worked like a charm!  I put two coats of the urethane on (sanding with steel wool in between coats).  And my table looks awesome in my family room with my new sofa!