Customized Ikea Cart

Yesterday my oldest daughter turned 14.  (I'm still trying to figure out how that happened!)  Making her Mom super proud, she asked to take a trip down to our local Ikea store to do some shopping ;)  I stumbled across this cute idea from Polka Dot Chair on Pinterest a couple weeks ago and told her I thought it would be super cute for her room.  Click the image to check out the link to the original post!

We picked up this Raskog cart in the teal color to match her purple, gray and teal room.  When we got home I used my Cricut to create labels for each shelf.

We also grabbed this same utensil holder from the kitchen section that Melissa used and wire tied it to the side to store her flat iron and curling wand.

I love how this turned out! It looks so cute in her room and is extremely functional at the same time-perfect combination! 

I have this same cart in gray in my craft room...I think it is time to dress it up with some labels too ;)  Any other great Ikea hacks that you have done?!  I would love to hear about them!  Feel free to link them up in the comments of this post! (Please limit to ONLY Ikea hack posts on this thread.  I would love for you to link up any of your other posts each week here on Inspire Me Monday!!  Any non-Ikea posts on this thread will be deleted.)

Firefighter Turkey

My second grader came home this week with a fun turkey project!  He was given a turkey printed on a piece of paper and had to find a way to disguise him without just coloring him with crayons.  So of course, we decided to make him into a firefighter!  (Although, I must be honest that he did ask about making it a minion at first...)

We used scrap book paper for his gear, some firefighter stickers that were on clearance for accessories, pipe cleaners for the hose, glittery blue paper for the water, and topped him off by coloring his feathers like fire.  It was a fun project to work on with him!

Command Center Fix

I have showed you the Command Center we have in our house.  (If you have not seen it you can check it out here)  We have made several changes to it since then, but the most drastic change came just recently.  We started to get stains on the sheet metal we have hanging up.  It looked horrible!  It just made the whole room look dirty! We had some chalk board paint laying around so decided that we would use that to cover the stains, even though I have no intention of really using it as a chalk board.

Here's what it looked like...BAD I know!!

We primed the metal with a latex primer just as the chalk paint recommended.  

Then we put 2 coats of the chalk paint on.

I love how it turned out!! Makes the room feel so much nicer :)

Antique Window

About a year ago my sweet friend, Brandi, offered me an antique window that she had picked up at a flea market.  I was so excited to find the perfect spot for it, but as life often goes, things were busy and I never seemed to find the time to clean it up and find a place for it.  So out in the garage it sat.  And sat.  And I looked at it all the time dreaming about where I should put it.  I finally decided that I wanted it hang it in my dining room.  I thought it would go perfectly with the antique china cabinet that Brandi painted and distressed for me a few months ago!  (I'm starting to think we need to rename this the Brandi Room!)

The frame was a little rough looking, so while I wanted to keep the old look of it, I also knew that with our bright white board and batten in the room, that the window would need to be cleaned up and brightened up a bit.  (You can see how we did our board and batten here.)  I did a very thin layer of flat white paint to brighten up the frame, but also to allow the character of the wood to still show through.

It worked perfectly!  The paint did just enough to tie it into the brightness of the room but maintained the character of the old wood.  I love how it turned out!  And to finish it off, I hung a birchwood wreath on it.

BEFORE

AFTER

2014 Top 5!

Wow, can you believe that we are already at the end of 2014?!  Seems impossible!  I want to take a minute to just thank you so very much for all of your support, likes, shares, comments, etc through out the past year!  I truly appreciate each and every one of you taking time to visit my little space on the internet.  Your presence here means the world to me.

I thought to wrap up the end of the year I would share the top 5 posts from 2014.  If you missed one of these be sure to check them out just by clicking on the pictures!  Here they are in order, starting with your most favorite:

Pantry Organization

Cookware Storage

Controlling Paper Clutter...an Update

House Number Post

Spicy Chicken Enchiladas

So there you have it!  I am looking forward to the new year and sharing some fun new things with you!  Hope you will join me in 2015!!