Tablescape Thursday /July 4th BBQ

Welcome to Tablescape Thursday hosted by Susan at Between Naps on the Porch. I am early for this post but I have several different options for a July 4th BBQ, so I thought I start this week. Especially if you are having a crowd for the 4th you want to plan ahead to get all the great bargains out there before the stores are sold out.

I purchased most of these items at Walmart. They had great buys on melamine accessories and paper goods. The items below were found in the $1 section at Target (the kitchen towel that can be used as a large napkin for those messy BBQ's. The star bucket was from a couple of years ago though. The paper plates were from Walmart. $2.00 for a package of 8.
Below I changed the paper plate to white and added a star/striped paper napkin. The fabric on the table was from Joann's a few years back, they do have some nice fabric right now and there is a 40% off coupon.


The two items above were also purchased at Walmart for $2.50 each I believe. You can use the star dish for condiments, salsa or whatever you would like. It can also serve as the salad bowl for individuals salads. The plate is nice in lieu of paper if we really want to go "green". However, it would most likely be for a smaller gathering at $2.50 each.

Well I hope you enjoyed an early Red, White and Blue themed 4th. The only way to go. I will be adding to this 4th of July decorating post, so be on the look out.
Have a Happy 4th and don't forget to stop by Between Naps on the Porch for exciting table decorating.

Expressively,
Sofia

Outdoor Wednesday/Outdoor Wedding Plans

Hi Everyone. Today is outdoor Wednesday hosted by Susan at a Southern Daydreamer. I have been busy helping a client with her son's outdoor wedding. I thought I would give you a glance at what I have been working on.

These little tin holders I found at Michael's for $1.29 each. They say Love, Peace and Faith on them. I thought they blended nicely with the outdoor theme. If the client doesn't like them I will paint them a espresso color. She wanted to have pink in the theme so I used pink spray roses, and cutting of greens from my yard.

I am using a Shepard's hook to hold these buckets, with pink ribbon to tie around them. Depending on the look I may change the ribbon to white.

This is a test run to see if she likes the look. I am also going to try the arrangement with white flowers with a hint of pink on them.

What do you think, pink or white a combo of both. I didn't find the right flowers that I was looking for. I wanted little white bell flowers and pink sweet William's, maybe I'll find them elsewhere.

Thanks for stopping by and visiting and don't forget to visit Susan at a Southern Daydreamer.
Have a glorious day.
Expressively
Sofia

Father's Day table

Father's day is here. Do you need an idea for a cute and easy table decoration. I came up with one after looking are the Better Homes and Gardens' website. They had taken beer bottles empty, using them to hold flowers, and had DAD written on them.

Well since my children are grown, we just took beer bottles out of the frig and used our PrintMaster program to get a Father's Day logo and print D A D out, cut them out and glued to the beer bottles.

We also found an old picture of the children, added roses from the garden, empty Mets beer cans and a baseball, dad favorite game.

We set the table around this centerpiece. Just a fun and easy way to decorate for Father's day with their favorite items. If you dad is more of a football fan, use a football and decorate around that. Any item that is dad favorite, use your imagination. Golfing, Fishing anything itemsthat says DAD would be fun. You can also use BBQ type napkins, plates if your having a big crowd.

Enjoy your Father's Day with your special DAD.

Expressively,
Sofia

Hooked on Houses and Hooked into Transforming a Gym

Hooked into decorating a gym!

Hi everyone. I am sooo sorry I have not communicated lately. I am hooking up with Julia at Hooked on Houses for this Friday. I recently was hooked into transforming the church gym into a Bayou swamp for their vacation Bible School. Sometimes we are called to a task for the greater good. So for the last week we have been doing just that.
I did not have much time to prepare in advance for this but here are some pictures I took yesterday after three 8 to 10 hour days of working and creating.


Since we only had a short time to prepare we used a lot of paper and table cloths. The entire gym was covered in three different color plastic rolls of tablecloths to assimilate the look of a sunset and swamp water.The stage was made to look like a dock with a big old cypress tree and lots of tree limbs and vines, and moss growing on them.

The teenagers who are going to be camp counselors came on Tuesday evening and ready their group shack or boat and painted up a storm. 150 teenagers painting and creating a mess and some banners and trees as well.

These banners were made with felt and the white felt was cut out to create the sayings. We also made some fireflies out of felt as well. I would have liked a little more texture but we did not have a lot of time, money or supplies.

Our cypress tree below did not come out great but looks the same as the sample they gave in the decorating video. The Crocodile is really cute, and came with the bible school literature. The tree was made with craft paper, chicken wire, wrapping paper rolls, duct tape. Fake moss was used to decorate it.
So that is what I have been up to the last two weeks. That and getting my youngest daughter home from college. The garage is a mess (that is another story).
I am going to stop procrastinating now and get back to work on cleaning the garage and decorating for father's day. Catch you later.

Have a wonderful day and don't forget to check out Hooked on Houses for great stories.
Expressively

Sofia

Outdoor Wednesday Outdoor Room Project

Hi Everyone and thank you to Susan from A Southern Daydreamer for hosting another Outdoor Wednesday. I thought today I would get your thoughts on a outdoor room. We are taking down this screened in room pictured. It leaked from the day we moved into the home. Apparently it was never constructed properly. So after 10 years of living with rain come inside the room we decided to dismantle it


We have several options for a new outdoor area that we would like.

We would really like a room similar to this but alas it is too costly. Beautiful but not really in our budget right now.So we are hoping to have an outdoor patio arbor/pergola type structure. What do you think? Something along this design less curves with some sort of protection from the winds we get here in the evening.

A little larger than this but again we need a little protection from the winds coming in at night bringing with it the fog from the ocean. It is kinds of weird, if you have never been in San Francisco before.
Sorry for the late post and thanks for visiting. Hope to see you again soon. Don't forget to stop by Susan, A Southern Daydreamer for more outdoor inspirations.

Met Monday

In honor of my daughter's homecoming from college for the summer I thought I would repeat her postcard collection from London and Paris, so here goes....
It is time again for Met Monday hosted by Susan at Between Naps on the Porch. Sorry I am so late in my posting. Some days are so much busier than others. Anyway today I thought I would give you an idea of what you can do with a poster or large postcards you collect when you are traveling. My Daughter studied abroad last summer and brought home a few souvenirs that she wanted to frame some how. Of course she asked "good old mom" to put it together for her.
Here is what I came up with.

She brought back these large postcards of London. They are different black and white with a burs of color in each of them.

I looked around Michael's, Richards Crafts and Aaron Brothers before I found frames that would work for the prints. Of course these prints were an odd size so the frame does not exactly fit the picture. The frames were on sale 40% off and were about $40 for two different frames. The paper was $4.99 for the sheet.

I kept looked around Aaron Brothers as I didn't want to use Mats that would cut of some of the print. I found something new they had there. It is similar to wallpaper but it is a extra large square, larger than craft paper or memory book paper. It is really sold to cover plain mat boards to give a more custom look. I decided I could use this paper as the background for the prints that would border the print in the frameI cut the paper to fit the frame using the glass as a guide. Then I centered each print onto the paper using double stick squares that you would use for memory albums. I made sure each was center in the frame before I added the backing to the frame. Below is the finished product hanging in my daughter's room.
I did two in one frame and one in another. The paper coordinates with her wall color and the black and cream coordinates with her bedding.
It is a custom look for a fraction of the cost. I hope you enjoyed this Met Monday, and please join Susan and Between Naps on the Porch for more exciting changes.

Expressively,
Sofia

Paint Colors

MY FAVORITE PAINT COLORS!

OK , I am so sorry for being so late with this post. I had to go out of town unexpectedly and did not get to post before I left. Melissa at 320 Sycamore is hosting on June 4th.

I hope you will get to see this anyway. I love painting with color. It is so much fun and easy to change when you tire of a color. Hopefully you choose colors that you love,so you don't have to change so often.

I love using Benjamin Moore paints the best. Their color palette is fabulous and always has a great selection of warm colors. The paint is easy to roll on and usually covers in one coat.

My newest color that is a favorite of mine is Warm Cognac. I painted a bathroom we renovated this color. I love it.
It is a fairly new color and paint from Benjamin Moore. The paint is a little more difficult to work with, only because you have to do your trim work first and let it completely dry for 24 hrs. You paint it on and leave it do not go over again and again or you start taking off the color. Then the next day you can roll the color on, only rolling down once and overlap your strokes. Use a thick roller. Once you get the technique down it is fabulous paint and has a great depth of color. Only one coat needed and touching up is really easy.

I also recently re-painted my daughter's room. I also used a Benjamin Moore Aura paint. The color is Turmeric. It is a warm neutral tone with a touch of gold look to it.

Unfortunately when you take pictures with natural light and artificial light the color changes. Both the above picture and below are the same color and same room. I hate when that happens.

Again I so apologize for being tardy with this post. I hope you enjoy it and head on over to Melissa at 320 Sycamore for more awesome colors. Thanks for stopping by and visiting. Come again soon!

Expressively
Sofia