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All Things Home

All Things Home

studio closet reveal

The studio closet is finally finished!  I cannot express how awesome it is to have all of that functional storage in this space now.  It was one of my goals this year to make my workspaces more functional and that has been accomplished in my studio and home office. Previous Posts: If you missed any previous posts in the studio closet series, including plans and some process pictures of how the closet was built, you can find them here… studio closet: framing and shelves studio closet progress: building the doors studio closet progress: straightening warped doors with turnbuckles studio closet progress: building the 3rd door & adding catches So, this weekend, while everyone else in my family was occupied, I took some time to prime and paint the closet.  I used Smart Prime by Zinsser as the primer and then Benjamin Moore’s Aura in White Dove in an eggshell finish

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All Things Home

why there is a Christmas wreath on my door in April

I learned last spring that one can get away with having Christmas greenery and lights up on a porch until April in Minnesota. Since there is still snow on the ground, it just works and seems acceptable. (On Instagram, a reader and I dubbed the snow pattern on this door “snowmbre”.  Get it?  Snow…ombre?  Moving on.) But, the live greenery was starting to look sad just before Junk Bonanza, so I took a bit of time to take it down. Just before I did that, though, Jeff pointed out that there was a bird’s nest in the wreath.  I hadn’t noticed it, because it’s built in the top, left, inside corner of the wreath.  It’s really nestled in there and you can’t see it when you’re looking head-on at the door.  He told me we needed to remove the nest, so we don’t have birds pooping all over the door

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All Things Home

linen shades & art sale

First off, the winner of the Miss Mustard Seed’s Milk Paint birthday giveaway is Traci (butterflyoct)!  Congrats! Almost a year ago, I made some linen shades to filter light in my studio.  And that project turned into having the shades reproduced and sold on Decor Steals.  Well, they are back today! I hung one in my kitchen to show what they look like… They are made out of a pretty, off-white, linen-ish fabric that offers some privacy and filters light without blocking it out entirely.  They are made to hang on a tension rod, so they are easy to put up (and take down.) And the ties can be styled in a variety of ways.  Here is a video showing some options… I am asked about those shades almost every time I show them, I’m happy Decor Steals brought back this ready-made option. You can click HERE to purchase them.  Also, I

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All Things Home

more studio closet progress

Thanks so much for all of the lovely comments on my guest room and for the overwhelming response on my milk paint birthday post!  This group knows how to make a girl feel good.  Thank you!  I’ll announce the giveaway winner in tomorrow’s post. Well, we took advantage of a pretty day last week and finally finished building the studio closet! Now, I need to prime and paint it.  I’m planning to paint it the same color as the walls, Simply White by Benjamin Moore, so it just blends in.  I don’t want it to be too visually imposing, which would be easy since it is quite large. We built the last of the three doors and this time added a Z brace to minimize warping.  The door was still a little warped, but not anywhere near as wonky as the other two were. We did make one bone-headed mistake,

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All Things Home

Guest Room Makeover Reveal & $500 giveaway

Disclosure: This post is sponsored by Annie Selke (Pine Cone Hill & Dash & Albert).  All words and opinions are honest and my own. The guest room is finally done and I am so happy with how it turned out!!  I went out on a limb in this room a few different ways.  One of them was the color palette.  I strayed from my typical blues, greens, grays, and whites, and went with beige, cream, and yellow with a touch of blue.  The other decision that stretched me was wallpapering an entire room.  I’ve done a small bathroom before, but tackling an entire bedroom was a new challenge for me.  A guest room is a great place to experiment, though, and this was a successful experiment in my opinion! Here is how the room looked before… It had a good foundation and bones, but it was just a boring box.

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All Things Home

designing fabric & papers for spoonflower

A few weeks ago, I shared that my second quilting fabric collection with FreeSpirit Fabrics wasn’t going to be produced.  (You can find that post HERE.)  Thanks for all of your encouragement on that, by the way!  The brief feeling of failure that comes with any news like that quickly shifted into excitement.  This means I can take my designs and what I’ve learned and translate them into the world of home decor fabrics and papers. I am in the very beginning stages of reworking my existing designs and putting some plans together for new collections and colorways.  Once the designs are ready, they will be for sale on Spoonflower. One of the challenges with designing fabrics (or anything, really), is finding a way to communicate the ideas and concepts that live in your head with other people.  That sounds like a no brainer, but it’s more challenging than you

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All Things Home

straightening the studio closet doors

As I shared a couple of weeks ago, we got the first set of doors for the studio closet built and installed, but unfortunately, they were a little warped!  Ah!  We were trying to make this a simple, easy project, but these doors were not playing along with that and made things complicated.  They were warped just enough so they wouldn’t even catch on the magnetic catches we installed.  They would just pop right off. It was a drop-head-in-my-hands moment. The good news is that they didn’t look that warped or that bad and there was a fix that did not involve taking anything apart or building new doors.  (Which would not have fit in the simple/easy plan.) I bought a piece of hardware called a turnbuckle.  It is made specifically for screen doors, but I watched tutorials where it was used on gates, shed doors, and even cabinet doors. 

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All Things Home

fixing the bottom of an upholstered chair

This chair has had issues for a while, but I’ve been ignoring them.  It’s typically been in out-of-the-way places, so it wasn’t something I had to look at or be bothered by regularly.  Well, since I moved it into the studio, this saggy bottom has been annoying me. But still not quite enough to actually fix it. It went on my “annoying project list” to hang out there until I was in the mood to tackle it.  Well, then it started shedding all over my studio floor.  No, no, no.  Not in my creative sanctuary.  Even the boys pointed out the pile of “hair” under the chair, which is saying a lot because they are not generally observant about messes. So on Friday, before I took some time to paint, I took about 15 minutes to fix the chair.  Some of the webbing was coming undone and it obviously needed

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I’m Marian, a painter, writer, and lover of all things creative. From art and antiques to home projects and everyday life, I share my journey in hopes of inspiring you to embrace your own creativity and make beauty in the spaces you live.

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