PINEAPPLE CLUBHOUSE

My daughter is at that age where it's cool to hang with your friends and not your mom anymore. It is also a time where 10 years old girls seam to be obsessed with slime, fidget spinners, aliens, rainbows and pineapples. So last winter my husband promised my daughter he would build her a clubhouse this summer and her and I both knew what that meant....I would be building her a clubhouse this summer. Not to put him to shame, he actually did a lot of work on this, but this one kept me busy for over a week because I went a little over board on the interior. Instead of building a house from scratch we decided to just simply buy a kit. I figured when my daughter grows out of the idea of having a clubhouse we will use this as a shed for practicalities sake. You can find something similar to what we bought at Home Depot. I also decided to add a small deck off the front so the girls could hang out with the doors open on the front porch and for more seating for an extra $130 and approx. 3 hours it was well worth it. The only thing left to do is add some windows in the loft area for a little air flow.

Using a paint sprayer on this projects saved me tons of time!!! The Pineapple was painted buy hand, I had to touch it up after pulling the tape to clean it up a bit.

Getting down and dirty as per the norm - messiest painter in the world

We found these great blow up bean bag chairs on-line and the girls love them.

Green shag carpet was actually a few rugs pieced together and stapled to the sub floor

Shop Rachel Kate pillows at Bellacor.com

The girls making SLIME for breakfast - they all spent the night in the clubhouse. First Day of Summer Party!!!

DIY, DESIGN & BLOGGING - HAVEN CONFERENCE

FIRST BLOG POST ALERT!!! Being that I will be the keynote speaker at a this year's D.I.Y. Design & Blogging event at Haven I figured now would be a perfect time to actually finally start my own blog. Wow Bloggers! This is A TON OF WORK! Holy-time-suck... creating content, writing a detailed report and adding all of the techy elements is most certainly not as easy as it appears to be while scrolling thru beautiful images for inspiration as I usually do. Also, it's time to step up my photography game! I know how important it is for a business to blog and I look forward to learning more at the Haven event where I will be speaking to Designers on the topic of brand development and current design trends. I will share some creative tips outside of blogging to navigate the current market to get your name or products seen by the right contacts and how to be prepared for those opportunities.

This year's conference design theme is BOHO CHIC. Boho has been around for years and I still love it and I always will. I was raised by a 60's hippie-chic and surrounded by rattan furniture and hanging plants. I even had a macrame piece hanging above my crib when I was a baby. Boho is here to stay and going so strong you can actually begin to think of it in sub-catagories...

TRIBAL NEUTRAL BOHO

COLORFUL HIPPIE BOHO

TROPICAL BOHO

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To stay consistent with this theme I decided to create a modern bohemian stencil for some DIY demonstrations at the Haven event.  I drew it in Illustrator and printed out a 20" x 20" version of it at Kinkos. I laid heavy vellum I purchased at Michaels Crafts to cut the pattern out with an X-acto knife.

Wall, table, black and white pillows, and jewelry rack made with stencil, sprayer and heat gun.

Wall color Benjamin Moore "Onyx"

I have painted with stencils for years and have always been irritated at the gloppy look I get when using a sponge or stencil brush. I have been able to finally get the clean look I want using a sprayer. It is so crisp it looks like fabric printed at the mill.  Next I want to do draperies and an area rug...

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Using the heat gun allows you to get that vintage wood look and is mess free, no staining necessary. I love it. Look at the image above and notice the difference in color before and after. You can make the wood darker or lighter by adjusting the temperature and the amount of time you keep the heat on the wood. When stenciling with the Wagner Home Decor Sprayer always apply a glue spray to the stencil each time you lay it on your surface and it will work wonderfully.