DIY Life

Have a look at this party. You think you know who's designed it, don't you? Could your first guess be Martha, perhaps? WRONG! Looks like Amy of Eat, Drink, Chic is giving Ms. Stewart a run for her money -- buffet style. How lovely is this ice cream party, complete with DIY-inspired tutorials, printables and adorable personal touches? I'd love to throw a similar occasion to welcome in the fall, with a different color scheme but the same chic style! Amazing!

I'd include fall-inspired M&M's with autumn colors like orange, red, brown and yellow, chocolate ice cream, chocolate sprinkles and the like. Wowza. That sounds so good just typing it all out! I doubt it would be as pretty as Amy's party, but at least it would taste luscious!

For more party-inspired ideas, why not check out a few other inspired ideas from DIY Life?:
-How to Host a Progressive Dinner Party
-Daily DIY: Green Your Child's Birthday Party

Every kitchen has a few eyesores, but what do you do when your appliances (read: focal points!) are embarrassingly outdated? Take a cue from our ShelterPop friends and cover those blemished babies with Easy DIY: Updates to Old Appliances.

One of my favorite ideas is Danny Seo's refrigerator makeover with a handy can of chalkboard paint. What was once a retro embarrassment is now both fun, functional and incredibly easy on the eyes (and the wallet!). His tips for re-creating the look?:

1. Lightly sandpaper the refrigerator for a few minutes.

2. Paint a light coat of chalkboard paint directly onto the fridge. (Hint: Danny warns that this coat is going to look UG-LY, but not to worry. Every good project takes patience.)

3. When the first coat has completely dried, tackle a second coat. Let dry, and repeat. Third time is the charm, as your refrigerator will be miraculously transformed into a message center by coat three.

4. Prep for scribbles by rubbing chalk over the entire paint surface after dried. Wipe down with a damp washcloth and you're ready to play!

An instant, family-friendly makeover that you can do in a weekend. Fantastic!

It's summer: the season of sun, sand and surfing! So let's talk about how to incorporate a dash of beach flavor into your interior décor. Specifically, let's talk surfboards.

First up: Enter the DIY Life-Lunar Lounge Coffee Table Giveaway! A beautifully streamlined Eliptikal table is up for grabs. Inspired by 1950s interiors, the Eliptikal also evokes the world of surfing style. Want to win it? Just follow the link to Erin's post and tell us how you would put your own decorative stamp on this baby.

Now, I'll confess, I'm no surfer. However, I love the look of vintage long boards. Yes, they're kind of big and bulky, but they also possess elegant lines. They speak so powerfully of the ocean and outdoors living. Plus they effortlessly add an unexpected, fun twist to any room.

Last week we took a peek at ways to decorate your walls without breaking your lease's no-drill, no-nail policy. In particular, we looked at clever little stick-up products that sub for regular picture hooks. Today we continue this topic, but focus on ways to decorate the walls themselves.

Strategy 1: Negotiate! Persuade your landlord to compromise. Suggest a new paint job for the living room (or the whole apartment/house) in exchange for agreeing to the no-nail, no-drill policy. If he/she hesitates, offer to let them pre-approve your color choice.

Ask permission to install a gallery-style picture hanging rail. Emphasize that you would pay for and install the rail all by yourself, but that you would generously leave it behind for the next tenant.

The key to success here may be all in how you pitch it. Don't act like you're asking a favor of your landlord. Do not get whiney. Do sell your suggestions as improvements that will benefit the property owner.

You love your new apartment. There's just one problem: Those bare walls! They're blank because your landlord made you sign on the dotted line, promising no drilling and no nail holes.

Relax. With a little creativity you can decorate your apartment's walls and make your new home look fabulous -- without breaking the terms of your lease.

Step One: The Tablescape

Identify the heaviest and/or largest pieces in your collection of wall decor. I'm talking framed posters, paintings and large framed photographs. Now position each one atop a piece of furniture and accent with smaller items. You are creating what interior decorators term tablescapes. Lucky you: tablescapes are totally fashionable right now.

Notebooks are a necessity for school, but your kids may not get excited about the plain white paper and solid-colored cover. Sure, they are likely to plaster the front of their notebooks with the likes of "I [heart] David Archuleta 4-eva'," but why not suggest a venture slightly more creative than that?

There are some fun ways kids can decorate their notebooks for back-to-school, and make them uniquely theirs. For instance, using spare scrapbooking supplies, your kids can make their notebooks fit their favorite theme, whether that be cupcakes or super heroes.

Or, get some stencils, gel and glitter pens, and construction paper to embellish those notebooks and unleash those kids into a decorating frenzy.

A project like this one could go in so many directions; only time and creativity are the factors. So let your kids use the backs of their notebooks for their love graffiti, and proudly show off their artwork on the front covers.

Having previously used wallpaper to cover my kitchen cabinets, I'm ready to change them for a new look. Since I get bored fairly easily with my decor, I like to spruce things up about every six months, and I am so itching for newly decorated cabinets.

Thanks to help from Tipnut, I found the perfect kitchen cabinet makeover project over on Tres Chic Veronique. Using pretty fabric covered in bees and honeycombs, Veronique cut the fabric an extra inch on each side, then hammered in thumbtacks to secure the fabric to the cabinet door.

I read in the comment section of Veronique's post that Scotchgaurd was used to help eliminate grease and stains when the fabric is wiped down. If you, like me, are unsure of whether or not you want to use regular fabric on your cabinets, then maybe the best alternative would be to use oilcloth, since that can be wiped down easily.

The box air-conditioning unit is a necessary evil for many apartment dwellers. (Those of you about to head off to college, take note!) These things come with a few big cons: they are noisy, they are unsightly, they block the view out of your window, and they are a pain in the neck to install and uninstall.

At least the unsightliness factor is something you can fix! Here are a few suggestions for hiding your air conditioning unit from New York Magazine:

• Decorate it with something pretty like wallpaper scraps.
• Build a decorative cabinet around it, but be careful not to block air flow.
• Disguise it from view with a sheer curtain.
• Hide it with a screen.
• Cover it with artwork and frame it.

[via Apartment Therapy]

Summer vacation keeps rolling along. How long until your kids go back to school? Are they spending too much time lounging on the couch? Here are a bunch of summer projects to trick your kids away from their air-conditioned sanctuary and out into the great outdoors of, er, your backyard.

Okay, okay. So the backyard is not the great outdoors. True. But the main thing is to get the kiddos out in the fresh air, learning about nature, and learning about the noble pursuit of maintaining a garden.

Getting their hands dirty
1. Ask them to help with the weeding. Pay them a small amount of pocket money for their time.

Nothing says Happy Father's Day like a new tie, right? You can surprise the special dad in your life by presenting him with an artistically created necktie cake. A skinny necktie cake is a lot more fun to bake, frost, and embellish than shopping for the perfect tie. Everyone will enjoy this necktie -- with a little dip of ice cream -- and there will be no sense of disappointment from Dad.

MailJust4me provides simple Father's Day projects, including directions for making a necktie cake. I took liberties with their pan recommendations and used two 9 x4 bread pans. When thinking of a design, I checked out some Armani ties to see what's new.

What you need:

• 2 9x4 baked cakes or 1 large rectangular cake cut lengthwise in half
• white frosting
• food coloring
• ziplock bag
• scissors
• M & M's or other candy
• Large tray or platter to hold finished cake

Check out the gallery to see how my cake turned out, then follow me through the break for the decorating instructions.

A couple of months ago I made the switch from working full-time in a typical 8-5 office to working full-time from home. While I love working from home, my office leaves a little to be desired. Instead of the large office I used to have, I now work in a tiny corner of my living room.

So redesigning my office space is on the forefront of my mind: storage, comfort, and functionality are the priorities. When searching for creative ideas, I found an article from Shape with some great tips for creating a healthy home office. I'll share some of the tips I'm going to try after the break.

Spring is here and so are the April showers. The leaves are budding on the trees and the grass is starting to green. It is finally time to get the kids out of the house and take them on a nature walk.

Children are natural-born explorers, and it is such a joy to see their little faces light up when they find a unique rock or leaf. When you take them on their hunt for treasures this spring, take along a nature can for them to put their treasures in.

Megan informs us how to take an empty oatmeal container and glue fabric to it, decorate the container, and then add a strap so our little nature buddies can easily tote it around.

We are almost done with our oatmeal container and will definitely recycle it into a nature can for my daughter. She loves to walk around our yard and collect cool rocks, leaves and sticks. It will be a fun way to teach her about all the wonderful things the great outdoors has to offer, right under her little feet.

[via: Craft]

My daughter loves to watch the cartoon "Lil Bill". Repeat episodes come on every day, so I have the theme "Spring is here, Spring is here, it's the best time of the year" stuck in my head. The episode reminds me that the snow is slowly melting and it's about time to go to the beach.

Maybe it is too early in the year to go to the beach yet, but somewhere in the world it is spring or even summer. That means it is time to think about decorating your home for breezy summer days. What better way to do that than with seashells? Kathy Peterson has excellent suggestions on exactly what and where we can decorate with seashells.

Using seashells as a table centerpiece is a marvelous idea. Decorating with seashells in a roomy bathroom is ingenious, especially is you use seashells to spruce up a mirror. You can use shells to pretty up your fireplace too, as well as your lampshades, pillows and curtain tie-backs, and to decorate a baby mobile.

You can decorate pretty much anything with seashells, but like Kathy recommends, keeping your theme simple is the key to a successfully and tastefully decorated abode.

I never liked my living room rug. I purchased under duress, when we had just moved into our home and needed a rug fast.

My dining room is another story. I adore the rug in there, but I don't care for the overall look of the room. What I had hoped would be dramatic and even a little exotic turned out to just be too dark and missing that "certain something."

Then it occurred to me. Why not flip these rugs? So in the spirit of FreeStyle and Flip This House, I set off to do just that.

Peruse my gallery to see the before and after photos, and join me after the break for more details of "the flip."

Are you as tired as I am of modern easter egg decorating? No, I mean coloring them is still cool; the thing I don't get is putting stickers on them and calling it creative. Huh? That's just wrong. Plus, the sticker is probably made in China, and who knows what's in that adhesive? Lead? Anti-freeze?

Anyhow, I got this great tip from Kodak tips and projects. The kiddos can still get their sticker fix -- and be creative and process-oriented at the same time. Hey, that's three birds with one stone! For this decorating project, you'll need:

• Eggs (of course!)
• Paint brush
• Decoupage glue
• Regular printer paper (not photo)
• Photos (Let your child get creative here)
• Scissors
  

Let's get started!

1. Let your child go wild with the digital camera.
2. Print the pictures on printer paper.
3. Center the egg on the photo.
4. Trace around (rather, a-oval) it and cut it out.
5. Make snips around the edges so it will conform to the shape of the egg.
6. Brush glue onto the egg and smooth the photo onto it.
7. Apply a thin protective coat of glue over the photo.
8. Get pumped up to go a-huntin'!