Make Your Own: Artificial Milk Bottle

I was visiting my Grandma and helping her clean up a cabinet when she gave me an old (empty) glass milk Bottle.  I thought it would look great with the two artificial glasses of milk that I had out at Christmas this year, but I wanted it to look like the bottle was full of milk as well.  After thinking about it for awhile I figured that adding paint would be the easiest way to get the look.

Read on to see what an easy project this was,

 or click here to learn more about the glasses of milk.

Empty Bottle

Make sure your glass is nice and clean before you add your paint.  

(Grandma cleaned this one for me so I was already good to go 😊)

Add Paint

I poured a bit of white acrylic paint into the bottle being careful not to hit the sides of the glass.

Roll

After adding the paint I slowly rolled the bottle allowing the paint to coat the sides of the glass.  This was a bit of a process as you have to have enough paint to coat the area evenly but not so much that you are left with a large puddle in the bottom afterward.  I ended up having to add more paint halfway through and it was tricky getting the new paint line to match the previous one once I tipped the bottle back over.

I say just take your time and experiment.  If you end up making a mistake, no big deal.  Soak the bottle and the acrylic paint should clean out easily.  Keep that in mind for later though, if someone adds water to this bottle, the paint will deteriorate.

All Done

I'm pleased with how the bottle turned out.  The glasses are filled with some sort of white colored resin while the bottle only contains the light coating of paint, yet it looks as though this was a matched set.  Yay!

And now on to another lamp project.....😀

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I hope you enjoyed this how-to post, thanks for stopping by!

-Jennifer

© Jennifer Adams Flowers 2017

Easter 2017: How We Celebrated

With a couple days off of school we had a really nice and long Easter weekend.
Take a look at how we celebrated:

Colored Eggs

After hard boiling a couple dozen eggs, the kids had a fun time decorating them.  Baby Girl elected to keep hers a soft, plain pastel wile the Little Man went with bold color, markers and stickers.  The kids also painted some permanent foam eggs that we can keep, but I didn't get a photo of those.

You can click here to see some examples of these foam eggs that I have decorated myself.

Glowy Eggs

One of our favorite activities is to have a glow-in-the-dark egg hunt.  Or to be more accurate I should say; a rip-open-the-eggs-as-fast-as-you-can-and-take-out-the-glow-sticks-hunt! 😀

You can click here to read more about this fun tradition.

Egg Hunt

I like to make up the kids eggs ahead of time and assign them each a specific color or theme.  Then I can make sure that they each get the same number of eggs with the same exact fillings.  No squabbles here 😉

Easter morning this year was cold and rainy, so we had their egg hunt in the living room.

Brunch

Left:  Strawberry, orange, banana smoothies decorated with bunny peeps.
Right:  Cinnamon rolls, cheesy egg and hash brown casserole and bacon.

The egg casserole is really simple; just layer hash browns, beaten eggs, green pepper and cheese in a greased baking dish.  Season to taste with garlic, onion powder, salt and pepper and bake at 350.  Your time will vary depending on how large (or deep) your casserole is.  I set my timer for 30 minutes and then go from there, adding time as needed.

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In addition to the 'Eastery' activities listed here, there was also quite a bit of turkey hunting (Husby), neighborhood walks, bubble blowing and playing outside.  It was a great weekend!

I hope you enjoyed reading about how we celebrated, thanks for stopping by!

-Jennifer

© Jennifer Adams Flowers 2017

Strawberry Plant Restyle

I ❤ Strawberries

I have a very tiny artificial strawberry plant (you can see it  here) that I found at Dollar Tree once and I just adore.  It's itty bitty and missing a strawberry or two, but I love it!  So when I saw this huge faux strawberry basket at Good Will for $4 I snapped it up.  The only problem with it is I don't really like baskets.  In fact, the only type of baskets I ever purchase have to be rectangular, willow and linen lined because I'm not at all particular about things.....😝  

So anyway, what to do? Restyle this plant into a new container, that's what to do!  You can read on to see how easy it is to transfer artificial arrangements.  

But first, a note on cleaning:

Wash, wash, wash!

Here you can see the color of the water after I washed the strawberry plant - ick!  Needless to say, I washed it twice!

Side Note:  Now there is nothing wrong with shopping thrift stores and garage sales (a couple of my favorite pastimes, if you hadn't figured that out by now 😉), but you should wash everything as soon as it comes home.  In fact, if it can't be properly cleaned, I won't even give it a second glance.  Not only does the idea gross me out, but I have allergies and have to be pretty careful.

A New Container

Eventually I would like a fancier outdoor looking container for this plant, but until I find one that I like this plastic pot will do.  I purchased the pot and two foam cubes from Dollar Tree.

Stack the Foam

I used hot glue to attach the cubes together and slid them into the pot.  Normally I would glue them to the bottom of the pot as well, but since I intend on switching to another container I just set them inside.

Get Organized

The person who originally arranged the strawberry plant  kept some of the bushes whole and cut others apart.  So before starting I lined everything up on the counter top so that I could easily see the differences in sizes.  I like to start by placing my largest stems first and then I fill in with the smaller pieces.  Having everything organized by size makes the process much easier!

Keep Going

Here you can see examples of different spots that need filled in.  The photo on the left shows a large hole where the foam is exposed.  The photo on the right shows and area heavy on greenery where an additional berry or flower would make things look better.  Just keep turning your plant and filling in wherever needed until it looks lush and full.

All Done!

And there you have it!  In a few easy steps this plant went from looking like a table arrangement to a growing pot of summer strawberries.

I hope you enjoyed this restyle post, thanks for stopping by!

-Jennifer

© Jennifer Adams Flowers 2017

Thrifting Haul!

Around the middle of February I tend to get really tired of winter and ready for spring.  Not just for the sunshine and warmer weather, but the garage sales of course!  Since I still had weeks of winter to get through, I decided to take a couple of trips to the local Good Will stores (this past February and March) to help hold me over 😄

Now I can't remember the prices of each item, but I can tell you that they ranged between $2 & $4 with many of them being half off for 'color of the week'.

What is the color of the week?  Good Will merchandise is marked with a color tag; red, blue, yellow, green or black with one of the colors being half off each week.  Look for the sign when you walk in the store to know which color is currently half off the marked price 😉

And now, check out my finds:

  An artificial boxwood, decorative letter and plaster molding.

Right now I'm trying to decide if the boxwood is for Spring, everyday or back porch decor.  I'm sure it will probably end up as all three before it's over with 😁

The big letter H is stashed with my crafts while I decide who to give it to and the decorative molding is in a 'future' box.  That means that I love it, but don't currently have a place to use it 😉

Candle Sconces

These are also in my future box.  

Shhh, I don't have a collecting problem, this is all just good planning 😎

Mixing Bowels

These ivy printed Corelle bowls match the everyday plates and bowels that we use at the table.  I'm not sure how I'll use them - I have glass bowels to keep all of our fruit washed and ready to eat in the fridge and I prefer plastic bowls for mixing - but I had to have these because the remind me of my Granny as she bought me our table set.

Faux Artichokes

Artificial artichokes are something I didn't already have so when I saw a bag of them I was like, "Yep, need those." 😁

Milk Glass

I was really excited to find the baking dishes.  I have a ton of decorative milk glass already, so I think it's absolutely time to start collecting functional pieces as well 😉

Update:  I now eat my nightly popcorn snack out of a vintage milk glass bowl 😏

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And that is how I made it through the last few harrowing weeks of winter.  I hope you enjoyed my thrifting haul, thanks for stopping by!

-Jennifer

© Jennifer Adams Flowers 2017

Easter Eggs (Etsy) 2017

Happy April 1st!
Take a look at these hand decorated eggs, just in time for the Easter holiday:

Beaded Blues

Strawberries

Seashells

Pink & Polka-Dot

All of these eggs are cuttently available in my Etsy shop that you can visit now by clicking here

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I hope everybody is enjoying the weekend, thanks for stopping by!

-Jennifer

© Jennifer Adams Flowers 2017