WE OWN A HOME!

So... lots and lots has been going on . We officially closed on the house on Monday at 2:30 pm.... and as soon as the keys were in our hands we were there, and getting our hands dirty ripping up the carpet! We are hoping to have the floors finished by this time next week... and I will be sure to post about all of it for you when they are looking beautiful!

But for now... here is just a short and sweet post to say WE OWN A HOME NOW!!!!!!!

(aaaand we're hard at work!)

Lots of carpet ripped up... that was gladly hauled away for free by a neighbor this morning!

And then my sweet husband took this gem:

And with that... I leave you... 

Go, Fight, Gryffindor!

It is no secret that I am a bit of a Harry Potter nerd. So when my (at the time) 11 year old brother-in-law (and all around, most amazing kid I know), started reading the series... it brought proud little tears of joy to my eye. Ok... maybe that's an exaggeration... I didn't cry... but I was super happy. Every time I saw him we'd discuss what book/chapter he was on, and when he'd tell me, I'd look at him all knowing like and say... "oooh just wait... there is some really good stuff coming up soon!" (as if there is any part of the Harry Potter book that is not "really good stuff").

Noah (my bro-in-law fo' life) is also a pretty imaginative kid, so when we decided to make this present we wanted to go all out and give him tons of stuff to interact with. So this is the story... all about how (this is where the fresh-prince sing along stops), we made a Gryffindor writing box, complete with homemade quills, DIY coffee-stained rolls of parchment, and even a version of the Maurauder's map!

 

The box was just an unstained box that we got from the wood section at the craft store Before staining, Zach drew the Gryffindor flag on there the way he wanted and then used our wood burner to put it on the box, he did the outlines of the red and yellow flag, as well as all of the letters this way. 

We then stained the entire box. Then with Acrylic red & gold paint we painted the Gryffindor emblem. Fairly straight-forward and simple.... the inside was a bit more complicated.

For the top of the lid and the bottom of the compartment, we used felt paper (not sure if it's called paper?), but these can be bought at just about any craft store... the top was a brown textured piece that we liked, the bottom is cut out patches of red & gold. It took us awhile to figure this inside part out and get the felt cut to the correct (& precise) dimensions, but after we did, we just glued everything in. I think that some of these felt pieces can be purchased with an adhesive backing... which would make this even easier.

Here is the box without all of the stuff, so you can see how we arranged the felt.

Then we obviously thought it would be super-magical to attach a mirror to the lid.. so we also just glued that in place. While we were making this present we had to split the projects up, Zach pretty much did everything for the box on his own, he may have asked for my input now and again, but he did all of the felt-cutting, wood-burning and staining, etc. Ain't he something special, my hubby? 

I was in charge of the contents of the box. I knew I wanted rolls of parchment, some quills, and after seeing/ downloading this homemade Maurauder's map, I decided to include those as well. 

The rolls of parchment were probably one of the first things I made... I had some leftover paper (nice slightly textured drawing or painting paper), it was in about an 18 x 24 sheet. I cut this down into 2 or 3 various sizes of parchment. Then I brewed some coffee. 

This was not coffee to drink (though I suppose you could). I poured the coffee into a large rectangular tupper-ware container. Then one by one I put the cut pieces of paper in there and let them soak. The darker your coffee brew, and the longer the soaking time will all effect the end results, so if you ever do this, it's worth it to experiments. You can also drop ink on the paper before you put it in the coffee-stain, for a bit of a messy/blotted look.If the paper is thick/strong enough you can even crumple it up while it's wet to creat a bit of texture. You can see one in the photo above that I did this to. 

After you take the paper out of the stain lay it flat on a counter top... or drying rack... and let it dry. You can use paper towels to soak up some excess moisture... but I wouldn't let it dry on them.. they might end up stick together. You could probably leave them to dry on top of dish towels without any issues.

After the paper was dry... I burned some of the edges (for extra magical effect), then I just rolled them up and loosely tied them with some twine.

Then I decided to make my own quills. I don't really care to give a tutorial on this... because, while I think that my quills looks ok.. I don't think they work in the way that a quill actually should. Ideally a feather quill holds in some excess ink for you while you write... my quills... well they just left you with ink-y fingers. However, they were good enough for an 11 year old boy!

Basically I attached some old writing nibs that I had lying around (don't ask me why these were lying around... you accumulate weird things in art school), to the end of the feathers with glue, and then I used strips of the coffee- stained paper and wrapped & glued those around the base of the feathers and over the glued ends of the nibs for some extra stability.

For the Maurauder's map, I can't even really explain what I did. I download the map that I linked to above, but I opened it in photoshop and made my map a bit bigger, and I made more rooms in the castle , and added more characters from the books. I did stick to the basic folding instructions from the original link, but they had to be modified a bit since I extended the paper size. Anyway... after all of the modifications I made on the computer, then I printed out the map on a piece of coffee stained paper, cut to my appropriate map size, and after much trial and error, I finally got it folded just right!

Here are the pages front and back of my map that I updated... I checked the size in photo-shop and I believe I printed these on 8.5 x 15 in pieces of paper:

This was the front of my map.

Back of my map. 

The original download of the map didn't have a backside... but I am such a nerd... that I HAD to add more rooms. I mean... can you really make a map of Hogwarts and not even have the dormitories for each of the four houses?  Also... a castle needed to have more than one story... so my back side includes a second and third floor of the castle. Which made it more legit... because then I could add Moaning Myrtle's bathroom on the third-floor corridor! Yeah... I have issues. I could have gone on creating the whole castle forever, if my deadline for this project wasn't Christmas. 

I can't figure out how to make these a download for you guys... so if you want to make the map, just contact me and I can send you a full size document so you can print your own!

Then we just threw everything in the box ( along with a bottle of ink), and VOILA! The absolute coolest Christmas present I have ever made!

Complete with Luna (as in Luna Lovegood) in the background. Seriously... I have a Harry Potter obsession... 

Anybody want to hire us to make them a box? We've thought about making them for all four houses... just for fun...

We're so crafty...

So... two days until our closing! We get to see the house again for our final walk through... and then on Monday at 2:30pm... we will start signing everything that will make it "official". But since, there is not much house related to report.. I thought that I would share a few crafty things that Zach and I made a couple of Christmas-es ago. I came across these pictures yesterday... so it seemed worth sharing.  I will share one of them with you today.. and hopefully get another post written up for tomorrow about the other one! Both of these were Christmas presents, one for Zach's mom and one for his little brother.

This first one is a "secret" jewelry box we made for Zach's mom. His parents house had been broken into two times (grrrr... stupid people).... and his mom was upset because both times her jewelry had been taken. None of the jewelry was particularly expensive... but some had sentimental value & had belonged to her mom before she passed away (most of those were taken on the first break-in)... after the second break-in she was upset because she had just started to accumulate some cheap jewelry things from JC Penney, etc. when it was taken again, and she had to start her jewelry collection all over!

Step one of this process was to go to Half- Price Books and find two books that we liked. We picked two that had slip-cases, so that our books could be pulled out like drawers.

We glued the two slip-cases of the books together to make a more "solid" structure for the jewelry box.It also makes it easier when you are trying to pull out the drawers, if the slip-cases aren't moving around.

Next we needed to carve out the books... whenever I'm carving a book (and yes... I have carved a great many books in my day),  I like to leave a few of the title pages in the front to hide the secret compartment a bit more, but it's really a personal choice, you can do whatever you want.

***Also... I suggest that BEFORE you start carving the books you use mod-podge (or some other transparent glue-like substance), and glue all three sides of the book together. I don't have pictures of this step, but typically I just use some large binder clips to hold the pages together, and then with a paint brush I apply Mod-Podge to all of the sides (include the back of the book as well).  If there are pages you don't want to be glued (like the title pages in front), you can use wax paper to separate the two areas until the glue is dry. After you glue the sides, I suggest putting weight on the book until the glue dries(it will help everything to adhere tightly and therefore more sturdy). You may have to repeat this step if you have any pages that seem kind of loose... every book is a little different when it comes to this.***

After you've done all that... you can carve out your book! With a pencil, just measure out whatever you want the dimensions of your compartment to be and mark them. Then using a combination of box knife and X-acto knives, start carving! I'm not gonna lie... carving out a book (especially depending upon the thickness), can be tedious work... and you have you be careful to make sure you are keeping a fairly straight line down. Just remove bits of the pages as you go, and be careful not to slice through the back cover of the book when you get to the bottom!

*** To make the divider that is shown above, I just cut down a bit of illustration board to the size I wanted and then glued a few of the excess book pages to it so they didn't look out of place, then I glued them into the book compartment. EASY-PEASY! ***

**One other thing... I always glue the inside edges of the compartment as well, and put weight on them until they dry, just like before.**


And here are pics of the bottom "drawer" as well! Here's to hoping our suspicions are right that burglars won't touch books.... ( if they did, they might not have become burglars in the first place!)

So what do you think? Does hiding valuables inside of books make them safer? Even if it doesn't- I do really like this as a way to display/ store jewelry... and for a DIY dork like me, it's actually pretty fun to make too! (although I must tell you to use caution when working with the box knife and X-acto knives... I did slice my finger open pretty good in the making of these boxes.)

And here's a sneak peak of the second project I'll be posting about later on:

House Tour!

Ok... so it has been a week or two since I've written on here, mostly because we have just been on stand-by, waiting for any news on the house. BUT... we finally heard from our loan officer that we "officially" have clearance for closing now, so all that is left is to wait until April 15th... and those keys will be in our hands! (that's a little under two weeks... and i haven't even begun to think about packing or moving!)

Anyway, I felt safe enough in the fact that all of this is really happening that I think I can go ahead and share a tour of our new house. Consider these the "before" pictures, we have some serious plans once we move all of our crap in. So without further ado... here it is:

                                                                The Living Room

                                                                    The Dining Room

Looking into the Dining Room from the Living Room.

The built in cabinets in the Dining Room... the one in the wall is original to the home... from 1928!

Straight ahead is the kitchen... the archway on the right leads to the bathroom and two bedrooms.

                                                             Sort of a hallway space

Straight ahead is the bathroom. To the left leads to the larger bedroom, to the right is bedroom two.

                                                                         Bathroom

                                                                 Small Bedroom

      We will probably use this space as a bit of a multi-purpose room, we are planning to use it for an office/music/guest room. Although it looks small... we are planning to get some serious use out of this space.

This is the only picture I have of this room, but it also has a closet that you can't see here... to the right.

                                                                          Bedroom

 This is what will be our bedroom... it has two windows (lots of natural light), the larger window on the left looks out onto the backyard... I'm a little in love with that window and it's view actually.

Forgive the blurryness... I was so smitten with the house, I didn't notice my camera malfunctioning.

The other side of the bedroom, the small door is the closet.

                                                                          Kitchen

Looking into the kitchen, the stairway down to the basement is on the left.

You can sort of see it here... the kitchen also has a very large window that looks out onto the  backyard.

 Also... original to the home... look what else is in our kitchen!

That's right... it's a built in ironing board! How cute is that!?

                        

Basement

The door straight ahead leads out to the backyard. To the left leads down to the basement.

                    

                                                                             Exterior

So there you have it.... our amazing new house. We have some serious plans for just about everything... and I will definitely keep you posted as changes occur. Now... I just have to try not to be too crazy  excited for the next couple of weeks before it's official.