DIY Projects in the Works

I've never been one to have a hard time coming up with ideas or finding inspiration.  On the contrary, I always have far more ideas and projects in my head than I have time to do them.  Which results in many ideas getting pushed aside, or "thrown in the vault" as I like to say.  But every once in a while, an idea hits me and I feel compelled to drop everything and do it.  This has happened to me twice recently, and although neither was a completely original idea, I was so struck with inspiration that I immediately started work on them.

The first was this outdoor music wall, which I saw pop up in my Facebook news feed a couple of months ago:  http://www.filthwizardry.com/2010/05/music-wall-rip-music-tree.html

What a brilliant idea! And so easy, too.  And I knew we had the perfect spot for it, so two days later I was already gathering junk from our basement to do it.  It's still a work in progress, but here's a little sneaky peeky:

Outdoor music wall, in progress

I still have some more things I want to add to this, but it's a pretty good start!  And literally the only thing I purchased for this was some spray paint to liven it up.  Can't beat that!  Or can you??  (Ha!  See what I did there?  Haha, eh, ahem.)

Moving on to the second idea...  Several months ago, I got the urge to paint our van.  No, not have it repainted, but to paint it myself.  Crazy?  Maybe a little, but it wouldn't be the first time I have painted a vehicle - I had a car in high school and college that I painted twice: once with random designs and the other with the solar system and stars.  In any case, I have been thinking about this off and on for many months, but hadn't really come up with a plan of how I wanted to paint it.

///Fast forward to a couple weeks ago///

I was looking at one of those silly buzzfeed articles - you know the ones:  "30 Amazing Photos That Will Change Your Outlook on Life" or "16 Animals That Are So Cute You Will Cry" or some other nonsense, seemingly always in a tidy little list format.  I see these pop up in my Facebook news feed frequently, and I rarely click on them.  But for some reason, I happened to click on one a couple weeks ago - I don't even remember what the article was now, but somewhere in the ridiculous list was a photo of a car painted with chalkboard paint.  When I first saw the pic I kind of casually thought, "Haha, that would be fun." But after a day or so, I kept gravitating back to the idea and thought, "No, wait, that really would be fun!"  And it was the perfect solution to my indecision of how to paint the van - if I painted it with chalkboard paint, we could draw on it and keep changing it! 

Sneak peek at the chalkboard van!

It didn't take me long to start gathering supplies and begin work.  And of course, as soon as I got a little section done, we had to try it out!  Even though this is a fairly big project, two weeks after deciding to do it, I'm already half way done.  When inspiration strikes like this, it really is a force to be reckoned with!  Now I just have to wait out a couple of rainy days so I can finish it.  Back to indoor projects for now!

Inspiration and Visualization

I'm always scouring the internet for ideas and inspiration.  When I came across something I loved and wanted to remember, I would always bookmark it for later.  But even if I kept my bookmarks well organized (which I've been slacking on lately), it was hard for me to remember which bookmarks were for what, and why I bookmarked them, without clicking on every single one.  Then I found Pinterest.  What a fantastic site for visually oriented people like me!  If you're not familiar with Pinterest, it's basically a way for you to create online bulletin boards to "pin" all of your bookmarks to.  So I can see at a glance what I have "pinned", and therefore remember why I saved it, without having to actually open the link (brilliant!).

After getting my Pinterest account set up and familiarizing myself with how everything worked, I thought what better way to start collection inspiration for some of our home improvement and redecorating projects!  The biggest project we have coming up will be to paint the exterior of our house.  This is going to be a huge job, so I want to give a lot of thought to the color we choose.  To get some ideas, I started out (as I usually do) with a google image search.  I found some houses similar to ours that I liked, and made a pin board to collect them all in one spot, which makes it super easy to compare the different looks:

When I was doing the google image search, I also happened upon this post, from another blogger who needs to paint her old house too.  She had a found this great tool from Sherwin-Williams where you can try out different colors on your house without getting out a paintbrush.  It's called the color visualizer, and you can find it here.  I'll definitely be spending some time trying out colors on our house!  In the meantime, I'll also be searching and pinning away, like ideas for redecorating little g's bedroom, and inspiration for our someday kitchen remodel (it's never too early to start getting ideas, is it?).