Holiday Open House Uptown Antiques!

Our dear friend Kim from Uptown Antiques 
invited French Hen Farm to join her Holiday Open House!
She has an beautiful shop in Marysville filled with amazing pieces!

Here are some shots from Kim's shop Christmas transformation!

We spent the weekend filling it with a little holly jolly!

Hope you can make it.  This coming weekend.  

Uptown Antiques 

117 South Main Street, Marysville 

Nov 7 & 8

Friday 11-5, Saturday 10-4!

Lots of beautiful Holiday goodies! 

 Hope you can make it!

chalkboard art

One of the things I did for the Holiday Open House was make some fun chalkboard art.

I started by digging through the barn for some old frames.

I thought I was going to spray paint some plywood or mdf, but hubby found pre made 2' x 4' sheets of chalkboard at Home Depot for $9.97.  I am always into taking some shortcuts!
So you will need a frame, pre made or make your own chalkboard, chalk, chalk markers, ruler, wipes, q tips, aqua net unscented hairspray, glazers points.

Start by printing off some artwork from the internet that you like (pinterest has some great ones).  

I then fold the paper into squares and then grid off my chalkboard accordingly with a light chalk line.  

This then becomes your guideline to hand drawing the artwork onto the board.

I will lightly draw out the placement of the artwork and words in chalk to make sure it is spaced correctly.  If not, simply erase and draw again.

I then take a chalk marker and begin my drawing.  Again, make a mistake, simply take a baby wipe or dampened q tip to erase...

When it is all done I will go through with a baby wipe and q tip and clean up all my lines,

I will set it aside to look from a far and make sure I don't have any changes.  
When I am finally done I will lay it on a towel and lightly spray it with unscented aqua net to set it.

Let it dry flat before you put it in the frame.
When done, use glazer points to secure it in the frame and you have wonderful Holiday artwork that can be changed out season after season!

Here are a couple more of what I did, all of these will be available at Kim's store, Uptown Antiques, in Marysville.  Her Holiday Open House is Nov 7 & 8.

new years organization and file cabinet redo!

I had been looking forever for a small set of file cabinets to fit into my office space.
Over the Holidays I began my massive reorganization and filing a years worth of paper.
I needed something fast to put my piles away in.
After not finding anything, I came across these bright colored files at my favorite Hobby Lobby store.  

They would not work in my home in their current state….however...
I thought I could possibly make these work.

I took some black paint and a stencil and now they work much better in my home than in their red, green and blue color way!

Always look at the Hobby Lobby sale section.  You can find some great deals!

laundry room redo

This past fall we decided it was time to redo our laundry room cabinets.  
Time to get rid of the ugly laminate cabinets. yuk….
...junk collectors!

After shopping around, I came across another unfinished cabinet similar to the one we did for the adjacent bathroom last january. 
See http://frenchhenfarm.blogspot.com/2012/02/new-bath-room-vanity.html
This time I bought this one from Menards.

Again, I did the same treatment - coat of wax, then dark wax.  added some handles from my favorite Hobby Lobby to compliment the bathroom cabinet from last year.

Added remnant piece of marble...

….the finished product!….much nicer!
...and i don't want to clutter it with all the junk we did before!