pinterest gets the best of you sometimes, "making" you save all these tiny scraps of stuff so you can (forget to) finish a project in the distant future.  i think my husband might burst if i save the scraps of any more crafty projects (though i can never have enough yarn, i do everything BUT knit with it lately!)

one that finally came to fruition this past holiday season was wine cork garland! sure you can go to a thrift store or ebay or amazon and buy wine corks and make it now, but what's the fun in that? don't you want to DRINK the wine the corks came from?  i had been saving them for about 3 years, and i finally had enough to string them and hang them on the tree!



it's as simple as drilling a hole through the long end of the cork and slipping a long piece of fishing line through it (i bought the 50 lb fishing line, but now that i have it maybe that was overkill.  the good thing is that the fishing line is stiff so it usually went through the hole in the cork without a needle).  i started off holding the corks with pliers to keep my fingers away from the drill bit, but ended up just using my fingers to go faster (oops!).  i also started off with the tiniest drill bit, but soon realized that a larger hole didn't hinder the cork, and the fishing line was WAY easier to slip through without a needle if i used a bigger drill bit.



i drilled a few corks, threaded them on the line, drilled a few more, threaded them on the line....  i didn't want to get too far ahead of myself because sometimes i would need to redrill the hole if the fishing line got stuck.  i just tied the end of the string in a knot around the wine cork on each end to finish the string of garland.

the finished project turned out so awesome! well... for about an hour and a half worth of my time anyways.  maybe next year i will take it apart and put some poms between some of the corks or something fun like that ;)

nearly free and lots of character. those are the kinds of projects i like to do!  it's such a simple project that i didn't think it needed a lot of explaining, but if you have further questions, just ask!

pin this now, so you remember it next year when you have enough corks to string on your tree ;)

cheers.
jenn

after a night spent flying home from a business trip, partying with e.tittlemouse and co. at the night of noir event for jc fridays , and snagging a "night cap" of sour cream blueberry ice cream and earl grey fudge ice cream at milk sugar love , who knew we could even be functional on saturday, let alone saturday MORNING.  (see tomorrow's post for details from the night of noir event!!)



here's the story.  hung and i had been putting off getting a headboard for our bed for a long time.  like 6 months.  which doesn't seem that long for normal people, but for people who complain nearly everyday that the pillows fall behind the bed because we don't have a headboard, it's a long time.

with the way our bedroom is laid out, there's only one location that the bed fits while allowing the drawers beneath the bed to fully open on each side.  this spot puts the head of the bed about partly in front of the exposed brick area of one wall, which leaves about 7 inches of space JUST big enough for all of the pillows to fall behind the bed.

we knew that putting a standard headboard on the bed would waste that precious 7 inches of space behind half of the bed, so we knew we needed to put shelves behind the headboard..... shelves that would hold our phones, glasses, chapstick, etc. since we don't have room for a nightstand and desperately needed a "landing zone" for that stuff.  how hard could it be right?

last year on this day   (ok, last year on 9/11) , it was sunday, and mr p and i were busy busy bees.



we had just started renovations on our "new" jersey city apartment. it was day 7 of renovations, and that day we:
   - laid trim
   - ripped up the bathroom tile floors
   - laid new backerboard
   - grouted the bathroom tile
   - painted the tub with appliance paint
   - bought a stove
   - ripped out the bathroom vanity

i'm SO happy those days are over! small bits of renovating have continued to creep up now and again, but that first month of having keys to the new place was BRUTAL! (i guess our relationship can survive anything if we survived THAT!)

we actually did a LOT of renovations to our tiny apartment in our 100+ year old building.  check out the beginning of the story here (or click renovations on the left side bar)

what's your story? did you do any fun renovating or decorating in your home? tell us about it!

cheers!