The devil is in the details. I changed my coasters from boring and terrible to awesome and classy with some gold acrylic paint and about 15 minutes.
I love it when small changes make all the difference.
Before:
After:
Interested in learning how to use Photoshop to edit videos, I made a fake ghost video of my beloved pet cat, Hamburglar.
After loads of research and years of longing, we traded in our gas-thirsty 2000 era SUV for a new 2012 Mazda 3!
I LOVE this car. It’s so fun to drive, but it also has the practical features I wanted too: great gas mileage with the 2.0L Skyactive engine, hatchback, and excellent safety rating.
It also had one thing I didn’t want: The enormous dealer decal on the hatch.
Most of the time when you buy a car, you can request that the dealer remove this unsightly advertisement from the vehicle before you accept delivery. But between hashing out purchase price, financing and extras, it’s very easy to let a relatively minor detail like the dealer decal slip, which is exactly what we did.
So I decided to remove it myself. This seemed very intimidating at first. What if I were to damage the finish on a brand new car? But my research assured me it could be done with ease and little risk, so I soldiered ahead.
It turns out that on a hot day, the vinyl lettering used on these decals softens in the heat. If it’s winter for you or you just live somewhere cold, you can use a hair dryer or heat gun (carefully!). I live in Florida, so it being August it was 30 billion degrees out creating no need for artificial heat. When the letters are softened, you can just pick them off with your fingernail!
Excuse our goofy reflections.
With the letters removed, all you are left with is nasty goop in the shape of the previously offending decal.
Grooooss.
But this is easy to remove. Just grab a bottle of the ever-useful Goo-Gone and spray on then wipe off. It may take a couple of tries to get all the nasty off. Then just clean up with a clean rag and dishsoapy water.
And voila! 20 minutes of light effort and your car looks better and is no longer a driving billboard for the guy you bought it from.
SO SHINY.
My loving and thoughtful husband bought me some new nightstands for my birthday back in June. This was a great gift for me because we did not have any nightstands, and I had fallen in love with ones from CB2 that I never would have pulled the trigger on myself due to the fact that I’m the cheapest furniture buyer in the world. Normally if I am shopping for furniture, I buy something functional from craigslist or the thrift store and go bananas with refinishing and replacing hardware. Once I even made new coffee tables from scratch using a power drill and a hand saw in my driveway.
IMAGE FROM CB2.COM
So my excitement over these nightstands was perhaps not proportional to what others might have felt.
When they arrived, they were lovely and everything I had hoped for. They were just a little short next to our bed. With a little hemming and hawing, I came to the conclusion that they were fine- they just needed extra tall reading lamps to go with them, no problem.
But then it turned out, problem, extra tall lamps aren’t even a thing, and if they are, they are ugly or a zillion dollars. So I decided to make some, and here’s how. Continue reading →