Happy Easter

I hope everyone had a blessed and happy Easter!  My husband and I spent time with family and we had a very blessed day.  I love Easter décor and I love setting the table so here is a picture of my Easter inspiration this year!

Besides our cat being our favorite part of this décor (JK), I love our Easter bunny salt and pepper shakers which came from Anthropologie.  The table runner came from TJ Maxx and the place matts came from Target.  The eggs came from a gift store in Milledgeville called The Lemon Tree. 

The Best Strawberry Cake!

I have made this strawberry cake several times and it gets better and better every time I make it.  Here is the recipe.

Ingredients:

1 (18.25-ounce) box white cake mix
1 (3-ounce) box strawberry-flavored instant gelatin
1(15-ounce) package frozen strawberries in syrup, thawed and pureed
4 large eggs
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1/4 cup water
Strawberry cream cheese frosting
1/4 cup butter, softened
1 (8-ounce) package cream cheese, softened
1 (10-ounce) package frozen strawberries in syrup, thawed and pureed
1/2 teaspoon strawberry extract
7 cups confectioners' sugar

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Lightly grease 2 (9-inch) round cake pans.
In a large bowl, combine cake mix and gelatin.  Add pureed strawberries, eggs, oil, and water; beat at medium speed with an electric mixer until smooth.  Pour into prepared pans, and back for 20 minutes, or until a wooden pick inserted in the center comes out clean.
Let cool in pans for 10 minutes.  Remove from pans, and cool completely on wire racks.
For the frosting:
In a large bowl, beat butter and cream cheese at medium speed with an electric mixer until creamy.  Beat in 1/4 cut of the strawberry puree and the strawberry extract.  Gradually add confectioners' sugar, beating until smooth.
Spread frosting in between layers and on top and sides of cake.  Garnish with sliced fresh strawberries, if desired.

This is what mine looks like after I get finished baking it!

DIY Kitchen Table

My husband bought our home in 2007 before we ever started dating and when he moved into his home his parents gave him this table and chairs to go in our breakfast area.  The table and chairs is well over 40 years and luckily has great back bones to shabby chic it!!  One of the legs on the table was broke and we had to be careful putting any weight on that side of the table and the chairs had dog scratches on in them and on the sides the dogs had chewed it all up! Needless so say I was ready to put my touch on it to give it life again.  Here are a few pictures of what the set looked like before.

and here are is what the chairs looked like before with all the scratched in the seat.

 

 

Lord HELP us!!  I was so ready to get my hands on this set and get it redone.  My husband was so sweet and helped me on this.  He even had a broken wrist when we did this project and didn't complain at all!  Here is a list of this I use to start this project.

 

Things You Need

1) TSP Cleaner

2) Rubber gloves

3) Steal wool pads

4) Electric sander

5) 120 grit sand paper

6) Water base primer

7) Latex paint- color of your choice

8) Polyurethane

9) Stain- color of your choice

 

How to Redo

1) Put warm water in a bucket and put the TSP cleaner in the water and mix it up.  Use your rubber gloves during this step because the TSP will eat your hands completely up.  It is a harsh chemical.  Using the steal wool pads clean your piece of furniture.  Damp dry with an old towel.

2) Using your electric sander and 120 grit sand paper and the entire piece of furniture.  Once you are finished, use a damp towel and wipe the piece of furniture down to get rid of the dust from sanding.

3) Prime the piece of furniture using water base primer.  Here are a few pics of what our looked like with the primer. 

already looking better with just the primer on.
4)  We took the legs off the table and stained the legs.  We use dark walnut stain.  You have to be very careful with stain.  All we did was use a chip brush and wipe the stain on the table legs and use an old t-shirt to wipe the stain off.  You may want to use your rubber gloves on this step as well because the stain can make your hands very sticky.  Here is a picture of what our table legs looked like.

5) Paint your piece of furniture.  I used two colors. Teal blue for the chairs and bright red for the table.  Once your first coat of paint is dry, I would recommend painting a second coat of paint on because table and chairs get a lot of wear and tear.
6) Once your paint has completely dried, used 120 grit sand paper and your electric sander and start sanding around the corners.  Here is a picture of what mine looked like once I finished sanding.



 7) Polyurethane the entire piece of furniture.  I even used a second coat of poly since it was our table and chairs. 
8) I would let it completely dry for about 24 hrs before placing anything on the top of your table because your might have a ring around where you left it.
Here is our after product!

 





 I loved the way it turned out!!

How to Spray Paint Furniture

Recently I post on my blog this being the first table and chairs that I ever redid.  I am going to give you a step by step tutorial of what you will need and how to spray paint furniture!!!

List of things you will need:

1) TSP cleaning solutions
2) Sand paper (120 grit)
3) Spray paint primer
4) Spray paint
5) Matte finish spray paint
6) Rubber gloves
7) Electric sander
8) Steel wool pad

How to Spray Paint Furniture:

1) Mix about a fourth of a cup of TSP in warm water.  Make sure you have rubber gloves on because the TSP is a harsh chemical and it will eat away at your hand.  Wash the piece of furniture with a steel wool pad.  Then pat dry with an old towel.

2) When you have patted the furniture dry start sanding with your electric sander and your 120 grit sand paper.  Make sure you sand the entire piece of furniture or sand most of the furniture that you can get to.  Once finished, wipe away all the dust with a damp towel.

3) Use the spray paint primer to prime the furniture.  This does not have to be perfect but make sure you at least have one good coat of primer on before you start spray painting.  Let dry for about an hour before you start spray painting.

4) When the primer is completely dry start spray painting the piece of furniture to the color of your choice.  I will say that the expensive spray paint is a lot better than the cheap spray paint.  Let the first coat dry and then apply a second coat if you need to.  Let completely dry before you start your next step.

5) Using your electric sander, use 120 grit sand paper and go around the corners of the furniture to give it a nice distressed looked.  Wipe all the dust off from sanding with a towel.

6) Use the matte finishing spray and let completely dry

 

This is the after product of my piece of furniture that I redid!!

  

Getting Started

Let's see where to begin!!!

My name is Georgia Ethridge I am 29 years old.  I work with my dad and brother in the insurance business which has been a blessing.  The reason why I wanted to start blogging is because my passion for interior decorating and shabby chicing furniture.  It all started in college when I got move into my own condo and decorated my room!!!  My room was very bright and I loved it.  I would always keep the lights on because you could see it a mile away from where I live.  Here are some pictures of my college room and where my passion for decorating began.  I wished I would have taken more pictures of my college room because I had it decorated more over the years before I moved out. 





That was the past and this is the future.  I married my sweet husband on October 15, 2011.  He bought our home several years before we even started dating and when I first walked into our house for the first time and I was thinking "What am I getting myself into"  In the living room he had Budweiser pictures and a poster of a monkey drinking a beer!!!  I was thinking to myself that this has got to go!!!  It was a man cave in itself!!!  So we made a compromise, he really wanted to keep the all of his pictures on the walls so we both agreed that he could use one of the guest bedrooms as his "man cave" where he could hang up the pictures that he wanted to hang up.  He was so excited about decorating his on room he even painted the walls all by himself.  I will take a picture of his "man cave" and post it on here later.  Needless to say David's "man cave" does not look bad and I think he did he did a great job decorating his room.  I am very proud of him.

So, I said all of that to say this.  When we first started remodeling our house I had a slate that was wide open and my decorating ideas were constantly running in my head.  The walls had never been painted some of the furniture I could shabby chic and we would not have to go out and buy all new furniture!!!  Our first big project was painting our house and I will say Benjamin Moore paint is the best.  I use their paint for everything even shabby chicing our furniture.  We painted every room except the guest bedroom and that is because I am still debating on what color to paint it. 

When it came down to arranging the furniture, I really wanted to start learning how to paint furniture.  A lot of the furniture was David's and lets just say that some of it needed a "girl's touch" to it.  So, I started researching how to shabby chic furniture because this would be my first DIY project that I had ever started and I had no clue how to begin!  Thank goodness for Pinterest because it gave me step by step instructions on how to shabby chic furniture and I still use that some method today.  The first piece of furniture I shabby chiced was in David's breakfast room before we got married and I thought it would look great as a console table behind our sofa and I have to say that after I painted it it looks great and is a great console table.  Here are the before and after pics of it.



 I love the way it turned out because that has led to many projects that I have done over the past couple of years that I will blog about later.  We still use that table today and if we need extra chairs we use these chairs to sit around our kitchen table if we have extra guests.