Fireplace Focal Point

I have recently decided to start up with this blog idea again.  Since my last post was sometime ago I have plenty to share.

We have moved into a new house and have slowly been making improvements.  One that I am very excited about is the recent transformation of our fireplace, TV area in the family room.

I am not sure why builders today create these holes for the TVs which now are the size of a large picture. Makes me crazy.

Our fireplace was very outdated with ceramic tile and gold metal accents. There was no mantel and the walls had no character.

My husband and I have always been drawn to a country cottage style.  We have used ship lap in our office, which I will share in a future post, and decided to use it in here as well.   This also ties in different rooms in the house.  The room was previously painted a light yellow which was not bad but not really our style.

The ship lap received a dry brush of paint so the knots and character of the wood shows threw.  The fireplace was painted to cover the gold with a flat black so your attention stays on the stone and wood.

One thing that I think is a must is having a mantel.  We did a 4x6 post that was stained to match the flooring with decorative hardware.  The addition of the stone, which is the Airstone product, a great alternative to real stone.  We got it on clearance and only spent $100 for all of it.

Total project cost less than $300 and makes such a great difference in our home.  More pics at https://www.facebook.com/SmallJobsPlus/posts/655468841239782

Lavendar Soap

A few weeks back I mentioned I was going to be making soap.  Well I finally was able to carve out some time to complete it.  Some background on the whole soap making undertaking. 

I decided months ago I was going to make Christmas presents for family and friends and soap was one of the items I was going to include.  I thought for the women I could do a "spa" basket and include homemade soaps, sugar scrub, and include essential oils, etc... I went out and bought a "kit" for spa soap and my girlfriend had some olive oil soap as well from a previous purchase that she never used. 

I spent an afternoon making soap to see how it was done and created "samples".  This was back in September.  I dragged it all out, mind you, my husband had me set up the hot plate outside in the event I make a mess.  So by the time I was done with my trial, had all the stuff picked up and put away, the idea of dragging it all out again was less than appealing. 

Needless to say, I ended up buying all the women socks. 

Now for today, my girl friends birthday is coming up and I thought, why not.  So I trimmed lavendar from my friends garden, Thank you Theresa, and pulled it all out this weekend.  I decided to do it at the stove, Steve frowned, but I made sure there was no spillage. 

I melted the soap with the lavendar and let it steep to infuse as much of the scent as possible.  I loved that the stems turned the soap a light shade of green.  I added extra buds to the container so it would be mixed throughout the bar.

I love how it all came out.  Took awhile to slowly melt and steep the soap but will definetly do this again.