DIY Maritime map letters

I’m sure you’ve seen cute map letters like these ones from Not On The High Street:

The price of these letters – not so cute. Five letters cost close to $150.00, and that doesn’t include shipping from England. Insane! But no worries, this a super-easy project to do yourself for a fraction of the price.

Being a beach & ocean lover, I wanted my map letters to have a Maritime theme. Now, in theory, this project should have been fast and easy – glue map to wood letters, DONE! But thanks to my:

1. inability to focus on one thing for more than five minutes,
2. habit of making things 20 times more complicated than they need to be, and
3. an ingrained need for perfection,

everything I do takes longer than it should.

(Have I mentioned that I’m a little on the OCD side? Picture Sheldon on The Big Bang Theory with boobs. Yep, that’s me. So overall, I probably spent a few hours creating creating my map letters – not including waiting time between a couple of steps – but it was really simple and straightforward.)

I bought the white wood letters

B  E  A  C  H

at Michaels for 50% off (I think they were around $3.50 each). I totally forgot to take a “before” picture of them – DOH! But you know the kind of wood letters I mean:

 Image via Jonny’s Sister

I searched the Net for some maps of beaches that I’ve been to. Originally I was going to do use a separate map for each letter, but then I came across this whopper map of the Maritimes:

I like the soft colours and old look to the map. And after I printed it out on 16 sheets of 8-1/2” x 11” paper, I realized I could fit each letter onto an area of the map that I’ve been to – PEI, Cape Breton, and three other areas in Nova Scotia (including my beloved Lunenburg region).

Once I figured out where I wanted each letter to go, I cut out each section from the original map image on my computer using Paint and printed out the map section for each letter on its own sheet of paper. That way, I wouldn’t have to cut off the white borders and try to match up seams between sheets of paper.

Map section for the letter B

Next, I traced out each letter onto the map section that I printed out for it and cut the letters out.

I painted the sides of all the letters a light bluey-green. I realized after the fact that I didn’t get any good pictures of the painted letters. DOH again! Anyway, after the paint dried, I used Mod Podge to attach each map letter  onto each wood letter. And voila, Maritime map letters!

I used a little creative license with the A – I turned PEI about 70 degrees so I could fit more of of the island onto the letter.

And I made sure to fit my very favourite part of the Maritimes onto one of the letters – this is the Lunenburg region in Nova Scotia on the letter E:

I still haven’t sealed my map letters. I need to try out some different types of sealers first to see which one works best with paper. I’m thinking either a clear water-based poluyurethane, Mod Podge, or a spray sealer, Any suggestions?

Backyard refresh

This spring, I decided that it was time to give our backyard a bit of a refresh. It was looking pretty boring and bland!

I didn’t want to spend a lot of money (well, hubby didn’t want me to spend a lot of money!) and I couldn’t do much about the plants or torn up grass. With three or four dogs playing in the backyard all the time, flowers will be stepped on and the grassless spots just won’t grow back. So I worked with what I had and fixed up what I could.

My colour inspiration came from this stained glass window that I made years ago at a workshhop given by Out of Ruins.

I used paint to breathe new life into things that I already had – planters, candlesticks, a lantern, and a small table. I actually loved the colour of the green table, but the finish had become worn and dull after lots of summers outside.

I used the same Krylon Gloss Purple spray paint on one of the candlesticks that I used on my $7.00 lamp. I got a lot of use out of that can! The other two candlesticks are painted with Valspar Deep Sea Diving and Tropical Oasis.

Thanks to my friend Janet for telling me about the glass floats at HomeSense :-) They’re a nice addition to the planters. And I couldn’t resist the cute glass frog :-) I used some shades of turquoise from PARA Paints on the big planters.

While I was at HomeSense, I saw the turquoise candlesticks and just had to have them :-) And hubby found citronella candles at Home Depot that fit the large candlesticks perfectly. I don’t know if citronella really keeps the mosquitoes away,  but is smells nice :-)

Our old wood Adirondack chairs had definitely seen better days. They were worn and weathered, and the dogs like to chew the arms. I found these plastic Adirondack chairs at Lowes for $16.00 each. They’re the perfect shade of green, and apparently not as tasty as wood ;-)

And of course, there was the patio table that I showed you back in May that’s been waiting to be finished…

I painted the metal on the table Sherwin Williams Oceanside. I used Rustoleum Oil Rubbed Bronze to paint the umbrella base. The tiles on the top are from Lowes. I really want a turquoise umbrella, but we have a brown one that came with the table when we bought it that’s never been used. So frugal wins out – for now! ;-)

I’d love to dress up the chairs and loungers with cushions and add an outdoor mat, but sometimes practicality has to come first. And I know that a cushion wouldn’t last more then 5 seconds before becoming a chew toy! So the backyard “after” isn’t all that fancy, but it’s colourful and as dog-friendly as I can make it, and an improvement over bland and boring, I think :-)

   

Yo Ottawa, what’s up?!

People say Ottawa is a boring town. I say… well, yeah, kind of. BUT, sometimes there’s cool stuff to do around here. Like this weekend. I’m going to start my Saturday off checking out the New Art Festival…

I went last year, and walked away with these two beautiful pieces of art:

“Pacifica VIII” by Roz Hermant

“Petit Puff 4” by Susan Bailie

Then tomorrow afternoon, it’s the Take The Plunge fundraiser for various Ottawa-area rescue groups…

Catahoula Rescue Ontario will have a booth at the event, and we’ll be there with our new foster, Gizmo. Well, his official name is Marshall, but he looks like a Gizmo to me so we call him Gizmo :-)

And on Sunday, I’m planning to go down to Brockville (about an hour from Ottawa) to check out the Tall Ships 1812 Tour…

Hope the sun stays out all weekend long!

Do you have fun plans for the weekend?

Whatever you do, have a good one!

When Hollywood came calling

Back in 2008, I posted pictures of my newly-decorated living room on the Rate My Space web site.

A couple of months later, I received an e-mail from the alleged producer for HGTV’s upcoming TV show, “Rate My Space”. She said that they were interested in using my living room as an inspiration location for the show. Uh, yeah, right, sure – I didn’t just fall off the turnip truck!

But being the curious sort, I had to at least play along. And after doing some spy work, it turned out that this was totally legit – OMG, Rate My Space wanted to put my living room on TV!

There were papers to fill out and a video to make and a couple of months of excitement and anticipation, and then it really happened – Rate My Space came to my house. Well, OK, to be honest, one camera man named Dan came to my house. But still, it was pretty freakin’ awesome! Dan was such a great guy – he was even willing to wear my crazy Canadian springy things on his head.

Our Skype interview with Rate My Space host & designer Angelo Surmelis didn’t happen because he was laid up in bed with a bad back that day. But I got to talk with Tayo & Mark, the couple that was getting a martini lounge makeover on this episode of the show. They chose my living room as one of their three inspiration rooms because they  loved the party-potential of my furniture arrangement.

 

This is how Angelo interpreted my living room furniture arrangement in Tayo & Mark’s martini lounge.

The shoot took an entire day and in the end, my clip on the show only lasted about a minute. But it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience and a fun day of feeling like a Hollywood star :-)

If you’d like my living room to appear on your TV show, give its agent a call ;-)

Boone Hall Plantation

Chances are, you’ve seen this house before:

It’s Boone Hall Plantation, which served as Allie’s family’s summer home in the The Notebook. It was also in a little movie called North and South. It’s located about 30 minutes east of Charleston and is really close to where we stayed on Isle of Palms. It’s also the home of the beautiful Avenue of Oaks.

Boone Hall Plantation dates all the way back to 1681when a land grant of 470 acres was given to Major John Boone and his bride Elizabeth as a wedding present from Elizabeth’s father, Theophilus Patey. But it wasn’t until 1790 that a house was constructed on the plantation. The original house is long gone – the house that’s standing here now is actually not all that old – it was built in the 1930s by Canadian Thomas Stone.

Thomas Stone had to return to Canada around 1940 and never returned to Boone Hall. The McRae family bought the plantation in 1955 and it’s still owned by the McRae family. They live in the upper storey of the house, so only a few rooms on the main floor are open to the public. Cameras aren’t allowed inside the house, and this is the only picture of the interior that I was able to find online (thank you Julia at Hooked on Houses!)

I’m guessing these pictures are pretty old, because the rooms are quite a bit different now.When you're looking at the front of the house, the dining room is to the right of the front door. I want to say it’s red – I’m almost positive it is! To the left of the front door and a few steps down is the library. It’s got a super-high ceiling and the walls are painted a really dark purple that looks almost black. Close to this colour – AC139N Aubergine from Color Guild

There’s gorgeous crown moulding and trim. and tall built-in book cabinets around the room painted white. And lots of old furniture and knicknacks.

Straight ahead of the front door is a curved floating staircase. Under the staircase and through a doorway is sort of a conservatory. I REALLY wish I could have taken pictures of this room – the ceiling has curves and arches and is made from brick, and the floor is brick too. A wall of windows and doors look out over a brick patio.

The plantation was open to the public in 1957 and great efforts have been made to preserve the original structures and gardens. This smokehouse is the oldest building on the property – it was built in 1750 using bricks made on the plantation.

Something that we don’t seen on brick structures here in Canada – mortar with shells!

There are also nine of the 27 original slave cabins still standing that date back to around 1800. This section of the plantation is called Slave Street. For me, Slave Street is the most fascinating part of Boone Hall. Each cabin tells a part of the story of slavery, from the very beginning right up to the end of slavery in 1861. The story continues from post-slavery right up to icons of the American civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s, like Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks. I spent a long time reading the plaques on the walls and watching & listening to the presentations in each cabin. Very sad, but fascinating as well. Slaves at Boone Hall Plantation grew rice and indigo crops, and they also made bricks. The slave cabins were made with the brick “seconds”.

The Gullah Theater is outside of the last cabin. Artist Zenobia Washington delivered a wonderful presentation about Gullah. Slaves came to America from different areas of Africa and spoke different languages. The Gullah language and culture evolved primarily in South Carolina and Georgia from all these different African languages and backgrounds. Zenobia makes and sells these colourful dolls at her presentations (I bought the dolls in the middle and on the far right in the bottom row).

I could have spent the whole day at Boone Hall Plantation, exploring and taking in all the history and culture. If you ever go to South Carolina, definitely make time for a visit.

Happy weekend!