diy instagram magnets

Happy hump day, y'all!  Here is a super easy DIY that only takes about 10 minutes to complete, and leaves you with some really fun, personalized magnets to use on your fridge, or wherever else you may need magnets.  I made my magnets out of some of my favorite instagram photos, printed out using the Printic App.  You can send them to print straight from your phone and then they come in the mail a few days later, printed on photo paper with a fun polaroid frame.  You could use almost anything for your magnets, though, as long as the adhesive on the magnet sheets can stick on!



For this project you'll need:
Photos, or whatever you want to make into a magnet Scissors A pen Magnet adhesive paper (I found mine on Amazon)

 

1. Take one of your photos and lay it on the magnet adhesive paper. Hold it still and trace around the edges so that you know how big to cut your piece of magnet.  
2. Cut along the line you drew and then lay the photo over the piece you just cut to make sure the piece isn't larger than the photo.  You don't want to see the magnet, so you'll want to cut it slightly smaller than the photo.  If you can see the magnet, go in and trim the edges of the magnet a bit until you can't see it when you lay the photo on top.
3. Remove the backing on the magnet to reveal the adhesive surface.  Carefully line up your photo over the adhesive and then stick it down.  You only have one shot to get this right because the adhesive is pretty sticky and it'd be difficult to pull it off and try again.  If you didn't get it quite right, you can take your scissors and trim any excess magnet that is showing.
Done!  The magnet is pretty decent, so you can even use the little magnets you made to hold up papers and such.  I think it'd be fun to have a whole fridge covered in photos of friends and family and pretty little details.  In a digital age where most of our photos are online or on our phones, it's nice to have tangible, physical photographs.  One of my favorite things to do when I'm at other people's houses is look at the photos they have on their fridge.
I have a bunch of magnet paper left over so I'm brainstorming more fun magnet projects now!

OUR HOME // bathroom before + after

I'm pretty excited to share this with you guys because it's taken about ten months to finish this room, and the only reason it took that long was my crazy paint undertaking.  If I'd gone at it in one go, it probably would've only taken a week, but I started it right before my family got here to re-side the exterior.  Once we started that giant project the herringbone paint job was put on the backburner and I didn't return to it for months.  It was half done for most of this year.  I can't tell you how good it felt to put that last line up.
This before picture is a shot from the listing before we bought it.  The sad, lonely toilet plant was not my doing. I hated the blinds, mostly because they're impractical.  I never want them closed because the bathroom is so tiny that I need as much natural light as possible coming in.  But obviously I want them closed while showering so no peeping toms get a show.  I solved that problem by taking the blinds down and putting up an etched glass contact-paper-esque window covering that made it so I could have all the natural light and none of the peeping toms.



 

We didn't really have a place to hang towels, and there was an awkward tiny wall behind the door next to the shower which was begging for some hooks to be installed.  I didn't want to just throw up some boring old hooks so I covered the wall with reclaimed wood from pallets and then put up some natural wood hooks from Ikea.

Also from Ikea is the little cart next to our toilet and sink.  The bathroom is rather tiny and it's the only one in the house so we really needed more storage for our daily items than the little medicine cabinet behind the mirror.  It fits perfectly between the toilet and wall and it holds everything from hair products, to spare toilet paper, to our toothbrushes, q-tips, and cotton balls.

 

The little vessels on top the toilet are from Moorea Seal!  When did her product shoot at my home back in July, my wish list grew exponentially.  I basically coveted every little thing she brought to the house to shoot.  Of course, I'd go broke if I'd actually bought everything.  I settled for just a few items and this gold and black vase and feather vessel were two of the pieces I picked out.  

The photo on wood was a Christmas present from my little brother the year Dan & I got married.  He made it himself after googling tutorials and a ton of trial and error.  It's definitely one of my most treasured items.  The photos next to the window are photos I took at my grandparents' house in Juneau many years ago on my mom's old Olympus OM-1.  They've always been some of my favorite photographs, so I'm glad I finally got to display them!

 


I know that you guys probably don't have any desire to spend hours and hours with a tiny paintbrush replicating my herringbone wall, and the good news is... you don't have to!  I partnered with WallsNeedLove.com to create a vinyl removable wallpaper version based on my hand painted design!

Sweet, right?  All of the herringbone, none of the cramped hand and hours crammed against the wall meticulously painting hundreds of tiny lines!  Although if you're looking for a way to watch all of the seasons of Grey's Anatomy, I highly suggest going the painting route.  Because it took multiple seasons of Grey's to finish that project.  So, it's your choice.  Binging on Grey's and cramped, painty hands or ... binging on Grey's while... drinking wine or something.
mini feather vessel / moorea seal :: black + gold vessel / moorea seal :: turquoise cart / ikea towel hooks / ikea :: wall design / handpainted (but buy the wallpaper version here!) turquoise + polka dot towels / target :: gold towels / anthropologie

OUR HOME // kitchen before + after

The kitchen was the room I worked on first when we moved in.  For me, the kitchen is where I spend most of my time, simply because it's the hub of activity in our home.  In the morning we hang out and make breakfast and I work on my computer, I work out in the kitchen, Dusty currently spends most of her time in the kitchen (while we housebreak on the linoleum), it's just the room we all gravitate towards.  I hated that our whole house was painted in shades of beige, and was really eager to get something more bold and bright in there.  Since chartreuse is kind of my current color obsession I couldn't resist painting it chartreuse.  And I've always wanted to have a chalkboard wall in my house, so I painted a whole wall in chalkboard too.  It's not a very accessible wall, since the fridge and the cabinet and shelves cover most of it, but the texture and boldness perfectly balance the chartreuse.  I painted the trim white to a make it pop.  I love the trim in old craftsman homes, and it kind of disappeared when it was beige.  Our friend thought we'd put up new trim after we painted it because it looked so different!
I'll start off with some before photos.  These are photos from before we bought it, just taken off the listing.  Super basic and boring, but nice.  The kitchen had clearly been re-done recently with new cabinetry and appliances, which was nice, but since they're new they don't need replacing with prettier, less boring ones.  I really wanted to paint the cabinets bright white, but they have a coating on them that would be hard to strip and paint.  If we end up staying here long enough we have big dreams for knocking down half the wall between the kitchen and living room to open things up, and if we do that I might replace the cabinets.
   
Because we didn't get a ton of space where we could actually use our chalkboard wall,  I decided to put chalkboard contact paper on the side of our fridge, and I'm so glad I did!  We use it all the time, and it's a great spot for our calendar since we spend most of our time in the kitchen.  Also: love notes.
Above our back door there was a little space that was begging for something fun, so I went to Jo Ann's and got some of those cardboard 3D letters, painted them black with the leftover chalkboard paint and propped them up on the trim above the door.  It was a super quick and easy little project but it's one of my favorite details from the room.
    I've become a little obsessed with collecting globes.  I have two in my kitchen, two in my living room and two in my studio.  Anytime I see a cool one at the thrift store I have to get it, especially because they're usually super cheap.  
The black cabinet beneath our shelves was originally going to double as a coffee/liquor cart, but the liquor area took up too much space, so we moved the coffee accoutrements to inside the cabinet instead of on top.  We just do pour-over coffee so it doesn't involve anything more that filters, beans, and a grinder.  The prints in this corner of the room are another favorite detail.  They're made by an amazing local print studio, Slide Sideways, and I got them at a craft fair where they had a booth earlier this year. A little over a month ago, I was at the Fremont Market with Julie when she was in town visiting and I found some vintage food prints, and I love how they sort of match the Slide Sideways prints.  I hung the vintage prints above my stove and they fit perfectly there!
Some of my favorite personal details in my kitchen are the Alaskan infusions.  My grampa made all the little boxes on the counter.  One holds my spoons, some of which he carved by hand, one holds my other kitchen tools, he made the recipe box and my grandma filled it with recipes, and then the wooden plate with the map of Alaska next to my stove is from their house.  My grampa's carvings are some of my most precious items and I love having them out on the counter to enjoy.
 
Since the cabinets are new and difficult to prep for painting, I opted to just put chalkboard contact paper on them instead of permanently altering them with paint.  I love how it's a really quick and non-committal way to add a bold look to cabinets, plus it matches my other wall, which ties them together nicely.  I can remove the contact paper whenever I want in order to change things up, too!

milk bottle measuring cups + floral painted bowls / anthropologie :: fruit prints / slide sideways rug/roadside shop in WA :: chalkboard contact paper/amazon  ampersand + sun shine print/courtesy of modcloth :: globes/thrifted chartreuse paint/Behr "lemongrass" (if you guys have questions about where anything else came from let me know and I can add it)

strawberry basil lemonade sparkler

The summer menu at Metronome has a strawberry basil lemonade sparkler, and so far I've tried ordering it twice.  The first time they'd run out of champagne.  The second time, lemonade.  So I decided to try my hand at making one for myself at home.  Summer is winding down, but it can still get hot outside and this is a refreshing late summer drink.  I think this drink is so delicious and man does it go down easy.  They're not too stiff, since there's no liquor in them, so you can have a few before getting too silly.
I love a drink that has a cool gradient. I think this might originate from when I used to see my parents drinking Mai Tai's in Hawai'i when I was a kid.  I always thought the gradient of the brown on top and the orange on bottom was so cool.  So much so that one time I wanted to be cool like the grown ups, so I made a drink that looked like a Mai Tai by using orange juice and coke.  Needless to say, it tasted kind of gross, but I'm pretty sure I drank the whole thing just because.  


For the strawberry-basil syrup:
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
1 cup water
1 pound strawberries, washed, hulled, and sliced 1/2 inch thick
3/4 cup tightly packed basil leaves

1. Place the sugar and water in a medium saucepan over high heat and stir until the sugar dissolves and the mixture comes to a boil.

2. Add the strawberries, reduce the heat to medium low, and simmer until the strawberries have softened, about 10 minutes.

3. Remove from the heat, add the basil leaves, and stir to incorporate. Cool to room temperature, about 45 minutes. Strain through a fine-mesh strainer set over a medium bowl; discard the solids. Cover the syrup and refrigerate until ready to use.


For the sparkler: 
2 oz syrup
1.5 oz lemon juice
4-5 oz champagne/sparkling wine

Fill a collins glass with ice cubes, add the syrup, then the lemon juice, and then slowly add the sparkling wine so it doesn't bubble over.  You can also make this drink in a wine glass sans ice, if you prefer!  I like to serve the drink with the gradient intact, just because it looks cool, but it tastes best mixed up.  Garnish with a strawberry, or a lemon wedge, or a basil leaf... or go crazy and garnish with all of them.  It's your party, you can garnish if you want to.