Upcycled: Free Logs Turned Into Fantastic Centerpieces & A Present

One of the best things about being nice, is that if you're nice to strangers, 

they will generally be nice back to you :)

I was driving to my boss' house one day and I passed by some guys cutting down a few trees for one of his neighbors. After they cut the tree into smaller pieces, they placed it all into a pile across the street. I parked my car, went over and started asking about the wood--all in hopes of asking the land owner if I could take some of the discarded wood. The workers informed me that the city dump would come by tomorrow and that the wood was mine for the taking. I grabbed three large logs (pictured below) and threw them into my trunk.

A few weeks later, my oldest brother and I spent a few hours with the wood and a chainsaw to cut the logs into 2 1/2-3 inch thick pieces. We got about 18 smaller pieces and three large pieces out of the logs. 

(Pay attention to the tall one of the left--I'm going to use it later on for a gift for the bride and groom)

Here's a close up of the sizes. They all varied because I didn't want the tables to look too uniform--My hope for the dinner party was to make the tables look styled, but individual.

Next, I wanted to create something fun for the bride and groom.The largest leftover piece of wood was too tall to place on top of a table, so I decided to make it into an engraved doorstop for the couple. 

I wanted the doorstop to read "A + J" but I couldn't find my grandfathers' wood engraver, so I resulted to using an old trick that I learned in high school. You can achieve the same look by using regular wood matches. 

First you line up the matches in a row (or in the shape of whatever it is that you're trying to make) and then you use tape to hold the ends together. Try not to get too close to the ends of the match because you do not want to prevent the matches from burning. 

Place the line on the log in the location of the project area.

Set fire to the matches and let it burn for 3-5 seconds. 

Blow it out and remove. You should be left with something that looks like this: 

Continue repeating the steps until you have your final project!!

Here's what mine ended up looking like. The bride and groom loved it! The groom, however, wanted to know what his initial didn't come first haha. 

The dinner party ended up being a big success. My parent's think that event planning/wedding planning is my calling. They might be right. I did have a lot of fun planning and decorating.

Here's a pic of what the tables ended up looking like with all of the flowers, candles and wood cuts :)

Upcycled: Purple Shirt

I used to work at Anthropologie for a second, part-time job, in addition to my full-time job. I worked there for over a year and a half and I have to say I am so grateful for all of the people who I worked with and all of the inspiration that floats around in the atmosphere. 

One day in the fall of last year, we received this shirt in a new shipment. 

I absolutely fell in love instantly with the colors because it has almost every one of my favorite colors in the pattern. I didn't, however, love the neckline. In fact when I first tried it on, I hated it. Something about having three holes in the chest area (one very deep and low--hint the middle) and I was a little uncomfortable with drawing attention to my chest. I ended up purchasing it because of the color pattern, but only wore it a few times in the past year. It was a few weeks ago that I was cleaning out my closet and I came up with an idea for a neckline adjustment using salvaged materials from things I was going to donate. 

One of the shirts I was going to donate was this babydoll (or long tank) with cream colored lace around the bottom of the shirt. I decided to cut off all of the lace from the tank and then cut out all of the holes on the purple shirt. My hope was to eventually give the purple top a more structured and vintage look.

What I ended up doing was first cutting out a square in the shirt, made what I'm going to call "edging" because I don't know the right terminology and then I attached the lace at the very end.

I think I have decided that I like when things aren't perfect. As you can see, I decided to do a zigzag pattern for the stitch and I used bright purple thread all so that the neckline would stand out a little more. The edging also isn't perfect because I made it all from teeny-tiny scraps from the square cut-out and then I also salvaged the edging from the original holes.  

After two hours on the sewing machine, I came up with this:

(I wore it to work this week and snapped this photo in the bathroom!)

All in all I am very happy with how it turned out. I love the colors and now it has a very unique neckline that doesn't draw attention to the crack between my boobs! Hah!