Why my "& Co." is amazing

So by now you've probably all figured out that my "& Co." is my best friend...my mom. She's been the biggest help in making The Wine Cellar the cutest off-campus house Bradley University has ever seen. Seriously, she is awesome.
Last weekend, my mom, sister, dad, grandpa, uncle and great uncle came down to visit me! The guys went golfing while us girls did one of our favorite activities...shopping. I found some really cute clothes and jewelry, as well as few more things to decorate my room with. My mom also brought a bunch of stuff to finish the last room in the house that needed some TLC. I think our house might finally be complete! For our living room, we had to work off the colors from the plaid chair, so our accent color was kind of a burnt orange and some navy blue as well. Of course we weren't going to take the easy route and just buy some pillows and wall art. Instead, & Co. found some cheap pillows at Goodwill and re-covered them with fabric in our accent colors and stenciled them, just like my stenciled rug! She also made the most adorable wall art for the awkward wood wall in the living room. Each picture is just painted and stenciled on recycled pieces of wood!

Lilly Agenda Upcycle

I never thought the day would come where I would cut up one of my old planners. I am incredibly OCD about my planners and writing everything I have to do in them, so I have a ridiculous attachment to them. I have every planner I've used since my Sophomore year of high school- it's crazy! So why did I suddenly decide it was okay to actually CUT UP one of the most expensive, beautiful planners I've owned? Well, it's quite a tragic story actually. While in Spain last semester studying abroad, I brought along my beloved Lilly agenda. On one of the many rainy days there, I had the planner in my backpack and my travel-sized umbrella dripped water all over my backpack, causing my planner to get completely soaked. I was absolutely devastated. I spent over 2 hours with a hair dryer on the pages and all of my notes were completely smeared. Once it finally dried, it was a crinkly, warped mess.

I'm still a little heartbroken, but I've tried to make the best of this minor tragedy. The day the new Lilly agendas went on sale for pre-order, I placed my order for the Large Agenda in "Resort White Chiquita Bonita."The new agenda starts in August and I can't wait to start writing in it! I'll do another post in the future about my organizing tips for my agenda and how I stay on top of things (hint: LOTS of color coding. It's marvelous). So now that you're brought up to speed and my new agenda is just waiting for me, I feel at peace with cutting up the old one. I bought a coffee thermos at Starbucks today that is blank and you can put any pictures or paper inside to decorate it yourself. It looks like this:

Next, I went to town cutting up the old planner. I have a lot of leftover scraps that I'm in the process of planning a new craft for.

I traced the shape of the paper onto my own scrapbook paper and glued the pieces into a beautiful Lilly collage!

Here's the finished product!

Hope you enjoy!
Keeks

Confessions of a Book Nerd

I love books. I always have. From the time I was a little girl, my mom could put me in a room with a stack of books and come back hours later and I'd still be there, entertaining myself. I'd finish the books and then sit and make up new stories or new endings and to this day, I can finish a 500-page novel and minutes later pick up the next book on my list and dive right in. There's something so magical about getting so wrapped up in the lives of the characters in a book for a few days or weeks or however long it takes you to finish, only to part ways and meet a whole new set of friends (or enemies, as the case might be) as soon as you pick up a new book.
As much as I love to read for pleasure, the schedule of a college student doesn't exactly allow all that much free time. This is one of the many reasons why I love summer! Even though I'm working, I don't have homework to come home to or tests to study for so I can spend my free time reading book after book after book-just the way I like it!
Side Note: I have also been spending a lot of my free time lately getting wholeheartedly addicted to the show Downton Abbey. If you haven't seen it, you're missing out. I can't WAIT for the new season to start this fall!

So I'm here to bring you some of my summer reading suggestions, or at least what I am reading and plan to read in the next month before school starts!

1. Where We Belong by Emily Giffin. This is my current read at the moment! It's a great summer read, but if you've read any of Giffin's other books (Something Borrowed, Something Blue, Baby Proof, etc) you can expect this novel to have quite a bit more substance and meaning than her other books. Another fun fact is that Giffin is actually from my hometown of Naperville, IL!


2. Harvesting the Heart by Jodi Picoult. I don't know how you feel about Picoult (sometimes her books can get a bit repetitive) but I do like to throw in one every now and then because her storylines are just so compelling! You can't put them down! This is an older one of hers, but I enjoyed it. I just finished reading this one a little over a week ago.



3. The One I Left Behind by Jennifer McMahon. This came recommended to me by my roommate, and it's probably the next book on my "to-read" list for this summer. It's supposedly quite suspenseful, a genre I adore.


4. Inferno by Dan Brown. I LOVE all books by Dan Brown. The DaVinci Code and Angels and Demons are two of my all-time favorite books, so naturally I was thrilled when I found out he was coming out with a new novel for the summer. I need to make a trip to the bookstore to add this one to my collection and can't wait to start it!


5. The Kitchen House by Kathleen Grissom. This is another recommendation, this time from my "& co."-my mom. She read it a couple summers ago and I've never gotten around to reading it, but hopefully I'll find the time this summer!



That's the shortened version of my summer reading list, although I always keep a list of books I'd like to read. I add to it every time a friend recommends something or I see a new title in a store that is just calling my name, which means that I never get to finish my "to-read" list. I think that's just wonderful, though. There are always new (and old!) things out there to read! And here's my last little plug to reading...I do NOT own any sort of e-reader. I appreciate the convenience behind traveling with a Nook or a Kindle, but I don't think I will ever be able to bring myself to buy one. I 100% prefer old-fashioned books that you can physically close once you've finished them. There's something so satisfying about that! I don't judge those who use e-readers, but I personally am so sad that so many bookstores are closing and the notion of paper books is quickly diminishing. SAVE THE BOOKS! (and hey, paper books look better on your bookshelves!).

Decorating My New House: DIY Projects for "The Wine Cellar"

It's your lucky day-2 posts in ONE DAY! Actually, I'm just really behind on getting all my cool projects up here. The wall grouping for my bedroom is basically done! I added the painted quote canvases I just made, and a few other things but I still need to add some splashes of apple green, my other accent color.

I like how they turned out! The shelves used to be navy, so my mom painted them black and I put up the two canvases I painted. The glass bottles are an old vase and an empty glass dressing bottle that I filled with the same pink paint from the canvas. I made the letter "K" for my dorm freshman year and decided to use it again-it's just Mod Podged with magazine clippings and painted black on the front and back. Finally, the plate is from my grandma's house and I laced it with cute pink quatrefoil ribbon. I'm ordering another one of my favorite monogram stickers for the center.

Also in my room now is the amazing headboard my mom made! It's really hard to see how cool it is in the picture unfortunately. It started with an old crib my mom bought from Craislist (we repurposed another part of the crib, which you'll see soon!). She used two pieces of foam core board on the side of the crib with the bars, tied with dental floss or embroidery floss through punched holes. Next, she covered the foam with batting and stapled black fabric over the whole thing. Finally, she purchased a button covering kit to do buttons in the same fabric and make it tufted. I love it!

In the living room, here are a couple of the cool projects my mom also did. (She's been SUCH a big help in crafting all sorts of things for the Wine Cellar house while I started my internship). These were all originally inspired by Pinterest crafts. The rug we have in the living room is a cheap $10 grey rug that my mom actually PAINTED with a stencil and white paint. It turned out really well, I think.

For the wall above our TV, she took a frame and picture we already had and cut up paint samples to make this cool design.

Finally, the famous sunburst mirror, made from gold-painted paint sticks!

This might just be my favorite project, also made from a part of the crib she purchased. The end of the crib (the flat, non-slatted part) we painted with chalkboard paint and a white trim for an entryway chalkboard! I did some cute lettering.

Decorating My New House: Craigslist and Clearance finds for "The Wine Cellar"

In case we don't personally know each other, I'm a college senior at Bradley University and this year I'm renting an off-campus house with four of my best friends. The house is old, but we've made a major effort to decorate it as cute as possible (and for the least amount of money!). On my campus, it's a tradition to name your house and the name gets passed down with the house if other members of your sorority or fraternity rent the same house the following year. We are the first Sigma Kappas to live in this particular house so we got to re-name it! Let me show you some of the cute things I've done for my room, kitchen, and living room in The Wine Cellar!

First of all-Craigslist.org is AMAZING. A real lifesaver when you have to completely furnish a house, especially a college house where you don't want to buy expensive things quite yet. I'm also a big fan of upcycling old, used furniture. With just a few small changes a piece can go from shabby to chic so easily! 

Here's a few examples of my "upcycled" furniture and Craigslist finds. 

Ikea chair: originally $199 at Ikea, bought for $20 on Craigslist

Matching ottoman: $5

Desk: Free! This desk was originally garbage-picked by my grandma in the 1950's. It started as a flat black paint, then a funky pale green in the 60's, a screaming electric yellow in the 70's, white with country flowers stenciled from the 80's-90's where it lived in my little girl room, then a nautical navy blue for our basement, and finally back to classic black for my college house! We spiced it up with cute clearance knobs from Hobby Lobby for $1 each. 

Dresser: Also free! This was another roadside find that got spray-painted black and some new knobs. We also lined the drawers with cute wrapping paper. 

Scalloped edge bedside table: Free from my Great-Grandma's house, then painted black and topped with an old lamp and $5 lampshade from Craigslist.

Chair: This was an old, nasty orange chair from my grandparents' old house and my mom sewed a slipcover from a treated painter's dropcloth for $6

Pillows: Made from clearance printed duck from Hobby Lobby or muslin fabric from our sewing box at home and recycled pillow forms. 12 pillows for under $12!

Coat Hooks: This shelf came from my grandma's house as well-it didn't have coat hooks and was an ugly oak, so we painted it and added hooks. It still needs artwork on top.

More clearance finds came from my favorite store, Hobby Lobby. My mom and I were shopping and happened to come across an 80% off home decor section. I found 3 adorable prints for my kitchen! The "Kitchen" print only cost me $9 and the two square prints ended up being $6 apiece. 

I know the pictures are a little dark, but you get the idea. 

Painted Quote Canvases

So for my first real post, I decided to show you all what I've been working on for the past couple of days! I've been home at my parents house this week for my brother's graduation party and for Father's Day this weekend and had lots of time to craft for my new house! A while back I bought a pack of canvases on sale at a craft store and I knew I'd find a way to use them. I have two black shelves that my mom painted for me to make a wall grouping above my bed at the new house and needed things to decorate them. I absolutely love cute, inspiring quotes and I thought it would be fun to paint them for my room!

For the first one, I used a bunch of different fonts and printed off the quote the way I wanted it to look in a Word document first. I freehanded it in pencil on the canvas and just used black acrylic paint and a very skinny paintbrush to do the lettering. Some of the words are also done in chip letters that I painted black as well. I might add ribbon to the outside to spice it up.

 The typed copy 

 The finished project!

For the second one, I painted the background a bright pink-my accent color in my room. Instead of painting on each letter, I used stencils for a different look. I really like how the white on pink turned out. You can't tell really well in the picture, but the word "sparkle" is covered in white glitter!

Stay tuned for what the rest of the wall grouping will look like! I want to do a letter K and paint some vases to go on the shelves as well.

Hi there, friends!

Welcome to my new blog! I'm so excited to get started with it, and start posting all the things I'm working on and fun things happening in my life. I started blogging about 6 months ago, when I left for a semester abroad in Granada, Spain. I loved blogging so much, I decided I wanted to continue doing it after the semester was over and Keeks & Co. was born!
In the past two weeks, I have returned home from Spain, unpacked, re-packed, moved to Peoria where I go to school, started my internship, come back home for my brother's high school graduation party, and now I've started THIS! It's been a whirlwind, but now it's time for me to fill my free time with great books, movies and fun craft projects to decorate my new house!
Stay tuned to see if all the Pinterest crafts I've been eyeing actually work out! :)