So it hit me this morning that Easter is only three weeks away and I have nothing Spring or Easter-ish up around the house.

In some ways, this is nothing new. I gave up trying to lighten up years ago after I realized that all of my pastel decor violently clashed with my new overly red upstairs.

But this morning I decided that I don’t care.

The snow every-other-day thing is getting me down and I need some color in my house. Plus, I figure there’s got to be ways to make “light” play nice with all the dark colors in my house.

So in true THRIVE style, I riffled around the house to see what I could find for inspiration and came up with Easter candy. Lots and lots of Easter candy.

Ahem.

So I broke open those adorable PEEP bunny packages and sorted the jelly beans and wound up with Easter specimen art cute enough to eat.

And the best part was that this project came together in under ten minutes.

Want to make your own?

I really wanted to make these with shadow boxes like all the other cute specimen art floating around blogland.  But I didn’t have any, so I cheated and Rocked What I Got.

I grabbed three frames from my living room …

… popped out the glass and cut white poster board to fit the frames.

To make the PEEPS display, I cut each bunny in half using an old pair of scissors.

Using a knife, even with non-stick cooking spray is a nightmare. Please don’t ask me how I know this.

Arrange the bunnies how you’d like and then gently, but firmly press to the poster board. The marshmallow is plenty sticky to hold those bad boys in place without any extra glue.

Measuring is also a good thing. I eyeballed it and was a little off. Oh well.

Just to be safe, I let my PEEP art sit for an hour to make sure it was good and attached before popping it back in the frame and hanging.

And as for the little blue bunny on the bottom row, I couldn’t resist. 🙂

And as for all of those unused bunny halves …

… my kids created their own lovely hybrid PEEPS to munch on for lunch snack. Thoughtful ones my kids are.

The jelly bean art came together just as easily.

I tried cutting them in half to see if they’d stick to the poster board on their own as well, but it’s a pain to carefully cut through each one without fracturing the outer shell. No biggie. They’re small enough anyway that it worked out fine to use them whole.

A generous dollop of Gorilla glue …

… done and done.

Just to be safe, I let these sit for an hour as well since I didn’t know how well the glue would adhere to the candy coating.

Worked like a charm.

Houston, we have Easter Art.

Ah, much better.

The house is already feeling more Spring-ish which is good since we’ve got more snow on the way. Lovely.

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Happy Monday everyone!  Hope you had a great weekend.

I wanted to show you another project in our No-Money Remodel.  Our upstairs has a total mismatched collection of fixtures and ceiling fans. None of them are original and it sort of looks like an odd collection of Home Depot clearance sales and garage sale finds.

My least favorite were two, very brassy fixtures in the kitchen: the main, three bulb light and the ceiling fan.  I have searched through literally thousands of pictures going back to 2004 and these blurry shots from 2007 are the only ones I could find.

I’ve apparently tried really hard to keep the glaring brass out of every . single . picture or have cropped heavily.  Or maybe both.

My decorator neighbor suggested painting both fixtures with a little bit of liquid magic:

Specifically Sophisticated Finishes paint by Triangle Crafts in Blackened Bronze. It’s a little larger than a bottle of craft paint and is usually found by the faux finish paints at craft stores.

I’ve used this stuff in the past to paint a little planter and cover an old utensil crock in my kitchen, but was nervous about using it for fixtures. However, since Decorator Girl has a straight-out-of-the-catalog house and I paint diaper boxes, I deferred to her judgment.

Because I’m lazy Because I didn’t think it was necessary, the only prep work I did was to clean both fixtures with soap and water. No primer, no sanding, nothing. And since I didn’t have the electrical know-how to mess with removing either fixture, I just climbed up on a chair and got to work.

I started with the ceiling fan …

… covering the main fan housing with a thin coat of paint using a cheap-o foam brush. (I ended up doing three thin coats).

To paint the top of the fan without getting paint all over the ceiling, I stuck a meellion little pieces of frog tape around the base.

A pain in the neck, yes, but easier than having to remove the fan from the ceiling all together.

To paint the individual arms, I removed the bolts holding the arms to the housing …

… and then removed the small bolts holding the blades to the arms. Everything went into a ziplock bag to keep the kids from walking off with the parts.

The arms got a good wash down and then a first coat of paint. Just a heads up: it’s going to look terrible at first. I mean really, really terrible.

My first coat on both the fan housing and the arms looked awful and sent me into full oh-crap-I’d-better-figure-out-some-way-to-fix-this-before-Mr.Thrive-gets-home mode.  Thankfully, each coat looked better and five thin coats later, the arms looked awesome. And a little bit like lobsters.

Before reassembling the fan blades and arms, I dipped the heads of the screws in paint and let them dry for an hour …

… then carefully screwed them into position, touching up any scuffs with a quick dab of my brush.

On the opposite side of the blades, the tips of the screws got a quick dab of paint to get rid of that last little bit of brass …

… and all of the blades were reattached to the main housing after everything was dry.

Ahhhhh. So pretty.

The other fixture came together the same way: wash with soap and water, dry thoroughly and paint with a bunch of thin coats.

Painting the top of the fixture where it meets the ceiling was handled the same way as the fan.

So. much . better.

 (And I swear to you that this fixture really is clean. I’ve taken these pictures three times and dusted and cleaned obsessively and it still looks like there’s a bunch of dust from this angle. Bleh.)

Using the paint I had on hand made this a great no-cost project for me, but it’s pretty cheap even if you were to buy paint.  I think this bottle was $10 at Michael’s before the coupon discount. I’ve painted two fixtures, a utensil jar and a small planter so far and still have a third of a bottle left.

But hey, Rock What Ya Got.

Fixture re-dos like this would also work great with spray paint or another brand of specialty paint in your choice of colors.

So have fun checking around the house, checking your local recycling center or checking the online classifieds for free/cheap paint.

(And if you’ve painted your fixtures, I’d love to see them!)

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As promised, here’s the first of two no-cost kitchen projects I’ve completed so far.

I showed you my picture frame cabinet re-do yesterday and love how they turned out. When the pictures are up in the frames, I like to have the area above the cabinets plain so that all the focus is on the pictures.

But there are times when I like to leave the cabinets plain, too.

And when the cabinets are plain, the above space looks pretty bare.  So I’ve been looking for something around the house that I could repurpose and use above the cabinets when frames weren’t in use—something that could easily be removed whenever I wanted to go pack to the pictures.

So I looked and looked and finally found what I was looking for in my own kitchen: plates.

Plain ‘ol white plates actually. 

In the odd-shaped, open cabinet was my glassware and the $7 set of “good plates” from a Target after-Christmas clearance sale from 10 years ago.

I never used them since the kids always seemed to break one whenever I brought them down … and there wasn’t enough to use when company came over because of the whole kids-breaking-them thing … and they were just sitting there collecting dust anyway …

so I put them to work.

The plates got a good wash and then a vinyl design cut on my Silhouette (although you can cut these by hand with an exacto knife, too).

The best part is that I can swap out the designs any time I need to.  For now I used a bunch of different designs that I happened to like plus a monogram for me and Mr. Thrive.

But I could peel them off and put up new designs for holidays, too.

I don’t have any plate stands (working on that), so I just set them up on the cabinet top and leaned them against the wall.  Baring a major earthquake, it works just fine.

Ahhhhh.

I love the extra punch of color and design above the plain cabinets.

And when I’m in the mood to put the pictures back up for birthdays in April, the plates can come down in two seconds and hang out on a shelf until they’re needed again.

Have fun shopping around the house!

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