DIY Yarn-Wrapped Hangers

Christmas is just around the corner. I love (LOVE) giving handmade gifts to my friends and family, but I just haven't had the bandwidth this year to go all-out. So, rather than making everything, I'm cheating the system a bit by adding just a little handmade twist to each of my gifts. Really just enough effort to get handmade credit. :)

I got my sister, Heather, who knows not to read today's post (!), a Golden Tote for her Christmas present this year. It's a service that surprises you with fun clothes and accessories. It's $49 for 2-3 pieces and $149 for 5-7.  I have friends that use Golden Tote because they care about looking cute, but don't really love to shop. They're too busy or just don't really want to deal with it. It's super easy to give as gifts too - I made a style profile for Heather (which was basically just choosing her size and favorite stores - easy) and then picked two of the six or seven items I wanted to see come in her tote. The other items were surprises.

It was fun to see what they sent for her - they totally nailed her style. And of course everything came in an adorable golden tote.  :)

My favorites were this bomber jacket with the brass zippers and a pretty blouse with black lace trim around the neck. I know she'll look so great in these! And when I am not rocking a giant baby belly, I'll for sure be borrowing that cute gray sweater. It has sweet little buttons that run up the back. Love it.

So to make her gift a little more special, I picked up enough wooden hangers at IKEA to hang all her new Golden Tote clothes on and stopped by Michaels to get a few different colors of yarn, whatever colors were pretty and on sale! :)

I am not a glue gun fanatic (I usually prefer Fabritac), but for projects like this, where it's helpful for the glue to dry really quickly, I love a glue gun. You only need a little bit of glue on the hanger anyway, so likely your fingers will escape this project unburned! :) I used just enough glue to hold the start of the yarn at the middle of the hanger, and then a little bit more every 5 or 6 wrap-arounds to keep everything in place.

You can do any pattern you'd like, obviously, (black and white uniform stripes would be so cute!) but I did random colors in random sized stripes.

I love how the hangers turned out! And I think they help make this fun gift more personal and extra special!

A big thanks to Golden Tote for sponsoring this DIY. Every first Monday of the month they launch a new tote - check out December's here! The last day to order in time for Christmas is December 17, so get on that! :)

My Cleaning Closet Overhaul!

While it is fun in some ways to live in a house where we can stretch out a little more and the kids and the dog can run around more freely, I'm learning a bigger house sort of just means there's more to clean! :) I use a cleaning schedule that really helps, but I was feeling like I needed a central command station.

So over the holidays, I joined forces with seven other bloggers also anxious to get their homes organized in 2014. I decided to have a little fun with the closet under the stairs, formerly known as the Harry Potter closet/closet of no return/most embarrassing place for guests to mistake as a coat closet.

Shield your eyes!!

Christmas decor. Amazon boxes. A wadded up air mattress? Random cleaning supplies. Lists. Receipts. Leftover flooring nails. Home Depot bags that may or may not actually have useful things inside. This is my life, people. Help!

The first step was a good clean-out. Then I headed right over to my fabric stash and pulled out what I had left of this pretty Quadrille fabric. I found it at a fabric warehouse a few years ago and had used it for a custom shower curtain (it's an acetate fabric).

The colors are so pretty! Orange and turquoise and olive with just a bit of plum.

I wanted a bright blue paint color for the walls and went with Sky Watch from The Home Decorators Collection line at Home Depot.

I also picked up just a few (!!!) extra things for the project while I was there.

I painted the walls in a flat enamel.

Then I added flat trim to the shelf fronts, to make them look thicker. I also added baseboards to the closet. It's amazing how much more finished the room looked after adding baseboards!

Then I painted the shelves the same color as the walls, but in a high gloss.

I left the back wall white though. No need to waste paint there.

Using the same technique I used to upholster a wall in our old loft here, I roughly cut the Quadrille fabric to size and then I stapled and stretched it, and stapled it again on the back wall.

After all the staples were in, I trimmed off the excess fabric.

I tried to be mindful of the pattern the whole time, so that everything would line up in the right way.

Then I covered the staples using cotton twill tape from Joanns and some copper upholstery nails.

To dress up the fronts of the now-thicker shelves, and to help keep things organized, I picked up a package of these metal label holders in the scrapbooking section of my local craft store. I spray painted them gold to get a brass look.

I used black carpet tacks to hang the label-holders on the shelves.

It's really easy to keep everything where it should be with the labels on the shelves.

There used to be some plastic hooks on the wall to the left here, but I took those down in favor of this mop-and-broom-clamp-holder-thing (that's the official name).

I keep our broom and dustpan here and my new Swiffer SteamBoost mop, which I love for our bathroom and kitchen floors especially. I seriously use it every day. We put in winter grass this year, and it's been nothing but mud all over my floors for months. I love Linus like a son, but man, that dog tracks mud in all day long. It's a good thing he's so cute and sweet. :)

I also bought one of these screw-in plastic-dipped hooks from Home Depot and I installed it right into my shelving to help keep my vacuum's hose up off the floor. Works like a charm!

It is so fun to have a pretty little space to keep all my cleaning and paper products now.

Now when people accidentally open this door to hang up their coats, I'm like, oh that? That's just my cleaning closet. NBD. #boombaby #organized4lyf

For more organizing and spring cleaning tips head on over to FinditatHomeDepot.com, where seven fab bloggers are sharing their great cleaning and organizing projects.

This post was brought to you by The Home Depot and P&G. Start Clean in '14!

My First Domino Article!

I'm packing up to head back home from NYC, but first wanted to share with you a link to my article for Domino!

I added three Pax units to our bedroom to better store our shoes and folded clothes. My favorite part is the little vanity area in the center unit.

I have a few DIY project posts coming up from the behind the scenes. Can't wait to share this week!