Diary of a Crafty Lady: My Mom's House (she's another very crafty lady)

There's no question that I get my craftiness from my parents. My mom is an all around crafter, builder like me - and my dad is pretty much superman when it comes to figuring things out and building on his own. He recently did an entire 3 floor addition to their house all by himself!

When I went to visit recently, it had been a while since I'd been to their house, and I took a few pictures of some crafty things that I wanted to share.

This canvas wall is right at the top of the stairs, and an amazing focal point. It is a work in progress, as mom continues to add new canvases - and we love to look at it. There are pictures of my sisters and I as children, of our own children, and of my parents as they were young, and newly married. The colors are vibrant, the memories abound, and it really looks great on this long wall.

She uses the same company to make all her canvases, and has gotten many of them on sale. I know there are tutorials in blogland for making your own canvases, or faux canvases, which would be another way to achieve the same look for a little less.

One room in the new addition part of the house is a great big game and media room. Our family LOVES movies, and LOVES playing games together - so this space gets a lot of use!

Below, you can see one section of the wall that my mom designed with Disney paraphernalia.

The cells are from Disneyland and Disneyworld, and she had the mats custom made with spaces for matching pin sets. We were really into pin trading last time we went, and got some great pin sets that mom wanted to show off. It makes a great theme for this corner of the media room.

Here is a close up of the clock she made, which has Mickey pin sets in place of all the numbers. I love it!

Another section of the media room highlights our love of quoting movies. My sister and I devised the plan for this craft (which she executed ;) ). She took these giant canvases, painted them black, and wrote dozens and dozens of our favorite movie quotes on them.

We started my making a list of quotes - which was serious business. ;) We thought about this for days and days, and she even read off the titles of the hundreds of movies my parents own so that we could try to remember all the best quotes. She researched them on the internet too, so that we could get them exactly right (turns out we quote a bunch of movies wrong :) ha).

We figured out how far apart each line should be, based on the number of words...We made a mock up in a word document so that the spacing was just right all the way through...My sister drew pencil lines all the way across to keep her writing straight, and then wrote all the quotes by hand! And let me tell you, the meticulous planning paid off. They look awesome!

Here they are on the wall next to the game table. This is the same area we later hung the Chalk Sayings on Platters that I did a tutorial for the other day.

Another couple of cute things. In the kitchen, my mom has a magnetic board, and I fell in love with this Colman's Mustard tin. She glued magnets on the inside so that she could stick it to the board and hold pens in it. Isn't it adorable?!

At one of my many trips to Brimfield for the Antique show, I saw something that looked a lot like this cool piece below. We have collected old keys from our favorite antique shop, and my genius mom took an old pizza peel and made it into an awesome wood plaque for the keys! She cut off the handle, stained the wood, and added vinyl letters to make it look like an old hotel key holder. It is so adorable in the house (which consequently, feels and awful lot like an inn sometimes...) :)

Isn't my mom amazing?? There are a couple other projects we worked on that I will tell you more about later. We were busy ladies! I had a great time visiting home with my family over the summer - and it is always fun to share our creativity and help each other with projects.

Such a wonderful way to be inspired!