When we first looked at our new apartment, it was hard to get past one thing: the awful, ugly mint green walls in the dining room. Because the space is so open, you can see it from wherever you sit in the living room, and I knew that it was something I wasn’t going to be able to get past. Not that I really wanted to paint… but luckily, my mom convinced me that painting was not as much of a hassle as I was making it out to be. We took the easy way out, and asked the landlord if we could paint the walls white. (As much as I love color, I also ADORE crisp white walls. And furniture. And actually? If I could have a totally white canvas then all of my too-brightly colored items would look even better!) So the weekend before we moved, my parents came up and the four of us painted the dining room walls white. And it made SUCH a huge difference; I only wish I had taken a before picture so you could see how awful it was before.

And as much as I adore the white walls, the longer we lived here, the more it seemed too empty. Too white. The fact that the table and chairs are white too didn’t really help. I have some ideas for how to decorate other spaces, and while I don’t want to NOT decorate, I also don’t want to go too crazy because I don’t know how long we’re going to be here and I’d like to avoid making extra holes/doing anything that might get us in trouble down the line.

And then it hit me. Tissue paper pompoms! I put them on my 30 Before 30 list last summer because I have absolutely adored them since I started seeing them everywhere on the internet way more than a year ago, but I never got around to it. (At just over a month into 30? This is TOTALLY counting.) Party decorations? How about all the TIME decorations? I wasn’t really sure I could convince Dan to let me make some to hang in the dining room, but I made a hard sell, because they are temporary, easy to make and hang, and most importantly, a simple way to add some color to such a big blank canvas.

(the tissue paper is from Target. I’m sure you’re shocked.)

(the first one definitely wasn’t the best, but I don’t think anyone other than me would be able to tell.)

Dan surprised me by agreeing to the idea, as long as I didn’t make pink ones. I’ve had the supplies for a while, and once I heard that the hurricane was coming, I knew the universe had aligned to make it happen. After we ate our power outage pb&js, I sat on the floor next to a window and used one of our trusty Lack end tables as work space. It was the perfect power outage craft, and I cranked out six of them before I realized it was probably time to stop. (I even made a pink one). I used Holly’s tutorial, which was super easy to follow.

(working with the wire is a pain, but it does the job so easily.)

(power outage snack: baby goldfish crackers!)

I even hung them up in the semi-darkness during the hurricane power outage, because once they were done I was WAY TOO excited to wait. (Dan actually never commented on the pink one.) I hung them using fishing line and the tiny Command hooks I buy every year to hang Christmas lights, and you can’t even see the fishing wire or little hooks from a distance.

(one day I won’t be too lazy to tidy up before taking pictures like this)

Overall, I don’t think I could be happier with this project. It’s fun, bright, and cheery, and if I get sick of them? No big deal. (But I really don’t think I’ll get sick of them.)

I’m behind in posting my Handmade52 projects, but I have still been working on things. Or, I worked on some things ahead of time to keep the project afloat through the move.

Way back in May, Dan and I saw Bridesmaids and I became obsessed with solid colored stud earrings in various shapes. I wrote about it in a guest post on Cynthia’s blog, too, and intended to turn some buttons I’d bought into some super sweet earrings.

Except as it turned out, I couldn’t find any craft tools or tool-tools in my arsenal that would remove the shanks from the buttons that I bought so cheaply.

Luckily, I have a dad who has some pretty awesome problem-solving skills. Namely, when there’s some sort of handiwork type problem I can’t solve, I can be pretty confident that Dad will be able to figure it out. So I brought my buttons over to him and let him do his magic. (I’m still not sure what magic that was, but the button backs were removed so I could go on with my craft.)

I wasn’t sure what type of adhesive to use; I’d had bad luck trying to repair the red earrings with hot glue (the red ones used to be real earrings and I loved them so much that I saved them for over a year, hoping to be able to make them back into earrings someday). In the end, I just used krazy glue, and it worked like a charm.

It turned out that the yellow and pink buttons weren’t flat enough in the back to be able to glue them to earring posts, so if you ever decide to do this yourself, do yourself a favor and doublecheck that the buttons are flat on the back.

So! I am super jazzed about my earrings. But since I can’t really be asking my dad to saw the backs off of buttons all the time, I think I’ll leave this craft to the etsy masters in the future… unless I find another set of buttons that I can’t resist.

This past weekend was a sort of an unplanned childhood summer revival. First, I bought flying saucers on a whim at the ice cream store, and Dan and I housed them. I really can’t remember the last time I ate one. And I had that same feeling I used to when I was a kid: “I ate mine without dripping or making any mess! Am a champion!” Dan just looked at me blankly.

The second half of my childhood summer revival is this week’s handmade52 project, one that I really didn’t plan. I’ve been seeing tutorials and photos making their rounds through pinterest and the blogosphere for old school friendship bracelets (I think I saw it first on Elise’s blog). And at first, I thought they were fun, I remember making those, but I’m not sure I need to make them now.

And there I was, sitting on the couch this past Sunday, watching Dexter and then baseball with Dan, and I was struck with the urge. Thanks to my cross stitching over the years, I have a pretty solid rainbow of embroidery floss on hand, which meant that five minutes after I decided to go for it, I had colors picked, and was safety pinning the knot to my throw pillow.

I ended up making three that day, and have made one more this week, and started a fifth. And I’m obsessed. When I’m at work, I want to be home tying my 4-shaped knots. I’m trying to think of which ones I should make next. It’s so childhood, but the bright colors in endless combinations, the varied patterns between the chevron (instructions here) and the standard stripes… I can’t get enough.

Maybe it’s because of the pure time capsule feeling. It sends me back to sitting in the backyard picking colors with my sister. To that giant plastic box we had to keep all of our colors organized in rainbow order. To knots taped to picnic tables at girl scout camp, the town’s summer recreation day camp. To the ones with the lighthouse pattern, where you make the knots over all the threads, instead of just one at a time. To the woven one that was so complicated but I was so proud of. To ones we made longer to turn into ankle bracelets. To that Klutz book that I came thisclose to requesting via inter-library loan at work this week. It’s just summer, pure and simple. And as I’m staring down one of the busiest Julys I’ll have maybe ever, at the stress of packing and moving and turning 30 after talking about it all year and who knows what else, pure and simple and brightly colored is EXACTLY what the doctor ordered.