Hot Mulled Cider

My mother used to make this every year around the first of October. I continue to make it every year. It's such a nice way to welcome Autumn and it makes your house smell so yummy from the spices!
You will need:
1 gallon of apple juice
1-2 oranges
Cinnamon sticks
whole cloves
First pour your apple juice into your sauce pan (I only have small ones so I could only put about half of it in at once)
Next, slice 1 orange in half (2 if you are pouring the entire gallon into on big pot)
poke holes into the orange peel.
insert into one of the holes a Cinnamon stick
then insert in the rest of hole 8-12 cloves.
put oranges into pot and heat up.
I try to let mine sit for at least a 1/2 hour for the flavor before we start serving drinks.
I usually end up leaving the oranges in there for a couple hours so that the flavor gets really strong.
You kind of have to adjust the time and the amount of cloves to taste, this is just what I like.

Car Seat Canopy Tutorial

First off let me just say I feel bad about ignoring my blog for awhile. Life has been busy, but I'm going to try to recommit to more consistent posts here on Color Coated!


Since my little one is due at the end of December I wanted to make a car seat canopy to help shield her from the cold. I found this tutorial and bought my fabric and will be making it over the next month or so when I have time. I'll post pictures when I'm finished!

For the tutorial click on the link below:
http://www.make-it-do.com/sew-it/baby-car-seat-cover-tutorial/

Make It Do is a cute blog that has some great tutorials so you should take a little look around while you're there!

Paper Lantern Obssession

So I have always thought decorating with paper lanterns looked so cool! They add such a neat dynamic to a room or party.

When I was young my mother taught me how to make this type of lantern and I made hundreds of them. I just thought they were so stinkin' neat!

Now I am day dreaming of designing my baby's nursery. Although we are crammed in tight living conditions right now, I still day dream about how I would decorate the nursery and I keep imagining these paper lanterns hung in the nursery. I just think it would look so awesome!

I found a tutorial online to make these paper lanterns. The demonstration shows Christmas paper and I think they would make adorable Christmas decorations too!

I figure I will try my hand at making some of these and see how I like them!

If you want to try to make your own, check out this blog link: http://thecreativeplace.blogspot.com/2009/10/tuesday-tutorial-paper-lantern.html

Images pulled from Google.com

Missing Ralph Lauren Paint

This is a sob post about Ralph Lauren Paint.

The Home Depot use to stock it, but discontinued carrying sometime last year because they were making space for their new Martha Stewart Paint (which really isn't that impressive of a line I might add)

So the first place my hubby and I owned after getting married was a little town house (that I love and miss so much even to this day) and we were allowed to paint the walls when we lived there.

I loved that I could paint the walls, I felt like since it was my first place I could try something new and different.

Ralph Lauren has a line of faux paint that I fell in LOVE WITH. It was called Suede and it looked just like the name. It was awesome.

Now this faux line could not be painted in bathroom or kitchens, but I did paint it on my dining room side wall. It looked wonderful. The color was Clay Red

The accent wall was pretty easy to do, and once complete looked really good.
For the first coat you just roll on the paint with a roller.

I started to panic when I finished the first coat, because it looked terrible, but I told myself that I had to finish it!

For the second and final coat you apply it with a 3" brush and do varied crosshatches. This was a lot of fun, and took next to nothing to complete this one wall.

Here is the finished wall! I still drool a little when I see this picture, and this wall isn't even complete with out my wrought iron clock from Hobby Lobby.

So if anyone ever discovers where to find Ralph Lauren paint. Please let me know. Die hard fan here.

DIY Baby Bird Mobile

I have been following the number of hits each blog post recieves and I noticed that my nursery ideas post gets way more views then any other post.

So I thought it would be fun to occasionally post a baby craft project. Since I have no need to make baby crafts right now, I am simply going to share my fun findings!

I thought the birdie mobile was very cute idea! The URL below gives directions and even has a link on the sidebar so you can download the pdf pattern for the birds.

http://www.spoolsewing.com/blog/2008/05/16/bird-mobile/

Happy Crafting!

In honor of Easter...

Easter Ideas!


There is a fine line between cheesy and cute when it comes to Easter decor.
I think Martha had some great Easter ideas on her website. Here are just a few that I really liked...

Marbleized eggs. These look awesome!

For Directions to make your own Marbleized eggs, click HERE



How do you like these simple daffodils? I think that would be fun to have as name cards if you are having a big family Easter dinner! This is fun paper to cut out flower petals and a paper cupcake cups for the center of the flower and of course jellybeans!

I thought these spring chicks looked cute and delicious! For directions click HERE






If you have little ones at home and you don't want to dye eggs, but you still would like to do something fun for Easter, why not find some cute glitter stickers and use those instead?


These are just a few ideas I pulled from http://www.marthastewart.com/

Out with the Old and in with the... Old?

Repurpose and ReuseThere is a new and growing trend of re-purposing, part of the on going trend of "going green" I honor of this growing style I have a few pictures to share with y'all. I would have NEVER thought to use my old doll house as extra storage in my laundry room

This is very similar to picture I posted previously, but I completely love the idea.

Ok, is this not cool? Garden Gutters! Reusing your old gutters and creating a little herb garden. How fun is that, and yummy too!

This idea I have seen done before in my Aunt's home. She actually used an old door as a head board, they wanted to be a little bit more discreet about it so they took the hardware off.

I recognize that this style is not for everyone, but you have to admit it is inspiring! I always admire the creativity of those that are able to reuse old items.

Images retrieved from Google