The Midas Touch {Ikea Curtain Pole Hack}

If you've been reading for a while, you may remember my little friend Goldenballs. Goldenballs, the lamp.  He is round, and cute, and painted gold.

Everyone say "Haaaaay, Goldenballs!"

Ever since Goldenballs has come into my life,  I've had a fever.  And the only cure is more gold accessories. Yesterday.....I took a few steps toward recovery.

We are about a month into the process of updating the master bedroom, {You can see what it looked like before we started here, and since we've painted it and added trim here} and now that the painting is done, I'm in the process of sewing our curtains. Unfortunately, we blew our budget for new curtain rails when we splurged on an Ash chest of drawers from our local antique store.  (More on that some other time).

So...who can guess how I updated our boring, black, box-standard Ikea curtain poles? 

Here's what happened...

1) Took them down off the wall, and removed the brackets/finials.  (This was done before we started painting our room)
3) I slid the curtain poles onto some bamboo sticks, which were stuck in the grass (we use these in our greenhouse)

4) I also sort of balanced the finials on top of some screws that I stuck in the grass .

 *Standing the stuff up like this meant I could spray all sides of everything at once, saving me time waiting to turn stuff over!  (And sorry for the overexposed pics...it was sunny out and I didn't realize quite how blown out they were until I uploaded them!)
4) The brackets/screws were placed on a piece of cardboard nearby....nothin' fancy there!
5) Sprayed ALL THE THINGS gold (3-4 light coats).

 

 Goldenballs is so proud. 

This update, only cost me £3 for a can of gold spray paint, and painting the curtain poles/accessories only took a few minutes (plus drying time).  When I brought them in, I stood them next to the white curtains in our dining room so that I could fantasize about see what they would look like next to our bedroom curtains....

Oh yeah. Come to Mama. 

I also laid them next to a candle lid made of dark wood with silver accents to see how all of the finishes would look together. 

It's a little much all  close together there, but I think that it's going to work really well!  Things are starting to come together, and I'm having a lot of fun planning the finishing touches.

Oh! We now also have a fancy, gold blasted tree in our garden....

Oops! I guess I've got the Midas touch! Hope it doesn't die. I'm out of gold spray paint now, though, so at least the rest of the garden is safe.

What have you been painting gold recently?  What other metals/finishes do you like to mix with gold accessories?

Bloomin' Gorgeous--A Garden Tour

This last weekend, we have had some beautiful weather.  It gave me a good chance to get out and take some pictures of some of the latest blooms in our garden.  I feel incredibly blessed to have a home in such a beautiful setting and a husband who looks after our garden so well.

So, without further ado...Welcome to our garden!  Would you like to have a look around? In the front of the house, there is a small, semi-circular walled garden with some gorgeous flowers...

I love the purple and white theme that occurs around May each year, with a few splashes of pink here and there.... In the front garden, there are bluebells, and lots of other pretty flowers that I don't know the names for.  (Maybe my Mother-in-Law, our go-to gardening expert will fill me in, and I can pass the info along to all of you! ;-)

Our greenhouse, where we grow tomatoes, cucumbers, chillies, and melons, is around the back of the house...

 I love the yellow poppies in this little section of the garden...

In the back yard, we have a fairly large rockery, with lots of pretty flowers...

This one is a particular favourite of Jim's (and mine)...

Past the rockery, you go down a few steps to get to a small seating area, where we spend a lot of summer evenings cooking out and/or drinking wine....

So, it's not a comprehensive garden tour, since I only really planned to go out to snap a few pretty pictures in the sunshine....I could have gone out and taken some more today, but the sunshine was fleeting, and today, we are back to normal with a wet, grey day.....

Have you been making the most of the holiday weekend? I hope you have all enjoyed some nice weather!