For the latest issue of VintageKC magazine, a vintage home décor, fashion, and DIY magazine, a handful of other bloggers and I were challenged to create wind chimes out of vintage, reused or thrifted materials. Immediately, I thought of skeleton keys. What’s more wind chime-y than keys clinking together? Luckily, I had quite a few on hand. After I expressed my love for old skeleton keys to my tool-savvy grandpa a while back, he gives them to me any time he comes across any—and I’ve amassed quite the collection. (You can find them at flea markets, garage sales and thrift stores, too.) The next question was how to structure the wind chime. What was going to hold my skeleton keys in place? I wanted something that would hold up outdoors and that would go with the rustic look of the keys. Randomly, I’d purchased an old mattress spring at a flea market for $1 a while back. Don’t ask me why. I thought it would come in handy sometime. And it did! I decided to use the mattress spring as the base for hanging my skeleton keys. I strung the keys to the spring using 24-gauge craft wire. An old keyhole...
A Look at My New Home
For a while now I’ve been talking about how I recently moved into a new rental home. You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t posted hardly any pictures of the house yet. I’m a perfectionist and my new home is so far from perfect I just can’t show it off yet. My to do list is filled with DIY projects and decorating ideas. So for now, I’ll just show you the outside. Best part of this house? The apple tree growing in the front yard. We’ ve been eating yummy apples for months. Keep up with Red Leaf Style! Follow Red Leaf Style author Kirsten Hudson on Twitter @kirsten_hudson, Google+ and Pinterest. This is the twenty ninth post in a 31 days blog series called 31 Days of Reimagining. Start from the beginning....
Rainy Days
I have a thing for dreary days. Give me gray skies, a steady storm, that cold scent of rain, and I’m happy. The unseasonably wet late summer we’ve had here in Kansas City has been my perfect weather. A happy do over for the always too short spring rains. There has been a lot of drinking coffee on the porch and lazy afternoons going on around here. This is what the view from my porch has looked like lately… No, that gorgeous brick number isn’t my house. But I get to look at it every day, so that’s something, right? Of course today, the day I’m writing, it’s all blinding sunshine and high temps outside. But the day I took these pictures, the rain poured for hours, and then… …that magical soft light that only comes out after a hard rain appeared. That fellow is my sweet boyfriend who recently injured his knee. Hence all of the porch sitting and lazy afternoons we’ve had lately. I thought that I should finally show some pictures of my neighborhood because there might be some changes coming for me soon, hint, hint. The skinny houses, Virgin Mary statues and red, white and...