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Posts Tagged ‘DIY’

Herb Garden Success (So Far)

Gardening Week on Ramshackle Glam continues, this time with my very first herb garden.

Well, second, actually. But I don’t think we should count the thing that I stuck in the ground outside my house in Los Angeles, completely forgot about, and killed within about 72 hours.

As of this morning it’s been nearly 146 hours since I planted the pots pictured here, and so far, so good.

In this pot, we have (clockwise from left) rosemary, mint and lavender. In addition to using these herbs in dishes, I’m pretty excited to have all three close at hand to call into action as garnishes for summer cocktails. Yum.

And in this pot I put four basil plants, because the woman I bought them from said they’d grow pretty fast and would do best in their own container. (If the plants look slightly picked-over in this shot it’s because I just plucked a few pieces to make a Caprese salad for lunch, and felt enormously fancy garnishing my plate with herbs from my very own herb garden.)

A little tip for DIY gardeners (not from me, obviously – from the garden store lady): Make sure to pinch off those little purple flowers that pop up on basil leaves in order to keep your plant growing.

Garden pots via T.J. Maxx.



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May 10th, 2013 | Home | 7 Comments »

Getting My Garden On

All weekend I wandered around in this sort of happiness-haze, wearing garden gloves and scooping dirt and saying things to Kendrick like “Who KNEW? I mean really…who knew?!” And he was sort of confused by my need to announce (over and over) how amazed I was by the fact that I was enjoying something that was way, way outside the realm of anything I would have ever thought I’d enjoy…but seriously.

WHO KNEW?

I never in a million years understood why people liked gardening. I was like, “OK…so you spend all weekend hunched over on your hands and knees digging in the dirt, probably encountering things like insects, and at the end you get…something that you could probably just go pick up over at CVS? Cool, guys.”

But it’s so satisfying. And the results are so gorgeous. And there’s something really incredible about standing back, looking at your yard which was once one thing and is now another thing entirely, and thinking I did that.

Anyway, this sauce ladle is what I chose to use as my spade, if that gives you any sense of the starting point we were working from in terms of gardening know-how. (I picked up an actual spade on Sunday afternoon, so we’re good now.)

The first steps, of course, were the boring (or at least not immediately-gratifying) ones: sprinkling grass seeds on the bare spots, pulling out dead bushes, mulching the flowerbed, planting lavender seeds along the border, et cetera.

But next came the fun stuff: I picked up a zillion gorgeous pots in the garden section of T.J. Maxx (every pot pictured here except for those big terracotta ones is from the store), bought soil, and got to planting.

I planted large lilac bushes surrounded by two varieties of salvia…

Put in a rosebush that immediately wounded me and made me think twice about owning a rosebush…

Moved our fire pit (the one I ordered off of eBay and then forgot about until a fire pit arrived on my doorstep) and rocker to the center of the garden, and then accented it with a ceramic frog and yet more salvia (my next plan is to get those weeds out – obviously – and then do a pretty two-tone thing with the gravel)…

And then celebrated. Because that was AWESOME.

P.S. Every plant you see here is also accessorized with a deer-repellent station. We’ll see how that goes (fingers crossed).

On me: T-shirt and shorts via T.J. Maxx; necklace c/o Melinda Maria.



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May 7th, 2013 | Home | 13 Comments »

Entertaining Inspiration: Colorful Jar As Unique Water (Or Wine) Carafe

I have a water pitcher. It’s ten thousand years old and made of raffia, which isn’t a great combo.

I’ve been meaning to pick up a new one in preparation for summer (I like to use pitchers to serve my BBQ guests homemade sangria), but how much prettier – and more fun – is this idea?

The key is to look for a jar – whether vintage or brand-new – with interesting details that make it anything but ordinary; I love the contrast between the rustic wood-and-twine stopper on this jar and my delicate gold-rimmed water glasses.

Tip: If you find a jar in a pretty color, you can also transform it into a centerpiece by placing it on a contrasting tray.

Vintage water glasses; plate and jar via T.J. Maxx.



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May 1st, 2013 | Home | 5 Comments »

DIY Terrarium Centerpiece

Things that I like: 

- Plants

- The color green

- Centerpieces

- Small creatures, preferably ones that require a minimum of care (we’ve got our hands full over here)

Things that I do not like:

- Keeping plants alive, because I kill them. Always.

I know, I know: on the scale of Difficult Things To Kill, terrariums are fairly high up. I don’t care; I promise you, if I own a for-real terrarium, I will kill it.

And that will make me feel terrariable. (Had to.)

The other day, at the mall, I spotted a gorgeous bell jar filled with various mini potted fake plants. But it cost somewhere in the land of $100, all-in, and I thought: no no no. I can do that way cheaper.

And so I did.

Here’s what you’ll need:

1. A clear vase of some sort, preferably one with a wide, flat bottom. I found this one at T.J. Maxx on my last trip; they’ve got lots of beautiful glassware like this in the home section. I prefer clear vases for this type of project, but you can also use a lightly tinted version if you want to add extra color to your table.

2. Pebbles or beads (try gathering small stones from your yard).

3. Faux moss (a variety of colors looks nice).

4. A couple of small faux plants.

5. Something weird (we’ll get to this part later).

Now, here’s what you do:

1. First, fill the base of your jar with your pebbles (about 2″).

2. Add your plants, and then fill in the surrounding area with moss, making sure to tuck the moss into any gaps to create a lush look. I used a couple of different colors and something that looked vaguely like dried mushrooms, and it all seemed to come together pretty nicely. (It’s tough to screw this one up.)

3. Add your weird thing (I went for a tiny rubber dinosaur that I dug out of my crafting box). This is an important step, so don’t skip it.

See? Important.

Ta da! Pretty and unkillable. That’s my kind of home decor.

Pictured: Vase from TJ Maxx; craft-store faux plants; my own rubber dinosaur button.



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April 22nd, 2013 | Home | 1 Comment »

How-To: Keep Your Louboutins Looking Lovely

This post is a highly problematic one for me.

Because while I, like every other woman on the planet, would really (really) like to own a pair of Louboutins…it’s just not really the kind of thing I’d ever buy.

Honestly, I’m not really an “expensive shoe” kind of girl; fancy handbags are more my thing (as you might have noticed). Why am I not really into expensive shoes? Because…I mean…you walk on them. And for me, until recently that meant walking in New York City. On things like subway platforms and cobblestone streets and grates and lots and lots of other surfaces that would strip away that lovely, pristine red sole in approximately thirty seconds.

And that leads me to another reason why I don’t tend to buy very expensive shoes: I’m not very precious about my things – I think clothing and bags and shoes are there to be worn and enjoyed, not put on a shelf and petted – and just the idea of them stresses me out. This, as an example, is the reason I’d much rather spend money on a rugged brown leather bag that would wear beautifully over time than, say, a pale-green clutch that would be ruined by a single raindrop or pen mark. I just think that buying something – especially something very expensive – that sends you into a panic every time you put it on doesn’t make a ton of sense.

Back to why this post is problematic: because at a wardrobe fitting yesterday (for an upcoming project that I’m extremely excited to share with you; more on that in a bit) I met Amy Creyer of Chicago Street Style, and when I complimented her on her Louboutin pumps she promptly whipped them off and showed me the (pretty close to perfect) sole.

And told me that they were six years old. And that she wears them constantly.

How does she do it? Easy: she just replaced part of the sole – the part that gets the most wear and tear – with a perfectly matched piece of red rubber.

How-To: Keep Your Louboutins Looking Lovely

How-To: Keep Your Louboutins Looking Lovely by ramshackleglam featuring christian louboutin shoes

If you live in NYC, Arty’s Shoe Service is apparently the place to go to have this done (just make sure they don’t cut too much of the original sole off; you want the rubber to end right where the flat part starts to curve upwards). Otherwise, consider buying sole guards specifically manufactured for Louboutins online (I can’t personally speak to how good they are, but at $25 it’s worth a shot).

Now that we’ve decided that I’m totally allowed to buy a pair (…right?), want to see what my pick would be? Everyone says that if you’re going to invest in a single pair of Louboutins you should get the classic black pumps…

But in my world, “classic” means “leopard.”



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March 12th, 2013 | Style | 5 Comments »

Money-Saving Wedding Ideas

Because Kendrick and I went heavy on the DIY for our own wedding (pictured above are the wedding place cards I hand-wrote, which was a bit of a time-suck but also saved us a couple hundred bucks), I’ve put up lots (and lots) of posts on money-saving wedding ideas over the years.

And because they’re distributed throughout the website with very little rhyme or reason (whoops), I thought it might be nice to put my favorites (many of which we used ourselves) all in one place for your handy-dandy reference.

Presto!



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February 27th, 2013 | Lifestyle | 3 Comments »

DIY Sugar Lip Exfoliator

My lips are a mess lately. Red, chapped, painful, flaky, all that.

I carry lip balm with me everywhere I go and apply it like a nut, but still: they’re a mess. It’s the whole dry-heat-inside/winter-air-outside thing; it just does a number on me.

The past few days have been especially bad, so last night I went on a hunt for some very fancy and expensive lip exfoliator that I remembered picking up at an event months and months ago. Alas, it appears that the very fancy and expensive lip exfoliator was sacrificed to The Moving Gods.

But you know what I did find while searching for a fix for my flakiness?

Brown sugar.

Honey.

And a huge jar of delicious-smelling coconut oil that’s been sitting in my refrigerator forever and ever, and that I’ve had no idea what to do with until now.

Seriously, that’s all you need…and if you don’t have coconut oil, you can easily swap in olive oil (the finished product won’t smell as beachy, that’s all).

Start with oil (coconut oil hardens in the refrigerator, so just return it to liquid form by heating gently in a pan of warm water)…

Add equal parts sugar (white sugar is fine, too)…

And honey…

And mix well.

Apply to lips with a damp toothbrush and scrub gently for thirty seconds or so, then rinse off.

Much better.

(This makes a lovely DIY gift, by the way; just fill a sterilized baby food jar with scrub and tie a bit of twine around the top to make it pretty.)

Pictured: Catbird First Knuckle Ring, Sophia Forero ruby ring, Deborah Lippmann x Narciso Rodriguez Stormy Weather nail polish.



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February 8th, 2013 | Beauty | 2 Comments »

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