Pepper Design Blog

DIY Curtain Rods – A Quick Fix for $2

The living room is coming along great and I was so excited to find tan, neutral curtains from West Elm on clearance. The wool fabric adds a bit of texture to the walls, allows enough light to filter though and blends in well with our choice of paint – this will help with any future decor changes since beige works with almost every color and fits right into our living room inspiration board.

The only thing that kept me from happily covered windows were a few basic curtain rods and a bit of drilling. I found faux rod iron curtain rods from Target and thought they might just do the trick while also keeping costs low. But a bend in the center of each collapsible rod (and the little plastic gizmo that keeps the two poles connected) has been driving me crazy… I promise that it’s much more annoying than what this picture shows! So I sought out a quick curtain rod fix via Lowes.

I needed a solution that was longer than 36″, would fit well with my current end caps and had a smaller diameter than the brackets that were already drilled into the walls. After a bit of perusing, 1/2″ wooden dowels seemed like the perfect fit.

The next step was to cover each dowel with two layers of basic black spray paint. This left me with two dull looking dowels that didn’t match the sheen of my curtain rod end caps. So over the black paint went a thick layer of clear high gloss spray paint left over from another project that made those poles shine.

I wasn’t so sure of my plan after coat number one… but as soon as the glossy paint was applied, the end caps popped on and the panels re-hung, we were pretty happy with the finished result.

And no more bend! (Does the right side of the curtain look a wee bit higher to anyone else?) An easy fix for $1.75 per window.

I’m currently working on diy curtains for the bedroom as well – a little pvc piping, a few drawer pulls for end caps, a bit of paint… we’ll see if the finished project stands up to the industry standard!

Side note if you try this out yourself: After having purchased the dowels I found that each end of the Target rod was a different diameter, and thus so were the caps – they do this so that the rod can easily collapse in on itself. Plan on using a little bit of sand paper to shimmy on one of the end caps to each rod.

DIY Fabric Night Light

This is one of the beautiful fabric remnants that I recently received from Calico Corners for the San Diego Design Expo. I wanted to find a fun use for it and came up with this basic night light fashioned from a Target fabric lantern.

The inner sleeve of the lantern slides easily out to reveal the light bulb inside, by simply recovering the sleeve you have a brand new look.

To create: cut fabric to size of lantern + 2″ in length and height, flip fabric over and use spray glue to create a 1″ hem around entire remnant (a ruler is a helpful tool to flatten out edges). You could also use the spray glue to adhere the fabric to your new lantern shade, but I used a simple pin to hold it in place so that I could easily change it out in the future!

It’s easy to update with new fabrics as rooms and tastes change.

This would make a great addition to a kid’s room or guest room – with the fabric’s intricate pattern the new lantern creates a soft, muted glow that I love. I even tried it with a red light bulb and it created a fun effect!

Our Anniversary… Has it Really Been 3 Years?

A big thank you to Jenn over at HWTM for featuring all of the details of our big day three years ago! I’m borrowing a few of her images today for this post .

Today marks Kevin’s and my third wedding anniversary. I can’t believe the past few years have flown by so quickly! We’ve purchased our first home (an oldie but goody that we’re remodeling piece by piece), taken time out to travel to beautiful and exotic places, and are now preparing for the next big surprises in our life.

But because this is such a special day for us… here’s a quick recap of our White Wedding.

The perfect site for our Santa Cruz mountains reception ended up at a home that we rented for the occasion (a common option in my hometown since venues are hard to come by). The house sat perched on top of a hill with beautiful views of the ocean, vineyards and mountains in each direction.

The rest of the wedding was 100% DIY… from the flowers to the cake to even asking close friends to DJ. We loved keeping it homemade and adding special touches that personalized the day and kept our guests comfortable. The goal was to create an atmosphere that captured a whimsical and romantic celebration.

Designing the day was my favorite part – we had to really get creative to come up with classy and outdoor-friendly décor on a budget for a party of over 250 guests! Because we were starting from scratch, we rented everything from the pale pink tablecloths to the forks – that helped us to price out each and every detail so that it fit our budget.

I found vases in various sizes on ebay and craigslist and created three separate centerpieces to accommodate the finds. Two days before the wedding we went down to our local wholesale florist’s warehouse and scooped up everything in all white (don’t worry, we gave them a heads up). Without being too picky on the type of flower and instead concentrating on the color we were able to say within our budget.

To sum up my favorites:

1. Handmade manzanita trees with dendrobium orchid blooms wired to the branches (sitting in pool/chlorine grade salt from Home Depot)

2. White roses in floral foam and sand (straight from the beach), bunches of tulips grouped together, and vases filled with an assortment of rununculus, mums, sweet peas, stock and lisianthus

3. Garden hydrangea hanging out of fish bowl vases with river rock fillers (from Home Depot)

The home had a beautiful pool house that we covered with white paper lanterns and floral balls (fake flower blooms from Michaels poked into foam). The floating candle island in the center was built by my brother, who used kick boards to keep a piece of plywood covered in candles (securely nailed down) and flowers afloat.

To mark the tables, we used leftover paper from our invitations to create table numbers that corresponded with a picture of each of us at that age.

MANY more photos and all of the gushy details after the jump… Read more »