Good morning everyone,

I hope you have all been doing great. It’s been a difficult week for us here because hubby has been working a different schedule which completely disrupted Nate’s daily routine. Needless to say, I had to adapt and help Nate adjust. Next week, hubby will return to work to his usual schedule, so here we go again!

You might remember from one of my previous posts a picture of oregano, parsley and basil seeds lying next to terra cotta pots. Well, I planted those seeds on May 3^rd and here is a picture of how beautiful they are growing taken June 3^rd.

You might already know that I don’t have a green thumb and that I don’t have a lot of plants in our house because I’m scared that they will die on me. During these last years, I’ve bought fake plants instead. This year, I decided to tempt fate and see if I can keep these little ones alive. Not only do they look pretty in our kitchen thus far, I am hoping they will add flavour to our meals. I know this statement contradicts the ‘alive’ part.

After seeing the growth of these beauties, I have taken a new small addiction during these last weeks. My new addiction is ‘SUCCULENTS’. I’ve seen pictures of them around the web and fell in love with them. They look different and don’t need a lot of water, which is perfect for me. We went to home depot, I loved their selection, and I only bought one of them (the one in the green pot) but I went back a couple of days later looking for more.

When looking around for flower pots, I found them to be expensive and bought clay pots instead. I like the look of clay but recently read many articles online on how to achieve the look of aged terra cotta. I know, not everyone might like the aged terra cotta look but I did.

Today, I will share with you this very simple and inexpensive way on how I recreated this look. There are different tutorials online about ‘how to’ but I tried my own way and I’m happy with the result.

with a damp cloth, clean the clay pot to remove any dirt or dust:

I free poured water and white acrylic paint into a small Tupperware and mixed them. Use a small paintbrush to coat the clay pot. I used random brush strokes without a specific design in mind. I felt this gave it a natural look:

The paint will dry very fast. The number of coats of paint you add is up to you. For an aged/distressed look, it’s preferable to use less paint:

The next step is very simple, lightly sand the pots using finishing sand paper:

From the picture below, you can see the difference between a painted and a non-painted clay pot:

Once I had painted them all, I decided to sand these small pots less than the previous ones in order to have a different effect and I liked how the white and green popped in our kitchen.

Don’t forget to clean the pots one last time with a damp cloth to remove any dust left behind:

In the picture below, you can see my succulent plant ready to be planted in the big clay pot and a mini succulent plant planted in my new distressed pot. I love looking at these in my kitchen every day. When it’s beautiful outside, we get a lot of natural sunlight through our kitchen windows, I hope this will help them grow and stay alive. If I succeed on keeping all these beauties alive, I just might get rid of all the fake ones I have around.

In my last post, I promised a tutorial of how I revamped some of my home office items using gold leaf sheets and spray paint. Here they are just for you at the bottom of this post. I didn’t want today’s post to be too heavy, so I grouped
the pictures with the steps to follow.

Before showing you the tutorials, I also wanted to show you other items that I revamped with gold spray paint; a small mason jar to hold my gold spray painted pencils and my tools:

 Tutorials/Steps on how to revamp home office tools with a golden touch, in case you missed it, the pictures of these items are posted on my previous post: 

You will see how easy it was revamping these small items. It only takes a few  minutes and you can do this with almost anything you can find around your house.

How to  gold leaf a leather journal:

1.  clean the leather journal with a damp cloth to remove any dust
2. coat the leather journal with metal leaf adhesive using a small paintbrush
3. coat the leather journal with gold leaf sheets until fully covered
4. in order to fill in any gaps in which the gold leaf sheets did not adhere to, use a 18KT gold leafing pen to color in
5. coat the leather journal with metal leaf sealer using a small paintbrush

How to gold leaf a notebook with stripes:

1.  add painter’s tape to the notebook to achieve a striped look
2. coat the notebook with metal leaf adhesive and gold sheets
3. coat the notebook with metal leaf sealer and remove the painter’s tape once sealed and dry

 How to gold leaf and spray paint an indoor flower pot:

Gold leaf flower pot:

1. add painter’s tape to the top of the indoor flower pot, then coat the rest of the surface with metal leaf adhesive using a small paintbrush
2. coat the indoor flower pot with gold leaf sheets until fully covered
3. gently smooth the surface with your fingers to achieve the desired effect
4. coat the indoor flower pot with metal leaf sealer using a small paintbrush
5. remove the painter’s tape once sealed and dry 

Gold spray painted flower pot:

1. add painter’s tape to the top of the indoor flower pot
2. spray paint the rest of the surface using gold spray paint
3. remove the painter’s tape once dry 

How to spray paint a leather desktop carousel:

1. with a damp cloth remove the dust from the leather desktop carousel
2. I started by gold leafing the desktop carousel, but I didn’t have enough gold leaf sheets left for this project
3. spray paint in gold the desktop carousel, only one coat was necessary
4. let it dry for at least 2 hours before using 

I decided to write a different post for the DIY Post-It’s tutorial because this post was getting to big, even for me.

Its Father’s day this Sunday but unfortunately hubby will be working, so we won’t see him until late that evening. I got him a present that he and Nate will both love. I can’t tell you right now what it is because he reads my blog or so he says.

Happy Father’s day weekend to every daddy out there!

Thanks again for stopping by!

Linking this week at these fun parties!