Gift guide for the home DIYer

I’m no fan of the frantic consumerism of Black Friday and the holidays in general, but for those wanting to build out their kit of tools for their DIY projects, this is a great time of year to score some awesome deals on tools. If you’ve got a DIYer to shop for, or you are a DIYer, this is a list of my personal favorite tools that I use constantly when I’m working. I sat down and thought through the stuff that I pick up on a near-daily basis, and these are those tools! I also included a separate list of tools that would be stocking-stuffer friendly size-wise. I always feel like adults get the short end of the stick when it comes to stocking gifts, but there are a ton of really great, smaller tools that are incredibly useful!

And since y’all aren’t out here DIYing naked I picked out some of my favorite DIY apparel from both my shop and other DIY bloggers’ merch shops, so you can rep the DIY life while you work!

With the exception of links to other bloggers’ shops, these are all affiliate links meaning any purchases made through these links will give me a little kickback, just FYI :) I hope this guide helps!

Ryobi ONE+ 18v Brad Nailer | Ryobi ONE+ 18v Drill and Impact Driver set | Trigger clamp set | Laser Level | Paint Sprayer | Drywall T Square | Ryobi ONE+ 18v Circular Saw | Speed square | Shop Vac

Remodel Project Planner | 6ft Ladder | Ryobi six tool kit |

Wall Control pegboard (get 10% off with the code LIZMORROW)

Stocking stuffers:

Kreg Pocket Hole Jig | Utility Knife | Drill bit set | Driver Bit set | Tape Measure | Carpenter Pencils | Safety Glasses | Voltage Tester | Pencil holder | Short Cut brush | Stud Finder

DIY apparel

DIY The Damn Thing Tank | DIY Vibes Sweatshirt | Built For This Tee | DIY List tee |

Hand Built beanie | DIY The Damn Thing joggers

Saturday Night... Before Christmas | Disco Ball Christmas Tree Inspiration

It’s time! I’m super excited to be a part of Casa Watkins’ Christmas Tree blog hop this year! Welcome to everyone who is arriving from Casa Watkins and Rebecca Propes! And make sure you head over to Au Petit Salon tomorrow morning to kick off tomorrow’s blog hop posts! Scroll to the bottom to check out all the posts from the blog hop!

We’ve had our white Christmas tree for a few years now and I was feeling a little uninspired at the beginning of the month. I thought maybe this year we’d let the white tree hibernate and head to a tree farm to do a real tree this season. But then I had an idea: DISCO CHRISTMAS. Is this just an excuse to buy a ridiculous amount of disco balls? Maybe. Am I already scheming things to do with all these disco balls after the tree comes down for the season? Absolutely.  To be fair, I do wish this tree was even MORE over the top, so this top image has a few extra disco balls photoshopped on (I mean, really, I could go for even more, but let’s calm down, Liz).  

I’m always torn between having a faux tree and a real one, a green tree and a non-traditional tree, a sentimental ornament tree, and a pretty beautifully designed tree.  Growing up we usually had a “pretty” faux tree in the living room, and then a live tree upstairs in the family room that had colorful lights and all our fun family sentimental ornaments and I really loved that.  Unfortunately, for now, our house is too small to accommodate two trees, but someday. Someday.

6” Disco balls | 8” Disco ball | Mixed size small disco balls | Mini disco ball garland | Feather boas (used as garland) | White tulle (fills in tree center and hide the ugly “tree trunk”) | White Tree | Tree Topper

Click to see the DIYs on how I made the Disco Ball Ornaments, and the Sparkly Tree Collar

START CODE:

Monday

Casa Watkins Living // Up To Date Interiors // Mocha Girl Place // Kate Decorates // House of Hipsters // Monica Wants It

Tuesday

The Happy Housie // SKG Designs // Delineate Your Dwelling // Cuckoo 4 Design // Room Bloom Design // My Sweet Savannah

Wednesday

Iris Nacole // PMQ For Two // Stacies Spaces // Rebecca Propes // Liz Morrow Studios

Thursday

Au Petite Salon // Taryn Whiteaker Designs // The Honeycomb Home // Daly Digs // T Moore Home // Love Your Abode

Friday

Haneens Haven // Our Fifth House // Seeking Lavender Lane // Two Twenty One // Amber Oliver // Zig and Company

Hang Up the Holidays!

Decorating for the holidays is so much fun, but with my porch newly remodeled, I didn’t want to pop nails into my freshly built and painted surfaces. I teamed up with Home Depot to create a holiday porch transformation using some amazing damage free hanging products and I’m so thrilled with how it turned out! 

I used a variety of different Command products for hanging all my decor, as well as some Velcro and Hillman products to secure things like power cords and attaching garlands together, and I’m definitely a convert. 

In the past I’ve usually hung my holiday decor using picture wire nails and staples since they’re small, but even small nails leave holes, and putting holes in brand new trim just felt, well, wrong. I was nervous that the Command hooks wouldn’t hold because some of my garlands and wreaths are pretty heavy, but they held up great!  I doubled up Command hooks in a few areas where there were extra heavy elements and everything was solid. 

Hanging Product Links: 

Outdoor Medium Clear Window Hooks  |  Outdoor Rope Light Clips (to attach garlands)  |   Clear Small Outdoor Light Clips (to attach lights)  |  Velcro Reusable Ties  |  Hillman 24-Guage Green Floral Wire 

Decor Links: 

4ft Flocked Trees  |  Door Garland  |  Door Wreath  |  Window Wreaths  |  Porch Garland  |  Lanterns  |  C9 Lights 

The other awesome thing was having Command Strips that allowed me to secure my power cords so they weren’t just dangling or laying around everywhere, plus my VELCRO®Brand ONE-WRAP® Ties secured any excess extension cord so everything stayed neat and tidy behind the scenes. The adjustable straps could be fastened and unfastened as needed, saving me trips back to the store for one-use twine or plastic zip ties. 

I’m always wanting a really full and lush look for my garlands, so I twisted two garland strands together for the garland hanging from the front of my porch. I used some Hillman 24-gauge Green Floral Wire to secure them together, and to create a loop for hanging the middle swag from so I could easily attach it to the Command hooks.  I also used two garland strands to surround my door, so they could go all the way from the top of the door to the floor, which meant I used the same green floral wire to attach them together in the middle, at the top of the door. The Hillman wire gave the extra confidence that my garland arrangements would stay put and secure for the remainder of the holiday season. 

Another cool thing is that there are Command hooks that stick to windows, which was perfect for me to attach the wreaths on my two big front windows!  I had always wanted to do that, but I wasn’t sure the best way to go about it. These turned out to work great! 

All the Command hooks I used were clear plastic, which made them very unnoticeable and low profile, keeping the focus on my decor instead of what’s holding it up. 

The best part about using Command hangers is that they don’t damage the surface when you remove them. Since I just recently painted the new trim on my porch, I was definitely wanting something that wouldn’t damage my brand new paint, and these hangers came off quickly, easily, and without damaging any of my surfaces. 

Here’s to getting the holidays hung up and starting this season of celebration off right! 

Season of the Witch

Y’all, I’m unreasonably proud of this little halloween porch. Gah! I don’t usually go full out on Halloween decor, I typically stick to more fall themed stuff— pumpkins and the like. But for some reason this year I felt like getting SPOOKY.

Last year’s monster door was super fun, especially with the door being pink, but after painting it chartreusey yellow, it felt like it wanted to be a spooky witch potion this year! With the door being a potion bottle, I kind of took that idea and ran with it for the rest of the porch, leaning heavy into the witch theme. So we hung some witch hats from the ceiling of the porch, made a witchy cauldron, and then a bunch of bottles filled with “potion” to finish things off.

The door was made with sheets of craft foam and foam core poster board. The eyes are cut out of white craft foam, then painted with the iris and the blood vessels, then I hot glued the pupils on, which are made of black craft foam. I used about five sheets of the white 6mm craft foam, one sheet of the 2mm black craft foam, one 20x30 white foam core board, and one 20x30 black foam core board.

The top where the bottle top shape is, was made out of foam core poster board, cut to form the negative space that make the door look like a bottle. Then I added the “witches brew” labels and attached everything with Command Strips.

I decided I wanted some witchy steam billowing out of the top of the bottle so I bought a few yards of white tulle, stapled half of it to the wall above the door, and then threaded some battery powered green twinkly lights through the tulle!

With the other half of the tulle, I put green Christmas lights in the bottom of the cauldron, then stuffed the tulle on top of it so it illuminates and looks like a frothing witch cauldron. On the opposite side of the door I salvaged some potion-y looking bottles from our recycling bin, and filled the clear ones with water mixed with green food coloring. Then I grabbed some of the crusty old squash vines that were left in our garden and wove them around everything.

Witch Hats | White Craft Foam | Black Craft Foam | White Foam Core Board | Black Foam Core Board | Witch Cauldron | Brown Bottles | Spooky fabric
Wood Lanterns | Green Christmas Lights | Battery Powered Green Fairy Lights

Kitchen Mural Reveal | Tacoma Mural Artist

After I built out this laundry room in the awkward corner of our kitchen, I knew the wall wanted to have some kind of statement on it. But dang did it take forever to figure out what that statement was going to be. This design was actually inspired by a tile design where each square tile had a quarter circle on it, when meant you could completely customize the design. So I pulled a pic of this spot into photoshop and played around with quarter circles until I landed on something that felt good.

But my favorite element came later. I had been seeing this orange color around and I knew I wanted to incorporate it into the house. My original plan was for the french doors to be painted black, but then a bell went off in my head and I knew they had to be orange. I grabbed a paint chip (which ended up being the exact same color as Home Depot’s signature orange, haha) and bought a little paint sample (a paint sample size is usually enough to paint a door— and they’re only a couple bucks!). A few hours later the doors were orange and it MADE the space.

It’s so wild to look at the before pic and see that sad corner with the laundry closet. The space planning in this house by whoever built it is down right bananas, folks. Like… was that supposed to be a breakfast nook? It didn’t feel big enough for a table there, but it’s still a lot of square feet of wasted space. Now we have a laundry room with added cabinetry for storage, a more defined rear entry area for dropping keys, coats, etc, and they functionality and flow through the space isn’t impacted whatsoever.

Now… I just have to finish the final details on the inside of the laundry room…