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I'm over at Michaela Noelle Designs today as part of her "She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not" series.

I'm sharing some of the things I've been loving (and not loving) lately.  Hop over to check them out and poke around a bit while you're there.  She's a sweetheart with killer taste and style.

Hope you're having a great week!

{Tutorial} Small Herringbone Coffee Table

Thanks for all the nice comments on the Herringbone Table I shared with you last week.  I'd planned to post the tutorial on Friday but, you know, life just gets in the way sometimes.

Today I wanted to give you a basic rundown on how you can get this look yourself.  If you read last week's post, you saw that I used two parsons-inspired end tables to make the new herringbone table.

Since you aren't likely to have exactly these same tables, I wanted to show you how you might mimic this look using a very simple, very widely available, and very affordable table on the market: the Ikea Lack table, which comes in several different colors and rings in at a mere $9.99.

The big difference here will be that you won't be able to stain the whole table since it's not solid wood.  These would be great candidates for a painted table though, or you could stain the wood parts you add to the top and go for a two-tone effect.  You could also hunt down something similar in wood to be able to stain the whole table.

The size will also be different than the one I made.  The Lack tables are a perfect square and I added some pieces to my table to make it a slightly rectangular shape.  Ikea also makes this table in a coffee table size but I'm not sure how it goes together (it includes a thin lower shelf).  You could very possibly use the same treatment on it, I'm just not sure because I haven't seen it in person.  Another option, if you're looking for a longer coffee table, is to make two of the herringbone tables and sit them side by side as coffee tables, like in this room.

 via

Regardless of what you choose, you should be able to take the basic idea here and apply it to many different shapes and sizes of tables.

If you choose to give this a shot with the Lack table, you'll need to purchase two tables, which you can do online HERE in a variety of colors.

To make a finished table that's about the right height for a coffee table, you'd cut the four legs at the bottom (I used a miter saw) to be 12" long then attach them to the table top per Ikea's assembly instructions.  For the bottom shelf piece you flip the table top with legs attached upside down, position the other table top upside down on top of the legs, and attach using a couple screws or several nails through the underside of the shelf and into each of the legs.

To add those decorative feet at the base, you'll need to purchase four furniture feet and four mounting plates.  I got these at Lowes:

Attach the mounting plates at the four corners and then screw the decorative feet in place.

Now for that herringbone top! 

You'll want to flip the table over so the top is facing up and mark the center of the table with a line.

My friend, Sarah, and her husband recently made a spectacular herringbone table by milling driftwood into about 300 tiny pieces and then laying the pieces into a herringbone pattern.  She gave a great description of how they oriented and cut the pieces HERE.  I used the same basic method, and her documentation of it is better, so you can read through her description to get a sense of how to get the herringbone pieces in place.  And you really want to take a look at her table anyway - gorgeous.

I, however, bought my wood at Lowes :)  I used 1x3 pine boards for the top and my herringbone pattern had four rows, so the look is a bit different than Sarah's.  I also opted to use a nailgun to attach each of the pieces to the tabletop underneath.  I did the two center sections first and then cut the pieces for the edges one by one.  

As you lay the pieces, you want to alternate sides so they puzzle together just right.

My advice for cutting the outer pieces that will sit flush with the edge of the table is to cut them slightly longer (1/8" inch or so) than your measurement.  It's better to have them overhang the edge slightly than be too short.  When you've finished, you can use an electric sander and coarse sandpaper to quickly get the edges perfectly even and flush with the edge of the tabletop underneath.

Once your herringbone pattern is finished and the edges are sanded, you're ready to add the border pieces around the edges of the top and the bottom shelf.  For the top border I used 1x4s and for the bottom edge I used 1x2s.  You simply measure the sides carefully and cut each piece with a 45º angle at the corners.  I found it helpful to cut one piece at a time, attach it the the table, and then measure the next side adjacent to it, cut that piece, attach it, and so on.  You want to be as exact as possible here for your corners to line up correctly.

When it's all finished, give the wood a sanding with fine sandpaper before applying any paint or stain.  I used Rustoleum stain in Sunbleached, if you happen to be working with solid wood and want to replicate this color.  I also added a top coat of wax after the stain had dried to protect the finish.  The wax worked well to fill in some of the nail holes and little gaps between wood pieces too.

And that's a basic rundown of how you can do this for yourself!  Any questions??  I know this tutorial wasn't as well documented with photos and diagrams as some of my others so if you have questions, ask and I will answer!

{DIY} Herringbone Table

This was one of those semi-impromptu projects I get myself into sometimes.

When I was cleaning and setting the furniture back up on our screened porch a few weeks ago I started playing with the furniture arrangement a little.  Which I do pretty much all the time anyway, but this room only became inhabitable for the first time last summer, so this is actually only the second time things have been moved around out here.

But more on my reasons for moving the furniture later...

When I moved the sofa to its new spot it was suddenly screaming for a coffee table.  But we were definitely not going to buy one right now.  So I started digging around the hoards of furniture stashed in our basement and garage and came out with two of these end tables we got for free (well, "free") when we bought our sofa seven years ago.

In fact, one of them lived on the porch last year.

So my wheels starting turning...

The tables were pretty banged up already with peeling veneer and/or chipped paint so I made a pretty quick decision to break them apart and repurpose the pieces as a new table with a herringbone inlay pattern on top.  The only things I needed to buy were a few pine boards and four furniture feet.  I stained the finished table with a light grey/cream stain and gave it a top coat of protective wax.

I'll share some more details with you and a general tutorial on how you might do something similar tomorrow, but for today, here's the finished table!

Check back tomorrow to see more on how I took this table from the "before" to the "after!"

Healthy Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars

Have you ever made the Barefoot Contessa's peanut butter and jelly bars?  They're really, really good.  Like, impossible to stop eating them good.  Of course, they have two full sticks of butter and a cup and a half of sugar in them so they are not, unfortunately, the healthiest choice around when it comes to snacking (but still fall-down delicious).

Last week I saw this recipe over at Ambitious Kitchen for chocolate peanut butter blondies and was intrigued...no butter?  No flour??  They look amazing but still not exactly what I'd eat myself or give my girls for a snack with all that (scrumptious) chocolate.

So I set out to combine the two recipes and make a healthy peanut butter bar with no butter, no flour, and no refined sugar like Ambitious Kitchen's, that also had that layer of jam I love in the Barefoot Contessa cookies.

And I'd say the experiment was a success!

Ada and Ellie gobbled them up, eying me a little suspiciously since I'd just offered them "cookies" as an afternoon snack.

Scott came home from work and ate one and said something like, "Ohmygosh.  Theseareamazing," and then, "What??" when I told him there was no butter or flour.

They're like little miracle cookies.  I don't really understand how the ingredients come together to make a "cookie" - a soft, cakey one, but still, a cookie.  And you know what...I don't care.  Some things you don't need to question.

If you like peanut butter, you simply must try these.  They are very quick to stir together and make a great snack or dessert.  It's still hard to eat just one...don't say I didn't warn you.

Healthy Peanut Butter and Jelly Bars - makes 16 squares
Ingredients
2 c. natural peanut butter (with salt)
2 eggs
1/2 c. honey
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. vanilla
3/4 c. good jam or preserves (I love Bonne Maman)

Preheat oven to 350º.  Grease a 9" square baking pan.

In the bowl of an electric mixer, combine peanut butter, eggs, honey, baking soda, and vanilla.  Beat until the batter is well combined and smooth.

Spoon about half of the mixture into the prepared pan.  To make the jam more spreadable, microwave 20-30 seconds to soften.  Use a rubber spatula to spread the jam over the peanut butter mixture.  Drop the remaining peanut butter mixture over top and spread until semi-smooth.  Don't worry if it doesn't cover the jam completely - you'll just have some jammy swirls on top of the finished bars.

Bake about 30 minutes until the bars are golden.

Let cool in the pan on a wire rack then cut into squares.

Click here for a printable recipe.

Linking to City Farmhouse

{DIY} Upholstered Folding Screens

So this post is still a bit of a teaser with these bad boys.

See, I've had this problem lately where I start a project (like this one), then my deadline for finishing it gets pushed back, so I put it on the back burner for a while to work on more pressing things, and then circle back around to it after a while.  Which, in some ways, is no big deal.

Though it does leave my workspaces around the house (usually either our garage or guest room) in perpetual states of disarray and makes it a little tricky for me to remember how I even did these projects to begin with.

These upholstered folding screens have had a lot of stops and starts.  But they are finished, and I love them.  I can't wait to deliver them to my aunt in a couple weeks.

So what I'm sharing with you today are just a few tight shots, and when I get them to her house and up in place, I will take lots of full-scale photos and share them with you, as well as a basic tutorial on how I built them.  You should expect to see that up here on the blog around the last week of June or first week of July.

So, bear with me, the instructions and full shots are coming!

In the meantime, you can see here how I curved the tops and bottoms of the panels and used nailheads to accentuate the lines.  I also added antique-styled casters on the bottom so it will be easy for my aunt to slide them back and forth as she wants to access her laundry area, which is where the screens are going.

Thanks for being such patient and devoted readers!