Hey friends! How have the holidays been treating you? We are due for a major update on what’s been going on around here. I opened my Rich Hippies shop on November 1st, and have been feeling the holiday rush from day one. It’s been an exciting and emotional journey that I am so lucky to be living what once use to be just a goal. We had our first Thanksgiving in Nashville, and it was perfectly calm.

Atlas has turned from a baby to a little man in a blink of an eye. He loves to dance to the Beatles every morning, do yoga moves, play with one of our dogs Rocket, and read books.

He’s obsessed with drawing and he’s really into helping Joey and I around the house with DIY projects, which is very exciting and we hope this type of stuff always keeps his attention.

We have so many posts to make about the project house. We are so close to done, and man oh man what a coat of paint and stain can do to a place is unbelievable!

This year we get to decorate for Christmas with the excitement of a little one around. We have been doing Elf on a Shelf, and it’s been fun for Atlas to find Ghee every morning, and fun to set up the scene every night. We will get deep into some projects (like that super duper easy tree above), but today we wanted to share one of the tiny things that will pop a smile on your fave about a million times a day.

As a lover of tiny things, I was over the moon to create a scene on a light switch. Yes, that’s a light switch. If you remember, we have been slowly replacing all our switches with the very fashionable Adorne collection by Legrand.

This was our first taste of the new lightswitches before we installed the floating shelves and painted the walls (we were excited to test them out before the facelift). We fell in love immediately.  This is our living room and our switch with the Christmas touch is in the dining room. We learned super quick that you can replace the switch pates blindfolded with zero effort and decided it was time to start planning the rest of the house and wallpaper plans etc. Then the company was super kind to inform us of customizable switch plates, and we went to town on making our “wave” switch” into a mini scene.

Clearly you can customize however you decorate, but thought thought it a good idea to show you materials we used that worked great for a not-too-heavy switch plate.

So, this is what it looks like when you put the customizable faceplate on. You peel it of like a sticker and can press whatever you like on it. Keep that in mind when picking a material. It should be lightweight and durable if you plan on going 3D with your design.

Your customizable kit comes with this pieces as well, which you can decorate or use it as a template. We decided to use it as a template and make the faceplate out of super duper lightweight craft wood. It was $3.99 at the craft store and the piece we bought could customize up to four light switches.

We cut out a small shelf in addition to the faceplate template as well as two shutters with support. We tried to add curtains, but it got too bulky and looked too busy anyway.

We painted the shutters white to ad a tiny bit of contrast and collected tiny tree’s we used in 2012 for ornaments and a deer from a broken snowglobe we saves from the move.

We used superglue to attach to wood pieces to each other, and it was strong enough. The extra little triangles of support seemed to really secure. At this point you can peel the sticky part off the installed part of the faceplate and stick you work right on there. After that we just lightly positioned and placed our trees and deer, and we were done!

I think using the wave light switch is a really importune port of this working out for you because you don’t have to touch anything, you just do a little wave and the light turns on and off.

So now you want one? Great! Win a $200 or $500 store credit to get your own goods from Legrand. We highly recommend the brass! Their products are truly gorgeous!

Joey here! Have you ever wanted to make something you own sit higher off the ground than where it previously rested? Well, I’m here to tell you how! YAY!

When Lana purchased these trunks a year or so ago she was so excited. And why not? They hold stuff, you can put things on top of them, and they’re GOLD! If I remember things correctly (which I almost certainly don’t) she jumped up in the air and clicked her heels like an old time prospector.

Fast forward to today and I was tasked with making some risers for them out of some basic stuff you can nab at most bigger hardware stores. And the materials and execution are pretty simple. Lets start at the beginning with a crudely drawn diagram of what’s going to happen here.

You’ll want to measure the base of your trunks or whatever else you plan on raising up. This will help you determine how much aluminum angles and flat bars you’ll need to buy. I ended up needing this much: 1” x 36” flat (2 per trunk) 1” x 36” angles (3 per trunk)

As for other materials and tools you’ll want at the ready you should have a drill with a 1/8 inch bit, a riveter with 1/8” rivets, something to cut your aluminum (I used my Dremel) and some safety glasses. Seriously, use the safety glasses for this one. It’s one thing to get a little dust in your eyes, it’s quite another when imperceptibly small, jagged aluminum bits are flying at you.

After you have measured your trunks you can start marking off and cutting your aluminum angles. The square that you are making for the top of this cube will need the angles all facing inward to give your trunk something to rest on. And a word to the wise… Leave yourself a quarter inch or so extra room on your cuts. You’ll want the space when you start riveting and realize that only one side of the rivet sits flush, the other end sticks out and mocked me as I tried to have my trunk sit level when I was done. First time using a riveter for me, so, live and learn.

When you have cut the 4 angles to length you can break out your favorite drill and make some 1/8” holes for the rivets. The first hole is easy. The second one takes some more patience. I suggest determining which pieces you’d like to sit on top of the others and drilling those and then using that hole to mark the angle that will sit below with a Sharpe. Even better would be to clamp everything down and drill through everything at once with a drill press. I went for the “I’m just gonna see how this goes” approach cause that’s the type of guy I am. Maybe next time I’ll be a different guy. A guy who doesn’t need to make a second trip to the hardware store.

Back to the project… So, now that you have competently drilled those holes all you gotta do is pop that rivet in there and tighten her right up. Being this was my first time using a riveter and I usually light instructions on fire on sight I had no idea how to use it. I must have looked like a confused chimp poking at stuff and scratching my head. In reality this is a very simple tool. Just put the rivet through the hole with the long end sticking up and then insert the rod from the rivet into the riveter and pull the handle a few times. The rod (in most cases) will pop off when the job is done and you’ll be all set.

With the other angles you have left over you are going to want to cut yourself the sections that will give your stand the height you desire. I wanted 8” so that’s what I did. Cut 4 of these. Then go back to making holes and filling them with rivets. Remember that you want the flush end of the rivet to be what you see when the project is over so make sure you are putting them in the right way or will be cutting them outta there.

Last of the cutting takes place when you make the bottom section out of the aluminum flats you should still have laying around. Cut 4 of these the same length you cut the top section. Place them along the bottom, mark where you’d like the holes and drill and rivet some more.

Now you’ve got something that looks like this, or even better hopefully.

Only two things left to do. Spray paint them the color of your choice. Lana said GOLD! So I did as I was told. Lastly, we took some wax that strangely Lana just had around the house and used it to create a sort of sealant on the paint so it wouldn’t scratch so easily. And POOF! You got yourself a pretty new stand.

If you like doing easy projects check out a bunch here. If you liked this project, pin it!

When you have a kid, everyone will warn you how quickly they grow, and everyone is not a liar. It’s amazing that Atlas really loves to observe everything, especially hanging things. Remember this DIY Doily Dreamcatcher I made for him just a few weeks back? It’s like the. best. toy. ever. He loves laughing at is and looking up at it. This project was pretty simply and required very few things – and you can hack it to fit your needs of course.

We got a very long wood cylinder at the home improvement store and chopped it up. Joey then drilled holes down the center so we could feed the string (also got at the home improvement store) through it.

We double checked to make sure the string fed correctly, then removed it to paint the wood fun colors.

 I just used your normal run-of-the-mill water color to paint the wood. I didn’t even do anything special to it – just straight paintbrush to raw wood action. I also dipped some feathers in Martha Stewart gold paint and dusted with glitter at this point, so all the wet stuff could dry together.

I found these super cute pom’s from Thailand, and decided this was the perfect project to add them to. They are tiny pom pom’s, so I just glued them to the end of the pink string (two small strips just a few inches long) for some fun.

I also added some wooden beads from the craft store along with some help from knots and some super glue.

Keep in mind, this isn’t intended as a toy for a baby to play with. Just a pretty nugget to hang and look at.

Like small projects? Check out other one-a-week posts!