The Little Gentleman's Closet

Our featured shop for the week is the Little Gentleman's Closet.  You will find the most adorable neck and bow ties for your little guys here.  This shop is owned and operated by Michelle, a former Family, Home and Consumer Science teacher turned stay-at-home mommy of two little boys.  Having two boys, she's encountered the disproportionate amount of cute boys clothing versus cute girls clothing.  And she decided to do something about it.
Michelle's ties are high quality.  She orders unique fabrics and most of all, her ties do not use velcro, elastic or snaps.  Have you seen the ties at The Children's Place, with those nifty plastic clips?

Yep, Michelle uses those.  Much much better!
Here are a few of my favorites:

I have a thing for paisley...too bad my husband doesn't share that...

How CUTE is this little bow tie?!

I think this is a brilliant idea.  For a discounted price, you get a surprise tie!
But BEST OF ALL!

Michelle sells her patterns for obsessive-compulsive DIYers like myself!  The pattern can be adjusted to fit wee little babies all the way to 14 year olds! AND the pattern comes with two of those little plastic clips (if you need more, you can also buy the clips in Michelle's shop).  I bought this pattern just a couple of weeks ago, planning to remake a couple of my husband's ties for my little boy.  I was hoping to have them done this week to show you, but I didn't get to it!  I'll have to show them off later.
If you have boys, you can't go wrong investing in something from this shop, I guarantee it!

Stay tuned tomorrow for the big reveal of my painted and glazed laminate bookshelves!  It's an even more drastic Before & After than my kitchen was!  The tutorial on painting laminate furniture is coming along with it tomorrow.

Maybe I'm a snob...

But I don't like having things that are just like what someone else has.  (I suppose that isn't surprising, coming from a girl who goes shopping and can't bear to actually buy anything, thinking, "I could make that."  Whether that is really true or not.)  This applies especially with regards to our home.  And even more especially with regards to the curb appeal of our home!
The previous owners had these tacky tacky tacky adhesive numbers in one of the bedroom windows.  You know, this kind:

Horrifying, I know.  So needless to say, replacing those numbers with something else was HIGH on the priority list.  Like as soon as possible.
But I just couldn't find house numbers I liked.  I didn't want the same kind of numbers everyone has.  No way.  I want the outside of our house to be charming and unique...just like us (pardon my husband's laughter in the background...though he's probably right, we may be unique but not charming).
So I went to Etsy.  And oh, did I find what I was looking for.
Winfield Designs (shop name: metalgardenart) will cut out the numbers you need in any font you want, steel and 8 inches tall.  $7.95 a piece, plus S&H.  Very reasonable, as some of the more unique house number designs I found online are $11.95 each!!!
So after much downloading of new fonts, playing in Word and deliberation, I decided to go with the Melanie font.  With this font, the numbers are not of uniform height, and Winfield Designs noticed and asked me if I wanted the numbers to stay in their original sizes relative to each other, or if I wanted each number to be the full eight inches.  So considerate of them, and great attention to detail!  (I chose to have the numbers stay in their original size...I think they are cuter that way!)
They arrived nice and clean, ready to paint:

And I painted them with Krylon Oil Rubbed Bronze spray paint.

Don't they look great?  They will look even better once they are up on our house!!!
Thanks Winfield Designs!
(and no, I did not get any form of compensation for this post, I just wanted to share a good find.)
(and the cabinets are a comin' I promise...)