farmhouse – Just a Maryland Girl

Easy DIY Winter Hat Holiday Garland

Anyone that knows me knows that I love a good DIY project. Something simple that I can make with dollar tree items or, even better, items that I already have in my home, is an absolute winner for me. When I stumbled across this DIY on pinterest, I HAD to make it.

I am still digital nomadding, so my boyfriend and I decided that spending a bunch on holiday decor just wasn’t on our list of priorities. We wanted to be festive, but didn’t want to throw money down the drain on disposable items that we wouldn’t keep, and definitely did not want more items to haul around. So this project really felt like something that fit the bill.

I already had everything in my home, and I thought this was a great way to do something easy while I’m zoned out in front of the telly. So let’s get into it.

Materials:

String/yarn
Cotton balls
Paper towel roll
Scissors
A board or book that you can wrap the string around

Steps:

Snip off small sections of the paper towel roll
Wrap your string around the board or book about 25 times
Cut the end, then cut the bottom section of your string, so that you have 25 independent sections of string
Loop and tie the string around one of your paper towel roll sections
Continue until the entire roll is covered
Push the yarn through the paper towel roll so that it dangles out the other side
Grab the string with one hand, and put two cotton balls into the space to form the hat
Wrap string around the part of the string that you grabbed and tie in a knot
Cut off excess string and form into a pom on the top of the hat

I used eight hats for my space. I hung a piece of string across my fireplace and then tied the hats to the string. I loved how it came out. It’s just entirely too cute!

Another cute project that I tried was this snowball garland. So cute, so simple, and I was able to use items right in my home. Just be sure to keep each string completely separated from each other until you have them hung. They can get quite tangled.

That project can be found here: (I didn’t use glue and found that the project held up fine.)

And ICYMI, of course I posted on IG about my holiday salt dough ornaments which were fun and easy to make!

The video for making this can be found on my IG page.

Have you done any easy diy projects this holiday? Let me know what else I need to try!

Let me know!

December 14, 2021December 14, 2021

justamarylandgirl2 Comments

Airbnb Journey: The Trendy Bungalow In NC

It was nearing the end of 2020. The lease to my apartment was coming to an end, and I truly didn’t want to renew. I had been house-hunting for a place to rent, and it seemed like rental inventory was at a standstill due to the pandemic. Time was winding down, I was getting stressed out, and almost as a joke, I said to my boyfriend… “What if we just put our stuff in storage and Airbnb it for a while?”

We kinda laughed and it seemed like a far-fetched, ridiculous idea, until it wasn’t.

I mean…why not…right??

We were teleworking for the indefinite future, and all we needed was a secure internet connection somewhere in the US. The more we thought about it, the more we realized…if we can’t go to restaurants and socialize and be around people, if we aren’t going to the office and really have no place to be…why not be somewhere else? We can be holed up in a house somewhere warmer, somewhere quieter, somewhere different!

So that’s what we did! When we packed up our apartment, crammed everything into a storage unit, and embarked on this Airbnb journey, which we have been on for almost 8 months now.

When we began, we really didn’t know what to expect. We knew we were super stressed after a really weird year. We knew we’d be giving up something that was certain—an actual fixed address—for something that was uncertain. We knew we’d be taking things a month at a time, looking for homes that fit our price range each month, and hoping that whatever place that we chose checked off all the boxes on our house wish list.

And we knew that all we really wanted was peace.

We were in the midst of a pandemic which was super strange and scary, and we decided to give up our lease, which was so weird and terrifying. We were going to be staying in places we weren’t too familiar with, after almost a year of being in lock-down mode, after dealing with a really heightened state of racial tensions and after a bizarre election cycle. We were venturing to another state with different COVID policies and possibly different feelings towards us for many reasons, primarily being racial and political.

And to top it all off, after spending a year dealing with a horrible neighbor, we just craved calm.

The first monthly home we selected on Airbnb was an adorable trendy farmhouse bungalow in Garner, NC. Garner is a suburb located only a few short minutes from downtown Raleigh and it boasted of all shopping and dining conveniences.

The home had three bedrooms and two bathrooms, it had been completely renovated and looked like something that would be featured on an HGTV show. It also came with a basketball hoop and fire pit—more ways to decompress. It was in a slightly warmer climate being four hours south. It looked so peaceful and cute, and it seemed like the change of scenery that we needed. It looked like the perfect place to hunker down and work for a month while we remained in lockdown.

Did the home show as well as the pics…

When you book a place online, a certain excitement builds, right along with all types of expectations. And you truly hope that the place lives up to the expectations that you have built up in your mind. It’s one thing to book for a long weekend or a few days. But we were going to be there for a month, and we had no place to go if this home sucked. So we truly hoped that the home was exactly as the listing described.

When we pulled into the driveway and parked in the carport, we got kinda excited. We walked into the home, and we were so pleasantly surprised! You never know if pictures on the web prove to be accurate once you arrive at the property, but in this case, the home definitely lived up to the pictures.

The open floor plan, the adorable touches, the perfect décor and furnishings…and the brand new modern bathrooms, the nice workspace, and the super clean bedrooms…it was just perfect.

There was an Aldi at the end of our street…we timed it and it was a 3-minute walk. We loved it!

What did we do while we were in Raleigh…

Well…it was December/January 2020, the world was still in the middle of the pandemic. There was no vaccine at this point. Lots of things were closed. Businesses truly suffered. And our personal feeling was that we were not doing indoor dining at that time. We were trying to just stick to grocery stores, Target occasionally, and a sporadic trip to Michaels or some store for crafts, puzzles, or other types of entertainment. So the few times we went out for entertainment, we walked around downtown Raleigh, we ventured to a couple of stores at the outlet mall, we found a whiskey bar that had firepits outside and went there a couple times. We socially distanced visited some relatives that lived in Durham, we visited a winery, we did an escape room, and we did lots of grub hub, curbside dining, cooking, and puzzles. And we also took lots of walks around the neighborhood, especially to said Aldi at the end of the street.

All in all, we truly loved this home. It was exactly what we needed at the time that we needed it. We did a lot of decompressing, we watched tv (ummm Bridgerton anyone!?), and we wrote. I discovered my interest in making beaded jewelry, I wrote in my gratitude journal, and quite honestly, I stared out of the huge floor to ceiling windows quite a bit. This was the most perfect home to kick off our journey!

Here are a few other pics of our Garner bungalow:

Could you see yourself doing something like this? Would you try it? If so, where would you start?

July 20, 2021January 20, 2022

justamarylandgirl1 Comment

My So Called Airbnb Life

*The North Carolina Modern Farmhouse Bungalow*

I feel like I should have made this post a couple months ago, but…better late than never, right? You may have seen me mention Airbnb life in a few of my IG and blog posts, so here’s why.

“Let’s find some beautiful places and get lost together”

Towards the end of last year, as my apartment lease was coming to an end, I had a decision to make. I had to decide whether to renew my lease or find somewhere else to live. I really didn’t care for the complex I was living in, and finding a new place to rent was proving to be harder than I imagined. Because of COVID and its restrictions on landlords, rental home inventory in my area was pretty locked up. I didn’t want to move into another apartment, (I was moving from a bad experience with a neighbor and just did not want to be connected to another person). I wasn’t quite prepared to buy another property (I already have a condo that I rent out and am not looking to buy anything else right now), and my rental options were extremely limited for the Southern Maryland region. As time was winding down on my lease, the whole search was absolutely stressing me out.

In addition, we were around month 9 of this crazy pandemic, we were knee deep in an unreal election cycle, civil unrest was on an uptick, and I felt like I just needed an escape of some sort. Travel was essentially restricted so a vacation wasn’t really an option, nor was it a long-term solution.

One day, almost as a joke, I said “I should just pack up my stuff and Airbnb it until I’m over it.”

It seemed like a ridiculous idea…until it wasn’t. What does that even mean?? Airbnb it? What are you even talking about?? Airbnb isn’t even a verb!

After a few conversations with my boyfriend, and a lot of hypothetical what-ifs, we decided what the hell! We were both teleworking for the indefinite future, all we needed was an internet connection, and that connection did not HAVE to be in Southern Maryland.

*I swear I did not think my stuff would fit!*

We came up with a list of criteria for a rental home, we entered said set of criteria, and we searched until we were numb. We whittled down our list and tuned in on one home that piqued our interest. We had probably looked at that Airbnb listing a million times before we made our decision. We decided to go for it, and eventually we made our first monthly reservation. We didn’t really know what to expect. Could we live in a rental home for an entire month?? What if we hated it on day 1 and were stuck?? We have no place else to go!

The pictures looked adorable but, in this day of filters and angles, anything can be made to look amazing.

Once the reservation was made, it was time to execute our plan. For the last couple months of 2020, we debated logistics, we purged, stored, and packed all our possessions. We finished out our lease, and by January 1^st, we were in our first Airbnb—an adorable modern bungalow right outside of Raleigh, NC.

*North Carolina Rest Stop on the way to our first Airbnb*

When move day arrived, we pulled into the driveway well after dark. We were exhausted from cleaning out the apartment, packing up the car, visiting relatives dropping off random this and thats, doing our last-minute Maryland items, and then driving the four hours to North Carolina. We fumbled through the self-check-in, we unpacked the car, (dropping a bottle of red wine all over the driveway…sigh…), showered and went to bed. We barely found our pj’s and toothbrushes before we called it a night. But the next morning when we woke up, explored our new (temporary) home, and realized how much we loved the idea of what we’d done.

The home was exactly as the pictures portrayed. YAY! The décor was adorable, the modern furnishings were so chic, and the personal touches from the host were perfect. It was peaceful. The scenery was so calming. We felt relaxed and it was wonderful.

Anyone who has taken a staycation can probably relate. It doesn’t matter if you go down the street or to another country, there is just something therapeutic about being out of your home, your day-to-day routine, your normal space, and in a new environment. And after nine months of quarantine, and a year of an unpleasant neighbor, new scenery was so refreshing. Even if all we did was sit inside this home and work, cook, eat, and do normal every day things, we felt like a new peaceful space, and slightly warmer weather, would be just what the doctor ordered.

While it feels super weird to have no fixed address, and to not know where I will be living two months from now, somehow my nerves are less frazzled than they were living next to a neighbor that drove me insane, while constantly watching news that regurgitated the COVID/election/racial injustice cycle.

I’m not entirely sure how long I’ll be an Airbnb vagabond, but I’d love to take you all on this little journey with me. I can’t promise it will be super exciting, but I will share some homes, experiences, and lessons that I learn along the way. I’m three months and three homes into this experience, and it’s been a pretty interesting lifestyle thus far.

Have you ever thought of doing anything like this? If so, what would be your approach? What would you want to do? Where would you want to go?

Have questions, hit me up!

March 28, 2021March 29, 2021

justamarylandgirl

12 Easy DIY Vase Upgrades In Time For Spring

Vases and planters seem to be at the center of home decor these days. Plants are great for creating a warm environment and for improving home air quality. Flowers are known mood-boosters. People are are inviting in more nature into their homes these days for overall mental and physical health reasons (especially during quarantine), and that means they need more pots and vases to put them in.

Yall know I love a good DIY. I love it even more if it’s free, cheap, or cost-friendly. There are SO MANY cute ideas around the innanets, so with plant and flower lovers in mind, I rounded up a few of my favorites! The best part of most of these projects is that you probably have a lot of the materials on hand. And if not, you can scoop them up with a quick trip to the thrift store or dollar store! West Elm and Anthropologie…whatever! Try these easy and less expensive DIY’s and create your own vibe for a fraction of the cost.

Plus…how fun is it to tell guests, “oh that vase? I made that.” (and then turn like it’s no big deal while they gawk in amazement at your super fab, oh-so-chic creation?? I can’t be the only one that loves that feeling.

So here we go!

1) Textured Clay Vase

2) Colorblock Vase

3) DIY Marble Vase

4) Nail Polish Marble Flower Pots

5) Textured pail vase

6) Pottery Barn Inspired Urn

7) Repurposed Thrift Store Vase

8) Gold Wrapped Vase

9) DIY Terracotta Vases

10) Twine Flower Vase

11) Faux Wood Vase DIY

12) DIY Hobnail Milk Glass Vase

With spring around the corner, it’s a great time to prep your vases for your lovely tablescapes and spring florals. Let me know if you give any of these a try!

March 11, 2021March 12, 2021

justamarylandgirl

$40 Nightstand Makeover in Four Steps

I recently moved a have been looking for just the right nightstands to go in my bedroom. I’ve seen a few that I liked, and I hemmed and hawed way too long, and now that we are in the middle of the COVID pandemic, store closures have brought my search to a semi-halt.

Of course I can still look around online, and I could do a delivery, but I like having options before making a furniture purchase. And quite honestly, I wasn’t in he mood to spend a lot of money. And I also like going into stores and getting good visuals of the things I’m interested in.

So when I stumbled across two nightstands for $30 on Facebook marketplace, I decided to go with an all-together less expensive, more creative option.

These tables weren’t exactly what I was looking for, but for the price, I could see the potential to turn my weekend quarantine hours into a project that would keep me busy while creating some furniture pieces that would suit my needs.

If my bedroom furniture was a different style, I would have used these well-kept pieces as-is. But I have more rustic contemporary feel going on in my bedroom and figure that these traditional furnishings may work better if they were repainted. I’ve seen a lot of furniture makeovers using matted blue, grey and black and thought that painting in one of those hues was more in my wheel house.

I perused around online and saw that I could do a pick-up order of some matte blue spraypaint from my local Walmart, so I went with that. All of the other materials that I used were things I had around my house leftover from various other projects, so the cost of this project wound up being $30 for the tables and about $7 for three cans of spray paint. Not bad!

Here are the materials I used:

Sanding block (I don’t know what the coarseness is because it was leftover from other projects)
Rust-Oleum Ultra Matte spraypaint in True Navy (3 cans)
Design Master 14 kt gold spraypaint (1 can leftover from other projects)
All purpose interior/exterior primer (leftover from other projects)
Paintbrush
Rags
Tarps

So here’s what I did:

1. Sanded the tables. After removing the hardware and the drawers, I used a sanding block and sanded the tables and drawer fronts. The tables had a glossy finish, and I knew I was going to need some texture for the paint to grab on to, so the sanding seemed like a good idea. After I sanded, I wiped them off with a wet rag to remove the dust, and let dry for a few minutes.

2. Primed the tables. I had some primer on hand from another project, and spread a layer on the tables. I didn’t use very much, so if you have some, use what you have. If not, maybe buy a small can or a bottle of spray primer. It may not even be needed if you are working with an unfinished, non-coated wood.

3. Sprayed the tables. I sprayed a thin coat of the navy spraypaint, let it dry about 20 minutes, then sprayed another coat. Once I sprayed the second coat, it needed 24-48 hours to fully fully completely dry.

4. Sprayed the hardware. These tables came with bronze hardware that was pretty well tarnished. If I didn’t have gold spraypaint on hand, I would have left them as is until I found replacement hardware. But…because I love having craft items laying around, I happened to have a can of gold spraypaint. So I gave these knobs a couple of quick coats and they came out perfectly.

I poked holes in the cardboard backing of an ink pen package (lol use what you have, right??) and I set the knobs in there for painting.

Once everything dried, I put the knobs into the drawers and that was that! I love how the project came out! And I love even more than I did it for under $40!

Have you done any cute makeovers that you want to share? Drop me a comment!

M signature

April 13, 2020April 14, 2020

justamarylandgirl