Front Room Reveal...finally!

Okay, Lindsey got me...she finally messaged me about being a MIA in the blog world. It's much easier to just read my subscriptions than to write my own. Plus, with teaching again, the time just slips away.

But I have done things! So here is an update with our front room (should be dinning room but we don't have a dining table). It's probably one of my favorite places in the whole house!

Pretty Stinkin' Excited!

So yesterday I received the best blog news ever! I am featured on The DYI Showoff blog today! SUPER excited!! Evidently, she really liked my $2 furniture re-do. Check it out! Also, you should subscribe to her blog if you like this sort of thing. I love, love, love getting to see what other's are up to!

Here are my latest furniture finds at garage sales. I am obsessed with them, but can't decide what to do with them.



The tall table was $7 and the shorter, rectangle table was $5. I also can't decide where to put them. I'd love to put one in our bedroom, but Ryan's furniture is pretty matchy-matchy and we can't exactly just pawn the bedside table off. Any ideas??

{I think I have just about decided that my iPhone camera is just not a good camera for blog photos.}

Project (Ghost) Lamps

About 3 weeks ago I found this super cute idea on Life in the Fun Lane to make lamps. I immediately fell in love with them! And being my crafty mother's daughter and my fit-it father's daughter, I knew I could do it! Off to Home Depot for light kits, Goodwill for shades, and Hobby Lobby for twine. The iron angles were missing, but we quickly were able to fix that! We had gone to a garage sale about 2 weeks ago and found a cute shabby chic white shelf, new in the box, for only $5! As Ryan was going to put it up, I said, "Oh! I think we could use those iron pieces for our lamps! They were more than $5 at the store!" Of course Ryan loved the idea because that meant he didn't have to put up the shelf! After HOURS, and I mean HOURS of wrapping the cords in twine, we have our lamps, my friends! TA-DA!



I wish we would've put them closer to the corner so that I could tie the cords back to the wall somehow, but oh well. I'm also not sure about them because I think they need to be lower and closer to the table height. It makes me want to put the old sofa table back in this spot. This will have to work for now!

Only $2? I'll take it!

I woke up last Saturday and thought that I'd check out the garage sales in our new neighborhood. I found a treasure! A $2 small shelf that would be a perfect accent piece! It was missing a drawer, but oh well. I knew I could just put a basket in it's place. I immediately came home and got to work. I had never painted a piece of furniture, but I knew what I wanted the end product to look like. WAH-LAH! Two days later, I had our first DIY furniture project completed! I found the basket at our neighborhood thrift store for $1.99 and with a little white spray paint, it does the job well! :)
Before:


After!

Our Garage Sale and Clearance Office

So we had a productive Saturday. I got up at 6:30 and went garage sale-ing and Ryan mowed. I painted a piece of furniture and some picture frames. Later we hung things up on the walls, and I found homes for some of our garage sale pieces! Most went into the office, which is STILL being cleared of wedding gifts. I feel like I will never find a place for things to go. Here's where we ended up putting a few of the garage sale items.



The vinyl rub-on was SO easy to do! Totally recommend it for easy decorating! I was a bit nervous, but Ryan helped out a lot and it turned out really cute! This room will be one of my favorites when it's all done. I can't wait!

Garage Sale Success

Yesterday Ryan and I headed to League City to check out Altar'd's garage sale. It began at 6:00 p.m. and we arrived at 6:21 p.m. We were about 21 minutes too late. Two ladies arrived before us and bought the whole dern garage sale!!!

We were successful in finding a few treasures, though. Check them out!

I don't know where we are going to put it all, but we love all that we purchased! Tomorrow's task is to find a "home" for all of our new stuff. I'll post pictures soon!

HomeGoods, So Good!

In the last 3 days I think I've made 4 trips to HomeGoods. I went with Kali in search of lamps. Thanks to The Nester, they are my latest obsession (if you haven't checked out her blog, she's pretty much amazing and you definitely should. She has our dream home!). So while there, I found 1 lamp that was on clearance for $29. I just couldn't yet make myself pay it because the bottom portion of the lamp wasn't the same color as the lamp shade. The blues were off and it just bothered me. I came home, talked to Ryan about it and of course, being the genius he is, he said, "Just paint it. Didn't you read somewhere how to paint porcelain?" Sha-Zam! He fixed my dilemma. I went back the next morning and bought the lamp. Along with some other goodies!



I continued my day of lamp hunting to downtown to only find another lamp on sale for $22. (I am loving our Visa gift cards we got as wedding gifts!) We aren't fond of the lamp shade, but that's totally replaceable with the help of or trusty Goodwill Store.



Yesterday as I was having lunch with some kiddos from my class last year, I decided that I'd check to see if a HomeGoods was in the area. Wahlah! It was meant to be and off I went. I walked in and there it was. Amongst the awful mess of reconstruction going on in the store was the same lamp I had originally found except in the right color!



I bought it for the low price of $15 and just thought I'd swap the lamp shades around. Of course I came out with more than just a lamp, too!

Here were the lamps before...


Here are the lamps after!