Mini Makeover Monday - Gold Shell Tray

I feel like all I've had time to do lately are mini makeovers, but I do have a few bigger things coming. But for today, I'm posting another makeover, and it's one you can do!

I recently discovered the 99¢ Only Store, which is funny because not everything in the store is ONLY 99¢, but I digress. It was your average dollar store-type with average dollar store junk, but I did find a few things like this elephant coin bank, a cute mug, and this plastic shell tray, each 99¢.

Okay, so the shell tray is a little boring, but I knew it could be awesome, so I bought a few and got out my trusty spray paint. Lucky for me, and to my husband's dismay, I keep all the left over spray paint for projects like this, so I have lots of colors on hand.

First I taped off the corners. I was going to lay it upside down to spray paint so I didn't need to cover the inside.

I then sprayed a color on the backside of the shell. There was already a teal faded color treatment on the shell, so I chose colors that would go with that.  Because I sprayed the backside, it made the inside of the shell super glossy because the color is showing through the plastic.

Then I sprayed two coats of gold spray paint over that and let it dry completely.

And that was that! I chose not to do a top coat because in my experience it takes the shine off the gold paint, and I didn't want to do that. But if you want a little more durability, you can do it and it will still look nice.

 Here they are! Not bad for a dollar, right? Which one is your favorite?

So now I have five of these... who wants one???

Read more...

Mini Makeover Monday - 50¢ Flip

My friend Emily thought it would be fun to challenge me with a few random thrift store items to "upcycle." The first piece I took on was this trashed out metal candle holder she got for 50¢.

I wasn't quite sure what to do with it, but I knew I didn't want to keep it as a candle holder, so I pried off the top. Once I got it apart I stared at it for a while and reconfigured the pieces, thinking it would make a cute little jewelry holder.

I scrubbed off the old wax and sanded down the rusted and rough areas. Looks like this used to be silver, and then lime green. 

Next I primed with Kilz spray primer, and then I sprayed the back sides with Rustoleum metallic gold. Once it was dry I taped up the gold sections, and sprayed the other sides with Rustoleum Universal Robin Egg blue. All of these products I love, but especially the Rustoleum Universal. It was my first time using it and I loved the way it handles and sprays.

I had a bit of an issue figuring out how to put it all back together, since I kind of ripped it apart. After some trial and error, I ended up drilling a hole where the old joint used to be and adding a new screw. This created a problem, however, because the screw wasn't flush with the base. So I added some felt to the bottom to level things out. It looks super classy on the bottom, but no one sees that part anyway. 

So here it is finished!

Read more...

Remembering

I hope you don't mind a little nostalgia. This past week marks fifteen years since my dad passed away. The first years without him really hurt, but then I think we recovered a little and learned a new normal without him. And then I got married and had kids, each of those moments making me miss him a little more because he wasn't there for those happy times, but also because my family will never get to know him in this life.

It seems like the older my kids get, the more I long for them to never forget someone they never knew, and so we talk about him, and look at pictures of him. But I have also tried to incorporate little things that remind me of him in our home, whether it be a milk can from his ranch or a collection of nick nacks that he collected from his dad.

Recently I found a stack of his guitar music. Actually mostly only lyrics to popular songs and folk music from the 60's written out in his rambling script with guitar chords above in red. And in the back of a yellowed notebook full of these songs was a chord chart in which he had carefully hand-drawn every chord he wanted to learn. My dad wasn't an accomplished guitar player and he didn't really play a whole lot, but he had a deep, rich bass singing voice that even fifteen years later I can recall with perfect clarity. This chord chart is beautiful to me, and I had to display it in our music room, because looking at it immediately takes me back to my childhood, him singing The Marvelous Little Toy to us, and me begging for him to sing it one more time.


If only he could sing it one more time.

Read more...

Out With the Small, In With the Bigger

Remember this mini makeover I did on Abby's room? Well, in regular Mandie fashion, her room has changed once again. (shocker, I know.)

She has outgrown this small dresser and so I went in search of a replacement. After a lot of deliberation, (because when you are decorating a nine year old girl's room you don't have complete control,) we decided on the Ikea Tarva six drawer dresser. The price was great, and cheaper than most of the things I found on Craigslist, which is just wrong, btw. Plus its raw wood, which meant I had a clean palate to paint on. Abby wanted a white dresser with cute drawer knobs, and so in the midst of painting the bookcases, we primed and painted the dresser with the same white paint. It worked out great.

The wood pulls that come with the dresser are cheap and boring, so we looked around for cuter replacements. We found these adorable drawer pulls for 50% off at Hobby Lobby. It was a little painful forking over money for 12 pulls at $2.50 each, but they really gave the dresser the bit of character that it needed, and really, they are cheaper than most pulls that you get at home improvement stores.

Since this dresser is much bigger than the old one, we had to take out the bookcase to make room, which did not make the owner of this room happy, so maybe we'll try to squeeze it into her room somewhere else.

This gold framed mirror was in another location in the house and we moved it here because it fits the scale better than the white oval mirror that was here before. I decided to leave it gold for now anyway, because I thought the aged patina added some interest to the room. The accessories are mostly thrifted, except the frame from Ikea and ring holder from Target.

Another change we made in her room was to bring in THIS side table that I refinished last year. We sold her other one since it matched the old dresser and we had the yellow one on hand, so we tried it out and I think it looks pretty cute there.

Read more...