10K GIVEAWAY

I started this little blog nine months ago, and today I hit the 10,000 page view mark! It's a small milestone, but I don't have any grand intentions with this blog other than to share my projects and ideas to anyone who will listen, so the fact that my blog has been viewed over ten thousand times is an honor.

Knowing that I would be hitting that milestone soon, I started thinking about what I could do as a thank you to those of you that follow my blog. I thought about all sorts of stuff but nothing felt right, and then it hit me. What do I love to do more than anything, and what do I love to share on my blog more than anything? Thrifting!

So here's the deal. Leave me a comment telling me what your favorite blog post of mine has been, and on Saturday I will randomly choose a winner from those who comment. The lucky winner will receive.....drumroll please....... a treasure that I have found (or will find) on my thrift store hunts! I don't know what it is yet, but it will be something fabulous, and something relatively small for shipping purposes. Sorry, you probably won't get an awesome dresser in the mail.

Many of you might think this is a totally lame giveaway, but for those of you that can appreciate a good thrift store find, this is going to be SO. MUCH. FUN! Imagine winning something but having to wait for the package to arrive to find out what it is, and knowing it is coming from someone with impeccably classy thrift store taste and a knack for finding the good stuff? You know you wanna!

So please, leave a comment, and tell your friends! And thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!

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Master Bedroom Updates

One outdated black vinyl headboard: Free

Two yards of woven fabric: $15
Button makers and staples: $12
Two amazing sisters to help you with the project: Priceless

My two younger sisters came over to help with some projects this past week, and one of them was reupholstering our master headboard.

Initially I wanted to buy a new headboard and was looking at styles like this:

But then one day I looked at our headboard and thought, although it's a little boxy, I could recover it and I bet it would look great!

So my sisters came over and deconstructed the headboard and stapled the new fabric on and started on the buttons. I finished the buttons after they left and mounted it on the wall and easy as that, a new headboard for under $30!

After I took the first photo I found this pair of glass lamps for $20 ea. Oh, and then there's the wall. I decided that with a neutral headboard, it was time for some color on the wall, so I went with Wrought Iron by Martha Stewart.

It's incredibly hard to photograph, but it's an awesome color and really completes the room!

What do you think?

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Brass in the Rough

It's a busy day/week but I wanted to share a short little post with you.

I have really grown to love brass. Not the 1980's shiny fake looking brass, but the classic, mid century kind. And I only love it in small doses as accents here and there. So when I'm at the thrift stores, I always look for cool brass pieces, like this awesome brass peacock.

The other day I found this brass vase at a thrift store for $4. I loved the lines, but it was tarnished and unloved.

One way to tell if it is solid brass, and not brass plated, is by holding a magnet to it. Solid brass is not magnetic, but if the magnet sticks, it is probably steel or cast iron, with a brass plating. In this case, the magnet did not stick, so it was solid brass. Score.

I took it home, got out my trusty Brasso, and went to work.

After polishing once with paper towels, I polished again with a soft cloth, which made it really clear and bright. I think I am going to leave this vase out on our kitchen counter for our kids to put their pretty weeds flowers they like to bring me.

So next time you are the thrift store, and you see something brass, forget the stereotype and try to think of brass in a new way!

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Lurve Seat

We have lived in our current home now for almost 18 months, and early on, my vision for our front room was to have a piano and a seating area. We already owned a lot of pieces that would work in that room, but it needed some additional seating. So this is about how it looked for a long time.

It felt really incomplete, but because the room isn't super large, we knew whatever else we put there needed to be the right size and scale. 

Over the year, I experimented with a couple of thrift store love seats. 

This vintage one pretty much got a heck no from the hubby and family, although it did solidify in our minds that we loved the seating arrangement. I kinda liked it, but it was a little too granny chic. 

The second one was a total fail. It looked great at the store and it was clean, but when I got it home it was just way too much beige and clashed with the chairs, walls, floor....everything. And it looked way too Rooms to Go contemporary for me (no offense.) Somehow I overlooked all of that at the store because the $90 price tag was too tempting. Good news is I sold both of these love seats on craigslist for more than I purchased them for, so I wasn't out any money.

For the longest time I had my eye on this love seat from Target. It was small, neutral and I liked the style, but every time I saved up enough money for it, it was either out of stock online, or it wasn't on sale anymore. It cycled like that for over a year, and then they raised the price because of its popularity I guess, so I finally decided to give up on it and look at other options. 

My problem is that I'm picky, but I am SUPER cheap. Bad combination when you want things to look just right. I really wanted a love seat for less than $350, and of course everything I was finding was way over that. 

 I liked these two from Macy's, and they mark them down pretty low (around $500) when they are on sale, but regular price is $800+. Yikes. 

I also liked the Karlstad from Ikea, but I resisted because I have a thing with buying ikea furniture. I feel like its a furniture store for the masses and I didn't want to get sucked in. But once I sat on the Karlstad and looked at the price and color options, I realized it was exactly what I needed. So I got over my Ikea snobbery and took the plunge. 

I picked the Sivik slip cover, which works great for the room (and isn't nearly as dark as the picture,) but what I love is that you can get a slipcover custom made, so if I ever want a change, I have options. 

I'd still like to put a rug in this room, but aside from that, I think this room is finally complete! 

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The Caillou Vase

I got this vase for fifty cents at Salvation Army the other day.

It has a gross 1980's peach paint job, which immediately made me think of Caillou's head, a nightmare in so many ways.

But despite that fatal flaw, I liked the shape, size and price, so I bought it.

When I got it home I checked out the paint job, which, like thirty year old wallpaper, easily peeled away once I got it started. I peeled and scrubbed away all the nasty peach paint and realized I kinda liked what was under neath. Bye bye creepy, whiny headed vase!

My sister is redecorating her office, including a huge wall of beautiful built ins, and coral is one of her colors, so I decided to do a dipped look with some coral paint. I used Martha Stewarts Multi-Surface Pearl paint in Rubber Ball.

First I taped it off.

Then I applied one coat of paint, let it dry and did two more coats.

The finished product is definitely better than the original! And not bad for fifty cents!

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Flash Shopping

Many people ask me, "How do you have time to decorate your house?" And "I never have time to shop! How do you do it?" Well, let me introduce you to something I like to call flash shopping. On those rare occasions when I am kid-less and I have to run to the grocery store for a few things, I like to conveniently go to Target because it is located right next to Ross. And for those of you that have a Ross (or Marshalls, Tuesday Morning, Homegoods, or TJMaxx) know that their inventory changes daily so it's different, and hopefully a new experience, every time you go in.

Flash shopping doesn't have to be done without kids, but if your child isn't up for the challenge, then find a time when you can go alone. This technique also works for thrift stores, although I usually dedicate a little more time since there's so much junk treasure to go through.

So before going into the store I set my phone timer for TEN minutes, and once the timer goes off, I absolutely have to stop what I am doing and either leave the store empty handed, or go check out. This helps me not waste time, because we all know those stores can be time sucking vortexes, and it also helps me justify going in once a week.

When I do my flash shopping at these stores, I make a mental note of the areas of the store I want to look at, and it almost always includes

Pillows
Rugs
Lamps
Picture frames
Accessories (where I seem to spend the bulk of my time)
Baskets
Mirrors and Art

Many times there are specific things I am looking for, but other times I just like to go for the thrill of the hunt, because if you're like me, there's nothing like finding a good deal!

Because our Ross is small and never very full of inventory (boo), I can easily hit all these spots in ten minutes. However, when Homegoods by our house opens, (squeeeeeee!!!) attempting a flash shopping trip there will be futile I'm sure. But maybe at some point I will even be able to only spend ten minutes in there too. We'll see about that.

Anyway, on this particular trip I took a few photos of things that caught my eye.

 These pillows were $17 for the pair, and I liked the color and pattern.

 Not sure what I would do with this large square monkey fist, but in the right room, it would be pretty cool. Maybe on a bookcase in a nautical boys room?

These bookends are pretty awesome, but I think they were $12.99 ea. so I had to pass. 

This elephant is definitely unique, and standing alone, he's pretty bold, but he would look great in a well staged bookcase with other colorful accents. 

This 5x7 rug was a great color but not sure it was worth $50, since I've gotten rugs here before for $35 before.

Love this metal basket for $9! 

This colored jar with a jute rope is super cute and there were also two other larger sizes in the same style. I think this one, which was the smallest one, was $8.99, which wasn't worth it to me.

I like the detail in this basket, but it was a little fragile and not practical for kids.

I really liked this basket, but it was a little lopsided. The size was perfect to use as a toy basket or for blankets.

I am never impressed with Ross's art collection, mainly because I'm not into Marilyn Monroe, Bob Marley, or colorful downtown city scapes, but sometimes they have a few decent art pieces. This was a cute canvas, especially for $16. It would look great in the right space.

I don't know why I was drawn to this little bird house, but I thought it would be adorable in a little rose garden. Which I don't have. So I left it on the shelf. 

There was nothing that I absolutely couldn't live without, so I went home empty handed on this shopping trip. 

So the next time you are out shopping and you pass a store with home decor, try out my flash shopping technique, and let me know how it goes!

Happy treasure hunting!

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Identity Crisis

We have a four bedroom house, and three of the bedrooms are upstair, with the master downstairs. My daughter has her own room and we have chosen to have the boys share a room, because the space is large and they actually prefer to sleep in the same room right now.

So the third bedroom has a few different functions. It serves as a guest room, my husband uses it as a work space when he occasionally works from home, and all our crafts and sewing and such are stored in there.

Our guest room used to look like this, with a twin bed, but we moved the mattress out when our youngest child graduated from a toddler bed. So the room has been bed-less for a while. I also stole the pictures above the bed and the rug to use in the playroom, so it was looking pretty empty.

We occasionally have visitors, and have always thought of putting a queen bed in this room, so we were excited when my bro-in-law asked if we wanted to keep their guest room queen mattress and storage bed for them while their house is being built. Although we don't plan on keeping this particular bed, it'll be good to try out a queen in this space.

This bed definitely needed a headboard, so I found a really cool headboard on craigslist for $15, and because a finial had fallen off, I talked them down to $10.

This headboard is AMAZING. It deserves to go in an awesome, well designed room, not in a hodge-podge room with an identity crisis. But you know the best thing about this room? Aside from the $10 headboard, I haven't spent any additional money by using things I already had.

I'm not sure I want to spend a lot of time and money redoing this room, especially since the bed and mattress aren't going to stay. And we may move my husband's office downstairs (which is a large budget goal for the future,) and I also want to improve the craft storage in this room by creating a more functional closet. I'm not even sure I want to paint the headboard, because this room doesn't have a clear vision yet. So for now, this room will remain the hodge-podge room, and I will continue to remain frustrated by it. But sometimes when designing a room, you just gotta wait it out for when the time is right.

What about you? Do you have a room with an identity crisis?

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