Free?!?

A couple of weeks ago, the kiddos and I had a really early morning.  That tends to lead to a bit of tension and a lot of cabin fever, so I decided we need to get out of the house and take little cruise through our neighborhood.    On what is usually a routine bee-line for the local Sonic, I spotted an unusually large curbside garbage pile in the distance (our neighborhood does those monthly bulk pickups.) As I came closer to the pile, I realized it was not a garbage pile-but a furniture pile... Yes Sir.  A furniture pile.  Not a smashed up, dumped off sort of pile, but a thought out, gently placed stack of a dresser, night stand, sofa and love seat.  Now it wasn't the sofa and love seat that caught my eye.  I wanted the dresser and night stand.  Well, honestly, I've been seeing this style of dresser around blog land and I have been lusting over it BIG TIME!  Now, I gotta tell ya, I felt a little-no a lot-anxious about taking things off some one's curb.  What if the stuff was sitting there waiting to be picked up by someone else? I felt like I needed to ask permission, so I asked for their junk... The woman looked at me like I was a bit loopy and said "Um, yeah, go ahead and take it..."  I felt like I had just won the lottery!  I practically skipped back to the pickup, and then it hit me.  Here is a full sized dresser and little ole me to get it into the back of a jacked up pick up??  Yep, I'm gonna make it happen even if I break a foot doin it... :) To make a long story short- I got that dresser AND night stand into my pickup, took my babies to Sonic for a milkshake and went home to get to work.  However, I did leave my finds in the pickup to unload when Soup got home.

In usual "Brittney fashion" I didn't get before pictures, even though this sat in my living room, behind my couch for quite some time...

I am so.very.happy. with the way they turned out.

 

And the days get shorter...

 Well, we've picked out a preschool for our oldest Little Miss. :(  I am not ready to let her into the world, but I do understand that it is best to help her little personality flourish.

  The girls have picked up an new hobby...

  The Little Mister mastered crawling and taught himself to pull up on things, practically in the same week.

  We have nearly completed our kitchen reno.  Work is progressing in the sun room, dining room, and living room.  I hit the mother load a an awesome estate sale this week.  We have just been flat out busy in general over the past two months.  I thought summer time was a time for relaxing and vacationing, but that hasn't happened for us yet! Four more weeks til school starts? Boooooo. 

Here is what I've been working on. 

This piece was in really great shape, but I had somewhere specific to place it, so it naturally needed to be painted.  This is going in Little Sis' room.  I received her pillowcases, which will be the focal point of her "design."  After Soup gets her lovely wallpaper textured over, I can slap some paint on those shabby walls.... I can't wait!

Croctastic!

I was strollin through a local craft store a couple of days ago brainstorming for a desk that I refinished a few years back.  On the scrapbook paper aisle I came upon an UH-MAZING find.  Faux croc paper.  This stuff looks sooooo REAL! SCORE!  The minute I saw it, I knew exactly what I would do.

To add to my freakish, over the top, excitement for this project, I was rocking the Little Mister during The Nate Show (soo addicted to) yesterday and low and behold what is he chatting about?  A $12,000 Ralph Lauren croc cocktail table and how you too can get this look... YEAH BABY! 
Well I forgot to take before pics because I was way too excited to get this underway.  Here ya go...

Soup and I also did a little work in our back yard as well.  The pool area is supposed to be calm and relaxing.  Ours is just down right stressing me out.  I feel like I need to close my eyes every time I walk out, but that wouldn't be a good idea because I would totally trip over one of the stinkin posts jutting up out of the concrete.  The previous owners needed MAJOR protection around the pool, and I get that, but I think they went a little over board.  Anyway, we have a looong list of things to do back here, starting with this lovely dirt bed here.  Before I took this photo, I removed the rock garden that previously lived here.  In all honesty, I do NOT qualify a pile of cement squares and quartz rock to be a "garden," but that's just me. 

We added some tropical plants, some oleander (which I'll be sure not to let my little ones munch on, it's poisonous), and some other little purple flowered creeper that Big Sis picked out.  Soup lined the bed with some really pretty stones so that all the dirt and mulch doesn't seep out into the walk.  I think it finished up nicely, can't wait to get crackin on the other areas!

I'm sure it will be a fabulous haven for the DISGUSTING  lizards that call our dwelling their home. YUCK!

Here is Little Sis doin some work.   As you can see our list is still in need of some check marks.  Fencing, concrete work, those stinkin posts... It could possibly never end.  :)

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A black and white story.

I bought this amazing mini chest at a "marriage" sale about a month ago.  I thought the idea of the marriage sale was pretty cute. The new couple had previously been married and were getting rid of all their stuff from their old relationship.  Great for me because I totally scored on this find and a larger chest with mirror.  I also purchased a sweet little frenchy set of nesting tables that I will be featuring soon.  So here is the before of Miss Amelia.

This chest is built with fabulous maple and extremely sturdy.  I planned on painting it from the beginning, but Soup put up a great fight.  He's all about the stain!  It did have a nice grain, but the warm rustic look just isn't what I'm goin for in Littlest's room.  Here's how it turned out!

 I am super happy with the clean chic look!  I'm sure it will look fabulous in her room! As you can see, this is not the icy purple, feminine little girl room I want for Littlest Miss.  This is in fact our sun room.  It's my photo room because it has the best light in our house and has the ONLY decently painted walls in our entire house.  Sad that there is only about 5 sq ft of nice paint, but still... :)  I'm workin on it!  I hope to have some energy to finish Bub's room this week, and then you can see some house progress! Yay!

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Let there be light!

I've been itching to start this lamp since the second I saw it sitting on the table amidst the junk at the yard sale.  It painted up VERY nicely, but I knew I couldn't use the old shade because I didn't like the size.  I wanted to slim the whole silhouette.  I was wanting just a plain cylindrical shade, no sloping, so I figured I could make one-easy enough... Did I have poster board? No.  Matte board? No.  Any type of flexible plastic something? No....... Soupy finally said, "Did you ever think about going to the store to buy one?"  Where's the creative, Susie Homemaker, I did it all by myself fun in that? Well, guess what? I caved and went to Target.  And guess what else? They didn't have what I wanted.  So I settled. 

I absolutely LOVE it! I am soooo happy with the results! I hope this new lamp inspires you girls to go out and snatch up that fabulously figured but maybe not so made up find and fix her up yourself!  Here's how I did it.  First, I removed the old lampshade.  You screw off the top screw and remove the shade.  I then taped off the piece that holds the light bulb and the base of the cord, where it attaches to the lamp.  I spray painted the entire base a high gloss black.   I couldn't leave well enough alone with a white shade, I wanted to jazz it up a bit.  I couldn't find any gross grain ribbon in my stash, so I used some ric rac.  I may change it later, we'll have to see how it looks when the whole room is complete.  So, I hot glued the ric rac along the bottom and top edges and then popped on a flower with a bead accent.

Before I attached the new shade, I had to modify the lamp a bit because there was a large metal framework protecting the light bulb.  I removed that, then had to remove the light bulb to slide the new shade to where it could sit under the bulb(weird placement I know, I should have taken pictures-but you can figure it out if you need to!).  Hope you like!

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Zebra Craze

So, just had to share these photos because I am so so so IN LOVE! These chairs look so fabulous at my dining room table! If that room looked anywhere near presentable, I would show you.  I don't think you want to see photos of a room that has polka dotted walls because of removed floor to ceiling mirrors!! To do list keeps growing: texture, painting, decorating...  Anyhow, here is the before of my dingy garage sale chairs!

Here is the after!

Lovely! I have a few people interested in these, so hopefully they are on their way to a new home!

Also, I painted the lamp a chic glossy black but I'm not going to share until I've got the shade. I can't decide if I want the PBTeen one or if I want to make my own! It'll be a surprise!

Vintage

I looked up the meaning of vintage this morning because for some reason I associate the word vintage with having to be soooooo old.  Like before the 70's.  But the actual meaning is: old, old fashioned, dated.  Interesting.  In that case, I'm definitely a vintage piece collector! So, check out these awesome vintage chairs the kids and I found at a yard sale this morning!

Littlest was so proud of our find. She just had to be in the photo! My favorite find is the lamp.  As I said before, I'm trying to copy a PB Teen room for Little Miss and this lamp is exactly what I've been looking for! I'll paint it glossy black and slap a chic shade on her and call it good!

(via PBteen)

Stay tuned for these updates! If you're interested in the chairs let me know and I can cover them to your needs!

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