Gone Thrifting Lately?

I’ve been doing a little bit of thrifting lately and I thought I would share some of my favorite purchases. First is this little beauty. I got her at an Estate Sale last week. I fell in love the minute I saw it. The price was $5.00 so I snatched it right up. I had set all my stuff down at the front by the register and while I was gathering up all of my stuff to start paying for it a lady asked me “oh, are you still going to get that?” I replied, “oh yes, definitely”, and she replied “oh darn it, I was hoping you didn’t want it anymore and I was going to grab it.” So, would you have bought it for the $5.00 price tag?

At the same sale I also found this, a mini globe bank. I’ve been seeing globes in use as décor all over the internet and I really love them so I wanted one of my own. Unfortunately all of the ones I’ve found recently are priced way too high for my tastes. Then I saw this in a 25 cent bowl at the same estate sale where I got the scale. I snatched it right up. For display purposes I just set it on this candle holder to give it some height and to make sure it didn’t go rolling off the cubby wall hanging. So, what do you think? Would you have bought it for 25 cents? What a steal huh?

I actually placed both of these items in the same vignette on the top of my new splurge PB cubby wall hanging. Here they are all put together with yet another thrift find, the milk glass goblet that I got at a thrift store for $2.00. The blue Ball jars were kinda expensive for me but I just really wanted them. I got 4 of them with the lids for $20, then an additional $12 shipping on Ebay. The rest of the stuff in the cubby I’ve been accumulating over time. Some of the items I’ve bought at thrift stores, garage sales, or estate sales, and others were gifts or just stuff I’ve had for awhile.

So, this particular estate sale was really awesome. I got quite a few more things at the same Sale. I bought a bunch of plates for my “in progress” plate wall, some Dr. Seuss books for my sweet grandbaby, the salt shaker I used in the previous post (actually I got 3 of them and broke 2 of them when I dropped them, bummer!), a set of 3 stacking gold Italian tables, and a few more things that I just can’t remember right now.

So, what do you think of my recent thrifty purchases? Would you have bought them too? I’m linking up to…

DIY Mini Button Flower Bouquet Tutorial

As promised, here is the tutorial on how I created my mini button flower bouquet. To refresh your memory, here is the finished piece…

So, let’s gather what we will need. You are going to need:

1. A glass salt or pepper shaker. Preferably you are going to want to find one that just looks cool. I’ve been collecting these whenever I can find them, either at garage sales, estate sales, antique stores, or thrift stores.

2. A bag of pearl beads. I got mine at Hobby Lobby for $2.00 (priced $3.99 and then half off).

3. Buttons, you will need one button for every “flower” you are going to make. This is a personal preference, just pick whatever you want. I wanted mine to look vintagey and to stay in a black and white pallet so my buttons are all white.

4. Scrapbook paper or any other paper to cut your flowers out of. I chose a paper that is actually a print. You could even just use pages from an old book. If you want to do colors, just pick some paper you like.

5. A flower punch. I had mine from Stampin Up and it was the perfect size. It made 3 different sized flowers and I used 2 of them, the 2 larger ones.

6. Wire. The wire will need to be strong enough to stand upright, but flexible enough that you can bend it. I just used what I had which just happens to be 17 gauge wire for electric fencing…hey it worked!

7. Wire cutters and pliers.

8. A hole puncher.

OK, so you have it all gathered? Let’s get started. The first thing I did was just fill the salt shaker with the pearls.

Then, I just cut my flowers out of the paper using the punch. After I cut out the flowers, I punched a hole in the center of each one using my hole puncher.

Then I looked for some buttons to match up to the flowers. I actually love the ones I picked.

So, now it was time to assemble my flowers. I just guestimated at the length of the wire, but basically you want it a little longer than what the finished flower will need to be. Then I thread one end of the wire through one of the holes in the button. Bend the wire at the end and thread the end through the other hole in the button. Like this:

Then I took my pliers and clamped the wire together and thread both ends through the hole in the middle of the paper flower.

At this point I just kind of experimented with it and figured out a way to make everything stay secure. In the end I just took the wire and bent it straight across to basically hold up the paper flower. If there was any wire sticking outside of the flower I just trimmed it with the wire cutter.

The last step is to just put one flower through each hole in the salt shaker lid. Now I will admit that I wish this one has a few more holes so I could add a few more flowers, but this one just had the 6 holes so that is the number of flowers I could add. I’m super excited about some of the others I have because they have tons more holes to fill with flowers. I think it’s a judgment call though. You can either fill each hole with a flower or just fill it as much as you would like. So, let’s take a look at the finished piece again.

And, here she is in her new little cubby in my PB cubby wall hanging.

So, let’s sum up cost and time. Total cost of this was: $3.00. Now to be fair I already had the buttons, paper, punches, and wire so they didn’t cost me anything. All I had to buy was the salt shaker (which I got at an estate sale for $1.00 and the pearls which I already mentioned I got for $2.00). Total time from the start of gathering supplies to putting her in the cubby was about 30 minutes (which includes experimenting time figuring out how to secure the flowers on the wire.) Not bad for a cute little vase, is it?

Weekend Roundup

I can honestly say that I am extremely proud of myself over what all I accomplished over the weekend. It was a very productive weekend indeed!

To start with on Friday night my sister, our husbands, and myself helped a friend move. Someone at work asked me “doesn’t helping friends move end in your 20’s?” In most cases that would be true but in this case, she needed our help and we gave it. It was a good feeling to be able to help out a friend in need. You see we happen to have a very nice covered trailer we use to haul our motorcycles and it just happens to be quite handy to move other things as well. Since she didn’t have access to a truck she asked if we could help and we did. It was only one trip with just the big pieces of furniture that she was unable to fit in her SUV so it took an hour at the most.

On Saturday the hubs and I went to my parents and started the project of tiling their backsplash. My dad had just redone their kitchen (replaced counter tops, rebuilt some cabinets, rearranged a few things) but they had just the blank wall for the backsplash. I offered to pay for and install a tile one instead. So, a couple of weeks ago we went to the store and picked out the tile and this weekend we got it installed. The work wasn’t that hard actually to lay the tile. The prep work actually took the majority of the time. I did take a before picture but not on my camera so I don’t have that one handy. However, I did take a “middle of the road” picture (aka after the tile was laid but before we grouted) and then of course a final picture. I still need to go back and take a really final picture after my parents replace all the outlets and face plates and she puts her stuff all back. But, in the meantime, here are a couple of the pictures I did take. This is my mom making us a peanut butter and jelly sammy before we got started on the grouting. The tile is a recycled glass so not only does it match and is it super pretty and neutral, it’s eco-friendly to boot!

And, here is the tile after grouting (but before caulking, putting in the corner-round trim, and finishing up the outlets).

I told my parents I think we need to install a couple of under cabinet lights now too. With the dark counter tops and then the dark tile it is really dark in the corners. I think one of those small under cabinet lights would look so good and just really highlight the tile. Isn’t it really pretty though? I have to give my husband a huge grandiose shout-out too. He and I did all the work on this so he pretty much gave up his weekend to help out my parents and I sure do appreciate that. I married a winner!!!!!

Now, while just accomplishing the tile backsplash was really enough of an accomplishment for the weekend, that isn’t all I did actually! On Saturday after we got the tile up I went home and did a few more projects of my own. I hung up some more things on my entry room gallery wall and it is almost complete. It’s complete enough though to show you what it looks like. I have just a few more finishing touches to call it done and when it is, I will do an entire post on the gallery wall from start to finish…but in the meantime, here it is now:

The things I got done this weekend are the turquoise key plate hung in one of the frames at the top, the white curly frame hung inside the rectangular gold frame on the bottom, and the gold curly frame hung lengthwise on the far left by the chalk board. I have just 2 more empty frames to fill and then a few finishing touches and this puppy will be done!

After I hung those up, I finished yet another project as well. I’d seen these on Pinterest and other places and just had to have one. I’ve been collecting old salt and pepper shakers for awhile because I plan on making these not just for myself but for gifts for friends for Christmas too. This was a super easy, relatively inexpensive project. I made this “bouquet”:

I put this in my new cubby in the living room. Here she is in place now:

I have a full tutorial on that project that I will post later today or tomorrow with pictures on the entire process.

Then to finish out the projects I made myself an earring holder. If you are a Pinterest fan I’m sure you’ve seen these all over Pinterest so I didn’t take a whole slew of pictures throughout the process because I’m sure there are tons of tutorials on this project all over. I know they are super trendy right now but I just loved it so I decided to make my own. I just stapled pretty lace in strips in an empty frame and hung it up by my vanity to hold earrings. It looks so pretty and now I can see all my “non set matching earrings” at once. Earrings that match an entire set (earrings, necklace, and bracelet) are all stored differently but I had a bunch of earrings that are singles and I would constantly forget what I had so this is great. I used the lace trim from Stampin Up and a frame I got at a garage sale about a year ago for a $1.00.

So, those were all my Saturday projects…in addition to the tiling and 4 loads of laundry, watering my flowers and herbs, straightening up the house, watching a movie I hadn’t seen, and spending a lovely dinner at home with my hubby. On Sunday I was a lot more tired when we finished the grouting but I still did another 2 loads of laundry and one more project, but I didn’t finish it enough to take pictures, so that’s another post to come later. Hopefully I will finish it up tonight and can post about it later in the week.

So, what about you? Did you have a productive weekend? I am really happy with myself and I felt good this morning waking up and starting my work week over knowing I didn’t just stay on the couch all weekend. Yay me!

A Splurge from Craig’s List – Entry Room Makeover Part 6

Well, my entry way is really coming along and I wanted to share one more thing with you this week. This has been my biggest splurge in the room to date, but it’s one I am totally in love with. I have shared with you already how things are looking…

So, I’m really liking things…except for these pesky chairs!

They definitely do NOT match anything in the room, but I liked them enough. I think the lines and style are fine, but the finish and the fabric would need updating. That was originally my plan (once I got to the point where I could do it that is). But then yesterday while killing some time I was looking over the internet and took a peak at Craig’s List for my town and found a listing for 2 antique Victorian chairs. I clicked on the picture and fell in love! She had paid $400 for them and she was asking $95 each or best offer. I texted her and asked if they were still available and if she would take $150 for both of them. She AGREED! Yippee Skippy!!!!!

Take a look at my lovely new additions now!

The only downside to the entire thing was my husband actually said “They sure are ugly!” Can you believe it? I mean what does he not understand? They are gorgeous! I’ll admit, I’m not married to the pink velvet upholstery but the chairs themselves are beautiful and the pink is not bad at all and actually goes well in the room. So, now my sad looking chairs from before will be on Craig’s List and I don’t have to do anything to finish this part of the room now. YAY!!!!! I’ll admit though, the $150 price tag was a little steep so as this post is titled this was my big splurge for the room. However, I’m really happy with them and I’m glad I got them. No buyers remorse here baby! So, do you agree with my husband or with me? Do you like them or do you think “they are so ugly?” I would love some comments and if you agree with me I’m going to show my husband…if you agree with him…well I may just not show him your comment but I appreciate it anyway! ha ha ha

Have a great weekend everyone! (I’ll be sharing my weekend project sometime next week…we are putting in a tile backsplash in my mom’s kitchen so stay tuned!)

Shadow Box Revamp

I recently went to a garage sale and came upon a couple of these wonderful print tray drawers. I’ve seen these all over but most of the time they were just a little too pricey for me. This time the person running the garage sale was a friend of mine and when I asked how much she wanted for them she said…oh, how about $3.00 each. SOLD!

So, on Pinterest recently I saw a couple of these in use and I loved the outcome, so I decided to take on the project and put one of these to use. I wanted to replace an old replicate of one of these drawers that I had in my kitchen.

My first step was to add scrapbook paper to the back of each section. I picked some paper in yellows, blues, with some red too. That is the color scheme that I want to go for when we get around to redoing the kitchen.

The process for doing this was totally random. I didn’t try to follow any set pattern or repetition of papers. I liked how it turned out…very much actually!

Then I just hung it back up in the kitchen. The old hangers even fit the hangers on this one so I didn’t have to even take a nail out of the wall. Now there were some of the objects in the old one that just wouldn’t fit in this one. It is not nearly as deep as the old one. But, instead of lamenting about it I used it as an opportunity to clear out some of the clutter, get rid of some of the stuff that had been put in there but really had no special meaning or significance to me. I have lots of room still open too, but I’m going to be kinda picky about what I put in here so I’m in no rush to get it all filled up.

I put my miniature “Rainbow Row” houses back on the top after I took this picture, it fit so much better on the new one.

So, what do you think? Improvement or not? Would you have bought the drawer for $3.00? I’m linking up to Junker Newby's Would you buy it Wednesday.

Entry Room Re-Do Part Five–China Cabinet Makeover

Whew, this china cabinet has been in the works for months it seems. It just kept getting pushed to the side to work on something else so it’s been sitting there being neglected for so long. It’s time has come finally! She’s been patient long enough!!!! So, I started with this:

You can see a reflection of me taking the picture in the glass if you look. I got this china cabinet many years ago. It was a hand me down from Hot Rod’s great aunt when she was being moved to the nursing home. It was originally a blonde wood (very 70’s!). It was much shorter than this with really squatty legs so I replaced the legs with these slightly taller ones and then painted it the hunter green about 10 years ago when that was the color I was going for in my living room/dining room. Needless to say it was tired and needed an update.

The first step was to empty it out, remove the glass, take the drawer out and then I flipped it over so it was sitting on the top. I wanted to work from the bottom up. So, once it was upside down, I was ready to get started.

I started first by painting the inside of the shelves. I went to Lowes and had them match the Rustoleum Painter’s Touch spray paint Heritage White and the Rustoleum Turquoise spray paints to a satin latex canned paint. I wanted to paint this using rollers and brushes instead of spray paint. My reason behind that is a couple of reasons actually. First of all, this is a rather large piece so if I used spray paint it would take A LOT of paint!!!! Also, it would be very hard to keep the spray paint where I wanted it and not where I didn’t want it since the inside and the outside were going to be 2 drastic different colors.

So, I started on the inside and painted the shelves the heritage white. Charlie had to supervise. ha ha ha

Once I finished the white, I let it dry and then moved on to the outside. I am painting it the same turquoise as the lamp on the table. I used a roller for most of this. I bought the roller for cabinet painting. It was perfect sized and worked great.

I did a couple of coats on both the white and the turquoise while it was upside down and let it dry completely. Then it was time to flip it over to right side up.

I painted all of the top surfaces, touched up a lot of the sides and then let it all dry. I didn’t paint the inside of the cabinets because they won’t be seen and hey…I’m lazy like that!

The next step was to age and distress it up a little. What I did first was grab my sander with 220 grit sand paper and just randomly started sanding things. I did sand the edges everywhere and then just touched the sander here and there on the flat surfaces. I only did this on the turquoise part. I left the white part alone. Then I rubbed a dark walnut stain over the entire piece (outside only, not the shelves) and then rubbed it mostly off. I ended up with a toned down turquoise, distressed piece. I love it!

I let it all dry over night (actually a couple of nights.) Then I decided to try and use a rub on wax to finish it up. Luckily I thought ahead here and decided to try it on the back of the piece first to see how it would look and if I liked the final look. Thank Goodness for small favors! Turns out the wax did not work at all. It was a total failure. I rubbed it on and all it did was completely remove the stain I had put on. I really don’t know what I did wrong here and I’m still trying to figure it out but needless to say the wax was not going to work. I just left it out. I’m just so glad I tried it on a small part of the back so there is only one small square on the back that is no longer stained.

So, if you happen to know what I did wrong here I’m dying to know. I know I’ve seen lots of projects that have been done exactly like this but apparently I just didn’t do something right.

So, now it was time to finish it up. I got the hardware for it at Hobby Lobby. I liked the look of it even though the white doesn’t really match the white of the shelves. I still think it’s ok.

Now it was time to put things back in the shelves and decorate it a little. I’ll admit this is still a work in progress. I’m not quite happy with everything yet but it’s coming along. Here are my first couple of tries…

OK…so I like the second shelf…sort of. I really don’t like the top or the bottom one and the top is really not right. Back to the drawing board…

OK, this is a little better on the top shelf. Still not feeling it completely though. Oh, you may have noticed it is now missing one of the bottom cabinet pulls. It just didn’t work, so I had to replace it. I waited until they put the knobs on sale at Hobby Lobby again so don’t worry, it is back in place now.

I finally decided that the blue Ball jars just weren’t going to work on the top, so once I took them down, everything else just sort of fell into place. I changed out the flowers in the vase at the top instead of my wedding bouquet I put some of the branches with blooms on them in it. I really like it so much better. So, what do you think? I’m still not feeling the large goblets on the bottom shelf. What do you think? Should I paint that middle one? It’s sort of an old gold which kind of goes with the maroon, gold, turquoise, and white color scheme but it just doesn’t seem to belong. What do you think I should do? Here is the final look (for now anyway). I do love “most” of it, but I’m still on the look out for some other things to put on display. My absolute favorite thing in the entire cabinet is the matching plate, cup, and saucer in the middle of the second shelf. I got those when my husband’s grandmother died. It was our only inheritance from her and I just love it so much. I found out later that there was an entire set and they split it all up and gave one place setting to each grand child. I wish I could just buy everyone’s from them but I bet many of them don’t even have it anymore. Not everyone loves old things as much as I do I think!

So, what do you think? Do you like how it turned out? I welcome any and all feedback, both positive and negative!

Would You Buy It Wednesday?

I’m joining in on Junker Newbie's Would you buy it Wednesday? this week.  I really love this weekly post she does.  She posts something she has seen recently while out junking and then we all can chime in on whether or not we would have bought it too.  Then (and this is the best part) we can all submit our own objects.  So, this week I have this:

I’m really not sure what this actually is.  It’s a cute metal box that I think was used to hold 8mm movies, but I really don’t know that for sure.  Anyway, I saw it at Goodwill and decided I wanted it.  It was $2.00.  I have already started on the transformation of it.  I started by taping off the handle and clasp and painted it in Heirloom White.

I painted the outside and the inside as well.  I’ve decided I’m going to use it for a recipe box.  I am going to do some decorating of it now that it’s painted but I’m not quite done with that yet.  So, what do you think?  Would you have bought it?