Bookcase Revamp

I bought this little bookcase at the thrift store months ago. I actually hadn't been thrifting in a long time (and haven't much since then either), but I stopped in to get my fix that day. I wasn't planning on buying anything at all (isn't that how it always seems??), but I glanced over to the side & saw this calling to me. We actually did need a bookcase to house some extra books, and I wanted it to go in our guest room. I had plans for a pretty red & cream chevron pattern (which I may still use on another project), but I am so in love with my zebra pattern paper, and it's easier for covering big areas, so here I went with another zebra print project. Just for retrospect, here are some of the many projects where I have used this patterned paper:

- My old frame-turned-jewelry-tray re-purposing project

- My framed calendar vinyl project

- My organizer re-purpose (a.k.a. my first ever Mod Podge project)

- My framed "J"

So on this project, I started by spray painting the bookcase with Krylon 2-in-1 primer & paint in Cream. Not really thrilled with the finished look of this paint. I have used it on two projects so far, and I didn't like the coverage it provided on either one. I was happier using cheap-y spray paint from Dollar General than this stuff! Who knew?!

I then, of course, lightly distressed it, 

and applied a simple clear coat...

I did the painting in the basement when it was a little warmer, then I got bored in the basement and decided to move it upstairs to the living room to paper it. That's the only downfall of my basement crafting area- it can get really lonely down there by myself.

The trickiest part was matching up the paper roll with the sides of the bookcase, and holding it there while I trimmed the paper...

I papered the edges also, just to give it more color...

...and I also papered the back...

Now, my Before & After!

BEFORE

AFTER

Here it is in our guest room, 

now fully stocked with our overrun of books. 

That's a picture of my dad when he was little. Is he not adorable in that pic? Gah, I love it! :)

It is so nice to now have extra storage in our guest room! I highly recommend repurposing thrift store finds- even cheap-y laminate pieces like this one- for your simple furniture needs throughout your home. You won't have much money or time invested, and you'll have a piece that you uniquely transformed yourself. 

Love it!

Thanksgiving Weekend '12

We had a great four-day Thanksgiving weekend- full of rest, eating, family time, shopping & decorating. On Thursday (Day One), we hosted lunch at our house for my family. I took just a few pics before everyone got there (leave it to me to never think about taking pics WHILE family is there)...

These are just a few of my Thanksgiving table- just kept it simple this year...

This is my little turkey platter that I scored on clearance at Dollar General last year. DG is really stepping it up on their decor!

Thursday night, we went to Zach's mom's for dinner. Only one pic really turned out that was taken that night...

It was a full day, needless to say. Then, I headed out that night at 11:00 to meet up with my mom & her best friend for some Black Friday madness! We stayed out all of NINE hours-ALL NIGHT!
And it was AWESOME!!

Friday (Day Two) was pretty much a blur of a day. I didn't do much but lie around when I got home that morning, but keep in mind, I had already put in a full day.

Here's a little pic I took right before the doors were opened at Belk & the stampede began (this was right around midnight)...

... and we were right smack-dab in the middle of it!

Oh, and here's a pic I was able to take of the craziness that was the Belk shoe department- Hello, boot sale!

Yes, it is insane, but it's so much fun for us! We really enjoy the tradition of it. (By the way, this was my second year in a row to get the exact pair of boots both my mom & I wanted. It pays to wait it out, I'm telling ya'! I weaved into the crowd, and with a little bit of sifting through the boxes, found what we were looking for!) :) 

We stayed at the mall & around the mall area all night, just long enough to be there to line up for another store opening at 6 AM...

We had such a great time! We made it home by about 8 AM, and crashed. My sweetie picked up our tree & wreath that day, hauled them home, and decorated most of the tree himself. Bless his heart! I snapped just a couple pics...

I hope to post more on our decor later on. I am changing up some of it this year- I'm sticking with the "less is more" motif. :)

I finally got up & around on Saturday (Day Three), but since the Iron Bowl was in the middle of the afternoon, we didn't get a lot done at the house that day. Roll Tide, by the way!!! (more on that later...)

I did accomplish the front porch transformation over the weekend.

  This is what one side of the porch looked like on Thursday...

...then on Saturday, it looked like this! :) ...

I am loving having this urn out on the front porch.
You can do so much with it year-round!

On Sunday afternoon (Day Four), I did a little more decorating for Christmas (which is still not completely done, by the way), and me & my sweetie watched some TV & relaxed. We don't get too many of those days, so we enjoy them while we can. We have already made our Christmas movie list, and have marked off one already. We hope to watch all of our favorites this year!

I realized I took a lot of pics of me & the babies over the long weekend. I love getting to spend more time with them when I'm home.

We're really looking forward to the SEC Championship game this weekend- I'm a little nervous about this one, but I was also nervous about last week's game. Hopefully, the nervousness will turn out to be a wasted effort like last weekend!

Hope you all have a great one!

3 Things For Under $10!

Hope everyone had a great weekend! We enjoyed our last Saturday before football season with a trip to see Zach's mom. We had a wonderful lunch with her at The Boathouse, one of our favorites, then shopped a little that afternoon. We then had a wonderful service at church on Sunday morning, followed by a great lunch, then we spent the afternoon getting things done at home.

Lately, we are very excited about some home improvement projects in the works around here!! We are having ceramic tile put down in a couple weeks in our kitchen & two bathrooms, so tile is one of the things we shopped for on Saturday- it was so fun!! That project is going to be so awesome once it's done! I would love to say that we could tackle that project on our own, but we're not that brave. Might as well have it done correctly the first time, right?
I will post some before & after pics once it's done!

Other than that, we are counting down the days to our 4th Anniversary vacation to Walt Disney World!! I am still in disbelief that we are coming up on 4 years of marriage! We can't wait to spend it at our favorite place on Earth!! :)

So, I wanted to kick the week off by posting about my lunch break thrifting trip last week, because I am still so giddy about it!! I scored 3 items & paid $9.00. Yep, I got out for under 10 bucks. Woohoo! That's what I call a successful thrifting trip.

I wanted to also share somewhat of an "After" pic of each item, showing where it is in our home now (kinda' like what I did in this post), but I haven't really found a place for all of it yet- ha! I always want to show what I've done with my finds, but I also have to find the time to do that. Two of these things will more than likely be used at Christmas time, anyway. If you want to check out some other thrifting posts of mine, I'll make it easier for ya': there's one here, here and here. :)

Before we get to the important part though, I want to share what I scored at my first stop, The Dollar Tree, that day...

I am surprised every time I browse through that store. They really do have some cute things, not to mention the everyday bargains that save you a trip to the lovely Wal-Mart.

I just loved these little ceramics! If you remember, I bought these ceramics there last year, and set them out again this year...

Yay for cheap, but not cheap-looking, seasonal decor! Seriously, these could pass for a Kirkland's purchase- easily! My sweetie even mentioned how nice they are for a $1-a-piece purchase, so you know it's noticeable. :)

Now, back to the good stuff...I only had about 10 minutes of my lunch hour left, but wanted to stop by the thrift store right quick. And I am so glad I did!

I grabbed up this little beauty first...

 This was $1.00!

I have in mind to use this in my crafting area in our basement. I am wanting to just leave it as is- the chippy wood is so pretty,

I don't want to cover it up! 

I spotted this next...

This was $3.00!

Now, I KNOW I don't need another wreath form, but I couldn't pass this one up. (I've said that way too many times before.) The last wreath form I bought is versatile, and can be used for anything. This one is just a Christmas wreath only. This one is very heavy & filled with lush branches. It was definitely not a cheap-o wreath in its past life. (FYI, the first thing I'll do is take off the apples & bow.) :) 

I am planning on dressing this baby up with some deco mesh!

Lastly, I came to this...

This was $5.00!

This was a dusty little thing when I first spotted it in the store. But, you can easily wipe that right off. I am also not really happy with some of the items stuck in this little arrangement, but that is also easily fixable.

I have big plans for this beauty- I am wanting to mix & match a lot of different things to dress the arrangement up. I am hoping it will be my go-to arrangement for my dining table, which I've never really had before. This is mainly because of the expense of most of them & I have never really found anything I'm in love with...until now. You can add & take away to make it fit every single season and occassion... Yes, please!

I am just loving the heavy urn too! It is crazy how heavy

& sturdy it is!

I will keep you all posted on our home improvement ventures! I may not be posting much for a little while, with our vacation & "remodeling" projects going on, but I hope to still keep working on little crafting projects in the middle of it all.

And, just in case I don't  have a chance to post again before the weekend... ROLL TIDE!!

Laundry Letters Re-Do

Wow! What a great weekend we had!! Me & my sweetie went yard-saling Saturday morning, and found a few little things. Then that night, I had a blast with some awesome ladies from our church women's group at the Vaudeville Cafe Murder Mystery Dinner Theater- and it didn't hurt that we went shopping & hit Krispy Kreme on the way home. We had a great time together! I also made it through our trio song on Sunday morning. Yay! It was a blessing to have the privelege of singing with two very talented friends, Miranda & Dr. Roger. God is good!!

So, this post shows a project re-do. I was not happy with the results of my original project, the Ballard Designs Laundry Letters Knock-Off, so I decided to take it apart and do something different. They did closely resemble the Ballard Designs' look that I was wanting to achieve, but I just didn't like the look of it anymore. You've gotta' change things up every now & then, especially if you're just not happy with it or you're tired of it. It also took up a lot of space on the top of our storage cabinet in the laundry room,
and I just wasn't having that.

I am so much happier with this second end result- the white in the first version was just too bland, and I didn't like having the letters all together like they were. So, do they look better now or the way they were before?...I know what my favorite is,
but you can be the judge.

I started by taking the letters off of the wooden "stand" that I created. I was able to remove the hot glue fairly easily, by just scraping it off. Next, I was definitely tired of the plain, bland white, so I wanted to add a little more color. I went to Hobby Lobby and got the scrapbook paper, and began cutting away. (This was one of the items I squeezed in at the end of my No-Spend July.) I am just in love with their decorative paper selection. I probably spent 20 minutes in that aisle alone, just going through the pretty designs. As you can see, I am in love with damask- in any color. I thought these colors went well together, and they tie in the colors in our laundry room wall border.

I got a piece of cardboard to use as my table cover (I learned the hard way that you need something to protect your surface if you're going to start carving away with an X-acto knife).
I simply traced the letters.

I made the outline a little bigger, just to allow room for error.

I made sure they matched up closely, then grabbed up my Mod Podge and a good foam brush. (I just noticed these next pics have totally different lighting- that's the difference in the fluorescents in the basement & the soft lighting in the kitchen. Crazy!)

I Mod Podged the letters, then carefully spread the scrapbook paper out on top. After letting it dry for a full day, I then brushed Mod Podge on top of the paper to seal. I sand-papered the edges to rub off the excess paper.

I didn't realize until I started cutting that I had (subconsciously) picked out a red pattern for my "A." I am SO ready for football season!! Roll Tide!!

The letters are so light-weight (they also came from Hob Lob), so I was able to hang them up with poster tack. Yay for no holes in the wall and easy hang up!

Here they are in their new home, on the wall of our
laundry room...

And here's a Before & After...

BEFORE

AFTER

 

They really add a pop of color to this once-bare wall, and we now have extra storage on top of our cabinet.

Hope you all have a great rest of the week! We are ready to see one of our favorite comedians, James Gregory, who will be in our little city this Friday. It's always great to have something

to look forward to!