Thrift store inspiration for the Thanksgiving table

This year was the first year that I have hosted the big family Thanksgiving get-together. With a burst of motivation, I decided to dress up the table a bit. My inspiration for this table came from 2 candlesticks that I found on my trip to the Unique thrift store. When walking through this store, these candlesticks immediately caught my eye. They were priced at $15 each, which was a bit high for my budget, so I initially passed them up and moved on. But I kept circling back around to them. In the end, I decided to go with my gut and get them. They are very heavy duty candlesticks, as in: "Colonel Mustard in the conservatory with the candlestick" heavy duty:)

I knew I wanted to paint them a cream color to match the neutrals I was planning for my table. I had never painted a metal like this with chalk paint, so it was a new experience, but quite easy. I used Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Country Grey. 2 coats, both watered down slightly. I didn't distress this piece like I usually do because the paint seemed to come off easily when bumped and I didn't want too much silver showing through. I then used a coat of clear wax and then a coat of dark wax to bring out the intricate designs.

My table was a compilation of ideas from Pinterest. A burlap table runner from Michaels that was tied on the ends with twine - very easy to make because they sell burlap in a roll with the exact width that I needed. I took mason jars, filled them with some extra dried corn given to me by a friend and added tea lights. The table was strewn with some extra faux Fall flowers. Our table was pretty crowded, so there wouldn't have been room for placemats. Instead I purchased chargers from Michaels. I couldn't find enough all in the same color, so I ended up with 4 different variations of brown/gold and am very happy with how they turned out. We were way too short on utensils for everyone, so I opted to just buy the more upscale plastic ones at Party City. One day I'll get around to getting my fancy China and silverware, but for now I decided to keep it within budget. I had enough dinner plates for everyone, but was short on dessert plates, so decided to stick with heavy duty plastic ones. When it was time to clean-up, I was so glad I made that decision:)

At the last Easter dinner I hosted, I chose to not do seating assignments and everyone complained! Apparently they liked being told exactly where to sit. So I, of course, had to make place cards for this dinner. I found a lot of very creative ideas, but they just seemed too time consuming on an already busy day. I opted instead to use a faux Fall flower on each setting with their names written with a chalk marker. Took almost no time at all and looked very festive!

All in all, I was very happy with how the table turned out. Not entirely sure what I will do with the candlesticks right now. For now I have them sitting on the new piano we just bought off of a yard sale site.

And what Thanksgiving wouldn't be complete without some turkey nails? :) I hope everyone had a very Happy Thanksgiving!

Day Trip to a Thrift Store

This week I was lucky enough to be invited by my friend and Marketing Manager, Joy Toburen, to a Mommy Blogger event at Unique Thrift Merrifield, part of the Savers company. Being so new to the blogging world, I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I was just thrilled at the idea of a few hours of adult time and a nice lunch:)

I have to say, I really enjoyed my trip to Unique. I will admit that I am new to thrift store shopping. It really just hasn't appealed to me much in the past. I tend to do most of my shopping online around 11pm when my house is quiet. But as I move my way into the world of upcycling items and saving money, it seems to be a great fit for me. Unique sells just about everything that you can think of, excluding mattresses and certain baby items like car seats and cribs. I'm not much of a clothes shopper in general, but I was pretty blown away by the selection of barely worn children's clothes. With my boys growing like weeds, I anticipate a future shopping trip down here when they need new pants. I did, however, purchase a nice fleece jacket that I could use as a throw away item (clothing that you discard at the starting line and is donated to homeless shelters) for my Richmond Half Marathon this week - which is going to be freezing!

We were given a tour of the store and an explanation of how they operate. One of the neatest things I learned was about how they remove items from the shelves after a certain amount of time, compact them and then ship them off to third world countries. That idea alone makes me want to support a store like this.

Unique is all about reducing waste, reusing, and helping others. This is a world-wide chain of stores, each supporting different charities. This particular store gives their profits to support Vietnam Vets. They collect donations from the community in a variety of ways and pride themselves in putting out good quality items for sale.

A very interesting concept that they presented to us is their fundraising program. Organizations such as Scouts, PTAs, etc. can collect items for donation. A truck will then come to pick up these items and the organization is paid based on the number of pounds of items donated. This is such a brilliant concept that encourages people to donate unused items while fundraising for different organizations. I personally am very anti-selling fundraisers. I've been doing it with our kids for the past few years and I can't stand the poor quality and overpriced items we buy. I love the idea of doing something like this instead and getting to teach our children some great lessons in the process. I have already set the ball rolling to start a fundraiser with our Cub Scout Pack.

We were each given a budget of $25 and asked to purchase things that we could use for a project of some sort. I, of course, could not contain myself and ended up with way more:) Luckily we were also given a 30% off discount. They quite frequently have discount shopping days and offer a special program where you can earn greater discounts when you donate items.

So here are my goodies that I collected. I can't wait to get started on my transformations. With my credit and discount, this entire lot (including the table!) only cost me $18!

To top off this fun day, we were treated to lunch at Matchbox. Phenomenal pizza and dessert. And I so enjoyed a meal free of children and in the company to some pretty amazing Mommy Bloggers. I was just in awe at everything they know and felt like such a newbie. And, of course, I used the excuse of "carb-loading" for my race to overindulge:)

I want to thank Joy and Unique for inviting me on this day out. I learned so much and am definitely excited to shop more at this store. I actually had my eye on a piano (yes, a piano!) to restore, but it was a little over my head in terms of restoration. Hoping another one pops up in the future for me. Stay tuned in the coming few weeks as I post the before and afters of the items I purchased.

Cashing in on an I.O.U.

So I spent last Friday cleaning up projectile vomit off of myself/my kid/my cabinets, running PTA errands, shuffling kids to/from school, doctor's appointments, the pharmacy, grocery store, etc. Meanwhile, trying to clean my house and prep for my first live Jamberry party. When my husband didn't show up at his usual arrival time from work, I frantically threw my kids in the car and tossed them a slice of pizza so I could rush them off to evening activities, silently counting the lost minutes that I needed to prep for my party. Turns out it was the typical "couldn't get out of the meeting" situation for him (and one of the big reasons why it would be so hard for us to both work full-time!). So I was ready to just write it off as a crap day and move on. But the hubbie came home from work stating that he owed me after leaving me high and dry that evening. Who was I to hurt his feelings and not take him up on this offer? ;)

Little did he know that I had a project that was just waiting for the perfect opportunity. So this weekend we accomplished the fun task of painting the 2 story stairwell. He wasn't nearly as excited about this as I was:) Nothing exciting, but so glad to have the dirty builder-grade paint covered up and the upstairs hallways complete. I typically like to do as many of the painting projects as I can on my own, but unfortunately this one required two people. The front 2-story foyer will require a professional to complete the job, but I was able to get all surfaces that could be reached done first.

One thing that bothered me for years was how to fill the large spaces on your upstairs hallway walls. In my last house, I decided to put up this tree. It is a sticker decal that I found on Etsy. Kind of pricey, but exactly what I was looking for. Moving it to the new house was a painstakingly long process, but I managed to salvage it. Hung from the branches are pictures of each of our family at about the 18 months to 2 years old range. I bought the frames for fairly inexpensive at a craft store, then added the ribbons to hang them. The picture in the background is an awesome painting of my kids done by my very talented friend, Monica Hoke. Again, this is another place where I was incorporate my beach memories. We took the picture on a beach vacation and then I passed it on to her to replicate into a painting. I may still add a few large pictures or artwork leading down the back stairwell, but for now it seems more complete and homey. 

A Beach Styled Master Bedroom

The master bedroom is probably one of the most important spaces for me to decorate. I wanted it to be a relaxing place for me to spend my evenings. A place to unwind from the stress of hearing "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!!!" All. Day. Long. ;) My inspiration for this room was my happy place - the beach. I couldn't bring myself to commit to a beach theme in the entire house when we live so far away from it, but I believe bedrooms are a great place to create individual style for the person who lives in it. However, I didn't want an in-your-face beach theme either. Just something subtle that would remind me that I was dipping my toes in warm turquoise waters as I stared out of my window at the dreary winter weather.

In our old house, I left this room unfinished for a good 3 years because I couldn't decide what I wanted to do with it. Once we moved to our new house, I essentially replicated the look because I loved it so much. As I've mentioned in previous posts, you need to find that one piece that you love and then build around it. For this room, the item I found first were the curtains. I saw this idea in a magazine and decided I needed to recreate it. I really wanted something different than the usual window treatments and liked the idea of accenting the tall ceilings. I special ordered the ties for it off of a small online business. The fabric was a discounted gauzy fabric from online. The curtains themselves were actually quite easy to make and because they pooled on the floor, I didn't have to worry about their exact length or adding weights.

The dresser in our room is an old dining room buffet that I purchased from Craigslist. It is scratched up and could use some TLC, but I love the coloring of it, so for now I'm going to leave it as is. In our old house, I had a little entryway where I put an old secretary's desk that I found on Craigslist. In the new house, I ended up using the table as a place to hold our DVR.

On one wall, I decided to create a sort of collage rather than pick one or two large pieces to fill the space. This idea proved to be much more economical. I had many of the picture frames already in my basement, then found the photos for free online and printed them off inexpensively through Shutterfly.

Over our dresser in the new house I ended up putting the big mirror that used to hang over the fireplace in the old house. I haven't hung a mirror in the bedroom in a long time because Feng Shui rules would say that it is a big no-no. But I had the extra mirror and a space to fill that I was unsure of, so this just made sense. I don't regret it at all. I feel like it gave the room a more open feel to it and added brightness in a room where there is only one window.

A new idea that I tried in this house was to put curtains on the wall next to the bed. I had several extra panels because we had more windows in our old bedroom. I really wasn't sure of how this would turn out and whether it would look goofy, but I really love how it filled the space.

The last piece of the puzzle was the bed. In our old house, I had purchased an inexpensive cream colored microfiber headboard from Walmart in a moment of panic before one of the babies was born. I had big dreams for a big, cool bed like you see in the Pottery Barn and Ballard Designs catalogs, but it just wasn't in the budget at that time. The headboard was meant to be a short-term fix. We ended up sticking with it for a good 3 or so years as we kept moving the new bed down on the priority list and things like diapers moved up (sigh...sacrifices;)). The headboard was pretty and functional, but with hard lines that were too contemporary for my styling. So I came across a busted up cherry sleigh bed on a yard sale site for $50 and grabbed it, much to my husband's dismay. It was a king-sized bed and we needed a California king, so my husband had to cut the side rails and extend them by about 4 inches. I then repainted the bed with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Old Ochre, with a slight distressing, clear wax and dark wax wash. The frame ended up being a bit too wide, but is only really noticeable to me. The other thing I didn't like about it was that the headboard is the same height as the foot board. I lowered the shelf overhead to help balance this out. Not EXACTLY what I wanted, but overall I am pleased with how it turned out and the fact that I was able to do it for $0 by the time I sold my old headboard on a yard sale site. I think when you are decorating on a tight budget you have to just accept the fact that things won't always turn out exactly how you would like them to and you need to be okay with that, otherwise you will just get frustrated.

The wall color paint is one of the most important parts. I chose Behr Jamaica Bay and then lightened it by about 50%. I LOVE, LOVE this color. Whenever I am in my room there is a calming feel and I am reminded of the Caribbean. My perfect sanctuary for enjoying a glass of wine and some reality tv;)

The Patio

So this post has a little to do with me, but mostly to do with my husband. I tend to take the reins designing big projects, then turf them over to the hubby so he can do his manly work putting them together. I'm very pro-feminist, but hey, I hate to use power tools. And let's face it, I'm useless when it comes to digging a decent hole. :)

At our last house, my husband was able to build our deck, but at this house we wanted a screened in porch and figured that was best left to the professionals. To help with costs, the patio became our DIY project. Most people think we are nuts for doing this project immediately after moving into our house, but let's not forget that my house is full of screaming, energetic boys and they NEED. TO. BE. OUTSIDE. And I don't want to be sitting in dirt and grass while supervising them;) The last straw for me was really when my outdoor couch and chairs were sitting out front, a-la white trash chic, and a giant wind gust tumbled them across the street to the neighbor's house and busted them up along the way.

I love the look of a flagstone patio, but it was very far out of the budget and not quite as DIY-friendly. After a bit of shopping around, we decided on purchasing from Home Depot. I had a 20% off coupon from my USPS moving packet, so I used that during the purchase in order to save the max amount allowable, which was $200. The other benefit to using Home Depot, is that they do the purchasing per-stone. Once we were finished, I was able to return about $100 worth of unused pavers with no problems whatsoever. Designing was a bit of trial and error. We designed on paper during our many snowy days and thought we had come up with the perfect design. Once the snow melted we went out and marked off the space, then moved our patio furniture into it and realized we were way off. Some more Tetris-like antics and we finally figured out how we thought the layout would work best.

First step in the building process? Pack up the boys and get out of town:) We've learned from past experience that DIY projects are one giant headache, which is multiple exponentially based on the number of little kids you have running underfoot as you work on it. So hubby stayed home to dig away while I took the boys on a little Spring Break adventure with Grandma.

As with most DIY projects, things never work out as planned. But, he was able to complete a good deal of work while we we gone. Removing sod was a piece of cake because it was very new and not rooted to the ground. Digging out was a whole other ball game since we essentially live on a giant piece of stone with a bit of dirt mixed into it.

Next up was adding the paver stone, leveling, then the sand. At that point, we returned from our trip and I was able to help out with laying the pavers. My husband did the cutting and I put together the world's most eye-crossing puzzle. We worked about 12 hours or so that first day laying stone and then another 8 hours or so the next day. Lastly, sand was brushed into to the cracks to fill it in. For a more accurate description of how to complete this project, just Google it. As I said, this was more my husband's project than mine.

One part that I took on as my own was the landscaping. I really love how it finished the whole project off. Now I just need to figure out how to keep it alive! Hopefully sometime in the next year or so we will be able to put in our planned L-shaped bar and built-in grill. We created a concrete base already to prepare for it and plan to buy one of those DIY outdoor kitchen sets online. A few years down the road, our plan is to put in an outdoor fireplace along the big curve. We will very likely hire someone to do this project and save ourselves some giant headaches.

Things we learned along the way: 1) Projects always take longer than you plan (duh), 2) Install underground gutter extensions - we put this on one of the gutters, but for some reason neglected the other one. The very first day it rained, we had a bunch of floating pavers. We've done a quick fix for now, but I think one day we will need to find the motivation to go back and do that part properly. 3) Plan for the long-term. We thought we were doing this and had the piping installed to be able to put in a built in grill later on. What we didn't think about was the fact that it would be so dark out there at night. I wish we had thought to put in outdoor lighting. This is something we will have to go back and take care of at some point in the future.

Last step? Margaritas, and a heck of a lot of them!

Kid's Study Room

I figured I would start my project posts off with my favorite room in the house so far. For a little background, we built this house and moved in about 9 months ago. I love being able to build our own house and customize everything. My husband was pretty set on a particular elevation that left us with an extra room attached to the traditional living room and dining room. They called it the Library. He wanted that elevation for the stone and brick front and by default we ended up with this Library. I personally did not want an extra room in our house. I wanted a comfortable house on a large lot. Unfortunately, in Northern VA the only way to get a larger lot was to buy a larger house. But honestly, who wants an even bigger house to clean?? So this Library in the model home was decorated as a beautiful wine room with built-ins, a bistro table, etc. But really, how could that be functional in my house full of little boys? Assuming that I ever got to the point of collecting multiple bottles of wine that needed a storage place (UNLIKELY, wine doesn't last long in this house:)), it's not as if I could ever take the time to sit and relax in that room, tasting wines and socializing. I have to do all of my wine drinking at night after the kids are asleep, hidden away in my room while I enjoy a relaxing evening of folding laundry and catching up on my reality tv shows.

So that leads me back to this big empty room. I decided to turn it into a kid's study room. I had always had this idea and assumed I would make my dining room a shared kid's study space. This worked out so much better because I could really get creative with the decor. Growing up, I never spent much time sitting at the desk in my bedroom to do homework, so I never really wanted desks in my kid's rooms. Additionally, I don't like the idea of kids having computers up in their rooms. I want them where I can see them and supervise them. I want them to be forced to interact with their parents and siblings. I may change my mind once I have a house full of disgruntled teenagers, but for now I'll stick with this plan. But I don't want them at the kitchen table. I love my kitchen and I don't want it overtaken by kid stuff and clutter. This room was a great solution because it is close enough that they can shout out a question to me while I'm in the kitchen cooking, but out of site from the tv and video games.

When I start to decorate, I like to trust my instincts. My first step is to find my inspiration. Without this inspiration, I find that my decorating is kind of boring and missing cohesiveness. I need that inspiring piece to focus my direction. For the kid's study, my inspiration was a giant wall map. I helped my friend apply one to her kids' bedroom and was in love with it. I've always had a bit of an obsession with maps and love to stare at them and study them. This seemed perfect in that it was educational, but also a real visual statement piece - something that would look appropriate to children growing, but not tacky. The downside was the price. She purchased her from Pottery Barn Kids for about $200. It was high quality, thick glossy material with the ability to use dry erase markers on it. But let's be honest. What mom of four little boys in her right mind would ever set her kids loose with a dry erase marker and encourage them to draw on the wall?! After a little searching, I was able to find a very similar map from Target.com for about $68 and free shipping. It was a much thinner material and matte, not glossy. However, I actually found it easier to apply, much like wallpaper. It comes in 8 sections and gives you options for arranging the map to highlight different areas of the world. One big tip when applying this map is that it will be difficult to align the sections perfectly. Once the adhesive paste is applied, the paper expands, and then contracts as it dries. I had a hard time lining up sections because some were already dried and contracted while others were expanded. But I don't really notice this unless I look really close. I then had my husband add a trim border around the whole map, then painted the border a white to match our baseboards, and then painted the walls and ceiling shades of the neutral beige I chose for my house. The effect was pretty stunning, in my opinion, and always receives comments from house guests.

My other big inspiration was the chandelier. When we built the house, I had them install a ceiling junction box with the hope of one day putting a super cool light fixture in there. I set out on my internet searches looking for a real statement piece, but something that wouldn't break the budget. Yeah right, good luck with that! Lighting is freaking expensive!! I came across a couple sites where they had DIY orb chandeliers. I thought, hmm, it's worth a shot. I decided on a bright red color for it after seeing a neighbor's dining room chandelier which she had painted a bold red color and it looked stunning. So my friend gave me a an old, ugly brass chandelier that she had on hand and had decided not to use. I cleaned it up and removed the extra pieces around the candlesticks. To create the orb, I used large quilting hoops. You need 2 sets of hoops, and cut the tops of them. Now comes the bang-your-head-against-the-wall frustrating part. You need to glue the tops of the hoops to the top of the light fixture. I used Gorilla glue, but it takes a long time to dry, so I ended up with a bit of super glue as well to get that short-term hold. It really was a pain in the butt to get it to stay in the correct spot. Additionally, you put a screw on the bottom where the hoops all overlap, but I can't remember if I did that before or after gluing - I think before. Once the glue is hardened, you need to be super gentle with it. It is definitely not as durable as a metal one. The final step was to spray paint it. I also chose some filament light bulbs that I found at Home Depot. They were more expensive and not as bright, but look pretty cool. And then I added a crystal to the bottom of it to give it that Ballard Designs finish.

Next, I worked on my table and chairs. I purchased a dining set off of a local yard sale Facebook group. It was too contemporary and too small for me, but $60 for the whole set so I figured I would go for it. Unfortunately she had sold the table leaf separately, so my husband built me a new one. Not perfect, but definitely doable. I wanted a nice, durable top for the kids to work on, so I used General Finishings Java Gel Stain. It took 3 coats of the stain and then 2 coats of a polyurethane top coat. This stuff is just amazing. Super easy to work with and looks incredible. Very durable too. I ended up painting the table base with Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Greek Blue, distressed with dark wax. The chairs were painted in ASCP Antibes Green, distressed with dark wax. Then I stumbled across this wonderful fabric that I loved at JoAnns, and happened to purchase it over a holiday weekend with some amazing discounts that I then used to reupholster the chairs.

I knew I needed some sort of shelving for the boys to store their supplies, but once again I was discouraged by the prices. The solution just kind of fell in my lap. On a Facebook yard sale site, someone was giving away a 3-piece media cabinet for free. I had my eye on the 2 side pieces as potential for my family room, but he wanted to give away the set together. Funny enough, I ended up not using the side pieces and then loved the center piece for the kid's study. I painted the doors with chalkboard paint and decided to leave the rest with it's natural wood so that I didn't overkill the painted furniture idea. On the inside the shelves were all scratched up from the tv they used, so I sanded and painted over those. It had this handy little outlet in it meant for attaching your tv components, so I thought - score! I now had a family charging station for their ridiculous amount of electronics and have gained back the space on my kitchen counter. Lots of storage on the bottom and top gave me a place to keep all of our school supplies and a cubby for each kid to keep their "stuff" that usually ends up sitting on my kitchen counter. One PSA: Be careful with chalkboard markers! I hate the idea of chalk dust everywhere so I thought they were the perfect solution, but I am having a very difficult time removing them and will need to repaint the doors so that they are useful again.

My final project for this room was a growth chart. I had painted a similar chart on a door at our old house, but wasn't in love with it and the placement of it. I was hesitant to paint it on a wall because I thought it would look funny in 5, 10, 20, 30 years when I needed to repaint the walls around it. So my solution was to have my husband add a trim border around it and paint the background a slightly different color. This way I can change the wall color and decor of that room at any point and the chart can remain as is. 

I made my own burlap curtains using a super simple technique, then add some kid's artwork and tchotchkes that I had sitting around the house and purchased from HomeGoods (my favorite store, ever:)). The indoor/outdoor rug was an amazing find and deal from Home Depot.  And there you have it! I really just love this room and I my kids have already gotten a lot of use out it.