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;)