Before/After Dresser Table

When we lived in Student Housing, people who were moving would take furniture that they didn't want anymore and leave it outside where it was a free for all! I acquired this beauty as well as many other treasures.

I love this table. And my husband asked me to never paint it because it is 'real wood'!!!

Well, when I moved it down to our living room and started storing our board games in it, my husband was all of the sudden very critical of how it didn't match! And much to my dismay, he even tried to get rid of it during a game of 'Bigger or Better' that our church was playing a couple weeks ago.

SO...I thought that was my all clear for Paintin Time! 

This time I decided to Spray Paint. I used Flat Black Spray Paint, then finished it off with Polyurethane Spray. (I really don't like this stuff, I think it is going to be so much easier, until I use it and realize it goes on splotchy...) Oh well. 

Then I was contemplating getting new handles at Hobby Lobby. But I really love these handles, so I chose a Aqua Blue color...was going to do Khaki but wanted to change things up a bit. I also sprayed these with polyurethane after the color coat. 

And Here ya go.

Love the Flat look, and it feels like I have a brand new piece of furniture! 

Sweet handle. Totally my fad color of the year.

P.S. My husband even approves. Smiles all around!

Linkin up here :)

<div align="center"><a href="http://www.thriftydecorchick.blogspot.com/" title="TDC Before and After" target="_blank"><img src="http://www.homestoriesatoz.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/beforeAndAfterButton_thumb1.gif" alt="TDC Before and After" style="border:none;" /></a></div>

 

Project: Letters to Disneyland! {updated}

We are getting excited for this years Disneyland trip at our house!!

I found an address that if you write to a character send it in to the address, the character will supposedly send an autographed photo back!

So my kids set to work...the hardest part was picking a character, they each wanted to write to at least 7 different ones. :0)

But Buzz and Ariel were the winners.

PLUS, my 3 year old wrote his name by himself for the first time today! Super Bonus! 

I will update to tell you how long it takes to get an autographed photo back... 

Here is the address:

Walt Disney World Communications

PO Box 10040

Lake Buena Vista, FL 32830-0040

Here's hopin!

Guess what arrived in the mail yesterday! Yay! Two postcards addressed to my two oldest kids! They were ecstatic...as you can see!

For anyone willing to give this a try, the whole process took two weeks from the time we mailed our letters to get the Disneyland postcards back.

Now to find other fun Disneyland ideas!!

Project: Book Wreath!

Pinterest has been exploding with several variations of the book wreath as of late, but I found one I totally fell in love with.

I was inspired by this blog: HERE

It is totally cute,

but like every craft,

everyone does it differently :)

What you need:

Floral wreath

a cheap book-w/plenty of pages! (I used 343pgs)

acrylic brown or gray paint

paper towels

glue gun

ribbon for hanging

Found this floral wreath at the dollar store-I cut it to make two because it was thicker than I wanted.

Bought this at the dollar store for the pages...

I mixed brown and black acrylic paint, wiped it on a paper towel and ran it on the edges of the book and let it dry for ten or so minutes.

Do you know how hard it is for a reading teacher to tear pages out of a book? :)

Start by putting rolls on the top-shooting out like a sun,

 then flip it over and use that as your back side,

 then filled in the center so it was pointing forward.

I have about 7-8 layers from back to center...

Fill in, covering the color of your base.

To hang a foam wreath, you need to put a ribbon around the top :)

I did a small piece, not to be seen...

Super easy, super cute, but time intensive.

I have it hanging in my house, but it's moving to my classroom over the library in a couple days!

Project: Card Swap

A friend recently invited me into a Card Swap.

Card Swap: A group of X amount of people, who make 2 cards for every person in the group according to the theme chosen. (I was confused about this: 2 designs, not a different card for every person.) You are given a deadline, and then set free to unleash your creative possibilities in a card.

This card swap had 11 ladies in it, the theme was 1 Birthday card and 1 Blank card. We had two weeks to finish before the swap.

Above is my 22 cards I got back! It was like Christmas! I love all of them, and I think I am set for the rest of the year! 

This one was my favorite... 

Surprise!

Cute, huh! 

I made this one... 

This is your day!

Shake your Tail Feather.

Hop-Pea Birthday!

Seriously creative. 

My friend, Megan that invited me to this swap made this one. Love the baby clothespin.

So many great ideas. 

Love the ribbon on this one. 

I really had so many favorites, but you get the idea. Set up a Card Swap with your friends! You get so much back from such a small sacrifice of time. 

Project: Cheap Backsplash!

I REALLY want a tile back splash someday, however the current price for the glass tile I have my eye on is around 12-14 dollars per square foot. I have plenty of things that I could spend just under $500 on and well, I'm a cheapo :)

Chevron stripes!

I know that it is super trendy right now and so as far as long term...not gonna happen!

But for right now, I'm game!

I originally saw this pinned using vinyl for the whole thing. Great idea too! It costs about 5-6 dollars per square foot as well if you went through the Etsy site...

Here's what I did-

I painted the back splash area "Forsythia Blossom"

A great light yellow....I loved it until I turned on the kitchen light and then it held this fluorescent "highlighter-ish" quality I wasn't in love with...

So I did this-

Repainted it darker yellow!

When I took the paint back to be re-tinted the guy told me he had never had someone hate the color, come back and get it darker...

well there is a first for everything :)

I went with "Bumble Bee A13-6"

Above the cupboards I painted "Stormy Weather" a gray, so the yellow really pops.

Then-

I had a wonderful friend make me 2 stencils with her Silhouette...

Used left over "Witch Hazel" from a different project...I used a sponge brush-much easier when using a stencil!

Then-

Commenced to paint.

It was a long process because I only made two stencils and so I had to wait for them to dry in order to put them up for the next round. I took a lot longer than I planned, but I love the result...for now :)

Thanks for checkin in!

Project: Menu Board!

I have been using my kiddo's chalk board as a menu planner, while I know he doesn't mind, I figured that it was time to get serious about some menu board ideas!

I am very lucky because a friend of mine, saw that I had pinned several variations of menu boards trying to decide what I liked, so she invited me over for a playdate/craft afternoon. Which meant that we got to get together 3 times working on it! (choosing the style, shopping for the frame and fabric, putting it all together!)

Crafting with friends is my favorite!

After MUCH deliberation we ended up liking this style best!

Picture frame, 12''x18''

Used coupon from the website @ Micheal's.

Ended up being around 7 dollars. There are cheaper frames for the same size, I just really liked this frame best, I like the thicker edge.

I used fabric for the background.

Used a Sillouhette to cut out circles, letters, and rounded rectangles.

Tacky glued it and stuck it back into the frame!

Finished!

That was easy...

now...what to make for dinner?

Project: Drop Off Station!

 My new..."Drop off Station"

     

I often refer to it as my Mud Room because it's the closest I'm gonna get! :)

Since I am a teacher and the summer is my free time, I really started to panic last week when I realized, I hadn't even started the projects that wanted to get to! So, to assuage my guilt I quickly began work on the area of my house with the biggest need! I love my kitchen, but I do not have a good pantry area, I have had to rely on this shelf to hold the food "I use too much to be in the food storage area, but there isn't enough room in the kitchen because I don't use it that often," if ya know what I mean?

Uhg...here's the before: (I can't believe I am showing people how this looked! In my defense, this is probably the worst it got...)

It just became this awful drop off zone...yikes!

So....I moved the shelving into the Laundry Room, totally reorganized and much better looking!

I then began to paint the whole wall "Stormy Weather," a very beautiful gray-subtle but perfect! You can get the color at Lowes, however I just took the paint chip to my local Ace and they were able to find the color in their data base, so if you like it, I'm betting you could find it without a Lowes nearby.

After painting it gray, I wanted to do horizontal stripes using, "Witch Hazel" white, it has a gray tint so they wouldn't look so stark in contrast. Make sure when measuring from stripes that you put your tape up right, it needs to be on the outsides of the stripes you are painting, the tape should look even for every other stripe!

Found the basket at D.I. painted it "Tropicana Cabana"

Along with the shelf on top!

Wicker might not hold up the best, but for 4 bucks, I felt we could make it work ;)

The four plank table,

I found this on Pintrest, but the pinner didn't pin it to the website. So I googled it and found a couple of suitable designs! Super easy! It is supposed to have another board running across the front at a diagonal, but I wanted to put the basket there, so I removed it.

Spray paint, "Summer Squash."

Hooks from Lowes. I found that they want to charge you up to 2 dollars more per hook if you want different colors. Buy the cheapest and then paint it if needed.

I found the cheapest shelving material as well at ACE...I used the fifth board to my table as the shelf!

and there you have it!

Project: Barbie House 2

For almost a whole year now, I have been hunting for an entertainment center that can be transformed into a Barbie House, because dear Katie's Barbie House was so amazing, it totally inspired me.

My last trip to the Goodwill, I found this! It was 12 bucks but very sturdy, and I was SO stinkin excited about it! My daughter saw it first, but it only took me five seconds to decide if I was going to purchase it or not.

When we got home, we washed it down and made it shine. We grabbed all of my daughters old shoe boxes, that I KNEW would come handy one day! My old material scraps and cute paper, the trusty Mod Podge and went online to print out some pictures... 

Wah-lah!  Here it is, so much more inviting and homey, don't ya think? 

For the Living Room, I printed off french doors, some photos of our family, and the dresser and TV. The couch was made out of 1/2 a shoe box with the lid ducktaped as the back. The fabric was manipulated and Hot Glued down. The chair is an old jewelry box.

For the Kitchen, I mod podged some paper down to the floor that resembled tile, and found a photo of a kitchen my daughter liked for the wall. I like this one because it has the same greenery and french doors like in the Living Room.

I just finished the table for this today, I will have to post it later.

My daughter and I had a lot of fun picking out fabrics for the beds. The beds are again made out of shoeboxes cut in half and ducktaped to make them sturdy, then wrapped in fabric and hot glued. Then we sewed the blankets and the pillows were stuffed with cotton balls.

We printed out pictures of Barbie and Disney characters and a couple dressers off of Google. 

We even punched out 1 inch circles and sewed them to make a garland, then we hot glued that off of the ceiling.

The whole project cost was 12 dollars! We got creative and used things we had in the house. It is a piece that will hopefully last for years! We have had hours of fun with it already.