Metallic (Goodwill!) mantel

Hello everybody! How was your weekend? We celebrated my Bub’s 7th birthday yesterday – SEVEN! I still can hardly believe it, he was just my sweet baby the other day. (I guess he’ll always be, whether he likes that or not.)

Anyway, we have a big Christmas decor tour starting today – my friend Chris at Just a Girl is coordinating a Christmas tour of homes this week with nearly 25 talented bloggers showing off their holiday homes. I’m sharing mine on Wednesday and my house is far from done. Guess what I’m doing today? :)

So I did get the mantel done this weekend, and I absolutely LOVE IT. I started by placing my big fluffy garland up there, like always, and stood back…and it was just too much. I wanted something simpler this year.

So I thunk. And stood in front of my stuff in the storage room. And thunk some more. And stared, till it came to me. I grabbed the glass containers I decorated for Christmas a few years ago and started placing them on the mantel.

The candleholders (just glass from Goodwill over the years) were all silver so I needed to pull in some gold to work with our mirror. (I’m getting lazier smarter as I age and wanted to just leave that there – I don’t want to have to move everything out to decorate for the holidays!) I found a bunch more of the glass containers in my stash (apparently I’ve been hoarding them) but needed to cover them. I got an idea to look through my wrapping paper -- score! I found this gorgeous, PERFECT, faux bois paper I had picked up at HomeGoods months ago:

Ugh. Perfect. It had the gold and touches of silver to tie in the other paper. I was never planning to use it as wrapping paper by the way – I always knew I’d find a use for it otherwise. I do this often.

I traced the shape of the glass on there, cut it out, then used double-sided tape to secure it:

I had to run to the craft store to grab a couple more pieces of the silver scrapbook paper to finish off my collection, and then I filled in the empty spots with greenery and pinecones:

It is so simple, really. Wrapping the paper around will take you some time, but it’s SO easy and so dang cheap. The extra scrapbook paper I had to get was on sale, so I spent $2 to finish it up.

I really love how it turned out:

It’s elegant and simple, and it lets the mirror shine. My fluffy garland made the mantel feel squatty and small. This opens it up quite a bit:

I used a combo of real tea lights and my fake candles/votives. I’ve had lit it all up every day and night since I finished.

The last few days have been cloudy and dreary and it looks so pretty, even during the day. But it truly shines at night:

I say this every year, but don’t be surprised if the mantel still looks like this in February. ;)

I love it that much:

Every one of those glass containers I've picked up at Goodwill. Well, actually I think I got a few from Hobby Lobby years ago for this table centerpiece. But most are from Goodwill over the years. I found the hobnail votives there a couple years ago too. (See how I used them for a fall tablescape here.) The few mercury votives are from Target and other stores over time.

The past couple of years I’ve used more and more real greenery to decorate for the holidays. You need to spray it every day or two (or not…sometimes I forget) to keep it from drying out but I love the way it looks and love that I don’t have to store it year to year. :)

Do you have a mantel or vignette you like to change up every year during the holidays? You can see my past mantels (and see how this space has changed over the years) here, here and here.

To Goodwill or not?

Hello there! How are ya?

So I sometimes dig my heels in on stuff when everybody else does it…it’s just my thing. I will avoid something that is super trendy just because it’s…well, super trendy. :) The same went for Instagram – it took me forever to get on the bandwagon but I gotta say I have enjoyed it. It’s fun to share snippets of stuff throughout the day, especially when I’m out and about shopping.

Some interesting conversations have started up on some photos, and the other day was no exception – it got me thinking:

The Bub and I popped into Goodwill before an appointment the other day and I gotta say…some of the prices were a little shocking. ;)

I am and will always be a thrifty girl, but you may have noticed I’m not the Goodwill shopper I used to be. That’s for a few reasons – I just don’t have the time for it like I used to. The kiddo is getting older, the blog is getting bigger and to find the goodies at Goodwill you need to stop in often. I use to stop by one two or more times a week and lately I just haven’t made the time.

When you stop in once every three months it’s hard to find the deals. ;) And when I used to go a lot and I would find fun stuff and it would come home with me and sit. And sit. (Forever.) Because I couldn’t pass it up of COURSE! And there’s only so much time in the day to transform things so the items would take up space in our house and in my head. I finally had to come to terms with it and STOP.

This Goodwill stool I redid with Annie Sloan paint had sat in my garage for a least a year before it got painted:

You see, when you find a deal at Goodwill you have to buy it NOW or it will be gone when you come back – at least 90 percent of the time. And I had a lot of buy-it-nows cluttering up my house. :)

When our stores changed their return policy (you just get a credit back now), that also changed how often I shopped there. If I can’t just return it I won’t buy as much, plain and simple.

But the biggie is that Instagram photo up there – when I have stopped in over the past year or so some of the prices have been shockingly high. The response to that pictures was much of the same – many of your have noticed it as well.

Now PLEASE don’t get me wrong – I used to work closely with our Indiana Goodwill’s and truly believe in their mission and believe they do GOOD work. They provide hundreds of jobs for those who may not be employed otherwise. I also understand the price of everything goes up over time.

But every time I’ve walked through lately I am shocked by a price tag on more than one item. I laugh about it because I wonder if blogs have a little to do with it – over the past five years or so more people are seeing the value in transforming something old or worn and making it work in their home.

I don’t know what it is really, I’ve just noticed the prices have gone up considerably. Target sells some of their extra items to Goodwill and I’ll sometimes see prices at there for higher than you can get it on clearance at Target.

So…in a nutshell that’s why I’ve moved more towards antique malls and Craigslist over the years to find most of treasures. I find at antique stores you don’t have to worry quite as much about an item being gone…I’ve left many things and come home to think about them and they are still there when I return.

Craigslist is nice because when I want something specific I can search for it over time and wait for the right piece and price.

There are still a few go-to items I visit Goodwill for, of course. I love to use books when decorating and end up picking some up from Goodwill occasionally. I always find books I would actually read but it doesn’t hurt to find a pretty one. ;)

I picked up a few coffee table-style books to fill in the library built ins:

And of course Goodwill is always great for frames, although even with those you have to watch the price lately. I love that I can find so many different styles and sizes all in one spot. I found a big one for the basement here and had a few on hand from Goodwill for the kitchen chalkboard:

And most of the frames in my office were collected at Goodwill over time (and then painted white):

I love that they look like just that – collected.

So are you still a Goodwill shopper? Never was? If you are, have you noticed the difference in price over the past year or so like me? I will continue to shop there and support their mission…just not quite as often as I used to.

**To see more of my Goodwill transformations, go here.

Changes in the master

Hello and good morning and Monday to you! Hope you had a lovely weekend! The sun is just starting to peek out here and we have progress happening in basement bathroom as I write. We may have a potty down there by the end of the week! WHOO. HOO! :)

Today I’m sharing a a few changes I made to the master bedroom. I started these projects last weekend and finished up a few little things yesterday. I’m in LOVE with the changes. It started with the mantel (yes, a mantel in the bedroom – one of those things I fought hubby on hard when we built the house and now I tell him how right he was) and grew from there (of course).

I had my wallpaper art up there for years. I’m talking five or six years – that’s eons in this house:

The accessories stayed the same for all those years too. I never changed them, ever.

I got a wild hair a few months ago – and by a few I mean probably about eight? And I took the canvases down. That huge wall sat empty until I decided to try some Goodwill art I had bought years ago up there.

I painted the frame months ago with leftover chalk paint, and just touched it up with some dark wax to bring out the detail:

You can see the wax along the bottom, nothing on the side, just to see how it makes that detail pop. (This was before I buffed it down and cleaned it up a bit.)

Like I said, I found the art at Goodwill forever ago. It had been sitting in the basement till I decided to try it up here. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea I’m sure, but I was oddly drawn to it. It’s kind of dark and broody, but I love the colors in it and the scene looks exactly like the street and building of our favorite restaurant in downtown Indy:

It’s where we had one of our wedding receptions so it makes me think of that every time I see it. :)

The piece is HUGE, and it was only $7.99 – it’s hard to find anything big enough to go over a mantel! I found accessories from around the house to decorate a bit:

 

The marble bookends and that brass bowl were from the vintage mart I told you about here. LOVE.

I think it looks SO much better than before – there’s COLOR here now!:

Then, like always, I got inspired to move some other things around in the room. This spot by the fireplace has always had a chair and a little table:

I sit in that chair every morning to do my makeup (and watch TV) so the angle was important – but the chair took up SO much space. (It was right by the side of the bed.) I started moving things around to see how it could work better and got a BRILL idea.

I moved it to the other side of the room (I’ll share more about that soon) and brought up my little HomeGoods settee and put it in that spot instead:

It was love at first sight. I was so excited. This settee is nice and deep, so it’s really comfy to sit on, but it’s flat against the wall so it takes up WAY less space. It feels like our bedroom is so much bigger now, I can’t believe it.

I love how you can really see the pretty legs of my little gold table now too:

I have even laid down on this to watch TV. By the fire. Seriously? It doesn’t get any better.

The cats love it too, they cuddle up on it every night. :)

The only thing I needed was a light (for makeup and reading) and the lamp I had there didn’t really fit. So I went to my favorite spot for sconces (Home Depot) and found this beauty:

It comes so that it can easily be hardwired or plugged in – most of them I’ve purchased there are plug in. I thought that was a cool option.

I moved the frames around a bit above the settee – I went up and over a little. The black was too much for me so I painted them a gray chalk paint that I already had (I used the CeCe Caldwell for this). I didn’t wax them so they stayed a lighter gray.

I love the transformation and the bonus is I only spent on the new lamp, that’s it:

I still want to repaint the walls in here, but it will be a while. I was trying to decide between a dark color and light and after working in here again, I’m sure I want to go dark. I just love how warm and cozy and cocoon-like it feels!

I still want to come up with some kind of treatment over the fireplace, but the perfect idea hasn’t come to me yet, so I wait. For now I’m thrilled with the small changes – I liked it before but it was getting so, well…dark:

 

This feels so much cozier to me now, but brighter at the same time!

Well, there you go, my adventures in switching stuff around – it was time in here. I’m not sure if that art will stay up there, but for now I love the change. I would normally never pick that piece for our home, but like I said, I just had this connection with it. Have you ever found old art that spoke to you? For $7.99 it was speaking to me real nice. ;)

Chalkboard art wall

Hey all! Happy almost new year!! What do you have planned for tonight? Ours will be low key, as we are most years anymore. We just eat, play and hang with the kiddo. Wild and crazy. ;)

Today I wanted to show you how I turned the new chalkboard wall in the kitchen into a gallery wall to hold the Bub’s artwork. I showed you the Christmas version of the wall a couple weeks ago:

The art on there started out like this:

The small magnolia wreath didn’t make it up there, didn’t look right (I just hot glued the leaves onto a paper plate with the center cut out). The deer head was from Michael’s and I just glue the paper on like I showed you here.

The big “S” was from Michael’s too if I remember right. It stands for Sarah. I kid. It’s for our last name. ;)

I just gave it a quick stain with my dark walnut and called that done. The three felt snowflake ornaments were from Target for a buck each and I just stacked them on top of each other with a little hot glue.

The little paper poinsettia flowers were just hot glued together after I free handed the leaves and cut them out:

I just did one leaf and then traced it seven more times to get enough for a flower.

So I had a plan to make this wall more function for art throughout the year too – I wanted to make it so I could use magnets on the whole wall, but did NOT want to mess with magnetic paint again. I tried that before and even with one meeeellion coats, it doesn’t magnetize well.

So I came up with an idea, courtesy of the roofing area at True Value – I grabbed a few of these small metal sheets:

I have NO clue what they are for – I just know they were cheap (about a dollar each) and they were magnetic.

I learned years ago you need to find the right metal for these types of projects – magnets will not stick to so much of the metal sheeting you find at the hardware store. You need to look for galvanized metal – when in doubt, take a magnet with you (that’s what I do!).

I just put them up with tiny nails:

The holes are perfect!

I centered them in each frame:

They aren’t big, maybe 2 1/2 inches by four? So either direction worked.

It took just a few seconds and I was able to use my magnets to get some art up:

I can use my cute DIY magnets I made a couple years ago – they’re just scrapbooking brads with the prongs pulled off, then magnets glued on (I used Liquid Nails):

I kept the S for Sarah up ;) just because I think it looks cool, but I’ll probably replace it to put bigger art in there:

It’s a great spot for school papers, art work, cards – I hung two cards up:

The Bub is obsessed with writing us notes lately, and the other day he pulled out a few of my random greeting cards and wrote us sweet messages in them. It was too darn adorable for me to be upset about the losing the cards. ;)

So there you go, a chalkboard art wall – with magnets! The whole project only cost about $5 because I had the chalkboard paint, the frames and the magnets. I LOVE this new wall! And we still have plenty of room to write our lists and notes and the kiddo can still draw all over it too.

A little fun, a little art, a little organization – that’s what I’m talkin’ about!

Happy New Year to you!! Please stay safe and have fun!! See you next year! HAR. :)

 

I was one of the bloggers selected by True Value to work on the DIY Squad. I have been compensated for my time commitment to the program as well as my writing about my experience. I have also been compensated for the materials needed for my DIY project. However, my opinions are entirely my own and I have not been paid to publish positive comments.

Decorating the basement (a little!)

Hello all! How was your weekend? I could not believe how cold it was here – I’m still looking at frost out my window as I type!

 

Since we (sorta, kinda, mostly) completed the basement finishing process over the summer, I’ve held off on doing any decorating down there, just because there is SO much left to do. But I just couldn’t handle it any more – I had to throw a little something together!

I’ve had all of the pieces for quite some time now, it just took a little time to make them work together. It started with this awesome vintage sewing cabinet I picked up at a local barn sale this past spring:

A quick back story behind this barn sale – two local ladies (Kara and Johnna) run a furniture refurbishing business called Lila’s Pockets. What’s funny is Kara was the very first TDC reader I met in real life, years ago, and I’ve followed their business since. I love their pieces and love that they’ve created this awesome business together!

(By the way, I just found out they’re having another sale in a couple weeks – visit their Facebook page here if you are in central Indiana and want more info! I’ll be there for sure!)

AnyHOO, isn’t that cabinet awesome? I’ve never seen one like it! They painted it a blue color, painted over it in yellow, then sanded that down so the blue can show through. The colors are EXACTLY what I’m using in the basement, so it’s just perfect.

It does have storage inside, we use it for puzzles. The shelves are a little awkward, so I have a plan to make it work even better…stay tuned. :)

Next up, it needed a lamp. I had a glass lamp on there for awhile, but I moved that up to the side table in the family room so I needed a new one for this spot. I ended up taking this vintage one from the family room sofa table and putting in down there:

The color (it’s been spray painted at least three times) is a perfect match to the walls. At first I was going to spray it (again), but I am digging the tone on tone – it’s staying that color, at least for now. (The lamp shade is the only fairly recent purchase – from HomeGoods this summer.)

Then it needed some art – and I wanted it big. I grabbed a Goodwill frame I think I’ve been saving for YEARS and gave it a quick redo. I just painted it (no sanding!) with a color called Storm Cloud (the one I used on the back of the dining room built ins). Then I put a really light coat of dark wax over it to give it some dimension and taped a NYC poster inside:

 

I found the map at my favorite toy store in downtown Indy months ago (I can’t remember how much, maybe $5?), and I just turned the (kind of scary) little girl poster around and taped it to the back. That’s my “mat” – free baby!

I didn’t accessorize a lot, because it’s not a big table. And what I have on there was a total accident – I placed the wood tray there to put it away one day, then someone laid the drum sticks in there and it looked cool, so it stayed. :) Love when that happens!:

Want to know one of my very favorite things about the basement? Have I mentioned this before? Probably. It’s ALL of the wall space. It’s AWESOME. We don’t have a lot in the rest of the house because of our open plan (which I love), but it’s nice to have spots to add a little somethin’:

You can see how the wood plank wall looks on the staircase – so cool. But WAIT…blech…gag…hives…I see CORDS!!! You know how I hate the cords.

I grabbed a little sticky hook and stuck it to the back:

Ahh, yes. I can breath. :)

So much better:

I love the combo of the blues and yellows in each piece (and the wall!) and how they work together. And I think it’s worth mentioning that every blue and every yellow do not match exactly.

Psssssst…that’s OK. Really! At least in my house it is. ;)

I’ve mentioned before that the basement will be a bit more industrial/rustic/contemporary than the rest of the house (how’s that for a combo?). But I also want this space to be a showcase of all the things we LOVE, and this little vignette includes two of the big ones – New York and music:

I’m just happy to “nest” down there a little bit. Now it’s on to tiling the bathroom! :)

Are you seeing the direction I’m going down here? This spot is a great representation of how I want the rest of the basement to feel too. Love it!

Decorating the mantel for fall

Hello all! How are you this fine fall day? Sorry this post is later than usual – I was sidetracked by a quick (if two hours there and two back can be considered quick) trip to IKEA. WHOO!

I’m back today with our fall mantel and will be linking up over at Kate’s shindig:

Since our new, big mantel is still new to me, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with it this fall. I knew I wanted something tall in an old vase I found antiquing last year and that was about it.

The starting point found me this past weekend when a friend and I visited a fall festival at one of our favorite shops. My local blog friend Angela was there and I found these ahhhhmazing floofy things in her shop:

We don’t know what they are, but they scream fall to me. They are SO. COOL. Fluffy and soft and long and lovely. I put them in the vase at one end of the mantel, then started playing with colors, heights and textures as I went across:

The wood frame was from Target (filled with a pic of the Bub from last Halloween – fitting I thought) and the copper pumpkin was a find in the dollar spot a few weeks ago as well. The deep metallic tone was just the pop I needed!

I loved the pumpkin wreath I made for the patio so much I ended up bringing it in. I have something in mind that’s a tad more neutral for this spot though so this one may go back out soon:

I just hung it from a piece of burlap (that’s hot glued to the top of the frame).

I was at a BFF’s house the other day, lamenting that I have NO driftwood to decorate with. What kind of decor blogger doesn't have driftwood I ask??

Me.

Until she was all, OH, I have a pile of it from our trip to the lake! Huh? Do I even know her anymore? How was I not aware of her plethora of driftwood?

I used some of it in the middle of the mantel because I ask you…what says fall more than driftwood from the beach?:

;)

I’m pretty excited about the next part people. I found some hydrangeas at Trader Joe’s last fall that I fell in LOVE with – and low and behold, the hydrangeas on my pretty Pee Gee trees in the back turn into those exact ones! The colors are fantastic:

I can finally say…I got those beautiful flowers from my yard. Awesome. :)

The candlesticks were Goodwill finds I used in my Christmas centerpiece last year. I just spray painted them a copper color to tie in with the little pumpkin on the other side. And I finished it off with a big rattan pumpkin I’ve had for years, I think I got it from Target?:

I adore all of these colors – I mean. LOVE.

The greens, creams, oranges and touches of metallic – they are what fall is all about around here:

I took some of these pics  yesterday on a sunny day, and some today when it was dark and chilly. (My favorite.) Perfect excuse to get a fire going:

I love how everything works with my wood art I showed you last week:

This is not the time of year when less is more for me…that comes in January and February. :) Now I crave warm colors and a cozy feel in our rooms, and our family room feels so cozy to me right now.

Like a fall hug.

Awwww, gosh.

Even the dog likes it:

But he likes pretty much everything. :)

I can’t wait to see all the beautiful fireplaces and vignettes over at Kate’s! And don’t forget to come back and link up on Thursday when I host our last party – it’s all about easy, simple ways to add fall touches to your home. Anything goes! As long as it’s simple and easy. Or fall themed. Whatever.