Quick, as soon as you are done reading this blog post run, don’t walk, to your nearest Hobby Lobby. Well, actually not your nearest. Go to the nearest BIG Hobby Lobby near you. I have a HL near me and it’s small and cramped and doesn’t seem as well stocked as the one by B’s preschool. So I went to that one today for some jars for my kitchen and ended up leaving with a cute piece of decor for my back yard.

They have all of their Garden Decor on sale for 80% off. That’s right. 80%. You can say it… I sure did. “HOLY CRAP! That’s a big discount! ”

This location had 2 rows full of 80% clearance items, which included yard signs, welcome signs, wall hangings, iron decor and more.

I found some adorable little gardening tools that looked all rusted and vintage for $1.40 each. I snagged one of each style and went over to where they have hooks and knobs. I found a 3 hook panel that had gardening designs on it, and hung the tools from each hook. Perfect! All the hooks/knobs/etc were also 50% off, making it only $6.49!

So my entire decor piece for on my back wall was $10.69 + tax. Not too shabby!

(Side note: Glassware was on sale for 50% off too, so I snagged several airtight canisters for my kitchen at only $2.24 each.)

Hello everyone!

I’m back from Vacation. It was a 2 week trek back home (up north) for my best friends wedding. YAY! We also saw lots of family and had a great time, but it really put a halt to all the projects we were working on.

So today we dove back in head first on finding great deals to help us improve our home.

And by the way, I found one heck of a deal that I didn’t get a blog about before we left town… I’ll be sure to share that one with you soon enough though. Just a hint? It’s a $2,000.00 deal. No joke.

But today my deal is a $70 deal.

We went to Lowe’s tonight to get some cement board screws to hang up some outdoor decor I purchased (also a deal, but will post about that tomorrow) and while there we saw a rolling rack with light fixtures that were clearanced. I found what appeared to be a display model of the Mitchell Vanity Mirror. It was in great shape! I told my husband that it would be perfect in our downstairs half bathroom which is very plain and booooooring right now.

In this boooooring half bathroom we have a totally basic frameless mirror, a pedistal sink, and one of these fugly temporary lights

Not very stylin, huh? So we snatched that pretty little light up and headed right home to install her!

Here are my horribly blurry, not color corrected quick photos I took after dark. LOL

Not a bad change for 18 beans huh?

Tell me about the best deal you’ve found recently for our home or crafting!

If you’re my husband, you can build an entire tool bench with $23.00. Including tax.

Yup, that’s right. He’s the man! I’m a pretty creative lady myself, but dude has impressed me this week.

This tool bench is ALL GREEN, ALL THE TIME. Every single piece of wood in this piece was salvaged lumber from another project. How great is that? No extra waste. No extra expense. The $23.00 was the cost of 2 casters, 8 bolts (for the casters) and a box of screws. We are going to paint it to get all the wood uniform, but we are waiting until another weekend to tackle that. In the meantime, my hubby has his first tool bench

If you follow my blog, you probably already know Ana White. You probably already read Knock-Off Wood, and you probably have either already built something from her site, or are int he process of buying materials for one of her plans.

She’s contagious. Really.

Ana is this gorgeous female carpenter who offers free plans on her website for dozens upon dozens of awesome furniture pieces that you could easily buy in stores…. for a markup that makes me want to cry. I don’t mean like “Wow, I saved 10% by building it myself”. I’m talking more “I spent $110 on this including paint instead of buying it for $3,000 in a designer furniture store”. She’s awesome.

My husband and I are completely addicted to her website and while the big kids picnic table here was our first project by her, we have several more we are ready to tackle after vacation.

I was a bad girl and didn’t take photos while we were making this, but here are some pics of the kids (and dog!) enjoying this table once it was finished.

A few months ago I was flown out to florida to photograph one of my best friends renewing her vows on the beach with her family. On the way to the airport, I noticed that our neighbor had this “pretty” little bench (snapped in half) out with their trash.

I told JR that I wanted him to snag it if it was still out there when he got back from the airport. As usual, he looked at me like i’d lost my mind, and said “sure”.
When I returned about 3 days later, the bench was stacked in the corner of our garage. I was excited and oh-so proud of him for listening, until he confessed. He didn’t pick it up that day. Then the next day, it was still there. And the next day, it was still there. When he walked out the door to go get me from the airport after my return flight, he’d realized it hadn’t been picked up yet, and thought “Crap, now I HAVE to get it, or she’ll be mad”. LOL. So he dragged it into our garage that day and I saw it that night.
But really, it doesn’t matter how it got there, it just matters that it DID get there. And now it’s beautiful.

I started by removing all of the bolts and screws and discarding the busted up and rotted wood panels.
I hit up lowes for what they call “craft boards” in the size I needed. They were pricey, but the right size (no cutting) and a hard, high quality wood.
I also grabbed a can of the “Red Elm” Gel Stain from Lowes. Come to find out, Gel Stain is one of the best things you can use on hard woods b/c it doesn’t need to soak all the way in to get a deep, rich color (soaking in is difficult on very hard, dense boards).
I picked up some Brown colored Spray paint Primer for rusted metal, and some Valspar Brick Red Spray Paint as my top coat.

When I got home, I thoroughly cleaned the metal pieces and started priming them. Once they were primed and painted and dried, I re-assembled the metal and did a dry-fit of the wood to be sure it would work before drilling/staining such $$ wood panels.
Once I knew it would fit, I quickly stained all the pieces and re-assembled the bench using mostly the same hardware that came with it. Some screws were missing or just too rusted, so those were replaced.
And in the end, we have a new Bench… for around $55

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So the votes are in and everything’s been tallied and checked over.  Our winner for the 2010 Recon A Thon (who will win some custom fabric from Spoonflower.com!) is…..

Abbie of The Green Wife

Congrats Abbie!

To see more about Abbie’s project visit her blog post here:

http://www.thegreenwife.com/things-ive-made/halter-top-recon/

I’ve had a great time this morning, reviewing the entries for the Recon-A-Thon!
Below I’ve compiled a list of the entries that qualify. Be sure to check out each one and use the poll at the bottom of this post to vote. Feel free to share on facebook, myspace, twitter, or your blog, and please encourage your friends and family to vote. But remember, only one vote per day, per person. Thanks!

So without further ado, here are the entries…. Simply click on the photos from each project to view the actual blog post showing how the project was completed. All blog entries will open in a new window, so don’t forget to flip back here and vote when you are done reading!

Voting will close at Noon CST on March 10, 2010

Then of course, there is…

And finally…

So now that you’ve seen the entries and have had a chance to check out their blog posts about the projects, weigh in on which project is the most impressive by voting in the poll below. Be sure to pass along this blog post to anyone who you think might enjoy voting. And remember, you can vote once daily, so come back tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the next day and…. well, you get it. Anyways, keep coming back to ensure your favorite crafter scores the grand prize of 2 yards of CUSTOM PRINTED Fabric from Spoonflower.com!

Please remember: One vote per person, per 24 hour period. If we have reason to believe someone is abusing the voting privileges by placing multiple votes on one day, they will be disqualified. Since this is a private contest, disqualification is at the discretion of the blog owner. If the votes appear to be coming from an entrant, their entries will be removed. If they are coming from a reader, that readers votes will be removed. Please keep this fair in the interest of more contests in the future.

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Last week, I posted a review and giveaway from JulieVision on etsy.
I’m floored and SO excited by the response for this giveaway. Over 60 entries were received

But our one and only winner is….

“harrithu”
Submitted on 2010/01/29 at 3:08pm

my worst haircut was in the 4th grade when my hairdresser cut my hair all the way to my ears. and it was the day right before yearbook pictures!

Sorry to hear about your bad haircut, but congrats on the win! We hope you enjoy your new Mullet

For everyone else who entered, be sure to check out JulieVision on etsy

You’ve all probably seen Lily’s room in all of it’s pink and bead-boarded glory, but most of you haven’t seen Brendan’s space-themed bedroom.

For starters, Brendan is nearly 5 years old, and is obsessed with all things space and astronaut. When I say obsessed, I mean OBSESSED.  He was an astronaut for Halloween. His chicken nuggets are rocket ships blasting off. In fact, he’ll pretend ANYTHING he can get his hands on is a rocket ship… from toilet paper rolls to stacks of Legos, to spools to thread, to Tinkerbell dolls.

So when we were ready to do his room, the theme was a no brainer.

We started with a small-ish and very plain bedroom

To help you get an idea of room size, this is what the previous owners had in this room:

First things first, I knew Brendan needed a chalkboard wall. I also knew that chalk board paint is significantly more expensive than regular black paint, so I taped off the wall about 3.5 feet up and painted the bottom half chalkboard and the top half black

If you decide to paint using chalkboard paint, be sure to follow the curing directions to a T.

I also knew I wanted the top half of the wall to have some sort of space theme to it. At the time, Brendan was *really* into space ships and blasting everything off, counting backwards. So I googled rocket ships til I found one I was confident I could replicate.

Then I headed into his room with red paint and a tiny brush

Once the chalkboard paint was dry, I used 2 1×2s and painted them red, then attached them similar to chair rail over my tape line. This separated the two types of paints and well as provided a resting place for the chalk.

I had previously contacted Samantha of Goin’ Vinyl to place an order for the numbers “1″ through “10″ and the word “Blast Off!”

I had purchased coordinating bedding from Ikea on the cheap, and purchased matching colored fabric from Joann’s to recover some blue pleather ottomans i’d had for work.

While at Joann’s, Brendan spotted some space themed fabric which I knew he needed a pillow out of

And we hung the ikea circular toy net in red, and an ikea angled bookshelf in red

So here was his room at that point

This week, however, we made some changes.

After we added/moved some stuff:

For starters, let me address some of the space decor in the room.

The space stickies above the window are from Dollar Tree. Santa put them in Brendan’s stocking
The wooden space shapes above his bed are prepainted from Hobby Lobby.
The space patches on Brendan’s wall by the door are from TheSpaceStore.com
The globe is from Toys R Us.
The telescope is from Toys R us and I DO NOT recommend it.
The astronaut bear on the bed is from Hard Rock Cafe – Houston.
The letter B was purchased at a Burlington 5 years ago when I was pregnant with B by a friend of mine. I painted it to match his growth chart….

Which brings us to the growth chart itself

I, of course, made it the same way I made Lily’s. You can see my tutorial here.

The back of it was painted with leftover black paint from his wall (the top half). The rest was painted with paint pens from Hobby Lobby, excluding the earth which was painted with a brush using paint I had on hand. I recommend splurging on the paint pens (about $3.00 per pen) as it will make your life SO much easier, and it will give you a much smoother, more even layer of paint.

I do have more vinyl on the way for some canvas like panels to go over his dresser, and we do plan to eventually re-finish his dresser black. But that’ll be a while

So that’s Brendan’s room. Now you’ve seen both
What is your favorite room you’ve decorated recently? Do you have a bathroom that you’d love to hang out in? Or is the office your calm space? Include a link if you can

I guess about 2 weeks ago, my husband headed out to Vegas on a work trip. I was really upset at first because as much as I hate to admit it, my husband and I are a little codependent.

Okay, fine. I’m a little codependent. He’d probably fare just fine without me (although, he is visibly worn down and relieved every time the kids and I come back from a vacation without him), but I always get very upset and lonely when he’s gone.

With 2 kids to worry about, a house to prepare and a birthday party to do final planning for, I didn’t have time to be lonely. You see, my husband was flying home on Friday night at 11pm. At exactly the same time his mother was flying into town for our daughters birthday. So when he got home, he’d have his Mom with him. Which meant ALL the cleaning/organizing was left up to me, to be done before his arrival home. On top of that, on Saturday morning, our home would welcome a dozen family and friends to celebrate Lily’s 2nd birthday. Yikes. So much to do!

Along with the normal “clean bathrooms, vacuum, mop floors” to-do list that is inevitable when you have a get together at your house, I decided to give myself a few fun jobs to do. Things I’d WANT to accomplish, but also really needed to be done.

One of those jobs was to redo the kids bathroom. Their bathroom is a nice sized room for a secondary bathroom, and includes a tub/shower and single sink. It’s nothing amazing, but it is roomy and it had potential if we could just pull it from the clutches of the builder basics that held it hostage. Beige walls. Plain cupboards and counter tops. Big cheap mirror and ugly light fixture. Don’t get me started on the brass doorknobs (those will be the death of me in this house).

So I headed to Lowe’s, armed only with a shower curtain I already had on hand for that room, and 2 screaming children.  I picked out a color by Olympia called “Turquoise Mist” and grabbed a new pack of roller heads. On the way  home, my 2 year old informed me that not only am I mean, but I’m “not da boss”. Can you say “nap time”?

So we headed home, I tucked the kids into bed for naps, and I tackled the bathroom.

After painting all the walls turquoise (half of a $24 gallon), I rehung the shower curtain and liner (Curtain: Free from a friend who didn’t need it anymore. Liner: Already had on hand, from Ikea $3.99. Rings: Already had on hand, from Home Depot. $2.96).

I also applied some fun Vinyl I’d picked up at Hobby Lobby during a 50% off sale.  It went up okay, but nothing compared to the easy applications I’ve gotten from Samantha at Goin’ Vinyl (BTW, if you place an order with Samantha, tell her you heard about her through TFF).

Hit up the towel closet and picked out a mixture of bright towel colors that I had from my college days. LOL

Then I grabbed a green plastic bucket I got years ago filled as a gift basket, cleaned it all out and filled it with some basics for our house guests.

And Ta Da! The bathroom is done!

Overall, it cost me $34.00 to redo the bathroom, and I still have paint left over for other projects. Not too shabby The hubby was very impressed.

Thanks for following along!!

If you haven’t yet, be sure to enter this weeks giveaway! CLICK HERE to read all about it.