Postcard from Hibernation #5

These days, it's a big deal for me to post more that one thing per...six months. You know I'm psyched if it's two in the same month! I must be responding to the sweet comments you've left on my last blog post. Seriously, thank you so much for taking the time to say nice things to me...I tried to email you back if your address was attached to your comment, but if it wasn't, please know that I am thankful for your words!

I went to a local charity tag sale last Saturday. That's less than two weeks ago, girls! I am on some kind of hot streak. I picked up this red chair with cute-but dated-fabric for $15. (Nina and Henry discovered that Mama had the camera out and insisted on helping.)

We have crazy warm weather in northern California (this Midwestern girl is not used to 60 degrees in November, I can tell you). So I headed outside, whipped out the paint stripper and went to work.

After stripping, I added some color with Minwax's Dark Walnut stain, followed by two coats of satin polyurethane. Then I dug in the fabric bin for this yellow plaid that I bought a few years ago on clearance. Thanks to my husband's muscle and the staple gun, the "reupholstery" was a cinch.
It's a perfect spot for my Thanksgiving turkey pillow, and I love walking by it and knowing that I rescued this baby from ugly, all for $15. Happy Thanksgiving!

Postcard from Hibernation #4

Happy November! I truly can't believe it's been over four months since I've sent you all a "postcard." I think about you, and blogging, frequently. I still sit on the couch after the kids have gone to bed and read about all the wonderful things you are doing. But I am still very much smack dab in a season of life that takes all my attention. Blogging continues to take a back seat to Nina (who is loving kindergarten!), Henry (who still attends "mama school," as he calls it!), supporting Brent, and building a life here in California. I admit that I often daydream of living in my forever house, close to my family and back in my Ohio hometown, but for the time being...I am here. So.

That doesn't mean I haven't been busy! Just that my teeny tiny California ranch house is bursting at the seams, filled with projects that I do in hopes of giving them a more permanent home someday. Here are a few examples!

I found this ship at a local resale shop for $5. Though Henry is enchanted with pirate ships right now, I didn't so much fancy having one in my living room.

I took off the metal sails, covered the red bottom with a dark walnut stain, and stitched up some simple blue ticking stripe panels for some new sails. Cute!

Next, I searched for this table for about six months, biding my time on Craig's List. I wanted an antique that I could refinish to match my current dining room furniture, which I inherited from my grandmother years ago. Here it is (before), covered in at least three layers of brown paint. Pretty.

After many...many...many hours of stripping paint, I finally got it down to bare wood.

A few coats of dark walnut stain, a few coats of polyurethane, and I finally have a sideboard that is worthy of the rest of my grandmother's furniture!

Of course, the California ranch doesn't have a dining room to put it in, but a girl can dream!

Lastly, here is a lesson for all your husbands. We were out one Saturday afternoon and passed by a garage sale. Just that morning, my husband had said to me "We are not buying any more furniture while we live here!"

Um. You can see where this is going.

We spotted this huge, sturdy bookshelf for $11.

Let's pause a moment to take in it's ugliness, combined with layers of blue goo.

I cleaned. He sanded. I painted. He added new beadboard backing. It was a joint effort!

But Nina now has a home for her growing collection of books. And I just love the beadboard and cream paint combination!

Just remember this story when your husband tells you to stop acquiring projects. :)

Well, that's about it from around here. I'm sorry it's been so long! Here's hoping you're all doing well...I miss you!

Postcard From Hibernation #2

Hi everyone! I have done some research on behalf of us all, and I just had to share. First of all, let's revisit a photo of my humble little rental house in California, right after we moved in:

Ah, the green outdoor carpet. The abandoned flower beds. Lovely.

This spring, I've been trying to clean things up out there, on a very limited budget. I don't need Buckingham Palace here, folks. I'm just going for inhabited. So here's the look today, with some flowers, hanging baskets, and updated accessories:

And speaking of accessories, here's my new discovery: how to age a mirror (specifically the one now hanging in my outdoor entryway). I bought the frame below, complete with six individual mirrors, at a local thrift store for $12. And I love it when the original price is still on there. ($99.99 at Cost Plus World Market!) Please excuse the glass cleaner spray on the mirrors. I was impatient...you get the idea!

I took it apart (unscrewed the backing and took out the mirrors) and painted the frame with some off-white paint (Krylon Gloss Ivory), followed by rubbing on some stain (Minwax Dark Walnut) to age it. So then I had a situation where the frame looked all cute and vintage, but those mirrors were winking at me, all shiny and new. Can't have that!

So I looked up a tutorial of how to age a mirror (this one), and came up with this process. It works!

I started with some paint stripper (Ace Extra Strength Stripper) to scrape off all the paint on the back of the mirrors. Then I switched to paint thinner and scrubbed the backs with a steel wool pad. Then I washed them all off with some water. The last step was splattering liquid bleach on the mirror backs to get that spotted appearance, then blotting it off after a few minutes. (For more detailed instructions, follow my link on how to distress a mirror.)

Can you see how the individual mirrors look all beat up and old now, slightly foggy and age-spotted? Not bad for $12! I already had the rest of the materials on hand, but even if I hadn't, this project is much less expensive than all the other adorable-but-out-of-my-price-range antique mirrors I have seen out there!

Give it a try if you want the antique look without the price tag!

Biting the Silver Bullet!

A few weeks ago, I read a post by Katie at Harrington House that inspired me. She doesn't even know I follow her, because I never have time to comment on blogs anymore, but Hi Katie! Thank you for the tips!

She told us about her silver collection. She said that she started searching for pieces after she got married, and then later made the switch from using her regular stuff to using her mismatched silver pieces everyday. I love that idea!

Starting a collection is hard. Not hard in the real-life-hard kind of way, but just daunting, especially when you see Katie's collection over at her blog. But over the weekend I found myself at an antique shop, and lo and behold, look what I found!

These were marked $1 a piece, with 30% off! Certainly something I can handle. So I bit the bullet and officially started my silver collection!

And let me tell you, there is something so satisfying about polishing silver! Check out my before and after shot, above. I just picked up some Tarn-X at the grocery store, and it worked perfectly.

So now I have a little collection going. Mainly if people want to eat soup or ice cream. But hopefully it will grow over time!

Pretty, huh?

A New Room for an Old Coat Rack

Another idea born of recent panic!

As we scour Craig's List and Realtor.com for houses in the San Francisco Bay area, I am reminded again and again of how much we need to downsize. My pile of garage sale items grows bigger and bigger! But I am also on the lookout for projects that might make our storage options in California a bit easier.

A month or two ago, before we decided to move, I picked up this coat rack for $5 at a garage sale:

It was a bit too tall for what I had in mind: a cute little spot for my almost-four-year-old, Nina, to hang her all-important girlie business. My handy husband wasn't afraid to wreck this $5 coat rack, though, and he simply sawed into it, removing a piece towards the top, then reattaching it, using screws and wood glue.

Then I spray painted the whole thing using a combination of paint I had lying around. (I'm sorry, I threw the paint cans away before noting what color I used!) I am happy with this little addition to Nina's room. Her elephant backpack and PJs now have a dedicated place to hang. Very important.

And, I have a feeling that this little guy will be put to even greater use when we move. Who says coat racks only belong by your front door? I can picture them in kids' rooms, in laundry rooms, holding aprons in the kitchen...lots of adorable options!

My $10 Chair

Sometimes I find bargains in the unlikeliest of places. I had sold some of my old work clothes to a women's clothing consignment shop, and was on my way out their door after dropping them off. This chair was sitting underneath a pile of stuff. Marked $20, with 50% off!

It was in great shape, and I loved the color. Unfortunately, whoever had painted it must have run out of paint, so it looked kind of unfinished. I just whipped out my usual white paint (Behr's "Country Dairy") and popped in a movie to paint to while the kids were asleep.

I guess my lesson is that you never know where the bargains will come from! Keep your eyes peeled, especially now that it's summer garage sale season. Your next project could be just around the corner!

And I am sure your husband won't mind you hauling home more junk to store in the garage. :)

Why I Keep Shopping Secondhand

I must admit, the winter is long for a Goodwill shopper like me! For the past few months, I've been striking out big time when I shop secondhand. Slim pickings at the shops, no garage sales to behold, even Craig's List has been sad in Denver.

However...I don't know if it's spring fever or what, but lately my luck has been changing. Yippee! Maybe people are just in the mood to purge all their junk? Garage sale season is kicking in, after all! Whatever it is, the lesson is clear: sometimes things look bleak, but keep going. You never know what you're going to find!

A few weeks ago this theory panned out, big time! I went to Goodwill and got this little gem:

I gave it my own special treatment of paint and stain, and now it looks like this:

On the same trip, I ran into a great rug. Now, I usually don't go for rugs and other fabrics at the Goodwill, but this one was perfect! My guest room used to have this (nice, but a little too yellow) jute rug:

I found this (less yellow) sisal rug, same size, softer underfoot. In perfect shape!

Lesson learned? Keep shopping! Just when you think you'll strike out again, you might hit a home run! See you out there this weekend? :)

Outdoor Pillows on the Cheap

On Wednesday I showed you my new rocking chairs, and promised that I'd tell you about my new outdoor pillows, and how you can score some of your own.

First, I stopped by my local Goodwill, and happened to stumble upon four square pillows, for $1.50 a piece. On the same trip, I got an outdoor tablecloth ($3). All this stuff was made with polyester, so I knew it would be good for outside.

The only non-polyester, non-outdoor-friendly part of this was the blue cotton material covering the pillows. (But the stuffing in the pillows is polyester, so we're still good.) And that's what the tablecloth is for. I just cut it into squares and sewed a simple cover (inside out, so the color wouldn't bleed through) for the pillows. Voila! Instant waterproofing.

Here's my one splurge: I bought 1 1/2 yards of Waverly outdoor fabric for $12 a yard.

Then I sewed a simple pillow cover, and for the price of one Ballard Design pillow ($27 total, people!), I got four.
I love a bargain!

Rocking Chair Re-Do!

Last fall I was driving home and just "happened" by this garage sale in my neighborhood. These people had just moved to Colorado from North Carolina, and felt like unloading a few of their porch rocking chairs. I got two of them, at $5 a piece. Score!

Of course, one of the main reasons they didn't want the rockers was because the woman's husband, in a fit of romanticism, decided that he wanted a blue rocking chair, a la Kenny Chesney's "Old Blue Chair." Out came the spray paint, but it didn't go so well. A few weeks later, the (kind-of blue) chairs became mine. I just took a sander to them, followed by some stain and sealer. Below, you can see what a difference it made!

I used Cabot's Australian Timber Oil in Jarrah Brown (found at Lowe's). It's specifically designed for decks and outdoor furniture, and it is great for color and also for sealing the wood so that it's somewhat impervious to rain. We used it last year on our Adirondack chairs and, though they needed a little freshening up at the beginning of this season, it was totally worth the money.

Here you can see the seating area on my deck, all ready for summer get-togethers!

Stay tuned for Friday, when I'll tell you all about how I made those outdoor pillows on the cheap!

Crackle and Candlesticks

Hey everyone! How was your weekend? I hope it was a good one!

I've been eyeing the candlesticks at Pottery Barn lately. But when the prices range from $24-$34 per candlestick, I think I can find alternative arrangements!

image from potterybarn.com

Luckily I had this candlestick that I picked up at Goodwill a few months ago. It was $4.99. I love the shape, and I thought I could make it look like my new obsession!

I already had these tools on hand. Acrylic paint in Burnt Umber, some crackle glaze, and a semi-gloss can of Behr paint in "Country Dairy."

I started by painting the Burnt Umber over the black, then covered it with the crackle glaze. The crackle glaze, when dry, allows you to paint on top of it. It will then "crackle" and allow the underneath color to come through. Make sense?

I think it turned out pretty good!

Now what else can I crackle?

Pretty in Silver

Hello everyone! How was your Easter weekend?

Just a quick post to share a new discovery. I've been picking up little silver vases as I find them at thrift stores. Here's a photo from our Easter brunch yesterday. Don't you love my pretty pink tulips? The smaller vase in the forefront was 79 cents at a local consignment shop.

The silver pitcher is a family piece from my mom, but I've seen ones like them at Goodwill and other such places. Most of the time they just need a little shining up.

Just love the way this silver looks on my table! These little vases are not real silver, but they look pretty and they hold water. Basically all I'm looking for. So keep your eyes peeled when you're out shopping. You'll be glad you did!

Luggage Rack Renovation!

Hello friends!

Well, I can't say that our spring break was restful, but I am glad we had it. My husband and daughter both ended up getting diagnosed with strep throat, and then my son got some other kind of nasty bug that he's still fighting. Wa-hoo! Lots of couch-sitting and cherry Icees (which my husband swears are necessary when one is sick).

But in between all the medicine doses, I got to work on a few projects! I've had this luggage rack in the basement for over a year. Ugly, dinged up, and with some seriously gross-looking straps to hold it together, it was no prize at the thrift store when I picked it up (for $5!).

I gave it a coat of primer, followed by two coats of creamy white (Country Dairy by Behr). Then my very accommodating husband removed the old, ugly straps and attached these new leather ones (bought by the yard from Joann's).

He just used a few upholstery tacks to get the job done. What a great result for not a lot of time!
And why did it take me a whole year to do such a simple project?