What Have I Been Up To?

Besides being with my mom for about 8 hours per day. Which I totally love by the way. Just a little background. Jeff has been at POST which is Peace Officer Standard Training for his job. Thankfully it is just in Meridian (about 20 miles away) however he has to stay there the entire week and can only come home on the weekends. Thankfully it is only two weeks long and he is into his second and final week. Anyway, he was home this weekend and we both became so motivated to get projects done. I had so many, oh ya, you guys read about that.

So lets get started. I found a few cute things at Savers the other day and thought spray paint. They were not spendy so why not. The first is this cute little bird.

So I am also not very good at taking before and after shots. By the time I even remembered a camera, this little guy was well on his way to white. He is pretty small but heavy. He was a blue "stone" look before. The other thing that I found was this something. Honestly I have no idea was it it. But I thought that I could spray paint it and eventually find a cloche to go over it. Right now my bird is sitting on it. As you can see I forgot the after picture on this one but will post it later. It was spray painting all black.I f.i.n.a.l.l.y. finished Gunnar's dressing. I am just warning you, that if you are thinking of painting red, just take this as a warning and don't do it. I swear to you that you will curse your way through the entire project and then after really like the results. Much like I did with this dresser. No lie here, it took about 15-20 layers on this thing. I went through 3/4 of the pint of paint. That is a lot of paint on a project like this. I painted and painted and painted to finally end of up with this.The drawers are chalkboard paint. Super easy to roll on. Of course it doesn't have that freshly painted look to it because you have to rub a piece of chalk over the entire thing to prime it.The knobs are probably my favorite. The white knobs were the originals that we on it before. I wasn't sure what I wanted to do with them. In the end, I decided to keep them as they were. The washers on the backs are the fun part. I was reading a magazine a couple of weeks ago where they primed washers and then spray painted stripes on them. They used metal knobs in front of them with the fun bright washers behind. Gunnar's room is more kid industrial with CARS as the theme so I decided to keep them as they are. I also wanted to find a H.U.G.E. frame for Gunnar's room where I could turn it into a chalkboard for him. I started to notice that thrift stores wanted an arm and a leg for really ugly large pictures and the frames really weren't worth it. Hmmm, where am I going to find one? I decided to search craigslist. You never know. Low and behold there was someone selling huge, empty frames. A lot of them to choose from. I met with her and all that she wanted was $5/frame. Holy Cow, I was stoked! I bought two. One that is going in our bedroom (more on that later) and then this longer one that is perfect for Gunnar's chalkboard. This thing measured 52" long x 28" tall. Go ahead, grab your tape measure just to see how big it is.

The table saw that it is propped up on is not small by any means. Okay, so I decided to go with red on this too. Why, I don't know why. I am still in the process of spraying coat after coat on this thing. It is slowly looking better. I plan on checking out Michaels to see if they can cut me a mat that I can paint with chalkboard paint for this. It is really so big I am not sure what to put in the center. Okay, so maybe I do know why I picked red. Gunnar's walls are tan right now. I have the paint to paint the bottom half blue with white chair rail on top. So red naturally worked. At Ross last week, I found two wall ledges cheap but they were white. I don't want white. I originally wanted these for my front room but I really wanted three.I just planned on buying a third that looked close. My reason for buying them was that I know that I could easily spray paint. So that is what I did and decided to put them in my bedroom instead.About two summers ago, I found this yard sale with all of these super old things. She was selling them sooo cheap. I was immediately drawn to these frames. They are old and the paint is wearing off of them but they are perfect. I believe they were around $.25/each or two for that price.I love finials! I have several. So I gathered them from the family room and stuck them here. The silver thing is a mystery. It is not a candlestick holder. I think I found that at a thrift store many years ago. Just liked it. But it looks good in that spot. I have since added a family picture below the higher shelf and plan on hanging smaller pictures of Gunnar inside those frames on the wall. I will post a more complete picture when it is done.This weekend we also chose (I had already narrowed down my choices and Jeff helped with the final decision) and bought curtains for the sliding door in our room. Does anyone have or remember the vertical blinds? We have those in our house. Now that we are nearing 4 years in this house, I figured that it is about time that they come down. We chose a brown lightly lined curtain. I really like them and they look good in this room. I plan on collecting the cream version of it for the front living room. I need 6 panels in there. I really like this rod that we picked out. Usually something that I would not be drawn to but it works well in the bedroom. Just look past the odd coloring behind the curtains. I still need to touch the walls up where the other blinds were taken down.Now this was probably one of my most exciting things of all time. We have this store nearby called Graples. It is one of those places that is only open on Thursdays and sells in style home decor at deeply discounted prices. Really quite cheap. They open Saturdays a few times per year and a couple of Saturdays was that day. Normally I wouldn't go but I figured that I would when I saw through the window to their clearance section. Heidi and I took Noelle there and wanted to go to the clearance area to only find out that it was closed until this Saturday. So I went that day and headed straight to clearance. When the doors open at this place, it is an absolute zoo! Drives me rather nuts. A bunch of ladies grabbing things like crazy, whether they probably really need them or not because they don't know if it will be there 5 seconds later. Nuts I tell you. The clearance is actually across the parking lot in a part of the warehouse where larger items are picked up. So that is where I headed. I found several cool things and snagged them but then I noticed two twin headboards. I have been looking for a sturdy twin headbaord for Gunnar. How strange seeing these even there. They don't sell headboards. I've never seen one in the store. I ask how much because they weren't labeled. I was told $25 and then 30% off of that. Home Decor in the clearance section was 40% off and furniture 30%. Holy Smokes! That made it super cheap. There is always something wrong with the stuff in clearance. Heidi found a frame there once that was perfect except for the glass that was broken out of it. No big deal. So I searched this bed and the only thing that I could find that was that the paint was coming off of the top. I can handle that. So I bought it and was stoked. I tell ya, this thing is heavy! It is sturdy beyond belief. I asked the sales person where it had come from. She was pretty sure that it was the owners and she just stuck it in there. They were also selling another one that would have been perfect for a little girl. The detail work on it was really cute. Anyway, My plans are to paint it white. I am thinking spray paint to get an even, smooth coverage. I love it! And did you want to see what my garage looked like? Jeff had me all set up with different areas.We have the kitchen cabinets pulls which are turning out awesome! The kitchen already looks updated and better. I am about half way done. More on that in another post.The frame station, the chalkboard drawers, and the wall ledges.

On top of this, I had an order come in through Etsy for a baby boy album. I really need to get on that. And then within the last couple of days, one of my all time favorite clients wants to get 2 baby albums and 2 wedding albums for various people this year. She is so fun to work with and all of her friends now expect these as gifts. So I really appreciate her business. I just need to make the time to get Brent and Noelle's album finished and off of my desk so that I can get moving on these others.