My Littles

One of my goals this week was to take time every evening to photograph some of the smaller items I've collected from various thrift stores and rummage sales, and get them listed on my site.  They're certainly not getting any attention sitting in my basement.  I'm toying with the idea of opening an Etsy shop to share the love of some of these pieces, and this would be good practice.  I had this great: I would take the time to photograph one item every evening, sit down and upload the pictures that same night and that way it wouldn't take me 2 hours and I wouldn't get frustrated.

Well, I forgot about this goal.  I didn't even have the decency to feel like I was forgetting something, I just flat out forgot.

So guess what I did tonight?  I tried to make up for lost time and photographed a whole bunch of my littles and it took me two hours and I got frustrated.

Imagine that.

Sneak peak is below but you can check out the full listings over on the TLBT Littles for Sale page!

Wardrobe Re-Do Part III: Shelving & The Big Move

Well y'all the beast is complete.  *Sigh*  She was a doozy.  For those of you just joining us in this adventure, you can read Part I here and Part II here.

Before we put the shelves in or put the doors back on, we wanted to move her from Terry's office to my closet/dressing room/office.  This is the wall where we're going to put her:

Let the furniture shuffle begin!

First we heaved her out into the hallway, and suddenly Terry's office became much brighter.  And look at my perfectly clean workspace - no paint!

Once in the hallway, we shimmied her into her new room.  There was cussing and lots of "WATCH OUT FOR THE CARPET" and "Are you watching the carpet?  Are you?".  I didn't really understand what the carpet was going to do but just to be safe I stared at the floor.  Finally, she was in place!

Well that's deplorable.  Below is the viewpoint from the doorway, and it very quickly became clear that she couldn't stay where we'd put her.

At this point I told Terry I didn't like it to which he replied "Oh well, it's YOUR turn to keep it in your office."  Nice.  So we decided to try her out under the window, where my desk lived.  You remember my desk.

So I had to move my desk.  And then the room looked like this, and I totally quit.  

But we shuffled her a little further across the room (and watched the carpet)...

Ok that's better!  Now let's measure for shelving.

I let Terry measure because math is hard.  Time to drill!

Yup, that sucker's mine.  True love is a 31 piece Ryobi drilling and driving accessory kit for Christmas.  I pre-drilled the holes in the shelving supports before screwing them into the wardrobe to keep them from splitting.

The supports are nothing more than scrap trim we had in the basement, cut to fit.  After being pre-drilled they were secured to the wardrobe with 1" drywall screws.  And the shelves just rest on top!

This will allow us to take the shelves out should we ever have to move this lady again. 

The shelves are white melamine boards from Home Depot that I painted to match the interior and cut to size.  Last but certainly not least, we put the doors back on.  Remember, here's what she looked like before:

And here's the finished product:

Not too bad!  It's only taken three years; I can't believe it's finally done and she's fully functional again.  I tried to keep track of what this project cost, I think I spent about $70.  I had the painting and staining materials on hand, along with the shelving supports, so really all I actually purchased was the plywood for the interior, drywall screws, and the shelving boards.  It might seem like a lot of money for a DIY project, but it was worth it to me to invest in this piece and make her useful.   

Now to tackle the rest of this room...  stay tuned!

"You've Been Taking Pictures of the Plants for a While Now - Is Everything Ok?"

I'm tired of the snow that's been on the ground for nearly a week.

I'm tired of hop-scotching into the house, jumping from rug, to mat, to towel in an effort to keep from tracking Winter into our home.

I'm tired of wearing two pairs of pants.

I'm tired of walking like a penguin.

I'm tired of finding out the hard way whether that's ice on the ground or if the pavement is just wet.

I'm tired of having perpetual hat hair.

I'm tired of swerving down the road like a drunk person in an effort to avoid potholes that are large enough to eat my entire car.

I'm tired of being cold.  All the time.

Which is why I've kind of become obsessed with plants.

Evidently my green-ish (maybe it's more turquoise) thumb has been itching since Summer ended and I've slowly been cultivating some indoor plant friends!

Plants are lovely when I don't kill them!

Plants help clean the air which makes my cleaning OCD squeal with delight.

Plants also provide an organic element to home decor through texture and color.

Plus I kind of love fun flower pots and planters.

These two plants I've had the longest - probably close to seven years.  

They've been near death several times, and at one point my mother threatened to claim custody of them because "For God's sake Tiffany, all you have to do is water them, how is that hard?!"  Needless to say we've all pulled through just fine.

This guy helped start the plant trend in our home by simply refusing to die.  

He was sent to me by my office when my grandmother passed away.  He's almost a year old now, and to quote the movie Jaws: "We're gonna need a bigger boat."

And we're one month in with my beloved Gardenia.

It's been a little touch and go, but there's new growth every day so I remain hopeful.

All my plant friends remind me that Spring is around the courner.  They are the hope of what's to come.  I talk to them, mist them, and plead with them when I fail to remember they have needs too.  Fingers and paws crossed that come Spring I won't get so distracted by what's in bloom that I'll forget about my indoor friends that have made me so happy during the grey Winter months.

Thrifting in the New Year

A couple weekends ago I made my first thrifting trip of 2014.  I visited one of the nicer stores in my thrift store arsenal; it's bigger, brighter, and the aisles are larger.  All key components for a successful experience.  This particular store seems to be less expensive as far as housewares and other stuff, however their clothes are a little pricier than some of my regular stores.  The only real downfall of this store is they're not close enough for me to visit regularly, and they don't tend to have a lot of furniture.

Nonetheless, I scored some goodies!

I talked about wanting to bring some color into the bedroom here.  One of these days my amaryllis will no longer be with us, so I am looking for something a little more permanent.  Once upon a time I had a beautiful white duvet cover that I loved.  I still have it, and I still use it but with two dogs it's no longer exactly white.  In my search for a new duvet cover I found little that I liked except for this one:

 

FYI - That's not my bed.  

The colors are rich and bold, yet not overwhelming, and I love the design.  However I do not enjoy the price (full details here).  Well lo and behold, what did I find on my first thrifting trip of 2014?  

This quilt:

That's my bed!

It's brighter than what I initially had in mind, and I'm not certain it works as well with the existing colors in our bedroom, but with the right sheets and shams it could.  The hints of aqua in the quilt also work nicely to tie in our aqua and coral master bathroom.

It's super soft, and was priced way better than the original duvet cover that I liked.  Plus it's machine washable, which is always key.   

Also purchased: my french super canisters!

They're super, and absolutely gorgeous!

 Terry complains because he can't fit his man-hands in to scoop out the sugar for his cereal.  Raisin Bran doesn't need sugar, it's sweet enough.  

This is one time I'm in favor of form over function.

Wardrobe Re-Do Part II: Painting & Staining

Oh how I agonized over these paint choices.  I think part of the problem is I know where it's going to live, so I tried to work with the colors in my closet/dressing room.  I wanted it to pop, but not overwhelmingly so.  And since it's such a big piece (and will be in the space it's intended for) I wanted to try to tone down it's girth a little bit.  

Plus, having recently parted ways with my beloved pink sofa I needed to have at least one piece of pink furniture.

I like to think of this color as more of a blush, rather than a full-on pink.  And how awesome does the blush look with this hardware:

That's the original hardware, just given a new lease on life with a little gold paint.  I'm thrilled with the hardware!
 
But the rest of her?  Meh, she kind of doesn't make my heart sing.  I think the reason why is because of this detail here.

I wanted to keep this detail because, well, duh, it's awesome.  But right now it's unrelated to the rest of the piece and doesn't tie in at all.  I'm hoping once I get the wood doors back on that will help make everything look more cohesive.  

Aaaah, the wardrobe doors.  

You can tell they want to be beautiful.  I knew I didn't want to paint them.  But I wasn't entirely sure I wanted to refinish them.  So I ate a Hostess cupcake or two (the chocolate kind with the squiggle on top and cream in the middle) and thought long and hard about what I wanted the doors to look like.  I really wanted them to be a shade lighter than they currently were, but I was afraid I wouldn't be able to get them clean enough to make them lighter.  Only one way to find out: 

Much to my relief the doors started to come clean almost immediately.  See the grain peeking through in the picture above?  The stripper was still wet when it started to show, which means that these doors wanted to be stripped as badly as I wanted them to come clean.

Reading that sentence out of context might give you reason to question what this blog is really about.  

Time to find out what was underneath it all:

Perfectly clean, and gorgeous veneer!  

After sanding, I stained and polyed:

And these suckers are done!  I got lucky with this particular project.  With older pieces you never know what you're going to get once you strip it, but these guys cooperated from the beginning.

The doors are going to end up being slightly lighter than the detail in question, but hopefully the natural wood appearance of both will work to provide cohesion to the overall piece.  

Next step:  Shelving

Loving Him Was Red

Yea, that might be a Taylor Swift song.  And yea, I might be 31.  And no, I don't entirely understand what she's singing about in that song because it might be a little too emotionally mature for me but so what, it applies to my post.

I am pleased to report that I finally completed a project.  This handsome devil (see what I did there?) is done!

Since our new-ish living room furniture is technically considered neutral in color I've been itching to bring in some color.  This chair now sits immediately inside out front door and is a bright cheery pop of color.  Added bonus, it serves as the perfect spot for this turquoise pillow I picked up over the summer.

I love turquoise and red together - I think they make such a sweet vintage color combo.  I also love coming home to this delightful chair.  Especially on days like today when it's grey and snowing! 

Somewhat related - my amaryllis came to life last week.

We get wonderful sun in the bedroom where this lady lives, and she catches the light so nicely.

 I could take pictures of her all day long.  Again more "neutrals" in the bedroom, although our wall color could pass as blue in the right light, but Ms. Amaryllis serves as a whole different pop of color from my red chair.  Same color, same concept but in completely different rooms with completely different items of accent.

Short update tonight as I'm not feeling the best.  I'm not sure if it's the cold weather, if I'm just sore from all the manual labor I did yesterday (I worked my rear off!), or if I am in fact the next victim of the flu outbreak at work (in spite of all previous flu victims, myself included, having received a flu shot). 

Regardless I just mentioned to Terry I was not feeling that great and I was afraid I had a fever.  He offered to get me some Tums.  For both of our sakes, lets hope I'm better by morning.  

I leave you with gratuitous dog pictures: