Finding Fabulous Feature!

Holy Bananas!  Yesterday, my dining room was featured on Finding Fabulous!  For those of you who aren't already familiar with Finding Fabulous, it is a blog featuring home decorating tips, tutorials and DIY projects.  It is run by the super talented Jane, and her mission is to find fabulous design on the cheap.

For those of you who have stumbled my way thanks to Finding Fabulous, welcome!  I love comments and feedback, so write away!!  And because I've received a few questions about sources for items in my dining room, here's a rundown:

Jute Rug: Pottery Barn's Natural Diamond Jute Rug (Not currently in stock)
Table: Indian Rosewood Table purchased from Dock 86.
Buffet and Bench: World Market Sourav Line  (I found the bench on Craigslist.  See this post.)
Green Knobs on Buffet: Pier 1 Ceramic Knobs
Blue Chairs: Estate Sale (See this post.)
Floral Slipcovered Chairs: Pier 1 Dana Dining Chair
Chalkboard: DIY'd from an old mirror (See this post.)
Basket Wall: Target, Home Goods, Goodwill (See this post.)
White Planters on Buffet: IKEA Kardemumma
Curtain Rod: DIY from Closet Rod (See this post.)
Curtains: IKEA Ritva
Drum Pendant: Zen Mystic Black Large Drum Pendant purchased from a local lighting store.
DIY Profile Art: See this post.
Pillows: Home Goods

And to take a step back, here is how this room looked in April:

It's come a long way already, and I have a few more projects in mind for the near future!

Stay Tuned!

Here Birdie, Birdie, Birdie!

When Charm is napping and Bill and I are painting in the garage, Lucky paints too:

 Here are a few more art projects from the last several months:

Lately, she's been painting birdhouses like this:

I usually buy them for under a dollar with coupons at Michael's or Joann's.  This picture shows my current stock pile.  Bill and I may have a few paint projects on the docket for the next couple months, which means Lucky is going to be very busy with her bird houses.  (Lucky just informed me that she will be taking birdhouse orders for her Grandparents if anyone is interested:).)

Here are her latest two bird homes drying in the garage after a coat of spray gloss:

 And here they are all ready to be hung in a tree with zip ties:

 Tree Proud:

 They join two bird houses we had hanging in the backyard already:

Lucky loves her bird house tree, and so do we.  They are subtle from a distance and bright and cheery up close.  They keep Lucky busy and happy when we are painting, which keeps everyone happy and productive.  Charm will probably get in on the action when he's a little older and nap times are a thing of the past. 

Did anyone notice the landscape difference from a couple weeks back?  Here's a before picture of the same area:

See more before pictures in this landscaping post.  I think it's pretty safe to say that we're calling our landscape work done for the year.  We still have a bit of work to do next year, including purchasing a tree or two and a few more plants, but the really difficult stuff (sod cutting, sod removal, dirt hauling, edging etc.) is behind us.  Thank goodness!  I'll be posting a final 'Backyard Landscaping Reveal' post later this week. 

Lucky Shamrock Blue

In this post from a while back, I showed this image:

It shows a paint chip of 'Lucky Shamrock' blue from Menard's Grand Distinction paint line.  We had a gallon of Dutch Boy's No-VOC Satin Enamel paint color matched to 'Lucky Shamrock' (how perfect is that paint color name?) and here is what I did with it:

Bill picked up four matching and very sturdy wood chairs from an estate sale for $60.  (I grew tired of trying to find mismatched chairs like I was originally planning.  All of the thrift store chairs I was finding were damaged or really tippy, and I didn't feel up for driving across the metro for four to six $10 chairs.  I'm still going to keep an eye out for fun, old, sturdy chairs for the future though.) 

The chairs were this color when we bought them:

Bill brought in one of them and it was lovely!! 

High gloss and chippy and exactly what I wanted. 

Unfortunately, when I took a look at the other three chairs a few days or weeks later, I was greatly disappointed to see how crazy dirty and grimy they were.  My plan was to wash them down and then spray poly them to seal in the old paint and prevent the paint from chipping further.  When I started to wash them down with water and a sponge...the blue paint came off.  A lot of it.  It was bad.  I thought about color matching paint to match the current blue so I could do some touch ups.  We got a sample jar for $2.50, but the touch ups looked bad.  So, we opted to repaint all four chairs in a brand new teal blue called 'Lucky Shamrock', after spray priming them. 

Painting dining chairs has to be one of the most annoying things to paint aside from staining a deck.  When I was painting the chairs, I realized that because these chairs had been previously painted (in green, red, blue and white) there were many, many drip marks from bad paint jobs that I couldn't do much about.  I wish I had stripped all the old paint off, but the thought honestly hadn't crossed my mind at the time.  I was in prime and paint mode, and I wanted the option of sanding down the chairs and making them look all chippy again with different paint colors showing through. 

If I go the chippy route, I would have to poly over the chairs.  So for now, we have Lucky Shamrock colored dining chairs that are so far from perfect it is laughable.  Perhaps I'll strip them in the future and try painting them again or maybe I'll take advantage of all the layers of paint and chip them up.  Regardless, we are enjoying them now.  We bought the chairs in May, and we just put them into our dining room this week.  The process was long and annoying, but I love how they look in the room.  The blue chairs and the green chalkboard are lovely together!!  And my floral Pier 1 chairs pull things together nicely.

I love that girl!!

Linking up to Finding Fabulous.

Color Me Pink

Here is our family room today in all of her pink, orange and gold glory.  I gave a tutorial on our mantle 'art work' in this post last week.  Aside from a few cheap, pink candles, I didn't buy anything new this month...yippee!

I picked up the gold 'S'  at Hobby Lobby in Iowa in June for $5.  I borrowed Lucky's hat stand and put one of her sun hats on it:)!

I put some of the leftover fabric from the 'love' artwork in a frame.

 My Goodwill book collection continues to grow:)!

As for next month's color...I'm feeling fall in the air!  Hope you all have a wonderful weekend!

We Got Mudjacked!

On Monday morning, our front step went from this:

To this:

Much Better!

We still have to caulk around the bottom step and build up some landscaping by our house (yes, more landscaping work) to prevent future settling, but we're so happy to have the steps and driveway level!


And because the summer is flying by so fast, I quickly updated our Outdoor Project List for the Summer of 2011 to make sure we tackle all most things on our list:

1. Uncover our Garage Floor.
We did this once after our garage sale, and it's a mess again.  Bill will be building some shelves in the garage in the near future and hopefully, it will help to tame our garage beast for good.

2.  Tightening Play Set Bolts.  Done.

3.  Add some fun touches to our Play Set.  Done for this year.
So far, we've added a steering wheel, a play kitchen and some bright flower pots.  I still have a couple more things I'd like to add next year.

4. Tackling the dead plants in our landscape.  Done

5. Landscape the back corner of our lot and a small area around our patio.  Add extra plants to appropriate areas.  Mostly done.  We've got a few more plants to add to the surprise flower bed we made, and then I'll post some new pictures.

6. Have Gutters Installed.  Done

7. Staining the Deck.  Done

8. Plant a Vegetable Garden.  Done

9. Mudjack the concrete of our driveway/front step.  Done

10.  Fix the landscaping by the front of our house/driveway to prevent future settling around mudjacked concrete.

11. Purchase some patio furniture.  More Furniture. Done

12. Wash house windows and clean screens.

13. Clean up our herb garden bed with some trimming, black dirt, mulch and plant switcheroos.

We are well on our way to crossing off everything on our list, and it feels good!  Just a little more landscaping, some shelf building and window washing should wrap it all up.

Sun Porch Updates

We've made a few minor updates to our sun room this summer.  You can see how it looked in May in this post and a little later in this post.

The palm tree that I purchased for $2 at a church sale in May isn't doing so well. 

I ended up finding a couple hibiscus plants for the low price of $2.25 each at Menards a week and a half ago.  We have one opposite the palm tree in our sun porch and the other on our deck. 

When the cat palm officially bites the dust, I'll move this hibiscus inside too. 

Here's how our sun porch is looking now:

I moved up the rug we already had in our basement, and I did a little book shelf accessorizing too.

This cloche was on sale at Urban Outfitters for $10 and the plant was a few bucks at IKEA.

We picked up these antique crates on our vacation in June.  One was from an antique shop in southern Minnesota and the other was from an antique store in downtown St. Paul. They were $10 each.

This watering can was $4.99 from IKEA.

Lots of cheap updates have our sun porch looking good for the season! 

Plans are Made to Be Changed, Right?

We got ambitious and decided to tackle Phase 3 of our 'Dream Landscape Project' this year.  We had the equipment (sod cutter, borrowed pick up truck, shovels and wheel barrows) and the help and time so we're in the process of working on the fire pit side of our lot. 

Here's how it looks now:

We cut the sod and loaded it into our pick up truck and dropped it off at a local landscaping company and picked up additional edging at the same time.  We used up all the black dirt we had delivered on the opposite side of the yard, so we ended up picking up a pallet of black dirt at Home Depot.  They fork lifted it into the truck and we wheel barrowed it down the hill to our back yard in short order. 

Today, we'll be edging and planting the leftover plants from the other side of our yard.  (I may do a little more plant shopping this year, or this new bed may stay slightly empty until next year.)  We'll also get the black dirt laid down and some mulch down today.  We anticipate needing to get some more mulch delivered, and we'll see how much we need by the end of the day. 

We're nearing the home stretch!