Thrifting Exchange!

So on a whim, I decided to join up with this chick over here for a thrifty gift exchange.  I mean, not like I need another excuse to go thrifting, but hey, why not?       I got matched up with Whitney, who blogs over here at Rooted in His Grace.  She's fun, and she's puuuuuurdy.

See?   I totally just stole that picture from her.  Hope that's ok?? So I stalked her on her blog for a little bit, discovered that she's a thrifting expert, friends, for real.  She's crafty, artsy, and very stylish.  She also happens to be studying special ed in college, and of course you know that bonded us right away. So I skipped off to the thrift store to hunt down a cute new outfit for her fall semester that I think will look so cute with her cowgirl boots.  :) And then....

This came!

Beautiful earrings!  Remind me of sea glass, and will totally go with just about every clothing item I own.  Sweet!

Fun distressed painted block of wood that will look awesome on my bedside table next to a pic of my hubby and I...

and this!  It's a homemade earring holder.  Loved this post on Whitney's blog where she did a diy for this project... and let's also just throw in a shameless plug for her new Etsy shop where she sells these one-of-a-kind pretties!   Can't wait to set up my haul and show you! Thanks, Whitney!  and thanks for awesome exchange, Carina!

On Organizing Life

Don't get me wrong.Days off spent lounging by the pool or doing generally nothing are pretty darn great, but sometimes it also feels good to get some stuff done! Last week I took advantage of a stormy icky day to do some little organization projects around the house.  This stuff is so therapeutic for serious. 

I thrifted this wrought iron wine rack for my classroom markers, but I couldn't find the right kind of cups for it, so instead, it became hand towel and washcloth storage for my linen closet... 

 I needed some practical storage for my makeup brushes and stuff, and is there really any better smell when you're getting ready than coffeeeeeeeee beans???

So there's this vintage blue apothecary jar with coffee beans for my brushes...

and this little apothecary glass jar for cotton balls with the lid inverted for qtips.

yay!

thrifted birdcage from my front table is now holding bracelets, earrings, necklaceswooden tray from target now holds beads and statement pieceslittle silver tray (gift) holds my watch, rings, and daily faux pearls

Antiques on the Cheap

I just love not spending money.  Or at least not much of it.  Here are some of my latest cheap-o finds that now live on my porch.  

Old wooden toolbox that I found in Goodwill for a few dollaz.  Gold mine.

Took my little oregano plant and a little lavender...

filled it with a little peat moss, and here it sits.  Yes, I know it's lopsided.  I just can't decide what to plant on the left side.

Then there are my little wooden shutters I bought for a few bucks from someone in my community.  I sanded them down a month ago when hubby gave me a powersander lesson.  

I took some of this ($6 at Ace Hardware)...

 Spray-painted it pathetically (on purpose)...

I liked the "distressed" look of an inconsistent single coat, so I left it that way!  It's now sitting next to my herb barrel on the porch...

Meet my herb barrel.  Found this half barrel in a Goodwill bargain room last summer for about $3.  I started all kinds of herb seeds in it in the spring, and whaddyaknow?  They grew!
What have you found lately that made your heart skip a beat?

Possibly the Best Day Ever

Yikes...guess I'm a little behind on blogging this week.  Too much fun!!  First let me catch you up on Tuesday, quite possibly the best day ever, rivaled only by Wednesday, but we'll get to that later.
So Tuesday morning began with "teacher craft day".  So several of the ladies I eat lunch with in the teachers' lounge are chronic crafters...legit scrapbookers, knitters, and people who do things with those fancy cricut paper machine things.  They very kindly invited me to "teacher craft day" and naturally, I accepted without even thinking...umm...what am I going to do?  
Don't get me wrong--I love the IDEA of being crafty.  My mom is crafty, for sure.  I occasionally partake in crafty projects.  But I, myself, am not a chronic crafter.  I try not to do things in my spare time that require extreme amounts of patience when I could just as easily watch my mom do them.  So...I spent quite a bit of time on pinterest trying to find something I could do. I didn't look far before I found this brilliant idea from Anna, as I previously mentioned.  Here are my attempts, still waiting for earring backs to be attached because I can't get the lid off the epoxy-ha!  Waiting for the husbot to have a free moment to help me with that.

 

And since that really is a quick project, I decided to try wrapping a wine bottle with yarn.  Surely you've seen these fun things on pinterest...

yarn+bottles

 So since I couldn't find a beer bottle at the time, and the only yarn I have in the house is hunter green...

I will definitely be trying this again with beer bottles and some funner colors...I really want to do a mustard yellow and a fun pink...maybe a blue or a mint?
And then...oh then.  My good friend and I embarked on our long-awaited Goodwill tour...attempting to hit as many thrift stores as we could in the "better" parts of town.  In theory, we would find gobs and gobs of designer clothes for $4.50 and NOT get lost.  In reality, we found some neat things, called our husbands for directions, and were only slightly flabbergasted at the idea of "community dressing rooms"--what??  Check out my goodies!

Holla!  Fun turquoisy skinny jeans that fit perfectly!

coral-y cropped jcrew pants

fun flowy white tank with neat little tie thing
And I also grabbed a cute little cast-iron wine rack so I could do this for my classroom...

marker organizer

And because good days like this can only get better...we came back to my house and our husbands and some more friends joined us for pizza, peanut butter chocolate truffle cake! (for a little buddy's 6th birthday), and mmmm....margaritas.With this stuff.

That's what I call a Tuesday.

Paint Chip Love Note DIY

Valentine's Day 2012...come and gone.  Here's a little peek at my diy cheapo-gift for hubby this year.

So for my sweet hubby, I thought I'd get a little creative this year and make a card/piece of artwork rather than look for the perfect Hallmark creation at the grocery store.  I found my inspiration from the Dating Divas (a really fun site for lover stuff, by the way), but as usual, went slightly overboard.

So here's my first shot at a very low-budget, low-talent project on the blog...

Paint Chip Love Note

First you will need a piece of cardboard the desired size of your finished product (or slightly bigger since you'll probably need to trim up the edges), mod podge and a foam brush, a pile of paint chips from your hardware store in shades of red and pink (I looked for all the ones that had fun names like Be My Valentine, Temptation, Luscious Lips, etc), and printed words (the cheesier the better, if you're husband is anything like mine).

Start laying out your paint chips in different directions and play around with overlapping the edges and blending the colors...my main goal was to keep the funnest and risque-est (is that a word?) names showing as I moved all the strips around.  I finally found an arrangement I liked and started mod podging.

Remember to mod podge a thin layer on the cardboard itself as well as the back of the paint chips and start glueing them all down.  Smooth out any air bubbles with the heel of your hand.  Give it 15 minutes or so to dry and get a good grip while you grab a cup of tea.  I'm pretty sure that's key to the process.  Then mod podge the back of your words and the paint chip area where you want to place them and glue these down as well.  Give this a few minutes as well and then mod podge the whole darn thing.  Be sure to keep your brush strokes all in the same direction and be generous.  It will dry clear...I PROMISE.  No seriously.

Mine took about 15-20 minutes to really dry at this point.  I trimmed up the weird edges and wrote a little love note on the back.  No, you can't see that part :)  SOME things are sacred, even in the blogging world.

Hubby LOVED the finished product.  He just laughs and laughs when I do things like this for him.  I try not to read too much into that and choose rather to think that he just REALLY enjoys little creative cheesy gestures, however strange they may be.  I think his favorite part was actually reading all the funny names, like "hot spice", "patty cake", "pretty in pink", and "secret rendezvous".  If I was super-creative and professional-like, I might even put this in a simple frame and slap 'er up on the mantle as some V-Day decor.

Have you seen the bajillion and 2 project ideas for paint chips on Pinterest?  Here's a few to get you started...  Anyone else love the rush of "stealing" free paint chips for a totally different purpose?