Striped Dresser, new chair, and side table

Ok, ladies (assuming that it is mostly ladies that read this).

I have got 3 transformations for you!

Let's get right to it, shall we?

First up is this dresser that I got off of freecycle!

It was in great shape! Always a plus.

Then I also have this little table to show you.

Is that not a pitiful looking table?

Then here is the chair also got off of freecycle.

I actually got two of these chairs. One is being picked up tomorrow. Yeah!

So here are the afters!

I will start with the chair and the pitiful side table.

For the chair, I spray painted it heirloom white, glazed it, distressed it, and then found this fun paisley fabric!

Then for the pitiful side table I painted it Sherwin Williams Cloudburst.

Here ya go!

When I put this picture on craigslist I got multiple offers for my lamp.

Sorry, not for sale! Got this baby and its twin at the local Habitat for humanity restore! Love that place!

Here are some close ups to the chair.

I just love this fabric!

And now for a close up for the table.

Now the dresser.

First I striped the top which had the thickest coat of poly I have ever seen! It took forever to get that top ready to stain.

Then I used my scotch blue painters tape and went to town.

Then I painted it a taupe/tan color called puppy paws.

Love that painters tape!

Once that paint dried, I sanded it and then glazed it.

Tada!

Love the curves on the front.

The drawers were in great shape!

The problem with this dresser is that I wanted to put cute turquoise knobs on it, but since the drawers were so big all the knobs I got just looked so dinky. So no knobs was the way it ended up.

But it sold, so I guess they didn't mind the no knob look.

Fellow Chicagoans. The chair is still available for $75.

I am linking to these parties.

Monday: The DIY Showoff, Skip to my Lou, Between Naps on the Porch Tuesday: Tip Junkie, Today's creative Blog , 

House of Grace , Just a Girl Wednesday: Blue Cricket Designs, Domestically Speaking, Someday Crafts Thursday: House of Hepworths, Shabby Chic Cottage Friday: Miss Mustard Seeds, My Romantic Home, Funky Junk Interiors, Shabby Nest, Finger Prints on the Fridge Saturday: Tatortots and Jello, Be Different act normal

Sunday: Under the table and dreaming, I heart naptime 

A hutch reborn

A while back ago I got a pine hutch that was in great shape. But it was boring, just plain boring.

I spruced it up a bit!

I found some Oops paint that I thought would be a fun color for the back. It is a mint green color.

I also got these knobs at Hobby Lobby.

I LOVE these knobs.

I am linking to these parties.

I am linking to these parties.

Monday: The DIY Showoff, Skip to my Lou, Between Naps on the Porch Tuesday: Tip Junkie, Today's creative Blog , 

House of Grace , Just a Girl Wednesday: Blue Cricket Designs, Domestically Speaking, Someday Crafts Thursday: House of Hepworths, Shabby Chic Cottage Friday: Miss Mustard Seeds, My Romantic Home, Funky Junk Interiors, Shabby Nest, Finger Prints on the Fridge Saturday: Tatortots and Jello, Be Different act normal Sunday: Under the table and dreaming, I heart naptime 

Winner of NYR and my new hobby this summer

Time to announce the winner of NYR Organics Rose Polish!

To find out the winner to this giveaway go and look at my giveaway page. Here

The May Silhouette Sale

It is Silhouette Sale time and this time you can get a deal with Heat transfer paper. 

Which is great to whip up some shirts or for some quick teacher gifts. 

*which I really need to get on the ball and make Wild man's teacher some gifts*

Anyways, here is what on sale this month.

1 Silhouette SD machine

1 package of white flocked heat transfer material

1 package of teal smooth heat transfer material

1 package of dark pink smooth heat transfer

All for $219!

Just use the code “PATIENCE” at check out to receive the discount.

(valid May 17-25)

For those of you scoring at home, that is a savings of over 125 bucks.  

Not bad—not bad at all.

Also if you already have a Silhouette then machine then you can get 25% off the heat transfer paper with my code.

Silhouette sent me some of the heat transfer paper to try out.

EASIEST baby gift I have ever made.

You see one of my brothers family is having twins.

Boy, girl twins. 

So when I got the pink and teal heat transfer paper, well I needed to do something with that.

Right?!

So Jenny if you want a surprise then do not look but if you are like me and are too curious for surprises. Then by all means you can scroll on down.

I couldn't decide what to put on the onsies and then inspiration hit when my boys where fighting over...who knows...probably one was looking at the other's toy. There is no telling with them.

So when they were fighting, it hit me. You just know all sibling do. 

So...

In less then 30 minutes a baby gift was born!

Updated Giveaway and a happy mistake

Enter my giveaway here!

First of all I am sure that most of you have heard some buzz about blogger being all messed up over the last week.

In that little mess up a lot but not all of the comments that were left on my giveaway were lost and never to be found again.

What to do, what to do.

The only thing I can come up with is for everyone to go back to the giveaway here leave another comment (but check to see if your comment was one of the few that was left) and then I will announce the winner this friday...that is unless blogger decides to go crazy again.

So go on back to the old post and leave up to 3 comments to win your own tube of Rose Polish to get your beautiful radiant skin back, organically.

Now onto showing you what my happy mistake was.

I got this beauty a little while back.

Well actually the whole thing was oak but I started priming and then realized I needed to take a before picture.

I had this vision of making this a bold yellow. The lines are kind of modern and I thought a bold color would be fun.


Kind of like the feel of these.

 

photos via

Unfortunately the color wasn't a bold modern yellow but more like a country light yellow. Very sad. 

So I decided to just paint over the yellow with my new fav cloudburst. 

Then a great thing happened when I went to distressed the edges just a tiny bit the yellow showed through and I just love it!

Sometimes mistakes can be turn out to be ok. 

Who knew?!

I am linking to these parties.

Monday: The DIY Showoff, Skip to my Lou, Between Naps on the Porch Tuesday: Tip Junkie, Today's creative Blog , 

House of Grace , Just a Girl Wednesday: Blue Cricket Designs, Domestically Speaking, Someday Crafts Thursday: House of Hepworths, Shabby Chic Cottage Friday: Miss Mustard Seeds, My Romantic Home, Funky Junk Interiors, Shabby Nest, Finger Prints on the Fridge Saturday: Tatortots and Jello, Be Different act normal Sunday: Under the table and dreaming, I heart naptime 

Don't forget to enter the giveaway!

NYR Organics and Giveaway

The giveaway has been extended another week due to the blogger problems.

I have mentioned before of my love for Shaklee products and how the natural cleaning products have helped my Romeo with his persistent cough.

The cleaning supplies are items that we breathe and that can have effects like asthma along with other health problems.

But I got to thinking about if breathing in cleaners can hurt you what about the stuff we actually put on our skin?

To find out more about this giveaway, please go to my giveaway page. Here.

It's a dresser, now it is a tv stand

The garage sale is OVER! 3 days for the garage sale is a LOOOOONG time!

Phew, it has been a crazy, long weekend.

As life would have it on wednesday night as we were setting up for the garage sale, Wild Man was bringing over a decorative jar to help set up and he fell. The glass cut right into his thumb, VERY deep. The Dr's were scared he cut his tendon.

 Here he is trying to be so brave.

Thankfully he didn't cut his tendon, he just needed stitches. But a trip to the ER is never a welcoming thing.

Now the drugs have kicked in and we are good.

Now that we have moved on from that drama I thought I would show you one of my furniture transformations.

But I do not get the credit for this one. I copied this idea from Sausha at show and tell.

She turned a dresser into a TV console.

I LOVED this idea and just had to try it.

So remember this dresser?

And the headache of stripping this thing to find out it was just plywood?

First I took the top shelves out and put a shelf in.

Then I added a L shaped trim on the bottom on the shelf.

Nailed that baby on.

Painted the whole thing black and then distressed the edges a tiny bit and change out the hardware.

And here she is now.

You can't tell from the picture but we cut a whole in the back in order to pull the cords through.

Mr. Genius and I brought it in the house today to stage for Craigslist and it didn't work out. We put our tv on top and then I decided I wasn't going to go through the whole ordeal of unplugging all of our electronics to put all those on the shelf so I was going to use baskets.

Once we put it in I noticed that all my baskets were too big to slip into the shelf.

*Sigh*

So I tried. But the staging didn't go so well.

The pictures are so plain. OH well I am just a little too tired to care.

**UPDATE***

Here are some better pictures that we took when the light was better outside.

And as always, this item is still for sale. So Chicagolanders if interested contact me!


I am linking to these parties.

Monday: The DIY Showoff, Skip to my Lou, Between Naps on the Porch Tuesday: Tip Junkie, Today's creative Blog , 
House of Grace , Just a Girl Wednesday: Blue Cricket Designs, Domestically Speaking, Someday Crafts Thursday: House of Hepworths, Shabby Chic Cottage Friday: Miss Mustard Seeds, My Romantic Home, Funky Junk Interiors, Shabby Nest, Finger Prints on the Fridge Saturday: Tatortots and Jello, Be Different act normal
Sunday: Under the table and dreaming, I heart naptime 

What my mom has taught me...

In the different stages of my life my mom has taught me many things that still stick with me.

circa 1980 or '81, yep that is me

When I was little she taught me that saying words like "crap" and "butt" were boys words and nice little girls do not say such things.

As she would drop me off to go to a slumber party or a play date. Mom would sing a song that I now sing to Wild Man as he goes to preschool. Now I will not be torturing you with the song but the words were just to remind us to be polite. As I was about to be dropped off she would say, " Now don't forget...Yes Ma'am, No ma'am, thank you ma'am, please."

circa 1986 or '87

We would walk through houses that were being built and would talk and dream on where we would place certain pieces of furniture and the color the walls should be.  I still love to do that.

I learned very quickly that decorating was my mom's passion. My brothers and I would make fun of the things she would rig up as curtains. One we called the giant Q-tip. It was simply a cardboard tube and on the ends Styrofoam balls all wrapped in fabric, then another fabric draped over. For about 3 or 4 houses we lived in she kept remaking them since the people buying the previous houses made sure all of her curtains stayed with the house. One time I went back to drive by a house we lived in around Memphis, TN and the Q-tip curtains were still hanging up! Mind you, this was over 15 years after we moved out of the house!

Then later on when I was a teenager she tried ever so hard to teach me to not touch my face so that my face wouldn't break out. This is also a way my brother's and I would drive mom crazy, by wiping our hands all over our face when she was trying to have a serious conversation with us.

Because the only job of teenagers is to drive their parents crazy.

Then while I was in college she helped me through a really hard time. I had some trouble with 2 friends and she cried with me, got mad with me. Then when I wasn't mad or crying. She still would. At the time, I thought she was just overreacting. But now that I am a mom...I totally get it.

When Mr. Genius and I first got married and we got our first apartment. She would drive from Knoxville to Nashville to go to the flea market with me to help me make that completely dirty and nasty apartment somewhat cute.

Then when I first became a mom... well she helped me become a mom.

 Mom with Wild man

I can honestly say that my mom is one of my closest friends. When I aced a presentation in college, she is the first person I called, when I sold my first item on craigslist and I thought the lady was totally crazy for actually buying something that all I did was paint, I called mom. When I have a hard day with my boys, I call mom. When Romeo first used the big boy potty, I called mom.

 Mom, Wild Man, and me.


I thought I knew my mom so well.

I thought she was a strong and godly woman.

But I was wrong.

When dad suddenly died a year and a half ago, I got to see my mom in a whole new light.

I can honestly say that my mom is the bravest, most Godly, wise, and strong women I know.

I have learned so much from her and I hope I can grow up to be half the woman that she is today.

Thank you mom for being my mom.

I love you.

Happy Mother's Day!