Making Out... Part 2

Here's the second part of how I made out like a bandit, as promised. This time I went to Target, and I snagged some great stuff at even better prices! The first items I got were these sweet napkins I've had my eye on for a while, but since I'm the biggest cheapskate ever I wouldn't buy them when they were on clearance for $4.98.

 Isn't that the prettiest little napkin? And I got them for only $2.48 for four of them. I was pretty happy about that, but there was more happiness headed my way in the form of these tablecloths that matched the napkins.

I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to use these beauties since they're for an oblong table and I have a round one, but I have several ideas. Perhaps curtains, or pillows or the material to cover that little bench I've been wanting to work on. If all else fails I can always just make more napkins I suppose. I also picked up this tablecloth that yes, is the exact same one as what is already on the table. 

I figure if this one gets stained or torn or something I'll always have another. I'm kind of crazy like that sometimes. My next great snag were these two place mats.

As you can see they are slightly different colors, but since I don't plan on using them next to each other that shouldn't be a problem. I've already found a home for one of them on top of a little bookshelf. The last deal of the day were these two vinyl place mats that I plan to use for outdoor get togethers.

I already have coordinating flowered ones that I used for our Memorial Day Party this last year, and I thought these little circular ones would be the perfect addition to them. And at $.48 a pop how could I resist.

So let's see the final price of all of this, here's a picture to remind you of everything I snagged.

Here's the run down:
           1 package of 4 napkins-                                           $2.48
           2 60x84 tablecloths-$1.98 each                                 $3.96 total        
           1 round tablecloth (identical to what I already own)      $3.74
           2 flowered place mats-$.98 each                               $1.96 total
           2 circle place mats-$.48 each                                   $  .96 total
Grand Total:                                                                  $13.10

Not too shabby, eh? And I actually got an extra 5% off because I used my Target debit card. So ends my bandit adventures, hopefully I will have some more fun finds soon though since we are getting ready to completely renovate the back room. Stay tuned for more details.

Making Out... Part 1

Making out like a bandit that is. I've had an excellent week of shopping that I just had to share. It started this weekend while Jake and I were celebrating Valentines Day. We went to dinner and then decided to go wander around TJ Maxx for a little while to see if they had anything interesting, and we found several things that we had to bring home with us. The first item we found was this cute little votive holder.

Isn't she just so sweet? Can you believe she was only $4? This was my favorite buy of the night, she's just so cute! And I love the way she looks on our bookshelf too, but I'm not sure if it will be her permanent home or not.

Our next great find was this wall decal. We've been trying to figure out for a while what to do with the giant sliding closet doors whenever we reno the back room this spring/summer. Well now we know what we're doing, or we have a descent idea anyway.

We aren't sure if we're going to use the actual decal on the door or if we'll just use it as a stencil to put up something in a slightly different color than the doors but keep it all in the same color family. And it was on clearance! Wohoo!

We figured $7.50 for such a great little addition with so many possibilities wasn't too high of a price to pay.



Now on to our last bandit buy of the night. As I was still drooling over some furniture and the votive holder from earlier, Jake found this great charging station.

Now to understand just how excited I was about this you would have to share my extreme hatred of all cords. Cords are my nemesis. I cannot stand having them out and tangled, trying their best to collect dust. I wish all things could be completely wireless, which could make my life harder in some ways considering my husband is an electrician, but it's a small sacrifice to make to have the world rid of evil cords. So, back to the charging station. This baby will at least help contain some cords, which I am super stoked about (that's right you heard it here first, "stoked" is totally back). The best part about this little puppy, well second best part after hiding those evil cords, is that it was only 2 buckaroos! Crazy! The cheapest I've ever seen something like this is around $10, and since I'm also a cheapskate I always refused to pay that much.

As you can see, the tag is marked "as is", but the problem with it was so small that it really wasn't a problem at all. There was just a tiny bit of wood splitting on one part of it, which we can always take care of with some wood glue if we get the urge. Needless to say, even though I love that little flower votive holder to death, Jake definitely won the Deal of the Night Award. And he was pretty happy about his find too, between his love of technology, my hatred of cords, and our love of all things bargain, it was like a match made in heaven TJ Maxx. So concludes the first part of the bandit shopping. We'll be back a little later with a Target trip that we put on our bandit masks for and came out loaded.

Drab to Fab

I love a great front porch, who doesn't? They are so homey and inviting. Enter our front porch.

Not exactly your picture of a great front porch, huh? This picture was taken after Jake had already torn down the old ceiling, which you would not want to stand under too long for fear of it collapsing on you. We replaced the old, crumbling ceiling with 3 sheets of bead board, which you can kind of see in the picture. Here's a better view of the new ceiling that doesn't have you running into the house for fear of being buried under it.

It was really a fairly simple switcheroo since the beams that held up the old ceiling were still pretty solid. We just held up the bead board and screwed it into the old rafters that were already there, making sure to leave a hole thru which to hang a new light fixture.

Next came tackling the plain jane white house. Now a few white houses are cute and can pull off being solely white, ours however, is not one of those, especially since the white came in varying shades of peeling. So, knowing that we wanted to paint the door blue (we actually did this project before the blue door) we tried to think of colors that would look good with the blue and add interest to the outside of our ho-hum house. One of the hottest colors in home design right now is gray. Gray can do no wrong in my book. It's just so versatile and can make things look oh-so-sophisticated. We got several different swatches of gray from our trusty Lowes and got to work taping them up where we planned to paint and looking at them at different times of the day. Since the porch faces North, the sun only hits it at certain times of the day and during certain times of the year, so this color had to look great in all lighting conditions. After considering several colors for a day or two we finally decided on the winner. It was a nice, stormy gray that complemented the white and blue without being overpowering. So began the scraping and painting. As you could see in the top picture, our paint was chipping bad, so it definitely needed scraped, if it hadn't been chipping though, we may have just gone straight on to the painting. Good thing it was chipping though, because if we hadn't scraped we may not have found this.

That's right, a rotting pillar. Thankfully it was only one side of the pillar, so it wasn't that difficult to replace. Jake just tore off the rotted side

And replace it with a new piece that he cut to size. We're just very thankful that we caught it before it caused much larger problems. So, with that out of the way we were able to get on with the painting. Once again, to jog your memory, here's the before:

And here's the it's crazy amazing what paint can do, after:

Doesn't it look so much chicer and just all around great?! We have since painted the rest of the concrete white too, and the door blue, but I don't have a picture of that other than the one from the recent blizzard, so if the snow throws you for a loop against all the other summertime pictures, I thoroughly apologize.

As you can see in the picture, we've painted the concrete part of the pillars white, along with the front of the porch, and even the front of the steps, but you can't see that because it's covered with snow. I'll try to get a picture with the sun out as soon as all the snow melts. In the mean time, here's a close up picture of the porch ceiling after it was painted and the light fixture was hung.

Looks great doesn't it? I love how sophisticated the gray looks with the white. Oh, and we got that new light fixture from Lowes for only $10! (it was actually part of a two piece set; we put the other one in the kitchen).

So that's the story of how our front porch went from being boring, and let's face it, a little trashy looking to the cutest little front porch on the block.