Cheaply unique

I'm itching to start decorating for Christmas this year! And in anticipation of it, I bought my first new ornaments of the year.



I love the intricate cut-out design and the sparkle the glitter gives these red hot mamas. But the best part? A set of 6 cost me all of $4 from Big Lots!

Not my size? No problem!

Recently I purchased new bedding from The Company Store to help spruce up our bedroom and bring it into spring/summer. I opted for TCS over places like Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrel because 1.) I really liked some of their clearence sheets, but 2.) the other stores carry mostly 200 thread count sheets. I kind of made myself a promise that I would never put anything on our bed that was less than 300 thread count again--c'mon now, we're grown ups! ;) Plus, I knew TCS would have a lot of different options for striped bedding, which is exactly what I wanted.

I chose their Parker Stripe Percale sheets because I loved that they had varying shades of brown, but also because the stripes were nice and thick (oh, and they were 50% off).


The only problem was they didn't have any queen size flat sheets in the lovely Oatmeal color I was looking for! D'oh!


The I realized I could order one of the other sizes for my flat sheet, because my fitted sheet was what really mattered most (and thankfully the combo queen/Oatmeal was available). So I pondered between a full for $13 or a king for $23. Pfft! Hello budget, full size it is!


But if you think I'm done there, you're wrong! I went one step further and started huting down a free shipping coupon. I was already on a roll with savings, there was no way I wanted to fork out $8 for shipping! I like Retail Me Not for online coupons. Unfortunately, the code I used is expired, but I imagine it's been replaced by now.

So for just under $44, I got an entire sheet set of 300 thread count cotton percale bedding. If I'd paid full retail (plus shipping) I would have shelled out $110! Now that's what I call a bargain.

After thought: Whoever thought "Oatmeal" was the correct word to describe that bedding color was wrong. Unless they add the words "Brown Sugar" before it...

Frame up

I took a day off yesterday to spend with my mom and pup to try and get some stuff done around the house. It was surprisingly theraputic! In between dishes, finishing projects, bank runs, paper sorting, and all the other junk we got accomplished, I also managed to squeeze in a few paint projects as well. Three to be exact, and ironically, all frames!

Last weekend Mom and I went to my cousin's bebeh shower, and we were both the recipient of prizes! Mom won a small Mikasa oval picture frame (and for the rest of the day had to hear me say "Mikasa es su casa!") and I won the grand prize of a fleur de lis drink dispenser (pictures soon, I promise, because I know you're all just dying to see it). ;) But it's what Mom's gift came in that got me going on my frame project.


I loved this colorful little bag she brought home. I kept hissing throughout the party, "Make sure you keep the bag!" because my aunt was trying to throw it out. I knew I had the perfect little IKEA frame for it, so when we got home I traced out a piece of the bag to size, primed and painted a frame, and I had instant artwork! I love the way the black pops all those bright colors (although after seeing this picture, I think I'd like it better horizontally).


Then I remembered two other frames that someone had given me (my family knows who to come to when they think things are useless). I'd stuck 'em in a drawer and just never got around to painting them. So I took out their inserts (someone had a thing for apples), and planned to paint one black and one another color (but no clue what that color would be). I wanted to layer them on the wall because they fit together perfectly! I was ridiculously thrilled considering they were part of a matching set.




So, there you have it! I kept the smaller frame primed white until I decide what I want to do. And its insert is another gift bag that I had hanging around.


Hopefully soon these babies will be showcased in our portico wall that I'm trying to put together (yes, I'm calling it a "portico wall" rather than a "gallery wall"). I know it's not an original idea, but eh. I like it. ;)


I'm linking up to:
Thrifty Thursday @ Thrifty Decorating

Spring & Summer vs. Fall & Winter

When I did our master bedroom make over back in September, I didn't take into account that the changing seasons might have something to do with the reason I was going with richer hues like our chocolaty headboard.



(to see how i made it, click here)
But now that the seasons are changing again, I'm dying for some freaking color! The white curtains have me feeling very blaaaaah. The brown? I'm over it. All the black furniture? Yawn! But of course with my newly established 1/12 for April, I can't just run out and buy new decor for the room. I have to work with what I've got!

My first order of business was the windows. I was trying to figure out the cheapest most cost effective way to get a new look without breaking the bank. I think curtains make or break a room and I always begin every new redecorating project by addressing the windows. So to get rid of some of the black (which I felt was really bringing down the room for spring/summer) I grabbed some leftover spray paint I purchased back in December, pulled down the rods (actually $2 PVC-pipes) and brackets and went to town (I used Rust-Oleum's Metallic Antique Bronze spray paint for a subtle sheen and a little variation)!






The curtains aren't 100% finished (I'll touch on their make-over in another post) but I decided to shake things up a bit and add a tiny country touch to them--I used jute twine to hang them around the rod. I think it adds a very cute detail! I cut even lengths of twine and tied them around the tabs of the curtains. Then I tucked the knot underneath the tab so it would be hidden (...um, forgive the chipped nail polish!).




By far this was the most tedious process. My fingers were a little sore after all was said and done. It took me an episode of Bones and Glee on Netflix before I had everything cut and tied on. Where was Tessie while I did all this? Where else but in mama's lap!


In keeping with the new gold hardware in the bedroom (so it didn’t look too odd with everything else being silver), I decided to go ahead and paint my dresser mirror as well. It was a $10 mirror I picked up at Wal-Mart, and it really anchored the dresser against an otherwise empty and looming wall.


BTW, I buy my jute twine at Home Depot. 190-feet will cost you less than $2.50.

Upcoming projects to bring our master bedroom into a new season:
- updating the dresser ("new" drawer pulls and a little paint)
- changing out the bedding
- repainting the wall shelves and adding some trim to beef 'em up a bit
- repainting the bed side tables
- updating the head board
- adding another shelf

Overall I'm going for more of a fresh country-cottagey kind of feel without going over board. Or over budget...or lack thereof ;)

Better Homes & Gardens

There's something about BH&G that makes me want to throw on my frilly florally tea length dress with high heels and pearls and strut around this house like a fab little 1950's housewife. And I absolutely love that their products are now available to the masses through stores like Wal-Mart. Imagine my surprise when I saw this beauty for only $15 gracing their shelves.


If you know anyone who does "Scentsy," then you know what this is. If not, let me break it down for you. This little guy has a light bulb inside. When switched on, it heats up the plate on top and melts little wax tarts that are made for them. A full sized Scentsy warmer is going to run you around $30, and the little wax tarts will run about $5-$20 for a pack. But the BH&G set at Wal-Mart is only $15 for a full sized burner (same size as a Scentsy) and the tart packs only run $2 each!


How can you not love a deal like that? I was on the fence until another Marine wife rolled up next to me and started gushing to her husband about all the new scents that were out. When I asked her how they compared she gave it rave reviews compared to her Scentsy burner (which she also loved, but the BH&G were a better deal). So I started grabbing tarts and sniffing. Which, by the way, is another convenience I love: I can't smell the tarts in the catalogues, but I can stand and whiff all I want to at Wal-Mart.


Currently I have French Lilac burning which smells like Easter to me. I also burned the Vanilla Caramel Spice in our bedroom for a few days and the smell still lingers in there. Talk about a sinfully heady fragrance! YUM-MY. (The great thing is, once you're ready to switch scents all you have to do is pour the wax back into the container, wipe out the plate, and put in a new tart.) I can't wait to try out the Creamy Tahitian Coconut come summer. It has a light scent that I know I'm going to love when it's time to start BBQing outside again.


So if you're not fortunate enough to know a Scentsy dealer or you're looking for something equally comparable at a great price then definitely rush over to your local Wal-Mart and see if they stock these (I found ours in the candle section). You won’t be sorry!

I was in no way paid or compensated by Wal-Mart, Better Homes & Gardens, or any of their affiliates for sharing this info with you. My opinions and experiences are 100% my own.

St. Patrick's Day: the food

Just reading the directions for these dishes is making my mouth water. The stew sounds hearty and like Irish soul food. I'm think I may add a splash of Guinness to give a bit of a stout taste and provide more broth for bread dipping.

The Main Dish
Slow-Cooker Vegetarian Irish Stew
Irish Soda Bread

Dessert
Irish Whiskey Cake
Irish tea

In other St. Patrick's Day news, the table is very slowly coming together! One of my favorite inspirational photos is this one right here. For some reason this captures the feeling I'm going for all in this one tiny shot--well, minus the green oatmeal!


The natural colored linen napkins, and table cloth, classic white dishes, the old silverware bundled with a bit of twine, and a little shamrock to finish it off. And I knew exactly where to find those napkins.


Pottery Barn's Hemstitch linen napkins. Everything about them is perfect. Except the price. A set of six was going to set me back $56 (no matter what the table is set for, I always buy things in a set of six because that's how many people our table can actually hold). I was bumming hard. Over $9 per napkin?! There was no way I could justify it even if they came out every holiday because I'd constantly be worried about people actually using them. And what's the point in that? But then I found these.




(this is a better representation of their color.
can you tell i was trying to be all pottery barn-like when i took this shot??)
Hemstitch napkins from Pier One for only $4 per napkin! Their color and texture are perfect. The biggest difference between mine and the Pottery Barn ones? Mine are made of cotton. Which I am 100% okay with because they're actually cotton and not a polyester blend. Easily washable and maintainable. And at $24 for a set of six I was doing a little (Irish) jig as I carried them up to the register.

Now I just have to decide what to do about a table cloth...

Spring has sprung (in the stores)

We're still experiencing days that are no higher than 60-degrees (I know, poor us) so it doesn't quite feel like spring time here, but I love love love going into my favorite stores and seeing all the Easter and spring decor on their shelves. I grabbed my pal Stacey and we loaded up for a little girls' outing to try and shake away some of these winter-blues. Our choice of store: Pier One. Note: these were shot with my phone, so apologies for the less than desirable quality.

I remember when the over sized utensil look was all the rage, but I never did get into it. Stacey proposed instead we use them in a "Miniature Cooks" Halloween ensemble.


I was in pink puffy he♥rt love with these hand painted glasses, the stemless ones especially. But at $8 a pop I just couldn't bring myself to buy them, especially since they're so seasonal.


The section of paired salt and pepper shakers had us cracking up. This guy was one of my favorites (followed by the two peas in a pod next to him). My mother has always called Jason "Mr. Monkey" so we hold a special place in our hearts for kitschy stuff like this.


This orange vase with its matching orange flowers were so bright and sunny. Even though orange really isn't one of the colors I use around the house, I was sorely tempted to snatch this display right off the shelf. But I didn't.


Here's what I did come home with. A couple weeks ago Jason and I had visited Pier One just because I needed some inspiration (I was feeling very blah with all the grey skies we were having). Hiding in the wreath section was this amazing lemon wreath that I'd seen the previous summer when he was deployed. My mom and I both loved it but the $45 price tag was waaaaaaay too steep. But when Jason and I went it was marked down to $20! I happily snatched it up. When we got the register it rang up for $11! SO. FREAKING. SOLD.


When Stacey and I made our sojourn to Pier One, I grabbed another one to hang above the bed in our master bedroom. I promise to snap a good photo once the bed is made and Jason isn't playing video games (and giving me little scowls for standing in front of the TV because "that's how the wreath is centered!"). He's on leave this week, so it's all about him and his relaxing time. ;)

And last but not least, I picked up one of their scent pods. Sadly it does not give off any type of fragrance (a real bummer because when you sniff it, the vanilla scent is so intoxicating) but it was only $5 and I really like the way it looks sitting on top of my blue books right now. The beads really catch the twinkle of the light in the living room.


So, until the weather starts to warm up outside, I'll just have to keep visitng my favorite places to see those first hints of spring.

What stores are you visitng right now to get inspired for the season?

Obsession, meet Budget

I was reading about Thrifty Decor Chick's journey to being debt free. I liked their outlook--they paid cash for any purchases they made, they put a chunk of their savings into paying off their debt, but they didn't deprive themselves of life's luxuries (at least not all the way). And while I wasn't ready to run off and buy Dave Ramsey's get-out-of-debt system, something I had read on her blog stuck with me and I'm sure it's the oddest thing anyone's ever come away with. She said something about never buying new furniture.

Okay?! Why is that what stuck with me?? (So sorry, Sarah, I'm sure that wasn't the point of your eloquently written post, and I'm sorry that's all my consumer driven mind sucked up.) I blame it on my ongoing obsession with new couches. Remember these guys that I've been daydreaming about?


But in any event, good or bad, it did drive me to start browsing Craigslist. I know some people are skeeved to the nines about buying used couches, but to me as long as I can wash the slip covers, steam the cushions, and Febreeze the heck outta everything, why is it any different than buying any other piece of upholstered furniture second hand?

At first searching for things like "IKEA sofa" were producing a lot of random results and I was getting too frustrated sifting through them all. So when I tried "Ektorp" imagine my surprise when I was rewarded with a whole page of the words "Ektorp" and "IKEA" in the listing titles (and yes, for you SoCal residents, I did just link you to the very search page I used).

I came across one great listing off the bat which was a set of the loveseat and sofa for only $600 (which you can find here if you want to jump on the deal I passed up).


But I decided to try and see how cheap I could be go extremely frugal and search for an even better deal which I found in not one but two listings.

On Saturday we brought these babies home.





Not for $1063.57 (what the retail price of this combo would have been). Not for $600 (the other insanely good deal listed). We got these for a freaking steal at only $430. Total. I found two separate listings of a loveseat and a sofa--the loveseat was going for $130 and the sofa was going for $300. As fate would have it, they both had the same color slipcover!

I think I eventually want white slip covers, but for now I really don't mind the brown. Kind of helps break up all the neutral we now have in there with the big jute monster gone. And with the smaller scale couches, when I do finally replace our rug, I can go all the way down to a 4'x6' and have it fit perfectly! Look how much bigger the room looks.



So thanks Sarah for inspiring me to not go for a brand new store-bought set of couches--you just saved us $633.57!

I'm linking up to:
The Before & After Party @ Thrifty Decor Chick

My first estate sale

Some people think the idea of estate sales are a little creepy since (at least here in California) it means someone has passed on. One of my sisters absolutely cannot do estate sales or anything of the kind. She just goes all "Paranormal Activity" thinking about the folks who owed her stuff before her. Me? I like a good back story. That's half the fun of going to flea markets--hearing what the peddlers have to say! (BTW, I Googled "peddler" to make sure it wasn't a derogatory term, and came up with this page. Fun!) Anyhoo... Over the weekend my friend Stacey and I went to our first estate sale, which was a little creepy as we found out someone had actually killed themselves in the home. But we made our way through and I picked up three little knickknacks.

These two mason jars are practically brand new--I'd be surprised if they've ever been used. I'd like to fill them up with either bath salts or white tapers for our bedroom.


This little guy has to be my favorite piece of the day. A little nautical bell that was hanging on one of the closet doors (Stacey supported the wobbly step stool as I got up there and unscrewed it).


It's missing the actual bell but still has all the other mechanisms. I'd love to find one and rig it up with a rope pull so that we can have a dinner bell off the kitchen.


Kind of like what Layla and Kevin have going on over at their house.


But I do think I'm going to leave ours brass for now. I like the bit of warmth it adds to all the glass and silver we have in our house. But we'll see. Once it's hung I may go "iiiiiiiiick!" All in all, my three little trasures didn't even cost me a dime! They were such "measley" little objects, the home owner wasn't even concerned with charging me for them!

I'm linking up to:
Thrifty Thursdays @ Bloggeritaville

Home Reserve furniture

We've been wanting new sofas for quite a while now. We've tried living with the old ones by re-stuffing them, slip-covering them, drop-cloth-covering them, anything to make them seem like new. But I think when it comes down to it, we really are just ready for new ones. Exploring our options has been fun, and here's where we're considering right now:

The Ektorp line from IKEA, which would run us $954.83 after tax (oh yeah, I did that kind of math). Classic IKEA and a classic knock-off for Pottery Barn's traditional slip covered sofas. But almost $1000 for a set? I guess it's just the DIY-er in me screaming I can do a whole room with $1000! I wish I didn't love these so much (although admittedly, even at $1000, they're still half the price of one Pottery Barn Basic Sofa).


The Karlstad line from IKEA, which would run us $846.07 after tax. I love that they can look super modern if you use a short slipcover, but can also look very country-cottage with the long ones.


We were pretty much resolved to just save our pennies and get either one of the IKEA sets until Google spit out the Home Reserve website from one of my searches for living room furniture. I've seen their name around the blogosphere once or twice so I was anxious to give the website a little peeky peek. I immediately fell for their Laney sofa in the Ranger Twill White. It plus a matching loveseat would run $778 after all is said and done. Yes, we'd only be saving $68-$177 overall, but somehow a price tag that's well below $1000 makes me feel better (financially, that is).


What we love about both places is the small scale the furniture has. (I know I've said it before, but living in military housing doesn’t always guarantee you a lot of room. We have lived in houses that were too small/our furniture was too big for the rooms.)

Am I a little hesitant about buying a couch that I can't look at, touch, and sit on first though? Hell yeah! Which is why I'm hoping some of you have had some experience with them (or knows somebody who knows somebody...). I want real opinions from real people.

So how 'bout it readers? Comparison shop with me here.

btdub, out of morbid curriosity, i rang up what a pottery barn basic sofa and loveseat would run--$2,982.79 after taxes and shipping! hoe. lee. cow!

Non-Christmas-after-Christmas sales

Our tree was down by noon on December 27. Yeah, I was done with Christmas this year. I wanted to tear down the holly garland, pack up the tree, and move onto Spring. Then I looked over at my couches and saw the old bird pillows. A little worn out and a little deflated (thanks to constantly being hugged, tugged, and slept on by the slew of Marines we have over)--they weren't exactly screaming "bring on the new year!" So I hopped online and started scanning the sale section of my favorite decor website: Pottery Barn, duh. I was seeing a lot of red (in the good way) but when I saw these, I had to do a double take.



in case you can't see that teeny tiny print, it says $9.99 marked down from $29
I mean, $10 for a Pottery Barn pillow?! A big 22" x 22" one?? I can get three for the price of one? It was definitely worth taking a closer look. I had seen these in-store and tried to talk my mom into them because the white one had shades of green and purple in it (Mom has a Tuscan-wine feel to her house). I was hoping the ones on sale were the blue ones--the ones that would go with our decor. And they were! I can't wait to start playing around with that great golden yellow it's got going on.



sorry to anyone who has them monogramed, but that's not the look we'll be rocking--too busy with all that print
Now that the couches were getting a little post-Christmas love, I figured I'd get to work on my table. Down came the winter-esque tablescape. I decided to play with some black and white Martha Stewart dishes my step-mom bought me. I love the little scalloped edges.


But the table was looking pret-ty bare without the holiday place mats. So, wanting something a little more modern I popped over to CB2's website, where I found these for a whopping $0.95 a piece!


They're simple lime/apple green basket weave placemats, but I think with the current black and white dish/table combo I got going on right now, they'll add a fresh pop of color and a little pizzazz.

So there you have it, some post-holiday sales to give my house (and myself) a little pick-me-up. Once the table linens arrive, I'll show you a shot of everything put together and the new centerpiece I'm rocking right now.

Anyone else snatching up some great sale items that aren't actually Christmas-y?