A Little Before and After

As I have mentioned before I have been working on some furniture pieces for my new place.  The place I had originally planned to move into fell through so I have been staying with family while waiting for my apartment to be ready.  I have a few of my furniture pieces almost completed.  I have been trying to work on them on weekends when I am back at the family home...my family is ready for them to be out of their way!  So here is a small project that I worked on.

My Stepmother gave me this plant stand.  I'm not sure if she really wanted to give it to me but I asked real nice and she said I could have it.  I always forget to take an actual before picture.  The picture below is after I had sanded it.  It was painted green and had yellow and rust peeking through.

I liked the rough worn look but knew it wouldn't work with the other pieces I had done.  Below you can see come of the metal scroll work.  I think it would make a good side table or a plant stand again.  We will see.

Don't mind the background, there has been a lot going on at  the home where my pieces are stored.  i painted it a neutral almond color for now.  I would love to paint it a bright primary color but again I'm not sure of where this is going at the moment.  I had originally spray painted it an enamel white but it was awful (It was so bad it made me cry and then I had to sand it again...I don't think I will use enamel paint again.)

It looks so much prettier now and the finish feels very nice.  Once all the pieces are in place I will take a picture and show it to you all together.  I will also show you the other finished pieces soon.  I'm bad at taking pictures and realized I'm missing pictures of the finished pieces.

Thanks for stopping by!

Halloween Swap 2015

I joined Sarah's Halloween Swap again this year.  I forgot I would be moving when I joined so it was pretty hectic and I wasn't able to do what I had planned but I was still able to submit, I think a cute ornament, but maybe not as cute as the others I received in return! 

This box is what I had to work with this year...paper straws, tulle, glitter, paper cupcake liners, glitter foam.  I was inspired by cupcake images I saw on Pinterest.

I found these cauldrons at a thrift and glittered them up.

I used two different glue techniques but I liked the hot glue best.  I was trying to make it look like a bubbling cauldron.

The witches shoes made out of glittered craft foam.  I didn't use a pattern to make them, I just free handed them and wrapped them around the straw legs.

Cupcake liners and tulle for the skirts, straws for the legs...do you see what they are becoming?

Witches in cauldrons.  You can head on over to Sarah's blog Makin' Projiks to check out a better picture of what I made and what she received in the swap.  Below are pictures of what I received. 

My box that came in the mail.  I came home and found it waiting for me.  (By the way, I am enjoying my new job so far!  Though I am still waiting for an apartment to become available.  I have been couch-surfing at my cousins, it has been fun but I'm looking forward to my own place and I'm sure she is looking forward to having her home restored.)

This is what it looked like when I opened the box.  I was so excited to see what was inside!

Everything in the box in the packaging they came in.

A house ornament...this is the front...

or maybe this is the front? It shows nicely from both sides.

A painted pumpkin acorn.  I have never seen elongated acorns before!

Sarah from Makin' Projiks made these cute mouse globes.  You can wear it on a chain if you don't want to use it as an ornament on a tree.

Kim from Musings from Kim K. sent all this.  The ornament has a cute front and back.  I'm not sure which side I like most.

Possibly the owl? or maybe the scarecrow?  I'm not sure.

There was this cute cone.

and this sparkly witches broom!

I loved this skeleton with her painted nails and skirt...I'm assuming it is a female skeleton!

Here is a cute pumpkin using a tart tin!

Now I need to fix this one.  You can't see it in the photo but he had an accident during the shipping process and he lost his head and hat, nothing a little glue can't fix.

I think I will need to use this in my dollhouse...if I ever get it completed!  This fireplace is all decorated for Halloween.   I think this was another really great Halloween Swap.  I hope you guys enjoyed it just as much as I did.

I will be posting pictures of the after from my furniture redo's soon.  I have a few more things to finish before I can show you and since i'm not home during the week to work on the projects they have been delayed.  My brother is also putting on a haunted house again this year and I have been "helping" him with it so the month of October is booked.  

Thanks for stopping by!

Yay or Nay?

So if you read my last post you know there are some big changes in store for me.  I resigned from my current position, accepted a new position and will be moving away from all my close friends and immediate family members.  I will be living on my own in a new city for the first time in my life.  No I am not having a mid life crisis but I will admit to not being happy in different areas of my life and when a new opportunity arose I decided to jump on it.  I know you take your problems with you, I'm not running away, I'm just ready for a change.

The last couple of weeks has had me traveling back and fourth looking for a new home...I may have found it, finding moving boxes, starting to go through my things to decide what I will be taking with me and be getting rid of.  Did I mention I do not have a lot of my own furniture.  I have my bed, a dresser, a desk, some shelves, a few dishes and utensils but I will pretty much be starting from scratch.

I've had some projects that have been hiding out in my garage for the past several years.  I have started some of them but when the hand sanding became to much they sat there getting rusty and dare I say moldy!  So that is where the Yay or Nay comes from.  Would you try to save a piece of furniture that has lots of rust and some mold?  Not to mention a lot of other work needed just because you love the piece and can see what it can become?

I have 5 projects that I'm working on, hoping to take to my new place.  3 pieces are or were really rusty, one has mold growing on it and the other has a roughed up paint job.  Here are two of the worst looking projects.  Would you keep them or toss them to the curb?  They are worse in person than they look in these photos

This stool I found in the garbage 3 or 4 years ago.  It went directly into my garage never to be seen again until now.  It has a ton of rust, needs a new seat and back, new upholstery and new steps...It basically needs to be totally rebuilt.  Would you take on this challenge right before a big move?  Do you think it can be done or should it be tossed?  The reason I want it?  I had one of these growing up as a kid and I loved it.  Plus my possible new home has cupboards that go up to the ceiling and I thought I could use this to reach the shelves.  Any ideas for fabric or color?  I also have another, better conditioned stool I am also working on.

This dresser.  I LOVE this dresser, but I put it in my garage while I tried to figure out what I wanted to do to it, my garage sprung a few leaks in the roof and mold started to grow on it.  I have sprayed this down with bleach several times.  Do you think it can be saved?  Any ideas on how to stop the mold.  This piece doesn't seem to be damp or rotting.

The bottom drawer in the above picture has what appears to be the worst of the mold on it.  This was the drawer closest to the floor and standing moisture.

The top drawer in the above photo cleaned up the best.  I realized though that I will have to re-sand and paint the whole entire dresser because there is a lot of discoloration and stains from something.  It looks like someone tried to clean the dresser in the past because there are spray marks from some type of cleaner on the frame of the dresser.  The discoloration looks like it could have been tar from cigarette smoke on the dresser but it doesn't smell of cigarette smoke.  

I cleaned the yellowness from the top drawer with a magic eraser.  The magic eraser fell apart after cleaning that one drawer.  I think I would need 15 of them and a lot of elbow grease to get the crud off this dresser.  Do you think this dresser can be saved?  Look at that hardware, it is the reason why I bought this dresser.  Do you have any ideas about what I should do with it?  Do you think it can be tackled in a few weeks especially since I am working a full time job and refinishing other pieces?

Well what do you think, am I crazy?

Did I also mention I joined a Halloween Ornament Swap hosted by Sarah at Makin' Projiks and that the ornaments are due the same time I am moving?  I think I am crazy.  I will let you know how things go but feel free to send me suggestions. 

Big Changes, Breakfast Fried Rice and Some Found Treasures

I'm sorry I have been missing in action for awhile.  There are some big changes in the very near future for me.  I have resigned my position at my current job, will be starting a new job that I am looking forward to and will be relocating to a new area by myself.  I have always lived with someone, in a small town, but I am relocating to a city and will be living by myself, so this will be a big, major, change for me.  I am looking forward to the change and I'm of course a little scared.  I have always had immediate family near me and now they will all be at least an hour away.  I'm a big girl though so I think I can handle it.

I thought I would share this recipe I threw together.  I thought it was good, not great and I'm not really sure if I would add this to the regular recipe rotation but it whips together fast and is filling.  I had leftover Chinese white rice that I wanted to use up and so came up with this recipe.  I would have taken more pictures but fried rice happens so fast I didn't have time.

Breakfast Fried Rice 

Ingredients:

Bacon

Onion

Red Pepper

2-3 Eggs

White Rice

Soy Sauce

Fry up your bacon, drain but reserve some of the fat.  Add you onions and red peppers and cook until they are just about the way you like them, push them to the side.  

Add a little of the reserved bacon fat to the pan and add your scrambled egg yolks, cook until done.  Add your white rice, mix together ingredients, add your soy sauce, turn off heat, taste and adjust seasonings.

This recipe is different but if you are looking for ways to use up leftovers you can give this a try.  I like the contrast between the salty bacon and sweet peppers and onions.

So while I have been working on the changes in my life and weird recipes I have also been hitting some sales.  I know I shouldn't be buying anything since I will be moving but I couldn't pass up these items.

I apologize for the really crappy photos.  These pictures do not do the items any justice.

I found this really great homemade picture.  I believe it was made sometime in the early 1900's.  It is quite large.  Someone painted the roses and leaves on what appears to be silk and added two pictures of "A Pair of Jacks."  There are no names or dates on this framed picture.

Jack number 1.

and Jack number 2.  I bought this for $5.99.  I will be cleaning the frame up and removing the stickers.  I will be keeping and displaying this in my new place.

A set of six Vera napkins.  I have never seen these before.  I was thinking about making these into pillows.  Did you see the price tag?  I bought these for $1.99.  I'm not sure what they sell for but I loved the colors and design.

I can never pass up Vintage Nativity Sets, I don't know why.  I definitely do not need anymore and I will have to invest in a shelf to display them all.

But look at this angel, isn't she sweet.  I think this box holds several different sets.  Some of the figures are marked made in Italy.  

Some random Christmas items I found at a church rummage sale.  I love these melted plastic figures, I have never seen this snowman before.  Everything in this photo was $2.

My haul from a festival.  I bought everything in this photo for $7 dollars.  Oh wait there are two Vintage White Pyrex Mixing Bows missing from this photo.  The seller gave me a package deal...I wish I would have bought more but I didn't think I would have enough money and the seller was so helpful and carried everything to my car. 

Look at the graphics on these domino boxes.  I was told originally $1 for both.  The little taffeta angel was $.25.  The embroidered linens were $1 each.  There are seven of them.

A cute kitten table runner.

Look at these Deer.  I can't imagine the time it took to make these.

If you look at this photo in the upper right hand corner you can see there is a black ring,  Do you guys have any cleaning advice for vintage linen?

A vintage pink floral table cloth.  They wanted $3 for it.  You can see there is rust spots on this vintage pink floral table cloth.  I would like to try and clean them properly before cutting them up if I can't remove the stains.  I have tried some cleaning recipes I have found on Pinterest on other vintage fabrics but have never been happy with the results, so if you have tried something and it worked I would be happy for the advice.

I also bought a little plastic swan pot.  It was on the $.50 table.  It is still waiting to be cleaned.  

Do you see the white background in these photos.  That is a full/queen Matelasse coverlet by Spiegel.  I have been looking for a Matelasse coverlet for awhile now but they are always so expensive.  I inquired about the price thinking maybe $40.  They told me a $1 before bundling everything together.  Finding that coverlet made my day but the pricing of it made it even better.  I would have paid more for it.  And lets not forget the two white Pyrex mixing bowls (sorry no photo, they are being cleaned)  They told me $1 for both.  I loved that sale.

My funky, memory inducing find was this Lite Brite.  I plan on using this at my new place.  It has the pegs and paper images but I need more.  So what funky and awesome finds have you scored lately?  I would love to hear from you.

A Fox Box and the Missing Tail

I went thrifting and found this fox trinket box.  The only problem was that it was missing it's tail...oh and the price!  It was several dollars.  I didn't want to pay that price for a damaged item so I left it behind.  I went into the thrift several times and would see it sitting on the shelf but I would pass it by.  My thrift store prices item with colored price tags and each week a color tag goes on sale.  Eventually the box went on sale and I decided to buy it even with the broken tail.

As you can see there are some very minor chips on it which is not surprising for my thrift store.  They receive a lot of damaged items and they are sometimes rough on the merchandise getting it to the shelves. I still bought the box it figuring I would eventually think of someway to fix all the problems.

Here's a close up of the broken tail.  The fox box sat on my bedside stand for months while I tried to figure out how to fix it.  It really didn't take me long to figure out how I was going to fix it I was just lazy and was looking for the right color chenille stem.

Well I couldn't find an appropriate orange colored chenille stem so I went with white.  I then had to figure out how to dye it.

A little side note the box was made in '73 by someone with the initials KMB.

My first choice to color the stem was with food dye.  I tried it twice but I had a lot of problems.  So I went to my next choice Sharpies!  They were a better choice but still not perfect but I made due by using several colors to get the color I wanted.

I ended up with two color choices, a dark red orange and an orange yellow color.  Both actually looked good directly next to the fox butt.  I debated for awhile on which one to choose, asking people for their opinion.  It didn't help because their opinions were split down the middle.  I then had to make the choice on my own.  I had real world problems here people.

Once the decision was made I dabbed a little E600 glue on the fox's butt and went to work.

I chose the lighter colored tail and shaped it.  My color choice was decided because I wanted to get this project completed and it was the first one I grabbed.  I actually like it though.  

I still need to add something to complete it but it definitely looks better with a tail.  I think I could have also used paper clay to make a tail but then I would have had to paint it and it probably would have looked really out of place.  I think the soft fuzzy tail makes it interesting.  I now have to see how long this fix will last.  I'm thinking about adding a button or ribbon on it's butt...do you have any suggestions to hide the wire?

Thanks for stopping by and if you have any suggestions for future posts feel free to leave a comment.