Our Home: Master Bedroom Redo!

I redid our master bedroom a few months ago but never got a chance to post about it! Both Peter and I have pretty much despised our bedroom decor from day one.. it was just always the last thing to work on since we were really the only ones to spend time in there. I finally couldn't take it anymore though & decided one weekend that it was time for a fresh start... on a budget of course!

Here are some pics of our bedroom before:

And here is the after! We love it and actually enjoy being in there now! 

Quilt from Tuesday Morning. Two small pillows are new from West Elm. Rugs from Urban Outfitters (mine is teal chevron and his is light gray chevron). Lamp on the left from Marshalls. Lamp on the right from Target. My bedside table is the same as before, just with a new pink knob :) and Peter's is a bedside table that I switched out from another bedroom.

I did frame collages on each of our respective sides using old frames I had (spray painting some and leaving some as is). On my side is my grandparents wedding invitation, a baby pic of my grandpa, a rhodesian ridgeback art print my mom & I bought in Austin, and some other fun stuff! 

And this is Peters side... his favorite thing is the black & white lonesome dove pic, duhh.

I love these wooden butterflies.. I bought them at Paper Source a long time ago and found them during the redo. I just sticky tacked them to the wall.

I added the curtain to the bathroom door for a little privacy! Also put up a map made of cool patterns that I got on sale at Urban Outfitters. I got the frame for that at a thrift store and spray painted it a metallic goldish color. I repainted the chest of drawers on the right (it used to be black), distressed it a little bit, and changed the hardware.

I repainted this dresser (actually using just one sample jar of paint from home depot, which I'm sort of proud of, haha)... it used to be black. I also repainted the knobs in the same metallic goldish color as above. The white rattan thing above the dresser is actually a twin headboard. I got it at a thrift store and love it! Also you can see on the far right side of the pic one of the new curtains I hung up. I found them in the clearance bin at West Elm! 

Benson loves the new bedroom too! 

Valentines Decor - Dollar Tree Style!

I ran into the dollar tree recently (I'm sure to buy some necessary items like cute ankle socks and 500 various tubs to organize with) & noticed that they had some suuuper cute valentines items! Although I have a very love-hate (mostly hate) relationship with valentines day, I still couldnt resist!

First up, the picnic table in our kitchen eating area:

The mason jar in the middle is filled with red hots and then I stuck a few cute, soft little hearts on sticks in the red hots. Oh and then I cut the hearts off some extra sticks I had and filled the side mason jars with those. woohoo DT rules! I wish they carried mason jars though. Someone work on that for me!

Felt table runner and heart plates below are from Target - compliments of Anna. thanks mom!

I printed out these little L-O-V-E letter cards to put on each plate around the table.. corny but again, I just cant help myself! ahh

Now for the dining room table... (yes there's more - cupid threw up on my house for real)

Wooden candle holder filled with red hots and more hearts on sticks! I sure do get a lot of use out of my wooden candle holders. And for some reason I have like 4 of them in various lengths...  why? I think every time I went to Canton over the course of a few years I'd forget I already had 1 (or 3) at home and would make Anna buy me a new one. oops, thanks again mom! :) 

And last but not least, an easy vday garland! 

I bought a pack of foam hearts at DT and strung them together with a needle and some red thread. Might sound time consuming, but I promise it only took me like 5 minutes to do! 

Oook I think thats all the valentines decor that anyone can handle... I apologize to all you vday haters out there & will blame all of the above on my love for the dollar tree, budget decorating, and anything and everything holiday related.  hah try to still love me! :) 

Junk Cabinet Organizing on a Budget!

Sooo its time for another post where I embarrass myself with a "before" photo that shows off just how disgusting I really am deep down. This time its our junk cabinet -- the cabinet in between our kitchen and tv room that contains pretty much 2 types of items -- weird, rarely used home items or benson's belongings. Feel free to judge me, cause I'm judging me just looking at the picture again...

For some reason January has become organizing month in my head, so when it rolled around, I decided this grosssss cabinet was first priority, but knew I couldnt really spend more than a few dollars to get this baby organized. Challenge acceppptedddd. (how i met your mother reference.. anyone get it? no? im the only one who still loves that show?? oh well).

So to start, I took everything out of the cabinet & got rid of what i could & categorized what was left over. Then I gathered some bins I had around the house that weren't being used and made a beloved trip to the Dollar Tree to get whatever else I needed. (love you $tree!).

I gave everything that needed to be in the cabinet a home of sort in either a bin, basket, or tupperware container & after adding some perhaps over-the-top homemade labels to the mix, my lovely little organized masterpiece was complete!  

You can actually see whats in there now, wahooo! Just hoping it stays this way! 

Oh & here are a couple of pics of the countertop below the cabinet.. I cleaned it off & made it a little cuter at some point during the cabinet organizing process! 

Alright thats all for now... hope you are inspired to do some January organizing!! 

File Cabinet Coffee Table!

I saw this old file cabinet in my garage the other day & an idea popped itself into my random head.. what if I turned this babyyy on its side and made a coffee table out of it? 

I had seen it every day since we moved in (the people who lived here before us left it in the garage) but I hadn't noticed its true beeeauty until now! I loved its rusty worn look & loved the color too! Soo inch by inch I drug that 500 pound hunk of lovely junk out of the garage and with the help of my buff & manlyyy husband, carried it into the living room.

After a good & thorough cleaning (years spent in a garage = nasty) I think she looks quite lovely in her new home!

Beautiful Evil Thrifty Chair.

I went by my fav little thrift store yesterday on the way home from the post office. All I needed was a $1 piece of fabric & I promised myself that I would not be tempted by all the other beautiful, wonderful, evil little things around me... 

I failed. Five minutes after I promised not to be tempted by things such as these, I was outside sweating and cursing trying to get the little beauty in the front passenger seat of my beetle. But I meannn, as I told Peter, I really had no choice... It was $25... TWENTY FIVE! Ahhh! Its just not right to put these types of bargains in front of my face.. I'm not strong enough! 

Oooh well, I'll worry about my willpower later. For now I'm just gonna go stare at my chair and smile creepily by myself. Byeee! 

Our Home: Built In Shelves Thrifty Makeover

The shelves in our tv room/den/main gathering room -- whatever you wanna call it -- have bugged me for a while. They are great shelves but when we moved in I just sort of threw some old books & other stuff on them & then never touched them again. They looked ugly. And they staaared at me all the time. So even though I really didn't have money to spend on this problem at the time, I found a way to do something about it!

I took a lot of the old books I had & found the hardcover ones & removed their paper covers... they look much prettier that way! I also found books of similar colors, like the white/cream books under the pewter pitcher. Much better! Or at least I think so!

This old wire fry basket is from a thrift store near me (not the one I always refer to, but another one) - it's called Second Chance Treasures & benefits homeless pets!

The photos are from our honeymoon -- I played with them in photoshop to make the colors pretty & printed them out!

The old cake pans are from the thrift store that I love down the street from me.. I think they were $1 each, yay. The moss frame is one thing I did leave on the shelves --- the tutorial for that is here!

The woodsy filler stuff in this jar & also in the fry basket is from the dollar tree! Loooove you sweet best friend dollar tree. Jars are from a thrift store.

For this shelf I framed some paper & also made us a mini version of the wedding date customized print I sell on Etsy. You should get one too! :)

The Plaza de Santa Cruz picture is one I had from Spain... I love it & it reminds me of spain every time i look at it!

Hope my newly made-over shelves make you as happy as they make me! Ok they probably don't, but hopefully they made you a little happy & a little inspired to use cheap/thrifty stuff or things you already have to reinvent parts of your home!

Office Organizing: Vintage Ideas

I love these ideas for adding vintage touches when organizing... not only is repurposing vintage items cute & different - but its cheaper! yay!

They have a million of these old coke can boxes at Canton... great idea for storing just about any craft supply!

Image via bhg

Image via bhg

Image via country living

Image via bhg

Love this idea of converting an old suitcase into the perfect storage place for crafting materials! And its portable too!

Image via bhg

And genniuusss... you can stack them & label them with cute gift tags (that look like luggage tags! presh).

Image via bhg

Our Home: Vintage Kitchen Tin Planter

I found a couple of vintage kitchen tin jar/canisters (whatever you call them) at the thrift store down the street from my house recently for $1.50 each! I knew they were cute, but I didnt have a clue what I would do with them. When I got some oh-so-pretty pink flowers for my birthday from my brother & sis-in-law though, I had an idea... A flower planter!

This one is an old Bisquick tin.. I love it.

I used a white bowl type thing inside the bisquick tin to raise the flowers up a little bit. Also I put some scrap burlap underneath the planter for some added rusticness (sure thats a word). Love me some burlap babyy.

Have a happy Monday!