Have a Springy Weekend!

This is a picture I snapped at the Raleigh Farmers' Market yesterday.  Wish I could go tomorrow because there will be more vendors, but we have a huge storm headed our way which is going to make our Saturday pretty rainy and gray.

I hope it's going to be sunny where you are!

Deals at the JC Penny Online Outlet

We bought our nursery furniture from JC Penny and now I get an email just about every day that's advertising some sale or promotion they're having.  I got curious the other day and started looking around the outlet section under the clearance tab on their website.  The outlet sells overstock and discontinued products at huge discounts and it's where I found the gorgeous mirror I posted about yesterday.

Here are a few more deals from the JC Penny Outlet.

1.  Cindy Crawford Luster Hurricane $14.99 (originally $50)
2.  Linden Street Old Fashioned Lantern $14.99 (originally $50)
3.  Cindy Crawford Lattice Placemats $8.99 for 4(originally $30)

Those are my favorites...here's one more.

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95" panels for $9.99!  These have a navy and red stripe and would work great in a little boy's room.

They're also doing free ship-to-store right now too!

Dead Ringer: Restoration Hardware Venetian Beaded Mirror & Cindy Crawford for JC Penny Pearl Beaded Mirror

This is a good one.  The items in my last Dead Ringer post had a $50 difference in their prices.  These beaded mirrors look almost identical, but the one from Restoration Hardware is over $350 more than the one at JC Penny.

This 30"x40" mirror is  $425 at Restoration Hardware.

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This mirror is the same size and it's $69 in JC Penny's outlet.  They also have free shipping on orders over $69 right now. 

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Kitchen Gallery Wall

 

old frames + new, free art = YAY!

This wall in our kitchen is the first thing that you see when you walk into our house so it's pretty important that it coordinates with the new color palette in our living room which is just to the left when you enter.  The best thing is that I didn't have to go out and spend a dime to update the wall. 

Here's the old wall:

(once again, horrible picture...sorry)

I swapped out the red plates for cream plates that we already owned.  They're the Emma dinnerware from Pottery Barn.  They were wedding presents and so was the clock.  I bought the small frames about six years ago from Target's dollar spot and the larger frames are from Micheal's.  The two smaller ones were $5 and the larger one was $10.

I already had the ink and photo paper, so I just clicked, saved and printed to get the prints I wanted from these sites.

 

I realize that I just keep showing snippets of our house.  Hopefully I'll have full photos of complete rooms in the near future.  I keep checking things off of my to-do list  for our living room/kitchen revamp.  When we make our trip to Ikea, all I'll have to do when we get back is put stuff in it's place and I should be done.   I'm really looking forward to being finished.  Only two weeks!

Back to Sew Much Ado

Back to Blue Cricket

Back to The Shabby Chic Cottage

Back to Finding Fabulous

Back to The Stories of A to Z

Painted Letters

Here's project #1 from my weekend.  I finally painted the letters above the cork board (which was only $11 at Wal-Mart) in our kitchen.  I got them from Hobby Lobby for $5 each.

This is what they looked like before.  Gold and crooked.  They've been hanging like that for about five months.  I always knew that I wanted to paint them, I just didn't know what color. (I also still had our Christmas cards hanging up!)

Thank goodness for Better Homes & Gardens.

I found this page in an old issue.  Those paint colors go perfectly with my new throw pillows.  I decided that I wanted to try and add a little more green to my new living room color scheme.  The color on the page is Sherwin Williams Antiquity.  It came out a little too light and I ended up having to get the color two shades darker on the swatch, Grandiose.  Paint was 40% off at Sherwin Williams this weekend so the sample I ended up getting was only $3.

 

I also used the paint on a set of "a" and "z" bookends that I got on clearance from Target.

I'm still not sure if I'm going to keep them in our living room.  They were originally black and now they look a little childish in green.  I may end up re-painting them and moving them to my son's room.

I wanted to post pictures of the new "art" in my gallery wall in my kitchen, but I was getting some bad reflections off the frames from the sunlight coming through our windows.  I'll get some pictures taken tonight and get 'em posted tomorrow.  Here's a little sneak peak!

Back to Sew Chatty

Happy Monday!

I had a super busy weekend and I got a lot of little tasks accomplished.  I don't have any posts quite ready yet, but here's a quick rundown.



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Thanks to The Graphics Fairy I'm 90% finished with updating the gallery wall in my kitchen with free vintage printables.

I took advantage of Sherwin Williams' 40% off everything sale and bought some paint.  I got a little bit of a color called grandiose that looks like the green in the mushroom print above, and a lot of white.  I wasn't able to make a decision on a color for our master bedroom so I bought the white paint at the discounted price and when I'm ready to settle on a color they'll tint it for me at no extra charge.  Isn't that great!?

I also rehung my moss initial on my front door and I am much happier with the way it looks now.

Lots of stuff checked off my to-do list and I'm looking forward to sharing!

A Little Bit of Brass

While I was looking for hardware to give my dresser a face lift I came across these.

I couldn't use them on my dresser, because the drawer fronts are bowed, so I immediately started thinking of another piece of furniture that I could use them.  I think brass accents can give a piece of furniture so much character even if it's in small doses.

I decided to put them on our TV stand.  Our TV stand is actually a bookcase that we had custom made at one of those unfinished furniture places.  Our living room is so small that I needed a TV stand that was really shallow.  Our custom bookcase fits perfectly at 12" deep and it was a little over $100.  Not bad for a solid wood custom bookcase. 

Here's a before:

I took the picture when I was in the middle of clearing off the TV stand so I could move it to put the plates on.  The corner plates aren't that drastic of a change so maybe it's a good thing that the before picture is pretty horrible.  Look at the cords pouring out from behind and the hole in the back of the bookcase.  Gasp!

Here's the after.  Like I said, not drastic, but the plates add a little bit of character.  Now that I know a local hardware store carries all kinds of brass accents I might go crazy and start putting brass hardware on any piece of furniture it'll go on. 

A little inspiration....

 

 

 

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Free Meal Planning Printables

I'm still plodding along in my living room.  Until I have something to show, here's a handy tool I whipped up that may be of use to my fellow meal planners.

I'm not a very good planner so this little project was a bit of a stretch for me.  I came up with this when I first started couponing.  I didn't want to fall into the trap of buying things just because they were a good deal.  These lists help me buy only what I need.  They also save me from having to run out and make special trips because I don't have an ingredient for a meal I decide to cook. 

First I look at what's on sale and what has the best coupon match ups and then I choose which meals I'm going to prepare for the week.

I made the list of meals because it always took me so long just to get ideas of what to cook.  Now I have all the old standbys in one place and plenty of room to add new meals.  The printable above is blank so meals can be filled in.  The PowerPoint printable which is below has the lists of meals that I cook a lot and it can be altered.

After I've picked which meals I'm going to make, I write down which meal I'm going to cook on which day. Then I scan the pantry and fridge to make sure I have all of the ingredients for each meal.  The items on the list are items that are needed for the meals I commonly make plus staples like olive oil, eggs and bread.

The process of meal planning takes me a  while, especially when I'm also couponing.  However, I've found that the time and effort is well worth the money that's saved.

I've uploaded two different copies of the meal planner.  One is a PowerPoint file and doesn't look that great, but it can be altered.  The other is a PDF file and it can't be altered, but it looks better.  Click the pictures above to download the PDFs or click here to get the PowerPoint version that can customized.

Happy meal planning!

Turning My "Wanter" Off

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This sofa and the matching love seat are on sale at JC Penny right now for $799 each.  Not a bad price, especially when you consider that it's $200 cheaper than the least expensive sofa at Pottery Barn.

It's exactly what I'm looking for too.  Neutral with clean lines.  I can dress it up or down, and it'll go with most color schemes.

As I've been working on changing the color scheme in my living room, the one thing that's standing in my way of having the look that I want is my sofa set.  My sofa and love seat are skirted, camel back, and upholstered in  a yellow-y neutral chenille.  Blah. 

The yellow-y fabric makes me think my sofas belong in a room that looks like this:

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Definitely not the look I'm going for.

My husband and I bought our sofa and love seat four years ago, back when I knew that I wanted my house to look pretty, but I didn't really have a grasp on my own personal style.

Our set was also an awesome deal.  We stumbled on it in a furniture store that was changing location and trying to get rid of their inventory before they moved.  We bought both pieces for $650.  Yes, a new sofa and love seat for $650.  They're decent quality too.  As much as I'd like to get new sofas, I don't think I could bring myself to pay much more than that on a new set.   Since sofas are hard to come by at $650 for two, I most likely won't be getting them any time soon.

Of course reupholstering our sofas would be cheaper than buying new ones, but it's still not exactly cheap.  I wish I could get my sofas to look a little more like this:

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I could definitely work with that.

Since buying new sofas, nor reupholstery are options, this is what I'm going to do:  I'm going to turn my "wanter" off.  Yes, you read that right, "wanter."  We all have it.  That voice (urge, impulse, whatever) that tells us that there is something that we should have that we currently don't have.  The "wanter" also usually tells us that we should have that thing the very instant the voice, urge, or impulse kicks in.  Sometimes the "wanter" is sneaky and can convince us that the thing we want is actually a need.

The truth is that I don't need sofas, so I'm going to work with what I've got and I'm going to be happy with it.  I'm going to be thankful that I've got furniture in the fist place and that I've got a roof to put it under.

Maybe I'll stumble across a killer deal sometime soon (let me know if you find a sofa and love seat for about $200, OK?) or I'll find a way to make inexpensive slip covers with my horrible developing seamstress skills.  For now my wanter is officially off and I am going to be content with what I have.

Delayed Ikea Trip & Moss Initial

Our plan to make a trip to Ikea was foiled by a stomach bug.  My husband got sick Friday morning and I was so determined to go get that chair that I almost drove the 5 hour round trip by myself.  I called the store to make sure that they had the chair we wanted, and the lady I spoke with said that they had a lot of them.  Since it sounded like they weren't going to run out any time soon I decided to just postpone our trip for three weeks.  I've been planning on getting the chair since December, so three more weeks is nothing.

I'll see you in 3 weeks, OK?

Instead of going to Charlotte with my husband, my mom and I loaded up the baby and made a trip to Hobby Lobby in Burlington. Can you believe that we have to drive over an hour to get to the nearest Hobby Lobby?!  I think I'm going to start a letter writing campaign to David Green to get a Hobby Lobby in Raleigh.  I can't be the only one in this city of over 400,000 who wants one.

Anyway....I got some supplies to complete a little project that I've been wanting to do for a few weeks now.  Copies of Pottery Barn's moss letters have been floating around the blog world for a while, but I thought I'd share mine any way.

Other tutorials that I've seen have used moss that comes in pieces.  I used moss that comes in a sheet.

I just cut and hot-glued.  The most difficult part of this project was keeping our dog from eating the moss that fell on the floor.  The second most difficult part was getting the letter to hang on a wreath hanger.  I still don't really like how I've got it hanging, but it'll do for now.

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These are Pottery Barn's letters which retail for $79 each.  The letter I bought at Hobby Lobby was on sale for $5 and the pack of moss was $5.  Even though my letter is smaller than the Pottery Barn letter, the $10 price tag makes up for the few inches it's lacking.