right...

Thankfully stolen from Thrifty Decor Chick

repurposed chalkboard and thrift store lamp...

Happy Friday!

I hope everyone had a wonderful and happy Easter and a nice week! I wanted to share my 'new' chalkboard with you. It's been up for a while, but I've been too busy to take pictures and do a post. So here we go...

Of course, I don't have a 'before' picture...or at least not a good one. But this frame was given to me by my sweet mother-in-law. It was actually a giant shadow box. In bronzes and tans and coppers and golds. And inside the box was a big scroll-y thing. I tried to save the scroll (to paint pink and put in my daughter's room) but it turned out to be hollow plastic and broke during the process.

So I painted the frame with white spray paint, and glazed it with brown acrylic craft paint. Here's the frame (I love that it's a little chippy and distressed-looking):

I knew that I wanted a chalkboard, so I bought a big piece of MDF and painted it with chalkboard paint. I bought both the roll-on kind and the spray-on kind, an wound up using the spray paint. Just seemed like it'd be easier. And it was pretty darn easy. My only advice is this: give your paint a couple of days to dry before you write on it. I didn't and I can still see the "scratches" of the first thing I wrote on the board. I plan on giving it another coat of chalkboard paint one of these days...

So here's the finished product:

The lamp is from one of my fave thrift shops. I rarely find something I like there, but when I do, it's love. I got my all-time favorite thrift store find there. You may not think it's much, but for some reason I LOVE this jar.

Here's the before...The shade was AWFUL, but I loved the shape of this lamp - and it was only about $3. Only problem was...for some reason, when you buy an appliance at a thrift store here, it will always have a sticker on it that says "this is a used appliance, lower your standards, it may not work, and you may electrocute yourself." Or something like that. And those stickers? Almost impossible to remove. And usually placed somewhere obvious, so you HAVE to remove them before you can rehab your treasure. So this lamp sat in my garage for about six months before I rolled up my sleeves, whipped out the Goo Gone and got to work.

...and here she is after. $7.99 shade from Target. I have had a heck of time finding shades that I like lately. And I'm not a make-your-own-shade kinda girl. I know people have been doing it out in blogland, but it's just not my thing. But I love this lamp now. The mercury glass vase is from my husband...my 10th Anniversary flowers came in it. 10th Anniversary is 'tin,' so the flower shop gave me the mercury glass vase. Sweet, huh?

And then look what I found in the PB catalog today...

Pretty close, huh? Except that the lamp looks to be finished in ORB. And there's that pretty seagrass-looking wallpaper...and those cute hats. Oh well. Close enough.

Thought I I'd throw in the ladder-back chair (painted black, of course) that's part of the same 'vignette.'

TTFN...have a great weekend!

Linking up here:

A Bowl Full of Lemons

Domestically Speaking

Simply Designing

At The Picket Fence

Sassy Sites

Common Ground

French Country Cottage

House of Hepworths

Miss Mustard Seed

Serenity Now

The Shabby Nest

Just a Girl

Chic on a Shoestring

Remodelaholic

The Shabby Chic Cottage

504 Main

Beyond the Picket Fence

The Shabby Nest

tmi...

I just wanted to share that we had a wonderful Easter surrounded by lots of family.

Then we went to the pet store to buy a mouse for my son - for which he has been begging and saving for months. Literally...he had $3 stapled to a list of things we needed to buy for his mouse that went something like this:

mouse food

mouse vitamins

mouse toy

MOUSE!!!

[My mother noted that you are allowed a finite amount of exclamation points in your life, and T may have uselessly squandered a couple on his mouse list. I told her that I didn't think you get a finite amount of exclamation points, and to shut up about it!!!!!!!!!!!! But anywhooo...]

I should note that, when we were getting ready to leave for the pet store, the $3 had mysteriously disappeared - although the list had not. Hmm.

So...for two years we had a gerbil named Scurry. Scurry was social and sweet and smart and only bit T a couple of times. I can attest to the patience of the gerbil, as I have had the desire to bite T on dozens of occasions. But Scurry only bit him twice. Even though T deserved it far more often.

And while Scurry's cage could get a little stinky if we didn't clean it often enough, he was pretty much a non-stinky pet. [My husband would argue to the contrary, but we'll let him talk about that on his own blog. Oh wait...he doesn't have a blog. Too bad. But I digress...]

So...when T decided he wanted a mouse I thought - "Great! A mouse is smaller and therefore will smell even less than the gerbil." Right? Wrong. It's only been two days, and already I'm having little fantasies about the mouse's true role in the Circle of Life, and how I might hasten his demise without upsetting a) my son or b) the Circle of Life.

Thanks for listening. Now you know why this post is titled "TMI." Have a nice day.

the day came and went...

...and I didn't even realize it was my 100th post (the 'oh how i love picnik' one...that was my 100th post). I thought about a special giveaway. Maybe a big party. But thanks to 'scheduled posts' I just put it out there and forgot about it. Oh well...check back at 200 and maybe we'll do something fun! :)

today...

Gleefully stolen from Lavender & Lilies

oh how i love picnik.com...

Have you been over to Picnik.com yet? If not, you should hop right on over there! Here's my lilac picture from my previous post with a little fiddling on Picnik. I used the cross-process and vignette effects. Messed a little with the softness, color saturation and sharpness. And voila! It's the next best thing to Photo Shop. Enjoy!

sample pics from the new camera...

I haven't really had a chance to play around with the custom settings yet. And yes, the gimmicks are, well, a little gimmicky. But still...love this camera. So, here we go:

First, I experimented with the zoom. This camera has two or three times the zoom of my old camera. Here's the few from our hotel last weekend, without any zoom:

...and here's the same fountain, at about 15x zoom. I know that most cameras take good pictures outdoors, but I'm impressed with the resolution at high-zoom:

Note the tree in the middle of the picture has flowers on it:

...and here are those flowers close up - again, using full zoom at about 15x:

Takes great pics of always-on-the-move kids:



Same pic with a little "lightening":


This is the one that has impressed me most. A gecko on-the-move, taken quickly in "auto" mode, and with a slightly shaky hand. The pic is not fantastic:



...but look at the resolution when I crop that same photo. I'm impressed:

The lilacs in my backyard (that never last long enough...boo), taken with the camera's "miniature" feature:

...and again with the camera's "color select" feature, where you pick one color, and then everything else is in black and white. I love the blurring in the background. There's a word for that, but I can't think of it:

TTFN...have a Happy Easter, everyone!

new patio cushions...

We'll have a housefull of people here next weekend for Easter. I have a long to-do list - more than I can possibly do between now and then. So I'm picking and choosing my projects this weekend. This one was quick and easy. And boy, did those cushions need to be recovered!

Before...

Note to self...take the cushions off of the chairs before the kids start painting!

After. So much better. This outdoor fabric was only $4.99 a pound at our local fabric-by-the-pound place (and this project took exactly 2 yards). Yay! :)

why i never get anything done...

...gratefully plagarized from Thrifty Decor Chick.

and the winner is...

TA DA!!!

After months of exhaustive research (I got my Amazon GC for Christmas, people!) I finally bought a Canon PowerShot SX130is. Not the SLR I was dreaming of, but it's an awesome camera and I LOVE it (and it was in my price range). Sample pics to come...

craigslist fail...or hit?

Fail or Hit? You decide...

I searched for a king-sized headboard and found this:



And here's the info:

I use the term "pimp" very loosely. You don't have to be a pimp. I mean, I'm not. Definitely not. But this thing is big. 10'3" big. (' is for feet, " is for inches, by the way.) And when I say big, I mean long - from end to end it's 10'3". That's longer than my bedroom. Longer than all three of my bedrooms. One's actually converted into a little office, but that's besides the point. Perhaps they would be larger if I were a pimp. But I'm not. Definitely not.

Now what is this thing? It's a headboard for a california king bed. And it has a nightstand on either side combining all 3 pieces into one big unit. It's 4 feet high. It has a mirror that goes all the way across and LOTS of storage. It also has lights on it so that you can read in bed. This thing is OAK. That's wood from the OAK tree. Heavy! Way heavier than you think. You need a truck or an old VW bug that's also a flatbed. But once it's in your bedroom that's larger than mine (sure - rub it in why don't you) what it took to get it there will no longer be a concern. It'll be good ol' times that you can laugh about and reminisce about when you're good and old and your children's children are about to inherit this soon-to-be family heirloom pimp furniture. Moving it into their space will then be their problem, not yours. Just instill into them good work habits so that they have bedrooms that are bigger than mine. You know, like a pimp.

I say "fail" on the photo, but definitely a "hit" on the description!