Chargers turned mirrors.

I’ve been holding on to these three gold chargers for months. I bought them a long time {last year sometime} ago on clearance for $2.48 a pop at Target. I knew they could be turned into something cool for wall décor, I just didn’t have a place or purpose for them…until now.

I stopped at Hobby Lobby & found the perfect sized craft mirrors for $3.99 for two {but I got two for 40% off and two for 50% off in two separate trips.} I also stopped to buy some glossy white spray paint that was on sale too. Those combined with my glue gun, and I was all set.

I simply spray painted the front of the chargers white…

…hot glued the mirrors in place…

…and hung them above my bed. This is before I finished adding the mirrors.

I realized that the off white lamps were pretty much a total clash. So I swapped lights with two I had by our gallery wall in our living room. Here’s the off white Ikea lamps moved to my $10 Craigslist dresser.

And the white lights in the bedroom…

Much better, don’t you think? Now I just need to find some bedside tables that work.

I love the crisp white on the new dark teal paint. And I also love how it turned the room slightly dainty –the chargers/mirrors kind of look like doilies to me once I got them on the wall. It matches well with the rest of my house that has some antique/retro-ish touches thrown in for accents.

And one last picture of the chargers turned mirrors in the new teal bedroom. Not too bad for about $15 for the whole deal!

Oh, and we just ordered new windows for the whole house. We’re pretty excited to see the dramatic change once we replace the original {54 years old} windows. :)

Good deal.

Late post today. Sorry. I'm trying to get all my info on a new computer & I can't get Windows Live Writer to work, so I'm posting the old fashioned {annoying} way. Like I mentioned earlier, I'm taking this week away from work, so my posts will likely be sporatic & thin. I'm going to move blogging down on the list of things to do & just enjoy my week off.

For instance, today I went shopping for new work cloths with my mom. I snagged two $70 dress pants & two button down oxford dress shirts for Eugene - all on clearance for $20 for the pants & $10.80 for the shirts at JCPenny. {Nice!}

But the real deal came in a few stores down at New York & Co. I like that store because, being 6' tall, I appreciate that their dress pants come in "Long" and their dress shirts are longer too. I walked out of the store with 12 items coming to a total of  $102.59:

• one pair of long black dress pants
• four button down dress shirts
• four cardigans
• one jacket
• two blouses

 
Being the shopping nerd that I am, I figured out that if I would have paid full price for each item, my total would have come to $561.69. I'll take a savings of almost $450 please. :)

I'd love to post more, but I've got to get going. Lots to do today & this blogger system is driving me nuts! I'll have plenty to post about house updates and life updates once I figure out how to fix Windows Live Writer. Sorry for the delay!

Hope ya'll are having a great week!

 

Brown be-gone.

I’m rushing around with lots to do for my last day of work, but I wanted to post a recent pic of the totally teal bedroom. {See this post for details on the color/paint.} It only took two coats of paint, and I didn’t even bother priming. {Score!}

I love the white trim. It’s amazing how much better the white trim made our wood floors look! The floors aren’t in good shape, but adding the white to frame them made a night & day difference. Definitely need to do this to the other rooms, but it’ll probably be a while before I take on that huge task!

I also really like the wall color. It’s a rich, deep color that is quite cool and calming. I worried about it being too dark or making the room look smaller, but it’s actually quite lighter than I anticipated and I think the room looks just as big, if not bigger than the brown poop-colored version! I also think it will be a great color that makes ya feel cool & refreshed in the Summer, but rich enough to translate well into the Winter months as well.

Here’s the before & current {but not nearly done} after:

I could be really bad & show this hoarder picture of the brown room when we first moved in as the before pic.…

Oh my. Yikes.

Back to the much better “after” pics. :) The cute pillows are from the couch – the DIY version I blogged about a while back.

  

I still have quite a bit to tackle for this room, such as:

• paint the door & closet doors white
• get night stands
• make new throw pillows
• add wall decor {plan already in the works for this!}
• upgrade the ceiling light
• embellish the curtains

Poop-brown be-gone! I feel much more relaxed {and less disgusted} in the totally teal room now. :)

Career move.

Back in June, I asked for some prayer to help me as I made some big decisions, but I wasn’t able to provide much detail. Well, the big decisions were about a career move. I had two new job opportunities to pray over, in addition to the option of staying at my current job. After lots of long talks with Eugene, and asking for advise from wise folks around me, and lots of prayer, I’ve accepted a new position in Dayton. I’ll still be in the field of event coordination; however, my new position will be more managerial in nature. This translates to less time away on the weekends, less physical labor of setting up and tearing down for events, more support, better salary, and better benefits.

Combine this with the basement costs that we’re facing and it’s undeniable that God provides. I’m nervous to leave the banquet hall I work for because I started it all from scratch two years ago and it’s bloomed into a very successful place that I’m proud to have contributed to, but I’m also comforted by the fact that we just hired someone to take my place here. I know the brides I’ve promised great wedding receptions to will not be without help and support – this was so important to me, and again, God provided it. :)

I want to remember some of the sweet thank you’s I’ve received working as an Event Coordinator the past two years. I’ve mentioned “Love Languages” on here before {just search it on my blog if you’re confused}, and mine is certainly “Words of Affirmation.” So I figure on all those hard days when I feel burnt out or doubt myself as I’m trying to learn my new job, I’ll just pull up this post & read all the kind thank you notes. :)

I was also surprised this week by a delivery of a beautiful basket of fresh flowers to my office. I get so flustered when I get flowers at work {all two times in my life!}

So pretty!

 

It was the words on it that mattered to me the most – a thank you gesture from the catering staff I use for all my events. Such sweet people.

Sunflowers are the best. :)

So, thanks to all those who were prayer warriors for me. I definitely felt God’s direction {finally} on the day before I had to make my decision. I’m excited to see what God has planned for me in my new job!

P.S. Adjusting to a new job and hours might mean less regularity with blog posts, so hang in there with me!

P.P.S. Tomorrow, I’ll show ya the newly painted “totally teal” bedroom. It’s lookin’ good! :)

A totally teal wondrous thing.

God’s pretty sweet. Do you remember my Debbie-Downer of a post that gave the house update that basically said (1) our basement’s gonna cost an arm & a leg {and probably both feet too}, and (2) Since we’re not taking loans to fix up the house, we decided not to spend any money on any other renovations. Well, God knew I was bummed about it, and I wholeheartedly believe He gave me a wondrous thing just to cheer me up.

Last week, Eugene was finally able to take back the left over fencing material because we were already borrowing my dad’s truck for a different reason. The fence cost way more than what we expected, but we had a bunch of metal posts, hardware, and some quickcrete bags that we didn’t end up needing. Anyhow, long story short, he wasn’t able to get cash back so they gave us about $200.00 in store credit to Home Depot. See where I’m going with this? God handed me two hundred bucks to spend on the house that we wouldn’t have spent otherwise. I know it’s already our money that we technically already spent, but if we had been able to get the cash back, we would have just saved it for the basement project.

Yesterday, I spent $9 on a mold spray to remove the small areas of leftover mold in the basement. Almost all of it’s gone thanks to Eugene ripping out the dry wall. And I happily bought this bold beauty with some of the store credit funds…

Glidden’s “Totally Teal.” It’s bold and dark, but so far I love it. {On a more technical note, I’ve decided that I much prefer Lowes’ Olympic brand zero VOC paint, but since our HD doesn’t offer zero VOC, Glidden was the cheapest “low-VOC” paint I could get.}

Needless to say, I was uber excited to get started attacking the poop brown room that we will use as our bedroom. Eugene helped me remove the four sets of unused window hardware {why didn’t the previous owners ever remove window hardware when the changed things?}, clean the walls & ceilings, remove the light fixture, and patch the nail holes.

 

  

We still had leftover ceiling paint to use; we bought a 5 gallon bucket when we first moved. Thankfully, this ceiling wasn’t covered with glitter like our living room, but it still needed a fresh coat. Just one coat did the trick.

And I also had leftover white trim paint from all the kitchen painting. I used the oil-based primer on the woodwork first {same primer that worked wonders when I repainted the pink bathroom tile.}

 

I got smart this time around & decided to tackle the trim before painting the walls {duh.} It was so much easier to paint the trim without worrying about getting the white on the walls!

 

And cause I’m nice, I’ll show you a preview of the “Totally Teal” after the first coat {finished it late last night.}

In the meantime, Eugene & I are crashing on the floor of our guest bedroom. {Eugene uses an abnormal amount of pillows each night – five!}

The pup thought it was totally awesome to have the mattress on the floor.

I caught him relaxing with a stuffed animal on the bed {cell phone pic.} He thinks it’s just a really large dog bed for him!

So that my big wondrous thing story for this week. And since I only used $40 of the $200 store credit, this wondrous thing’s gonna keep on making me happy for a few more trips to Home Depot! It’s worth saying again, God’s pretty sweet. :)

 

In no particular order.

You know you have issues when…

…you spray paint your wallet. {Guilty as charged.} It was ugly & I had pink spray paint in the basement. Why not? ;)

Moving on.

We drove through a wicked crazy storm last night. Of course we were on the highway with a big orange barrel every two feet of the road – add in torrential down pour plus horizontal, strong winds and ya get a tricky, scary driving course to maneuver around the barrels that were blown in all directions. We had no power when we got home, plus it was 87 degrees in our house {not exaggerating at all}, so the added candles were romantic & charming, but we were sweating.

I will say, I enjoyed the quiet hour without power, without TV, without internet. {Peace.} Oh, and yes, that’s an ironing board in the living room. I keep it real here.

Transition to another unrelated topic…

 

The sky was beautiful a couple nights ago when we drove to Eugene’s parents’ place. I also like this scripture on waiting patiently because of unseen hope. It’s not a overly popular scripture that I hear all the time, but I like it today.

And, I can’t help but share an updated picture of my niece, Baby Cate. She’s not so much of a baby anymore, walking, talking some, helping, understanding. She’s absolutely beautiful, and I can’t get over it. I just stare at her and marvel at what a blessing she is. She’s with my sister & husband living in OK, trying their best to stay safe in the sweltering heat wave out there.

I mean, really! I just love looking at her picture. :)

Oven vent.

We quickly got rid of the old appliances {before we moved in}, I didn’t remove the over the range vent right away because I didn’t have a replacement yet, and I thought it might be safer to have a vent rather than no vent at all until we got a new one.

Well, I finally got sick of looking at the yellowed vent, so I ordered a new one online & quickly removed the old one on a whim one evening. I was absolutely disgusted with how nasty it was in the pipe & fan. {Barf.}

Oh and this is the fancy, super-safe way someone installed this existing vent…sheet of thin aluminum & tape. Lovely.

I’m wondering if this was “installed” by the same person who stamped coyotes & evergreens all over the bathroom walls. Hmmm.

After I removed the existing range vent & taped duct work, I realized that I’d have to make a trip to the hardware store to see what I could use to safely install the new vent because the built in pipe was a few inches above the bottom of the shelf. Here’s what I was looking at…

After a few questions & searches at Home Depot, I found this piece of pipe {for under $10} that snaps together length wise & was the correct diameter to fit around the existing pipe & new vent.

Eugene & I measured the correct length we needed & he carefully sawed off the excess.

It was a super snug fit onto the vent, but it worked perfectly. So much better than taped version!

We bought this shiny new vent a few weeks ago for a total of $58.49 shipped from Lighting Direct, which was the cheapest I could find anywhere for a 36” vent that was stainless steel. {I can’t find the exact model on their website anymore though.} Lowes had one for $90, and up to $200 – I’ll take my $60 version. I love getting a good deal.

Well, this weekend, Eugene & I sweated our way through installing this new vent. It wasn’t terribly difficult, just hot hot hot in our house. And oh boy, it looks a lot cleaner & prettier than the old vent! {Don’t mind the smudges; I hadn’t cleaned it after installing it yet.}

And the best part? It’s CLEAN inside that fan & pipe!

How about a side by side comparison?

Not bad for sixty bucks. {Especially since we bought it before we found out that our basement was going to cost a boatload to fix.} It was worth the money to me just to get rid of the hazardous taped concoction!

   

Goes well with the brand new chalkboard wall, don’t ya think? :)

     

Next on the list is to get some molding or something to fill in where we cut the the cabinets and counters to add the oven. Oh, and thank ya’ll for the kind comments on the chalkboard wall. Makes me smile! :)

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