Thursday, May 19, 2011

Thrifty Finds

I was browsing around the Raleigh Flea Market Saturday with my mom and SIL and I came across this little cutie.
It was $40, which was a large chunk of my budget for the day, but I seem to have this thing for water coolers.  I asked my mom who owns a thrifting store and she said she thought it was a good deal, but what sold me on it was this
I totally fell in love with the fact that it has a #6 in the crown stamped on it.  6 just happens to be the number of people in my lil' family.  I had to have.  It is missing the spout, but since I don't intend to use it I will just put a cork in it and if I ever change my mind I can just get one from the hardware store.  After I left, my mom said there was another one similar except the lid was missing and it did have the spout for $150.  Wooh! Then I spied this one at my fav Pottery Barn.  It's almost identical except it is smaller than mine.  I'm so pleased with my thrifty find.  Now if I can just keep the kids from breaking it.

I'm linking up with Southern Hospitality

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

Laundry Room Makeover

I finally got to redo my Laundry Room!!! I'm so excited.  We've lived in this house for three years and we haven't done much to the laundry room since we moved in.  Here is some pictures of the before laundry room.

Not so bad.  I love aprons and so I hang them on the shelf.  Do you see that bright blue birdhouse?  My mom gave it to me for Mother's Day last year.   It was one of my color inspirations.

This is the view from my kitchen looking into my laundry room.  It's funny how you don't realize how bad something looks until you see it in a picture.    My dad helped me make the message board from a yard sale picture and some upholstery fabric I already had.  I love having it up and keeping invitations, announcements,  thank you notes, etc.,  that our family gets throughout the year.  I love seeing them and thinking of the fun times we've had.  I clean it off in January and start again. 

These are the lovely 1980's cabinets that are also in our kitchen.  Oh how I hate the way they look.  The are so sturdy and functional and it would be such a waste to replace them.  I've been trying to convince my hubby to paint them for three years now, but he doesn't want to waste money on painting them.  He wants to wait until we have enough money to replace them.  It's been three years, I'm thinking we'll never get there so I finally succeeded in talking him into letting me paint them.  Yay me!

And finally here is the one window and the $2 valance from Ross e that I bought three years ago.  It wasn't so bad then, but now......I really don't likey.  Notice how dark and dreary the hardware is.


This is what my newly painted laundry room looks like.  I totally love it.  As you can see we painted the walls yellow and the cabinet a creamy white.  I think its Luna from Behr.  I painted the table under my apron shelf, it use to be yellow, and now it's a very light grey.

I changed out the fabric in my message board and painted it white.  The fabric is left over from the fabric I used to make my kitchen valances with.  I'll post pictures later of my kitchen makeover.  Can you see where else I used the inspiration color that is on my birdhouse.  Yep in my curtains. 

I am very happy my my new curtains.  For those of you who stalk Target you might notice these curtains from their current line of spring picnic supplies.   It's actually a table cloth.  They are the exact length that I needed and I love that they're not lined because I want to let in as much light as possible into this little room.  They make me happy just looking at them and they only cost $10 per panel. 
I spray painted the existing curtain rod and hardware white and just hung the table cloth with clips.  It took a lot of spray paint to cover up the ugly hardware.  I was so tempted to buy new because I didn't think anything would make the hardware look pretty, but I'm glad I didn't.  I really like them now and it saved me some money.  I love the way the curtains balloon at the top for a casual breezy feel.  Almost like being at the beach.  Almost.

I think the yellow paint really opens up the space.  I may even enjoy doing laundry now.  Maybe.



Another picture of my message board.  It looks like artwork and I think I may just hold off on putting stuff up on it.  It's just too pretty.  The fabric is by Waverly and is indoor/outdoor fabric called Cascading Coral.

And finally my beautiful cabinets.  We added crown molding to the top and kept the same nobs, but changed the hinges to match the paint color.  So much better.  Thanks for looking.