I have been featured @ Knock Off Decor

I would like to thank the academy.....

Yes, this is how I actually feel!!  I am soooooo excited!

Knock off Decor is an awesome blog that features other blogs who completely rip off imitate popular decorating mags or stores....my drug, eh store of choice is almost always Pottery Barn.


They featured my Pottery Barn Bellora Chandelier Knock-Off.  You can read about that on this post.

If you don't remember they look like this:

I spent the weekend cleaning/scraping the floor in the dining room and kitchen.  Today, I am going to figure the square footage for flooring (future purchase).  I also found some super amazing inspiration for our master bathroom.  My before pics look very similar to the before pics for the inspiration!  They are from Welcome to Heardmont.  Check out their blog, they are AWESOME!  I love finding other blogs from DIY'ers.

My master bathroom looked like this when we moved in:

Their bathroom looked like this when they moved in:

 Fortunately, they had tile... I am rockin' the laminate from 1987. Yippy.

They made this bathroom go from that to this:

I know, pick your jaw up off the floor! I am amazed!  I have been trying to figure out this space for a while now and I now know what I am doing in there!! 

My bathroom is green and will have a gray and white striped shower curtain.  She actually had the exact same idea for the shower curtain as I had for all my curtains at home.  She made this shower curtain out of a white top sheet from Wal-Mart and fabric paint. 

I am doing the same thing in the girls' room for curtains!  I love how it turned out!

I am also in LOVE with the board and batten behind the mirror!

Awesome job!!

-Make your life beautiful!

License Plate Wall

A few years back Mr. TSL and I were at an auction, a boy auction I should mention.  No girl house stuff, just car parts. He knows I love all things old, rusty, and junky and he saw a crate of old license plates and bid on them for me!  I think he paid $3 for the whole lot.  It ended up being 69 license plates from the late 60's early 70's.  

When people drove cars that looked like this:

  And gas was under 50 cents

No, not him silly!  Actual $0.50!

I carried them around for WAY too long and I finally googled what to do with them.

Here are some cute ideas:

via The Inside Source

 

via Apartement Therapy

The last one is more what I was going for.  Mr. TSL restores old Mopars (Dodge, Plymouth, Chrysler...don't worry after dating for a month I finally broke down and asked what a Mopar was too :) ) I wanted some car stuff incorporated into our home decor without it being too overboard.  So, I have his car stuff in our office area.  Some of his signs and memorabilia have gone to live in his shop outside.  With that being said, I had a blank wall above the desk and wanted it to look similar to the above picture.  So, Hayley and I got to work cleaning them.  40+ years of dirt had to come off of them.

A few hours later and a lot of nail holes and they look like this:

I would show you the whole office area, but it is a freaking nightmarish mess needing the new desk from the garage brought in, it currently has a God awful rounded corner huge desk with blue tulips stenciled on. Gag!  I have to glue the side part on the table/desk and spray paint the file cabinets that will be tucked under neath for storage.  Just another in a long line of random things to do!

One more thing before I go....I tore the carpet out of the dining room and kitchen!!!!!  Hauling carpet out by yourself is a pain in the bum!  I got about half out of the dining room and pooped out.  Mr. TSL was very helpful when he got home and helped me remove the rest.  Apparently, if you roll it neatly it's a whole lot less of a pain to remove out. (I just dragged mine out in a jumbled mess.)  Then we removed the kitchen carpet.....

GIANT.

FREAKING.

MESS.

It was that carpet that is really thin with the squishy yellow backing.  

before we moved in before pic

They glued it down. So sad.  I think I will be sanding for like the next 10 freakin' years now!  Oh well, the nasty is gone....well on the trailer headed for the dump!

You can read about what I plan on doing here and here.

-Make your life beautiful!

More Painted Stairs!!

OMG!!  I am so sick of looking at my stripped stairs.  If you remember my stairs look like this:

I am going to  pull the carpet off the big steps too and I am painting them green!  I know crazy, huh?  Well, eventually when budget permitting we will redo them to have nicer steps and risers.  But, for now, I would rather sweep the painted wood then try to drag the vac up the stairs to clean the steps....who am I kidding, I don't vac them very often. 

While blog-stalking searching for inspiration, I cam across these:

I love them and since the kitchen/dining room subfloor is being painted in a neutral tone, hopefully soon, these will be a fun pop of color!  I am painting the whole step, I don't have the patience time to tape off a runner.   I am adding something fun to the risers though.  Like these:

via Apartment Therapy

Adorable!! 

-Make your life beautiful!
Kari

Why buy art when you can create it?

I often find myself swooning over all things Pottery Barn.  I know, you are shocked.  I love our their style!  I was perusing through and found this:

I thought to myself: "Self, you can make that!"  I tweaked it a little, because it's my house and I can :)  I didn't want another mainly black piece of art, so I made mine white with black numbers. 

All of my frames in my house are black (most have been spray painted that way.)  I use to love picture frames when I was a teen and collected quite a few over the years.  However, I felt like they were taking away from the important pictures I had in them, so I unified them in color. Black-it's slimming ;)

I am ALWAYS on the look out for interesting frames and frames with matting. 

Did you know you can paint the matte too?!?  I paint all mine white.  I am also a fan of matting, but it is EX-PEN-SIVE...  So I use poster board instead sometimes (shhhhh, it's a secret.)  I use to use construction paper, but that fades to easily in the sun.

I came across some inexpensive frames for the GW. I scored them for half price (yellow tags were marked down) and also an additional 10% off because I got the GW discount card!

They were $3.99 originally....then $1.99 and then finally, $1.79!  I also got some UGLY pictures for $5 from craigslist.  They were marked $199 on the back...whateva!  I painted over them, the smaller rectangles got a coat of chalkboard paint and are in the girls' rooms and the bigger one is now my PB number artwork!

I also came across a black canvas with some white string I can't seem to find the picture and be able to attach it.  It was in the PB catalog and thought it would be simple to create...it was!!

I started out with this stuff:

Morgan said, oh so nicely, "Mom, I don't think those are very pretty."  I said, "I know and I'm glad you don't have tacky taste!  I am going to paint them."

They turned out like this:

I just popped some cute pics the girls drew when they were little.  They had been in my wallet for years, now everyone can enjoy them!  I also plan on getting some frames for them to have art to change out as they want. 


Here they are on the wall:

-Make your life beautiful!

Kari

 

Monogrammed Cups---DIY!!!

Monogrammed cups are EVERYWHERE!  I love them :)  They are a little pricey though.  I decided to make my own, but need some inspiration!  I loved all of these:

Cute huh?  $16...pass

These are from Anthropologie...$6 a little better :)
  P.S. I watch Steven and Chris everyday and this is what they drink out of their guests always get one too!  Too cute!

I have seen some cute pics where they spell LOVE or GROW with plants inside.  This would be a cute way to ask a girl to marry you or tell someone you are expecting ;)

Needless to say, I don't want to pay $6 for a mug (I don't even drink coffee!)

So, I had 8 white mugs from my dishes set. (Corelle dishes are the BEST EVER!!  They don't chip and it takes a lot to break them.)  I bought a few more from GW for $.29 each.  Found these Porcelain pens courtesy of a cute little blog called Design Mom.  They are from Dick Blick or any other crafting store.  My pile started out like this:

Followed the pen directions and ended up with these:

 I still have a few mugs left to do, but I love them and I think I am going to make some for Christams and give them as gifts!  These pens also write on crocks, so I numbered mine!!


 -Make your life beautiful!

Spring Break---no bathroom redo, but got a new stove!!

Apparently, spring break with your kids at home means very little gets done for projects on my part!  I am thinking of starting on Hayley and Audrey's room today...I said thinking about.  We'll see if I actually get to it!  I did score a one-year old Kenmore Stove from CL for $225.  She's a beaut!! 

Mr. TSL had me measure the opening to make sure it would fit.  30 inches, measured the new stove 30 inches perfect!!  Then we pulled out the old built-in stove and 28 inches....oops.  And it was hard-wired in!  Home Depot trip.  Mr. TSL put in the new plug and has to cut the opening so the stove will fit in.  We also had to pull the laminate back splash piece off of the counter.  Kind of an eye sore, but I see it as progress in the direction of getting the kitchen done!! 

I'll be back to post next week....this week is super packed!

-Make your life beautiful!!

Goodwill Hunting

I love Matt Damon and Ben Affleck!  Robin Williams makes me laugh so hard I could pee! But, I am talking about the good ole GW (we pronounce is jee-dub).

We live about 25 miles from Wichita and sadly it isn't as easy for me to make it to GW as often as I'd like.  Which is a good and a bad thing.
Good-I don't end up buying a treasure I didn't even know I needed until I saw it at the GW.
Bad-I don't end up buying a treasure because I didn't even know it was there!!!

It's easy to get caught up with all the things people make in blog-land (It's like Candy Land, but without the fancy outfits.)   I think I can make cake plates out of stuff I could pick up, or a starburst mirror for every room in the house.  I can make Apothecary jars out of mason jars and candlesticks.  Or redo as much fantastic old furniture as I can possibly find.

But the truth is, am I really saving money and cutting back if I buy something I don't REALLY need?!?

Most of the time I walk around with it in my cart and if I still love it 15 minutes after my "I got it first nan na nan na boo boo!" high wears off, then I can justify owning it.  I went to the GW yesterday (and a few weeks back) and I am going to share my scores with you!
I found like 20 other things that people would love in blog-world, but I would have been mad at myself for buying after I got them home and they would have been re-donated back to the GW at a later time.

I found 2 trunks/suitcases. They were super cute!  I love old suitcases and trunks.  They were $10 for the big and $12 for the small....sometimes their pricing is crazy.  I like to think that some days the pricing fairies are back their drinking and they just say mark whatever on it!!  I put them in my cart!  I got them first nan na nan na boo boo!!

Then I found a red feather wreath!  This went in the cart!  I had seen one on a door in blog-land and thought it was soooo cute!  $5

I found an hour glass-technically a half-hour glass (it goes for 30 minutes)  I had wanted one of these FOR-EV-ER!  $10

I found a pair of black corduroy Marissa Fit Victoria's Secret pants....$4 Super Cute, no they don't look like that on me because momma has a little junk in the trunk.  But in the cart they went.

I also found a pair of North Face Kaysey Shoes for $5 (Retail for $85-I don't think they have ever been worn, they are perfect!)

After my crazy lady "I got it first nan na nan na boo boo!" high had worn off I evaluated what I actually NEEDED....

The suitcases really have no where in my house to live, see I am trying to de-clutter my house and life and I don't need 2 more suitcase/trunk things taking up more room.  (sidebar-had they been large trunks I would have bought them for that price! But alas, they were little guys-like very large purses.)

Back to the shelf they went :(  Someone else will love you, I assured them!

Red Feather Wreath-who am I kidding?  What the hell am I going to do with this?  I only put a wreath out for Christmas.  I don't have anywhere to store them for having seasonal one's and the most decorating for seasonal purposes I get done is on the dining room table.  Hopefully, we can put in a fireplace one day and I can decorate that too!!

I bartered with myself....suitcases or hourglass...I am not leaving ALL cool things behind.  The hourglass at least has a purpose at my house.  I tell the kids it's time to clean and we flip the hourglass.  We put on some music and clean like mad until the last grain of sand falls.  Then we take a break and the girls switch who gets to flip it!  This usually works a few times, then Hayley finds somewhere to hide while the rest of us clean.
PURCHASED!

Although, I have a little junk in the trunk, it doesn't need to be accentuated with huge wide-leg pants.  These pants were too good of a deal and I have already made them into capris and taken enough material the girls made tube-tops out of the scraps the excess off and made some pretty cute pants!
PURCHASED!

The shoes are so cute and super comfortable!  I bought them because during the summer I hate wearing shoes-unless they are flip-flops!  Which Mr. TSL tells me are killing my feet and back and are terribly impractical.  (He's right, I accidentally power washed my foot and split it open.... tennis shoes would have prevented this.)  However, slip-ons are a happy compromise and these are cute.  I will still be wearing the flip-flops almost all the time, but if we got for a walk or to the zoo, I can rock these!
PURCHASED!

I love Pottery Barn and a few summers back I saw these:

 
I LOVE them!!!!  I have been thinking about these since I saw the pic in the catalog!!  I want them sooooo bad!  A few months back, I had a coupon from PB and was going to break down and buy them.  6 glasses for $24, that's $4 each! (Yes, I taught math ;))  I ordered them....I know, I know, don't lecture me. Cringe-2 sets.  I needed enough for everyone for Thanksgiving.

They were on back order until late December....  I quickly called back after I had come to my senses. Why would I pay that much for glasses???? and canceled the order.  So sad, though.

Skip to now, still thinking about them and low and behold I found 3 at the GW for $.50 each...yep!  No, I don't have all of them, but I have some!  And when I got home I washed them and loved them!

(Have I mentioned that the previous owners of our house left behind some really cool things for this junk-lovin girl!)  I have 4 boxes of mason jars various sizes and such and all kinds of canning stuff.  I threw my parents an anniversary party and used them all for centerpieces.  I found another matching jar with a handle for FREE!!!

Now, I have 4 of these beauties for $1.50! 

Then I decided to google mason jars with handles:  You can buy these for way cheaper in complete sets!
12 for $16.50 here.
$2 for individuals  here.

Come on PB, who are we kidding on the prices!!

One more GW tip, they offer a 10% off coupon for $2...buy it!  I used mine and saved an additional 10% on all my stuff and it paid for itself-like 5 trips ago!


I leave with you with a cute pic of my little helper and partner in crime!

Make your life beautiful!
-Kari