I’m A Winner!!

Yep you heard me right.  I won my first ever giveaway!  Tammy over at Type A was hosting the “Mother of All Giveaways” for her blog reaching over 650 followers.  I had 9 chances to enter and since I had never won a giveaway before and I somehow knew she wouldn’t rig this for me to win lol, I tried to strategically place my votes.  I wondered if I should post them all in a row.  Should I get them in at the start or toward the end?  Ultimately I decided to spread them out.  And today she called me to tell me the good news!

You guys I was totally squealing like those people you hear on the radio who won front row tickets to a rock concert.  It’s the real deal folks.  I entered the Mother Of All Giveaways and won the MOTHER LOAD!  Wooohooo!  I’m a Weeeeeeeener!

If your curious here is what I won:

Lesley from Fabulously Flawed is donating this beautiful piece of jewelry from her Etsy shop Fabulously Flawed.  Gorgeous isn’t it?!!

 

 

I Candy

I GOT NUTHIN. Seriously, since I’m running out of ACSP and money at the moment… yeah I can’t buy steam off a hot lunch right now.  I’m taking drastic measures to keep you all entertained.  So what better than a little I Candy?  For realz…  So for all my sweet sweet readers, this is for you.

While I was off looking at retail space recently I came upon the most incredible candy shop.  You just don’t find them like this anymore.

The entire room was filled wall to wall with jars of candy.  And tables were set in the middle of the aisles with apothecary jars filled to the brim.

Halloween was already starting to show it’s face.

There was even this charming little ladder with shirts and aprons for sale.  I could live here.

 

Have a wonderful rest of your holiday weekend!

~Sommer

Wrong Turn Sweetheart

Last week I saw an offer on freecycle for an old vintage chandelier.  Most items on freecycle are sight unseen but I knew I wanted it regardless.  Just the words “old” and “vintage” give me butterflies in my stomach.  Well sometimes it kind of feels like diarrhea but that’s another post for another time!

Fabulous Family Planner

This is my favorite time of year!  The kids went back to school yesterday!  My youngest starts kindergarten this morning.  She had her orientation Monday.  My last little bird to leave the nest.  Am I sad?  Heeeeeeellll no!  She’s cute don’t get me wrong but I’ve been waiting ten long years for this bit of freedom! I douched the house and got everything in order.  And I got all the paperwork showing the kids schedules for the year. 

There Aint No Bugs On Me!

A couple months ago the kids and I bought some seedling strawberry plants and potted them at home for the window atrium in our kitchen.  We also started some tomatoes and herbs.  The best way to start seedlings is to spray them with a fine mist every day until they get to be a couple inches tall.  Then you can start watering them.

We’re excited to have our second season of fresh tomatoes this summer.  Last year our strawberry plant didn’t make it.  I put it outside where I thought it would get more sun and a ferocious wind came through and bye bye strawberries. 

So this year we’ve been using the herbs in our spaghetti sauce already and have been waiting and waiting for the strawberries and tomatoes to catch up.  I’ve cut back the watering to every other day because the leaves were turning a brownish yellow color.  Which I thought was weird since yellow was too much water and brown was too little water.  I mean way to confuse a girl, seriously.

Yesterday morning I went to water them and to my horror, I found this…

Nothing Is Safe

Nothing that comes into my house that is.  Muahaha.  I give just about everything the royal treatment these days.  I swear I can’t shop for anything without looking at it and thinking to myself, it’s cute but it needs this or that.  Or… Oh this would be even better if I did x,y,z to it!
I want to show you something I spruced up recently (And there is more to come)…  I started with this cute clock from Pier 1 Imports.  I loved the shape and face plate but she was very… BROWN.  Don’t get me wrong I love brown.  My leather couches are brown, my dining table, some vintage luggage and a my ladder.  But you know what they say, everything in moderation. 

So I found a pretty design I decided to mod podge into the center insert you see. And let me tell you what a Roal pain in the treatment this was!  I ended up laying a piece of printer paper on the clock and tracing around the lip of the inset with pen cap. 

Then you can see the hole for the pendulum is traced out also.  I just ran my finger around the rim to make an indention in the paper.  This is how I got my template. Then I traced it onto the nice paper and mod podged it onto the clock.


I let it sit this way for about a month until I decided it wasn’t enough lol.  Story of a girls life right?  It’s never enough!  So I went to my favorite website The Graphics Fairy and found some cute little brown birds.  I printed them of and used the same tracing technique as before.  Then I trimmed and cut around the branches and such until I was happy.  Or so I thought.

I love the birds and they are there to stay… however I’m not sold on the branches I left for them.  They aren’t on there permanently, I just have a little piece of tape holding them on right now.  So what do you think, just the birds or leave the branches?  One thing I’ve learned about decorating is that I like to live with something for at least a few days before I make it permanent.  Paint can be changed easily but this kind of stuff cannot.  So don’t glue it down until you know for sure.


ETA:  The branches are gone =)  Thanks for all the great advice everyone!  It looks wonderful.

~Sommer

I Party Here

What I've Been Up To

I've been so busy trying to get this bathroom finished I've neglected the world.  I should have probably just brought an inflatable mattress into the bathroom and called it home the past three weeks.  But the good news is.... It's FINISHED!  The bad news is that I'm not revealing until Saturday muahahaha. 

Here is why.  I have a few things I want to update you on.  Tomorrow is the VIP party and don't want that to trump the big reveal.  I also have just a few finishing touches I need to run to Target and get before I can really be finished and the lighting this time of day is horrible in there so I have to wait until this afternoon for photo's.  Those are my reasons and I'm stickin to them!

SO.... what have I been up to? 

I bought my first Purdy!  I'll tell you more about it during the reveal but I will say after months of hesitation with the prices I wasn't disappointed =)

Mr Garden and I organized the garage!  My shop is functional now.  I think the broken toe motivated to help me get it under control out there lol.

Here is my paint station.  All my paints, stains, rags, gloves and of course the stereo =)  Can't work without some tunes.

My old old ass compressor that my daddy gave me.  It leaks, it's overly noisy but it does the job.  And my new router table.  I learned how to use it during this project too =)

My make shift work bench.  Two saw horses and some plywood.  Hey it works and I'm short at 5'2 so it's just my height =P  See there... the trim for the mirror is drying!

The peg board Mr Garden installed to keep me all organized!  Okay well I'm sure he'll get some use out of it too lol.

Do you spy what I spy?  Those lovely bar stools you say?  Why yes, I did get them from the same neighbor who left the lovely wingback chair on the curb for me!  How did you guess?  They are my next victim.

This is the scary part.  Projects of craftiness past.  Waiting patiently for me to bring them back to life.  A refrigerator I'm desperate to sell to make space.  A bunch of old doors, windows, lead glass oh my!  This is what I call the holding tank.  The path out is just big enough to wheel the garbage can through =P

And just as the broken toe healed I got into a fight with a miter saw...

It's all good.  I won.

~Sommer

Something New

I warned you... there isn't much going on here due to the pending move.  I can't even find it in me to clean this place up now that I know I wont be here much longer.  What's the point really?  I'm lossing my creativeness but yet looking forward to getting moved so I can find it again.

My bestie came and rescued me from my clutter and boredom last week and took me shopping =)  See why I call her bestie?  And though I vowed not to bring home anything new before the move... I am a woman after all.

Look what she bought me =)  Of course I will reimburse her but I was trying to be good by leaving my wallet at home lol.

Beautiful creamy porcelaine canister with metal labeled plaques.  Oooh I adore them.  You won't believe me when I tell you these were only $20 for 4 of them!

They even had this awesome matching utensil holder.

That's all I got today.  Unless you want pictures of me packing boxes =)

~Sommer

Addicted to Goodwill

"Hello... my name is Sommer and I'm addicted to Goodwill".  Whew, now that I have that load off my shoulders shall I show you what I've scored the past few days?  This will be a post of little words and lots of excitement.  Just wait until tomorrow when I show you some of the transformations that have already started taking place on these great finds.

Little terracotta pots that I plan to start an herb garden with.

Clear canisters since my old ones were solid and I got tired of peeking into each one to find what I was looking for.  There are more left I want to go back and get since I think I have more than three items I'd like to display.

Oooh I've been on the look out for jars (preferably with lids but no luck so far) to transform my daughters room with, you'll see what I mean in the coming weeks!

I couldn't resist that crackly bottom!

Um okay I've been searching for months for a mirror like this.  It was a good day =)

The detail is incredible and I'm nearly positive she's made of some sort of plaster/resin material cause she's HEAVY.  Shhh don't tell her I said that, don't want to give her a complex!

Seriously I never thought I'd be the owner of real silver lol. I am getting old.  And guess what?  I'm lovin every stinkin minute of it!! LOL

The little silver tray as you can see is already undergoing a makeover.  I will reveal soon enough.

Come back tomorrow to see what all I've transformed so far!  Hint... we had lots of fun with chalkboard paint today heehee.

Happy Birthday Mrs Garden

Once again I bring you a post of little words.  I went treasure hunting for my birthday over the weekend.  Have I mentioned what a great hunter my hubby is?  I might have to re-name him from Mr Garden to the mighty hunter lol.  The pictures that follow are the loot we brought home.

This is what I consider a successful hunting trip! With the entire back of the expedition filled to the brim, we had no choice but to start strapping stuff to the roof!  I know... classy right?

Can we say love at first sight?  What color would you paint it?

Everything you see from this table on was less than $5.  In fact my grand total not including my birthday gift, the big one... was only $46.

This drop leaf was marked at $40.  I got it for free =)

These were from an old lake house!  I thought they would be super cute antiqued in white.

Do you ever remember seeing these types of tables in your grandparents house?  I do!

This is an antique.  Birds eye maple.  You should have seen the guys face when I told him I was going to paint it! LOL

These were road side finds at the low low cost of free =)

And HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME... I had been eyeballing this for over a week on Craigs list.  It was $100 but for the condition it's in which is even better in person that it seemed in the pictures... it was worth it.  Can you believe I've been married for 8 years and never had a bed?  Well okay a mattress on a frame doesn't count in my book.  I can't wait to re-finish her and get her into my room!

And a wonderful birthday it was.  Filled full of laughs, family and friends!

White, bright and beautiful

I've been wanting to start transforming my house into a brighter space for some time now.  Our last house we just moved from had no front windows on it and only two small windows with a sliding glass door on the main level.  It always felt dark and sleepy in there.  Now I have windows up front, and floor to ceiling windows on the back.  I love waking up and seeing the birds and rabbits run through my yard.  Having the sun shine in as I make coffee and feel like anything more than a dungeon.  So here are some of my latest makeovers to help brighten things up.

                                                                              BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

BEFORE

AFTER

I don't know what it is about white, cream and the like but things are starting to feel very fresh in here and I makes me want to wake up early every day =)

More to come.....