Re-Do

Here are some projects that various people in my family have done.  I cannot take all of the credit here!  My mom and dad did some pretty awesome handy work...but I did help with some of it!

Older Projects

I have several older projects that I have been meaning to post...just haven't gotten around to them.  So here it goes!

Limited Shirt Replica

So, I saw this shirt at the Limited and loved it...until I looked at the price!  

It was like $40..for a t-shirt!  Talk about ridiculous.  I started to look a little more closely at the shirt and though "Hrm...I could make that."  I had the perfect black shirt that I no longer wore anymore because it was kind of faded.  I had some grey ribbon.  It was perfect.  I got home and got to work.  Below is the picture of my completed shirt.  I thought it was fun!

Total project cost: $0.

Students here and I am BORED!!! Let's talk about YELLOW DOG!

I have students in here finishing up some keyboarding assignments and my brain is fried from today.  I figured I could tell you a little bit about my favorite store I have found thus far here in our teeny town of Sully.  It is called Yellow Dog Studios.  You can find their website HERE.  Basically, John, takes old crap that no one wants anymore and he turns it into something DELIGHTFUL!  His style is quite a bit like West Elm.  Well, the first time I went to this store, I made my little high school girl that I mentor go with me!  It was very intimidating to find! The show room/studio is in an old shoe factory that is as good as abandoned.  The building is SOOO perfect for his style though, the rustic chic-ness of it and all.  I just love love LOVE it!  Some of his stuff:

This is a bookshelf that I just MADLY in love with as soon as I saw it.  He had two of them but...Mr. Thrifter only let me buy one.  In all actuality, I was pretty fortunate to even get him to agree to that!  I love it though!  We had been searching far and wide for the perfect bookcase that was in our price range.  I had even toyed with the idea of building one myself.  Once I started pricing wood though, I nixed that idea.  Once I started looking around, I realized how expensive they are!  GAH!  The ones I liked were generally in the $300 range.  Let's face it, we are just starting off, newly-ish wed, just buying a house!  We can't afford $300...So you can imagine my sheer excitement when I found this baby for just $150!!!!!!!  I couldn't BELIEVE IT!  And, it just so happened to be the perfect color for our bedroom with the right "feel"--antique-ish yet new.

 Then there is this puppy below.....  This "strata" design is his signature dealio.  I am madly in love with this thing...it only weighs like 50,000,000,000 pounds.  I would LOVE to use this as a night stand with a really sweet lamp on it!  Sadly, it just doesn't go with my quilt, that is in our bedroom, that I spent entirely too much time, money, and effort on to not use!  Maybe some day, I will get my strata side tables....until then, I can visit them often.

And then....oh my, where do I start?!  I have always wanted one of those old steamer trunks that the ladies on the Titanic used to keep all of their things in.  They are just SO cool.  I have looked at several of them at the Classic Home Consignment store but they were all like $75-$100...more than I was willing and able to buy it for!  So my search continued.  Until one day, I happened to stop by Yellow Dog and started rummaging through his un-started (not sure this is a word....if it wasn't before, it is now.) projects and found a reallllly nasty, dirty, junky looking trunk.  Of course, thanks to my thriftiness problem, I was able to see through its dirt and grime to its true potential.  I asked how much he would sell the thing to me for...to my honest surprise, he told me that I could HAVE IT!  Can you believe that?  Ha, I didn't ask twice.  I loaded that bad boy up in my car and away I went.  I took it to my parent's house, they are both really crafty and talented with this sort of redoing business.  I just didn't have the time for this project and my dad volunteered so I figured, what the heck?!  After hours and hours and hours, and SEVERAL cans of spray paint later, my love is finished.  It is great.  I love her.  Now, I just need to Kilz the inside of it and finish her off with my 50cent roll of ugly "vintage" wallpaper and she will be all finished.  We will call her Felicity.  :)

And there she is...Felicity at her finest.  She needs a new latch, but that will just have to wait.  Who knows?  I may just leave her as is!  

Well, that is all for my post about Yellow Dog.  If you guys are ever in the area and would like to see it, let me know!  It really is an AWESOME place!  He is having an art show, Saturday, February 5, 2011 at 6pm in his studio if anyone is interested.  I made this piece for it:

He has about 100 of these that he has asked people in the community to do (start as plain wooden boxes then you are supposed to use your creativity to spruce it up!")  he will be auctioning them off at the show as a fundraiser for the Sullivan Area Arts.

  We will probably have a party before or after as well!  It should be a great time!  Everyone is invited!  :)  Watch for some details.  

Our house

Several people have been complaining that we haven't posted any pictures of our house.  I will put some on here that were taken just shortly after we moved in.  I will work on more...I just keep forgetting to take my camera home from work!

Our main bathroom!

  

 New shower curtain and curved curtain rod .  I HATED the old rod and I have ALWAYS wanted a curved shower curtain rod!  I am still trying to figure out what to do with my old shower curtain...I still love it!  I will hold onto it for now until I figure something out.

Our dining room.  It looks WAY different now.  I hung things on the walls...finally.  I will post updated pics later!

Living room...again looks VERY different with some things on the walls and new lamps thanks to my previous post HERE

View from the dining room area into our kitchen.  That door on the right goes to our bedroom.

View of the main area of the house from the front door.

Our spare bedroom...also known as "The Dexter Room"

That is all for now, like I said....I will put some better pics up later.  I am taking the camera home tonight!!! :)

DIY Lampshade recover...and you all said you HATED THESE!

OK!  So, for my newest project, I have some new lamps that need some serious TLC.  I got these babies at the Habitat for Humanity Restore while they were having their 20% off sale!  They cost me....are you ready?! A total whopping $24 for the pair.  I don't have a before picture of the whole lamp itself, but let me just tell you....they are UGLY!!!  :)  My friend's exact quote:  "Michala, I've liked everything you have thrifted so far, but these are just bad."  HAHA.  She doesn't even know how great they are going to be.  She will be eating those words in a few short hours.  My husband, also, HATES these lamps.  He wouldn't speak to me for the whole day after I bought them.  Whatever, he will get over it after he sees how AWESOME they are!!!  

So, how did I make them better you might ask?  I'm about to tell you.  First off, I searched through several blogs and tutorials until I found one that fit my needs.  This tutorial at Shanty-Chic, was really good!  I started by pulling off the trim.  This picture already has the trim pulled off, it wasn't much to see anyway.

Then, Mr. Thrifter and I started cutting the sheer (these shades are a green plastic material, like a plastic table cloth, with a black sheer over it...talk about horrid.)  So, as little Miss Shanty-Chic suggested, I kept the lining to save myself some trouble.  

 Once we had all the black removed, it looked like this....

 Not too shabby!  I almost just left it like that!  haha.  I started thinking about what all came next...blah.  But, in the end, I decided it needed something.

Just a little background knowledge on my lamps....(A.D.D. MOMENT!)  When I bought these lamps, I had no clue what I was going to do with them, I just knew I was going to recover them.  Our living room is green with brown couches.  Our current lamps are waaaaay too small for the furniture, they are moving to our bedroom once this project is finished.  The lamps have a black and green vase.  I know what you are thinking...BLACK AND BROWN?!?!  Has she lost her marbles?  Believe it or not, people in the design and style world are doing this nowadays...check out this "How to Wear Black and Brown"on eHow!!!  Anyway, I have been looking and looking for a great fabric to go on these awesome lamps!  the fabric couldn't be too modern as the lamps are retro...but it couldn't be too retro because I didn't want them to look like they came STRAIGHT out of the 60's/70's!  So, I had to find a happy medium that contained black, brown, and green!  BLAH!  You see my dilemma here!  On to how I found this great fabric...we had a snow day on Tuesday and my little sister called and asked if I could take her to the train station (I would have to drive east to pick her up then drive north west to the train station...ICK) After much hesitation, I decided that I could be nice and take her.  Well, we met about half way...I had to drive mostly country to get there and VERY QUICKLY realized why we had a snow day!  I have a 4x4 and was all over the road!!!  So, we finally made it, alive, and she was off on the train.  I had some errands to run and Jo-Ann's just happened to be on my way so I stopped in "quickly"  Well, for those of you that know me, and my shopping A.D.D., a fabric/craft store visit can NEVER go quickly.  I was there for about an hour, just wandering through isles.  Weird.  BUT!  That's just how I happened on this fabric!  Please see below!

It is PERFECT for what I need it for...but came at a steep price...$10 a yard. OUCH.  I tried to go get one of their little magazine things with the 40% coupon in it...but wouldn't you know, there were the magazines with all the coupons ripped out!  UGH!  I finally just asked the lady at the desk, as I was the only one in the store, and she was kind enough to give me one!  SCORE!  Now I don't feel SOOO bad about paying that much.  So, I finished up my purchases, ran my errands and made my way home.  I was too tired by the time I got home at 9:30pm to work on my shades, so I saved it for the weekend.  Thanks to all the blowing around our snow was doing, I got a call at 5:45 am the next morning saying that we had ANOTHER SNOW DAY!!! YIPEEEEE!!!  I got up early and started on my shades.

This brings us back to where I left off above...After all that ugly crap was cut off, I made my template.  I didn't take any pictures of this because I was way too stressed just trying to keep the shade from rolling all over the place.  After I cut out my template, I put it on my fabric and cut my pieces.  See below:

With my pieces cut, I ironed the fabric and created my ironed overlaps.  Then I went to glue...and realized, I DIDN'T have any E6,000!  AHHH 

And for the final product! YAYYY!!!  I love it!  I especially love the lamps!  The globe at the bottom lights up so you can have a dim "night light" or you can just turn on the top part, or you can turn on both parts!  Man!  I can't get over how cool they are!  I am still trying to decided what I am going to trim the outsides with!  Any suggestions?  I was thinking teal ribbon or green ribbon (what I trimmed the insides with)  

I will post more pics of my steps later after I do my second lamp.  I will also put up some before and afters of the lamps and my living room!  I just LOVE LOVE LOVEEEEEEEEEEEEEE it!!!! :)  My husband however, is still unsure.  Sorry if this blog is kind of crazy and all over the place hard to read!  I'm still trying to get used to the whole blogging deal!  :)  I'm signing off for now!!!  ENJOY!

Christmas with the family

So, Evan and I just got home from Peoria this morning.  It was a great weekend!  We got to see Evan's brother, his wife, and their two kids.  We stayed at Evan's parents house.  They are sooo incredibly patient with out dog. I think Riley pooped in their house like four time. :-/ ah.  Anywho, it was a really great weekend spent with family!  We came home really early this morning because some of our really good friends decided to come to church with us!  Praise God!  It was a great time!  I look forward to many more great weekends such as this!  Chris and Regan will be coming to stay with us for a few days this next weekend!  Watch for pics!

Logan is so cute and ALMOST makes me want one...until you smell the dirty diapers.  If those aren't the best birth control EVER, I don't know what is?!  LOL.  Love those little rascal to death though.  Seriously, they are soooooooooo darn cute, even when they are SCREAMING about silly string because its just so awful!

Stay tuned for more!

WPM Apple Races

After semesters of struggling to motivate my keyboarding kids, I came up with an idea!  I thought I would share because it worked soooooo well!  :)  I am attaching pictures.   

I had a big blank white wall that I have been trying to figure out what to put on and this just happened to work perfectly.  I asked out FCS teacher for some extra yarn and created lines on the wall, I then set word per minute goals (WPM) for them to reach.  

Every day, if they reach a new goal, they get to move their apple.  Who knew that the first day we did this would be SUCH a hit?!?!  I don't know how I am going to keep up!  I had kids working so hard, they went from 41 WPM to 49 WPM!  They LOVE it!  they are constantly trying to beat their friends.  

I have NEVER had sooooo many kids with such high WPM scores!  I may just have to set some new goals!  

Enjoy the pics! They aren't very good, my yearbook students were using my nice camera.

The main goal at first was to just get to the plus sign (+) but I had so many kids reach that so quickly, I had to come up with a new idea, and fast!  So I decided to label all the plus apples with their WPM! It created even more competition!  LOVE THE IDEA!  I just ordered more so that I can do this in the semesters to come!!!

Newbie

Ok folks, I am new at this blogging thing.  I am a total blog reading NUT, I just haven't been a big writer, so I have been afraid to start one of my own!  I am start to get bored with the whole Facebook thing, so I figured I would give this a go!  :)  I am pretty excited.  Hopefully, I can get a niche and run with it!  I love being thrifty and find deals on anything and everything.  I love refinishing stuff, especially with the help of my mom and pop.  More to come!!!  It's Friday and I'm outttttaaaaa here!