Monday, July 7, 2014

Living on a Budget Successfully

This weekend I was on a mission. A mission to be productive! I bought (or already had) a bunch of old furniture that I was determined to refinish and bring back to life, but I had to find a place to do this.

Currently, we live in an apartment, and by apartment, I mean we live in cracker jack box. It is TINY. This is a bachelor pad for two dudes and a dog turned into an apartment with two dudes, a girlfriend, and two dogs (soon to be three). The kitchen is so small cooking a decent meal in it should be part of the cirque du soleil show, because it's basically impossible. Anyways, this lack of space gives me nowhere to do my craft projects, so my parents home has become my storage unit/craft area. They have a large house with a large basement, and my dad has pretty much everything you could ever need for refinishing furniture, and my mom has the craft supply closet stocked. This was my destination this weekend so I left the dog with the boyfriend and headed up to my parents house, and got productive!

First, here is the mirror and end table I blogged about last week, so here are some before and after pictures of those.
 
Mirror ($50) - Painted in Duck Egg Annie Sloan chalk paint (a little lighter in person and gold specs showing through)
 
 End Table ($10) - French Linen/Old White/Duck Egg Annie Sloan chalk paint

Now, here are some other things I found on Saturday morning (Habitat for Humanity re-stores). This end table was about $40 so I almost didn't buy it, but I really like it and it's still cheaper than buying one new! It was this ugly yellowish brown color when I got it.

End Table ($40) - French Linen/Old White 
 
This is a mirror I found on Saturday - It was only $15! It looks like it was a door of something and it's really old and REALLY heavy. I love it. It's one of those things that looks worthless at first glance, but when you really look you realize it has so much character! I'm just going to leave it as-is. I'm going to put it in our bedroom for a full length mirror! The price was unbeatable... I think my dorm room mirror from Target with the plastic frame that always broke was around the same price haha!
 
Mirror ($15)
 
Metal Trash Can (Home Depot - $25) - Painted in Chalkboard spray paint (I'll decorate it with chalk once we move in) - using as a cute/cheap dog food container
 
 
And here is an updated picture of our future puppy (just because puppies are adorable)! He's 6 weeks old! Can't wait to meet this handsome boy! We pick him up on July 20th. We're naming him Bear.


 

8 comments:

  1. Finding a mirror like that is definitely one of my goals! I haven't had much time off lately, but I really want to shop around some salvation army stores and especially find our nearby habitat for humanity restore! :) love what you have done!

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    1. Finding a good mirror can definitely be difficult, especially at a good price! So many mirrors are so expensive! Salvation Army, Goodwill. and the Habitat stores definitely have some treasures hidden in them!

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  2. He's adorable! Our puppy is just about 90% housebroken. So glad we decided to potty train before moving into new house in a few weeks

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    1. Thanks! I can't wait to pick him up! Good to hear your potty training is almost over! I am not looking forward to that part ... but I'm glad we'll have him mostly potty trained before we move into our new place too. I can imagine scrubbing brand new carpet daily! haha!

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  3. Oh, Bear is gorgeous! What a cutie!

    I want to try to find a bathroom mirror for the powder room soon. I can't stand that oval mirror Ryan uses. I am going to hit the goodwill once we close on our current house. I love what you did with the mirror!

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    1. Thanks! We're so excited to get him!

      Yea, I agree .. the oval mirror is definitely not ideal. I think I'm going to put this mirror in the foyer. I think I'll probably look around for a replacement mirror for the powder room once we move in too (I think my boyfriend would hate it if I already had plans to replace one more thing in our brand new home, haha oh well!).

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  4. Can we go shopping?! I need help finding treasures and not impulse shop for wannabe antiques at an expensive random store. Can't wait to see how you decorate your home!

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    1. Haha! It is very hard to not want to buy stuff from those boutique stores! They have such cool stuff! The place I bought my chalk paint from has a bunch of old refinished furniture and I have to try so hard to ignore them. It's all so expensive!
      I can't wait to decorate my house! I've been on Pinterest like its my job!

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