Hootie Hoo

As I mentioned previously, I spent an entire day last week roaming around town and shopping with my mom. We weren't shopping for anything specific. Just enjoying being able to look at new things and imagining where to incorporate them into our homes.

In one of the stores, Tuesday Mornings, we came across a bunch of glass owl vases in different colors. It was love at first sight! And when we managed to find one in a teal/turquoise color (my new favorite color - and not just because we used it in our wedding), I knew I had to take one home.

But, I wasn't a fan of the price...

Sure, $15 isn't that big of a deal, but I had already spent $20 that day on the mirror frame. And considering we're on a tight summer budget, I wasn't planning on spending a whole lot of money on this shopping trip. As I stood there having an internal fight with myself over whether to get the owl, and knowing the hubby probably wouldn't be too thrilled, my mom stepped in and saved they day. She proclaimed it was her gift to me, and that she would buy it. Have I ever mentioned that I love my mom? Because I do. And not just because she buys me cute little turquoise owls. She's amazing!

So, the owl came home with me. And I had the perfect place in mind to place him - our new dining room buffet. 

I paired the owl with a glass hurricane lamp (which you can't have too many of, if you ask my mom) and a small brown votive candle.

I love our new little animal addition. I seriously get a big smile on my face every time I see it. Have you brought home any pieces lately that bring a smile to your face? Maybe you have a specific animal you tend to prefer in your design choices? Or maybe color glass is simply right up your alley?

Dining Room Word Art Inspiration

This is a brainstorming post of sorts. Last Wednesday my mom came into town and the two of us went shopping. While we were out and about, we stopped at a store called Dockside, and I came across this little guy for $20 in the clearance section. Excuse the blurry cell phone pic. 

It looks like it was once a mirror, but the mirror itself must have fallen out. There weren't any others like it in the store to compare it to. But, I loved the black metal look of it with the bits of sparkle. I immediately thought of the empty wall in our dining room. The black would go well (much at the risk of being too matchy-matchy) with the black photos on the gallery wall and the black metal dining table that we already have.

My first thoughts were to chalkboard the inside of the piece and use it as sort of a menu board. But, the hubby wasn't a fan of that idea. Another option, that my mom thought of, was to find a piece of fabric or even wrapping paper and place it inside. Not a bad idea, but I was afraid it would look too plain or too much like a bulletin board. Then, while we were walking around in Kirklands, I kept seeing these large frames with sayings about family in them and immediately I knew what I wanted to do - find a meaningful and/or cute saying and paint it inside the mirror frame. And if I can manage to find it in vinyl, that'd only make my job easier!

So, I turned to pinterest to search for sayings that might fit well in our dining room. Some sayings talk specifically about food or eating, while others talk about family and love, and still others are quotes that I just happen to really like.

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Who doesn't love some Winnie the Pooh??

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I think this one is a contender:

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Maybe turn it into a "house rules" board?

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This scripture was said during our vows. Traditional, but might be nice to tie into our home

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Simple, but I like it.

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I'm still having a hard time deciding which one I like best. I'll probably have to hand-paint whatever phrase we end up choosing. Of course, since I'm not much of an artist, that poses a bit of a problem. Maybe I can find a vinyl to put in the frame instead? Or chalkboard the inside so that I could change up the saying whenever I felt like it.

Which one is your favorite? Or is there a saying/quote I'm missing here that you really like? I'd love to hear your suggestions!

Craigslist Score

The hubby and I made our first official Craigslist purchase this weekend. And the price was a steal! But before I get ahead of myself, let me start from the beginning.

Ever since our wedding, I've been on the hunt for a buffet/sideboard for our tiny dining room. We got so many new dishes and small appliances as wedding gifts that we have completely run out of cabinet space in our kitchen. We even had a yard sale to scale down the amount of stuff we had. But even with the yard sale, our kitchen cabinets are filled to the brim with stuff. So I thought a buffet would be the perfect solution - we could store our small appliances in it, or we could move all of the dishes that we don't frequently use in it.

So I started my search online. I wanted dark wood, tons of hidden storage, cabinet doors and drawer space, and preferably somewhere to store wine/liquor bottles. These were the top contenders:

Top left: Hutch-Style Buffet from Target; Top Right: Thomasville Beau Monde Buffet from Target; Bottom left: Hokku Designs Cedric Buffet from WalMart; Bottom right: Canopy Anywhere Console Table from WalMart

The problem? Buffets are expensive! Furniture in general is expensive. Maybe I'm a little naive about what a decent price is for furniture considering every item in our home was a hand-me-down or free (with the exception of our mattress). But I refused to spend $200-$300 for a buffet. So, I turned to Craigslist.

I've been searching on Craigslist religiously for the last two months or so. Although we technically live in Central Florida, we are on the very northern edge of it. So, I spend most of my time searching the Ocala Craigslist. Every once in a while, when I would get bored with seeing the same listings posted multiple times, I would scan the Orlando Craigslist. I figured both of our parents live in Orlando, so if we found anything there, we could just make a weekend trip out of it. We more than likely would have to go to Orlando to borrow my stepdad's truck anyways. And what do you know...

Last Thursday night I was doing another search on the Ocala list and got really frustrated. Before shutting the laptop down to start making dinner I decided on a whim to check Orlando's list again. It was the fifth posting listed, and it was perfect! I seriously squealed. Like school girl squealed. Which is really not typical for me. I anxiously showed the hubby and waited for his approval (our tastes are similar, but we're both very particular and stubborn). He loved it! Sold! Here are the pictures from the website that I snapped with my cellphone so we could show our parents what we were getting.

But now what? I've never actually bought anything from Craigslist before. Sure, the hubby had sold a couple of tools about a year ago, but he handled all the communication on that. There wasn't a phone number listed, so I emailed the seller immediately. Told her we thought the price was totally reasonable, but our only concern was the width of the piece (too wide), so I asked again for the exact measurements just to be sure. The seller emailed back within 10 minutes and confirmed the measurements. We thought about it for a little while, and decided that we loved the piece so much, and since this living arrangement is only temporary, we'd go ahead and get it.

The only potential problem was that we wouldn't be able to go and get it until Saturday morning. And the seller wasn't sure if she'd have any left (turns out she had like 13 identical cabinets). She wanted me to contact her before we left for Orlando to double check that she still had one - if she did, she would hold it for us at that point. Luckily, everything worked out, and we were able to pick up the piece from their warehouse Saturday morning.

My stepdad was nice enough to loan us his truck. We were hoping we might be able to fit the piece into the hubby's car once we had it back at my parents house, but that simply wasn't going to happen. So, the hubby and I drove the truck back to our house (which is two hours, round trip, from my parents) to unload the piece. We stopped by my sisters house and borrowed their dolly. Without that thing, there was no way the hubby and I would have been able to get it up a flight of stairs by ourselves. In the words of the hubby, "That piece is SOLID."

When we finally got to our place, we realized we were going to be racing against the incoming storm...

I didn't take any pictures of us trying to get this thing upstairs. I was a little preoccupied.

We set it in our dining room against the only cleared wall we had at the time. We both knew it would eventually move somewhere else, but for now it was going to work. Even the cats seemed to be excited about the new addition.

So, how much was this buffet? I'm sure you're dying to know! Well, it actually fit right at the top of our budget for this piece of furniture. It came out to an even FIFTY BUCKS! Yep, 5-0. One whole Ulysses S. Grant. Now do you understand the school girl squeal? You should have seen my mother-in-law's face when I told her how much we paid for it - her jaw seriously dropped. If you want to get technically, it cost us a little more than that with all the driving back and forth we had to do, but I still say it was a steal!

The piece is 3 feet high, 4 feet long, and 2 feet wide. It seems to be made of solid wood. The front panels seem to be clear plexiglass. The seller taped some white cardboard behind it to make it look more white/frosted. The hubby and I are considering frosting those pieces anyways.

On the inside are pull-out shelves. It looks like they had some type of plexiglass dividers in them, but the seller had run out of pieces for that. As it is, I don't think I want them anyways, so we'll probably take those out some where down the road. So far the pull-out shelves are working for us. But, we haven't crossed out the possibility of taking them out (or maybe just one set) and replacing them with standard shelves. Why? Well, I originally wanted to store our wine glasses in there, and I don't feel comfortable with them sitting in a movable shelf. But we'll see and I promise to keep you posted.

Sorry for the blurry shots... I was trying to snap pictures while also shooing away the cats.

The top is Formica, and it's pretty scratched up along the edges. The seller was nice enough to rotate the top so that the worse side was facing the wall. We're thinking about getting some white craft paint and just touching up the nicks for now. Eventually we'd like to replace the top, but we're going to wait until we have our own home and see what we want to do with it then.

Yesterday I moved the piece along the wall with all of the picture frames, which I think is where its going to stay for now. I might move the pictures frames over to the adjacent wall and find something else to put above the buffet. The whole room just looks a little unbalanced to me right now. We decided to move the fish tank into our living room, so that should help some. But this room still needs a lot of work to make it work.

Last night after the hubby got home, he helped me move the fish tank into the living room. I moved one of the chairs into the empty void there to balance out the chair on the other side. If we put all four chairs around the table, the area just looks crowded. It looks a little funny with just two chairs around such a large table, but for now I think we're going to live with it this way. We're entertaining the idea of finding a small, square, wooden dining table to replace our current table. Neither one of us has ever been a fan of this table - but it was free, so we've learned to live with it.

Anyways, this is what the set up currently looks like...

 (the sign is from our wedding reception)

But there you have it. Our first Craigslist purchase. And the first piece of furniture that we've actually shelled out some dough for. I couldn't be happier with the piece! Have you snagged any good deals lately? Maybe at a thrift store or yard sale? I love hearing stories about good deals!

Quick Fix: Raising a Light Fixture

So I mentioned in my last post that I had done another little project in the dining room besides our little gallery wall. Well, this little project had to do with the lighting fixture hanging above our dining room table. You see, this thing hung pretty low. Even with the table beneath it, I would still bonk my head on it from time to time. It was becoming pretty annoying.

Probably the most annoying part though was the fact that once we hung up the gallery wall of picture frames, when you sat in our living room, the top frames were being blocked. Something had to be done to fix this problem.

See what I mean?

Living in an apartment our fix had to be something that we could easily undo whenever we moved. At first the hubby used these rings that we had lying around the apartment. I think he was hoping to be able to close them, but the weight of the chains and light fixture didn't make that possible. I loved the fact that the light was higher so that we could admire our gallery wall better from the living room. But, I was not a fan of those silver rings.

So, we headed out to the store and picked up these little guys.

We also picked up a can of oil-rubbed bronze spray paint. Although we didn't like having to buy a brand new bottle of spray paint for such a little project, we knew we'd end up using this stuff in future projects.

I took the little s-hooks outside on the balcony and gave them a couple coats each. I wasn't sure if we'd need two hooks or just one, but we bought two to be on the safe side.

Once everything dried, the hubby took out the old silver rings and replaced them with the hooks.

It looks sooo much better now! Granted, you still see the jumbled mess at the top of the chain, but at least now you aren't looking at the random bit of silver sticking out like a sore thumb. From the living room point of view, you can't even see the small hook that we used.

And I love the fact that you can see the new gallery wall without the light fixture obstructing the view. Too bad that pile of paper clutter is ruining the shot, huh? Oh well. No one's house is 100% spotless, 100% of the time, right?

Anyone else out there have issues with low-hanging lighting fixtures? How did you fix it?

Dining Room Gallery Wall

My husband would be the first to tell you that I have a thing when it comes to picture frames. Our little apartment is littered with them in all of our rooms. I think the only rooms that don't have at least one frame in them is our kitchen and the guest bathroom. Seriously, sitting in our living I can count 9 frames just in this one room.

I think part of the problem is the fact that, once a photo is in a frame, I hate to take it out to replace it with something new. Instead, I find that new photo its own frame and its own home within our living space. I can't be the only one who does this, can I?

Anyways, ever since I had hung up our maps in the guest bedroom I wanted to add some more art on the walls around our apartment, and I thought the dining room was the perfect spot. We had talked about finding a large piece of art for that space, but we're always hesitant to invest a large chunk of change into something without knowing if it'll fit into our next (hopefully more permanent) home. Here's what we were starting out with:

And then it hit me... picture frames! I had a whole box of them sitting in a box in our black hole guest bedroom closet that still needed to be hung up. The best part, they were all black frames. Immediately my mind went to creating some sort of gallery wall using all of the frames. I had seen some on Pinterest that had caught my eye, so I used them for my inspiration.

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What I love most about this one is the fact that they changed things up. Large and small. Matted and un-matted. Chunky and sleek. I also love that they included what I can only guess is the intial of their last name.

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This one is probably my favorite hands down. Again, it has their inital featured within the gallery wall. But it also has some pieces that aren't totally devoted to photos. I'm also realizing that I like the asymmetrical gallery walls more so than the symmetrical ones.

So, now that I had an idea of what I was going for, I took out all of my frames and started laying them out on the floor.

Even the cats joined into on the fun and helped out.

As I was playing around with the frames, I realized I wasn't ready to take the risk of an asymmetrical gallery wall in what was suppose to be our "formal" dining space. I did, however, like the fact that I managed to throw in a couple of frames with matting, and the large circle collage frame (a Christmas gift from my sister) helped it not to look so straight-lined and boxy.

I used a tip that I've seen a million times online to figure out the right placement of all the frames on the wall - newspaper.

After taking the corner shelf with my Willow Tree figurines down and relocating them to our master bedroom, this is what the gallery wall looks like with all the frames up on the wall.

Please ignore the fact that some of the frames don't lay right. I use push pins to hang everything in our apartment, and sometimes the frames just don't sit right on them. Why push pins? Well, I don't think our neighbors want to hear us banging a hammer on our adjoining wall. That, and the fact that you don't really have to patch push pin holes as much as you do nail holes when you move.

When I first snapped these pictures we were still waiting on photos to come in the mail to fill in the large circles in the collage. But now that they have arrived, here's what that frame now looks like.

I love the fact that all of the photos are of the same color tone and that our DIY wedding program fits right in. It's a little personal touch without being overwhelming. Also, if you noticed, I swapped out a black/white photo of my sister & nephew when he was a baby with a photo of our niece and nephews from our wedding.

So that's our gallery wall. Nothing too fancy, but it makes a big impact. Now we're just looking for something to balance out the fish tank on the other side of the wall. We've been looking at options for a small buffet/bar of sorts. I'll keep you posted on what we find.

We're not totally done with the changes in the dining room though. We did a little something something to the lighting fixture. But I'll be back with those details another day. And...I recently changed up the photos that hang above our desk in our office, where I played around a little with an asymmetrical pattern that I'm excited to share with you.

Anyone else love the idea of a gallery wall somewhere in your home? I would love one day to be able to have one going up a staircase like the first inspiration photo above. Any tips on how to make an asymmetrical configuration work and still look elegant? Is there any thing to avoid when putting a wall together, or do you think this is one of those "anything goes" type of project? Would love to hear your thoughts!