SnapShots & WhatNots

Framed finally

 

Finally!

A serious case of procrastination has been overcome – I finally hung the prints on the wall of the guest/craft room. I bought the first print “Magic is something you make” from the February edition of #make29 on elisejoy.com (she does a new collection of products each month). So yes that means that I have had this print unframed and unhung for over 7 months. That’s impressive in a bad way.

The other 2 prints came from and opportunistic free shipping sale on Society 6 in March which is when I had the idea for hanging all three prints together in off-white frames. The owl print can be found here and the “Happiness is coming home to a wet nose and a wagging tail” can be found here. I bought the frames in Michaels for $4 each.

I’ve even had the frames since July. I love the prints and knew I’d love them on the wall and yet I procrastinated forever about actually hanging them. I finally did it yesterday. I especially like that because I hung them on the wall facing the door I can see them from the living room – without actually hanging them in the living room.

Ok so that’s a goal that was set in August and then again in September finally crossed off the list!

You can see what the rest of the craft room looks like here

My craft room

 

The craft room, as I like to refer to it as, is currently serving its more official purpose as a guest room at the moment, while Kathy’s parents are in town visiting. Of course, in preparation for their visit I had to tidy it up from the absolute junk heap that it was into something that doesn’t make guests feel like they’re staying in a school on art&crafts day.

So I packed away all my fabric, wool, paint and other supplies which are all now hanging out in my pretty filing cabinet in the wardrobe, tidied up the desk, made the bed and last but not least I hung some new curtains that I picked up in target for $25 a panel. Curtains are so expensive, and at first I thought it would be cheaper to make some but when I weighed up the cost of the fabric I’d need to make them wide enough it didn’t work out any cheaper to buy them.

So here’s my little craft room at the tidiest it ever has and ever will be again!

Mini-Makeover - creating a coffee nook

Should I really call this a coffee nook when it's currently sporting three bottles of spirits? Ah well, it is technically my little coffee nook though and I think it's a much better use of the space compared to how it first looked when we moved in over a year ago. 

Obviously this photo was taken right after we moved in which is why the place is pretty much bare. The space where the coffee nook is now was occupied by the microwave and a portable dishwasher, which I never even knew existed before I moved in here. The idea being that you roll out the dishwasher over to the taps at the sink and connect it each time you want to run a load of dishes. I'm an incredibly lazy person when it comes to things like washing dishes so this just seemed like far far more hassle than it would ever be worth. 

This little section of the kitchen stayed like that virtually unchanged for months after we moved in except that the top of the dishwasher became a perfect place for junk, bills, receipts and more junk to collect. Then one day I had the bright idea to move the microwave from here onto the counter on the far side of the room and to place my coffee machine over there instead. From there the idea grew and we picked up a few tea/coffee related odd and ends in places like World Market when they went on clearance, like the espresso cups and on sale like the flavoured syrups. The wine rack was thrifted and used to hang out on top of the fridge but I much prefer it now in it's current location. 

Then it stuck me that since the dishwasher was a portable eye-sore there was no reason why I couldn't move it to a less obvious location so I pushed it out into the mudroom where it fit perfectly behind the back door and that's is where it's lived ever since. In fact sometimes I even forget it was ever under this shelf in the first place. 

By taking out the dishwasher we ended up with a much less chunky looking kitchen and the perfect place to store Boomer's toys in a thrifted picnic basket. Sometimes it's the smallest changes that make can make the biggest difference to a space!

Mini Makeover - big print edition

Another weekend and another mini-update achieved. This time around it was the turn of the kitchen – or more precisely the kitchen wall. Yes, the marathon training chart that I had made for Kathy to record her training progress last summer was looking a bit out of place now that the marathon was long over (she completed it last September) but while I’ve been saying for months that I should change it out with something else but I just never got around to it.

Until now. I got one of my favourite photo’s blown up and printed a huge 16x20 at Walmart for $11 and bought a new piece of 99c white poster paper in Michaels and in a matter of minutes I had switched out the chart and hung the photo.

The photo is one I took when we went on an apple picking trip (great fun) and I like how the colours work really well in our red and white kitchen – also doesn’t hurt that it’s a very obvious food reference which works great beside the fruit bowl.

These little mini-updates are an easy and cheap way to liven up the house a little bit at a time. Now that we’ve been here a year and don’t really know how much longer we’ll end up living here it’s a balancing act between making the rental house more ours without doing things that would make us lose our deposit (like rip up awful carpets and paint over horrible paint choices) or things that would cost us a fortune we’d be better off saving (like buying more furniture and artwork etc). 

Anyone else got ideas for cheap and easy ways to change things up without breaking the bank?

Mini Makeover - a little goes a long way

I spotted this lovely little succulent planter in the Home Depot the other day – and isn’t it really similar to the one I put on my February wishlist? Best of all it was $11 and I already had the perfect spot picked out for it so it was immediately coming home with me.

This is the little table that sits just inside the front door and manages to collect so much junk! For instance that “lovely letters” holder is holding a lot more than letters….junk mail…dvd to be returned to the library…..a beer mat that I thought look pretty cool so I pocketed it….Charlie’s puppy book….about 5 receipts….the list goes on (and it is usually never this tidy!). So in much the same manner as the bedside locker update, I found a new (tidier) home for the junk and brought a little life into the living room.

The little table now sports the succulent planter, a wooden giraffe statue from Dublin Zoo (yes it was one of the very few items from home that managed to make it into the suitcases, and a bear statue that Kathy picked up on her travels that usually hangs out on a shelf in the bathroom. Can’t beat a quick and easy $11 makeover!