Thanksgiving Tablescape

Sorry this has taken me so long to get up, I was CRAZY busy over thanksgiving weekend right up until Sunday, and Monday was sort of my day to relax after it all, so you're finally getting something five whole days after thanksgiving. Actually, I guess that's not so bad, it could be worse.

Anyways, I really wanted to show you all my thanksgiving table scape. It turned out better than I expected, but you'll have to excuse the less-than-perfect images. I had to take them pretty quickly, and as it was incredibly cloudy all Thanksgiving day the room wasn't lit very well, resulting in blurry/grainy images.








Next up: Christmas Decor post!

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Thanksgiving Table Sneak Peak

We're having Thanksgiving at our house this year, so I pulled out our two long folding tables today and started figuring out exactly how I was going to set things up. I must say, I'm getting VERY excited about it all! I think it's going to come together really nicely!

Anyways, I thought I'd just give you all a little sneak peak of my table setting:


It's intentionally a pretty vague picture, because I want to save showing you all the full thing until after thanksgiving!

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Beachy Striped Side Table

Gosh, time really gets away from me sometimes! I am sorry for not posting more often, I've just been crazy busy these last few weeks. This last week I had some insane planning to do for a Halloween party me and my friend were throwing. We spent 11 hours one day planning for it, and were up until 1:00. The party was last Friday, and needless to say, after it was over I was just exhausted. I spent basically the whole of Saturday just sitting around. I had absolutely NO motivation to get ANYTHING done. I eventually got myself to go out and work on the end table I had started earlier in the week though, which I just finished earlier today.

The side table is one we got from my Grandma's house after she passed away. We really only got it (and two others) because we knew of a local summer camp that needed side tables. Unfortunately (or, fortunately, I suppose!), when we contacted them about it, they never got back with us, so the end tables just sat in our basement. Well, because I was having some problems with another piece I was doing, I decided I wanted to work on something new, and those side tables are about the only thing we have.

Here is a picture of the side table:


Just look at that swirly laminate wood. Is that not the grossest thing ever? Eeeeeeew! As you can see, I got a little too eager to start stripping the laminate off the top, and forgot to take a "real" before picture, but this still shows how ugly it was.

Here is the after:


I'm quite pleased with the finished result. I wasn't sure how it was all going to come together when I was working on it, and almost decided to change my plans, but I stuck it out, and I'm glad I did.

Thank you all so much for reading!

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Featured...again!!!

Wow, this is slightly overwhelming. I've been featured again, this time at *Remodelaholic*

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An Autumn Afternoon

I promise I have a furniture redo coming your way. I've been trying to work on it every second I get, which lately has meant painting after sunset under the dim porch light. Hopefully tomorrow I'll get some good work in on it and maybe even finish it, but in the mean time this is just a little post to tide you all over.

We had my two grandma's, my grandpa and my sister over for lunch today so I decided to set a nice fall table, because I know my grandma's really appreciate it, and I'd kind of been dieing for an opportunity to do it anyways. Here are a few shots of it:


It's not terribly elegant, it's really quite simple, but I was still pretty happy with it. Simple is sometimes best, imo.

The leaves in the cups was an idea I got of the PB website. They used book page leaves for theirs, but I wanted more color, so I used leaves I'd preserved in glycerin.

The napkins were left over from last thanksgiving. I folded them using the instructions here. I really need to memorize some of the napkin folds on that site because they look so nice, and I'd like to be able to do them without looking on the site every time.




The pine cones I gathered from my grandma's yard. Funny, when she saw the table, she asked me where I got the pine cones remarking that "I could have gotten them from her yard." I did, Grandma, I did! ;)

I apologize for the plates, which don't match all that well. Those are the only plates we have enough matching ones of for the amount of people we had for lunch. Nice plates and cloth napkins are both things I'd like to invest in eventually. For now I'll be content with my none matching plates and my paper napkins. :)


Thanks so much for reading!

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Featured!

Thanks so much to Blue Cricket Design for featuring my post today; what an incredible honor!

Bookcase Reveal

First off, I want to thank you all SO SO SO much for you're incredibly kind comments on my last post. I was really overwhelmed by them! You all have made me feel so welcome my first few months here. :)

Alight, remember the bookcase I told ya'll I was going to paint, and asked for your opinion on way back in August?

Yep...that one.
I finished painting it quite awhile back, but just haven't got around to shooting pictures of it because, in order to get sufficient lighting in this particular room for taking photos, you need to get up early. I get up early every morning, but I'm usually more concerned about my schoolwork and eating breakfast then taking pictures. Anyways, this morning I had a little extra time after getting ready for church, and the sun was shining in beautifully, so I snapped some photos.

Before I show you the photos, I want to take you back for a second to our family room a few years ago:


Yeah...this photo basically speaks for itself.
Boring, outdated, boring, outdated, boring and well...outdated. This is basically what our house looked like for as long as I can remember. Don't get me wrong, I loved my house then (every gross, outdated, boring inch of it), I just love it a lot more now.



This is me "working" on the bookcase. For some reason my ridiculous mind thought it would be a brilliant idea to sit inside the shelf and take a photo. *rolls eyes* The result is me in my work clothes looking tired and dirty.


Here are my lovely footprints in the sawdust created by my sander. Yeah...another "brilliant" photo idea from my mind. ;)

Alright, so now with my old living room in your mind, and the above photos that prove that I obviously worked quite hard on this project, I present the new bookcase.



Basically I decided to go with stripes on the back paneling. Originally I wanted gray stripes but when I tried painting them, they just didn't look right, they were too defined and I wanted them to be a lot subtler. I ended up painting over them with a lighter version on my tan accent wall color and I'm pretty happy with the result.










Everything in this space isn't the exact way I want it (particularly that ugly, crooked lamp shade) , but I'll undoubtedly be messing around with it for months to come so that's why I decided to show it to ya'll now.

Thanks again to everyone for reading!

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