Re-Purposed Drying Rack

Ever been to a home goods swap? Since moving to Charlotte a year and a half ago, I have met some great budget friendly gals that have hosted clothing swaps and home goods swaps. Basically, the gist of it is to bring some stuff around your house that you don't use or isn't your style anymore but is in good enough condition to go to someone else . It's a great way to get rid of stuff that you love, but just don't have a place for. I love seeing someone else I love being able to use it instead of just donating it to Goodwill (which would be the next best option unless you thought you could make a buck on Craigslist :) ) In return, you get some great stuff from others! In general, the way we played it is if you brought 5 items there, you could bring 5 items home. There were certain rules that if you'd be interested in hosting one, I'd be happy to e-mail you how we did it. Well, my friend Meghann couldn't go to the party and asked me to take a few of her items along . I was happy to oblige, but I forgot one thing in the back of my car.The lone dish drying rack. Now, what am I supposed to do with it? The party had come and gone and Heaven knows I don't hand wash dishes. If I have to for my stoneware or silpat, though, you would catch me wearing these. I'd like to take this opportunity to give a big shout out to my Jenn-Air dishwasher. It's the bomb and I never have to pre-rinse or scrape crusties out of my drinking glasses. Anyway, the rack got me to thinking about something else I've been wanting. A spice rack.

I just unscrewed the two pieces and layed one down in the drawer. It's perfect for the spices to nestle in between the rods and then they don't rattle and twist around. Plus I don't have to spin the turn table 189 times before I find the parsley.

How's that for the cost of 0 dollars?

Bird Eggs

We have a ton of birds on our property and now we are about to have 6 more. In the fern on the far right were these 5 little guys...

About a week ago, I checked on them just a few days after discovering the eggs and was so surprised to see they had already hatched!

There are now these fuzzy four little guys. There were five, but sadly one had fallen out of the nest.

In the far left fern there are these two little guys. I haven't checked on them recently but I started to last night and the mama bird was sitting pretty on them so I didn't disturb. It's so fun to have National Geographic happening on my front porch. :)

Behr Premium Paint

Here's the thing. I bought some expensive paint recently for the island. It was Behr's Premium Plus paint the kind that has primer in it and all. Normally, I'm just a basic Valspar cheapest kind of paint you've got kind of girl, but Behr's color was the one I liked the best on the sample card so I just went with that one. I actually just found out a couple months ago that you can buy paint in other brands using shades from their competition. I had NO idea! Anywho, back to Behr, being the first time I've used them and all I have to say I was HIGHLY impressed. This stuff goes a LONG way. I seriously maybe lost 1/4-1/2 inch of paint total in my bucket. Since it had primer already in it, I only needed one coat and I painted the entire piece and still have a full gallon of paint to show for it! It was probably 10 bucks more? (I have no idea since Adam bought it) but after painting the island during one naptime, I can highly recommend this to those who are short on time. I also applied poly before I painted in case I wanted to distress the island, it would show a more finished product underneath. Any thoughts? To distress or not to distress?

I commented below, but just in case you missed it the color is Behr's premium ultra plus (something like that) Carmine Red with 2 extra ounces of white in it. I had to take it back to make it a titch more muted and that's all they had room for. So there you have it!

Oh, and don't buy Walmart's $1.00 cans of spray paint. They've been tried and have been proved to not be true.

Kitchen Island

I haven't shown you our kitchen island yet, but here it is uncovered in all of its natural untouched glory. It's been sitting in our outbuilding covered by a tarp for a couple months until we were able to take some time to paint it and bring it inside. Isn't it beautiful? We paid Adam's old co-worker from Raleigh to custom make one for us and he did an awesome job! It even has a place for a microwave with a hollowed out leg for the cord to run down through.

This picture below is the very first one I saved in my "inspiration" folder as a color palette for my kitchen. Love those muted neutrals, striking black and that pop of red.

And I loved this rug I had picked up last summer in Raleigh at a garage sale with it's grays whites and muted pinks and greens.

So after bringing home a gazillion sample cards of red home from Home Depot, we came up with this!!
I just love it. It's just the perfect pinky red that I was trying to achieve. I wanted something to tie in the brick fireplace, but not be too dark or dreary and give us that pop of color from my original picture. I mulled over the colors for days wondering if I should do the awesome-ly distressed gray that people are doing or a striking black, but when I got stumped that's when I pulled out my inspiration folder and remembered what I really wanted initially.

I can't wait to get my microwave back too! We've just kept ours in the box until we could put it in its rightful home. I don't know about you but stirring around leftover mac n' cheese in a frying pan to warm it up gets kind of old...

Oh yeah, did you notice my cows on the wall. Here's a close up.

I love them too. But what I love even more is hearing my 17 month old do his best cow impression, "Ooooooo," every time we pass them. :)

We plan to top it off with butcher block too.

2 Frying Pans and a Coat Rack

Since we've moved in January I have been missing 2 frying pans and a coat rack. Well, being the kind of family to walk in and throw your coat up on the rack, we couldn't do the formal coat closet much longer. It's nice to have for the winter coats and rain jackets, but everyday stuff had to be easy to put away and easy to find with two little ones. Using this picture as my inspiration, I decided to give up on the missing coat rack and start fresh.


Lucky for me, I found these hooks soon afterwards at Hobby Lobby at 1/2 price! I took them home and sanded them down to give them a distressed look and let some of the silver metal shine through the white paint.

I did love that white on white look from the magazine, but I had an old naturally distressed shelf in the outbuilding that was too weak structurally to keep as a shelf so I took it apart and used it for mounting my hooks.

And there you have it! It fits perfectly!

Easter Shrine

What do you get when you combine an old entry way table and...

a thrift store mirror...

and a can of black spray paint?

An Easter shrine of course! Well, er, not really a shrine...but it's a hall table decorated all Eastery and really doesn't serve any other purpose but to just let me get creative in a small amount of space. So, check it out because that's the only reason it's there.

(l-r) African violet in my Ikea lemon planter, crate found in the attic that says "to Charlotte via Charleston" and has something about pansies printed on the side, a stack of metal tart tins I picked up for $1.50 at Habitat ReStore, stuffed chick on Easter clearance last year at Target, old flashlight found in pansy crate in attic holding Dollar Store daisies, decorative sconce that I acquired last month at a home goods swap (have you been to one of those?! They're awesome!).

And let's get a good look at that flashlight. What else do you do with an old flashlight that looks to cool to throw away but serves no other purpose in it's current state? I was pretty proud of myself. :)

Happy Easter everyone!

Romans 6:5-11

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we shall certainly be united with him in a resurrection like his. We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. Now if we have died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. We know that Christ being raised from the dead will never die again; death no longer has dominion over him. For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.