♥Christmas 2018 ♥Vintage Decor Touches♥

Happy Holidays!

Seems like November lasted about a whole week this year. I blinked and I barely remember any of it! Thanksgiving was fabulous, but man, it flew by!

As I grow into my last couple weeks of pregnancy with my second little girl making me pee every 30 seconds , and my two year old daughter attached to my hip, I am busier than ever! I am really trying to create an atmosphere of Christmas peace and serenity, (and no, that feat has definitely not been a cake walk).

However, I have been encouraged to savor December with being able to add some really simple and pretty Christmas touches around my home to help cherish the season! I’ll have you know we have only had about 5 hundred ornament casualties thus far with said two year old. Ha!

When my great-grandmother passed away, I was very fortunate to receive some of her beautiful china, including this holiday set below. I just love it! It is simple and timeless with the bone white and classic holly design. I can’t wait to serve tea, coffee and hot cocoa to my family in them on Christmas morning!

*The silver tray is a Goodwill find ($8) from last summer and the silver salt and pepper shakers ($12) are from a hole in the wall antique store in Genoa, NV.*

The 6ft Fir garlands this year at Trader Joe’s were so inexpensive ($6.99!) and stunning this year! I had to grab one! For some reason I have never seen them at my Trader Joe’s before this year, only wreaths, but I am thrilled they arrived! I am obsessed with how it dressed up my wood stove, (and yes, wood stove is only for decor and occasional use, don’t worry, I won’t burn down my house!) The garlands smell so good as an added nostalgia bonus. I grew up with my parents always taking me and my brother to the snowy mountains and getting a real tree for Christmas when I was very young.

I am lazy have a lovely fake tree and lower real Christmas tree standards, so this is the best of both worlds for me!

 I hope you are able to enjoy the little things this season! Even if that little thing is just enjoying a mug of festive hot cocoa while in the corner of your eye you notice your two year old taking each “horsey,” (reindeer) ornament off your tree in a not-so-gentle fashion.

Happy Holidays!

♥ Shelby

♥Shabby Chic TV Stand Makeover

Hello, friends!

I did a quick furniture flip over the weekend while we move our entire lives house around to make room for our new baby girl, expected in late January! My two year old daughter is still not sure how she feels about being a big sister, but she got a new, bigger room this week since we moved our office and bedrooms around and I think she may be coming to terms with the new sibling.  It has been quite the transition for her, she won’t be the only center of my universe apple of my eye in a few months!

To prepare for the new baby, we will no longer have a designated media space like we used to, the TV watching, chill zone has now all been moved into our formal living room, which, has actually worked out really nicely! We even bought a fancy new sofa sectional for the space! Woo-Hoo!

The old media room is currently being converted into our new bedroom, and I am really happy with how it is slowly coming along! Since we had our second, smaller TV without a designated place now, I thought I would take a gander on ‘ol Offer Up and see what I would be able to flip into a cute TV stand for our new bedroom. I was on a tiny budget, since we sunk a chunk of money into our new sofa sectional, headboard and new curtains.

 

I bought this TV stand/Sideboard piece for only $25! It is very sturdy, just had a slight musty smell and some scratches! With a little cleaning, white paint, and new hardware, I knew I could make it absolutely charming!

I sanded the stand down just a bit and filled in a few holes with some wood filler. The first coat of Valspar Antique White paint went on like a dream! I decided to also paint over the detailed brass applique and see if the paint would crack on top of the brass to give it that true shabby feel. I wasn’t really loving the actual pull-knobs, so I left those behind.

Yay! Hobby Lobby!

In the land of fabulous knobs! I honestly took about 8 years to decide on which knobs to get. There were SO MANY beautiful options it was really hard to land on just one design! From sparkly crystals, rustic bronze, and stunning geodes, I landed on some simple, white shabby chic knobs that would fit my chosen aesthetic perfectly. Although, a part of me was slightly devastated I had to leave the super sparkly, crystal knobs behind.

My husband probably appreciated how I abstained from my sparkly instincts. Haha!

I slapped a second coat of paint on the TV stand and just waited for it to dry before I added my knobs.

Then, my husband and a buddy of ours carried it up the steepest stairs ever stairs for my 7 month pregnant self!

Ta-Da!

I am SO HAPPY with how the piece turned out! I am always just AMAZED with what a little cleaning, fresh paint and new hardware can accomplish! It is transformed from sad, dated (and slightly orange), to fresh and fabulous! I love how the brass applique I painted over cracked ever so slightly, giving it a well aged look! So cute!

I am slowly but surly decorating our new room and am getting really amped up to tackle the new nursery as well!

Hooray for flipping furniture on the cheap!

♥Shelby

Extreme China Hutch Makeover♥

Are you ready for this?!

I am so excited to share this transformation with you today! This was such a rewarding project and an AWESOME birthday gift!

For my birthday last week, my husband went to OfferUp.com and started looking for some buffets and hutches/china cabinets that were in need of some serious lovin’. I have been looking for a china hutch since we moved into our home. I was getting anxious to finally unpack my tea cup collection and my great grandmothers china that I inherited! I was just tickled that my husband thought of getting me a hutch for my birthday! The good ‘ol boy that he is, he forwarded me some pictures of the contenders he thought would be fitting for our space and my personal style. We went back and fourth sending each other links of possible hutches and landed on this beauty (yikes) from the 80’s! The lady selling it originally wanted $250 and we scored her for a whopping…wait for it…$50!

I know, right!?

A total steal!

Once it got plopped onto the front porch I wasted no time getting it cleaned, lightly sanded and primed! However, my sweet, infant daughter had other ideas, so the priming part took about 8,000 a couple more hours than it should of. I was so excited to finally have a new project in my life that I contemplated pulling an all-nighter just to see the finished project!

Yeah, right.

My daughter, Dahlia, pulled a huge cranky show before bedtime that squashed all those crazy aspirations. I went to bed and decided it would be better to actually get some sleep, (wait, what is that again?) and wake up refreshed less exhausted Saturday morning.

Alright, let’s finish this baby!

The morning was sluggish and it was hard to make progress (life with an infant), but I started gaining momentum after the first coat of Antique White was finished. Before I was able to feel really accomplished, I had to stop a few hundred times to nurse and rescue my husband from Miss Gassy Cranky Face.  Doesn’t she realize mommy is trying to create a masterpiece!?

PLEASE JUST LET ME HAVE THIS ONE THING!

I was thrilled (and totally relieved), to be able to take out the HIDEOUS yellow glass panels and replace them with some french country inspired chicken wire screens!

I just LOVE the result! It fits my personal decor style completely!

In the home stretch now! Just added a second coat of paint and starting seeing my project finally come together beautifully! Before I knew it, I was standing back looking at this beauty:

It feels at home now in my formal dining room! It fits perfectly! I am utterly obsessed with it and so thrilled with how it turned out! Night and day from that dingy and dated piece that it was!

Time to add all my Great Grandmother’s china as well as my own personal china collections!

Let’s get decorating!

I just am so beyond thankful that I was able to take a small break from mommy duties (as much as I love them), and really get back to my creative roots!

Till next time my darlings!

♥Shelby

Thrift Shop Wing-Back Chair Makeover!♥

Anyone who knows me, well actually they don’t even have to know me, they just have to talk to me for about 20 seconds before they are aware of my uncontrollable obsession   deep love for thrift stores and antiques.

Since grammar school, my mother was dragging me to every Goodwill and Value Village in the city. Since I am lucky enough to live in Tacoma, Washington, there is a thrift shop about every block. So thanks to my mother, to this day I can’t pass up antique stores, or any store, that may have some hidden treasures among the junk. I get a rush and a fabulous feeling of pride when I find something that fits my personality at bottom dollar!  Today, I stumbled upon this chair that needed a good deal of TLC. As always, I looked past the coffee stains and other *ahem* questionable blemishes, all I saw was potential for this chair to be cleaned back into its former glory! I bought it for $10, even though the seller wanted $15, but after flashing him batting my eyelashes, and smiling real big,  he gave it to me for my asking price and even carried it to my car for me!

Here is the before photo:

And here are only some the stains in question:

Certainty, we can do much, much better!

So I started by gathering my supplies and going to town! First, I vacuumed it really well with the hose and the brush tool to get any dust/crumbs out. After that step, I poured rubbing alcohol in a spray bottle and give it a good, damp spritz all over, try to concentrate on the stains and other “less than awesome” areas. Grab a dry sponge and soak it in the rubbing alcohol and then wring out. Start scrubbin! I had to use a butter knife and soak it in alcohol to get the yellow line of paint out. Be gentle though, especially if it is an antique. The butter knife was just abrasive enough to remove the paint but not damage the fabric.
Rubbing alcohol is a great way to clean microfiber, never use soap and water to clean it, it will destroy the fabric.  Microfiber is made with polyester and needs to be cleaned with a type of alcohol, you can even use vodka! Woohoo!
I didn’t want to keep the dark wood legs, they were a little beat up, and not in the gorgeous shabby chic way…

I gave the legs two coats of the “Valspar Paint and Primer in One”, does the trick every time! I used a flat white, (try to control your excitement over the color choice).
I also bought new nail head trim since half of the original trim was missing as you can see in the first picture.  Removing the old nail heads was not as tedious as I had anticipated, (thank god). I used pliers and the kind of nail heads that they used were in strip form, so once one of the staples that held the strip came off they all followed. I chose a brassy, gold color. For 25 nail heads it only set me back $1.75. I bought 4 packages for this project.

Start nailing those suckers in! I chose to do about an inch width between each nail. I used about 75 altogether. Sometimes the nail head part pops off if you hammer it in too hard and fast (that’s what she said),  so be careful not to be too aggressive.  No need to waste supplies!

Before:

After:

All clean, painted, and trimmed up! Former glory indeed!

♥Shelby