With legs like these....

who could resist?  Apparently not me..Much to the hubby's dismay(only because we don't have room for it right now) I just couldn't resist this baby when she popped up in my inbox as part of a clearance sale.  This is one of the legs to a 10 foot table! Wohoo!  Can you say dinner party?!  I always want to have people over for dinner but we rarely get around to actually doing it so maybe out of pressure to use this puppy we will make more of an effort!

It looks blue next to the sofa but it is a nice gray tone..Isn't she pretty?

The plan was to build a super long table out of really rustic boards and find some old pedestals to mount it to but when I saw this baby and saw the price(tables in general are pricey as far as I'm concerned but especially this size) I knew it would be hard to beat. Plus there is the whole we would have to find time to search for old rustic pieces of wood and boards and then the time to build it thing.  So I just went for it.  Can you picture some modern or mid century modern chairs around it..maybe clear, white, silver, or even some bright colors?  

I think I can!

Best Bites Giveaway!

Want a chance to win what looks to be a fabulous cookbook?  Head on over here for a chance to win! The best part about it as far as I'm concerned is they give you a second recipe that you can use some of your leftover ingredients from the first one in.  What a great way to help you plan ahead!  Maybe this will help motivate me to cook more?

Easiest Cheapest Pillows Ever?

It's not often that I get out to shop around but every once in a while I get to sneak away all by myself, listen to my music, complete a thought, and peruse the isles of Target.  Yes that is a great night out as far as I'm concerned.  I did this a few weeks ago and I found these little pretties.  They are placemats and they were in the clearance section.  I have been wanting to add a little yellow to the house to brighten things up for spring so it caught my eye.  When I picked it up and realized it was just like a sad empty pillow I thought "well I can do that without even having to rearrange the whole house in order to get the sewing machine out".  And then I turned that baby around and saw....

THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then I dug around and found this guy

Aren't they perfect and springy!

And then finally today I gathered up a few things like this..Oh I knew I had saved that filler stuff for years for a reason(I was actually nervous that it was going to have little creatures in it it's so old).

I picked at the threads with this

Pulled it apart

Stuffed it and stitched it up !

And now we have these springy cheap little numbers!  I went the easiest route possible.  I am sure you could add a zipper easily and put pillow forms in but it would be so simple to just do the same process again if I ever need to wash them(which I am sure I will) so it just wasn't worth the effort.  Oh and I don't know how to sew in a zipper yet..maybe someday!

Linked to:

Remodelaholic

Tatertots and Jello

20 Below Thursdays

The Trendy Treehouse

DIY by design

Flamingotoes

Tatertots and Jello

Finding Fabulous

Chic On A Shoestring

It's a Hodgepodge Life

At The Picket Fence

Paisley Passions

The Shabby Chic Cottage

Somewhat Simple

Someday Crafts

Blue Cricket Design

Savvy Southern Style

All Thingz Related

Extreme Personal Measures

Tip Junkie

Domestically Speaking

Todays Creative Blog

Hope Studios

Blessed Little Nest

Skip To My Lou

diyhshp

Sumos Sweet Stuff

Keeping it Simple

The girl Creative

DIY Showoff

Poly Want A Crafter

Between Naps On the Porch

Tatertots and Jello

Be Different Act Normal

Funky Junk Interiors

Crazy Domestic

Fingerprints on the Fridge

Bubbly Nature Creations

I Heart Naptime

Remodelaholic

See this Little Ebates Button on the Left?

I started shopping through Ebates over the holidays and did recieve my rebate check!  I don't know but for me it sounded to good to be true that I could find almost any store online through ebates and get some kind of rebate.  Even ebay and itunes...yes itunes.  They email me what they call a "daily double" every day where the rebate is doubled on some purchases.  You can even shop for appliances people!  I haven't done that yet but I think when we start loooking for appliances I will go to the stores and see what I like and then find it here. Anywho...just thought I would share a fun little shopping find that floats my boat!

Now who wouldn't LOVE this???

Just had to share something awesome!  This would be a great way to start your morning..Roll out of bed and slide on down to your coffee..You would have to crack a smile now matter how groggy you were!

LOVE IT!
Found here:  http://design-milk.com/an-nyc-home-with-a-steel-slide-by-turett-collaborative-architects/

While we're on the subject of living rooms...Another Before & After

This is our current living room.(I mention "current" because of the recent blast from  the past posts about our first home)  Or should I say this was our current living room..have I lost you yet? This little space is the most used area of our house yet is so hard arrange in a way that makes sense for our family.  See that corner on the left?  Stuffed to the brim with toys!  That had become the toy box and free for all for the kids.  We had super large furniture that took up too much space and as you can see it also had to be butted up against the walls.  Ideally we would have had a sectional to put on the back wall that wrapped around onto the right wall but since we are always "about to put the house on the market" we didn't want to make the purchase.  Although I did search about a 1 1/2yrs ago for the perfect kid friendly gray sofa and believe it or not couldn't find one(one that didn't break the bank that is).  Now they are everywhere!  I even when to Bassett where you can pick your own fabrics and had no luck.  Crazy how much things change in a year.  Anywho, that wall there on the right has always driven me crazy.  It is really hard to decorate around a thermostat so we just threw something up and lived with it.  I mean we really lived with it....all three of the photos on that wall are of our first born child and we have two more that never got there pictures up;)

BEFORE

So back to the we are going to " put our house on the market" comment.  We have been thinking about selling for the past two years but the market in general has made us weary of making the move.  The builder is still building in the neighborhood and it is tough to compete with them.  So instead we have been in constant staging mode.  I took all of our family photos down over a year ago and we try not to add anything that would get in the way of it being staged to sell.  That being said we decided that it was time to move the big brown beasts out of the living room.  They were weighing it down and there were a couple of huge rips in the leather that we didn't want to spend the money on because we didn't know if we could use them in the new place or not.  So the big sofa is now in the garage and we moved the chair into the formalish living room.  Not wanting to spend a lot I scoured Craigslist for microfiber sofas (we have 3 kids a cat and a dog) I found these brand new looking sofas and an accent chair for $500 or 600 I can't remember.  The accent chair wouldn't fit and was too matchy matchy anyway so I sold it.  Even though I wasn't really looking for blue I felt these were a good enough deal that we could sell them after we sold the house and at the same time they would lighten things up a bit.  We had already bought the rug at the Crate and Barrel outlet and it has some aquaish blues in it and I apparently was in an aqua mood because I had bought the lamp for $30 at marshalls. So here we are with a ton of blue in the room.  This is not what I had envisioned at all but hey it lightens it up a bit and looks clean and tidy.

As for the toy corner..there is a small closet under a staircase over to the right and we placed a low bookcase from Ikea with 8 large containers full of "stuff".  The kids each have their own box labeled and it seems to be working out pretty well.  I recently threw those pillows on the sofa(they were here and there in other rooms) and they add a bit to the sea of blue that we find ourselves in.

AFTER

So that's how our current living area became the staged good enough living area!  I think it brightened it up for sure!

Now if it only always stayed like this!  This is what I had to throw into the formal living so I could get a decent picture;)!

Linked to:

Homemaker on a Dime

Meet the Living Room

You met the outside of our first home here last week.  Now come inside it's fun inside(couldn't help myself..the kid's are watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse as I type).  Here is the view of the front door from the living room.  Here's what we got rid of: screen door, half wall dividing the dining, vertical blinds, peel and stick "wood look" flooring, you can't see much of it but the thin non insulated door that went into the garage there to the left of the breakfast area, brass chandelier and every bit of trim and door in the house was replaced.  See that entry to the hall there on the right?  We decided to round that off and add more interest(see pic below for in progress shot..not sure if we would do that again but that is where we were in our design style in 2003).  Oh and we scraped the popcorn ceilings throughout the whole house, sanded every wall with a belt sander because they had a prickly texture(I am now not a big fan of the belt sander..that was rough!), and you see that back wall in the breakfast nook?  That was a faux brick pattern made out of joint compound.  Its was about an inch thick..I sure wish I could find the pictures of me sanding that off. The air was so thick with dust we couldn't see each other and mid sanding we ended up bubbling off the area..Live and learn through home reno for sure!

Below is what you first saw when you walked into the house.  Hubby built a new mantle one day while I was at work(better than flowers!), we of course got rid of the vertical blinds, we also scraped every window in the house because they had a film of something all over, replaced the sliding door with double french doors that both opened out towards the one day to be deck(does every girl love the thought of pushing open double doors to her veranda..or is it just me?), replaced the the fan, painted the beam white to make the room more airy.  I scrubbed most of the smoke stains around the fireplace off with a wire brush, removed the rusty fireplace screen and painted the inside of the fireplace with an appropriate heat and fireproof  paint.   Those are the same peel and stick vinyl "wood look" planks mentioned in the bath reno that were of course replaced with the tile that we put everywhere except the bedrooms.

So here is how it all eventually looked. There was a time in between these before and afters where we had a dinky tv cabinet, and none of this furniture.  See that large armoire for the t.v?  I am a lucky woman...hubby built that too.  We saw one at a large furniture store..took a picture and he eventually whipped one up that fit our space.   All the trim in the house was done with MDF boards that we ripped down to size and routed the top edge of. Otherwise there was no way a tallish baseboard was going to be in the budget.

Here is the armoire almost done..I wasn't so good at taking In Progress pics..or I have lost them(it's a little bit of both I'm sure)

Here is the other side:from standing near the breakfast nook.

The view from the front door.  That's the master bedroom to the left of the credenza.  

Just another shot of the same area.  I had apparently changed up the stuff on the credenza a bit at this point.  

If you look at the pictures below you see how much the room progressed over time.  I tried to go with a yellow color(shown below..yellow is tough for me to figure out) but felt like we were going to get a sunburn just walking into the room. Then I  tried a faux finish look that was just all wrong.  Eventually we landed on a paint color called "winter wheat" but I can't remember the brand..I can say that it was from home depot though:) (that was our home away from home) A lot of this look is thanks to new furniture and just collecting some fun stuff to decorate with.

Isn't it amazing what some paint and new furniture can do for the feel of a home?  We bought that little chair for $5 when we were first dating(probably our very first project together) and I am embarrassed to say we first covered it in fuzzy leopard print(I mean the super fuzzy classy stuff..that was a long time ago friends) and then this lovely little faux leather number.  It now resides in storage because we just can't let it go;)

So there it is! We loved this warm and cozy room!

Linked up to: 

Houseography

Between naps on the porch

The Shabby Chic Cottage

Somewhat Simple

 Savvy Southern Style,Blue Cricket Design

At The Picket Fence, Fingerprints On The Fridge, Between Naps on the Porch, The DIY Showoff, The Girl Creative, Sumos Sweet Stuff,

Skip To My Lou,makin cute blogs, Tater Tots and Jello