Craig's List - YAY!

I don't know if I have mentioned this before, but I have really expensive taste. REALLY EXPENSIVE. It is very unintentional and it sucks. 

For example, a friend of a friend threw a Lia Sophia party a few weeks ago and I was asked to attend. As I am flipping through the magazine and displays, the only thing I considered buying was..... wait for it.... the ONLY $288 item in the magazine. Really, Lauren? Really? It isn't even real gold. I obviously didn't get it.

My husband notices it too. We play this little game when we go shopping. If there is a display of something, he will try to guess which one of the items I like best. He's usually wrong. But, then I will choose the one I like the best and compare the prices to the rest of the display items and it is ALWAYS the most expensive item. ALWAYS. ALWAYS. ALWAYS. 

Do you think that this is a disease? It has to at least be a syndrome of some sort.

If you all met my mother, you would certainly know why this is the case. We didn't have a ton of everything growing up, she always tried to buy the absolute best quality item that she could.

Anyway, this becomes a problem for me in my daily life. I was looking at bedroom furniture for our new home (we literally have none right now). We sort of made the decision to try to buy American Made furniture and products whenever we could (and not sacrifice quality or spend like $500 more for something). I priced out some American Made bedroom sets with all of the furniture we would need and really the whole package. Ask me how much the bedroom came to? $10,300. REALLY LAUREN, REALLY?


Given the consideration that I am in fact NOT A BALLER.... I said... ok....it will take us 4 years to save up enough money for bedroom furniture and that is just unacceptable (plus I want a new kitchen ASAP)... so I am going to check Craig's List. 


Guess what I found? 

 (Lady's Dresser)

 (Man's dresser/chest)

(Nightstand...actually, there were 2 nightstands...only the picture of 1 though)

I don't know many furniture brands, especially from furniture that was built in 1942. But, I have a coworker who does, so I sent her the link and asked if I should go check it out and her response was running into my office telling me to leave work immediately and go see it. lol. I listened to her.

I made an appointment to look at the furniture and was so happy with it when I got there. The furniture is Drexel furniture. It is solid Mahogany (no veneers) and MAN was it HEAVY. I didn't want our furniture to be too flourishy or girly (for my husband's sake) so this furniture really is perfect! 

So, I bought the furniture! Folks, this is for a 4 piece bedroom set. 1 Lady's dresser, 1 Man's chest, 2 nightstands. Solid Mahogany. Solid brass drawer pulls. SOLID! 

Ask me what I paid for the whole set... go ahead... ok I'll tell you...

$300.00!!!

I did some price comparisons on Craig's List, and one of the night stands ALONE goes for $300.00. The woman I purchased it from inherited an old friend's estate and really just wanted to get rid of things. WOW, it was a STEAL. 

Granted, there are 3 or 4 things that we have to fix. A couple pulls are missing, but we have the entire bag full with extras!  We need to re-stain part of the other nightstand. There is also a hole where a drawer pull used to be that will have to be repaired. No bigie though.

Mind you, we still need a bed and I would really like an armoire, but I don't care. We can always find coordinating items, I am sure of it. 

This is my second Craig's List deal and I am seriously impressed. My first deal was someone giving away 30-40 used once moving boxes and all of the packing paper FOR FREE! That was amazing, too.

 I think that Craig's List might be my method of finding the high quality and high style items that I gravitate towards at the prices I can afford (& not have a heart attack).

I can't wait to clean up all of these pieces and get our bedroom in picture perfect condition to share the photos with you. 

Oh wait, we haven't even closed yet, that's right.

Thanks for listening. I am really proud of myself for finding the pieces (clearly, I wrote a whole blog post on it). lol. 

xoxo

Trying to be "with it"

Hi All!

As I was doing my daily blog stalking of all my favorites during lunch, I noticed that there are so many bloggers staying connected using Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Google+, etc. Then, right after lunch I got a message from a good friend who said that I would LOVE Pinterest. First, I admitted that I had no idea what it was. Second, I went to the website and immediately fell in love. It is like your own personal inspiration central! Kinda awesome. 

But, of course, you have to link your Pinterest account to either a Facebook or Twitter account. Well, I don't know that I want to link all my blogging to Facebook (still undecided on that one). So, I started a Twitter account. That's how it all happened.

Given that, on my left sidebar there are links to all my accounts. Flickr, Ravelry, Pinterest, & Twitter. HOPEFULLY, I will have an Etsy store soon, so you can shop too!

xoxo

Craft Room Look & Feel

I've been really really thinking about what kind of LOOK & FEEL I want my craft room to have. I have been struggling with this thought a lot. What look to I want?  I know what I absolutely don't want, but I have trouble narrowing down exactly what I do want.


Do I want to be vintage chic:

Do I want to be super organized and structured?

 (YESSS!)

Or do I want a more go with the flow attitude?

Do I want to use wire/metal shelving and racks and create a more industrial feel?

 

Do I want to eliminate as much open shelving as possible so it is a cleaner, more streamlined look?

Do I want to have a design wall? More importantly, will there be room?

BIG QUESTION: Do I want a color scheme? I'm not really a "theme" or "scheme" person. Do you have to have theme or color scheme? Is it a must?

 Do I want to display a collection proudly?

What do you think? What do I want? Of all the pictures, I think I like the one below the best. I like the brightness. I like the combo of open shelving and drawers. I like the white wood and the neutral-ish color. I think that it will give as a nice backdrop while working on various projects, maybe I won't have sensory overload with too much going on in the room. I just like it. Also, green is my favorite color.:

P.S. notice the wire baskets? Maybe that's why I like it?!


xoxo

Wire Basket Storage Inspiration

I'm really loving these wire baskets as a storage solution for the bookcases. I am not sure how I want to store my fabrics. I might just fold the fabric and stack it on the shelves, but the idea of placing all of the fabric stacks in wire baskets also sounds like it would give a nice overall look to the bookcases.

Look at all of these beautiful baskets:

Wall-hanging wire storage:

 (I love these! I don't have any brushes to put in one, but I am sure that I could find something just as fun)

 (I REALLY love love this one. I can picture hanging it on the wall and storing all of my mail / receipts in it)

(Isn't this one great? Maybe it would be great for gift-wrap roll storage?)

Baskets for bookcases and maybe fabric storage?:

 (Ok. I won't be keeping lemons in the craft room, but these are the baskets that I envision storing fabric in. These are from the container store, aren't they GREAT?)

Other storage baskets. Not sure that these would actually fit anywhere in the craft room, but maybe for a garbage can? Or a great scrap bin?

Overall look:

(I love how this person lined all of her/his wire baskets with a linen/canvas look material. It really unified the look and softened the industrial feel of the baskets.)

What do you think? Are the vintage looking storage baskets a winner?

xoxo

Ball Jar Inspiration

My first inspirational post is about beautiful ball jars. I love them. I LOVE blue glass. 

This is what my craft room looks/looked like from online pictures of the house. We haven't closed yet, so I haven't gotten in there for good photos. As you can see, there are built-in bookshelves on 2 of the walls. They are currently a lovely shade of hunter green (although they look black in the pictures).

These are my inspiration photos. I love the pretty blue hue of the ball jars. I really love this picture below and want it for my craft room. I do also plan on painting our shelves a white or light cream color and I think that it will look AWESOME with these blue jars.

oooo lalala more ball jars . . . I absolutely love this picture:

 Ok! There you have it... blue ball jars are the love of my life.


xoxo

Goodbye, My Lover . . .

So, remember how I told you that we are moving into our gorgeous first home:

Well... that means I had to pack up everything we own for a while. Naturally, that includes my recent love:

As well as the rest of my quilting supplies:
 

Given that I won't have access to my crafting goodies for probably a month or so, I plan on sharing inspiration photos with you for a while. I hope you enjoy! 

Wish us luck moving. We have packed almost everything we own, except food, some bath products, and clothing we'll need for the next two weeks. I am staring at all of the boxes/garbage bags full of our life and DREADING having to move it all down 2 flights of stairs and then into the house. I also am sick of hearing myself whine about it.

xoxo

 

FWQAL Block #6 Big Dipper

Here is the second installment of my Farmer's Wife Quilt-a-long blocks for Week 3. I hope you enjoyed the Bat Wing block from yesterday.

Block #6 is the Big Dipper block:

Here are the fabrics I chose. I am still second-guessing myself:

 

I only needed one template for this baby, but boy did it get a lot of use. I needed to cut out 16 of the same pieces:

Here are all of the pieces laid out and ready to go:
 

 Here is the block! Overall, it went together pretty easily. Although they call this block the Big Dipper block, it is an hourglass block pattern and I LOVE IT!
 

Here are my week 3 blocks:

Here are all of my blocks so far from weeks 1 thru 3:

 You can see all of my progress thus far at my flickr account.

Have a great weekend!

xoxo

FWQAL Block #5 Bat Wing

I just finished up week 3 of the Farmer's Wife Quilt-a-long and I am loving it. Well, not all of it. Cutting out all of those templates are pretty brutal!

 

Here is the page from the book:

I decided to use these fabrics. The print is an Anna Maria Horner print from her Innocent Crush line and the solid is one of her AMAZING solids:

 

Here are the the templates that I had to cut out:

Here are the pieces, all cut and ready to go!:

This block was super easy to sew together and I think that it came out pretty accurately:

 

See all of my Farmer's Wife Quilt-a-long progress at my flickr account.

xoxo