Teak chairs! Woot woot!

So I was at an auction a while ago and I spied these fabulous teak chairs, a set of four.

They came for auction and no one was bidding on them! I started to get panicky. I have this weird thing where I feel bad for nice stuff when no one wants it. So I bid, and someone else jumped in and I bid again and they backed off! Well if I didn’t end up getting the chairs for $16… FOR ALL FOUR.

They are all in great condition and everyone who sees them loves them!

My boyfriend even uses one for his desk chair because they are so comfortable.

Notice the kitty come hither pose? He’s special.

Anyway, does anyone know what a set of these chairs would go for? Probably not $16…

A wee craft

So my mom saw this:

And I told her “You are NOT paying that price for something I can make!” (Sorry bouclair! Eep!)

I printed the text out to fit an 8 x 10 frame and headed to goodwill to find one. I found a bigger one for 5 dollars, brand spanking new AND it came with matting! So I came up with this:

And that’s the craft of the day!

Sally Anne – A Quick Trip

It’s my birthday weekend so we are doing whatever I want!

First stop a trip to the Sally Anne! I got the following for 6 dollars total. I plan on painting them all white for my bedside tables! I’ll post tomorrow once things are put together!

Spring Mantel!

So, a while back I got a mantel off Kijiji.  (For any American’s, Kijiji is your answer to Craigslist.)  The Mantel was $20 and fits perfectly in my kitchen.  I resolved when I bought it that I was going to decorate it with each season.    This was my Winter Mantel:  

I loved how festive it made the kitchen.  But I had some trouble with the “Spring” mantel.  What was springy? Flowers? Rain? Easter Bunnies?  All totally fine, but not my style.

I made a trip to my local homesense hellbent on getting some mercury glass candle holders and ended up coming up with this:

I figured, it has a bird so it *must* be springy!

Thoughts?

I got the cutest table! How should I paint it though?

Wow.  I just realized I haven’t posted since Christmas.  That’s what starting a new job in the new year will do to you!  I’ve been so busy!

Anyway, quick update and to the point… I got this awesome little table from work, they were going to throw it away!

(This is a stock picture, the table is dark grey and extremely dusty!)

I’m wondering two things.  I plan to use this as a bedside table and my room is beige and my bed is white and my bedding is blue.

What colour should I paint the table?

Also, what do you think the best method of painting would be?  Spray paint or hand painted?  Prime it first?

Suggestions please!

Gus

So I’ve been MIA lately.  For good reason.  We got a puppy!  Like our house wasn’t busy and loud enough with 3 cats running around.  We’re so dumb. 

My SO had been mentioning puppies for a while now, and the neighborhood we live in is a dog-crazy neighborhood.  We were seriously the only people in our complex without a dog.  So we started looking in the classifieds for puppy ads, we knew we didn’t want to get one from a pet store, and my SO was adament he wanted a specific breed.

So we ended up with Gus…

He’s a Pug x French Bulldog cross and he’s 8 weeks old.  He’s absolutely adorable and I love him to death already!!

The Christmas Wreath, AKA My attempt at being crafty.

So I couldn’t find a Christmas wreath that I loved.  And I had searched EVERYWHERE.  I was getting frustrated and when I get frustrated I make rash decisions.

This lead me to decide to *make* a Christmas wreath.  No, I have never done this before.  No, I didn’t think it was a good idea.  But I was feeling rash, and rash people don’t make good decisions.

I had seen these wreaths online:

I thought “well that can’t be that hard to do…”  I was only partly wrong.

All you need for this craft is:

1. Some pliers
2. A LOT of Christmas balls – I used 3 sizes and used about 38-40 balls in total.
3. A coat hanger
4. A glue gun

Steps:

1. Unwind your coat hanger with the pliers and fashion it into a circle.
2. Take your ornaments and check for any with loose tops.  Glue these on using the glue gun.  Mine were unbreakable ornaments so most of the tops just snapped on.  I was lucky. I couldn’t imagine doing this with glass ornaments.
3. Feed your biggest and second biggest ornaments onto the coat hanger using their tops. They’ll swing around to and fro so I tried to keep it flat (so it would have a flat back) and glue each ball to the next one to keep them steady.  Otherwise they’ll just all gather together and you’ll never have enough balls.
4. Once I got to the end I made sure to leave a small space for the hanger to go through, you could use a ribbon or over the door hanger for this.
5. Use your smaller ornaments to glue on and fill the spaces and hide the wire.
6. Then I added a pre bought Michael’s bow and we were done.

All in all this wreath took about 45 minutes to make and I think it turned out okay!!

One small problem though.  I didn’t think to measure the space between my doors and my wreath is so “full” that the door wont close now.  So I have to find somewhere else to hang my wreath… Which also means that I have to figure out another kind of wreath for the front door.  I have an idea though… More on that later…

I’ve gone Christmas Crazy…

So I’ve been single for the last couple of years and I’ve never had a Christmas tree since I moved out of my parents house.  There was never any point in having one because I always went to my parents the night before Christmas and stayed over.

This year is different.  Even the cats are into the spirit.

Seeing as my bf and I live together now I guess we’ll be having our own Christmas at our house.  So I’ve done some decorating. I went out and bought a tree, a wreath, some decorations, and some garland.  Doesn’t sound like much when I type it all out, but boy does our house look nice.

First off the tree:  I had a white tree when I was a kid. I have been obsessed with them ever since.

So when I saw white pre-lit trees on sale at Rona I had to go buy one right away!!  I was elated.  We got home and I immediately set it up and plugged it in.  It was beautiful!  A few days later my mom was at Canadian Tire and saw ornaments on sale for ridiculous prices!  She bought up what she could and voila!  We have a white tree with blue and silver ornaments!

Once that was done you think I’d be happy.   I wasn’t.  I needed more, more Christmas!

I had gotten this white mantel on Kijiji a few weeks ago for $20.  My boyfriend must have thought I was nuts because no, we do not have a fireplace, nor do we have any plans to get a fireplace.  But I wanted it as a decorative element in our kitchen.  We spent a few days getting it secured to the wall.  Not an easy task because the wall is concrete = no nails!  I went to homesense yesterday (my favorite store EVER) and bought some decorative christmas stuff and came up with this:

The picture is a little blurry, but I think you get the general effect.  The reindeer and tree are metal with sparkly gold details and the garland is antique Christmas ornaments strung together with rope.  The colored balls I got at pier 1 for a dollar each.  It turned out lovely, I think.  I can’t stop looking at it every time I go in the kitchen and I can’t wait to hang our stockings there as well!!

I hope you enjoyed my Christmas spamming!

Trouble-Makers

These are 2 of the 3 trouble makers that we have squatting in our house. They are super cuddly and warm on cold nights, but they also eat me out of house and home. Also, the fluffy one has taken a liking to eating earbuds, but only the expensive apple kind. He wont touch the crappy Liquidation World brand. He’s too good for that.

They’ve also discovered a love for q-tips since the bf has moved in. I have a fear of sticking anything that small in my ears so I never kept them around for any reason. The bf however smuggles them into the house and now the cats love to eat the ends off them. And when I say eat, I mean pull the ends off and bat them around the house in the middle of the night smashing into things and breaking things.

It’s quite lovely.  They’re lucky I love them.