From cheap to cheerful

I've had a small collection of magazine pictures and ads in a box beside my bed for some time, and I thought it was about time I did something with them. And a particularly fruitful visit to the local dollar store provided me with the perfect opportunity.
I bought a couple of cheap photo frames that I thought I could unify with a little white spray paint and create a cluster of pictures on an empty wall of our room.

Thankfully I had some leftover spray paint from the last project, so this is going to be turning cheap into cheerful! It only took two coats and about an hour to dry and voila!

I decided to upgrade the frame from my paint chip wall art I created about a month back so that everything was matchy-matchy!

I should have waited until it was morning to take these pics as the light isn't great in our room, but I think you get the picture (pun intended). I highly recommend using cheap frames over buying a match set. In contrast I bought my holiday picture frames from Freedom for $60, and these three frames cost half of that, including the spray paint!

Google is a wonderful thing...

I often wonder what my life would be like if there was no such thing as google. I would never have discovered why the sky is blue, how cameras work (but seriously I still think it's magic), the ever-addictive Facebook, my ultimate time waster Pinterest and the dozens of blogs that I read from authors around the world.

It was during my daily morning blog read that I discovered an interesting article about a design workshop that's coming to Brisbane. The School with Megan Morton  offers tuition from the best-of-the-best craftspeople inside the industry and gives an insight into the coveted worlds of craft, styling and design. Crafternoons and make-it-yourself lessons from specially selected teachers are structered with all levels of experience in mind.

One of the clases I was particularly interested in was a screen printing class by Rachel Castle. A little googling helped me to discover a little more about her and quickly I entered the wonderful world of Castle and Things.

Sadly for me, the class is only being offered in their Hobart Roadshow, but I'm going to keep my eyes peeled in the blogger world for more upcoming dates in the hopes I may learn how to create some of these pieces myself.

 

**I've created a link to my favourite blogs on the right hand side of the page. Check them out and you might find something you like! **

Ottoman Mania

When the boys are away, the girls like to play.... arts and crafts! Steve was away on a sailing trip this weekend so I thought it was the perfect opportunity to hunt down that coffee table/telephone table I have been searching for to turn into an ottoman for the end of our bed. And I was successful!

I hit up a Salvos store I hadn't been to before in Red Hill that was great. It had a huge selection of second hand furniture, chairs, dining room settings and hiding in the back was this perfect little coffee table.

And for a whole $10 how could I say no! I'd seen on Pinterest a couple of ideas on what I wanted the end product to look like, maybe this or a little something like this? So I went in search of some supplies:

1) Material
2) Paint
3) Glue
4) Tacks
5) Tuft Buttons
6) Foam

Now the first 5 items were easy enough to source. I hit up Spotlight for material and buttons, the local hardware store for paint, glue and tacks but the foam was a little harder to come by.

So many to choose from!

I narrowed it down to two!

Sadly Spotlight only sold foam in pre-cut cushion size sections. After a little googling I found Clark Rubber not only supplied a range of foam but actually cut it into any size you want! Huzzah!

I had initially picked a black enamel paint but when I got everything home, the wooden frame actually matched perfectly with our bedside tables so I decided all I needed was a little sanding and a re-stain. Fortunately I also had some left over stain at home, so no need to hit up the shops again.

Because I wanted to add tufted buttons I needed to learn how to use the electric drill. After a quick tutorial by David, my mum's partner, I was able to make four holes in the top of the table, and another matching four in the foam.

I had to glue the foam down to the table top before I could begin tacking down the material. Now that was the trickier part. I had ended up picking the black and white stripped material so I needed to ensure that ended up being straight, while pulling it taut. Thankfully by the time I was up to this step, Steve had returned from his weekend on the water. Four hands are better than two!

To get neat corners it was as easy as wrapping a present 

Adding the tufted buttons was a little tricky as I had to thread a needle through the material, foam and wood and fasten it to a washer at the back. After a weekend learning to sail I left the knot tying to Steve!

While he was on a roll I got him to re-fasten the base

So after a couple of hours the project was done and I'm so happy with the result! Not just functional, but oh so pretty too! And all up it cost under $50!

Diving for treasure

Over the weekend Steve and I went treasure hunting- of sorts. Friends of ours recommended we hit up the local tip shop, saying its a great place to find second hand furniture ripe for restoration. I'd been when I was much younger and back then all I thought was it was people's left over rubbish. I didn't have the imagination to see their potential. 





Steve said we should only purchase if we see something that isn't too large as of course we don't yet have our own house to store them in. I had my eye on gettting a coffee table to turn into an ottoman for the end of our bed, kind of like this. So when I spotted this 1960s vintage telephone table it got my mind racing.

I contemplated taking the drawer off and replacing the plether seat cover with some new material and wadding to make it nice and comfy. Perhaps a coat of white paint, the possibilities were endless.

I also like the look of the drawers in this old closet.

I was contemplating making some storage under our bed simply by adding some wheels to the bottom of old drawers.

But at $80 it was a little steep to buy an entire closet just for some drawers, and then I would have the problem of what to do with the closet.
Alas, I couldn't make a decision and Steve's shopping patience was dwindling so I held off on purchasing until I did some more research on what I could transform them into. I'm going to head back this weekend and see if the telephone table is still available or whether there's a more suitable piece to make into a coffee table! Wish me luck!

I swear we said we were just looking...

For several weeks Steve and I have been researching new cars to purchase in the next few months when my sister returns from London and reclaims her Toyota Corolla. While the little silver bullet has been very faithful and has seen me move to three different homes, we thought it might be time to upgrade in size.
Trying to agree on the criteria of what we were searching for turned out a lot harder than we first thought. Do we want something that's cool to drive around the city, bigger to cater for the home renovations towing a trailer and the like or were we just wanting a standard sedan to get us from a to b?
The other confusing factor was strangely our 'cultural differences'. Steve being Kiwi and I'm an Aussie meant we both had different views on what is a cool car. What's a good brand over the ditch didn't necessarily translate to over here. What was a 'mums car' or 'bogan car' differed greatly- both was something we wanted to avoid.
Now working for a motoring body comes with its perks also. I asked our car testing department what they thought would be an appropriate car considering what we wanted to use it for and how much we wanted to spend. We did have our heart set on a Jeep Wrangler for its cool factor. We were quickly persuaded against it due to their shonky track record and supposed poor on-road handling. They suggested a Ford Territory or a Subaru Liberty. We weren't exactly convinced. For starters Steve even pronounced the 'Sue-bar-roo' differently!
Anyway, off to the Moorooka Magic Mile this weekend to test drive a couple and hopefully resolve some of our differences. And I swear we actually said, 'now we're just looking, no impulse purchasing'.

We initially spotted a great black sleek 2006 Ford Territory with reasonable kays 130,000. It just had some new Advanti wheels installed and had a great window tint that made me think it was moon-lighting for a Range Rover in its spare time (wishful thinking I know).

We were recommended to try a Holden Captiva. We went for a test drive and while I didn't mind the look and it did allow us to tow a trailer and perhaps pop a future puppy in the back. But it wasn't a very smooth drive.

Now the Jeep Wrangler. It looked as sexy in real life as it had online. But stepping inside it wasn't exactly spacious. But we had said perhaps this was more a fun party car, good for a couple of years and then upgrade to a more sensible car later.

I soooo wanted to love it. But the rumours were true. The handling was just bad. It was bumpy and to be honest I didn't feel like I had good control over the steering. Sadly for me, Steve really enjoyed it. He loved the power and the noise and liked the opportunity to take it off road to go camping.

Hmmm... dilemma. We hadn't taken the Ford Territory for a drive so we thought maybe that would push me over the line towards the Wrangler.

Well quite the opposite. We love, love loved the Territory. It was so quite and comfy and spacious and allowed us the ability to add a puppy or a lot of building materials or even to put all the seats down and camp in the back of it. And the best part was the price! It was far better in comparison to the other cars we had seen. It included sat nav, blue tooth and fancy schmancy new wheels.

So we bought it! We put down a decent deposit and took the rest on finance. We were able to do that without having to eat into our joint savings and set out deposit back! Winner!

We pick it up on Tuesday. I'm so excited!

P.S Steve went off-course there for a bit and thought perhaps all we needed was a classic hot rod! Me thinks not...