A China Press Make Over!

4 or 5 years ago I came home from college for the summer, looked around my bedroom and decided, "This furniture needs to go!"

It was black with mirrors covering the front of every surface and while it had been awesome for sleep overs in middle school when we'd do make up and hair, it just multiplied any mess in my room because of the mirrors all over the fronts of the drawers and cabinet doors.  

So I took photos of it, put it on craigslist for sale and got it gone!

And with the cash I made combined with some of my savings and some $ from my parents, I revamped my room for under $500. One of those purchases was this lovely China Press that I found on Craigslist and paid $115 for!

I really liked the color it was but it smelled of smoke and the inside was too dark so I took to it with a bucket of hot water and Murphy's Oil and scrubbed the dickens out ot if!

Seriously, I scrubbed that thing all over at least twice and went through about 50 q-tips cleaning decades of grime out of all those intricate nooks and crannies. Needless to say, there was a lot of junk that came off of it. 

Than I painted the inside white. I knew from the moment I'd seen this cabinet online that I wanted to use it to display some of my pottery and vintage cameras and that if the inside was white everything would stand out much better!

I put two coats of primer on and then used some left over white with a pale pink hue that I had gotten for another piece of furniture to paint and went to town. 

The end result was exactly what I wanted!

 It brightened the whole piece up and gave me a great way to display some of my collected treasures!

Not to mention became a favorited piece by all of my friends! I have had at least 4 friends ask me to please let them know if I ever decided to sell it because they would buy it from me. Cool! But no thanks gals, this one is a keeper for sure! :)

Thrifty Thursday: One Man's Trash is SHE Design's Treasure!

So the 2nd or 3rd day I was in Florida my Aunt and I came across a back alley dumpster find chest of gold! Metaphorically speaking. 

We had just picked up a few pounds of shrimp for that evenings dinner at a small local market and left through the back alley only to come across (thanks to my Aunt's sharp eye) a huge beautiful framed mirror sitting next to the garbage cans! 

Say WHAT!? So we stopped and I got out to investigate. The mirror was clearly broken but I was focused on the frame. Was it solid wood or partical board... it was wood. Was it knicked up or in good condition... considering its location, it was in good condition. So we loaded it into the back of my Aunt's little Prius (thank you Jesus that is just barely fit!) and saved it from a doomed existence in a pile of garbage at the dump! 

This picture really makes it looks small.. it is not.. the frame is a good 4 x 3 1/2 feet. 

The great thing I discoved while investigating in the alley was that the mirror while cracked, had some kind of heavy duty plastic backing which is why it was still holding together. So we took the whole thing not wanting to leave a jagged mess for someone else to clean up in a back alley and layed it on a tarp in the driveway to deal with the mirror. 

 My Aunt and I put some tape across the front of the mirror just to be safe... 

And then we pulled out all the staples around the back of the frame. After that we were able to just lay it down gently and the mirror fell out the back in one piece! (I failed to snag a picture of that)

 So then we just folded the mirror over a few times and threw it in some heavy duty trash bags and into the trash!

 And what was left is this awesome frame!

 I'm 5'11 so as you can see.. this frame is pretty big! Pardon the horrible shot.. I was snapping the picture with my remote shutter release at the same time I was holding the frame up!

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it yet... there are just so many possibilities! So for now I think it will become one of my photo props but in the future when I get my own place I'm thinking I'll hang it up and put a bunch of smaller framed and un framed photos and paintings inside of it!

Visual Pick Me Ups

Since about January I've been really getting into keeping fresh flowers in more places around the house.  Pretty much my entire life I can remember fresh flowers on the kitchen table in our house. My mom has always been really good about it and its something she likes to have around to brighten up a space. 

My go to flowers, probably because they are my mom's favorite are carnations. These pretty flowers get overlooked a lot for the more exotic and romantic flowers like lilies and roses so they are always really reasonably priced at the market and they actually last way longer than most other flowers. If we get a brand new just cut bouquet ours can last 2-3 weeks! They also have a nice sweet fragrance and come in so many both natural and now altered artificially colors. 

I just find its nice to wake up every morning and see some bright color on my bathroom vanity to greet me each day. And through out the day as I may pass by where I've started putting out little vases its like a visual pick me up every time!

A cheery silent Hello!

One of my favorite flowers, though they don't last nearly as long are tulips. I just love how they look. 

We have a local grocery store that puts out discount bouquets twice a week right after their shipments of fresh flowers come in and 8 times out of 10 the discounted ones looks brand new and haven't even bloomed. Sometimes it takes a bit of looking through whats available to find the most closed buds but for $5 a week to have lovely fresh flowers its worth it! And it gives me the opportunity to have something different depending on what's in their inventory. 

So getting baby roses doesn't feel as frivolous when you didn't drop a big wad of $ for them! And these actually lasted a good two weeks. 

The other thing, now that spring is here and things are beginning to bloom is just getting cuttings from my mom's garden! That I think is the best way to have fresh flowers!

We have these beautiful camellia bushes that are actually from my Great Grand Mother Dorothy's garden! My grandmother brought down a portion still with roots and all years ago and they have been replanted at each home we've lived in! There are a few other plants in our garden that came originally from upstate NY and her garden as well! The camellia's grow these big fat pink blossoms.

The bushes get weighed down by them because there are so many and they are quite heavy. So I helped them out and cut off quite a few to brighten up inside. A lot of the blossoms fall off so I gathered the best ones up from beneath the bushes and placed them in a bowl with water and VOILA! A whole 'nother way to display flowers! 

The one other reason I enjoy keeping fresh flowers around is it gives me the opportunity to use some of the vases and apothecary bottles I've collected over the years and to use some of the ceramic one's I've made! Like the bowl above and the bud vase below!

Do you like keeping fresh flowers about the house? Have any favorites?