My $18 Desk Area/If It's the Spring You'll Find Me Spray Painting on My Front Lawn

A few weeks ago (oh who am I kidding-on Thursday-I have major instant gratification issues) I decided that I wanted a little desk in my den. My laptop currently lives on my sofa, and frankly, it was only a matter of time before one of us bumped it onto the floor. So I decided I wanted a petite desk. I only had 30 inches of wall to deal with, so I knew it would be tight.

I found one that was pretty nice at Target, but I did not feel like spending $100. I've been crazy thrifty recently-at some point in the near term I'll tell y'all about my $15 grocery shopping. For the entire week. Including 6 pounds of ground beef and a bag of Tilapia.

But I digress.

So I wanted a desk. I am cheap.

On Friday, I was at a thrift store, hunting for plates for my kitchen wall (oh yeah, I need to show you a picture of a decoupaged plate I made. With a tutorial from here. I {heart} this blog).

Then I saw her. She wasn't much to look at, but she was the perfect size. Dumped the plates on a shelf (heck this thrift store is such a disaster I'm sure no one noticed). I looked at her price.

$15.

But she was (a) light wood and (b) mission style.

But she was $15 and the right size so I knew I could make it work.

I decided to cover the mission spindly things with tufted upholstered panels. I found 2 old canvases in my scary slasher basement that fir PERFECTLY, as well as some brown fabric and some fiberfill. I couldn't find the batting, so just artfully arranged the fiberfill :) Then I tufted the panels with some $.88 for two buttons from Wal Mart. I'm considering asking the guys at work if they have any beadboard that they can cut to fit-and I'll remove the panels. But they work for now.

All I needed to buy were 2 buttons and 2 cans of black spray paint.

After I painted it black, I decoupaged a toile P on the top of the desk and put on about 5 coats of poly to protect the whole thing.

Then I "shopped the house" and found an unused black shelf in the basement, another canvas that I upholstered to use as a bulletin board, an unused lamp, and a little flower pot that I painted black and embellished to use as a pencil cup.

I forgot to take before pictures until I was mid-primer spray. So ignore the odd gray primer marks.



I am not a fan of the mission style. Apologies to anyone I offend.


And now...the great reveal. It turned out even better than I had hoped!




Opinions on the upholstered panels? Unsure.

But overall, for $18? Can't beat it!

And then I found a blog carnival. Go over to Southern Hospitality to see what other thifty decorators are doing...

When The Dovi is Sick

The Momma does organize.

I have told Benjie many a time-when the house is clean and organized, my heart is happy and peaceful.

Well my den has been a sty recently.

It seems that it was not enough of a sty to...ummm...get my butt off the couch in the evening to clean it. But it irked me. But I suffer form inertia in the evenings. And said intertia extends to my lack of desire to organize the scary slasher basement. It's so scary. And a disaster.

So yesterday, I was home with the fake strepalicious Dovi. And I am inspired to clean and organize in the daytime.

So...here is the toy/office closet before. Toys on shelves, home office in those lovely white file thingies on the bottom. Ahh the joys of your youngest(s) being 6 and understanding to not go in the files.



It makes me twitchy just looking at the disaster and precariously balanced piles of paper. A full view of the disaster

Aack. That's all I can say. Oh and Dovi? He stayed in his pjs all day. And watched Blues Clues (yes, he's 11. Shut up. He has FD. Blue makes him happy. Deal with it) no less than six of the eight hours we were home. In my defense, I did make him sit and read for ten minutes, and he played Wii for a while. But otherwise? What you see in the picture is what you get.

Oh by the way-do you like my red walls? Painted them myself. Took (I'm not joking here) FIVE coats of that red paint on top of tinted primer. The fugly paneling just sucked up that paint. And there are still places that it's not even. But remember? inertia? Obviously doesn't bug me enough to y'know, bring the paint can back up and deal with it.


And now....after THREE, yes THREE hours of cleaning/organizing. You see all the file drawers? Empty. I archived all 2008 into four banker boxes which are currently sitting at the door to the basement waiting for Benjie to shlep them down to the basement. Umm honey?

I

am

happy.

Look! Look how organized it is!! You know it was bad when your cleaning lady thanks you for cleaning it up.


Ahhh. Am happy. very happy. Cue the triumphant music. After the ingrateful hoodlums children got home from school I lectured them about how I had spent THREE HOURS cleaning up their toys and they'd darn better keep. it. neat. We'll see how long that lasts.


Oh and I wouldn't leave you without a craft. Looks pretty snazzy, no? I do like my little plaque-y guy I made with $2 of Dollar Tree stuff, some tissue paper, ribbon, paint, mod podge, and hot glue. Not bad if I might say so myself.

Lovin' the New Camera

So I'm loving my new camera, and today I'm sharing one of my latest crafts with you all.

If you're a blog-surfer, you might have noticed that one of the popular home decor items right now is silhouettes. ( Possibly one of the hardest words ever to spell, second only to diarrhea. So many superfluous letters!).
How freaking lovely is that? Imagine it in a kitchen...mmmmm.....more ideas abrewing. I did not make this. I got it from a free clip art blog I read. No mocking, please.

Well silhouettes are expensive.

I am cheap.

Soooo....here's what I did:

1. Since at the time of the craft, I was camera-less, I asked my lovely friend/neighbor Rebecca to take pictures of the hoodlums. We had them stand sideways against a plain wall. At dinner time. While Rebecca had to get HER hoodlums ready for swimming lessons. Immediate gratification issues, I know.
   
2. I then printed out the pictures of said hoodlums on my putey as an 8x10. Oh. After we spent like 20 minutes trying to email the files to me, until we realized, ya know, that I could just take Rebecca's camera home with me for a few minutes. Which I did.
   
3. Then, I took a very, very sharp pair of scissors and cut out the pictures.
4. (This was a many-stepped process) I then traced that cut out picture, slooooowwwwlllllyyyyy and carefully onto some black scrapbook paper I scrounged up from my scrapbooking days (Hi, Peta!!)
5. Then I cut that out.
6. Then, because I suffer from immediate gratification issues, I hopped in my car and drove to Michaels. I bought pretty scrapbook paper that was on sale for $.35 a sheet. I bought four. Because, ya'know, I have four little ungrateful hoodlums.
7. Drove home. In the snow. It was slippery. Remember, I need immediate gratification?
8. Then I used my kids' school glue sticks and very carefully centered and glued the black cut outs onto the pretty paper.
9. Then I needed frames.
10. Scrounged around in the scary slasher basement and found three black 8 x 10 frames from another previous craft. But that wouldn't work, because, remember? Four ungrateful hoodlums.
11. Remembered that Dovi had some pictures of him and his counselor Nuchie !who is getting married! on his wall. Ran upstairs. Removed a frame from the wall. What's my son's happiness at looking at his pictures when I have a project going???
12. Took said frame downstairs. Realized it was slightly different that the other three.
13. Decided to do two of each type.
14. Ran back up. Removed other picture from Dovi's wall.
15. Stuck picture of Dovi and Nuchie from now-spare-frame-from-three-from-scary-slasher-basement and ran back upstairs to at least give him one picture.
16. Put lovely silhouettes in four black frames.
17. Spent an hour measuring and making itty bitty holes in the wall to get them ever so evenly spaced.
18. Total Cost? $1.54.
19. Total time? Minimally two hours, all told.
    
20. Voila!
    

Here's the big question, though:

Can you tell who is who?

EDITED: I realize it looks like Shana's is a little higher than everyone else's. She isn't. Trust me. I've spent much quality time with my level to avoid that.