Sat Morning Thrifty Finds

Mr. CHL & I set off on Saturday morning to find some great pieces of furniture we can redo from thrift stores. We stopped in our local St. Vincent De Paul store, I saw a couple of great French dressers - but they were way over priced. After being disappointed with what we were looking for, I went over to the kitchen section and found trio of great buys.

I found this 5 piece set of cute white little dishes, perfect for small bites and personal dips for $2.49

A mini milk jar; the jar reads I.X.L Creamery Inc. Friendens, PA

The jar was a measly $0.97

The best thrifty find of the day was classic posy vase, its a nice solid weight. The vase bears a striking resemblance to the Kate Spade 'Sweet Pea' vase from Macys for $35.00

I paid $3.97!

The Rapper & The Diva

In honor of Halloween I thought I'd share a picture of Halloween 08. Mr. CLH was DMC from Run DMC and I was Diana Ross. We went to a mutual friends party and had a blast.

Spooky Chic Halloween Wreath

I fell in love with a black feather wreath from Target, just not the price. I decided to be inventive and DIY. I went to Micheals craft store and brought three 6ft fluffy feather boas for $1.99 each. While I was there I also picked up some black ribbon.

On the way home I stopped by The Dollar Tree and brought a $1.00 foam wreath. I applied glue and wrapped the feather boas around the wreath. The result is a spooky chic Halloween wreath.

{ Ignore the lovely writing on my beat-up door! }

FYI: I was browsing Eddie Ross's blog today and came across the feather wreath how to - with great pictures! I forgot to take picturse of the process...oops

His website has many great Halloween Decor ideas!

Roll Out

Roll out, roll that sod out. We decided to tackle the front yard and leave the pesky garden beds alone for a while. Before we laid sod, we killed our front yard with Round Up and Clover Killer. It took a while to kill our lawn, during that time I think our neighbors began to wonder is lazy people moved in.....

Thanks to Craigslist we where able to find a landscaper who rolotiled the yard and then installed our sprinkler system at a good rate. The found yard is a pretty good size, roughly 1000sq feet.

We decided to make the rest of the front yard a DIY project. The sod arrived bright and early at 6am. I wanted to help my husband lay the sod, but each roll must have weighed 50 pounds. I decided to take pictures and make lunch!

We had 2 1/2 pallets delivered

The makings of a curb appeal

From this....

To this....

{ We painted our house right before we laid sod, pictures coming soon after Halloween, our house

 is full of spooky decor! }

EDIT: When laying sod, make sure you stagger each roll so that the seams don't line up. Use an xacto knife to cut pieces of sod. When laying sod over a sprinkler head simply make one slit for the head, that way your sod is seamless. After your sod is installed, water it for twenty minutes in the evening and two times a day. This varies depending out what type of sod your purchased and the weather you live in and season.

Fresh Flowers

I cut these two roses from our front yard, and put them in a cute little Ikea vase. They smell amzaing and are huge. Our rose bushes are still blooming, I'll have to do some research and see when I need to cut them back in California.

Color Play - Sneek Peak

After we painted the our accent wall a pretty shade of blue; I knew I wanted another pop of color to tie everthing together. It tooks months to pull the look together being a serious  budget due to our wedding.

While redoing our living room I fell in LOVE with Colors: Blue, Yellow and White

Fun Pillows

Framers Market Flowers

New Artwork

Decor with Pops of Color

Painting Project Helper

It occurred to me to me today while I was thinking about my upcoming DIY projects for our dining room. I need a helper; Mr. CHL isn't big on painting. I decided to buy some Saw Horses. In the past I've had various painting projects that got along just fine without them. I've come to realize saw horses are good for a variety of things: painting (less drips), drying, cutting wood etc. I few weeks back we did a teeny tiny bathroom redo, I could have really used saw horses then. I hate letting items dry out doors. Now our projects can dry in the garage away few pesky dust & dirt.


When I'm in need of any 'new item' I first head to CL (craigslist) no luck today, oh well. So begins my internet search.

The saw horse below is a Storaway Saw Horse for $17.99 each, not bad, but it looks kind of flimsy (available at Lowes)

The pair below are $29.94! What a deal, the pair together can hold up to 1000 pounds, again there availble at Lowes. We have a gift card from Lowes, I think I'll pick up this pair tonight.

Upcoming painting projects: Paint Buffet, Restain Dining Room Table, Paint Mirror, Paint baseboards, Paint Dining Room & Kitchen, Paint Kitchen Cabinents.

{ Teeny Tiny Bathroom ReDo, will be posted soon }

Glossy Holiday Finds

I arrived home to find two glossy holiday reads in the mail box; CB2 and Crate & Barrel. I know its two months untill Christmas, but their already gearing me up for the  Holidays and DIY decor projects. Since this is our first holiday season in our new home, and first holiday season being married I want everything to be special.

I think I want to create a white, sliver and teal christmas.....the colors would look great in our living room. Crate & Barrel has me swooning over thier antiqued glass cander holders and ornaments. I can picture these on our dining room table or the buffet table.

I love these kissing balls, jusy not the color. I think this might be a great DIY project, just need white ornaments, pine cones painted white, small round foam ball, ribbon and hot glue gun. Can't wait to recreate this project!

Sitting Pretty

When Mr. CHL and I opened the boxes, I was a bit disappointed. The color chairs I ordered online looked cream, but the chairs in the boxes were oatmeal. I was annoyed at first until I realized the chairs matched perfect with our sofa, so in the end it was ok.

sofa & chairs = perfect match

Between planning our wedding and buying our first home, it took me MANY months to pull our living room together. I love the look we have in our living room, I'll share updated pictures of our living room soon!

We Got Mail, I um mean boxes

A few weeks after we closed on our house, we got a nice refund check from our closing. I began the look out for two affordable armless chairs. I found two that matched our sofa and style of living room. The UPS man delivered two huge boxes to our front door. I couldn't wait open them, and put our dining room chairs back where they belonged.

Geting There

A couple days after we moved in we had fresh paint on the walls, clean floors and plenty of space. It took 3 days for my sister and I to clean the beatup original 1956 hardwood floors before we moved in. There's nothing worse then grimy wood floors {yucky}. Most of the wood in our home came back shiney. It's a simple and quick fix, untill we refinish them.

Clean Up Time

new paint and clean floors

A better view, yeah the tag is still on the coach

View from the front door

We brought our sofa a few months before we closed on our house, it fit snug in our apartment, but needed friends in our new living room. Temporary fix, dining room chairs!

(please excuse the blurry pictures and mess!)

Drab Living Room

Along with cleaning our house with TSP Cleaner from top to bottom, I knew we needed to paint our living room before we even moved in. The walls and ceiling were all a funky green color, the baseboards were natural wood - not our style. We hated the ceiling fan, it looked oh so cheap. Our original 1956 hardwood floors were thrashed from years of neglect. We loved the original front door, but the glass panel was broken, yet anther thing to fix. We had challenges to face, but I could see good bones under all the drabness (is that a word). Oh and we had a lovely air condition wall unit in the living room, the previous owners left the unit in after they upgraded the home to central unit heat and air.

Thrashed Floors

Cheap Ceiling Fan

Time to Prime

Mr. CHL priming the walls & the lovely wall unit (cringe)

I love Target

A couple of months after we brought our home, the Target that is a few minutes from our house was torn down. I was crushed. That only left me Wal-Mart, while I like shopping there it doesn’t wow me like Target does. The closet Target was 20 mins from our house and way out the way of my normal routine.

Fortunately they re-built a brand new Greatland Target. My new Target opened on Saturday, I couldn't wait to stop by after my sons soccer game. There's just something about Target I love, the aisles are bright and cheery and they always have new great decor items. My Target even has a grocer section and of course Starbucks! I decided to snoop in the grocer section and see what goods they have: They have fresh pizza, a yummy variety of cheese, good assortment of appetizer items, and fruit. I bought raspberries and strawberries for a great price.

Flower Bed Redo: Part One

In the front our house we have two flowers beds, one now with no border (we removed the icky circa 1972 cement border). The other flower bed had a lopsided brick border. At first we were going to take the brick down, and re-brick with fresh mortar.

Mr. CLH liked the flower bed without the brick, he thought it aged our little rancher. It took him a few minutes to convince me, but I'm glad he did. The old brick on the house looks nice and gives our home character however the brick flower bed did date the home.

Enter Three Questions:

1. What to do with this great old brick? It's not enough to create a small patio in the backyard

2. Should we leave no border around the flower bed? If so what about drainage?

3. If we put in a new border, what kind?

Starter Flower Bed

When we brought our little house I knew we had plenty of yard work to do both front and back. The good thing about buying a small home, we have a HUGE lot. Our front yard has a mature flowering tree and 3 large flowering beds in desperate need of wedding and re-configuring.

I couldn't wait to start digging up the flower beds in the front and conquering the weeds and funky vegetation. The main flower looked like it hadn't been touched since 1972 and the other flower bed in front of the porch had a lopsided crumbling brick border. That had to go!

Being a long term renter and only planting in containers, I knew nothing about what flowers would actually grow in the flowers beds. Mom even brought me cute gardening books, I just ooh and ahh over pictures, because lets be honest after awhile all their gardening how to talk can be a snooze.

Flower bed, with 1972 cement boder (Shudder)

                    

Carving Out a New Flower Bed

Flower placement

When Mr. CLH (Chic Little House) and I left Home Depot we had a cart full of flowers and mulch. We soon learned it looked like we bought 4 plants and barley any mulch, talk about one of the 1st home owner shocks. We quickly got back to work.

All Planted, and looking dinky. Do you see the little tree like bush on the right? That's actually a Camilla Tree we moved from a 'Hot Spot' in our other flower bed. It was burning from too much sun, so we moved it and hoped for the best. It did good for the first couple of days. Then by day four it was pretty much dead. I was in denial for weeks, thinking it would come back. Then when my dad was visiting he asked why we had a dead tree on our flower bed. I touched it and poor little Camilla tree fell over.

Moving on Up

We moved in our new home the very first weekend in January. I think I even hummed the theme song to the Jefferson's 'were moving on up to the eastside, we finally got a piece of the pie.' The feeling moving into our new home was exciting. Before we moved into our house, my husband, sister and I scrubbed on our house from top to bottom with TSP Cleaner. Our little house was a foreclosure and had been neglected for quite sometime, but more on that later.
 We did a marathon move in one day, and spent the evening cleaning our tiny two bedroom apartment, gotta get that deposit back, for home improvements! The night before move in day, we changed all the locks.

Day One

Our Tiny Little House on move in day, notice our rolling hills of clover grass and lovely ONE color peach house. Can you see the potential that we saw?

Our first personal touch for house was putting our little patio set on our front porch and our potted plants, it gave us a tiny pop of color. The funny thing is the tiny patio set barley fit on our Apartment patio, now it's a perfect fit. I still do a happy dance that we have a front porch.

Introducing Chic Little House

My husband and I brought our first house on Dec 30, 2008 - long before we were husband and wife. We had been house hunting even before we got engaged. Finally after looking for a house for 6 months we finally got a signed contact and a close date, three days before Thanksgiving. He proposed the day after Thanksgiving 2008! One of the best days of my life. We brought a little 1956 Rancher 3 Bedrooms and 1 Bathroom for a steal.


A month later we moved into our home and started making the house more chic and planning a Wedding. Now with our marriage 3 weeks old, it’s time for me to refocus turning our little Rancher into a Chic and Modern Home.