10 Reasons I love Thrifting

There is a family joke about my mom and her need to stop at every garage sale we pass.  The sound of screeching tires imitated as we passed a piece of furniture sitting beside the road.  And rarely a weekend went by when someone else's 'junk' didn't become out 'treasure.'  I can probably count, on one hand, the furniture and decor items in our house we purchased new.  This continues now as I have my own home.  

I am my mother’s daughter.  There is no questioning that.  I love thrifting, garage sale-ing, estate sale-ing, and all things of the like.  Honestly, there is not much better than a good block sale. Why you ask? (Really, did you just ask that?)

1. '50% Off or More' All. The. Time.  The amount of money I have saved is reason enough.  It has enabled my meager budget to afford nicer things - for less than half the cost of a new item. And often these new things are of lesser quality.

2. Unique. You will rarely walk into a friend/family/neighbor’s house and see the same furniture that you see in my house.  I didn't buy it at a big box store that sells 100’s of the same items every day.  I bought it at someone’s house who loved it for 60 years and now it's one of the few remaining.

3. Go Green. Because I'm buying/receiving/pickingituponthesideoftheroad from a stranger, they are not throwing it in the garbage. The landfill just got one less dresser. You’re welcome. As well as less demand on our already limited resources.  Save a tree - buy used!

4. Making it my own. Rarely do you buy furniture to paint. Rarely do you find a sweet chevron dresser with purple and teal. Or rarely do you buy an old wooden box marketed as a floating shelf. Nope. You THRIFT these wonderful things that just scream YOU.

5. Its got history. If you buy a plate from Wal-Mart does it have character? Sure. Maybe. Does it have a history? Well, if by history you mean madeinafactorybyasmallchild than yes.  But think about buying a plate from an old mansion that is having an estate sale. That has history. Think about the dinner parties they might have held with that plate. Or why is that plate set missing 1 plate - because they threw the missing plate at the wall in the heat of the moment. History is just neat.

6. House tours. Do you walk into other people's houses and wondering what they were thinking when they hung that pink and green floral wallpaper? I do. I especially love the chance to tour an old mansion or farm house. Rarely do you have such an opportunity to tour someone’s life like you do at an estate sale.

7. Adventure. You are going down a windy road that appears to lead to nowheresville, wondering if this garage sale that was listed on craigslist is really leading you to a serial killer.  Then the landscape opens up to a modest house and the most gorgeous mountain back drop.  After chatting with the owner (and realizing he doesn't want to wear your skin as a coat), he offers you fish food to throw into the pond.  When you scatter the food, a plethora of koi fish rush to the top in a rainbow like fashion.  You can’t pay for that.  Well, I guess you can.  I got two neat old toolboxes that are now used as centerpieces. They cost me $2. Total.

8. Adrenaline   Finding a Lane coffee table for $50 when they are listed on eBay for $200 is a rush.  I just saved myself $150.  Buying a solid wood sleigh bed for $25 is a rush. I just saved myself a few hundred dollars.  Buying an almost new lawn tractor for 1/4 the cost new is a rush.

9. Shop Local.  There is no better way to keep your money in your community than to thrift.  If you buy a coffee table from your neighbor, the money is not divided fifty ways till Sunday.  It stays there.  That neighbor then might take that $50 you paid for a $200 coffee table and invest it in his garden, which boosts the curb appeal of his house, and increases the property value of your neighborhood. Whereas if I spent $200 at a big box store, maybe $5 would stay in our local community. Maybe. In many cases, thrift stores like Goodwill or Amvets, you are supporting a worthy cause and getting something nifty!

10. Saving Money. Really this is reason enough. It's so great it's worth mentioning twice.

Why do you love to thrift?

A Nikon D7000 and A (not so little) White Dress

This Bad Boy came in last night. Quick, right? Thank you overnight shipping. Buffalo be warned. You will have lots of photos taken this weekend. LOTS.

Holding it in my hands last night I really forgot how much I missed taking photos. I CAN'T wait.

This weekend is also dress shopping weekend. Of the white variety.

I really can't picture myself in a wedding dress. I have tried to close my eyes and visualize myself in one, but all I end up with is a picture of a model. Not me. I have a feeling it’s going to be strange. Very strange. I predict tears too.  I don't know why, but I just cry and random times when I think about marrying him. (no babies in this belly I PROMISE) I think it's because I never really thought to much about actually getting married. Strange right? I mean I couldn't wait for him to put a ring on this finger.

I found this beauty on Pintrest:

And you can see why I'm OBSESSED. But A.) it's made in Brazil and not sold in the US, and B.) it's $4500. Um Yeah. No.

So here's to hoping I can find something that beautiful and doesn't cost more than some people’s cars. Or a horse. Or half my kitchen. But I can totally picture myself wearing that dress. Maybe it's because she kinda looks like me. If you squint your eyes and picture me a bit more buff and less 10-15 pounds.

Next week many updates on the house. and all of it's no molding glory.

Comparison Shopping - When to Just Hit BUY

2011 Photo taken at the Air Show where I meet Krys

I feel as though my life has been filled with comparison shopping. Trying to make educated purchases for the best available price. First, identifying the possibilities. Second, narrowing down by what the heck is affordable. Third, what really fits ME. Forth, where the heck to buy from. And FINALLY, clicking that 'purchase' button. Frankly in the world of online shopping this can be very overwhelming.  There are so many reviews and opinions our there it's hard to just narrow it down.  From wedding dresses to cameras and little things for the house.  My brain is literally a file box bursting at the seams with all of these decisions.

Planning a wedding alone can do that to you. How do you choose a photographer when there is so many out there? We looked at portfolios until I was ready to throw the computer out the window... or at him. It's so easy to find faults in every single portfolio. Let's face it, no one is perfect. Plus when you are looking at a snapshot into someone else's wedding, analyzing how it would fit into yours; it's enough to make you jump through a window. That's closed. On the 5th story. Into a bed of sharp nails. How do you look past someone's ugly dress, nasty choice of makeup, and a background that just is puzzling? We chose to look for people that looked happy in their pictures. Plus, a photographer has the power to influence your day in a big way. If all we took away from our wedding (besides being married) was pictures of people being happy, that was good enough for us.

We finally settled on Erica Hasenjager.

Between looking at other people's photography work, writing this blog, and looking at other blogs that I love - it’s really, REALLY made me miss working on my own photography.  Lately I have been on a quest to find things that will fulfill my need of creativity and sense of accomplishment.  It's something that used to be filled partially in my professional life, which lately just hasn't been 100% there. SOOOO I looked, analyzed it, and just made the plunge. This bad boy is mine:

Nikon D7000

I initially wanted a Canon EOS Mark II.  That is what I used while working at my previous company. However, $2,500+ was not in my budget.  The $300 incentive that Nikon was offering didn't hurt either.

                              

Then it was time to find a place to buy it. I love the Google shopping feature, it can tell you very quickly who has the best price. But, I often find myself nervous ordering from a source I have never heard of. My fallback as of late has been Amazon.  I ordered a set of dishes through them recently.  When they came looking used, I filed a dispute and Amazon immediately credited me back the money. They also had a great deal that came with a nice lens. Score. Plus, it will ship today and I will have it tomorrow.

Now I just need some photo editing software. A purchase I have been putting off for a long time because of the cost.

Also a wedding dress. Hopefully that decision will just 'come' to me.

Rauhl, How would you feel about waking up with your feet above your head?

That's the question I found myself asking the customer service rep at overstock.com last night at 10:30 pm.

Snoozing, asleep, snuggled in bed. BOOM. Crash. And a good WHAT the FUCK just happened. Yes. It deserved the f-bomb.

Suddenly, I was staring at my feet in a rather unconventional way. He was rolling into me. And my head was significantly closer to the floor than it was before I closed my eyes.

Our brand new bed had collapsed. The center support had given way. And the last time I checked I was not significantly over weight.

It looked a lot like this:

Um, this is not normal.

And why on my side??

Oh, because

Apparently the screws that attach the little legs aren't made to stay straight. (insert joke here)

So, I called overstock and talked their ear off about how pissed I was.  In the meantime he took it apart.

It works much better as a dog toy than as a bed.

Positives. Negatives. I'll take neutral.

WHAT?!? Do you mind? I'm busy here!

 *This picture has nothing to do with this post*

Carry on.

The living room. Ah. When we were in the process of purchasing the house (which seemed to take FOR-EV-ER) we planned out the entire house in our heads. Yeah. That worked out well. HA

Originally the upstairs living room was going to be 'my' room aka the 'lady room' and the downstairs family room would be the 'man cave' and where we spent most of our time. But the 'man cave' has really turned into the dumping ground of all things without a home. It is set up nicely (although we need lesssss furniture), looks fairly decent when de-cluttered, but is FREEZING. It has some serious energy efficiency issues that we are looking to address, but that's another post for another day. 

So 'my' living room aka the 'lady room' as become our main hang out space. It's no where near complete, but one of our first issues we addressed was to paint it. Can you guess the color? Grey? Good guess. I have a seriously love affair with the color and all of it's wonderful shades of beauty. Sometimes Krys gets a little jealous of that love affair, but for the most part he respects it. 

The previous homeowners had a love affair with a semi-gloss blue. Why? I will never no. But they had a lot of bad tastes. Especially in electricians.

That blue is all sexxy with it's shine and shimmer

The second issue that we felt needed to be immediately addressed was the floor. For whatever reason, the green stained goodness on the floor was just not going to work for me. So, I overcame the need to roll in all of its disgusting glory and tore it up. Actually no. We hired someone for that.  

What happened under that chair? Bad diarrhea? Maybe. Probably.

Not much is cheaper in Rockland County vs Buffalo. But for whatever reason having the hardwood floors done here was CHEAPER than it was in Buffalo. Crazy right? Plus, they put 4 coats of poly on. And, let's be honest, I don't have the patience.

So they removed all of the carpet and the TILE. Yes, tile. Because apparently it's a good idea to cover hardwood floors with ugly, nasty tile.

Tile and carpet removed

Then sanded (with a dustless sander!). Which left us with some great oak floors.

Bare Oak Floors

Then stained. All in one day. We picked a fairly dark color – we love the dark wood floors and thought it was grand. Then I saw it after day 1. I hated them. They were very dark. I thought we made the wrong choice. But it was too late. 

They came back the next few days and applied 4 coats of polyurethane. And I LOVE, LOVE them. I couldn't believe what a difference it made. Thank God – we did not just chuck all of that money down the drain.

My mother has been asking for a few months to see pictures of the floor. But I haven't taken good photos of the room in the daylight. So here is a little teaser. Just to torture here some more. Plus our cat is really cute in his cat-cave.

Monster in is Cat-Cave. 

Mmm dark wood floors. They look even better when you see the whole room and not just a cat in his cave.

Taylor will be really jealous if he doesn't get a pic. This was from a little while ago when we were still living out of boxes. Ok it's probably from like 2 weeks ago, before we did the closet. But really, he's cute.

This cuddle works a lot like this:

Via

That's all folks.

Dumping Ground Gone Rouge

Our living room and front entry way has become a dumping ground for mail, keys, garbage from another project, scatted shoes, left over Christmas decorations and the dog towel.  It drives me absolutely bonkers. And while it's not the main door we use we pass though here from everything. This space is the mail hub of the house, if you will.  Hence the trash/junk/whateverelse collector. 

I had two extra bookshelves that I was trying to find a home for. They are cheap and look even cheaper, so they needn't be anywhere on display. But they are very functional, so I didn't want to get rid of them.

So they were collecting dust and taking up space here - The collector of all random things

I really wasn't sure what the heck to do with them at first.

The ugly front door and lack of closet door are kind of distracting to the creative process 

So I got this cute mail folder and bulletin board from TJ Maxx for $19.99 each to help organize

 

Then I mixed some vintage finds that I already had, with a few more TJMaxx finds to create this:

(For a full list of my finds look below)

• The cubbies are two separate pieces from Target, I already had them from a previous organization at my last house. I turned them on their side and put them together.  They are cheap are $45 each.
• The two wooden floating shelves are from an garage sale. I paid $1 for all three.
• The small chalk board is from Michaels. $2.99
• The tall glass colander is from TJMaxx and was $12.99
• The small clear glass jar is from and estate sale and was $0.50
• The teal glass thingy ma-bob is actually an old insulator from an electrical line. I picked up a ton of these around $0.50 a piece 
• The orange vasey and black metal ball are from TJMaxx and were $12.99 and $6.99 respectively
• The three ducks were from The Container Store and were $15.99 for all.  Not only do they hold mail, but they hold keys too. Amazing. I know.

• The two teal glass jars on top of the old wooden floating shelf are both from estate/garage sale. I got them a while ago and can't remember the price. But I never pay more than $2
• "Wag More Bark Less" is from TJMaxx (Have I told you how much I love that store) for $4.99
• And the tiles on the other old wooden floating shelf is from an estate sale. There are more where these came from. They were $1 each (they tried to charge us way more, but ooops the original price [I'm sure from a long time ago] was still on the back of the tiles)

As you can probably tell, I'm obsessed with both estate sales and TJMaxx.  Estate sales are great because everything you get from there has a history, or some sort of story.  If you search and bargain hard, you can get great prices on many things.  TJMaxx carries such an assortment of things, you never no what you are going to find there. Plus, you can find some really great deals.  Basically great deals and unique things give me a tingling sensation.

So there you have it. A place to collect everything while looking pretty.  Now, to replace that ugly front door, the closet door, and add back some molding and we will be in business.  If only.

Sneak Peak: A Bedroom Transformation

There has been a lot of work going on in our master bedroom. And if you have seen this picture,  you can understand why.

(The furniture in this picture is not ours. It was the previous homeowners.)

First, we tore down all of the drywall, thus removing the wallpaper.  This allowed us to re-insulate the entire room, remove the built in window air conditioner and re-size the closet. 

Then, we took out the carpeting which revealed beautiful hardwood floors (ok, we knew they were there before we purchased the place).  The floors were in amazing condition. Although, I suppose that's what happens when you install hardwood floors and then immediately cover them in ugly carpeting. Why, just WHY, do people do this? What is the point?  But we are grateful because after 50+ years they were brand spakin new. There was no real need to have them refinished.  But I have always loved dark hardwood, and it's easier to do it before we loaded the house with all of our wears and furniture.

We removed all of the oversized shoe molding that the builder was trying to pass off as real molding.

The we primed the room. And filled it will all of our furniture because we were sick of sleeping on the floor in the den.

(I need to get all of the pictures off my old phone!)

We lived with it likes this for a while.

Romantic, right? I know you are probably really jealous at this point. I mean, it's completely normal to have a night stand just chilling in the middle of your room and a sweet spotlight lamp for mood lighting. (Also, please note the fan)

I had an old sleigh bed from my old house.

Which was great considering the enormity of the bedroom. Really - I needed something ginormous just so it wouldn't be swallowed up in that room. But the reality is, new bedroom is much smaller than old bedroom, and it just wasn't going to work in this space.

So I found this bed on Overstock.com

It spoke to me. It all of it's tuffeted goodness. I had actually planned on making my own tuffted bed. But let's face it - there is so much more important things to do in this house than construct a bed.  Plus, I got a for $379.99 PLUS 20% off and FREE shipping.  I figured when calculating the cost of the materials including, lumber, fabric, buttons, etc plus my time, I wouldn't be able to make it for much less than this. And clicking that button was oh so easy. (It took me and Krys about 1.5 hours to put together.)

These were my inspiration photos for our bedroom:

Color and Tufted headboard

I think from this blog but I cannot find the original.

Mirrors and lamps (Oh how I wish I could have the chandelier)

Again, having trouble finding the original source but the best I can tell it's from Skinny Mom

I love the overflowing linens. I feel like it could swallow me up and I would be happy never being seen again.

Link doesn't work.

And the closet pinspiration

Link doesn't work.

And  little more color love

Some where on this site maybe.

Our bedroom looks NOTHING like any of these. But we are well on our way. Here are a couple in progress pictures.

The bed is a lovely color. But it just hides on that wall. (Those are the box springs pilled along the window, we were trying to decide if we were happy with the platform bed or if we would miss the box of springs. We don't)

Check out the Helicopter Fan.

Can you guess who picked that one out? I didn't think I would like it, but in the end it adds a lot of drama to the room.

So I decided to add a little color

I even took the time to cover the new bed

The "finished" product

(With a sleepy puppy)

The room is no where near done, but you can see the progress. What a difference the color on the one wall makes. It's much more romantic.

I can't wait for the final revel.