A 48 hour dining room transformation.

No, this isn't a new remodeling or design post.  This is a dramatic transformation from craft room craziness, to Thanksgiving brunch central, to plain dining room, all in 48 hours.

This is what my dining room looked like Wednesday morning.  Embarrassing as this is, this photo was taken after we had already moved and organized all my frames, packing materials, and t-shirts/blanks.  Yeah, I'm a hot mess (literally) when it comes to crafting.

This is a few hours into the great clean/purge.

And this is what the dining room looked like around 9:30 am Thursday morning.  The table is just as covered, but with delicious food!

ALMOST the best picture ever....most of my loved ones (missing my sister and brother-in-law NO thanks to the flu!) all around the dining room table!

And finally, my dining room table this morning.

**sigh**

I'm going to try to enjoy it for this moment, because I know all too soon, it will look like this again:

I hope you all had the most wonderful Thanksgiving ever!

We are just relaxing at home today, but excited to read about all of everyone's Black Friday finds! Did any of you find anything good?

Sometimes, mistakes end up working out for the best!

A few months ago, I was on a quest to change my master bedroom around for the Spring/Summer season.  I found a comforter on E-bay, and bought matching pillows and curtains from Kirkland's.  It was exactly what I wanted.....

Until I got it in the room.

The quality wasn't what I was expecting and nothing "fit" like I wanted it too.  You can read about that adventure here.

We decided to move everything back the way it originally was, and return the pillows and curtains.  But there was one small problem....

I couldn't find the stinkin' receipt!

I don't know how in the world that is even possible.  I save EVERYTHING....especially receipts!  I still have receipts from grocery trips I made FOUR years ago.  How can I not have the receipt?

I looked everywhere, even resorting to digging through the garbage, and never found it.

So, before the price was changed, I took everything back and got a Kirkland's gift card to use at a later time.

I've carried that gift card around for the past few months, just waiting for that "right" thing to spend it on AND waiting for the price to be discounted, too.  Finally, they were having a huge sale and I decided to go into my local store and look around.....

and I found "IT"!

 

 Photo from Kirkland's

The perfect narrow cabinet to go in my living room at a great price!  I showed it to Marty and he loved it too, so we bought it and carried it home.

Once we got home with it and took it out of the box, I had an idea to try it in the dining room, instead of the living room.

It fit perfectly!  It's like it was made to go there!

It's only 13" deep, which is perfect for this wall which is in a walkway.

It's shallow drawers are perfect to store all of my Silhouette materials.

It's even wide and deep enough to store my actual Silhouette!

I am crazy about this perfect little piece of furniture!

So I guess, sometimes mistakes end up working out for the best!

Now I just have to figure out what I want to go in my living room....again.

**sigh**

My Non-Traditional Fall Dining Room

As you can tell by my last post, when it comes to decorating for Fall, I'm not big into the "traditional". 

It's not that I don't LOVE traditional fall decorating, I just have this "thing" about orange.  It reminds me too much of Auburn (ROLL TIDE ROLL).  So, if I can get by without using orange, I try.

These days, it's not really too much of a problem.  There are fall-themed products out there that are every color of the rainbow.  PLUS, if you can't find something in the color you need, you can always paint it or make it!

I normally try to decorate my front porch to the hilt, but this year, a certain spastic puppy has attempted to single-handedly (or pawedly) destroy every thing we put out there, so I think most of our decor will be restricted to the inside.  Luckily, I have my new and improved dining room to work with!  I have been killing myself trying to get the dining room finished for Kelly's Korner 'Show Us Your Life' today, but I ran out of time yesterday (I just linked my old dining room post), so I was able to take my time and get some extra things done this morning.  From the pictures, the shelves do look a little "crowded", but they don't look that way in person, besides, once Fall is over, half of the stuff will be coming out.

I hope you enjoy!

I am planning on doing a tutorial on how I make my banners soon!

These are the cutest, easiest little pumpkins made of scrapbook paper. I found them on a blog last week.  They literally take minutes to make!

It wouldn't be "ME" without a little weird, would it?

I hope you enjoyed my fall-decorated dining room!  If you have any suggestions, I would love to hear them!

Should I go all White-ish?

Since I finally have my rack hung in the dining room, I've been trying to decide what to put on it.  I originally thought I would put my odd collection of white dinner plates, but was upset to realize the shelves were too close together for the large plates to fit.

I've been looking through blog-land, and I have noticed the trend to go "all white" with decor:

From The Inspired Room

From A Penny Saved

From Southern Hospitality

From The Nesting Place

So, on my recent browsing trips, I've picked up a few cheap white things:

Some not-so-white things:

And definitely-not-white things:

I also found some things that I picked up on clearance isles for next-to-nothing that didn't match at all:

But figured spray paint can cover a multitude of sins.  Here is what I have as of right now:

I want to get some "natural" orbs (balls) to go in the long white platter, and I definitely need to tone down the white of the things I painted.  They are just "too white".  I'm not planning on leaving everything placed just-so, with huge spaces between them, I just put them up there to see if the "white theme" would work, before I invested in a ton of other things.

I got the small toile plate at Hobby Lobby and I love it!  They have an entire set of different plates that have similar colors (brown, black, cream) that I want to buy more of.  But will have to wait until they go on sale since they are currently $9.99 each.

Does it look like I am headed in the right direction?

**I am linking to The Inspired Room-What Inspires You**

Does anybody remember these?

Does anybody remember these ugly frames from several months ago?

Plus, a not-so-ugly frame, with a few loose joints,  I found on super-duper clearance at Hobby Lobby:

Add a little white spray paint:

A little wash of brown and gold:

And TAH DAH!  Here are my new and improved frames!

This is my original inspiration from Lou Cinda at Tattered Hydrangeas:

However, the openings in my frames are VERY small (3 1/2 x 5) so now I am trying to figure out what to put in them and where to actually hang them.

Maybe dollhouse silverware?  LOL

I am linking to Chick on a Shoestring's Flaunt it Friday: