Rocker Refresh

Sorry for my extended absence...my hubby just graduated with his PhD (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and we've had family in town. SO very proud of him! He's amazing! :)

Our poor front porch has been sorely neglected since we bought our house a year ago. We threw our wooden rockers on one side and that was all the lovin' the porch received until this month when "front porch" popped up next on our prioritized to-do list.

Let me back up for a minute, though... As a housewarming present for our first house, Hubby's parents surprised us with a pair of wooden rocking chairs. Our front porch had wooden flooring, so the wood tones in the rockers looked great out there. Unfortunately, the front porch got full sun until late afternoon time, so the rockers baked under the harsh light for the three years we owned that house. By the time we moved, nearly all of the varnish had worn off and they were looking a bit rough. :(

Here's our rockers on our new front porch looking pretty tired and worn out. Mad props to Hubby for taking these before pictures of the rockers! He knew I'd want a before shot, so took several for me to choose from before attacking the chairs with his sander. He's a keeper! :)

Our new front porch has concrete flooring, so we decided to go with white furniture instead of wood tones this time. We love our rockers, so instead of buying new ones (can you say cha-ching?) we decided to give them new life with a fresh coat of white paint.

Blurry phone pic, but I wanted you to see just how THIN each coat went on! 

Jeremy sanded the chairs down with his sander, then they were ready to paint. I had recently read that using a foam brush as opposed to a traditional paint brush would yield smother results, so we decided to give it a try. I'm happy to report that the foam brush strokes were way smoother, but was much less happy about how extremely thin each coat went on. Guess how many coats of paint it took? 1 coat primer + 3 coats of paint + 1 coat polyurethane--and they really could have used a fourth coat of paint. I was too tired for that. Now let me translate that into days... We could only do one side of the chair at a time, then wait for that coat to dry and flip it to do the underside. So for every coat of paint, it took us 2 days. That's 10 days of painting, people. We usually only work on projects late at night or on the weekends, so it took us a month to finish these bad boys. I was thinking it was going to be a short and simple weekend project. Let's all laugh at me now. ;)

Anywho, after much doubt that they would ever turn out looking ok, they're done and I'm loving the white!

Check out the cute little chair we bought for our little man! So sweet!

Next up, I'll show you what we did with the other side of the porch!

Digging It #3

Some Friday randomness for you! Things I'm loving lately!

My friend Heather recently started an Etsy shop called What is Perfect. I am in love with these yarn wrapped letters! Tell me this is not just the cutest thing?! That little raccoon kills me!

Lately Hubby and I have been ADDICTED to this game! Hubby is a strategy gaming guy and I'm an I-don't-want-to-think-too-hard gamer. Dominion is a perfect blend for us! Actually just played it with friends tonight! So fun!

I LOVE the work of Lindsay Hopkins! Her Etsy shop is called Pen and Paint and everything is so colorful with crisp, clean lines! I've ordered two things from her and love them both! She really goes the extra mile as a shop owner..fast shipping, adorable packaging, coupon for next purchase, etc. Love! This was the first piece I bought and I absolutely love it! 

Candlestick Makeover

The last time I went garage sailing, I spotted this great set of candlesticks. I loved their curvy shape, the fact that they were solid wood, and that each candlestick was unique yet coordinated. I am not a huge fan of taper candles, but knew I could give these babies a makeover to accommodate pillar candles. They were in pretty bad shape. It's hard to tell from the pictures, but they were really dirty and had lots of yellowed stains on them, like they had been in the attic for a while or something. They look nicely weathered in the pictures, but trust me, it was dirt. ;)

I found wooden plaques at Michael's for $.79 and thought they would be perfect to use as the top platform for pillar candles. Because the plaques were raw wood, I knew they would need priming. It took 4 coats of white spray paint to get good coverage--the wood was quite thirsty. :)

I used Elmer's wood glue to adhere the plaques to the top of the candlesticks, then filled in the seam with wood filler. After I sanded the dried wood filler, I was ready to paint! Oh and let me mention that wood putty is very different than wood filler. I originally bought wood putty, but then read that it does not dry and become hard. Not quite sure what the point of that would be??? Wood filler dries fairly quickly and then can be sanded down and stained or painted. I'm probably the only newb that didn't know this! :)

After getting a coat of white paint (I used a foam brush and the leftover paint from the dining room chairs), they were looking much better! See the difference between the dirty one and the freshly painted one? I'll admit, I really wanted to distress them, but my attempt failed miserably. I'm still stewing over a way to distress them without ruining them... Ideas?

One of my favorite places to get pillar candles is the Dollar Store! Pillar candles start at $3.50 each at the big box stores, but I scored these for $1 each! Woot!

I'm loving the new look! I'll be back soon with our finished Spring fireplace display!

Quick and Easy Drawer Organization

Remember when I said there are only 3 drawers in our kitchen? Um, yeah, they were a mess.

They weren't terrible when we first moved in, but over time, they just got messier and messier. Time for some organization! 

I knew I needed some drawer dividers to corral all my cooking utensils and give everything a home. I headed out to one of my favorite stores, The Container Store, to pick up the dividers. I really liked the clear ones, but even on sale, they were a lot more expensive than the basic white dividers. Cost won out and I picked out a few different sizes of the basic white dividers. The Container Store had a drawer with dividers on display which was super helpful when trying to decide which configuration would fit into my drawers and would make the most use of the space. 

I came home, gave them a quick wash, then popped them into the drawers. I purged what I could, then filled up the drawers!

My silverware drawer was already organized with a utensil tray and a medium drawer divider in the back for knives. 

This project definitely qualifies for a speedy award. Seriously, it only took a few minutes to do. Now tell me why it took me almost a year to do this???

Spring Time Pretties

I'm so happy it's finally spring! I usually love winter, but I was getting antsy to get outside and start walking again!

Our jasmine smells amazing right now!

One of my favorite things about spring is seeing all the tulips blooming around town. One of the main roads near our house has tulips on the corner of all the major intersections. Each intersection has a different color. It's gorgeous!  

I've been seeing a lot of posts like this one lately on forcing tulips to grow in just water. I've been wanting to try it, but let's face it, I kill every plant I touch. Imagine my excitement when I found already assembled vases of tulips growing in water at BJ's! I grabbed a pink one and dutifully followed the directions to keep the water fresh and at the correct water level. They bloomed beautifully and the blooms lasted for days! Check it out!

(Collage made using Fotor)

Now that I know they can be successful, I will definitely try doing them myself next time!

Saturday Finds

This is technically a couple Saturday's old, but had to share our recent find. :) In our previous home, we used our breakfast nook as a play area for Little One and our dining room as our main eating area. In our new home, we have a bedroom downstairs that we made into a playroom, so we kept our breakfast nook and dining room for their intended purposes. Hooray! We only owned one table, though, so we removed the leaf from our dining room table and put it in the breakfast nook and bought a new table for our dining room. Confused yet? Haha

Anyway, we have not been 100% satisfied with how the table looked or fit in our breakfast nook. Because of its oblong shape, the person sitting in the back always ended up slamming the chair into the plantation shutters when they got up. Not cool. And, let's be honest...I'm not a fan of the style of the table. Cute in the 90's, not my style now. Danny Tanner called and wants his table back.

Here's a phone shot of the old gal.

Our original plan was to save up and purchase a new, round table that fit the breakfast nook better. But, with our long home to-do list, the breakfast nook table kept getting pushed to the very bottom. We decided to try and find a table on Craigslist for the same price or less than what we could sell our existing table for to save money and get this item marked off our to-do list.

I'll admit, I HATE buying things on Craigslist. I have terrible, terrible luck. I contacted 2-3 sellers within a couple hours of their listing going up, and they would either not bother responding, or their table was already sold. Another seller went as far as scheduling a time for us to come get the table, then mysteriously wouldn't give us their address and then told us the table was sold. What happened to honesty? Rant over.

Thankfully, on attempt #5 or 6, we found a round table that was in perfect condition for $200 AND were able to purchase it from a really nice woman without any drama. Hooray!

Here's our new little table!

It fits the space SO much better than the other table did! We gained a ton of space in the breakfast nook and were able to position the chairs so that no one would back up into the shutters. LOVE IT!

We were able to sell our old table for $220 on Craigslist, so we ended up with a table that we loved and $20 in our pockets! Woot woot!

Have you swapped anything out recently that just wasn't working in your home? Do you have better Craigslist luck than I do?! Hope so!

Pintertest Kitchen: Easy Cheese Danish

Growing up, my grandparents used to take me to a sweet little bakery in Waynesville, NC called Whitman's Bakery. Everything there is amazing! My grandma and I almost always chose a cheese danish out of the donut case to share and Grandpa always opted for something with chocolate. :) After our treat, we'd walk up and down Main Street, browsing all the quaint little shops. Those are some of my very favorite memories!

When I saw this recipe for cheese danish on Pinterest, I knew I had to try it! It's easy and really yummy! Brings back lots of sweet memories from our trips to the bakery! Try it!

Ingredients:

2 cans ready to use refrigerated crescent rolls
2 8-ounce packages cream cheese
1 cup sugar
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 egg

Glaze:

1/2 cup powdered sugar
2 Tablespoons milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350* degrees and grease a 13X9-inch baking pan. Lay a pack of crescent rolls in the pan and pinch the openings together. Beat the cream cheese, sugar, vanilla, and egg together until smooth. Spread the mixture over the crescent rolls evenly and then lay the second pack of crescent rolls on top of the cheese mixture. Bake for 35-45 minutes until the top is golden brown. Top with glaze after cooling for 20 minutes.

Notes: 

I used reduced fat cream cheese with great results! Original recipe found here. 

Linking up to the Pintertest Kitchen link party!