Garage Sales: Junk or Treasure Hunts You Be the Judge

Topics in this post include:

• Apologies
• Garage Sales: The bargain hunter's dream
• Holiday Decorating
• Frugal Decorating

I apologize for not posting much in the last couple of months. Several things have happened in my life. 1) I got a new job and have had to adjust to that and 2) I started a sewing blog and have gotten caught up in that excitement. I am considering moving this blog over to combine with my sewing blog. But, for now it will reside here on Blogger. I suppose another reason I haven't posted is that I haven't done much in the way of decorating lately. My previous posts were inspired by projects I was doing around the house but with my new job, I haven't had much time to do anything.

I did go to a few garage sales back in the summer and just last weekend actually. Since we moved to a new neighborhood with a lot of other neighborhoods around it, I found out that the summer is a great time to go to garage sales. In addition, I found out that the best time to go to a garage sale is when an entire neighborhood is having a garage sale. Then, you can just hop from one sale to another without having to drive very far. The only down side is that the best time of day to go to garage sales is as early as possible. Well, I am certainly not a morning person so I am not sure that I get the best items possible but I did score an awesome vintage quilt top last weekend on my birthday. Read more about that here on my other blog. My mom has started a collection of pictures which she gets for a dollar or two at each sale. I think every time we have gone to a garage sale she has bought a picture of some sort. I scored a couple of really neat vintage/Victorian pictures at a sale back in the summer, probably July. I'll try to remember to post pictures soon. I think those are either going to go in my shabby chic room or the (future)nursery.

I finally got out the decorations for Halloween about a week before the big day. I don't have very many. I did find a neat sign that said "Trick or Treat" and had a Jack-o-Lantern guy that I hung outside by our front door. I think we bought it last year on sale at a cutesy touristy store in Fredericksburg, TX. (I had forgotten that we even had it!) I also hung our fall wreath on the door as well. That, along with the mums in different fall colors are all I did to decorate for Halloween and fall this year. I have had some trouble keeping the mums alive. (I sort of have a brown thumb.) As much as I have watered them, they still want to droop and fade. I blame it on the weather that can't make up its mind to be cold or warm. Oh well, I didn't expect them to last very long, they are annuals anyway. (My husband won't accept that answer. He just keeps watering them even though they are wilting.) I guess my point here is that it is really easy to decorate in a way that is simple yet looks pretty good. Thankfully, no one on my block decided to purchase a crazy inflatable pumpkin or ghost this year. We did enjoy the trick-or-treaters visiting last night though. It was our first year to actually turn the light on and pass out candy. We came to one realization, the parents with the kids had the better end of the deal. They didn't have to continuously run to the door. They just went along and some even dressed up and expected candy! OK, sorry that is off the subject.

I will try to be better about posting to this blog (especially if I move it over to link with my wordpress blog, it will be easier to post to). I do have several more ideas about decorating on a budget. This is sort of a challenge for me because I have rather expensive taste but I like to see how I can "borrow" ideas in a less expensive way. I found a great website for that yesterday called the the Frugal Hack. This post in particular is exactly what I am talking about. Check it out! I will be adding more websites such as this to my blog roll very soon. Until Next Time.

Happy Frugal Decorating,

Anna L.

Curtains and Fabric in a Room

Highlights from this post include:

• Fabric can be the inspiration for a room


• Fabric can set the tone of a room


• Curtains set the mood and provide privacy

This is a very exciting post for me because I get to discuss one of my other passions, fabric! I am so thrilled that just the other day I was at a thrift store and found some very pretty home made curtains for only $6 each! It would have been impossible to get as much fabric and trim that were on those curtains for $6. This fabric, a soft blue with creamy flowers and a creamy trim is the inspiration for my future guest room. I decided I want to have one "shabby chic" room in my house and the guest room gets that distinction. I have read over and over that it is easier to match paint to fabric than the other way around, and I know from experience that this is true. So, I am using the curtain panel that I purchased as the starting point for the color for my guest room. Even though "shabby chic" has a certain look for furniture, white with worn edges, soft blues, everything that looks well worn and well loved, fabric in a room can set the tone as well. There is a very distinct style for shabby chic in fabrics, lots of creams, blues, pinks and soft tones. Also, Rachel Ashwell, who, I believe, coined the term, "shabby chic" has an entire line of shabby chic accessories at Target. But, instead of purchasing those great items, which are still in the realm of the decorating budget, I am using the panel I found at the thrift store. I just have to figure out how to hang it, hmm... that's a topic for my other blog, about sewing. I plan to get a really nice white iron curtain rod I saw at Lowe's for about $15, it has the worn look to it as well. Luckily, there is only one window in the room. As of right now, the room is bright pink with a blue ceiling with white clouds, someday, I am going to repaint the ceiling and walls to different shades of a soft blue (from the fabric) and repaint the blue accented base boards to a cream color that we used on the baseboards in our bedroom. If you find the right place, you can get great curtains (or curtain fabric) for very little cost. It just takes knowing what you want and waiting until you find it. Well, until next time.

Happy Decorating,

Anna L.

Transformation is Coming

I noticed that someone made a very good point about posting pictures on this blog since it is about decorating which happens to be a very visual subject. I am taking that to heart and will hopefully post some pictures soon. In fact, the next informative post will be about curtains and I already have some pictures in mind. It's just a matter of getting them from my cell phone to my computer (ain't technology grand!) So I hope to transform this blog a little bit by including pictures with my posts and also links to websites and other blogs that I frequent. (Blogging can be quite addicting you know.) I hope to make these changes by the end of June, thanks for your comments and support!

Happy Decorating (on a budget),

Anna L.

Lighting the Way to a Fresh New Room

The highlights of today's post include:

• Lighting can change the mood of a room
• Lighting can emphaisize artwork
• Lighting can illuminate work areas
• Installing new lights is easier than you may think

Today's topic is, obviously, lighting and how it can change a room. If you have already painted your room, you probably already know what sort of feel you are going for. If you want a modern room, choose a lighting style that has sleek, clean lines, probably with a bright, shiny metal or even a modern floating style. My style leans toward anything Old World, Tuscan, or Italian Countryside. This means that I prefer the darker metal fixtures such as wrought iron or even oil rubbed bronze. Do a search for lighting on a website such as www.homedepot.com or www.lowes.com and look up the style of lighting that appeals to you. Another funtion of light fixtures is to illuminate a specific treasured work of art in order to attract the eye and bring the focus to the colors of the artwork. Caution: Be sure that the light you use is acceptable for use with artwork, sometimes extended amounts of light can cause art to fade or become damaged. Many framing stores sell lights for artwork that are specifically made to be safe for extended amounts of time. In addition to illuminating artwork, task lighting is useful when you need light for a specific area. For example, in my sewing room, I have a light that hangs over my cutting table in addition to the regular light that is attached to the fan. I also use a special sewing light to illuminate my work area when I sew with the machine, because I like to sew in the evenings and the overhead light just doesn't quite do the trick. My sewing light has a bulb that is made to simulate daylight which is easier on the eyes to help avoid eye strain. Task lighting has also been used to create work zones in a space such as a kitchen. My biggest pet peeve right now is that even when I turn on the overhead florescent light in my kitchen, I always feel like I am in the shadows when I am standing at the counter. I plan to eventually get some sort of under the cabinet lighting to help illuminate my workspace. Also consider the type of lighting you use, do you want to put the lighting on a dimmer switch to create a soft illumination while you watch movies or eat dinner? We always have one light on when we watch movies, it helps if we want to get up to make popcorn (so we don't trip over something) and I think it prevents eye strain as well. And finally, there are a variety of new lighting products on the market today that are actually incredibly easy to install. If you are just replacing an existing light you will already have the wiring in place, it's usually just a matter of connecting the wires according to the manufacturer's instructions. ALWAYS TURN OFF THE ELECTRICITY before beginning a project with lighting. In my previous house, we replaced almost all of the light fixtures in the three years that we lived there, including the outdoor lights. The hardest part, I think, was having the arm strength to hold the light up long enough for someone to connect the wires. The lighting I have purchased from a home improvement store is easy to install and really quite affordable. If you just purchase a different fixture every month or every other month, you can quickly replace all the lights in your home and the difference it makes will be worth the time to install it. If you don't feel comfortable installing the lighting yourself, many home stores offer installation for a small fee. They might not mind if you observe while they install it and then you may feel more confident about installing the next one. Also, I would recommend checking out the DIY network website www.diynetwork.com because they have many step by step guides about these types of home improvement projects and sometimes even videos. By the way, lighting doesn't necessarily need to mean installing something with electrical wiring, adding a floor or table lamp can create a decorative, and useful solution to your lighting dilemma. If you do decide to try any of these idea, please let me know how it turned out by posting a comment below.

Happy Decorating,

Anna L.

Never Underestimate the Power of Paint

Here are the highlights of today's topic:

• Paint is inexpensive
• Paint is very easy and (depending on size of room) fairly fast
• Paint can create an entirely different mood in a room
• Faux finishes can transport you to a far away land without leaving your house

Today's topic is paint. As you will hear on almost any decorating show, changing the wall color in a room is one of the least expensive ways to instantly change the mood. This is, of course, assuming that you don't choose the most expensive paint available. Well, even if you do, but you paint the room yourself, you will probably still save money over paying someone to paint it for you. My husband and I painted almost every room in our former house, and we have plans to paint almost every room in our new house. The only issue we have right now is time, since our rooms are pretty big, it will probably be a several day ordeal to paint our living room. Just painting a room with a flat paint can add a lot of drama or just change the mood of the room, but if you want to invoke a sense of taking a trip to another country, consider a faux finish. Most faux finish techniques are fairly easy and just involve one or two special tools to help the process. When I was a junior in high school my parents let me paint my room, I decided to use a sponge to dab on sky blue paint over my white walls, the result, a room amongt the clouds. It broke my heart when they later painted it white in order to sell their house faster (I had moved out to go to college so I got over that heartbreak pretty quickly). Our new house is a wild rainbow of colors on the second floor. The former owners had three kids who requested strange colors for their rooms. One room is a sunny yellow with LIME greed trim, mouldings and light switch and outlet covers. The next room is bubble gum pink with a BRIGHT blue ceiling and matching blue trim, mouldings, light switch and outlet covers. In this room, there are white clouds painted on the ceiling with glow in the dark plastic duckies and smiley faces stuck up there. And the third room is the opposite of the first room, LIME green walls with yellow trim, mouldings, light switch covers and outlets. But as I mentioned in the previous post, the lime green color is growing on me. And, I can probably live with the yellow room because we have designated that room for the "future" nursery (no definate need for it as of yet, but we like to plan ahead). As for the bubble gum room, that is my exercise room at the moment and I am hoping to paint it a soft, calming blue and change out the ceiling color.
My husband helped me pick out paint samples for a new faux finish called bellagio faux that Behr paints is promoting. The results are beautiful but the process seems quite labor intesive. Chris (my dear husband) wants to paint our living room with the vaulted ceilings using this faux technique, I told him we should try it on a smaller room first to see how much work it involves before investing in the supplies to do the entire living room. If you are afraid to change the look of your white walls, just think of it this way, you can always paint it back to the white you had before if you don't like how it came out. Also, consider purchasing small amounts of the color you like and try it out on a small portion of your wall or even on a design board that you can hang on the wall for a few days to see if you really like the color after all. One last note, pay attention to the sheen (flat, eggshell, semi-gloss or gloss) of the paint you are buying. The former owners of my house painted the walls in the living room a blah brown color and painted the baseboard trim in the same brown but used an enamel of some sort. Then, I guess they decided to go back and do touch ups or something but used the WRONG paint, they used the enamel or glossy to touch up over the flat. It resulted in a very splotchy paint job, which we are just DYING to paint over. The only issue we have, as I said before, is finding the time to paint the entire space. For now, we are just adding art to cover the splotches until we decide on the paint color and find the time. Well, I hope this has helped and that I didn't digress too much from the topic. Feel free to share your tips or experiences with paint.

Until next time, Happy Decorating,

Anna L.

Decorating Tip:Give New Life to Old Stuff

A popular design idea that is floating around lately is an obvious one: use what you already have, but in a new way, to decorate your home. Here's a personal example, when my husband and I were searching for a new home to purchase, we found one that most people had passed up because it needed a lot of cosmetic work. The carpet is a horrible green shaggy thing (runs the entire two floors) and the walls are crazy colors. Our first plan was to repaint EVERY wall in the house. Well, we haven't painted a SINGLE wall in the house yet (we've been here about three months). I had picked out a nice pale blue color for my sewing room which started as a lime sherbet green. But, as I settled in to my new sewing studio, and as I started adding my accessories to the space, I decided that bright green wasn't so bad. As it turns out, lime green and pale blue with brown accents all work together pretty well, and I even had some fabric that included those colors which I was able to incorporate into a sewing machine cover. So, before you rush off to the paint store, live in your space for a little while and see if the colors don't grow on you after awhile. Now, as for the other room which is bubblegum pink with blue trim, and a blue ceiling with white clouds, that will probably get a makeover. :)
Also, don't forget that furniture can take on an entirely new look if it is just moved around a little. There is a show called Decorating Cents on the Home and Garden Television channel http://www.hgtv.com which does amazing things by just rearranging furniture. They call it "no cost decorating". The concept is fairly simple, go around your house and search for items that can be grouped, find an end table from your formal living room, a lamp from the bedroom, and maybe a rug from the closet, and put them all together in your family room and you have a fabulous room that looks put together. Unfortunately, they never really show what the other rooms look like without the end table, the lamp or the rug. And they never reveal that perhaps the home owner had to go out to buy new items for those rooms, but the idea is a good one. Many times people like to collect similar items but don't even realize they have a collection until someone with a fresh perspective finds it all. Has that ever happened to you?
Finally, think about family or even friends who may be doing some Spring cleaning and may be willing to give you their gently used furniture or accessories. It may be easier to ask family, I know I wouldn't hesitate to ask my parents for an old chair that they have in their storage room if I thought that I could put it to use, and most of the time they would be happy to see it go where it would be best appreciated. My sister is especially good at dumpster diving (and she always seems to live close to people who throw away cool stuff). She loves to find furniture that people put on the curb for the trash collection and use it in her home. Now, that may sound sort of gross but I promise you, it's perfectly sanitary, she only salvages old TV armoirs and wooden stools.
Well, that seems to be enough for now. If you read this and have any examples to share of how you reused what you have for decorating, please post.

Until Later Happy Decorating,

Anna L.

Vision for the Future

Welcome to my newest blog Priceless Decorating, by the Princess of Design. Well, truth be told, I am no princess and all I know about design (meaning interior design/decorating) is what I have learned from TV and magazines, but hopefully we will all learn something along the way. I hope I can help with your decorating dilemmas by offering inexpensive alternatives to brighten and embellish your personal space. I am an amateur decorator, but I think I have a good eye (or at least that is what I am told). I will take the time to research your questions and offer the best advice I can find. Granted, most of what I post will be my ideas and what I have done in my own home, but if I can't answer your question from my own experience, I will research it to find some answers. Each week (hopefully, ideally more often) I will post a tip that relates to decorating on a budget. It may be a new way to use paint or fabric in a space or a great idea I just saw on TV. There may be several posts at the beginning because I have a lot to say about this topic, so read on and feel free to comment or ask questions. I hope you can enjoy reading my blog as much as I will enjoy writing it!

Until next time,
Happy Decorating.

Princess of Design, Anna L.