$5 Challenge: Reinvented Mail Holder

I've been given the challenge to come up with a craft under $5. The $5 Challenge The CSI Project calls it. Remember when I found this in the Buck Hut on Sunday? My goal was to give it new life...

I decided to hang it in our entry so that we'd have a place to put mail and a happy little place for some flowers.

I was loving the shabby (okay, very shabby) chic look but didn't want all that lead paint flying around our house. So I sanded it like crazy. Actually all you had to do was practically look at it and the paint came off... Then I dusted it off, wiped it down and painted it. Here's what it looks like after one coat of paint.

I could really see the differences between where the original paint fell off and where it didn't... So, I decided to do things "right" instead of "fast". I love fast projects but patience is a virtue that it's taken me 29 years to even somewhat learn.

So I decided to plaster the entire mail holder with a thin skim coat, sand it again and then do two more coats of paint. This is what I'm talking about with patience...

My friend Katie and I went to the Hamilton-Wenham book sale today... fill a bag for $5. Basically I was in heaven... so this little old gem cost me about 50 cents. I took it apart at the seam and put the front and the back on the top part of the holder.
Are you wondering why I'm going to put a book on display called "Some Problems of Life"? It's to remind AJ and I about how we don't always know what is best for us... like when we found out we were unexpectedly pregnant... I had a hard time with it at first because I didn't feel like I was ready... but now I can't believe how much joy God has blessed us with in Drew... he adds so much to our family and I want to remind ourselves of the fact that He knows what is best for us... even when we don't see it!
I intend to put a photo (the one of us at the top of the blog kissing Drew) on the nearly blank book back:

Then I used the book pages and a cool vintage postcard Jade gave us for Drew's nursery to show off where mail will go. I just tore out the last page of the book and cut out "The End".

And here's the finished product! I can't wait to interchange the flowers with a potted fern or some fabulous moss and get up the photo of our family...

Thank you CSI Project for this fun challenge!

(I'm including the link here because I'm having a hard time getting the button to work.)

http://www.thecsiproject.com/

Oh, and here is a picture of the little guy propped up by my laundry while we waited for the plaster on the project to dry... :)

Have a fabulous weekend! Any fun plans? We are heading to upstate New York for Matt (AJ's brother) and Alison's wedding shower.

Motif #1

I love when work takes me on errands. Yesterday Drew and I headed to Rockport to check things out for an event I’m helping plan. We walked around for a little bit after our work errand and I showed Drew Motif #1 (I don't think he cared too much considering he slept through it).

Motif #1 in Rockport

 And now, humor me by looking at some of the photos I took during our outing...

Antiquing Adventure

You know a day is going to be rough when you don't have time to make a to-do list and you are mentally listing things on your "done list" instead... and you come up with "clipped fingernails". Drew just  fell asleep for this morning nap and I was able to crank out some work (I work from home on Tuesday and Wednesday) and then take a break to work on this blog post.

Anyways, remember how I posted about opening up our stairway? Well, we'd been trying to figure out what to use for a railing and spindles when AJ drove by the White Elephant outlet in Essex. It's this great antique outlet where everything is half off the sticker price (which is way too high to begin with). My favorite part is the Buck Hut, which is actually the area right next to the dumpster (that sounds really classy). We scouted out the options late last week when they were closed and went back on Sunday... here is the fabulousness that we found:

See those pieces on the diagonal at the front? We bought one, I talked the lady down from $50 to $30. We don't know exactly where it's from but it looks like it's been taken from an old porch. We wanted something with character but not something completely froo-froo.

After a quick visit to the Buck Hut and spending $3 on these steals (more on them in another post):

We went home and put up the new railing… AJ had measured it before we left but we never even thought that the angle of the railing would be different than the angle of our stairway. It definitely is. Notice how it fits almost perfectly at the top of the stairs but then there is a giant gap at the bottom. AJ is going to replace the drywall to fix that problem and then he’ll have to do some tweaking on the inside of the stairway to make it look like it fits with the house (and not like something we found in the Buck Hut. :)).

And here is a photo of the railing up close and personal after a good sanding. We’ll paint it white to match everything else after he finishes working on the drywall, molding, etc.

View from across the kitchen:

While AJ worked on the railing I started getting antsy to see more light in the kitchen, after all, it’s almost spring and it shouldn’t snow again (it did, yesterday), so I took down the drywall that was over our two large (and very old) windows. It’s amazing how much more light comes in now… and it’s amazing how much I realize that the stainless appliances are two different colors of stainless now… note to self: only purchase from one company… Maytag has the perfect silver-y color. GE has a more yellow-y tint to their stainless. Bummer.

After that I got to do a little destruction of my own… in our landing upstairs (three bedrooms and the bath are off of it) we had a mini, non-supporting, wall when we moved in. AJ removed it and put up a makeshift railing to make it more open… It was just scrap wood and I hated it (but it kept us from falling down the stairs while sleep-walking). I’d been thinking of a place to put a linen cabinet (our bathroom is barely big enough to fit a person in it) and I thought if I knocked down the railing I could put a cabinet (like the one in our entryway) in place of it. It didn’t look right. UGG. Now we have no cabinet and no railing… but it still looks better.

View from the stairway:

We think we’ll go back to White Elephant and purchase a matching railing for the upstairs. Won’t that look sharp with dark wood floors and a crisp white railing? In the meantime, we'll be careful not to fall down the stairs.

We found our Flipper Kitchen...

Saturday morning started out bright and early with.... drumroll please... DEMOLITION (AJ's favorite hobby... possibly more than running, but each are cheap forms of therapy). He drove to the Gloucester flipper and tore out the entire kitchen before 8am (I knew we were soul mates.).

Remember when it looked like this?

We found cabinets from IKEA that were the same style as ours at home (which we love). The price was cheaper, the wait time shorter (and by "shorter" I mean, the one hour we spent waiting in line to pick it up vs. the five weeks we waited for our cabinets from Home Depot) and the warranty was pretty great (25 years!).

Our cabinets are "Fayette" from the Thomasville line at Home Depot (pictured) and the ones we purchased at IKEA are Adel (said with a Swedish accent and last photo of the post):

Our Saturday morning (which turned into Saturday afternoon as well) was devoted to an IKEA trip... I like those a lot better than AJ does and could spend about 20 minutes in each room display. We met with a kitchen designer (which was a good thing because when I planned out the kitchen it didn't make as much sense as when he did it... who knew people look for dishwashers to be on the right of the sink because they are right handed? I wouldn't, as a lefty...). He helped us draw up these plans for the kitchen:

The space is very limited so we are essentially working with two walls... one for the sink and dishwasher and the other for the fridge, range and microwave. We tried to fit as many cabinets in as we could without it feeling too boxed in. It helps to have white cabinets in such a small space to brighten things up. The giant gray space to the left of the cabinets (below) is a door to the dining room.

Obviously I needed to document Drew's first trip to IKEA. He was a champ and slept through the whole car ride and then nearly the whole kitchen design, I love this photo.... what is cuter than a man with a baby (I mean, really... especially this man and baby. :))

Oh, and let me tell you the best part of the trip... when we get there we find out that if you purchase three appliances or more you get 20% off... we had already found the appliances we wanted from Home Depot so we just found comparable ones at IKEA (they are all made by Whirlpool, not some junky no-name brand). We were thrilled to save $400 on appliances but when we get up to pay we find out that it's 20% off the entire kitchen! Needless to say, we were happy campers... especially because we just ate gigantic lunch because they were having a special where you could deduct your lunch receipt from your bill.

After packing 94 items in the truck (can someone please tell us why each set of hardware is a separate bag?) we headed home... good thing we have nothing else going on in our house right now (note the sarcasm) so that we can fill half our living room with cabinets we are assembling.

Well, I'm ready to pass out so I'm going to publish this post and then roll over onto the pillow and fall asleep in 25 seconds. The fabulous AJ has probably assembled four more cabinets while I wrote this... I've never met anyone quite as speedy as him...
A Food PS: Anyone ever had Trader Joe's Mushroom Risotto? It's completely fab.

The Migonis' Go Green

We were the crazy ones who wore all green to Seth and Cari's St. Patrick's Day party... Everyone else wore green shirts and jeans. I wore AJ's green running tights and a green cape (aka: my green dry cleaning bag). We were obviously stylish.

Drew was the cutest baby there. The only baby there.

This morning I hear AJ say: "he's so precious, I just want to crawl in there with him" and the next thing I know he did. And the crib didn't break....



The Newest Flipper.

AJ and I just purchased a house. Today. To flip. You probably think we're crazy, and you'd be correct. But, this will give a little more flexibility with my job situation now that there is Drew to think about...

I've had all these photos ready to go for the minute everything became official. Here's what we are working with this time around:

Living room with a gorgeous fireplace.

The kitchen... imagine this with white cabinets, granite (not sure what color yet) and dark wood floors. Yes, please. :)

Tin ceilings. I'm in love.

Elegant stairway in need of some serious TLC.
Drew is next to me waving his hands and cooing. I'm pretty sure he's excited too.

First floor bathroom. You don't see the ugly stand up shower that's got to go. ASAP.

Dining Room. What were they thinking with the door color choices? We'll replace all the windows because a bunch of them are broken... and they look like they are at least 50 years old.

Master bedroom with fake brick. Stylish.
But the walk in closet is basically the size of Drew's nursery. I do love that...

Second bedroom, there are two more that look just like it.

This was Drew's first closing. I was going to take a picture but then he leaked (that's a nice way of putting it) all through his diaper onto his pants and my pants during the closing. During the middle of signing the papers I had to run to the bathroom and clean both of us up. Thankfully it was two minutes from home and only lasted half and hour because he was just in his onesie and socks when we left. His pants were in the bank's garbage (they weren't salvagable, people).

I'm hoping we'll make some great progress demo-ing the kitchen this weekend but it's going to be trickier than Lynn because there is a baby involved. We definitely don't want to bring him into the house with paint fumes and no heat ...at least when we are doing projects at home one of us can be hanging out with him in his room where he has his own little space heater.



Check back often... we'll be posting photos of the whole progress!

Just a reminder: I'm off of Facebook for Lent  so I'm posting this directly from the blog to Facebook (I won't see any of your comments on Facebook). I'd love to hear from you though, so make any comments directly on the blog or email me (jen.migonis@gmail.com).

$0 Lunch Break Makeover

UGG. Everytime I walk by our entryway I cringe. Our shoes are everywhere and all of our junk just collects. I've got my bag, a case of travel diaper wipes, a plant that AJ is taking to work to give his desk a little more homeiness, papers and screws. Sick. Case in point:

AJ and I have been talking the past couple of days about ways that we can cut back on our spending so as I lay in bed this morning I had an idea for a $0 makeover. My parents have loaned us some cabinets from their kitchen that they took out before gutting it and we've been using them in the basement to store things. I became motivated during my lunch break (I work from home on Tuesday and Wednesday) and hoisted the cabinet up the stairs. It was not easy, let me tell you... it's a good thing I've been regularly caring a hefty baby around. But the cabinet top was pretty icky looking (the countertop has been previously on top of it).

I scouted around the basement for the perfect piece of wood. It was no where to be found. :( So... I kept brainstorming what to do, I was really committed to spending no money on this project. And then I had an epiphany... my beloved Pottery Barn books were good for more than reading:

And I needed to fill the inside of the cabinet with things that would declutter the kitchen / our life. So I filled it with one basket of stationery (one of the things I collect) and I gave away the rest. Then I used these fabulous serving dishes to hold scrap paper and our cloth napkins (we try to use these at dinner each night).

And the final product with happy flowers and a little mini bowl for us to throw our keys and phones in. And as for the shoes, I stuck them behind the door for now. I'm scouting out the basement for a basket to throw them in.



I am participating in Metamorphisis Monday from Between Naps on the Porch blog:

http://betweennapsontheporch.blogspot.com/p/tablescape-thursday.html