My Lovely Desk

I am so excited to finally have a craft room and my very own desk! When looking for a desk I knew that I needed something sturdy and big enough to accommodate my needs and my crafting tools.I picked up my desk off of craigslist for $60.00 but knew that it needed a little updating.

So I picked my colors and got to work. I decided to take the desk apart to make sure that I didn't miss anything. Once it was disassembled I went paint crazy!

The bottom of my desk is a light coral color that I fell in love with. For the top of my desk I went with a light bright blue.

I also covered the top of my desk with lace print contact paper. It looks amazing and if I get ink on it from stamping it wipes right up! it's a little hard to get a picture of but it's lovely in real life!

I am so in love with my new desk! I think this transformation is quite possibly my most favorite one yet!

Craft Room

 Our new apartment has two bedrooms! And they are two nice sized rooms, both of them are big enough for a King size bed.  We decided to take the second bedroom as our bedroom, and use the Master Bedroom as a shared craft and office room. Now going from a corner to a room has been a huge jump. We are still figuring out how we want to set up the room, but one thing we knew for sure was that we we're going to need a desk for Joel and at least a craft table for me. Well, it just so happens that my Mom's work was moving some offices around and changing out furniture. So my Mother, knowing that we were searching for a desk, made arrangements for us to get one of the wooden L-Shaped desks that they were getting rid of. All we had to do was pick it up! While picking up our free desk, we also scored 3 office chairs!
  At first Joel didn't want the desk, so he was just going to use a table like he had at our old apartment. However, that quickly changed once we got the desk set up in our room. We decided to let him have it, and I would use a table or search for a desk online. After a few days of searching, I was beginning to give up hope, all of the desks that I was finding were several hundreds of dollars USED. The most expensive furniture purchase that we have ever made was our bedroom furniture. There was no way that I could justify spending that much money on a desk. Just when I was about to give up hope, I found this!

Yes, I got a tanker. For $70 bucks it was mine. Sure it doesn't look amazing but it's mine and beautiful things will be made on it. Now, those of you who know me, know that there is no way that I'm leaving my desk looking like this. I picked out the colors for my craft room and should have a total transformation for you soon!

DIY Lampshade Love

 I've spent these past few weeks crafting working away between school, and helping my Mom out at her office until she finds some new people to hire. So my crafting & creating time has been limited non existent.  On Friday after I got home from work Mr. Carman went out on a guys night and left me the entire apartment to myself! I love having time to craft and he knew I really needed the break. He even got me a new glue gun since mine has mysteriously disappeared, I might have left it at the beach house? Anyway, I used this night free of responsibilities to show my lampshades in the living room some love.

 Now we've had these lamps for a little over a year, the brown went with our original bedroom decor. When I redid the bedroom I snagged the shades from the living room and swapped them out. Yes...I have the same lamps in two different rooms of our apartment. You see our apartment is quirky, we only have lights in the bathroom, dinning area, and kitchen. So we registered for lamps that emitted tons of light. Anyway, I have never been happy with the brown lampshades in the living room, but they worked and sorta kinda matched. This is what we started out with.

Not bad, definitely lacking the wow factor. 

Supplies

• Hot Glue Gun
• Fabric {I used 4 yards of burlap}
• Scissors
• Lampshade

 This entire project was  just at $12.00, for both lampshades... that's $6 a shade, so much cheaper than buying new ones.  I began by cutting my fabric into strips. I cut two inch strips, but you can change it to get the results that you want.

  After cutting them into strips go ahead and plug in your glue gun. Now you want to fold the fabric almost like an accordion.

  Then you want to put glue on the lampshade, I started at the top of the lampshade and worked piece by piece.

   Then you place your accorded  fabric on the lampshade. Continue repeating the process until you have completely covered your lampshade.

Tada rustic, and cute.

  Now it may not seem that wonderful to you, but to me it is beyond lovely. Here is a before and after shot, so that you can fully appreciate the difference.

  Amazing right? It's a little shabby a little modern. I just love the crackle base. I'm thinking about taking it apart and painting it. What do you guys think, I would love some input on this idea.

   Ahh so much cuter. I'm hoping to take a new full shot of the living room and update the our apartment tab. I am also hard at work brainstorming dinning area swag. Once again suggestions, or ideas welcome.

 

where did all of our space go?

 Things in our apartment are constantly changing, furniture gets rearranged  household swag gets added and taken away. We are blessed with an issue that not too many newlyweds have, we simply have too much furniture, and it's all quality furniture. I mean we have a complete bedroom set, a dinning room table and hutch, a huge solid wood bookcase, a couch, an entertainment stand, side tables, a desk...the list goes on and on. Joel moved into our apartment with a bed- in less than a year we've filled it to capacity( well not really because I always seem to find something else). We are rapidly outgrowing our one bedroom apartment, and with Joel starting his own business even more space is needed, space that our apartment lacks. Even if we scaled down our furniture we would still be lacking in room. I've gotten to the point where I am hesitant to decorate anymore because I want to move so badly, and Joel does too. We've been debating if we should break or lease or not since at least November. I wish that space was the only factor in this debate--but it's not, we are also beyond frustrated with our landlords. They can never fix things that need to be fix, or maintain things that they should maintain. We rent a managed property, yet so many things go mismanaged. It takes us months to get them to fix things, or to get them to send people to do the tings that they are responsible for, our outside goes unmaintained. The most frustrating thing is that every time I inquire why something still hasn't been taken care of (there are things STILL needing to be done that we're to be completed prior to us moving in) they say that they are just trying to keep rent down. We are good tenants, we pay our rent on time every month, we live up to our end of our lease, but we both feel that they don't. Renting is so frustrating right now!!!(thanks for letting me rant)

Now onto more fun topics...like bulletin boards.
I have had an obsession with looking for a decent sized, quality bulletin board since May. However, bulletins of decent size and good quality are outrageously overpriced. So I tried to dismiss my dream of a beautiful bulletin board in my living room. Well in one of my many random trips to the various thrift stores, I found the perfect one.
Joel and me stopped into the Habitat for Humanity store one day after lunch, and there in the isle of frames was my bulletin board! It had a solid frame and solid cork, not the cheap stuff! It was also priced half off for the day, it cost me a grand total for $2.50. Of course I could never have a plain bulletin board in my house, so I set off to find some spray paint, and had the perfect color in my collection at home. I began by lightly sanding the wood frame, then I spray painted the wood frame green (I taped off the rest of the board).

I had decided to use the fabric that I had leftover from recovering my dinning room chairs! I used a special spray adhesive that Joel had in his collection that worked on fabric. I adhered the fabric:)

 I'd still like to add some ribbon...I'm debating if I should paint the frame a different color as well. This project essentially only cost me the $2.50 that I payed for the board, since I had everything else on hand/leftover from other house projects.

My First Big Project

My husband moved into our current apartment in April of 2010 and I suppose that's when my quest began. When he first moved in we had a bed, a microwave some Navy friends had given us before moving, and my tv from college and a entertainment stand from a family at our Church. Our next addition was a beautiful solid wood bookcase that I found at the thrift store. I was so excited about putting our apartment together but wanted to be mindful of our budget so I searched for deals and decided that this was not the furniture we were going to have forever so it didn't have to fit my taste. Our next purchase was a bedroom set from craigslist. I got a headboard, rails, two side tables, a tall dresser, and a long dresser with a mirror for $200.00 all solid wood. It wasn't my taste but I was excited to have a dresser, Joel had been using one form my parents guest room.

  We already had rails so we gave those to someone in our church. Our apartment was slowly beginning to come together, we also acquired a couch from some friends at Church (we have a great Church family), the week of the wedding we got our dinning room table and china hutch- again only $200, beautiful solid wood, and it came from my Aunt and Uncle which made it even more special to us! Well the wedding came and went, and of course all of our family from out of town wanted to see our place. So the day after the wedding they helped us bring all of our gifts home and saw our new place.  When I showed them the bedroom I told them that while I wasn't thrilled with the style I loved having dressers. My sister in-law told me that I could refinish it and make it my own- I told her that would have to wait until we moved closer to them so she could help!  I was nervous to try anything on my own, so months passed, and then I decided that I was going to do it. Since I was nervous, I decided maybe my first sanding and refinishing job should be small. I bought a roll top desk off craigslist and that's what started it all. After conquering the desk I was ready to start our bedroom. It took some time, and I recruited the help of my husband with the moving and some of the sanding. I chose a black satin stain for our bedroom and love how it came out! Once the sanding, staining, and sealing was done it was time for new hardware! I went to countless stores, and spent hours online looking at hardware until I finally narrowed it down to two choices. Joel helped me pick, I was so thrilled when they finally came in! Our staining makeover, and new hardware ran us $110, making our furniture $310. Since I didn't use all of our bedroom budget it got rolled over to my housewares! If you are considering embarking on a DIY project, go for it! You never know what your capable of until you try!