Oh deer

I have a confession to make, although it’s only October, I am already  getting pretty excited for Christmas. This is very unlike me as I’m normally the person bitching about how Thanksgiving doesn’t get enough love because it’s just completely overshadowed by Christmas.

But for some reason, I cannot wait to decorate for the holidays and, I think this is key, getting to go home and celebrate with my family!

My excitement may have initiated when I found these cute little candle holders at Salvation Army

I couldn’t pass them up! They just screamed Christmas to me. And oddly enough while scanning one of my favorite blogs papernstitch, I found this image in one of her tutorials

Which was actually kind of perfect because I was thinking about what color I wanted to paint these two guys and gold was one of my options.

I was also considering my oh-so-favorite color turquoise or a nice yellow, but since I’m considering buying some candle sticks for these I opted to go with white.

I bought this spray paint a long time ago for another project (that I swear, one day I’ll get around to) but I was always concerned about spray painting indoors. Luckily this weekend was beautiful so I turned on my ceiling fan, opened my windows and went at it.

After a couple of coats and some touch-ups here and there they were all finished

So until I can no longer contain my holiday excitement, they will quietly adorn my bookcase – with the ranks of my favorite photo of my two favorite people, busts of Mozart and Beethoven and my books.

Beauty lies in the details

The minute that I brought home my beautiful craigslist find, I knew I had to add to it just a little bit - give it that sense of uniquely mine and all. The easiest and nicest thing to do was to add some color to the bottom of these drawers. My initial props have to go out to THIS POST for the inspiration.

I was looking for wallpaper or scrapbook paper to line the drawers with when I went into the hardware store – just to see if they had any pre-fabricated shelf lining that I loved even more (which I didn’t expect to be the case). I was just about to walk out when the sales guy told me to come over and look at what they were about to throw out. He had 4 HUGE books of fabric swatches that they were going to toss because they were discontinued and he wanted to know if I’d want to cut out the fabrics I liked before they did it. Needless to say, I praise this hardware store and gentleman now because it was perfect for what I wanted to do!

So my combination of fabric swatches:

And my empty drawers + a roll of scotch tape:

Lead me to this!!

Isn’t it darling! All I did was roll some scotch tape like you do to hang posters and tape the fabric down to the wood. You can use double sided tape or something a little stronger if you want, especially if you're going to be taking items in and out all of the time, but for me this is the perfect and seasonally temporary solution! The bottom drawers didn’t even require any cutting!

And on the top drawers I got a little more creative with my felt fabric:

I’m so pleased with it and it cost me a total of $0.00! Plus I have tons of leftover fabric swatches that I can use later, like this little gem:

Horrah for simple touches!

I love salvaging

I’ve always loved going to Goodwill or Salvation Army, but now that I’m on my own and a salvation army is on the walk to my local grocery store, my love (and wallet) knows no bounds.

Now that I have natural light, I want to start filling my apartment with flowers and plants. This is easier said than done because I do not have a green thumb and I've been timid in buying any yet. I am growing herbs, so maybe this will instill some confidence in me - if they survive. Until I get some courage though, I've been collecting a small number of bottles/vases that I will be, one day soon, hopefully filling with flowers for my bedroom.

Isn’t the blue glass beautiful? I found that on my last trip and couldn’t pass it up.

On my very first trip to the local Sal Vo, when I still maintained some sense of self-control in this store, I’m pretty sure these are the candle sticks that broke all of thatl.

Don’t they just scream Anthropologie? They were a whopping $4 and just needed a little love. They were spotted with a greenish-gunk but with a little bit of soap and scratching, it immediately came off. I have then framing my television, as you can see below.

And now my absolute favorite find ever! This actually came from craigslist where I ended up driving 45 minutes to some guy’s house (I brought someone with me, of course) that had a coffin on the front porch (a leftover halloween decoration, I hoped) and a confederate flag wafting in the breeze. Needless to say, this was worth it.

Isn’t it great! He threw in the marble top and that cute little lantern to sweeten the deal – I have to say this was a steal. More than I’d pay for a regular side table at iKea, but you can’t pass up a piece of library card catalog history.

Here’s a close up on the lantern:

The drawers all slide out. I really want to get some cute fabrics to line each drawer with.

And I just found this great piece of inspiration this morning on a blog that I think would also look great:

I like the look of the white with the maps, so I’ll either do maps or just find some really cute scrapbooking paper.

Oh how I love thrifting!