Ive been naughty!

I have abandoned my blog lately. I feel awful as I was having so much fun doing it.. But guess that could be because I recently got ENGAGED :) yay!! So my internet time has pretty much involved mooning over other peoples wedding blogs (and driving my man crazy with my latest obsession with wedding plans).

So how did he do it? Well we went to Rotorua for a romantic weekend away. It was totally fantastic. We stayed in a lovely lodge with our own hot tub and had so much fun on amusement park rides, on the gondolas and the luge. After a lovely hot tub with plenty (perhaps too much wine) Steve grabbed my hands and started saying all this nice stuff to me (I was like .. hang on are you ok??) and then down on one knee with the most perfect ring ever.. I said yes and the rest is history (Don't even really get that saying .. just a bit corny really isn't it).

So me being me, after much kisses and cuddles I dragged the poor boy down to the supermarket down the road to buy some wedding mags and my planning begun!!

I want to stick with the vintage sort of shabby chic theme for my wedding. I have started (trying) to grow some hydrangers as I want to do something with them for the table. I say trying because 4 out of 6 of them look like they are about to die.. woops.

I am having a wedding website - which I want to make amazing - not just one of the ones you can subscribe to online - like go all out and build it from scratch (finally being a web developer and being stuck in a male ONLY career has come in handy!!).. Have only half made like a billion designs already and nothings good enough. It needs to be PERFECT.

Anywhoos I'm signing off for the night (Super Nanny is about to start - woo!) - So until my next blog full of all my wedding inspiration :) Ciao!

My First Linky Party

So I've never hosted one of these before so lets give it a go! Give me some inspiration for this weekend and post all your awesome projects :)

You should recognise this picture if you love Rachel Ashwell's work like me. Just borrowing it!!

Please be kind and link back :) Also I could really do with a couple more followers!! :D

Icky Chair and Table Project

I picked this up off trademe (for a bit more than I would usually spend ($38).. ahh.. just a bit competitive when it comes to bidding!!).. I brought it off a lovely old man who was selling all his stuff to move into a resthome.

It looked a bit better in the photo on trademe!! .. As you can see below its a bit.. well.. Yuck.

So I was pretty excited to finally use the pink paint I brought :)

I love it and think it will look perfect in one of our spare rooms when it comes to sorting them out :)
I wasn't overally inlove with the fabric (after I brought it) but I quite like it on here.

Please come join my LINKY PARTY :) all very welcome

Linking From Primitive & Proper ;) Linky party
And the blog I'm always on Shabby Chic Cottage! 
& Paisley Passions 
Stories of a house

Coffee Table - Before and After

I picked this table up for $10 from a garage sale. Got my partner to do the bargining (hes so good at that).

 Our very nosey cat Ebony is the photo, she's currently pink from rubbing up all over my latest project..

All the sanding back and paint stripping work is even all done for me so straight off to Mitre Ten Mega for some paint.

I quite like the result. I wanted a duck egg blue, which it isn't quite.

Mirror Magic

So i've been preettty slack with my projects lately .. A few weeks of uninspiring garage sales (Houses full off dolls, or crazy people trying to sell their underwear!!).. But last weeks garage sale was a success. Three new upcoming projects!

So I found this for $3 at one of the garage sales (I was lucky to get this as another lady was clearing out all the good stuff before I got there.. Very upset to miss out on a louis-style chair)

After a couple of coats of paint and a big split in my finger from scratching excess paint off with a blade ta da!!

Lamp Make-over

Found these at a garage sale for $5 - Awful Awful orange colour aren't they

Icky!

So I had my first attempt and made a bit of a mess - the material was bright floral (much to bright that I got sick of it in two minutes flat!!) and the material was so thin that glue showed through.

So attempt two turned out as below!

Picked up a huge roll of this material for $3 :) score!

I'm much happier with the final result. Now i just need some cute bed side tables to put them on :)

Fantastic Foot stool recovered & painted

I picked up this little beauty from a garage sale. I had to get in quick though, apparently I picked it up as an old lady was reaching over to grab it. I didn't see her.. honest!!

I have been keeping my eye out for one of these for a few weeks so was stoked when I saw this (it was even worth the half hour wait in the freezing cold waiting for the garage sale to open)

A bit of paint and some decent fabric (I love this fabric sooo much) can fix anything really can't it.

Pretty! Iloveit!!!

My kitchen is finished!!!!!

Remember the before? A book shelf to store the plates... No room, no bench space, no draws, no cupboard space.. All pretty random really..


Above: My partner fixing up the walls which came off with the old tiles.. as the previous people used no more nails to stick them up...
This is the mess of a kitchen we lived in for our week of hard work (you should have seen the rest of the house - just as bad, filled of tools, random kitchen appliances etc etc)..

All that work paid off though. I LOVE MY KITCHEN. I was going to have three massive shelves above the kitchen bench but we couldn't find any appropriate studs in the wall.. I shed a tear as I put the rest of my pretty display kitchen items into the cupboard, including all my teacups! Though I think it's for the best as it would probably make the kitchen feel cluttered again...
I love my curtains - I got the wrong ones first as I'm an idiot who read the millimeters all wrong when i measured it.. 1040mm drop not 1400mm!! woops.



In conclusion : I love it! I'm so proud of Steve, who has never tiled before but they look fantastic. I have done two lots of baking in one and a bit days to get the most out of my new kitchen (and its still clean!!!)

and all this cost only about $1200!! - And I think that's including some takeaways as it was so hard having our oven unplugged and sitting in the middle of the dining room

• The extra kitchen unit was originally a sink unit (for $150) but as we didn't want the sink that came down to only $80 from the demolition yard.
• The handles I originally fell in love with were $20 each - but the knob versions of the same stuff were only $3.50.
• Tiles were $1.50 each - We weren't actually going to tile... until I saw these flower patterned tiles.. Steve wasn't very impressed when I begged him if we could tile (even though it should have really been done first and we had never tiled before!)
• I have had my eye on these curtains ever since we looked for the ones in our dining room - $35.00
• Paint - we still had my fav colour caramel milkshake left over from the dining room but we needed primer sealer and skirting / window sill paint. 
• And then all the other bits and pieces - i now have 2 staple guns which i put the staples in wrong in them and they both don't work now :S but have stolen dads. Our halway is now full of tools and bits and pieces as we don't actually have a garage!
• New Bench top $108.00
• My pretty new shelves were the expensive part and I can't even put them up now!! So they might have to go up when we do our next project (The lounge)

Budget Kitchen Renovations have begun!!

Below are a few pictures of our before kitchen. We didn't take too much notice when buying the place but when we moved in we realized how we have no bench space and no cutlery draw.
So this week Steve and I have the week off to do it up!

Above is a bookcase we were using to store plates...

Above you can see the little room that we have.. just two sink cupboards which have big holes in them..

Currently the kitchen is in bits but im sure it will turn out great (though after much blood sweat and tears!)

Spice Rack

I have found a new hobby. Garage Saling!

I've been wanting a Spice Rack for a while, as currently they are all stored in boxes in our cupboard and tend to spill everywhere. So I was very happy when I stumbled upon this treasure for $4.


So after first trying to spray paint this and doing it terribly.. I painted it with 'caramel milkshake' and it looked all better again. I painted the lids too, did up some labels and with a bit of ribbon.....


I'm pretty happy with it really. Now just have to wait to paint our kitchen so I can hang it up! 4 more days until our week off to spend on our kitchen (and more!)

My First Blog

After spending pretty much ALL my spare time reading up on ideas for creating a Shabby Chic / French country styled home (& spending much time driving my partner nuts from talking about nothing else) I decided to try start up my own blog so I can rant on here instead :).

In January after months of house hunting my Partner and I purchased our first house. A gorgeous Villa, that we got for a bargain price as it was a bit of a tip. I'm in love. As it was built in 1910ish I want to do the place up but keep an old fashion cosy type look to it.

Anyway, recently I have discovered how much fun garage saleing is!! Below is a piece I picked up at a garage sale last week.


I know ugly right?? Trust me this isn't even the worst of it.. It came with all lopsided cushions that are faded and stained, these went straight into the washing machine.. and I wish I could tell you they came out looking great.. but im afraid not.. still as awful as ever.. and I'm not sure I could really even cover them.. so currently they remain in the hot water cupboard, well out of sight.

Annyway good old Grandad who helping me lug this thing home gave me some paint and a paint brush in white so as soon as I got home I dug in.. I put as much paint on as possible.. but it wouldn't get into the cracks, so I was off to get some spray paint (I now love spray paint!). I got one chair done and was stoked, but I also had a terrible cramp in my arm from spray painting, and with it being winter the fire soon became tempting. So the rest got left until the next day so I could rope Steve into digging into it with me.

Anyway as good as it looked, it needed more.. perhaps a coffee table? Here is a coffee table we inherited when Steve and I first moved in together.. Not great.. but we needed furniture..


And recently I saw potential! Much potential. So off it was to try find some crackle glue! First we went to Mitre Ten Mega, the man I asked almost looked like he was going to laugh "No we don't have that, that was in fashion like ten years ago..". So after a bit more searching we found the stuff at Resene. I was so excited to use it! So i sanded back the tables lightly to keep the dark colour and got stuck in.

The end result was much better and everything all together with my pretty new Shabby Chic candle holders off trade me for $10 I'm more than wrapped with the end result.