MAMA'S LAMP

Just a little update. My mom gave me this lamp long ago. She had two of them and they were in our home while growing up for as long as I can remember. Although they looked much different. You read about my re-purposing household items here. 
But it has finally found its resting spot after years upon years in my garage. It seems like nothing to all of you I suppose but to me it's a lot. It says hello at my entrance and its says "mom" to me every time I walk in my door. :)

A little Cottage with a little Vintage

YELLOW! -The new little black dress for decorating!

Isn't this little darling of a lamp gorgeous?? Don't you just love this yellow lamp??? Well, I do. I am doing my family room in black, white, charcoal grey and YELLOW! Who'd of thunk it? And because my family room is the great room that opens to the kitchen, my kitchen is following along. I remember reading a loonnnng time ago (before decorating blogs existed and I felt alone in my world obsessed with HGTV)) that every room should have a touch or whimsy (the owl) and/or a touch of yellow. It makes your room happy. Well, it does makes me smile. I walk into my living room or kitchen now and actually smile. I love the happy yellow. So I have always done that. A touch of whimsy or yellow. Mostly when it came to yellow though, I used flowers in the room.  Because I never really thought of yellow as a design color for accents until the past year. Now of course it's everywhere I look. I always ask myself why is it that when I choose a color for a room....it seems like everybody else jumps on board. (I did think of it first right? I didn't just jump on board myself did I?!! Oh my....)

Well, anyway..YELLOW it is. Mostly I am going with a "mustardy" color. That's a word, right? And thanks to the wonderful world of spray painting EVERYTHING it no longer matters what color something is when I buy it!
I bought this adorable little red lamp from Hobby Lobby just before last Christmas. (Sorry about the horrible "before" picture...(new camera is on it's way!)

I toyed with the idea of red as my accent color but could never quite get on board with it. And believe it not, red didn't "pop" in the room at all. I even bought some other items that day that were red. (Now yellow). I left them red during the holidays and then made the switch. I am horrible with "before" pics. Just as I am finishing up a paint job, it's always... "Ah geez, I forgot to take a picture!". So this is the best I can do for the before. It was cute -just not what I wanted.

So...don't let color hold you back when you see something you love in the wrong color. If it's a paintable surface -paint it! And believe me, this lamp does not look like it was "painted". Even up close in person, it looks like I bought it yellow. So thank you Lowes for a wonderful assortment of spray paint colors!!!!!!!!!!!

Double duty for all those Pumpkins laying around from Halloween???

Here's what you do  -Paint them! I simply took a spray can of primer and then sprayed them with a bright white paint. 2 coats for a really white look. While it's a little damp you can sprinkle it with gold or silver glitter if you want. They look festive with the glitter. I chose not to this year. I did last year and I am so done with glitter for a while. That's just me but so done... lol  A very fun and CHEAP decoration for Christmas and I really love the look of them white. 

Re- purposing. Just about anything can be made new again.

I re-purposed a bunch of items to show and of course I forgot to take some of the before pics. :(  Kinda ruins everything. But here are a few pics of some very easy cool things! See the lamp on top of the little buffet? Well that belonged to my mom and has been sitting in my garage, and the garage before that for about 20 years. It was brassy gold, and the lamp shades had broken. I brought it in one day and decided to fix it up. I searched online till I found white "milk glass" lamps shades that were very similar to the originals. They were actually fairly cheap too. I think they were like $35.00 each. When they came in I picked up some pewter spray paint and Voila! like new! Actually better, since they weren't brassy any more. :)
Here is the website where I found the globes in all different styles....  http://www.lampsplus.com/

And the speaking of the little buffet table. I found it in a second hand store for $60.00 buck I think and loved it. It was a bright neon blue and didn't work for me. So I painted it green and although I really liked the color I changed my mind on it. so............BEFORE. I love the green but I needed it to be neutral...so............

I WENT WHITE!!!

So how about those expensive small appliances that you see in magazines. They always have them to go with their decor and they cost a small fortune!!!! Again, PAINT your own!

I got these chairs from a neighbor who refinished chairs years ago. About 10 I think. I took the seats off (which is very easy to do) and recovered them with a textured material. Kind of like burlap feel, but softer on the bum. Sprayed them with scotchguard too. I have a huge family...so LOTS of scotchguard. And I painted the chairs with a spray paint. Just took them outside without the seats and sprayed them down. Very easy and it really gave them a new life. They go with my redone kitchen now! More of Cottage feel. Although I just took a test online at Better Homes and Gardens and it said my style was "Polished  Casual" hmmm... I like that. Find out yours.... http://www.bhg.com/decorating/decorating-style/quiz/

My "new" lamps!

So, I bought these lamps at Lowes. I loved them. Problem was...I didn't really "love" the decor in my formal (yeah, like anything in this house is formal..but that's what they call it I guess) living room. I have a family room that we really "live" in but this room is right at the entrance of the house and it is my favorite room to go to read in or just hang out for a little quiet time by myself. It had a lot of green so I thought these lamps would work but then when I switched out the green in the room, the lamps didn't work. So.....a little painters tape, some white gloss spray paint, and new shades and a totally different look! What do you think? The green pic on the left shows they had white shades which is a little hard to tell but .....the new shades (also from Lowe's) were on sale for $12.99! I love the new look.

and now the room fits!