More photos to the hallway

I love the photo display in my hallway...


So I decided to continue it on to the other side of the door. Sure, it's only 3 more photos, but I love the way it looks.


I especially love the frame with the 4 photos – it's Brent's and my grandparents either on their wedding day or shortly after.

WRM calendar

I know I've been somewhat quiet these past several months – some of it was getting ready for Brent's party, some of it was relaxing after Brent's party, but the majority of it was working on a calendar.

One of the rescue groups I volunteer with, Weste Rescue of Missouri, wanted to put together a calendar for 2011 – and, well, I was all about this and volunteered to do the design work.

While it's not completely done yet, I have several spreads that are finalized – and I just have to show them off. WRM received so many submission photos, and I'm happy to say I was able to use one of every dog submitted (80+) without the calendar looking cluttered.



I love how it turned out.

Calendars are scheduled to go to the printer next month. :)

WRM is especially close to my heart, because this is where Brent and I rescued Chip. Click here to read his story. And yes, he did make it into the calendar – he is Mr. September. I'm so excited that the selection team picked his photo.

My pedestal table flip

I first fell in love with this side table from Pottery Barn:


But since it's from Pottery Barn, I think we all know the price wasn't a bargain (or anywhere remotely close to one).

Then came Z Gallerie's side table for only $99.


A lot better in price, but I still couldn't do it.

Well, remember this guy:


Yep, I used him and made my own:


I'm so happy with how this table turned out.

I scored this table off Craigslist for $10 (!!!!!!!), and once the cost of spray paint is factored in – I only spent $27 plus change on everything.

Unfortunately, the table is too big for the space I intended it to go. While I love it next to the chair, for it to go there – I have to push the chair too close to the sectional – and that's the only walkway to the kitchen. So for the moment, my table is homeless. I love it so much, but Craigslist may be in its future.

Project details
This project was super easy. I roughed up the table with sandpaper, cleaned the table off and then used Rust Oleum's titanium silver metallic spray paint. With the finish on the table being so dark, I ended up having to use 2 bottles. Once that was dry, I used a clear coat spray paint over that just to be safe.

Note: Of course that's "Mockingjay" on the table. And of course, I already finished it. That book was amazing! Seriously, go read The Hunger Games series right now!

Side tables on the cheap

How adorable are these stools/side tables from Crate & Barrel?!?!? Especially at $14.95 a pop – that's right, $14.95.


I'm tempted to get several for the man cave.

Time for fans

I'm rather obsessed with CSN Stores, so I'm thrilled to finally get the pleasure of doing a review for them. I've spent many hours on the Internet admiring all their products – from dining room tables to lighting and flooring – they've got quite the selection of goodies.

While it's tempting to go nuts at All Modern, I'm making myself go practical. Yep, the dated ceiling fan in my office has got to go.

Never noticed the terrible fan in my office before? (That's because I cropped it out of all the photos).
Yep, the office looks rather great, until you look up:


I think "eeek" is the word that comes to mind for me. Sure, it wouldn't be winning any ugly fan contests, but it wouldn't be winning any beauty contests either.

So I spent the day browsing the fan selection at CSN, and fell in love multiple times. After lots of debate though, I picked the winner:


I love its sleek look, and you cannot beat the $86.63 price tag. I don't know if you've been ceiling fan shopping recently, but good-looking fans under $125 are hard to come by.

I can't wait to get this fan, and let you know how it turns out. :)

My latest Craigslist finds

If you're a fan of Decorating Obsessed on Facebook, you know I've been a busy girl. It's been all Craigslist all the time for me.

I scored this table on Wednesday:
I started working on it today, but the humidity got too out of control to finish. Hopefully, the weather cooperates soon, because it's looking so good and I'm rather impatient.

Today, I got this dresser and nightstand:
The dresser definitely needs some work on the drawers, but the price was just too good to pass up – and the fact in came with a nightstand sweetened the deal for me. Both these items I plan on flipping.

Macintosh is 5!

My big guy is 5 today. I can't believe it.

Light bulb chandeliers

I'm not a fan of the chandelier in my dining room. While I can appreciate the old-world look – it should never be mixed with modern glam, because said light fixture will stick out like a sore thumb.

I've been in love with Pottery Barn's edison chandelier for awhile now.


Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately?), I'm cheap and would never drop $399 on a light fixture. I was hoping JC Penney would catch on and make a knock-off like they do with every other Pottery Barn item, but no luck. For awhile, I even debated about making my own.

Then I flipped through CB2's catalog and saw the firefly pendant lamp:
It's even more perfect for the space and with a $199 price tag – way more doable. (Especially when factoring in that my birthday is in September). Yes!

Are there any light fixture crazes you're obsessed with right now? Anyone joining me on the light bulb obsession?

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If you're stopping by from my DIY Showoff feature, welcome and thanks for stopping in.

If you liked the man-cave theme, please check out the beer-tasting party I threw for my husband on Saturday.

Closet facelift

I love having a finished basement; the only issue is the lack of storage.

In the first house, the basement wasn't finished – so it was 100% storage. In the current house, well, it's basically the exact opposite.

So where did everything that didn't fit in the storage area end up? The third bedroom:


Yeah, it's slightly embarrassing. But I didn't want to pack up all my extra accessories, so I didn't have a lot of options. Until I remember the closet in the guest bedroom:

The closet now:


I'm really happy with how it turned out. Brent and I just used the cheap ClosetMaid gear, and quickly discovered that while it's the cheapest – it still cost a good chunk of $$. It was totally worth it though, because now the third bedroom is crap free.

While organizing everything, I found my cat ears. I decided to put them on Macintosh – he wasn't a fan.

Goodbye buffet

In case you didn't notice my "after" of the dresser/buffet I bought just for Brent's party in yesterday's photos...

Before:

After:

I'm really happy with how it turned it. The only thing weird about this dresser was the middle drawers – the drill holes were all different. So I filled the bottom holes in to make it more consistent and then updated all the hardware after I painted the piece white.

This is the first piece of furniture I've bought this year with the pure intention of flipping then selling. I'm happy to report that I received 3 emails in about 2 hours, and this guy was picked up last night. Brent's happy to have some more space in his man cave, and I'm happy to have a little extra money in my pocket. All good things.

The beer-tasting party

Is it too soon to already be planning the next-beer tasting party?

Brent and I had a blast, and I'm proud to say that our first annual beer-tasting party was a success.

Because of the lack of information I found on the Internet about beer-tasting parties, I’m going to try to provide as much detail as possible. (You have been warned).

For the set up, we had 3 stations in different areas of the house: ales, lagers and stouts. Each station had a beverage tub, bottle opener, napkins, cups, notepads, pens and a place for bottle caps.



THE FOOD
The downstairs snack bar:

The appetizers:

I wanted to stick with mainly bar-type food so the menu was jalapeno poppers, beer dip, black bean and corn dip, buffalo chicken dip, sun-dried tomato spread, Italian sausage, BBQ meatballs, steak taquitos, pinwheels, cheese & crackers and chicken enchilada dip.

My main concern was finding food that would taste just as good at midnight when guests were on round 2 or 3.

As for pictures, I can’t believe I didn’t take any of the appetizers. Once the food was all out, the guests started to arrive and I didn’t give it a second thought. The pictures below are actually some my dad took, but he didn’t take pictures once all the food was out either – so you’ll have to use your imagination.

Desserts:
I had the lady who did Brent’s and my wedding cakes do the majority of the desserts. The bottle cap cake was rocky road with cookies ‘n’ cream filling. Then there were 4 types of mini cupcakes – carrot, peanut butter, lemon and strawberry.

And of course, my grandma had to make her amazing cream cheese brownies.

THE BEER
Each couple was asked to bring a chilled 6-pack of an ale, lager or stout. After much debate, I decided it’d be easiest to assign these genres. To make sure the categories were even more even, I actually divided the guest list into 9 groups – those we knew would come, the maybes and those who couldn’t – and then we divided the yeses, maybes and nos accordingly into the beer categories. Because stouts are a more acquired taste, I did assign fewer beers in this category.

As for the varieties, we easily had 60 different types of beer – especially when you factor in the build-your-own 6 packs a lot of people did. With all the beer choices, most people stuck with the tasting cups so they could try as much as possible, but toward the end of the night some people ventured toward taking a bottle.

I’m not quite sure how much beer there was, other than a lot. To give you a better idea though, here’s several pictures after the guests started to arrive:

Brent and one of his friends have a Bud vs Miller battle going on, so as a joke his friend brought him some Miller Lite. Gross.

I easily tried 20 beers last night, but I have my top 5:

And Brent’s:

And to put the amount of beer we had into further perspective:

Yeah, and that doesn’t account for the beer people were drinking out of the tap or the wine some people stuck with.

It was definitely a good time. And yes, we really already have talked about the next beer-tasting party – the plan is to make it an annual event in October in honor of Octoberfest starting next year.

Beyond busy

On top of getting ready for the beer-tasting party on Saturday, I took on another project – designing a rescue calendar for the group I volunteer with. It's definitely been a busy week (as you can probably tell from my lack of posts).

I have so many posts to make (the closet makeover, the fabric headboard, etc), but it looks like those will have to wait until after Brent's party.

As you can see, I have a lot to do:
And this is only one room, gah!

I'll take plenty of pictures on Sautrday and promise to stop slacking next week. Everyone have a great weekend!

Another dresser

Saturday morning, Brent and I discussed our weekend game plan for getting for Brent's 30th next week. The plan was rather simple – some paint touch-ups, some planting, Scotch Guarding the chair and some picking up. I told Brent that I wouldn't be starting any new projects.

Ummm, yeah, about that.

Sunday morning we picked up this Craigslist find:

My plan for it – flip it, use it as for snack buffet for the beer-tasting party and then Craigslist it.

On a positive note, the dresser is almost done. :)