So I know I've mentioned that I've gone back to work, but what I haven't advertised is that I now work at Lowe's.

I'm a cabinet specialist (aka - kitchen designer), and I love my job. I didn't think I would because it was such a change from staying home with the kiddos, but I really do love being out of the house and contributing to the household. I miss the guys, of course, and the retail hours take some getting used to, but all in all I think everyone is adapting well.

One of the perks of working at Lowe's is seeing what goes on clearance pretty early on.

Like this pendant -
I got this beaut for less than $40 from originally being $160. LOVE!!!

She's the new jewelry over the kitchen sink. She doesn't produce much light, but lord she's gorgeous.

What do ya'll think?

For a very long time I have wanted to add some animal print to my home decor, but the hubs was not on board. So I did what any good crafter would do, I pulled out a blank lampshade and some puffy paint.

I drew some faint zebra lines on my lampshade and the spent a couple of days filling in my design.

I used white metallic puffy paint and I just say that I really like the effect of the metallic white against the white of the shade.

So here's the beauty right now. I love her!

Oh and when I explained my plan and then showed the hubs my creation he asked where it was going and if I thought it was too fancy. I guess if he thinks it's fancy then I did a good job.

Well I mentioned yesterday that I was altering two lamps at the same time and here's the 2nd one. :)

We've had a wonderful chrome floor lamp for a few year now and I still love the lamp, but the hubs never really liked where I put it in the family room. It blocked a speaker {the horror}. ;-)

So when I found this pretty glass number at the Salvation Army a few weeks ago, I knew just what I was going to do with it. Paint it!


So I busted out the looking glass paint from Krylon. I love and hate this paint. I love the mirror finish. I would love it more if I could get it to give me a perfect finish. Part of my problem may be the fact that I've not painted anything flat, but I still feel like my problem is not completely my fault, but moving on.

So busted out the mirror paint, and after several light coats and many, many, MANY curse words finally got the lamp to where I wanted it. Then I had a problem. What the heck color should I paint that awful brass?  Hmmm....what's this color over here? It could be  chrome or aluminum. I have no idea because the cap is missing, but the paint down the front of it is silvery so lets go with it. Its all very scientific, you know. :)

So I spray away. Ooops, apparently its aluminum. Ah well. We'll see how it goes. So then I put it all back together again and heres what I got. :)
 So lets recap:
 I am loving my new table edition. I love her girly lines {remember I'm outnumbered} and her sparkling personality. :)

So very happy with my lamp  purchases. :)

I hope you guys have a wonderful day,

I've been neglecting a problem for a little while, only because it wasn't warm enough to spray paint, and I'm lazy, but then we had a few warm days and I went spray paint crazy! I altered two lamps at once, well almost at once, but today I'm going to share with you the lamp I altered for Devlin's room.

You see he used to have two lamps, but then he wanted  to get  rid of the baseball theme, which included a lamp that was made out of  baseballs. Thats when the darkness descended on his room, because unless the sun was shining into his room the lone little lamp we left in his room was not enough light.

So this is the lamp I started with:

Pretty sad, huh? Yea. That's the lamp I bought for a $1 at the estate auction a while ago. Yup, $1. Not to shabby.  So the first order of business was to trash the shade, and paint the base a happy apple green per Dev's request.

Then I busted out a new lampshade, and the wheels started turning. I found some clipart of a silhouette of the continents of the world and loaded it up in Photoshop. I repeated the design until I had enough to go around  my shade, then I skewed each section of the map so that it would match up with the trapezoidal shape of my shade. The I cut it out and taped it to the inside of my lampshade.
Its not a great tape job, but then it doesn't have to be. I then put the shade on the lamp and traced all the continents onto the shade with a pencil. It doesn't have to be perfect. Once you're done with that take out the paper.
The lines are pretty faint, but that's ok, because what I did next was just pull out a sharpie. I do believe that sharpies are my favorite crafty accessory...that is next to coffee. :) So now I just take my sharpie and go back over my pencil lines.
 I was going to add arrows to certain points around the world ala Indiana Jones, but decided in the end I like the simplicity of this map. Now I moved it back to Dev's room.
 The lamp looks so nice in his room. Although I do wish that he'd pick a different color other than green to paint all his accessories. :)

Here is the before and after again. Just for good measure.
 I am loving the transformation. :)

Oh and just for you guys. Here's the clipart I found.
I hope you guys enjoy this little gem, because there are lots more ideas in store for this map. :)

Have a great day guys!

So for a while now I have wanted to replace the can light over our kitchen sink with a pendant, and the hubs agreed with me. Then came the hard part - finding a pendant that I liked. I don't know when I started looking, but I do know that I've been looking for forever!

Last week I thought I had a eureka moment which the trip to Ikea could alleviate, but Ikea was out of a key ingredient. The shade. Grumble. But wait! There's more! A second light bulb went off so I found a pendant with a glass shade, and it was $16! Then I went to Home Depot. I know its shocking. I very rarely ever go to Home Depot because there's not one really convenient to Gainesville. Not when Lowe's is 5 minutes up the road, but I happened to find myself at Home Depot with Mom and the boys, and low and behold guess what diamond popped out. This one!!!!

 Here are all the parts from both lights. I was not liking the idea of having the wire exposed so we needed to figure out the best/safest way to get what we wanted and make it work with the conversion kit. Luckily all of the threads on each of the kits were the same so we were in luck there, however we were not lucky in the fact  that on each of the sockets the wires were basically eyeletted in place. Like how I created a word there? Yea, me too.  :) This unfortunate development meant that we'd have to splice the wires. Grumble. We decided that since the conversion kit came with its wires heavily insulated that we'd run them down the tubes and then splice them together above the socket  housing, where they should be the most protected. So that's exactly what we did.


 Oh and I apologize for the less than glamorous photos, but these are from the cell phone. :( I'll have to take nicer ones when I show off the lovely that my grandmother is bringing me this weekend! So excited! Have a great day guys!