one cart worth of thrifting by the pound

I'm feeling very productive this weekend. I found my cabinet plus an extra, and this morning before I even made my morning tea (Chinese green tea today) I found a butchers block laminate counter top, which looks similar to mine for $2. I called the seller, and I can get it today, hooray! Even if it doesn't match I'm going to get it anyway because I really don't want to mess much more with this project. I don't want to go to a custom kitchen store and have to wait a month or so to finish this. I saw some oak grain contact paper that matched my counter top exactly in color, so if this doesn't match at all. I might cover it with contact paper then seal it. It's going to be half covered by our enormous microwave anyway. :)

blah, blah, blah... let me get to what you came here for! Yesterday I went to the Goodwill outlet store in St. Louis: a magical place where everything is .79 a pound. I got a cart full of cool stuff... and here it is!

 A cool bottle top and nipple washing cage

 adorable toy blood pressure cuff

yet another tin, I love tins. I use them for tea and bath salts :)

 cute little dress for my cute little niece

 moccasins for work, will be so nice this winter... yes I know they need cleaned

 stretchy thermal purple target top

chocolate brown cord jacket... love it!

These are too extra long pillow cases which I am going to turn into a boho tunic top. (I'll do a tutorial)

cool vase, don't really know what I'll do with it yet

knifty knitters... just because. 

Journey got a bunny toy, which she is loving lol

Ok, this little dresser/end table I got at the restore not Goodwill. It was $5

ottoman. This is an upcycle in the making. $1 in Goodwill furniture section. None of their furniture is over $15, most is under ten.

Now the stuff for my classroom. This is a water toy for our water table.

These little pencil boxes are indispensable! I use them for extra paint brushes, beads, scissors, you name it.

These organizers are going in our art/writing center. I have two there now, but I've been wanting a few more.

All this was around $9. It was awesome. My sister is in town next weekend, so we are gonna go again :)

so retro

Justin and I have been super busy working on the house here lately. We've painted the exterior (mostly), worked on our garden, installed a dishwasher, a washer, and a drier, cleaned and rearranged things, and done a few small projects. I've got to show you one that we are both loving.

Remember all my wonderful finds from the New Athens town wide yardsale? Well, I got that amazing little record player, and I was trying to decide between fixing the record player and gutting it... we went with gutting it. Here's what we did :)

 This is the infamous before shot :)

 This is my wonderful husband getting those pesky screws out.

And this is the interior... Our Ipod and a little radio. We love it! It has a cool distortion from being in a box. We had a graduation party for Justin a few weeks ago, and everyone was like, "where's the music coming from... omg, is it coming from the record player? that's awesome." We are pretty proud of ourselves.



Now, the project that is driving my nuts at the moment is getting this last little bit of our kitchen done. When we moved in we had no appliances and a weird little desk thing in this spot. We tore out the little desk thing pretty early on because it served no purpose besides annoying me by taking up needed space.

I bought our dishwasher for $35 a few weeks ago. (Score!) My MIL's boyfriend Jim and Justin hooked it up, and it works great. TODAY, I bought this base cabinet from the St. Louis Habitat for Humanity Restore. I expected to pay around $20 for a base cabinet. I could not believe my eyes when I saw that the tag said $1! ONE DOLLAR PEOPLE! That made my day for sure.

 Now, it's door and handle do not match our cabinets, but I am working on that. I'm also working on getting a piece of counter top as close as possible to our existing counter top. Usually Home Depot comes through for me, but it looks like I'm going to have to go to a custom cabinets and counter tops place. This doesn't hurt my feelings too much since I got the cabinet for a dollar. SERIOUSLY A DOLLAR!

Since the cabinets were only a dollar, I also picked up this long skinny one. I've got some big ideas for it, but we will have to see. I'm thinking about hanging it horizontally  in my awkward little nook thing. Also, I think I want to put one of those lift up hydrolic frosted glass doors on it. I might use it to store my tea in. (I am already taking up a whole cabinet of just tea.)


I also went to the Goodwill outlet store. It's a giant Goodwill with bins that you have to sift through and everything in the bins is .79 a pound, books are .39 a pound, and none of the furniture or appliances is over $15. It was amazing! I got a bunch of cool stuff that I really want to show you, but I will have to save it for later. My poor pooch is very sleepy... and I am pretty tired too... sorting through all those bins tuckered me out, lol.

Good-night :)

knock me up :)

I've got baby fever here lately. Justin and I are looking to add a little birdie to our nest, and I've been searching up some baby inspiration, mostly upcycled and fabulous and crafty... so while you puruse my recent finds I have two songs for your listening pleasure.

I didn't put any links cuz these are purely for inspiration's sake. If you are savvy with google though, you can search up any of these :) If you really, really want to find something from here, I can probably tel you what I searched to find it. (AND, just in case anyone misconstrues this post... no, I'm not pregnant yet, but could be soon)

My Wonderland (so far)

Ok, back to that inspiring Pier 1 commercial... let's see if I can find it on youtube and link it... nope not on youtube. ANYWAY, here is our wonderland (so far)

 I bought this swing for $15 in Mexico almost seven years ago. I never had anywhere to hang it until now :) Also, I have one wind chime, yay. I want a bamboo one too and some bells and lights.

 This is how I like to sit while I read. Not the best view, but dappled light and a swinging motion aren't all that conducive to reading, lol. I'm reading Wuthering Heights right now :)

 This is the view to the right. It's a lovely field.

Here's the view to my backyard... notice anything different? We painted the exterior a chocolate milk brown. I love it now. It looks bigger and warmer.

Here's a footless pic :)

Part of my tea garden. This is German chamomile and French lavender.

tiny tomatoes and big daddy tomatoes... I'm going to eat you all!

Justin's peppers (he did water them after I took this picture. they look kinda sad and droopy here)

My filing cabinet planters. You can see my cabbages and mints are doing really well. The mints smell amazing!

My hydrangeas are looking really good. I put up a fence, added river rock, and put in some cute little stakes. They have all almost tripled in size, and they are all blooming.

ta-da! This is where I've been until this 114 heat wave swept in. You've got me back for a while at least, but I do want to get out in my swing and finish Wuthering Heights. I do need to go to the Habitat Restore soon to look for a base cabinet and some counter top. Kitchen project :) you'll see. While I'm there I'm going to look for some globes to make those DIY luminaries :)

I've got another fun post a-brewing, I've been doing an inspirational search for a special room in our house.

Sooo many cool new DIY's!

Hello all... so "I'll post these later tonight" didn't happen. It almost never happens, and I should really stop typing things like that, lol. ANYWAY, as I promised, I do have some cool DIY's for you, heeeeeere we go!

Karen's coffee can lanterns. Ok, have you seen that Peir 1 commercial, "he has his man cave, and you've created wonderland" where she has all kinds of lanterns hanging in her tree? I want a wonderland. I'm on my way!

Karen's lamp globe bird feeders. (same Karen? if so I want o be her friend) I'm also planning some of these for my wonderland :) I think I might do lantern versions too. These are those bathroom light globes, can you believe it? They look so designer and expensive, plus I'd get to use a new kind of glue, score.

While I'm on the subject of luminosity, check out these amazing candles. This tutorial uses ready made pillar type candles (after Christmas discount, oh yeah) and remakes them into vintage tin candles. I'm a tin collector. I really wanted to make candles as Christmas gifts last year, but get sticker shock. This way I could make them on the cheap, which is always a plus :)

Cookie cutter Christmas ornaments! Finally a use for my cookie cutters, cuz Lord knows I can't bake!

Upcycled electrical spool ottoman. I tried really hard to come up with a snappy segway from ornaments to ottoman, but I'm not a big enough cheese ball I guess. I added this to one of my look books years ago, but I had no idea the image was part of a tutorial! This is a great upcycle!

Alright my dears,that's all I've got for this DIY post... Now I'm going to start post number 2.

so confused... but somputers do that to me...

hello everybody!

sorry, I've been away so long, didja miss me? There are 20 of you now! (does an even number follower dance)

anyway, wow blogger is different! which is good and bad, lol. Good because I finally have a domain name that matches the title of my blog. It's now www.sparrowscraftynest.blogspot. My nest is crafty, so I feel good about the change. Bad because I have no idea how to get to my other two blogs... and I found a bunch of cool DIY's to put on my DIY blog.

Oh, also I found that statistics thing. Very cool. I found out most of my traffic is people wanting to see before and after projects and upcycles. That's awesome cuz those are my favorite thing to do. I'm going to try to get some more of those on here. AND believe me, I've got some projects a-brewing.

Time for this Pre-K teacher to go love on my class and teach them about the ocean, but I will be back to night with those DIY's.

P.S. if anyone can tell me how to get to my other blogs AND/OR how to get to my dashboard I would be ecstatic!

The Thirteen Project- 3

I'm using thirteen embroidery hoops to tell a story about my family. This is a story of the beginning. My husband and I met in ASL101 in Spring '05. I was there to learn sign language, and as he puts it, he "was there to pick up chicks." He decided on me because I used God in a sentence without a curse word. If you aren't a sign language officianto, or you've never watched Sesame Street lol, this is the sign for "I love you." Now, I will be honest and say I didn't like Justin when I first met him. He didn't let that bother or discourage him though, he wanted me and that was that. It took him quite a while to convince me, but his persistence paid off. When Justin decides he really wants something, his mind is made. Although this quality is kind of troublesome sometimes, he has never had second thoughts about wanting me or loving me. I'm blessed that way. I love my husband with all my heart, and this is a fun reminder of when I first laid eyes on him.