chalkboard.

guess what?? my sister, her husband, and her two little ones (three if you count the one swimming around in her belly!) are coming to visit me in a couple weeks! a girl in one of my classes was telling me that she has a chalkboard wall in her house, and she said that when she babysits, the kids love it! so, when the dates of my family's visit became official back in february, i knew just what to do. i want my niece and nephew to have fun here. i decided to make a chalkboard wall for the renter! we can paint our walls as long as we paint them back white when we move out, but our walls are textured, so i took the easier route. 

 jon and i measured the wall that we wanted the chalkboard on and decided on a size for the board itself. we wanted it to take up most of the wall, and still look okay and somewhat centered even though there is a weird light switch in the way. then we went to home depot and bought a $9 sheet of plywood and a $15 bucket of black chalkboard paint. the worker cut the plywood down to the size we wanted and we brought it home.

 it was so easy to paint. i just propped it up on a bucket, opened the garage and painted a coat every time i had a spare 10 minutes. i think i did about 5 coats. i wanted it to be thick because, as you can see, the plywood is very textured. it felt smooth enough at the store, but when i brought it home, i realized that it would be weird to write with chalk on it. i would recommend getting a nicer, smoother piece of wood instead of plywood. we got that because it was the cheapest!

 a few coats later, i put a piece of chalk sideways and colored the entire board, then erased it. it worked! here is my cute guy hanging it up. you can see that it isn't centered on the wall, but it still looks good. 

 i was going to frame it with molding, but i like how it looks with no border. I'm glad that i painted the edges even though i wasn't planning on having them exposed. it brings interest into our front room and gives guests a little area to doodle on. it has been fun! surprisingly enough, the grooves and imperfections in the plywood haven't proved to be a problem! it's not as smooth as a school chalkboard, but it's easy to write and draw on it.

can't wait for my favorite little kidlets to come and try it out for themselves!

chair.

a few months ago (like...FEBRUARY...), Kalie and I went antique shopping. 

we went all over the salt lake valley to lots of different stores, it was so fun!

our last stop was this cute little store in sugar house. there was an old old lady there with her daughter. they told us that they had been running that store way back when, but eventually stopped for some reason. they still owned the little store, it just wasn't open to the public. so, they just kept adding more and more furniture to it as if it were storage. finally, the daughter talked the mother into opening the store again just to get rid of all of the left over furniture.

there was hardly anything in the store, but in the very back of the room, i found this gem.

the OLD price tag on the left says "$30"...the one on the right says "$2"

yes, i got this pretty chair for two dollars. 

i felt a little bad buying something from there.  they said as soon as everything is sold, they are done with the store. they were both sweet though and i loved this chair. 

okay see how yuck the seat was? and how thin and sketchy it was?

look at her now! this is leftover fabric from when I interned at Ethan Allen. I had used it for a project, so a big chunk was missing out of the back....it was....SUCH a pain to get the fabric to cover the entire cushion. it came out a little wonky, but i like it.

made the cushion from scratch, first time doing that. it was a struggle and it isn't perfect, but i think it turned out pretty cute. besides the new seat and cleaning the wood, i didn't do anything to the chair. doesnt it look so much better though? i love how the dark bits of the fabric brings out the darkness of the wood. 

i love bring such old pieces into new homes. they bring such life with them. and they're so much better and sturdier than furniture you can find anywhere else nowadays...

DIY serving platters.

katie and I had a fun day yesterday. i picked her up at noon to go to orem to try on my wedding dress (eep!!). we got there and they didnt HAVE my wedding dress. even though they'd called me the day before reminding me of my fitting the next day. now i'm not quite sure what that says about their business, but it made me very upset. why call me to remind me of my fitting if my dress wont even be there the next day for me to FIT into??

anyway. good thing we were in orem because i

posted these rings on craig's list and someone in orem wanted to buy one. so we met up with him and he bought it for $60 dollars!!

*I have two more. if you are interested, they are mens size 11 carbon fiber rings. they are really cool and really good looking. i'm trying to sell them on ksl and craig's list for $100, but i'll sell them to my blog readers (ha..) for $55. spread the word, eh??

after i made money, we went back up to salt lake to a bead store. katie is super crafty and loves making supercute binki chains for babies and she had to get supplies there.

after that, we went to the D.I.

her friends at church told her about this fun project that we decided to do.

we were mostly going to just get the supplies so that we could go to the activity and do the project with all the other girls, but we wanted immediate gratification so we bought the supplies and glue and put them together last night...

this is what i bought at the D.I.

-a really cute vase.

-2 picture frames.

-a small cup/vase

looking thing.

-two small plates.

-two large plates.

-a china set. includes big plate, small plate, and small bowl for four settings. its so nice and it had all the pieces! so excited for our new apartment/house!

all of this.....for only...

$16.50.

katie got TONS of stuff as well, and only spent $12.50!!

we were so excited and we both left the d.i. with SO many bags in our hands!!

thats a first!!

after the D.I. we had to run home and save sam from the children, haha.

then we left again and went straight to ikea (our favorite place to shop.)

katie returned over $100 worth of merchandise (the lady was really happy about it)

and then we ate dinner.

dinner and dessert with a drink to share for both of us at ikea was $4, ps.

we walked around ikea and looked for glasses to use for our project. they did have a lot of options, but nothing like what we were looking for.

katie ended up buying a three dollar pillow case for her one dollar pillow and a candy bar for us to share, then we spedsped to HobbyLobby to look for glue for the project, and ribbon for katie's binki chain she's making.

well, we got there 3 minutes before it closed and it didnt have glue.

so we ran to home depot where we found some! just what we needed.

after home depot, we went to the dollar store.

we found a cup for me to use on my project!!

then we went home to rest.

whoops, spoke too soon.

we were going to make brownies, and i needed to make brownies for sunday dinner today, so we had to get back in the car and head to ream's for brownies and chocolate chips.

we also tried getting a red box movie but didn't since none of our codes worked.

(pay $1?...seriously?)

this time we really did make it home. boy was audrey happy to get out of her carseat for the first time in 3 hours!!

katie has recently been raving about having bean brownies. instead of using eggs, water, and vegetable oil, you get a can of beans and take all the water out, put them in a blender until they're creamy and add them to the brownie batter. so she made those while i made my platter.

well 1.5 hours later, we finally took the brownies out. they really did need to be in there that long...wellll almost that long. sam decided to get the CHEAPEST brownies he could find and we could tell when we tried them.

they.

were.

awful.

it was sad because katie wanted me to try the bean brownies, she's had them before and she said you can't even tell a difference!

*also, if you use beans instead of eggs, water, and vegetable oil, the brownies cost LESS weight watchers points. !!

after the brownies, katie put her platter together!

it was altogether a successful and FULL day and night!

our platters turned out really cute! they were really cheap

(we probably used more money on gas running all around then on the supplies themselves)

this is a side view. the bottom cup is upside down, and the middle cup is right side up.

(parfait dishes work better and look cuter, we found)

i am making two for jon and i. i did my NOT as cute plates first in case i messed up.

katie's plates are supercute and both from the D.I.

they are different brands from different plate sets. and they look AWESOME together!

here is the top view.

try it out! it was really easy, and they turned out cute.

Epoxy glue is what we used, BTW.

enjoy!

break down of the cost-

big plate-.75 cents at d.i.

little plate- .75 cents at d.i.

bottom cup-1.00 at d.i.

middle cup-1.00 at dollar tree

epoxy glue-5.00 dollars at home depot

(you can probably put 2.5 platters with one thing of glue,

we put both of ours together and had some glue left over)