Sunday, February 24, 2013

Show Off Sunday Party!!


I am so excited for this week's  House of Thrifty Decor's Show Off Sunday Party!!  I can't wait to see what great projects everyone has been working on.

Next Sunday I’ll post my favorite projects from this week's party!


Thanks for coming to my party!  Feel free to post anything you would like from: home decor, crafts, recipes, thrift store finds, great before and afters, etc.

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Now the not so fun part, rules.
Here are the simple rules: (I hate rules!)
* Add my blog or button to your link. Or don’t. Sidebar. Separate tab. I don’t care. Just put a link to my site somewhere on your blog so others can come party with us!
* Link directly to your post, not your blog. If you want to link to your BLOG, click here and link away!

Let the fun begin!!!!

Please share with us what projects you have been working on this week.

Saturday, February 23, 2013

Top 10 Favorite Stores for Thrifty Decor



I get asked all the time for my top 10 favorite stores to shop for thrifty decor.  So I thought I would put together a list of my favorite stores:




I don't know anyone who doesn't love this place, it is the best place to find inexpensive yet unique times.  The key to finding the best stuff before anyone else is to talk to the store employees and find out which day or days the new truck comes and is unloaded.  I found out my favorite store gets it's truck on Tuesdays and Fridays..  So Tuesday afternoon and evening is prime picking time, as well as Saturday morning.  So go ahead and befriend the employees!  My other piece of advice is if you see it buy it, or it might not be there the next time. 




When I first discovered this place I thought that it was a garden center, boy was I wrong.  They have tons of patio furniture cushions and garden decor but much, much more. There are rows and rows of pictures, mirrors, lamps, lamp shades, bedding, area rugs, and other home decor items at great prices. You do need to have a list of what you are looking for (of you will be over whelmed) and you might need to dig for that perfect item but it is well worth it for the price. 




With a name like this you would think they only had Christmas items all year around, but they don't.  They have awesome home decor and seasonal holiday items for every holiday.  I have bought awesome Halloween, Thanksgiving, and 4th of July decor for out side of my house.  I always get compliments on the items I buy there.  I also bought 2 awesome night stands for my guest room for only $25 each, I just had to screw on the legs and presto I had new night stands.  Great place to find the unexpected. 




Another great store for home decor and holiday decor.  They have great prices on close outs from other stores.  I get most of my holiday decor from here, great selection of out door decor.  My husband and I bought our Broyhill bed room set at a local furniture store when they were closing out the heirloom cherry collection.  Unfortunately they didn't have another night stand we happened to go buy Big Lots that week and there it was for less than the other store.  We loved that collection so much we bought the coffee table and end tables to match at Big Lots all for a whopping $150. What a steal for 3 pieces of real wood furniture!!



While this store is mainly online you can find some of their pieces at your local Home Depot Stores, Home Depot owns them.  Crazy I know!  I have loved this store since I can remember, we used to have a Home Depot Expo store in my home town when they closed they moved everything online plus more.   Great place to find inspiration and home decor.  I will let you in on a little secret if you see something you like you can wait for it to go on sale and get it for a steal!!! Or sign up for their coupons and shipping specials, I don't buy anything that I don't have a shipping special on.  We have bought furniture from their site for my husbands man room that we adore, but each piece was 75 lbs so thankful for my coupon or the shipping would have been an arm and a leg. 



Not only is this a great place for clothes but home decor. They have a great selection of accent furniture, pictures, mirrors, and unique vases.  I have been shopping here since I moved into my first apartment.  In fact my husband loves to remind me of the time we went to the Ross Store in San Francisco while on vacation.  We needed to kill an hour before our dinner reservation when I noticed a great picture frame shaped like a window pane that holds 20 photos, 1 in each pane. My poor husband had to carry it 3 blocks on his head back to the hotel, to this day I never hear the end of it.  If you ever go to San Francisco please stop by there 4 story Ross Store.   I have never seen a better Ross in my life. 


What can I say about this place other than amazing.  Each store is unique as everything is donated by the community and the profits go to Habitat so they can build homes for much deserving families.  I have shopped at stores in Ca and now here in VA.  Both stores have great things but its first come first serve.  So if you see it, you like it, then buy it!!  They have great building materials that you can transform into anything, just like my laundry room sign. I have also bought amazing furniture there that I restored.  Great place especially if you are starting out and are looking for great furniture. 


I love this store for curtains and pictures for your walls. They have a great selection of pictures for every room in your house.  They curtain selection is equally great if you are looking for 84 inch or 95 inch curtains.  Plus they generally have coupons for 20% off online, via email or with my iphone app.  I have also bought a fabulous pair of towels for my powder room, they have some unusual patterns that are a little out of the box to help jazz up a boring powder room.


I love this place for its curtains.  If you are looking for curtains for any room at a great price this should be your first stop, especially for unique lengths like 108 inch.  We bought are living room curtains here last year for $25 a curtain, that was a great price for 108 inch thermal black out curtains.  I couldn't beat that price anywhere else, plus I had a coupon for more money off. 


Who doesn't love this place?  They have great prices on everything for your home from bedding to picture frames.  My favorite home decor isle is the seasonal decor, this isle is usually located on an end cap of a major isle.  Great accent pieces in fabulous colors.  Keep your eye out for this isle as it changes often and you can score some great deals when they start marking things down.  I bought 2 purple bottle vases for my guest bedroom for under $5.  Someone returned them and they were sitting at an end cap at the back of the store on the bottom shelf when I spotted them. I had seen them weeks earlier for $15 each.  That reminds me walk the back of the home decor isles and look at the end caps for great clearance deals.  Don't be afraid to dig and look on the bottom shelves for great deals. 


These are just a few of my favorite stores.  I have others that I like to score a great deal at as well.  What stores do you love to find a good deal at?





Saturday, February 16, 2013

Potter Barn Book Inspiration

Where to find inspiration?

This past July we finally bought our for now dream home.  Our move was such a blur.  I bought the house over the Memorial Day weekend all alone as my husband was still in Afghanistan.  We had just a few weeks to buy a home, move before he came home and we both started our new jobs mid July 60miles from where we currently lived.  Talk about a whirlwind.  Over all I am happy with the home and its blank canvas it provides me.  

I was so focused on getting us moved in that I didn't even think about painting or decorating.  My focus was get us in so we could start our jobs and we will sort everything else out at some point.  

After weeks of packing, moving, and the stress of welcoming home my husband after a year I wasn't in the creative place to decorate.  In a way I had a block similar to writers block.  Has that ever happened to you?

After being sick of living in an unfinished house I need something to help me out of my block.  We had moved 4 times in 4 years and this was the first time I didn't have the house decorated in a matter of days.  I can usually go around and figure out how to make our furniture and decor fit into our new space but this time it was different.  I think partly because I knew we would be in this house for the next 5-7 years and wanted to make sure everything was right.  I didn't want to paint or decorate and not be happy with it.

One day while visiting Pottery Barn Outlet I picked up this book and began flipping thru it and came across a few pictures that I loved.  I really wanted the book but my husband talked me out of it.  Not knowing that while I was looking at it he had ordered it from Amazon to surprise me for my bday.  What a good hubby!!  When the book finally arrived I was so happy I spent a few days marking pages I loved with post it notes.   I finally felt that this block was lifting and the creative juices were flowing.



 If you haven't seen this book I recommend picking it up, they no longer sell it at the stores but you can find it on the internet used for a great price.  The book is full of great inspiration from pictures to how to articles.  A really good read.

One of my favorite sections in the book is the Color chapter.  They really help you pull together groupings of colors that work really well together.  Pottery Barn has really taken a lot of the guess work out of it.  Of course I still had to buy 12 other sample colors just to make sure I was making the right choices but that is another post.

By far my favorite page is 307.  



I love this article about building a color plan, which can be a great foundation to beginning the process of decorating your home.  It shows you how to incorporate different colors in a similar color family and pull it all together so it doesn't look choppy.  We bought a few of the colors from Benjamin Moore who sells Pottery Barn paint.  We loved Collingwood OC-28 and Cape Hatteras Sand AC-34 both have been used in our home. 

Are these not great color plans? Have you put together a color plan for your house?  Where do you get your inspiration from?