Spoonful of Imagination

Add it to a Family for Something Beautiful

Thrifting Treasures

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I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving yesterday.  We had an amazing day!  It was our first time to host, and we had Matt’s extended family over.  It was a lot of fun with lots of laughter and family!  The benefit of hosting was we hardly had to do any of the cooking.  Sweet deal in my book.  I can’t wait to share some of these pictures with you! I hope you enjoy the rest of this holiday weekend.  I did a little Black Friday shopping last night with my sister-in-law and am now gearing up for my son’s birthday tomorrow.  It is crazy busy times, but it is all so fun and full of love.  I am truly blessed!

Even though its been a busy week I didn’t want to ignore my Friday Project Spotlight. I wanted to share a quick chair makeover that my sister, Olivia did last week. Olivia is the other half Dancing Zebras, our Etsy craft store.

Olivia, and my niece, Charleigh, were in town for a week.  We crafted and did all sorts of fun thrifting shopping adventures.  It was a perfect week!  My mom was so sweet to watch the boys one afternoon and finish up “school,” so I could have a girls day!  So, my sis and I loaded up our girls and went to four thrift stores in a row.  It was so fun!

We found lots of good deals and fun things to re-do/re-vamp!  Don’t you love Reagan’s Baby Gap hat we found for $1.00?? I love brainstorming with Olivia and dreaming of how to make ugly things beautiful again.

One of Olivia’s amazing finds was this old chair that she redid with a little paint and a pretty piece of fabric!  I love it and might secretly be wishing I had bought that chair!

The chair folds up, and it would be so easy to store and yet bring out when you need that extra seat!  I love the colors she choose and combined together!  She unscrewed the seat, spray painted the chair, then recovered the seat with some fabric she had left over from another project.  She then went back and gave it a light sanding job.  Didn’t it come out so cute?! It always amazes me how quickly these thrifting finds can become treasures.

We had a lot of fun on our shopping trip.  I found some fun things that I was able to use this week to decorate for our Thanksgiving feast.

I got that little pumpkin holder for $1.00 and those glass vases for $.80 each.  I simply filled them with some acorns I had collected.  I just adore that wood bowl I found for $1.00!

Thanks for stopping in and seeing my Project Spotlight item.  Thanks Olivia for letting me feature your chair makeover!  Do you have a project you would like me to spotlight?  I’d love to hear from you and share one of your creations!  Message me and we can work it out! Enjoy the rest of your weekend and I’ll be back on Monday with more from my Tidbits of Me series.

 

 

 

 

**Linked up at Miss Information.

A weekend for family dates and thrifty finds

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We had an awesome weekend!  You all know how crazy our summer has been.  I think this was the first weekend in a while we didn’t have ANYTHING on the calendar.  So, what did we do?!  We got out and had some fun!  I have been wanting to go to Scott’s Antique Market for months and months.  For those that don’t know it is a HUGE flea market/craft show/junk yard.  It is once a month down in Atlanta.  It seems that every weekend it is here, we have had lots already going on.  It was meant for us to go this weekend.

Before we got to Scott’s, we participated in Cow Appreciation day at Chick-Fil-A on Friday.  We dressed up as cows and got free food.  It was amazing!

Matt and I both got combo meals and EACH kid got their own kid’s meal.  It was all free!  I was so excited!  We’ve done this Cow Appreciation Day in the past, but not with three kids!  Granted, Chick-Fil-A gets a lot of my money regularly.  We usually have a coupon for something (from their amazing calendars), but to get a whole meal free!?! What a generous and AMAZING company!  We tried to use the camera’s timer for a family shot…

It was a little failed attempt, but I still like the picture.  It captured us running inside from the crazy storm happening outside.  No joke.  We were die-hard fans to go get a free meal in that rain storm.

Thank you Chick-fil-A for our free dinner!!!!  Now onto Scott’s!  I was so excited to go explore!  We loaded the fam up, packed a lunch, and headed south to Atlanta.

I LOVED these water-spout knobs.  It was so funny to watch our boys go crazy in the junk area finding “treasures” as they kept referring to things.  It made me giggle to myself.  I saw it as treasures too, but to a non-crafter it really was a lot of rusty/chipped junk.  I was SO pumped when I saw this pile.

It was a whole pile of metal letters!!  I had to have one!  I didn’t know where I would put it, but I wanted it.  For $20, I thought I scored a fun accent piece!  I’m still not sure where it will find a home in my home, but for now it is on my dresser.

I had the intention to look for an old door to make into a headboard for my new bed, but these amazing metal pieces caught my attention instead…

I LOVED the metal frames.  Now, my mind is going crazy on how I can do something like that for a headboard.  I’ll keep you posted on what I come up with!  After an hour and half, our sweet kiddos were ready to run free and not be told to “do not touch-just look” anymore, so we left.  Now that I know what Scott’s is like and have a grasp on how massive it is, I can’t wait to go back (kid free) and spend oodles more time there!  While we were down town, we scooted over to the zoo and used our season pass again!  The kids were able to run, see animals, and climb on the playground.

It was still really hot and we had been walking already for a long time because of Scott’s.  J found his happy place.  What a smart boy!

Reagan also found hers. 🙂

She knew exactly what she wanted.  She kept reaching up for the hand washing station by the playground until I placed her up there.  Every time I went to get her down (cause we all know the sink is not there to be used as a spray ground water park) she shook her head at me, said “no, no, no” while waving her finger and scooting away from me.  Haha  this girl knows what she wants already in life.  She has my heart.

So, we left the zoo and came home and CRASHED Saturday night.  My favorite find over the weekend is probably this little treasure at a local thrift store…

I laughed out loud when I found it.  It was perfect for me because it is SO not perfect for me.  My husband is the amazing chef in this house!  So, I wear my new shirt proudly with a smile on my face, as I laugh on the inside at how funny I think I am.

I hope you all are finding some quiet, relaxing ways to enjoy your family and get some rest!  Summer will be over all too fast!

Linked over at Southern Hospitality and Coastal Charm.

A Trick of Mine

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As my kids are getting older, nap time has been more flexible for us.  Reagan (17 months) is the only one that naps anymore and she can be flexible.  Often we will be out at the park or running errands and (since we don’t have to be home for set naps) I think “oh, if we could only do one more store before heading home”.  Other times, we will be out as a family and plans change randomly and we are out longer than we expected.  I often bring little snacks in the van and let them eat them out of our plastic containers.  But, in a lot of cases (where our plans have changed), we might run into Trader Joes for a bag of crackers or some kind of snack.  We hadn’t planned on being out long enough to need a snack, so I didn’t have one with us.  I get back in the van with the much needed snack and am at a loss as to how to pass it out.  This little snack is so important to revive all of our little attitudes and energy:), so there has been many a creative ways we have come up with for these snacks to be handed out in the car.

The other day, I came up with what I thought was a genius idea.  I bought a package of plastic cups at Target to solely keep in the van for these very incidents!  No more looking for snack containers/plastic bowls left in the van to reuse…or even leaving those containers in the van!  Now, I simply can throw the cups away when we get to our destination!  The other morning we were headed to my mom’s to go swimming in her pool and went through Chick-fil-a for breakfast.  After getting our food, I quickly started trying to figure out how I was going to divide it up so the kids each had a way to hold it and eat…until I remembered my cups!  What an easy lifesaver!!  I then didn’t have any greasy dishes cooking in my van all day either!  I threw those cups away when I got to my mom’s!

I know it’s not a good habit to eat in the car.  We don’t make it a habit or want it to be a regular thing, but let’s face it!  It happens!  Why not make it easier!?!

My little girl can totally eat cut up chicken minis out of cup, but couldn’t hold a wrapper and eat a whole chicken biscuit.  This helps her be happy as she can eat and doesn’t have to wait untill we arrived at my mom’s, but it also made me happy because I didn’t have to keep reaching behind me to hand her small bites.  Genius I tell you.

Happy kids=a happy mommy

Next time you find yourself at Target, I highly recommend picking up a stack of their cups to leave in your van for easy on the go snacks!