Spoonful of Imagination

Add it to a Family for Something Beautiful

Costumes for Cheap

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I am always excited to find dress up clothes really cheap.  My kids LOVE to dress up, and I love to encourage it!  For Reagan’s birthday in January, I have thought it would be cool to give her a box full of dress up clothes.  Our house currently only inhabits Spiderman, batman, Buzz Lightyear, Woody the Cowboy, etc type of costumes.  We need some girl stuff for this princess of mine!  Yesterday I went to my local thrift store and there was a whole aisle of Halloween costumes!  I was THRILLED!  Needless to say, I bought quite a few!  I plan on saving all the “girl” ones to give to Reagan for her birthday.

Can you believe that whole lot of costumes only cost $18?!  No joke!!  They ranged from $4 to $6 a piece, so that alone would have been a good deal, but I had a %50 off total purchase coupon that made it an even better deal!  They are all name brand (Disney, etc) and look in great condition!

You know my Transformer obsessed boys LOVE this Optimus Prime costume.  I might have one or two autobots this Halloween.  🙂

I have already gotten Reagan some fairy wings at the Dollar Store that will go great with this TinkerBell costume.

Can you beleive it only cost me $2.50?  That isn’t even the cost of a Chick-Fil-A sandwich!?!

There are lots of layers of girly fabrics in these costumes.  I just love having a girl!

Do you know that Children’s book Tea For Ruby?  We have it, and it is one of my favorites.   Ruby loves to dress up and gets invited to have tea with the queen.  It’s a great story about imagination.  Well, that purple dress is Ruby’s dress from the book!  What a great find.

I can’t wait till Reagan’s birthday!

If you too are looking to fill a dress up box, check out your local thrift store!  I hope you are having a great week.  Thanks so much for stopping by!

DIY Blue Painted Vase

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This week I had a little inspiration for my Friday Project Spotlight item.  I’m sure you have seen these GORGEOUS vases at Anthropologie:

I love them!! A thought that goes through my mind shortly after I figure out I love something (and want it) is “can I make it?”  I always think if I can make it, than it will be cheaper.  In this case, I thought I would give it a try.  My results aren’t anthropology, but I am pleased!!

I first got a clear glass vase at a thrift store for $0.99 and a bottle of paint for $0.68 at Hobby Lobby.

I poured the paint into my vase, and I kept turning the vase to let the paint flow all over and cover the clear glass.

It was kind of hard to get the middle “bump” of the vase covered so I ended up turning the vase over and letting it completely drain out.

There were only a few spots of the vase that weren’t totally blue (including the lip at the top), so I used a paintbrush and touched up those spots with the paint that had drained out.

I thought it looked pretty good here, so I tried it out.

I almost left it alone, but decided I needed to keep going with my task at making a cheaper Anthropologie type vase.  Plus, I had some etched glass markings I needed to cover up.

I sprayed a little glue on my vase and wrapped a piece of lace I had on hand around it.  I did this because I thought my black flower was too much smaller than the Anthropology vases’ flowers.  Plus, I LOVE texture!!  I then hot glued a black flower that I got at Jo Anne’s on it.  It was $1.50 with a %50 percent off coupon!

I really love the finished product, and I am so glad I kept going with this project!  I’m still working on “sealing” the vase so it is water proof.  Right now I have added a gloss varnish protective finish to it.  It is not totally “set”, so I can’t add water and try it yet.  I am hoping it works and the water doesn’t just break down my acrylic paint!  I would love to use the vase with real flowers.  It looks so good with these sunflowers on my end table!

If it doesn’t work I could always do something like this with it.

I am so pleased with my vase and think I got a good enough similarity to the Anthropologie vases.  What do you think!?!

Anthropologie, would you like to buy my design!?!  🙂

Thank you so much for checking in on this week’s Friday Project Spotlight item!

If you all LOVE Anthropologie and would like to win a $25 gift card there, go on over to Gentri Lee’s blog and register to win this giftcard from, Thriftary (one of my favorite blogs!).  There are lots of other goodies there to win too!  

I hope you all have a great weekend!!

Linked this project up at these fun parties:

Jennifer Rizzo, One Creative Mommy, Stuff and Nonsense, My Romantic Home, Southern Hospitality, The Ironstone Nest, Eclectically Vintage, Beneath My heart, and  At the Picket Fence.

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.