DIY Dress-Up Kit Gift

 If there is someone in your life who would love some dress-up clothes, now is the best time of year to buy them! Last year around this time I stocked-up on dress-up clothes for my niece Lyla.  I thought it would be a fun Christmas gift that would inspire creativity and that she would get a lot of use from.

My original plan was to get a lot of Halloween costumes on clearance, but they were SO cheaply made that they weren't even worth buying new! Instead, I found a lot of really, really nice dance outfits at Goodwill.  They tend to hang onto these donations and only set them out prior to Halloween, so go get them now!  Here are a few that I found:

During the Halloween season you can also find a lot of jewelry, crowns, and wands in dollar bins that made great additions to my gift.  

I purchased a purple storage bin from Target to store it all, and used my Cuttlebug to add the words 'Dress-Up' and my Niece's name to the outside.  I would have loved a box of fun like this when I was little! 

Goodwill Dresser Turned TV Console

What is wrong with me?!? 

That's exactly what I asked my husband the night I picked-up this beast for $40 from Goodwill:

You see I've spent the past 10 months re-designing our living room, which all started because our previous furniture was all from Goodwill and I felt like we were at a point in our lives where we should be past that. So, I sold our entire living room on craigslist to make room for all the great new pieces I was going to buy. Then I come home with this Goodwill gem; uglier, less expensive, more damaged and more out-dated than anything I had ever bought. Look at that drawer! Even I kind of thought I was crazy.

We were in need of a new TV console for the living room. I wanted something substantial with character and that didn't have open shelves.  Everything I liked was over $2,000 and was complete crap in terms of quality, so for $40 I decided to take a chance on the ugly dresser. We set it up in the living room and lived with it a while before I invested my time into painting it.  Even missing the trim on one drawer, it turned out to work great for us! 

We were able to have a local frame shop make a new trim piece for the drawer that was trim-less. It's not a perfect match but no one can tell! We sanded the dresser than painted it white using our Ben Moore trim paint.

My original plan was to replace the hardware to something more modern, but I fell in love with the details in the original hardware.  I sprayed them with oil rubbed bronze spray paint to darken them from the original brassy color.

The best part is the storage! It has 6 large drawers plus 3 hidden drawers in the cabinet. We are able to store all of our photo albums and lay our place mats flat with room to spare!

Overall I'm very happy with our new TV console. Saving $1,960 by being creative doesn't hurt either.

Thrifting Haul

I love it when my friend Halle from craft club posts pictures of her goodwill and garage sale finds, so I thought I'd do the same! Here's what I picked-up while running errands yesterday.

$3-A small glass jar to hold matches next to a candle on my coffee table tray.  I was so excited I filled it with matches as soon as I got home.  I plan to etch the bottom of the bottle for striking the matches, but if I don't get to it I might just cut the striking tip form the matchbox and tape it to the bottom. I found it at Hunt and Gather in Minneapolis.

$3-A snowmobile trophy top.  This thing is solid metal.  Since there's a screw on the bottom where it attached to a trophy, I though it might be cool to attach to a cork and use as a bottle stopper for one of my husband's scotch bottles. We'll see if it works. Also from Hunt and Gather.

$15-Solid wood antique dresser.  I've been looking for a piece with a lot of character for our entryway for years, and at this garage sale the price was right (I think I could have gotten it for $10 but I have a personal rule not to negotiate on anything I've been searching more than a year for!) It's dark cherry, not black as the photo conveys.  The hardware is original so I figured that was at least worth $15.  Not sure if I'll paint it, strip and stain, or chop up for firewood (it kind of smells musky, and the drawers stick, and my husband hasn't seen it yet, so its fate is unknown.......)

$1-Boomerang. How can you see a boomerang at a garage sale and not buy it?!?! They guy selling assured me it worked. I'll have to wait to test it out at my parent's farm. I'm upset with myself because they also had a bucket of metal baseball bats with a handwritten sign that said, "Protect your house!" that I thought was really funny. I planned on snapping a photo of it until the boomerang distracted me.