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| Us on the car ferry going from Ft. Morgan to Dauphin Island |
Wow this year is flying by. Today marks the end of the first half of the year! I cannot believe it, although I really can as it is June 30 and it is 102 degrees outside. Mississippi heat is a phenomenon that cannot be explained only experienced. It is the hottest place I have ever been and I hope to ever go! I digress! A couple of weeks ago I got to take a business trip down to the coast! Mike accompanied me and we spend a wonderful four day weekend at the beach! We ate extremely too much and got too much sun but it was a blast! It was our first time at the gulf in Alabama and it was so alien to see the oil and natural gas rigs out in the water there. We had a very informative couple of hours visiting with one of the scientific collaborators down at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab and that was the ‘business’ side of the trip! The rest of the time we spent relaxing, eating, shopping and exploring.
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| Fishing boat in the Mobile Bay |
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| Fort Gaines |
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| Wicked storm on the Mobile Bay |
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| Gulf Shores Beach |
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| USS Alabama in Mobile |
On another note, I have also been doing some more diy projects! I have many lined up at the moment but here are a couple that I have completed since my last post!
First is the coffee table. There is kind of a funny story behind this. After I painted the nightstands and the TV table for our bedroom I had the painting/diy itch so I started looking for pieces of furniture that we did not have that I could transform from drab to fab on the cheap(most importantly) so one day as I was browsing craigslist I saw a coffee table located here in Starkville and I showed it to Mike and he told me to call about it. As I was putting the digits in my phone randomly it showed up as the number of one of my friends here in town. She and her husband were selling off all of their furniture before they moved back home to North Dakota. She was originally selling the table for $15 but offered me the friend discount so I scored it for $10!! In the picture you will notice that the table is missing a drawer so we knew we needed to figure something out. Mike and I made a fake drawer front for the table before painting and attached it with Gorilla glue(which btw is totally awesome). Next I painted the table and let it dry forever. It is now in our living room and even though I cringe we lounge our feet on it constantly! I already had the black paint leftover from the other tables and all I had to purchase was the wood for the drawer front and a drawer pull for about $6.00 for both. So I spent less than $20 on this table which I am super stoked about! I need some accessories to put on top of it but I have a couple of ideas up my sleeve about that for a later project!
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| Before |
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| After: close up |
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| After: loving the new rug from Tracy! |
The second project I did last weekend while Mike was out of town. I have been wanting lamps for our ‘new’ nightstands for quite a while. However they are super pricey as you have to buy the bases and then the shades and we are quite limited in the home decor department here in Starkville. So while browsing some diy sites on the internet I came across a couple of people buying thrift store lamps and painting them to match their own decor so I decided that this may be a way that I could have cool, funky lamps and not have to pay an arm and a leg for them! I went to the local Salvation Army and jackpot, there were like 20 sad and pathetic old brass lamps just sitting there waiting to be saved. I found two that were matching and when I checked if they worked and they did they were as good as mine. For $4 each I couldn’t say no. These two were wood as well as brass and although I hadn’t seen anyone online paint a wood lamp I thought what the heck, I’ll try it. I also picked up a solid brass lamp for $2 for the living room that I will reveal later(when I find the perfect shade). I left there and immediately went to Lowe’s and picked up some spray paint and primer and went home and got to work. This took me all of about 30 minutes of total painting although I did have to wait 2 hours between priming and painting and that was the hardest part. I actually bought the white drum shades from Lowe’s as well which was my largest expense at $14 each. However the price of the shades were worth it because even if I decide that I don’t want blue lamps anymore I can repaint them and still use the white shades. I picked the blue as I was trying to have another color in the room besides the gray and yellow and I tried to match the blue color to the blue in the fish picture above the bed. I love the finished product and it makes me happy every time I walk into my bedroom! This was my favorite project so far!
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| Before: so sad and blah
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| After: so funky and fresh! |
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| After: Pumpkin enjoying the new lamps and bedding! |
Stay southern,
arnoldadventures.net 