Fall Mantle Decor

The Nester is my decorating hero. Seriously. You don't even want to know what my house looked like before I found her blog. Now my friends don't even believe that I used to have trouble decorating. *scoff*. So the Nester is having a fall mantle link up party, and I couldn't refuse the invitation :-) You can also find a fall decor linky party over at Hooked on Houses.

Lots of glitter. I glittered the edges of the roses myself with clear glitter. All the white ones, and 3 of the black ones. I love the addition of the one red rose- it brings so much interest to the arrangement! Actually lighting my candles? Another trick I learned from the Nester. The sparkly gourds on the candle stick holders also made me happy. The tall ones needed a little piece of double sticky tape and they were good to stay.The little glittery head things used to be my mom's. Don't know where they came from, but you could totally paper mache your own. 

I LOVE my ladder above the mantle. We found it in the cellar of the farm house when we moved in. My husband thought he was going to actually use it as a ladder. Silly hubby ;-)

Fireplace Makeover- less than an hour of painting...

Less than 1  hour of painting popped my fake fireplace right off of the wall!

Before

After

Some Details...

Patriotic Porch

Even though my front door is purple (and not red) I've decided to decorate my porch with a patriotic theme. So not "4th of July" decor, but actually American themed year round. I've been seeing some really cool projects that I'll be doing later. When it's not the 4th of July anymore. And none of you will care. Lol!

So here's what I have going on for now:

I love my hanging baskets from the dollar tree.

Clearance flowers. I love his old toolbox they're in.

I got it from a yard sale for $2.

My antique auditorium bench that I found beside a dumpster.

The porch swing my husband just made.

My blue cross from the dollar tree on my $10 Salvation Army shelf.

My purple front door and a wreath that was a wedding present.

I recently painted my shutters from gray to black.

My old wagon wheels came from a "free" pile on the side of the road.

The little flags all came from the dollar tree, or the Target dollar spot. Thanks for joining me today!

Don't forget to check out the other entries at Centsational Girl's Stars and Stripes Party!

Purple Door Eye Candy

I posted about painting my front door here. I never noticed what a nice door this farmhouse has until I painted it. I love the details!

Don't miss the before and after shots here! And find more front door posts at Funky Junk Interiors.

Purple Front Door

I've been working on my curb appeal this Summer and watching everyone's porches everywhere I drive. Sometimes my swirving would indicate I should be watching the road. Anyway, I think color adds a lot to curb appeal, and I felt like our front door could really use a splash of something bright.

Blah Brown Before Door

Once you go purple, you never go back!

Not bad, huh? I painted it while bouncing the baby in the bouncy chair with one foot. Lol! I love the color and I'm so glad I had the guts to go through with this! It painted on really bright, but dried a nice shade of purple. Shew! You never can tell with paint.

Red would have been the most obvious color choice for a white farmhouse, but I wanted something a little different. And I love me some purple! Yay for colorful curb appeal!

Thrift Store Find!

I found this great hutch thing at the Salvation Army here for $35. It was love at first site!


But barn red really isn't my color. So I painted it black. Classy. Simple. Sleek. I thought that would be best since I am going to put it in our entry way :-)
Kind of boring for me? Not quite. Check out the little surprise you get when you open the cabinets and drawers!


I love me some purple! The best part? I got the whole gallon of purple paint for $3.95 because it was a 'mistint' or 'oops paint'. If any of you aren't checking the oops paint shelf every time you go into Wal-Mart, Home Depot, or Lowes, you're missing out!

Defeating my Beast of Boxes

Unpacking. Ya. Not my strongest point. But it's fun getting the farmhouse together!

This is what it looked like in here when the moving

truck was pulling away...

But here's what it looks like now!

Ok, I'm going to drink a glass of sweet tea. I've earned it :-)

Fixing up the Farmhouse

I have been CRAZY busy! We are moving on Sunday to a fabulous old farmhouse built in the year 1900, and we're so excited! However, packing all our stuff while watching 2 tiny tots has been no easy task...

As if packing weren't enough, we decided we needed to paint everything so we would be sure there was no exposed lead paint. So for the last week, I've been painting painting packing painting packing packing painting. Ya. But I do have some great pictures for you guys!

The windows were really the worst off before cleaning and painting...

Then we thought, "Why stop at the windows and the walls?" so we re-sealed the floor.

I'm really glad we did this. We just got some high gloss polyurethane, and brushed it on with one of those lamb head applicator things. It cost $50 for the supplies, but the results were fabulous! The floor was in such bad shape before that even after we mopped, our feet were still turning black. It took us less than 2 hours to do this, and I'm very excited about the results! :-)

Just a little farmhouse eye-candy ;-)

Here's my new living room. I can't wait to get my furniture in there and start arranging! You guys will help me figure out where everything goes, right?