Dining Room Refresh

My Dining Room

I was getting super bored with my dining room.  It was starting to feel a little out of date.  I still absolutely love my furniture although I am considering reupholstering my chairs. That scares me a little. Anyway, that's for another day.
I like glam, my hubby does not.  Here is where I compromised.  I did a little on the wall.  
Here is a before picture from last Thanksgiving's post.  

Since then, we made a few changes.  The beautiful picture over the buffet was our Christmas gift to each other last year. It's called "The Bow" from Z Gallerie.  One of my favoritist stores in the world!  We had eyed it for a very long time but couldn't justify the cost in these harder times and just before Christmas we decided instead of dropping money on a bunch of unnecessary "stuff", we would give that to each other.  

Merry Christmas Honey!

Well, now it's the end of August and I wanted to pay a little attention to this special room.

Target had these fabulous mirrored frames that didn't look like the rest of the world's.  

So I decided to revamp a wall with sepia toned wedding pictures. Our parents, us and our children that have married.  We have one more that is still single so I went ahead and purchased the frame for his future portrait and placed a copy of 1Corinthians 13 in it. That's the chapter about love.  If you  haven't read it, it's a beautiful design on marriage as well as life.

Then I moved my Corinthian column to the other side of the cabinet to place a lamp that I took from another room where it was under appreciated and voila!  More light!  I love lamps and light You can control your ambiance so much with them.

I found the large metal "Trophy" at my other addiction, TJMaxx.

Bye bye chalkboard, it was fun while it lasted.

I have a blank table at the moment but never fear!  There is something in the works! A little "earthy glam". Your='re welcome Honey. XO

Target is still my favorite "$100 Store" !!

And Z Gallerie? Well let's just say the $ signs multiply but it's worth it!

Thanks for visiting!!

"To Be Frugal or Not To Be Frugal"...That is the Question!

Frugal...Ugh!  I hate that word.  It usually means I can't do or have something.  Go out to eat or go on a trip.
BUT!! It actually means that I can do those things even more often than I think if I would just make a few changes.
Recently I was very excited to hear that there was a new "gel" nail polish out that didn't require the special light you have to cure it with.  Well, my favorite "$100 Store" carried it! Target here I come!  Now in the name of Target Love, this is not to bash that store.  It's my go to for just about everything. (I wish they carried everything but they don't) 
This brought to mind, how much money I dump into that store on a weekly basis on "non frugal, yet to be listed items", nail polish, lipstick, spatula, candles, etc, etc...
Then it brought to mind my mom.  She was an upper middle class lady that had her hair and nails done probably once a week (she had 6 kids, she deserved it). But... did we have a new candle, new dishes, new nail polish, new lunch bag, new tee shirt, new, new, new... every week.  No way!  
This is no way shape or form to put us on some sort of guilt trip.  I thought it might be encouraging to start a few new ways to see your money grow, spend time with friends and get creative.
Here's what I mean by that.
See this picture?

Front and center is the fore said gel polish. Cost $14.99 for the start up box set of 2.  The new bottle of red to add to my collection was $7.99. Now that's a total of $22.98. Plus tax.  Can't get away from that.

See the basket of misc. polishes.  Now there's a bunch of waste.  I think there are a total of 2 that I actually use. AND by the time I get to them again they'll be thick and not worth their weight in pennies.  By the way, The gel brags that it lasts up to 2 weeks.  Yay!! Nope, not even 2 days for me.  Sorry.  

The encouragement I have for you in this one is.  Buy ONE bottle of your absolute favorite, doesn't matter if it costs $2 or $12.   Now use it.  Use it again, again and again.  Oh! and if your friends love it loan it to them and borrow  their favorite.   You could even have a "Polish Party" one afternoon or evening to try them out to see which brand you love most with your friends.  Sometimes it's not the expensive ones that last longer.  

Having said all that, I spent $24ish bucks on polish this month.  That doesn't include any pedicures.

So today I'm starting an envelope to save $25 I would have spent on the pedicure, do it myself (waaaaahhh, I'll get over it) and next month I'm going to add $40 to it for misc, polish or pedi junk.   Think it'll add up?

Thanks for visiting!