Blessings

Although I spend way more time on Facebook than I should, I somehow missed the memo on Thankful November.  I finally put it together this morning after days of seeing posts about being thankful.  I just thought people suddenly had woken up and realized how truly blessed there were! Silly me.

 

Since I didn't get on that bandwagon, I decided to write a quick post that gives an overview of my little corner of the world and all the blessings we have and have experienced to be thankful for.

 

Last month Mini was on fall break and Wonder Hubby and I took vacation time.  Other than our family vacation in the summer we are rarely ever all off at the same time.  We planned a few activities, antiquing, visiting colleges and seeing a movie (yes, that is a big deal around here, Wonder Hubby and I just never seem to get to the movies).  It was a glorious 9 days.  I truly mean that, I told both Wonder Hubby and Mini I don't know when I have enjoyed our time as much. 

 

Although Mini has been accepted to several different colleges (more blessings) she had not yet heard from the college she was most interested in.

 

These are pictures of the first couple of acceptances (then she lost interest in me taking pictures!).

First Acceptance!

 

Part of vacation week we planned a visit to her college of choice. It turned out to be a beautiful day here in Tennessee for a 3 1/2 hour drive there and the tour.  I didn't photo journal the visit, I just tried to actually live in the moment.  After the tour we met with her recruiter and she was told of her acceptance.....and let me take pictures. 

 

I think she may have been a bit overdramatic for pictures, but she was very happy!

 

We also took a day and drove into Kentucky to do a little antiquing.  We all enjoy digging through junk for treasure. 

 

 This trip Mini was on the hunt for a lamp.  She ended up finding one that she fell in love with and snapped it right up.  Turns out she was making her first purchase for her college dorm room (girl, please stop hurrying to get there you are killing me!).  I didn't realize what a big deal this was with her until I read her blog (which btw it a Christian based blog that features some of the content of her newspaper column and is AWESOME).  It was such a fun day.

 

We took in the Sandra Bullock movie Galaxy, which I loved cause I love some space stuff.  Toured another college and then ended up with a last minute home improvement project.  We decided to rip out the carpet in Mini's room and put down hardwoods.  It was a lot of work but she loves her floors and I am thrilled to have one less room with carpet (only 2 left to go!).

 

It was a great, relaxed and totally chilled week and I was so grateful for that.  Since then, well I am thankful we managed to get a tree that was leaning toward the house dangerously taken down, just before severe storms.  I am grateful to have had a really good sales month at Lottie and Molly not to mention that I have so enjoyed the pieces I have been working on as of late. 

Wonder Hubby was off last Sunday and we were able to attend church together which is huge because he is never off on Sunday!

 

How blessed are we that we have a nice home, a reasonably healthy family, cars with no major problems to drive to jobs we are blessed to have?  I would say very, very blessed and for all these things I am very, very thankful. 

 

Today, I am blessed with beautiful sunny skies and sweet texts from my children to start my day!  I hope you all are enjoying your blessings this minute, this day, this month and always.

French Typography Table

My dad recently brought me two of these tables.  They are really cute little tables but they had a bit of water damage on their tops and they were oak....which is so not selling in my area.

Since starting Lottie and Molly, I am always trying new techniques and ideas to make my furniture stand out a little.  Since these tables needed a little pizazz and I have been admiring furniture with transfers as of late and I am a huge fan of The Graphics Fairy now seemed like a good time to give it a try.

First I cleaned up the tables and base coated in a taupe color called Brushed Suede (it is a cheapo Glidden) that I have turned into chalk paint with my super secret chalk paint recipe that I love.  Then the fun began.  I first chose a postmark transfer and after a couple of prints (due to the fact that I could not seem to remember to flip the image) I had a transfer ready to go.

 

I decided to got with the design on the corner of my table since it was smallish.

 

 

I chose to transfer using the highly technical spray bottle method.  The first attempt was a bust, as I wet the paper way too much.  I wiped the boo boo away and adjusted the spray and tried again.

 

I then used a super professional Pampered Chef stoneware cleaning tool to press the transfer onto the table.

When I lifted the paper, I realized I used a little too much water.  Thankfully I was able to dab it off, but, I realized this transfer just wasn't working for this table.  Back to The Graphics Fairy website.

I won't bore you with tedious photos of the same techniques again.  Here is my table after my new transfer choice was applied.  It came out extremely light and I was afraid that once distressed and waxed with dark wax it would not show at all.  I chose to hand paint over the transfer.

 

After completing the hand lettering (which by the way took only a few minutes) I lightly sanded to distress (which BTW is why I love my paint formula, the distressing is soooo easy).

 

 

I then waxed with natural wax then waxed again with lots of dark wax.

I absolutely love how they turned out.  I so enjoy adding the dark wax and watching the magic happen!  The transfer was just the little punch this piece needed to become special. 

Wish I was keeping them, but these little beauties are heading to Lottie and Molly.  Thanks for stopping by, please take a moment to leave a comment.  I am joining Susan at Between Naps on the Porch for Met Monday and Kim at Savvy Southern Style, won't you stop by?