Hello everyone!

Our weekend was busy and this blog post will probably end up being long, wordy, and ::bonus:: full of pictures.


I decided to participate in Living with Lindsay's Five Dollar Challenge and I was really pondering what to do with my $5! I'll tell you what, some craftier person probably could do a lot with the money, but I'm afraid I'm not very creative! However, this Five Dollar Challenge did inspire me to put some effort into my dining room, a room that has been *very* neglected and seldom used in my home.

To put it mildly, my dining room needed serious help. Possibly even CPR.

Here are the before shots....brace yourselves.....



My dining room table is a disaster area. It is where toys go to die a slow death of missing and broken pieces. Broken things no one knows what to do with also live here along with half completed projects and homeless Christmas presents. Also the table has 2 fold down sides to the table which have always stumped me, to be honest. They don't feel sturdy enough to use around my goofy kids and I'm worried they'd kill the table.


The Chinese cabinet (which is what we call it...very PC, right?) is actually where we store our table linens, extra frames, our entire CD collection PLUS there's a record player inside, an 8-track and a really old radio. The cabinet itself was found at an estate sale and I paid $100 for it. It is totally customized and the man that did the work to it was in Vietnam while he pieced the inside mechanisms together. I think it is a beautiful cabinet. :) It came with autographed 8-tracks from Charlie Spivak, woo-hoo! I love estate sales. *sigh*

So, we did some repairs on the table, since a leg was about to fall off. Then we rearranged the furniture in the room. Just wow. That alone made a huge difference in how it looks in there. Here, I'll show you.

We moved the cabinet across the room to where the table used to sit, under my family photo collage. I did a few accessories on top for Easter but left it pretty minimal since there is so much going on over there with the pictures.

So then, over where the cabinet lived, was to be the new home for our little used dining room table. Even though we don't use it often, I wanted to fake it and pretend like we do so I went ahead and made all seats accessible and put out place mats, napkins and a centerpiece.


Our paint in the dining room is a really metalic pewter color that I think looks ::awesome:: and it dresses up everything, even my plain 'ole ordinary stuff! I think I'll hang another mirror in the dining room before we're all said and done, but OHMYGOSH, I'm just so blown away by how good it looks so far!

This last photo is the upholstry from my dining room chairs. It looks awesome with the wall color. :) I upholstered these puppies myself! Before they were an ugly red stripey, stained yuckie fabric. Now, fresh, pretty and new!

So that's that for my Five Dollar Challenge!!! What do you think!?!?

Where did my $5 go?? I bought some rocks for $1 and 4 round place mats for $1 each!

I had some serious doubts that I could do a single thing with $5, but getting a few accessories and using what I already had did a major change in my space! Thanks so much Lindsay for hosting such a fun event!! I'll be thinking of ways to implement the Five Dollar Challenge in other rooms of my home!

Ok, now let's talk about me. I got my hairs cut and colored. The before shot of me is over there on the side bar with Mr Hubby. Here I am now...

What do you think!?!?

Also, on a totally unrelated note, my stupid, stupid dog has it out for my garden, big-time. The little cow-pattie keeps digging up my garden, despite me threatening to kill him repeatedly. Apparently, he isn't taking me seriously. I was quite relieved that so many of my sprouts survived a late near freezing night last night and then quite annoyed when my sprouts were killed by the paws of my little digging machine. So, I planted some new seeds out there, so I could have a chance of growing ::something:: this summer and the little turd dug it up again. (insert image of me with steam blowing out my ears here) I have no clue what to do to keep the little jerk out of my garden, but for his sake, something must be done. GGGgggRRRrrr!!

Spring is springing up all around my house these days, check out the proof!

My tiny-baby Japanese Pistashio tree

Isn't it pretty here? :)

I'll leave you with a surly picture of my time-out twosome, doing some hard time next to the couch. Being bad doesn't pay at my house! LOL

Have a great day everyone! Thanks for stopping by!!