New Inventory In My Vintage Shop on Etsy

Thanks to a recent influx of goodies, the shelves of my virtual vintage store are once again stocked! Please check out my Etsy Vintage Shop for a peek at the new arrivals of recently rescued home decor.

Visit Etsy.com and search for seller FolkSmart, or click here.

After: Dining Room Gallery Wall & Front Yard

I am so excited to actually check off a few small projects on my list! After a week of tinkering and tweaking the new gallery wall in the dining room, it is finally finished. Verdict? I like it.

I couldn't to decide if I should leave some of the frames mismatched, but went ahead and sprayed them white, along with the two shelves which were originally cherry. It's enough that the art and mats are all kind of a hodge-podge, the frames were really crying out to all be one color.

Before.

During.

After.

I do intend to replace the pictures in the top, horizontal frame with actual art work at some point (I usually buy little paintings and such on vacation or in the thrift store). The bird and the letter E are just placeholders for now; they're actually just note cards!

Bonus Micro-Project: Incorporating this little "no soliciting" sign into my front door wreath. Since I work at home, it's become clear that we needed something to shoo away the non-stop time-wasting salesfolk of the world. It says "No Soliciting: We love our vacuum. We've found God. We gave at the office." I highly recommend one.

The rest of my weekend was spend starting the first of many yard projects. Today's project was labor intensive, not expensive or super challenging-- mulching. No fun there, but it felt good to be out in the nice weather (love our Florida sunshine in February!) working with my hands. My dutiful hubby was the mulch-buyer-delivery-boy-and-unloader and I was the installer. Together, we laid out forty bags of mulch, plus four bags of river rocks along the front walkway that gets nailed by roof rain runoff (we don't have gutters... yet).

I think it's a good start for the season. I aggressively cut back our "shrubs" (if you can call them that at this point) and fertilized them, along with our wimpy front yard tree, in an effort to beef up the greenery around here (some green is starting to wind its way back into our grass after this tough winter). We still have to mulch the back yard around the patio and this car-park area thingy at the end of our driveway, plant some actual plants, and build this giant pergola on the back of our house that I've been dreaming about for ages. All in good time!

So, it's been a pretty productive Sunday around here. I totally forgot that I spent the whole day yesterday running errands, getting my hair done with my mom, having dinner with my dad, etc-- today seems like it's been at least three days.

I'm off to apply some liniment (yes, I say liniment-- no, I'm not 80) to my inevitably achy joints!

Project List, Part One: Foyer & Dining Room

Ok, I'll admit-- this home project blogging thing has gotten off to a slow start. To be fair, I have been busy making over my lifestyle for the past six weeks. My husband and I have been working good habits into our daily routine (going to the gym, eating better) and working the bad habits out (being lazy about house chores and dining out constantly). So, with some new, all-around healthier practices in place (and it's still practice, not perfection), I've made quite a bit of headway with preparing for my impending project-palooza! Most of my weekends and evenings lately have been spent sorting, purging, cleaning, and organizing; finally, it's time for the fun stuff!

As previously promised in my first ever FolkSmart blog post, here is part one of my 'honey-do' list of decor projects (yes, I'm referring to myself as honey-- my husband's more the technical type than the creative/DIY type so I fly solo on most anything home improvement related), along with some "before" photos. As suggested by this post's title, I fully expect this list to expand/explode, twist, turn, and then some.

We'll begin at the beginning-- here is our modest (and currently über bland) foyer. I am hoping to find/make/steal (ok, not that last bit) some functional decor to spruce up this high-traffic spot:

• I am keeping the tile, as it's fairly new and neutral. I'd like to find a nice rug in a durable material, an unusual shape, and an all-concealing pattern which will accommodate foot traffic entering through both the front door and the garage. I also need one of those no-slip mats for underneath said rug (note to self).
• While the plantation-style blinds are consistent throughout the house, I do like having at least a decorative panel or two flanking the windows. I'm hoping for a neutral color in perhaps a funky pattern or interesting texture. I need new hardware, preferably matching the drapes that will be just around the corner in the dining room. I want to mount the drapes higher than my previous set to bring attention to the hight ceiling in the foyer.
• You totally can't see it from this angle, but if you look up as you enter, there's a big blank spot on the wall that has been crying out for six years (SIX YEARS?!) for some kind of unique, welcoming, colorful, substantial, awesome art work of some obviously not very specific sort... it falls under the "I'll know it when I see it" heading.
• My dream would be to incorporate something, anything really into this entry that won't eat up too much space, but would be a good catch-all for unopened mail and possibly my purse. It will likely have to be wall mounted (there's a little bit of space next to the window which might work), as there's no floor space for furniture. Well, you can see that.
• The paint on the baseboards and wall, not to mention the weather stripping around the doors, needs some TLC.

So, pretty much for the entryway-- rug, window treatment, wall art, wall organizer, touch up paint. NEXT!

Surprise (!), I've actually already started redoing the dining room. A little bit. Since I have a semi-open floor plan, my original decor incorporated the same colors in the dining area, living room, foyer, hallway, and kitchen. Guess what? I got sick of all that green, red, and beige. I'm adding splashes of color and moving toward a more eclectic-but-cohesive look. I like things that look collected, not "I went to Pottery Barn/West Elm/IKEA and picked out my whole look in an afternoon" decorating. That's. Just. Me.

Anyway.

Dining room 'before' (I never really got it together in there)...

And 'semi-after' (or, would that be 'during'?) my installation of a gallery wall, removal of old rug, repainting existing frames, rearranging furniture, etc. It is still a work in progress and is a serious contender for being my first "See, look what I did!" complete from beginning to end blog entry.

In addition to the gallery wall (which isn't even close to being done), I plan to:

• Possibly add a rug. I don't know. I just removed one, so I'm thinking long and hard about this (TWSS!).
• Definitely change the window treatment hardware (to match the nearby foyer window), possibly change the curtain. Again, I dunno.
• Add table thingies? You know, obviously I need some placemats, "natkins" (or, napkins if you're either a. not me or b. not five), "natkin rings" (yep!), place card holders, centerpiece options, candle holders, ummm loads of other decorative tchotchkes with which to festoon my table when people come over and it has to look fancy.
• OH-- here's a project I know I'm going to do soon. Repaint my hutch AND piano (photos below). That's actually more like two projects, I suppose. I have some cool plans for them, including a sneaky technique (we'll call it a "techsneak") for changing out the looks from season to season. I've already been stalking local thrift stores for crappy furniture with awesome hardware to transplant.

That's all for now, regarding these nooks in my house. I think next will be Part Two: Master Bedroom & Master Bath, Part Three: Living Room & Kitchen, Part Four: Guest Bathroom & Other (I'll figure out what "other" is later). I have loads of smaller scale projects in mind, too. Landscaping, for one! I guess that's not so little. Closet organization, how-to-maintain-a-home-office-while-maintaining-sanity (my husband and I both work from home), fabulous flea market and thrift store finds, and so on.

Ciao for now!