Hello fellow blog readers! I have been MIA for a couple of weeks now, due to the move. But I have MANY posts lined up this week to make up for all of the non-posting. In fact I have THREE posts today, so check back later on for those! Here’s post number 1!

So I am about 50% settled into my new house, and I have gotta’ say. As stressful as this has all been in the last few weeks, I simply LOVE my home. It’s about 70 years old, and it is the dream home that I have prayed for my whole life. It’s not big nor small. Just right. I’ve always wanted a colonial or tudor style home, and in this case I ended up with a beautiful 4 bedroom/2.5 bath Dutch Colonial on almost 1 acre just half a mile from my mom’s and near one of the best elementary schools in the state. I mean it does not get better than this -and I never wanted more than this. I was never one of those people who dreamed of having a million dollars, living in a mansion, and driving exotic cars. My dream was always to be debt-free and live comfortably in a quaint country style home with lots of trees, my kids attending a good school and maybe have a dog or two join the family. Who knows, maybe we’ll get one for Christmas

Anyway, the house isn’t nearly finished, as far as decorating, but I wanted to share a couple of shots of what is done, and that way you can kind of see the progress of it as it unfolds. I have HUGE plans for it and can’t wait to turn this house into our home.

I HEART shabby-chic and vintage style everything when it comes to home & landscape decor. North Carolina is shabby-chic heaven and really inexpensive too. The bench on the left was built by my husband Alin for my birthday one year. It’s made out of hundred year old blood wood & leftover iron from a previous stair job installation he did. My baby is so good at what he does! The metal bike/pot-holder on the right I bought from Marshall’s/Home Goods a couple of years ago for $80.

Man, I love Fall.

My boys call him Jack. And apparently he protects the mail “so nobody don’t get it”.

How cool is it that I can see deer in my front yard every morning & evening? This reminds me of when I used to live in Deerfield, IL.

This is my entry hallway. We bought this locker thingy from a garage sale for $10 and my husband painted it a fire-engine red. Each locker for each one of my four little ones. Cool, eh?

I LOVE this buffet/hutch thingy. It’s in our dinette/kitchen area. I found this lady at some antiques show who gets these old pieces of furniture & shabbifies them. She is AMAZING. It looks straight out of an Anthropology catalog, doesn’t it? Except instead of paying thousands, I paid $120. (Yes, you read it right)

Now the last set of pictures are taken from Genevieve’s room. It’s the only room in the house that is pretty much finished. Here’s a picture of her room when we moved in and before we did anything to it.

Now AFTER…

I LOVE this dresser. We bought it an at antique shop in Lincolnton for only $140! The lady who owns the shop said this piece is around 90 years old, and she did such a beautiful job refinishing it, don’t you think? Also, the old window frame taken from an old barn was only $5 from the same little shop.

This crib & bedding set were my best deal yet. Guess how much I paid for both? $32. Yes. Thirty-two dollars. How? Let me tell you. A client of my mother’s had a crib she didn’t need nor didn’t want to deal with, so she gave it to me (before Genevieve was born). It was a white crib and pretty plain. I then found this one on Craigslist but it was white and was missing the posts since it was supposed to be some sort of canopy crib. It also came with bedding as well. When I saw the wood-working details on the crib, I could not pass it up, and so I bought the crib & bedding together for only $100. Then here’s what I did. I washed the bedding that came with that crib on Craigslist & put it together with the crib that was given to me, took nice pictures and listed it on Craigslist. It was a nice set when put together, just not my style. I sold that set for $225. So now I was in the plus at $125 profit. Alin bought black paint for the crib for $25 (don’t worry, the paint was baby safe). So that left me with $100. I then found this amazing crib bedding set that I fell in love with. It was $400 online and I was sure it was the one I wanted. I did a random google search with the name of the crib bedding + the word “Craigslist” and a listing came up in Dallas, TX. A lady was selling the EXACT same set brand new in its original packaging for $90! I paid $10 shipping and there you go! ALL of it was free! Now where does the $32 come in? Since the crib was missing the four posts, I knew what I wanted to do. I bought four cream-colored porcelain rosettes from Anthropologie for only $8 each and fixed them in each hole to give it a finished look. So there you go! The WHOLE crib & crib bedding set for $32! It took a lot of patience and a LOT of hard work on Alin’s end to paint the crib with all its spirals & twist & turns, but in the end, I got the crib set that I had always dreamed of having for my little girl.

Got this wing-back chair on Craigslist for $25.

Bought this dresser+hutch for only $70 on Craigslist and Alin painted it the same black as the crib. LOVE it! The mirror & know thingy was about $12 from Marshall’s.

The mirror was $9 from Marshall’s.

I bought this box from Marshall’s for $9 and use it to store Genevieve’s keepsakes.

The doll on the left was given to me for Christmas by my mother when I was 13. It was a limited edition doll bought from Neiman Marcus when my mom worked there. The doll in the middle was bought about 8 years ago at the Chenonceau castle in France when I was there on my honeymoon. The third doll was bought for only $1 at a consignment sale here in Charlotte. Too good of a deal to pass up.