A Little Halloween-y

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #18:

Deal

Have I ever mentioned that I love thrift store shopping? Specifically at Deseret Industries, the thrift store ran by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints? 

Well, it’s true. I love me a good DI find.

Ever since I made my haunted houses a few weeks ago, I’ve been on a bit of a Halloween decor kick. Actually, come to think of it, it started last year when I found Ludwig. It’s so exciting to find things at the DI to get creative with. After I made the haunted houses, I started thinking it would be fun to make some decorations for my living room wall. I had a vision of replacing my kids’ photos with some scarier portraits. 

I found a few skeletons and skulls at Dollar Tree, and then I bought a few cans of spray paint, and some… well… I don’t know what you would call them… “frames & such?”… from the DI.

Frames & such

I spray painted the frames & such black and then wiped them down with some gray acrylic paint mixed with water (to give them a more dusty/matte look). I also spray painted all the skeletons white (they were originally more tan in color) and then wiped them down with a mix of black paint and water to distress them and accentuate the details. 

I never really know what I’m doing. I just make it up as I go. 

I took knives and scissors to the skeletons and skulls to cut them up how I wanted. It was all sorts of morbid, sawing faces off, hacking up limbs… but in the end, here’s what I had: 

Here’s what the wall looked like before:

I’ll probably fiddle with the arrangement over time just to see how it looks in a few different ways (it’s what I do), but I think it’s a pretty great Halloween set-up for this year. Here are the before and after photos of the frames & such:

Scotty had a good laugh about this one

This one is my favorite because the skeleton looks like he’s smiling, and it reminds me of the standard school photo

While I was looking through frames & such at the DI, I came across a bunch of rose covered frames that I loved, so I bought one of them. I thought it would make such a nice frame for a skeleton portrait, so I came up with this:

For now it’s on the bookshelf:

I had to chop off the skeletons’ feet and one of the arms. Then I bent the arm so it could go around the shoulder of the other skeleton, and I pieced it back together and glued it. 

I had a whole lot of fun making these! 

While I was at it, I also revamped a wreath I found at DI last year: 

Before

After

I spent nearly 4x more money on the ribbon than the wreath (wreath was $2, ribbon was $6.99). Luckily, a $9 wreath is still a deal! 

Normally I wait until October 1st to decorate for Halloween, but since I’m making decorations, I’m just putting them out as I go because I don’t want to put them away just to get them back out again in two weeks. I’ll be sick of them by Halloween, for sure! Six weeks is too long for any holiday. 

One problem with decorating my home is that I don’t have a lot of surface area, so I don’t have many places to put knick-knacks. With my thrift shopping adventures of late, I’ve ended up with too many Halloween decorations and nowhere to put them, so I’m trying to figure out where I can display Ludwig this year as well as my new friend: 

The Demon Mermaid

Then

Now

I’ll keep you posted…

Table Update

Back in 2018, I painted an old table for our kitchen. It was a nice, sturdy specimen, and I hoped the paint job would last 3-5 years.

 

I’ve been painting furniture for almost 20 years now. I was just thinking this week about how when I painted my first table, there wasn’t very good information on the internet about how to do it. People didn’t paint furniture back then! I had to go to the paint store and ask lots of questions, and to be honest, they didn’t know anything. There also weren’t very many products for such a task. Just primer, latex paint, and polyurethane, really. Now there’s almost too much information and too many products out there! 

Despite the image that DIY bloggers create, painted furniture doesn’t hold up for long. Don’t let them fool you! I always advise people that it’s a temporary fix, and it will eventually need to be done again or replaced, so you should always take that into consideration when you paint something. No matter how careful I am with my work, what kind of product or top coat I use, my painted furniture always gets dinged and scratched over time (unless it's something that no one ever touches or uses).

My kitchen table is no exception! It acquired all sorts of scratches and damage from my kids’ art projects. But that’s the great thing about having an old table. It can take a hit, and then I can do something experimental and imperfect to refresh it for the next round of battering.

Over fall break, my table suffered its final incident before needing to be redone. I made a Halloween dinner for my kids one night, and I had a fun table cloth they could draw on. 

I had Nicky put the table cloth on the table for me, and I assumed that it was plastic coated on the back side. My mistake! It was basically paper! My kids used Sharpie on it and left my table looking like this:

I tried to magic erase it, but it was stuck for good. I questioned how long I could survive with black widows and tic tac toes on my table, and I decided… not long. I was okay with nail polish spatters and glitter glue, but the Halloween artistry was my turning point.

It was time to give the table a facelift, but I didn’t want to work too hard. I wanted to do just the top, if possible, which meant I needed to do some sort of two-tone since my previous paint job wasn’t something I could touch up on just the top of the table and have it look uniform. I started researching ways to paint the table top to look like wood (it’s laminate), and I found a product called Retique Liquid Wood. It’s basically wood paint, so, in theory, you can slap it on something and then stain it. I figured it would cost a small fortune, but when I looked at the pricing, it was more affordable than I expected.

I ordered the liquid wood and some new paintbrushes, and then I got to work. First I sanded the table to smooth out some scratches. I was very lazy and sloppy about it and was only willing to endure fifteen minutes of sanding (I even set a timer). The result of my laziness is that my table still has tons of visible scratches and indentations in it, but ya know what? I have four kids. Give it a week, and they’ll be there anyway. Why should I endure torturous sanding for a few shorts days of smoothness? 

(I hate sanding! It’s the worst!)

After I sanded the table, I did two coats of liquid wood. I like to call this the peanut butter phase:

Table coated in liquid wood

With the liquid wood, you can’t use a penetrating stain because it’s so thin, so I did two test runs - one with a gel stain and one with Polyshades. I was a little limited on color options, so I ended up using Polyshades Mission Oak. 

After the first coat

I also did two coats of polyurethane on top just for extra endurance. 

Last time I refinished my table, I let it cure for two weeks before we started using it, but in the end, I don’t think it made it any more durable. So this time, I gave it a good 24 hours of drying time, then threw it to the wolves! My kids ate chicken noodle soup for breakfast on it this morning.

Here's how it turned out:

It's hard to get a decent photo with the bay window lighting, but you get the idea. I definitely liked the lighter color better, but this is good enough to get us through the next few years. My chairs could use refreshing, too, but I still really like the color (Krylon Pistachio with a satin finish), and I can't find it anywhere. I don't know if they make it anymore. So if I do touch up my chairs, I'll probably have to do a full color change, and I'm not to the point where I'm willing to do that level of work. 

Now we'll see how it holds up. Three to five years is all I ask! Three is enough to justify the work,* and five is an extra treat! At some point during that time frame, hopefully our house will be paid off, and by the time our table needs another refresh, maybe we can actually buy one! In the meantime, I'm grateful for this hardy beast! 

Update 10/23/22: The day after I posted this, a small piece of Polyshades flaked off the edge of the table, so the damage has already begun. I'm trying to keep it contained, but I don't know how it's going to hold up. I'm rather disappointed, but we'll see what happens in the coming weeks. 

Update 3/2/25: The paintable stain and Polyshades combo did not hold up well. We left the table like this for three years, but it had several scratches and dings in the paint. 

*Actually, with as easy and quick as this renovation was, one year is enough to justify the work, but I don't want to do it again in a year, so I'm aiming for three at minimum

20 Thrifty Things

Our house is pieced together with things we've bought new and things we've gotten second-hand - some given to us and some purchased. We don't have a lot of fancy stuff, but we have a lot of great stuff. 

Today I was looking around at our eclectic possessions, and I wondered how quickly I could find 20 things in my house that I bought from the thrift store (specifically, Deseret Industries). 

As you might have guessed, it wasn't hard at all! Here are some of the things I found:

1. Puzzles - I've found a lot of awesome puzzles for just a couple of bucks, and most of the time, all the pieces are there! 

(This one was so much harder that I thought it would be).

2. Tumbling mat - this is one of my more recent finds. I got it this summer for $20. I remember wondering if it was a waste of money that would just end up going straight back to DI, but then I thought, even if it only entertains my kids for three days, it will be worth the $20 (justifications of a "tired of summer" mom). 

It has ended up being worth every penny. My girls and their friends use it all the time, and Nicky used it to master his back flips. 

3. Games - we have a few games from DI. This one is one of my favorite game finds - it's Super Scrabble, so it has a larger board than regular Scrabble and additional bonuses (quadruple letter/word scores)! It was $2!

4. Puzzle table - I got this table for our basement, deemed the "puzzle table," for $25. The sides fold up and down, so it can easily slide up against a wall. It also has shelves under it that are fantastic for storing puzzles and bowls of pieces we're not currently building with. 

5. Bookshelves - these shelves in Zoe and Eva's room (stacked one on top of the other because "pieced together" is how we live) came from the DI. 

6. Bathroom vanity - I found this vanity for our bathroom for $5 over the summer. I was really excited because I had been shopping for one but hadn't been able to bring myself to fork over $100-200. We had a flat mirror there and really needed something with storage. This vanity was new and still had the price tags on it.

7. Decorative jars - I love swapping out home decor and changing things around, so shopping at the thrift store is a good way to do that without overspending. I just found these three jars at DI last week. 

8. Vintage Pyrex - these are some of my earliest thrift store finds from before I had kids. Vintage Pyrex goes quick at thrift stores! This was a lucky find. I got these dishes for $1 each when Scotty and I were first married, and I use them all the time!

9. Dry erase calendar - I found this weekly calendar for $1. I don't use it regularly, but it comes in handy when the kids need to know the schedule.

10. Ribbon - there's a particular location of DI where I tend to find a lot of fun craft stuff. Recently I found a grab bag of ribbon - almost all brand new - for $12. I counted over 60 spools of ribbon. I will be tying bows on EVERYTHING for the rest of my days.  

11. Game shelf - I found this shelf for $10 to store some of our games (only some... I need you to know that this is only a partial glimpse of our collection). 

12. Pill organizer - this is one of my newest DI purchases ($1 thankyouverymuch).  In fact, I found it just a few short days after I complained about how much I hate putting my pills in my pill container. I don't take meds four times a day, so I'm using this sorter to store an entire month's worth of pills so I don't have to refill it every week. 

13. Halloween wreath - I'm obsessed with wreaths. I don't know if I'll always be this way, but I'm going several years strong. This one is making its debut this season after costing me $2. 

14. Plates - along with my wreath obsession, I have a plate obsession. A lot of the plates I put on my plate rack come from DI (or a clearance rack). 

(I don't love this Hallowen configuration - it's a work in progress - but I adore my little Frankenstein plates).

15 & 16: Books and blue tray - Despite being a big reader, I don't actually care to own a lot of books. Marie Kondo got to me, and I keep my bookshelf minimally stocked. However, I do enjoy having a few thrift store books on my shelf at all times solely for the purpose of giving away or lending them out. If at any time you need a book, hit me up. I'll give you one. And it will still have the DI price tag on it because, for some reason, it sparks joy to keep the stickers on my DI books. 

For this photo, I strategically placed my DI books in my DI tray as to kill two birds with one stone. The blue tray came saran wrapped with the decorative jars I talked about above. I paid $4 for all of it. 

(One thing to note is that I almost always remember the price of everything I buy at DI. Clearly I use my brain space for the most important things). 

17, 18, & 19: Chair, pillow, & end table - I had been shopping for a good deal on a chair for the corner of our family room over a year when I saw this delightful specimen at DI. The manager at DI marked it down to $15, and I didn't even ask! Additionally, it was super clean and didn't even smell bad (that didn't keep me from shampooing the heck out of it anyway). 

I adorned it with a thrift store pillow and repainted a thrift store end table to go next to it. Hot diggity dog. 

20. Clothes - I got lazy at this point and didn't take a photo, but we have lots and lots of clothes from DI. When I was growing up, I never would have worn clothes from a thrift store. That would have been so mortifying! Now I'm like, "Look at this shirt I got from DI!" 

I've changed. 

Wednesdays are the Worst! (and ten other random facts)

Fact #1: My mouth is finally getting noticeably better. I'm so excited. So far today I have only used lidocaine one time. 

Fact #2: I feel like I could probably be a little adventurous with lunch and maybe chew some food, but my appetite is pretty messed up. Nothing really tastes or sounds good. Not even soda. 

Who is this Britt who can't enjoy a soda?

Fact #3: Right before I got sick, I painted this little table to go next to my thrift store chair:

It was $4 at the thrift store. A great, little find!

I haven't done a single productive thing since. 

Fact #4: While I've been sick, I've started watching Downton Abbey from the beginning. I watched it when it was on Masterpiece back in 2012, but I fizzled out somewhere in season 5. I never quite recovered from the season 3 finale... which I'm coming up on here quick. I'm not ready to go through it again.

Fact #5: The other day, I failed Wordle for the first time. It was devastating. It was the day the word was "smelt." I had the S, the E, and the T in place, and I knew there was an L. My final guess was "slept."

I thought I had it! 

Fact #6: I had a near miss on the day the word was "watch." I got "atch" pretty quick, but I ended up doing "catch," and "hatch." Then I had to decide between "match" and "watch" for the last guess. I went with "watch." 

Phew!

Fact #7: Despite my best efforts at growing a garden, I don't actually have much of a green thumb. I've always wanted to plant some tulips in my yard, though, so last fall, I finally did it! I checked on them yesterday, and something is coming out of the ground! And I would rejoice and think, "tulips!" except... the week after I planted tulips, my mother-in-law brought some bulbs to my house and let my girls plant them where I had planted the tulips to "surprise" me. So I don't know whose bulbs are popping up - mine, theirs, or both. All will be revealed if/when they bloom!

Fact #8: I do have one stray tulip that pops up in the middle of my lawn every year. It's from the people that lived here before us. 

Fact #9: I'm struggling with Wednesdays right now. They are so chock full of events that I can barely function. I really wish Nicky could drive. It would help immensely. 

Fact #10: This morning I realized that I haven't checked my weight for a year. The last time I stepped on a scale was at a medical appointment last March. I don't know how much I weigh! It's actually very liberating. I know I'm not exactly "thin," but I'm also not a slave to a scale. It's probably one of the best things I've ever done for myself. 

Cornstalks R Us

September Writing Challenge - Prompt #15:

Thrifty

Sneaky me. Sometimes I add a prompt to my September writing challenge with an ulterior motive. When I made this year’s list, I chose the word, “thrifty” anticipating that I could utilize the prompt to take a trip to the thrift store and buy something fun. Maybe I’d find something cool to refinish. Or maybe I’d find something amazing that didn’t need work! Plates for my plate rack! A new dress! Or maybe a book or two!

But ya know what? I don’t feel like going to the thrift store! 

So that’s a bummer. I set myself up for a thrifting adventure, and now I don’t even wanna do it. Maybe by the end of the month, I’ll get the thrift store bug and need a do-over for this prompt. But right now… I just really don’t have the desire. Mostly because I’m trying to save money after a summer of frivolous spending. I got a bit out on control there for a while. 

Do I spend money as a healing mechanism from dealing with parenting stress? Yes. Yes, I do. 

Anyway, even though I'm avoiding the thrift store, I've still been thrifty lately. Not in all aspects of life but in many. To be thrifty, after all, is to "use money and other resources carefully and not wastefully." I'm pretty good at that... when I want to be. 

As you know, Scotty and I tried growing corn for the first time this year. Things started off beautifully!

Looking at this, you may be thinking we planted our corn way too close, but we followed the recommendations of the square foot gardening method, which is to plant the seeds 4" apart - in other words, 9 per square foot. 

The corn sprouted quickly. We planted it in phases so it would be ripe at different times. The stalks developed silks and tassels. I made sure to assist them in pollinating and fancied myself a corn mating extraordinaire.

Everything was going great until one day, I went outside and was devastated to find this... 

It looked like a tornado had gone through our corn patch!

We tried out best to upright the stalks, but they were just too weak. In the end, this is all we ended up getting...

Plus about four more ears that we harvested one at a time and just cut the kernels off and added them to some sautéed zucchini with peppers and onions. It was a pathetic, little harvest, but gosh darnnit! We grew some corn! And despite how small the ears were, they tasted so delicious!

Next year we are going to try planting our seeds a little deeper, and we will try a few square feet with more spacing. Our stalks were just really thin, so we need to figure out how to get them thicker and stronger. 

I didn't want our sad, humble corn patch to go to waste, so I pulled out a bunch of the stalks to use for fall decor. They are messy, weak, little stalks and hardly anything you'd rave about on Pinterest, but you know what? I grew them! And I'm proud of them! And heck! It's thrifty!

I used to decorate with corn stalks every year, but it's been a really long time since I last used some. I used to get them from my grandpa’s garden, but he fell into poor health and has since passed away.

If you want to use some yourself but don't have something to tie them to, here's my little tip. I hammer something into the ground - I've used dowels, PVC pipe, and even old broom and shovel handles - and tie the stalk to it. 

This year I used these metal thingamajiggies from a storage shelf:

Whatever I can find in my garage!

Thrifty, eh?

The part that's not so thrifty is the ribbon that I bought from Hobby Lobby and insisted on layering. 

But I was also able to use that ribbon to spruce up an old wreath to hang on my front door and to wrap around some gifts.

Justified.

The cornstalks are a lovely complement to our dead lawn, and sometimes chunks of the cornstalks blow away and get stuck in the fence between our yard and the neighbor's, but oh well! I nurtured them from seed! Just let me have my cornstalks, mmkay. They're thrifty!

Sneaking in this sunflower photo...

because I grew it, and I'm proud of it!

Plus it’s relevant because there are

cornstalks behind it.

Now that we've attempted to grow corn and had some trial and error, I'm excited to try again. Hopefully we'll have more success next year. I'm kind of hoping for something like this:

Okay, not really. Candy corn? Ew. But now I want to go to Disneyland where this photo was taken, and that's not a very thrifty choice for our current circumstances.