Weekly Wonderings: January 11th, 2012

I love to read, I treasure all of my books. At home they are all organized in my room according to color. Well a select number are, the rest are shoved behind them. So the idea of tearing out pages of my beloved books to make crafts really is hard for me to swallow but these are pretty great ideas. I may just have to go buy some books just to make these.

 

Also, buy more books to make this!

50 Dollar Fix: Buffet Tables

     

       So in the midst of planning for our lovely potluck, Lotti and I realized we need somewhere to set all the delicious food, like Hank. We wanted to use our normal dining table for people to sit at and our kitchen is too tiny for doing the buffet there. My first thought was to rent a table, because a 8ft table will normally only cost 6 dollars to rent, which isn’t too bad on the bottom line and normally you get to keep it for three days. I called a party rental store near us but they only had an 8ft by 30 inches, which was way too deep for a buffet. We wanted it to be tall and skinny (about 20 inches wide we estimated), like a traditional buffet. Quandary.  Well, as I was anxiously looking around the apartment for some piece of furniture that could double as a buffet (none found), I stumbled upon some relegated wood, Lily and I had bought two summers ago in the a Home Depot frenzy. Relegated wood, as we refer to it, is wood that is leftover from bigger pieces Home Depot cuts for people. And normally its SUPER CHEAP. It’s great for little projects, like these frames.They were just about the right depth, so now the question was how to make them a table. I went and sat in my living room to ponder while watching Martha Stewart. By the way, love the new layout of the show,  its seems so modern! While there, I saw my bookshelves I built this summer. PRESTO! Idea!

I could stack two of the crates on top of each other and form a tall structure for the wood to sit on! So now we had one 4ft table figured out, but we wanted a second one, hmmmmm… As I went into our third room (Lotti’s study, my craft room), I saw Lotti’s keyboard. ON A STAND.

The perfect sized stand to balance another piece of wood. Buffet table born! After craftily covering it with a table cloth, no one was the wiser.

All and all this buffet table cost me nothing, but I bet if you were to do it on your own it wouldn’t cost you more than 50 either. Most people have some odd furniture that could double as the base of a table so all you really need a piece of wood and just look at the reclaimed wood section at your home improvement store for that! Have you ever had to be ingenious with your furniture to get it to meet your needs?

50 Dollar Fix: Side bookshelf

 

       As you can see, the area next to my couch is nothing pretty to look at. I am an avid book collector, and have several funny reads I like to keep in the living room. But, I was running out of room for them, and my cookbooks were crowding the kitchen. Plus it did not have a good transition from the breakfast nook to the living room. So with the help of several Michael's coupons, I managed to come up with hopefully a good shelving system that looks pretty good in my opinion. I still need some better ideas as how to organize or if I should remove some of the objects. Anyways, I just used 4 wooden crates from Michael's at $9.99 each (minus 40% off each ) plus one small crate at under $5. One can of black gloss spray paint and the project still came in way under 50 dollars. In fact, only 35 dollars. Here's a few photos, directions seem pointless. 

Materials:

Spray Paint

4 large Crates

1 small crate