Makely

Let's Make Life Awesome

A Basketful of Inspiration

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If you haven’t noticed, baskets are a dime a dozen at thrift stores. Okay, maybe they are more like $2 for one, but they are cheap!

I hit the mother load of great baskets during my thrifting trip this week, and I’ve been racking my brain to try to come up with creative uses for them. They were super cheap, in perfect condition, and AAAACCCCKKKKK…….

Um, it looks like my dog got a hold of them while I was out running errands. He’s lucky he’s adorable, because he’s seriously beginning to ruin my house little by little.

He’s also lucky that I was planning on recovering the top of that basket with fabric, so hopefully my plan will still work. The large basked was $4.99 and the small basket was $2.99 at Goodwill, so if they are a total loss, I won’t be out much money.

I’m planning on giving them their makeover in the near future (don’t forget that you can spray paint those baskets!), and I’m very excited to share them with you. In the meantime, I thought I’d pass a long a little inspiration to you so that you could figure out how to use some cheap thrift store baskets in your own home. I bet if you look hard enough you’ll even find some forgotten baskets tucked into a closet somewhere.

1. Line your baskets with fabric remnants using this simple no-sew tutorial. These liners are really expensive, so now you can use your glue gun to make one. Brilliant!

2. Put large baskets on pedestals and use as planters. Note: For those of us with black thumbs, you’ll want to put the plant in a pot and then put the pot inside the basket. Just saying.

3. Hang large, shallow baskets on the wall as art. This is a great way to cover a lot of wall space very cheaply.

4. Turn a small closet into a storage nook by adding baskets to open shelving. This would be a great way to gain some use out of a small coat closet.

5. Line a windowsill with small baskets and use as pots for clipped blooms. Again, put your vases inside the baskets.

Have a great weekend! I’ll be spending mine working on my procrastination projects!

I’m sharing this post with Julia over at Hooked on Houses this week. Be sure to head over there and see what others are hooked on!

Too Many Projects, Too Little Time

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Procrastinator. P-R-O-C-R-A-S-T-I-N-A-T-O-R. I can barely spell it, but I am one indeed. In fact, I’m procrastinating writing my procrastinator post by seeing how many times I can type a variation on the word procrastinate in one paragraph. The answer is five.

Then, Melissa issued a call to paint brushes, a procrastinator party of sorts where we share the projects we’ve been ignoring and then come back two weeks later and share our shiny, happy completed projects. I broke into a cold sweat and tried to ignore her. Although I do plenty of projects every week (every day, even!), I have a list a mile long and couldn’t even narrow it down to what I’d like to work on next. Wouldn’t I rather just make another wreath and call it a day?

But then, I realized that I need to make some changes that will do more for my home (and enjoyment level) than another stupid wreath (and also, Melissa kept talking about it and I got sucked in).

Which project should I choose? How about this area of my bedroom that currently houses Mr. Ugly-But-Comfy-La-Z-Boy Recliner, a dog bed, and the top of a decorator table that’s legs were eaten by said dog:

Or, I could recover the cushion on this chair to match my new window treatments in my craft room:

I could address my “Secret Shame”, my bookcases/dresser/TV/shelf combination that is my current collector of random, well, crap:


Note: I am a GENIUS who pushed our 2 old bookcases up to our old dresser and put a shelf on top to create a faux entertainment center in our bedroom. Much work needs to be done (painting anyone?), but I am very smug about how GENIUS this is going to be.

At the end of the day, the lofted playroom won my attention.

My son is so stinkin’ lucky to have such a great playroom! The thing is, he hardly ever uses it. My craft room is right off of the playroom, but I hardly ever use it. Why?

1. There is a total lack of adult seating in the playroom and Zack refuses to be more than 5 feet from me at all times. There was a couch in there, but in an only-in-Lindsay-land moment, my cat peed on it, I washed the cushions and left them on the back patio to dry, and my dog ate them while I was running errands. I found him in a pile of white, fluffy down in my backyard. I was so furious that I’ll I could do was laugh.

So, now we only have those adorable kid-sized club chairs, which Zack never even uses.

2. The lack of a window treatment makes it really warm in that room in the middle of the day.

And also? The view. Not long ago, that window looked over acres of former farm land. Now, we have this lovely sight:

At least I can let the new neighbors know if they have any hail damage on their roof, right?

3. There is a TV/DVR/cable box in the armoire, but I haven’t figured out how to hook up all three devices at once. So, we either watch Bolt or Cars or Wall-E or nothing at all.

There is so much (SO MUCH!) I need to do in this room, but I have decided that I will (try to) tackle three projects:

Project #1 – Window Treatments. I’m thinking I’ll do sheers in the center and a solid color panel on either side. I’ll find some fabric that I love to make a valence and then do a coordinating fabric on the bottom of the solid color panels. And of course, I’ll add some trim.

Project #2 – Armoire. DH I will figure out how to hook up my entertainment trifecta. I would also like to paint the armoire another color entirely, but I’m not sure if that is going to happen in the next two weeks. At the very least, I’m going to cover the panel inserts on the door with the same coordinating fabric I’ll be using on the window treatments.

Project #3 – Adult Seating. I DH will move Mr. Ugly-But-Comfy-La-Z-Boy Recliner upstairs. It kind of kills two birds with one stone – I get him out of my bedroom and have a place to sit in the playroom. Maybe I could come up with some way to dress him up? Suggestions?

What are your thoughts? Do you see something I should pay more attention to other than these three projects? And do you think I can do it all, or in true procrastinator style, will I put it all off until the last minute?