Dining Room Update for instant gratification

Like most DIYers, I always have millions of ideas floating around in my head....that plus a woman at my church declared I have ADD this weekend....so theres that too....actually this someecard describes the sitch in my head at all times:

Source: sphotos-d.ak.fbcdn.net via Katie on Pinterest

Ok, anyway back to the story...so I have a lot going on in my mind and WAY more projects I wanna do than I will probably ever have time for..at ANY point in my life. I do make time for some projects, but occasionally I get too many in the hopper and feel overwhelmed. At the moment, I have the closet project, a new Ana White build (that I haven't even posted about yet!), and 2 pieces of artwork....along with you know 50ish hours of "real" work a week and the normal laundry (when its utterly necessary....if you still have 2 pairs of undies then you're good in my book) and normal house work (and mopping every 6 months is the norm, right?)....so sometimes you I just need little updates/projects that provide instant gratification.

SOOOOooo I bought curtains and a curtain rod for my dining room.....the room this bad-to-the-bone blogger hasn't updated you on in  FOR-EV-AH! The last time I showed you the dining room, it looked like this:

Here's it's current state:

sooooooo since the last time I updated you I have gotten:

6 Pottery Barn Seagrass Dining Chairs in Havana Dark- ya'll know I have an unatural addiction to seagrass, right?

by popping by the Pottery Barn Outlet once a week (and sometimes twice a week) on their truck day after work... I scored these 6 beauties (mind you one of them is out of the frame in this pic) for around 350 bones plus tax for all 6! So now we have 8 total dining chairs. The other 2 end chair lovelies I got for $65 each when the outlet had BOGO!

Restoration Hardware Look-Alike Chandy- swoon!!!

Restoration Hardware sells their Rectangle Shade Pendant for $595. Yikes. I LURVE it, but not like sell-a-kidney-on-ebay love it. This pretty lady came from Overstock...Gotta love the O price at $139 after a 20% coupon in my email. At $450 cheaper than the RH version I will definitely take it. This light is almost 4 feet long!!!! Thats a lotta light. I HEART it. And it's on poles....and you guys know how I feel about pole jobs. 

and last but not least...

a pair of Horizontal Colorblock Curtains from JCPenney & a Target Threshold Rod

I can never decide on curtains. I liked the JCP ones, but they were $100 EACH! what!? no. I will bust out my sewing machine that has been in the box for the 10 years before I will pay $100 each. Then they ran a half off sale and I found a coupon code...so I snatched them up like I was a kid at an easter egg hunt. 

Now other than hanging the rod, there wasn't a whole lot of work involved in this project...but I will share with you my little secret. You know the Target drapery rod I got? Well, it's extendable. Which means it has those little plastic rings at the extension parts like this...

Well, I took a brown Sharpie marker to the rings on my new ORB (shout out to YHL for makin this acronym popular) rod and look how they turned out....

and you can't see them at all when you're standing on the ground (i mean where else would you stand, but you know what I meant.).

So that's my little trick....now I really need to get a silver Sharpie out and do that nickel rod in the pic above this one. Hope my little trick helps someone.

I hope to have a closet update soon. Peace out awesome readers.

PS- please ignor the supa dirty dining room table....it will get cleaned....sometime.

PSS- I purchased all of these items with my own monies...none were given to me or sponsored by anyone.

PSSS- I am trying on new logos on my pics to cut down on them being stolen...it stinks like mustard lookin baby poo when someone claims a room in your house as theirs.

Linking up to: 

Making the World Cuter Mondays  |      Keeping it Simple Crafts: Motivate Me Mondays  

 | Coastal Charm: Nifty Thrifty Tuesdays

Chic on a Shoestring: Flaunt it Fridays    |      The Shabby Nest: Frugal Fridays    

FREE Tostitos Chips or Dip at Kroger...load coupon today only!

Today, when I log into my Kroger (and affiliates) card account and look at the coupons, I see a ecoupon for a FREE Tostitos Cantina Chips or Dip! Gotta love FREE. My coupon says it expires 6/21/13. Go HERE to check it out.

Extra Bedroom Closet Overhaul: Phase 1- Planning

All of the bedrooms in this house are proud owners of big...REALLY big walk-in closets. I'm not saying that they  are California Closets (are those still in style? I wouldn't know. I am totally not trendy. did they ever become affordable for the common man woman?) Either way, all bedrooms had these huge-mungo (yes, that is totally a word....it's my blog I say it is a word...thank you.) closets with wirey like interiors....all but the extra bedroom downstairs. Yes, it had the builder-ish wire junk, but it was not a walk-in. It was decently sized, but well...it wasn't doing it for me. I mean if you put clothes all the way back on the top and bottom hanging parts then an average sized person (this could be totally wrong...I just couldn't reach them and it's my house so I just consider me average..at 5 ft and 3.75 inches...yes the .75 makes a difference) couldn't reach them. Here's how the situation looked before we moved in:

There was another thing that bugged me. There was a piece of wood on the wall behind the wire closet system. Yes...wood. Wood wasn't used to build the closet system, but apparently was needed to support it when the wires ripped a hole in the wall. 

Well, the wood on the wall was the straw the broke the camels back (thats such an odd quote to me btw). I wanted that wood off the walls...and if the wood was coming off the walls that mean the closet system had to come down with it.....and it wasn't going back up if I could help it. So when we had the house painted (yes, I didn't DIY the paint on my house. Surprised!? Well don't be....it was pretty much not worth it because I have an amazing paint guy named Rony with an amazing paint crew and their prices cannot be beat...and they use QUALITY paint to boot.) anyhow when we had the house painted, we took it all down....and had them fill the hole left behind underneath the wood....and by this time we had had the downstairs bedrooms recarpeted too.So this is what it looked like:

Please pay no attention to the piece of trim in the floor. It's actually a piece of window cornice I stored in there temporarily. But thats how the closet looks these days...like an empty little mini room. And it has stayed that way for 6 months now.....so it was time for a plan of attack. I took the measurements of this room to decide if I could make it into a walk-in....and do it effectively still maximizing space. I think I can, I think I can (said the little engine that could). I then printed out a piece of graph paper from printablepaper.net   and started drawing out my plan. Here it is:

The big drawing on the left hand side is the "aerial" view of the closet...and then the A and B are as if you are standing in front of those sides of the closet. Where you see two lines that is a shelf and where you see a squiggly line that is a clothes bar. Clear as mud? 

I'll update you on this adventure as I go along. Anyone else planning any overhauls soon? Anyone see any flaws in my plan? (Hint: I think there is one...so I am already scheming on how to remedy it) Also, what material would you use for the shelves?

Kroger- FREE bottle of fruitwater...today only

Today, when I log into my Kroger (and affiliates) card account and look at the coupons, I see a ecoupon for a FREE bottle of fruitwater! Gotta love FREE. My coupon says it expires 6/16/13. Go HERE to check it out.

Memorial Day Sale Finds

I didn't do too much shopping this Memorial Day weekend. I did visit a few home improvement stores for supplies for a couple projects I have in the hopper, and I visited the Pottery Barn Outlet. LOVE that STORE! Anyhow, they were having a fabulous sidewalk sale and even took an extra 10% off your whole purchase for the holiday! You had to dig around outside on stuffed tables, but there were deals to be had. Here's what I ended up with (prices below are after the 10% off):

- Havana Underbed Basket: reg $44.00, sidewalk sale priced $4.50
- Cambria Serving Platter in Persimmon: reg $32.00, sidewalk sale priced at $4.50
- Caterer's 12 piece Glassware Set: reg. $59.00, sidewalk sale priced at $9.00
and the best find of the day...
- Mercer Triple Glass Shelf: reg. $199.99, sidewalk sale priced at $13.50

Thats $334 worth of items for $31.50 thats like 91% off!!! Plus, I had some gift cards from Christmas leftover, so I practically got all this for no cash out the door!

Anyone else find any fabulous deals lately?

I Like Pole Jobs Better! (Pendant Lights)

I am a big fan of poles....when it comes to pendant lighting that is. What did you think I was talking about? Shame. Now that we have that taken care of I can share with you my latest pole job (I hear you snickering like a 13 year old school girl!). I know the jokes are lame, but it's all good....Honestly, when we were looking at lights I did tell Mr. SS "I think I like pole jobs better".....without even thinking....out loud in the middle of a home improvement store. Yep. I did that.

Ok, so lets get down to business.... this is the pendant situation we had in the kitchen upon moving in.

Two little orangey-yellow glass pendants hanging from the black canopies on the ceiling by black cords. They were okay if thats your thing. Its not my thing. And there were a few reasons that I wanted to change them out:

1. The one of the right had a big crack in the top. If you bumped it, a piece of glass would fall out.

2. They didn't put out a whole lot of light. 

3. I couldn't put an LED or CFL in there without it being seen.

So I started looking at lights mostly to satisfy criteria #2, because I like a lot of light.Then I found these beauties on Pottery Barn's website. 

(image from HERE)

I had a coupon and then they ran a sale.....and then a pair of them became mine. And they are BEAUTIFUL. WAY WAY nicer in person than this picture even makes them look. I absolutely loved them. I even bought an extra in case we ever broke one. I mean I knew these were gonna be the lights for me, errr I mean our kitchen. We finally got around to putting one up. Around that time, I had heart issues that wouldn't allow me to put my hands over my head for very long....so only that one pendant got put up and we lived with two different pendants in the kitchen for 4 months! Yes, 4 months! Can you believe type-A me let this happen!? The audacity! No, really it was just probably just a lack of time and sleep. 

Either way, those 4 months taught me....those were not the pendants for me either. Obviously if my type-A self can leave two different pendants up and not even be motivated enough to put up the other one, something isn't right. So I studied the Pottery Barn one. 

Did I like the glass? Yes. Beautiful. 

Did I like the metal color? Yep, its a shiny,sparklyish DEEP brown/black.

Did it clean well? Yep, you really didn't notice the dust & such as bad as I thought you would.

Did it have options? Yep, I could use the fad-dish Edison bulbs, colored bulbs, etc

Could I change the length? Yep, a bunch extra length was shoved in the canopy

So studying the fixture itself didn't help. I then started looking at other pendants from various internet sources trying to find a common theme in those I liked.... Thats when I realized I liked poles. Yup, I do. They are thick, sturdy, have a solid appearance in the air, add a visual element, and hang uber straight (if your ceilings are straight). That was the problem....I wanted poles in the kitchen rather than cords! 

So I started searching and wouldn't you know Home Depot came through for me. I found these lights which are made by the Home Depot brand Home Decorators:

(picture from HERE)

We went to the local Home Depot and checked the display out they had of it.

Was it on a pole? Yep

Would it clean well? Yep

Would it match? Yep, looks just like the appliances

Could you change the length? Yep, came with 5 twelve-inchers and 2 six-inchers

Could I use whatever type bulb? Yep, it had a glass diffuser!!!!

So, 2 of them became mine and looky at the pretties in my kitchen:

I love them!!! Loved them so much that we put BOTH pendants up one right after the other. Here's my assessment of them in the 2 weeks we've had them up. First of all, they were probably the easiest lights to install that we've ever done...and I've changed out a lot of lights. Secondly, the pictures do not do them justice. They are GORGEOUS in person. Very industrial yet modern and traditional all at the same time. The only slightly negative thing I have to say is that once hung, the diffusers are hard to get on. Not impossible, but just not easy, peasy....but since I put CFL's in them I won't have to open the diffuser but every few years or so. Lastly, they put off a soft, bright light that is perfect for kitchen pendants.The lights themselves are not on in this picture....why?? I have no clue...I just took it because I was so happy to love them.

btw...I am not sponsored by Home Depot. I was not given these by Home Depot. Home Depot has no clue at all that Simply Sarah even exists....I was just excited about my lights. BUT Home Depot if you read this and want to see more of your goodies featured here....well, I would not be opposed to this! ha! :)

Pin Ups- Carpeting Cleaning

My baby brother had 3 life changing events last week. Here's how his week went:

Sunday-  He graduated college (as valedictorian!) and sang at his graduation.

Friday- He bought a house, moved some items into said house, and had his wedding rehearsal and rehearsal dinner.

Saturday- He got married and left on his honeymoon.

What does that have to do with carpet cleanings you might ask? Or Pin ups for that matter. Well, you see his new house needed the carpets cleaned. There was a rush of things going on right before closing and the house never got thoroughly cleaned. Well, since they were off on their honeymoon and family was going to start moving things in for them, I decided to clean their carpets for them. I have a carpet cleaner that I used religiously at our old house. LOVE IT. Highly recommend it. In case you wanna get your own this is what I have, the Hoover SteamVac with Clean Surge.

Yep, it's a mini miracle worker on light colored carpets...and thats just what my brother and his bride had. Very light cream colored carpets. You can use whatever type solution in the Hoover SteamVac that you want and normally I use the Hoover brand carpet cleaning solutions that I pick up for around $10-$12 at Lowes, and that stuff would last me forever. Well, I didn't have enough left to do their whole house, so I stopped by Lowes and all they had was this stuff in the red bottle. I figured it would work just as well.

The next day, I went to take everything over there and I realized I didn't have any carpet spot treatment. I didn't feel like stopping by the store, so instead I turned to pinterest. To a pin up, I had made, where  I had read about people using homemade cleaners that changed their whole lives....well ok, maybe their whole lives is a bit of exaggeration...anyhow, I found this pin with this really horrible looking "Before" picture (You can see the picture and their recipe HERE) with a really good looking "After" picture and decided to give it a try.

I based my "recipe" off theirs with a bit of alterations. 

Here's what I did:

2 Cups of Water

2 Tbsps of White Vinegar

1 Tbsp of Dawn Direct (it's the only clear detergent I had)

I poured all that into an empty spray bottle I had. I then gently tilted the bottle around to mix everything without creating bubbles. Now it was ready to go....

Here's the carpets before we started out:

We started by first vacuuming the carpets with our Dyson. If you don't have a Dyson, you don't have fun vacuuming. We have the Dyson DC24 Compact Vacuum. I love it. I don't think it's available anymore though.

Next, DH went around and spray all the really dark spots with our homemade carpet solution. Some of the spots that had caked on gunk we scrubbed with fancy microfiber washcloths old cut up undershirts of DHs.

I then loaded up cleaning solution into my trusty Hoover and went at it. Some of the really bad spots, I used the Power Surge button on....which means the machine releases extra cleaning solution in those spots. I don't know if all machines have that but this one does. For normal use though, you just hold a trigger on the handle and push forward. Then release the handle trigger and pull the machine backwards and it will start sucking the water and solution back up. What that machine with suck up will be NASTY. NAS-TAY, I tell you. You will not believe what all will come out of your carpets. Anyhow, I went over the carpets twice since we weren't sure just how long they had been dirty.

And here's the before and afters:

 

I'd say the combo of the homemade solution and the Hoover SteamVac worked some magic on these carpets. Would I use the homemade cleaner again? Yup, in a pinch I definitely would. You had to scrub a bit more than if you had used Spot Shot, but overall it worked really well....and was cheap! Would I use the Hoover SteamVac again....you bet....thats like the 50th time I've used that sucker and each time I am amazed by the results.