kitchen table redo & some more fall decorations

I would say the key to living successfully in a small townhouse is finding ways to maximize floor space and storage. We found a kitchen table a few years ago that did just that, but once again it's black and I'm trying to lighten things up so I decide a fresh coat of white paint would be nice. We moved it out to the garage so I could start working on it and then I remembered to get a before picture.








I had already taken the drawer pulls off of the front, but you get the picture. And yes that is what our garage floor looks like.... Oops. I love that this table is really long and narrow because our dinning area is tiny. And before we had Zion I liked the little wine rack to store sparkling cider and the rack to hang our fancy glasses on, but with a hands on and curious baby it is just wasted space. While I was tearing the table apart to start sanding, I realized it could all be easily removed so that's what I did. I even got Zac to help with the sanding.








After a lot of time was spent sanding, priming, white painting, sanding the edges again, and then glazing the edges with a dark stain and glaze combo... I should have put a coat of poly on top to keep it protected from little hands but I was too excited to get it back in the house... This is what I ended up with...








As soon as Zion became mobile I started keeping the table tucked up against the wall to amplify floor space, and use it more as a way to decorate. When we have guests over we pull it out and use it like normal people, but the rest of the time we just eat up to it bar style. I love how it turned out and that I can fit a couple baskets under it to store stuff.








I made a couple more little decorations to keep on the table. Remember how I still had a bunch of burlap, hemp and silk leaves left over? I used them to wrap and embellish one of Zion's little sand buckets to hold our "Thankful Tree". You've probably seen a billion different versions of "Thankful Trees" but I'll tell you our version because it's a little different. We decided it would be a fun tradition to each be given enough paper leaves as there are days in the month of November leading up to Thanksgiving day. When it's time to pull out the fall decorations we will spend a night writing down different things we are thankful for on each leaf and then hot glue them to the tree. That way it's a fun decoration to enjoy during the fall season but will also bring a spirit of gratitude into our home for the whole fall season and lead right into The Holidays. Starting the first day of November we will each pull one of our leaves off at dinner time and talk about what we are grateful for. Then by Thanksgiving day all of the leaves will have "fallen" and we can start decorating for Christmas.








The other little fall decoration I made are "faux apothecary candy jars". I used some candle stick I already had, emptied and cleaned a couple jalapeño jars and filled them with candy, and then glued a little knob to the top of the lid and painted them black. Cute and easy and the candy can be switched out for any Holiday or season.








All I had to buy for these couple of decorations were the little knobs for $1.99. Everything else I already had, which brings all of my fall decorations to a whopping $42. I think that is pretty dang good for everything I've made! I feel like I should now say something like.... Stay tuned for the next episode of "What a crazy, housewife, mommy, insomniac, does in the night ". But that would be weird so I won't.

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