Piper is Home!

Piper's blood work came back normal this morning so the vet let her come home.  We are so relieved!  According to some websites that I have read, she may not be out of the woods for a while so we will keep a close eye on her.
Within 5 minutes of being home, she had already tried to eat a paper towel and got all of her toys out of her toy box.  I'd say she is back to normal!

Here she is with her cute little bandana that the vet decorated her with.

Isn't she cute?!

$5.00 Makeover Part II

I've completed a second piece of furniture that I found at the neighborhood sale a few weeks back (Yay Me!). It is a sturdy, height-challanged corner cabinet.  It was DIRTY! I think it had been stored in the garage for several years. The best part is that I only paid $5.00!

Here is the before:

I sanded the top down thinking that I would stain it but the wood wasn't the prettest so I decided to just paint the whole thing. I painted it my standard black using a short roller brush on most of it and my angled 2" brush where the roller wouldn't reach! It went really fast which is good because I still have 3 more $5.00 makeovers to complete!

I didn't notice until after painting it that the knobs do not exaclty match up with each other!

My oldest Daughter will be using it in the bedroom of her tiny apartment to hold a tv and dvd player. (Well, she will be as soon as I find a good price on a used tv! Time to go to more yard sales!) 

Thanks for visiting!!!
Gigi

WARNING to pet owners! SAGO PALM kills dogs!

Sigh, I don't even know how to title this post. It isn't going to be fun to write but I sure hope everyone reads it and passes it on to all of their friends that own dogs.

We bought Piper, our Golden Retriever, as a Christmas gift for our daughter. She (Piper, not our daugher!) is soooo hyper. She hates her kennel. She loves to chew. She loves to destroy. She loves to sit in our daughter's lap! She loves to harass our old dog, Haus. She is a complete ball of energy!

Here she is as a puppy in her Christmas dress (which she hated!)

She loves water! If there is any water anywhere in the yard she will end up covered in mud!

Did I mention how much she loves her food?  She used to sleep by it!

She grew bigger and bigger. She learned how to swim and fetch!

About a month ago, Piper pulled one of my potted plants out of the greenhouse.  It was a Sago Palm.

I didn't realize it was toxic to dogs! She played with it often. She also dug up my other plants and shrubs to play with. This weekend, we were doing yard work and I decided to leave the dead palm in the yard so Piper would play with it instead of digging up even more plants. It was a horrible mistake!

Monday evening, my Hubby took her to our land to run off some energy. When he came home he asked if Piper had gotten into Haus' dog food because she had vomitted. I knew she hadn't because I had put his food away. Piper seemed fine and we didn't give anymore thought to it.

Tuesday morning I let Piper into the backyard after her breakfast. About an hour later I noticed she was vomitting in the backyard. I brought her in the house and hosed down the yard where she had been sick because I think it is gross when dogs eat their own vomit!  When I came back in the house, she had vomitted twice more. Back outside she goes so I could clean the floor and she got sick again.  At this point I recognize some of the sago palm in the vomit and do a quick internet search.

This is what I found: http://www.tonyspencer.com/2007/10/03/this-plant-will-kill-your-dog-and-maybe-your-kids/  It scared me; bigtime! I called my Hubby then rushed Piper to the vet.

The vet has had her on I.V. fluids to try to flush the toxins out of her system. She is also being given medicine to help protect her liver. Her initial blood work shows no liver damage. Unfortunately, the damage may not show up for 4 days. I've read reports that sometimes the damage doesn't show up for a month!

We went to visit her this morning.  I'm happy to report that so far, the vet is optimistic that she will be ok. She was really happy to see us and very animated. She has an I.V. port in her leg that she has chewed off more than once. It is covered in the pink tape. 

I am really fighting the guilt of letting her keep her sago palm chew toy. This was completely my fault and is putting a huge financial strain on my family.  Please, if you have a pet or know someone that does, let them know about the dangers of this plant!  Hopefully I will be posting a follow up in a month that Piper is her normal, hyper, crazy self.

$5.00 Makeover Part I

This post is going to be a challange to write because I am keeping my precious grandson and I have to hurry before he wakes up! I had forgotten how adding a baby to the mix makes doing things next to impossible!

I mentioned a while back about going to a huge neighborhood sale and picking up several pieces of furniture. One piece that I brought home was a pretty oak coffee table.  It was only $5.00, my daughter needed a coffee table and I need one more project like I needed a hole in my head!

Here is the before:

And After:

I used Citrastrip to remove the poly finish on the top and followed that with a light sanding.  There were a few nics that were pretty deep so I filled those with wood filler and resanded.  I knew these areas would take the stain differently than the rest of the table so I marked over them with a black sharpie.  Then I conditioned it with pre-stain conditioner and stained it dark walnut.  Well, dark walnut wasn't quite the color I was going for so I stained again with jacobean. Still not right! Lastly I tried dark mahogany. Perfect! 

I brushed on a layer of Minwax quick drying polyurethane then sanded lightly.  Wiped the whole thing down and brushed on one more layer of poly.

While waiting for the different layers of stain to dry I painted the legs and apron black. I think it turned out beautiful and my daughter loves it!

My Hubby said that this is his favorite piece of furniture that I have refinished! Here are a few more pictures:

Do you have a favorite furniture piece that you have refinished? I'd love to see it!

p.s. The baby never woke up!

**Linking to Miss Mustard Seed's Furniture Feature Friday!**

Bestill my beating clock!

I was invited by laxsupermom to join her Before Blogging Throwback Thursday party.  It wasn't hard to showcase something that I bought before I started blogging since I am such a newbie!

This is one of my favorite things!  It is a Howard Miller Camille clock.  A friend spotted it in an antique store in Oklahoma and sent me a tiny picture. She knew I had been looking for a Swedish clock and wasn't sure if this would be something I was interested in.  I was! Two of my other friends (one being Rustic Raspberry!) and I took a roadtrip to pick it up. We had a blast!

Although it isn't a Swedish clock, I still love it!  What do you think?

Oh baby, what a good dream!

Have you ever had a dream so delicious that you hated waking up?  You know the kind I'm talking about; it feels so sweet and fulfills all of your secret desires.

Well, I had that dream!

I dreamnt that I was in Target. I dreamnt that in Target there was a whole shelf dedicated to Annie Sloan Chalk Paint samples. That's right, little dreamy jars of chalk paint. They were $6.00 each. There was only one sample jar of Aubusson blue left. I gingerly placed it in my shopping basket. Before I could even make it to the checkout I was rudely awoken by my Hubby opening his sock drawer. Ugh! I was drawn back to real life where there are no chalk paint samples at Target!

 I was so dissappointed when I woke. So sad! So disheartened!

Problem CitraSolved!

I picked this little sewing stool up at an estate sale.  It was in desperate need of a good cleaning and a makeover.  I had read about using Citrasolv orange cleaner to transfer an image from paper to cloth on the Ticking and Toile blog and decided to try it.  However, I couldn't find Citrasolv in my area so while I waited for my order to arrive, I tried an iron-on transfer.

Here is the little stool before.  I gave her a good cleaning and then taped off the legs and sprayed the metal feet with Rustoleum's Dark Bronze srpay paint.

I painted the legs and apron black.

Next, I bought and washed a drop cloth, cut to size and made a printable iron-on transfer with a graphic I found on the Graphic Fairy's website.  It was pretty but not the look I wanted!  It was very apparent that it was an iron-on transfer and a little bit of the edge was lifting up.  I tried to iron it down and ended up melting part of the transfer! I took the fabric off and threw it away and patiently waited for my Citrasolv to arrive! Here is the Iron-on transfer before I melted it.

After the Citrasolv arrived I tried (and tried!) again. It took me several trips to the office supply stores to get a toner based copy that would work. I finally found one at Kinko's. I had several copies made so I could practice first.  It takes lots and lots of rubbing to transfer the image. But, don't rub too hard or you tear the paper! The final outcome is lighter than the iron-on transfer but it looks like a vintage piece of material and that was the look I was going for!

I listed her on Craigslist and she sold within 2 days.  A sweet lady bought her to put at her little girl's vanity.

I've joined Debbiedoos Newbie Blog Party!!!