Thrifting Archives - Page 5 of 8 - Ashley Hackshaw / Lil Blue Boo

Project Playroom: The Scale and the Shelves

February 1, 2012 by Ashley Hackshaw

Well, I was supposed to be working on the last minute details for Boo’s birthday party today…..but Boo was still home sick….so I shifted gears and we worked on her playroom a little to entertain ourselves.

I finished the market awning in the last installment of Project Playroom. I thought I’d be done with the playroom by now but it’s taking me a bit longer to get my projects finished. I found this great old dairy scale on ebay for $20 and thought it would look so cute in the market:

I bought a $3.00 wrought iron garden bracket from Home Depot to hang the scale from:

Boo and I found these shelves at the thrift store this morning for $14.00 on the way to grab a burrito from El Pollo Loco:

With a little spray paint….the shelves match the awning!

Boo worked on organizing her veggies and fruits into bins (we found the bins at a local store called The Alley). The fruits and veggies are from Ikea.

We still have a lot more to add to make the market as realistic as possible! Looking for a cute wooden cash register is the next step…..along with some mini canvas shopping bags to hang from the scale.

Click here to check out Project Playroom for all of our related projects!

Thrift Store Find: Shabby Chic

January 23, 2012 by Ashley Hackshaw

I found the most amazing dresser at the thrift store to hold all the office supplies in the LBB office. It was only $170….I would have spent more at Ikea for storage for all my junk. Brett thought it was too expensive at first, but he came around when I negotiated “we’ll refinish it and sell it for more one day.” Here I am giving it a big hug:

I’d been checking the thrift stores weekly…..never finding what I really wanted or needed. THEN I walked in last weekend and this dresser was just sitting there waiting for me. It had already been re-painted the perfect color too. Another lady was eyeing it too and I swooped in like a falcon predator and tore off the “tear here and take to cashier to check out” stub and took off running.

Project Playroom: The Market Awning

January 16, 2012 by Ashley Hackshaw

I’ll call this series of posts Project Playroom because it is a work in progress, the making of a DIY Play Market staring with the awning. Lots of little projects leading up to one big reveal. I just have to pace myself and work on things as I feel up to it! We took the old LBB office and cleared it all out into a much bigger office. It was going to be the nursery but those plans are on hold for a bit until I am cancer-free and we figure out how we want to add to our family. So now it’s my new “writing room” and Boo’s new playroom….we needed a room just for that almost-four-foot-tall Barbie dream house she got for Christmas.

Boo loves her kitchen and she’s always wanted a market/grocery store to go along with it…..so I thought I’d devote one small corner to just that. Brett found this old awning that someone had tossed out:

I took off the existing awning to reveal the frame and Brett got out the power tools to make it a tad smaller. He’s always so great when I ask him to do little projects….you know I love my power tools, but I’m not feeling quite as strong as I used to so I don’t trust myself with the saws right now….I’d like to keep all my fingers and limbs if I can:

I used my seam ripper to take apart the existing awning cover. This is the easiest way to make a new pattern! Just take apart something old, trace it onto new fabric, and then put it back together the same way! That’s how even the biggest of companies do it!

I bought some bright yellow canvas, bias tape, and thread:

I traced all my awning pieces onto the new canvas:

I sewed the pieces together and tested the fit of the awning on the frame. Looks good!

I made a little template so that I could cut the bottom into a scalloped edge:

I stitched white bias tape all around the raw scalloped edges:

The finished edges!

I used a simple freezer paper stencil to add the word “MARKET” to the front. The letters could be cut out by hand but my Silhouette machine cut them out in under a minute. You can see more about freezer paper stenciling here in my beanbag tutorial.