Slowly but surely...

I didn't mean to be gone for soooo long. Wow, 12 days since my last post? How did that happen?
I have been busy working on my guest room. It is almost there, just a few last touches and I will post the final reveal, namely, I need to find a curtain rod, a rug, and a lamp shade and then I can finally mark the project complete. Over budget, but complete at last.

In fact, my apartment is slowly but surely coming together. My plan was to be done by the end of July but if I am diligent, and would stop eating crackers and reading novels, I might be able to push that up to the end of this month.

I finally completed my foyer this afternoon when I finally committed to some faux foliage. Don't laugh. I kept envisoning apple blossom or some kind of blossom branches in my vase but I could never find the right price.  Hobby Lobby was having a sale this week and the price was so right. Anyway, enough of my rambling.

The foyer.

The breakdown: 

Gallery wall.

I've actually had these frames and photos since 2005 or so, they have been travelling with me, from Worcester, to Miami and now the ELP. The little boy in the photo is mad grown now, but I digress. Many years ago, I scanned in some photos, enlarged them, and then printed them on my ink jet printer. I bought the frames from Micheal's I believe. They were a reddish wood. I updated them by spray painting the mats with black lacquer spray paint (left over from my frame refurbishments) and spray painting the frames themselves gold. I chose gold to go with the gold mirror. 

Mirror

I was fortunate to stumble upon this mirror in Goodwill one day. I had initially planned to convert a faux bamboo frame I had bought into a mirror but I couldn't find a mirror to fit the frame. Then I came up with mad idea to buy mirrors from the dollar store and stick them in the frame. That wasn't going well either, the mirrors were much smaller than the frame and the dimensions did not match. Anyway, God took pity on my foolishness and I found this mirror for $5.99, of course I snatched it up without a second thought. I paid $4.99 for the foliage. 

Hall table

My foyer table. My whole thrifting addiction adventures  started because I was searching for a foyer table. I eventually gave up and bought one from eBay for about $54. I actually have two of them. The first one I bought was damaged and the seller was kind enough to send me another one without any hassle. 

Tray

I bought this tray in Miami from a thrift store called Red White and Blue. In fact, the thrift store was located in what I called a thrift store mall, there were about 3 different thrift stores there, but RWB was my favorite of them all. Anyways, I bought it for my dining room table back in 2008 after I saw something similar in Melanie and Derwin's apartment on an episode of The Game. Hehe. Yes, I get my inspiration from everywhere. I can't remember how much it cost but it must not have been too much cos I bought it. LOL. It's actually gold plated. 

My Lions!

My lions are from Tejuosho Market in Nigeria. I saw them in January but passed them up because the price I had been quoted was too much (about N2500-3000 can't recall= $15) for me since I wasn't in the market for carved animals. But then I kept envisioning them on my foyer table, and generally couldn't get them out of my head. So I made my mother buy them for me when she went to Nigeria a few months later. She didn't ask for any money so they must have gotten a much better price than I did. I looked too American I guess. LOL. 

I also envisioned a small pot of healthy looking alive foliage on the table. But alas, my green thumb has become brown here. Sigh. Anyway, the bowl was another Goodwill find from my favorite Goodwill store out here (everything 50% off except furniture). The bowl had been used as a candleholder, was a pepto bismol pink and full of wax but I loved the shape. I bought it home, soaked it in hot water which took out all the wax and spray painted it gold and put a plant in there, which began to wilt, alas after a month. I haven't bought one to replace it yet. The plant in there is a gerbera daisy plant that died on me or so i thought. My vision for the space is a full, lush plant, but am so afraid to buy another plant. Oh yeah, the bowl cost about a $1 or was it $0.50. Can't recall. Dang, I was so excited to spray paint the thing, I never bothered to get a before photo. 

Gosh, these pictures are mad blurry and my camera won't let me adjust anything. I will try these photos again when the light is better. Good night.