{ sprucing up the dining room }

While I do believe that in many cases, less is more, THIS is not one of the times that holds true:

A dining room should not have a ridiculously bare wall like this, am I right? 

Yeah, that's what I thought too.

I kept changing my mind about what to do with this space.  At first I wanted a big family picture, then I decided I wanted the first initial of our last name, "A" up in vinyl in a scrolly print with a sweet saying behind it.  (I still want this somewhere...maybe the master bedroom?) Then I wanted a long line of random, fun, informal family pictures up on the wall.

Decisions, decisions!  The answer finally came to me when I found three beautiful floating shelves at our local thrift store for, get this, $1.50 TOTAL. For all three of them!  I'm pretty sure I let out an audible squeal of delight right there in the aisle.  This is where my thrift store obsession began.

They needed a little bit of TLC, but for a buck fifty, I was NOT complaining! I took them home and gave them a good scrubbing and a coat of black spray paint.  The shortest shelf needed a little repair work, and my husband fixed that right up.

Once we got them hung up, I knew I wanted some vinyl saying up there to tie it all together, and I played around with a bunch of different ideas and went to a million different vinyl websites.  Then I remembered that my husband had been given some vinyl lettering samples from one of his clients.  I thumbed through a couple of them until I found one I liked:

It wasn't along the same lines of what I'd been thinking, but when I read it, I loved the saying and knew it would work great for this space.

Now that I had the layout all put together, I was finally ready to start decorating those shelves!  I was so excited!  But I could not for the life of me find arrangements of things I liked.  I was SURE I had enough stuff lying around the house that I could figure something out, but I kept coming up with nada.  So, our beautiful dining room looked like this about a month:

What?  It's NOT a gorgeous dining room?  I know!  I was so sad.  Then one day it just hit me.  I had found a couple other awesome thrift store finds and once I had those ready to go, the rest just came to me.

Here is the finished (for now!) product:

That's our little dog, Chloe.  She is totally a member of the family.  Maybe it's weird to have a picture of our pet up, but we just love her like crazy, so it seems normal to us!

The other photo is of our daughter and niece.  They are only one week apart.  It's been so fun watching them grow up together!  Both frames were thrift store finds that were .75 cents each!  Can't beat that!

The reed diffuser I already had -- the oil was long gone, but I'd held onto the piece because it was so cute.  I am so glad I did!

The flower was one I got at Robert's Crafts forever ago, I'd been planning on making it into a clip for my daughter, but never got around to it.  It found a new home instead!  The circular vase was a buck from the thrift store and the little glass container (I have no idea what that is called!) was another long used up reed diffuser that I just took the label off of.

I love the sweetness of a single flower...so cute!

The vase was the most expensive thing up there at $15.00.  My husband and I went on a date where you paint your own pottery and this was his creation.  He was very proud of it (as he should be -- it turned out great!)  The fancy silverware was $2.00 for all of it at the thrift store.  I could not believe it!  I think I literally skipped out of the store.  It is gorgeous.  Not sure I'm loving how it's arranged, but it works for now!

One more to see it all put together!

Obviously, there are still some bare areas and I'm trying to decide if I should add to it or leave it as is in a "less is more" fashion.  Any suggestions?  Until we decide to change it up, I am feeling much better about this than the nothingness that was there before!

p.s.  Please ignore that all the pictures say "the inspiration studio".  That was my old blog that is no long in existence.  Apparently when I edited the pics, I didn't save the originals onto our external hard drive, and our old computer crashed, taking them with it, so the old edited pics are all I have.  Awesome.  Sorry for any confusion.

Linked up to:

The Shabby Chic Cottage - Transformation Thursday

Tales from Bloggerittaville - Thrifty Thursday

Somewhat Simple - Strut Your Stuff Thursday with Shaklee

Thrifty Decor Chick - Before & After Party

Between Naps on the Porch - Metamorphasis Monday