Freecyclin'

If you haven't heard of Freecycle.org, you are really missing out! A friend showed it to me a while ago and I've loved it since. It's a website where people from your area post things they want to get rid of and also things they are looking for. It's a great way to keep stuff out of the landfills and find awesome treasures! I've met so many amazing people through it, and have been able to give away a lot of things that I can no longer use. I've given away loads of baby guppies, bricks from my yard, baby stuff, magazines, and more. I've really been grateful for it since David is in school full time and money is tight, I've been able to get some cool stuff and with a little elbow grease, repurpose and reuse. So far I've received about 100 children's hangers, 2 aquariums, Nintendo consoles and games, a boppy pillow, artificial trees, children's bikes, silverware, a tricycle, a stroller, a baby bathtub, solar lights for my yard, and my favorite so far...

this armoire! I've stained and distressed it, the only thing left to do is put the doors on! I'm very excited to be able to hide our swanky TV when we aren't using it! 

The trick to Freecyclying is you have to be quick. If I'm not the first or second to email the person, I usually don't get the item. It's kind of like an auction, except instead of money, you just need to be the first to email and to actually pick the item up. The other day I got this tank just because the first lady to email decided it needed too much TLC and didn't want it. This is a 40 gallon tank! Yeah, it was COVERED in crusty saltwater residue and the caulk was blue from chemicals and starting to come off. For a couple bucks I got some aquarium caulk and re-caulked it. (this is the AFTER photo) I scraped the glass with a blade to get all the hard water off and used about a gallon of vinegar! 

I painted the brown plastic black and also painted the hood. 

And voila! I still need a background for it and Dave is going to build me a stand for it but I think our fish are pretty happy about the 20 gallon upgrade!

So this has nothing to do with Freecycle, but I'm pretty excited because I spent NO money at all on this. I finally painted the kitchen. It was kind of a sage green color and needed retouching anyways, so I got the leftover paint from Pepper's accent wall and mixed it with a mis-tint gallon of a nasty pinkish tan Dave got a while back and it was exactly the color I've been wanting.
Here is before...

And AFTER...looks so much better. Cabinets need to be painted white, that would look so great!

I also did an accent wall in our livingroom. Love it with all the brown I've been collecting!

Excuse the tent, we had a camp-in the night before.

I'm going to finish painting the rest of the upstairs with a nice warm tan color and then I'm DONE with projects for a while. I'm getting the photo business back in shape and it takes a lot of hard work and dedication. Especially since we're trying to break into a new market and do more work up here in Logan, and our client base is in SLC and Provo.  I've been doing a lot of market research in my spare time (ha!) and I have some fun new marketing techniques I'm going to be implementing. It's actually a lot of fun, and I wouldn't be doing it if I didn't enjoy it at least a little bit, right?