Inspiring Finds - 4th Edition

We are knee-deep in a big-fat-mess-of-a-backyard-project right now, which is why I've been a little MIA around the ol' blog lately.

Here's a tiny sneak peak of a  little portion of what we're currently working on...

We have a .67 acre lot and about 2/3 of it is unlandscaped
{in other words, it's a bit fat dirty, weedy, ugly mess!}.
So we've got a big job on our hands, to say the least :)

I've still managed to keep up with my daily internet perusing, however, and have spied some fantastic {future} projects that are just hanging out in my inspiration files for the time being.

Tracie at Cleverly Inspired made the cutest little plaster of paris footprints with her kids and displayed them on her summer mantel. What an adorable way to remember when your babies were littles!

Isn't this personalized latitude and longitude pillow great!? 

Head on over to Crafty, Scrappy, Happy for an easy-to-follow tutorial to make your own.

If you're like me and tend to spend a copious amount of time paging through the pictures in the Pottery Barn catalogs, taking in every little detail,
then maybe the driftwood star in one of the recent Pottery Barn Outdoor Living catalogs caught your eye too.

So you can imagine my delight when I found a tutorial on how to make one myself at 

The Handmade Home.

Love poufs, but hate their hefty price tag?

BHG has some great directions to make your own for a fraction of the retail price tag.
Make a Pretty Pouf Ottoman

Image source: Completely Coastal

I love the look of sling back folding chairs sitting on the deck. There are some great instructions for making some yourself at Ana White and Canadian Living.

Now if only I had the time to replicate some of these amazing projects...

If you've created an inspiring project or have been saving a awe-inspiring project in your inspiration files,

email it to me at 

meadowlakecottage@yahoo.com

and it may just end up in next week's edition of the 

Inspiring Finds of the Week!

The Evolution of the Entertainment Center

When we moved into our house almost 2 years ago, we had very little furniture 

(in number and in size).

The only furniture we had for our Family Room when we first moved in was a small entertainment center that held our old school tube TV. 

That's it. 

Not even anything to sit on.

{Below is the only sad picture I could find of the room right after we moved in. At least my sweet little girl provided some cuteness to the space.}

Naturally, we bought a sofa/loveseat set right away so we wouldn't have to sit on the floor.

Then after a few months of saving up some more moolah, we purchased a larger {flat screen} TV so that you could actually see what was on the screen without having to squint while sitting on the couch.

However, the new TV didn't fit in our old tiny entertainment center, so we had to borrow a console table from another room to set it on.

While we were happy to have a finally have a big kid TV, 

it looked like it was being swallowed up by the large wall behind it. 

And the room still felt empty.

We knew we were going to have to bite the bullet and buy a new, large entertainment center.

I wanted something like this one...

 from Pottery Barn, but I hated the hefty price tag.

After lots of shopping around, we settled on a similar {yet much better priced} one from JCPenney.

But when we set it all up in the room, it still just wasn't doin' it for me...

 

So first off, we had some mirrors cut at Lowe's and velcroed them to the backs of the cabinets to give it some depth.

 

Even though it's a large entertainment center, 

it still looks small against the large wall it sits in front of.

To give it some height, I ordered some black and white shell prints from Art.com and picked up some frames from Ikea to put on top of the entertainment center.

No sooner had I gotten the frames home and stuck the prints in, 

when

CRACK!

Uuuugggghhh.

 So I had to have some new glass cut at a local glass shop...

 

Now the height looks good, but the width needs some work...

After staring at it for months on end while pretending to watch TV, 

I  decided that I'm just not crazy about the color of it either...

it's a little too reddish and we have a lot of brown and tan tones going on in the room.

I'd LOVE to paint it white and put a nice glaze over it to give it a creamy look,

but when I mentioned it to Jacob, he gave me the NO WAY look and said,

"Maybe in 10 years or so."

He thinks painting it would make it look cheap.

What is it with men and their love affair with wood anyways!?

I did some messing around in Photoshop to see what it would look like if we painted it white and added some width to it...

{These are really rough sketches. I can't figure out how to change something dark to white in Photoshop. Anyone know how to do that?}

My first thought was to add some short bookcases the sides and two floating shelves above to balance out the width, but after seeing it all sketched out, I wasn't crazy about that idea.

Then I tried adding two taller bookcases to each side with cabinets on the bottom, but I think the width of the new bookcases looks funny next to the narrow length of the cabinets we already have.

The last sketch turned out to be my favorite. I added two narrow bookcases to the sides to match the width of the current bookcases. I also matched them to the style of the existing shelves.

Now if I can just somehow convince my dear hubby to let me paint the thing and 

then beg him to build the new bookcases to add to the side...

Hmmmmm...

that might take awhile.

P.S. There will be no "After Party" until further notice. It's too hard to drum up participants for a linky party when you don't have a ton of followers. I'm hoping to bring it back once I've built up my base of followers!

Thanks to those of you who have participated the past few months!