Productive lunch break? Yes please!

I'm going to show you just how productive one can be on an hour lunch break! My lunch break consists of driving to the house (10 minutes) and driving back to the office (10 minutes), so that leaves 40 minutes of free time at the house. (Yes, you can accomplish a lot in 40 minutes!) Sure, there are days when I might watch some tv, take the dogs to run and play for a few minutes, etc... but sometimes, that isn't enough- I like to be productive! So I'll show you 2 separate "lunch projects" from the past 2 weeks!

Lunch Day # 1
The first lunch project actually took 2 days. The first day, I was driving home on my normal route and passed a new thrift store that I had been wanting to check out. So I stopped by and 10 minutes later left with these items for less than $10:

Yep, that's 5 picture frames (1 8x10, 3 5x7, and 1 4x6) and a set of book-ends for $9! I had been looking for some vintage frames for a while because we have some old portraits of our grandparents that we wanted to frame/ hang. So these were perfect! The frames we gold, which I'm not a huge fan of, so I swung by Home Depot after this to pick up a can of spray paint. I wasn't sure what color I wanted to paint the frames, something bright and bold, but I really wanted the book-ends painted a fushia-ish color to go in the guest room. Well I couldn't find the fushia color but I did find a peacock teal color that I loved. Yay!

Lunch Day #2
When I got home for lunch the next day, I quickly put on some old clothes and got to painting! Painting the 5 frames took about 10 minutes.

  

However, I did learn a pretty good lesson about spray paint today. It does not wash off easily like regular paint does so this is how my hands looked afterward, since I had to hold the frames to get all of the sides and back painted. I looked like one of the Na'Vi people...

Good thing the painting only took 10 minutes because I spent the rest of my time cleaning off my hand! I tried removing it with nail polish remover. Of course, I used my "cheap" remover because I didn't want to waste the good stuff.

Result: Fail.

 Maybe it didn't work as well because it's "all-natural with no harsh chemicals". I guess I needed the harsh chemicals! But there was NO way I was going back to work with blue fingers! So that's when I broke out the good stuff. Seriously girls, this is the best polish remover I've ever come across, thanks to my mom!

It is a little pricey at $10 for a small bottle, but it's totally worth it. Especially if you like to paint your nails dark colors, which I do. I can paint mine a deep crimson and when I use this remover, I'm not left with pink-ish colored stained nails! Anywho, here's how well it worked on my smurf fingers:

So, when I got home from work that night, yes I get home at 9:30 :( , I put my photos in the frames and hung them in the hallway:

 Left to right, top to bottom: my grandmother, my grandfather (my mom's parents), Matthew's grandparents, and the bottom is a class photo when my dad was in 1st grade. :) Here is how they look with our other pictures in the hallway.

I'll show you how the book-ends turned out when I post our guest room :)

Lunch project #2

I actually completed this mini-project yesterday. It was a freebie since I already had the paint and brush from when I was picking out a trim color- I probably bought 4 or 5 samples until finding the right one. So while I was getting ready one day, I realized that the inside of our medicine cabinets, in both bathrooms, needed some serious TLC. These have been here since the house was built in 1952, so it was about time! This wasn't anything major, so I'll just show you the before and after pics.  Here is the hall bath before I cleaned it and put a fresh coat of pain inside:

Looks pretty gross, huh? 5 minutes later, voila...

And now for the master bath- it was in worst shape...

I know, right? That metal had rusted in places and I definitely don't want my toothbrush anywhere near that! But it's much better now...

So it didn't cost anything, and only took about 10 minutes, but these old medicine cabinet look so much better. Just fyi, I had thought about removing them entirely, but since they're from the 50s, I'm afraid it might expose lead paint. Does anyone know anything about that??

Stay tuned for more!