Two adorable wooden chairs...

I love to randomly visit the local thrift stores just to see if there's anything I can repurpose for my current home. Over a month ago, I was wandering through a store and found a wonderful old wooden desk chair that someone had painted a deeper red. It was marked at $5.00 and I knew it had to come home with me! I put it in my shopping cart (didn't quite fit but I wasn't willing to let someone else take it!), and wandered around the rest of the store - I was stopped by several people telling me what a perfect chair and color and was even asked what was I going to do with it.

At the time I thought I would put it outside to hold plants, so when I got it home, I left it in the garage for several weeks until I realized it was too cute to put outside, I needed to prolong its life and put it in my kitchen instead!

So, I dusted it off and put it in the corner of the kitchen and spent hours trying to figure out what to put on it. Here's what I came up with:

The little bird was found at the same thrift store for 50 cents (already on his stand), The top book was purchased for 10 cents several months ago from a thrift store that was going out of business (I bought it for the cover), and the bottom book I recovered in a free wallpaper sample I had leftover from several years ago. The pillow was purchased on Ebay several months ago (it came with a few others). On the bottom of the chair I put an old cotton placemat that slightly shrunk when washed several years ago (I've held onto it trying to figure out what to do with it), and on top of it, sits two round serving trays that I bought for $1 (for both!) at a yard sale earlier this year - I  had no place to put them, so thought this would be a good storage place until I figured out what to do with them.

It came with the "distressing" - I thought it was perfectly charming!

I played around with putting a seat cushion on the seat instead of the pillow, but still not sure which I like better. For now, this is good.

While on the subject of chairs, I also found this great little piece at a yard sale a few months ago for $3.00... I failed to take a picture of it before it was painted (sorry!), but it was a medium wood tone and the seat was covered in stickers! There was also some stickers on the back rest. I scraped them off, well most of them, a very large red STP sticker on the seat wouldn't come off, so I decided to create a seat "cushion" to cover it. I spray painted the entire piece a glossy black and then used a scrap of material over self-adhesive foam core to create the "cushion".

 (say hello Smokey!)

It sits in front of the fireplace with one of Grandma Edna's bears. Speaking of grandmas - this chair is older than me! When I bought it, it was being used by the grandchildren of the original owner. All three generations were participating in the yard sale, so I asked the group if they'd be okay with me painting the piece. They gave their approval and I happily bought it. You might think that strange, but when I purchase an old family piece directly from the owner and I have plans to paint it, I ask if it's okay... I feel like I am being trusted with a piece of their family history and I want to do my best to honor that history and that family. Think about how you feel when you sell something that's been in your family for years...