Grand opening and Makery September workshops

I am excited to announce our grand opening is Thursday, September 7th! It’s super crazy!  We also have our Makery September workshops launching this Saturday! I can’t believe  that it’s finally here,  and I hope you can come and join in on the fun! We’ll be serving small bites and sips, and have a few awesome, grand opening giveaways!

We’ve had some other fun things going on around here too… Here’s a sneak peek.

 

I wanted to share some of the fun classes coming up in September! Our first workshop is this Saturday(we have a few spots open if you want to jump in)!

Registration is also now open for a private bloggers event on September 17th. Susan from Kindred Vintage will be speaking about growing and engaging your audience on Instagram, and we will have some fun goody bags and treats.

 

I wanted to share the classes with you so you can grab your spot,

here’s a peek at our September workshops. You can register on-line or in the shop!

Feather painting on canvas with acrylic 

Saturday, September 2         9-11 am

 

Favorite Fall quotes wood board sign

Sunday, September 10 1-3 pm

I love a good fall quote!

 

Fall landscapes with Amanda Evanston

Thursday, September 14        7-9 pm

If you follow Amanda on Instagram, you know that her artwork is amazing!! We are so excited to have her in the Makery space to share her talent with us!

Hand-lettered chalkboard with Julie Norkus

I love Julie! We are carrying some of her beautiful handmade items in the shop, and we are giddy that she’s teaching this class!

 

It’s fall! It’s crisp! It’s muddy!

We are going to be making fun doormats to keep that mud and dirt outside. There will be several design options to choose from, I decided to make a Halloween one for myself.

Super cute, right?

Hello Fall door mats

Thursday, September 21        7-9 pm

 

Large stamp carving and printing

Sunday,September 24                1-4 pm

I love stamp carving and block printing, and customizing home decor! I am excited to share this class with you! We’ll choose from several different fall designs, and make a hand-printed tea towel!

And finally, I get to teach one of my favorite blog posts ever! We’ll bring in fall with

a pumpkin canvas painting class with cider and fun treats!

Saturday, September 30            9-11 am

You can register here for the September classes, or come into the store to register for the Makery September workshops!

Make sure you mark your calendar for September 7th for the grand opening!!!

The Collective lhe +Makery

4724 Main St. 1S

Lisle, IL 60532

 

Looking for some fall decorating inspiration?

Check out our previous fall home tours.

 Fall home 2016

Our fall home tour from 2015

2014

2013

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Our wood pallet wall

I am so excited today to share one of our favorite features of our Makery space! Our wood pallet wall!!! We’ve partnered with Mypalletwall to make an amazing wood pallet accent wall!!! We’ve gotten so many compliments, and we are delighted with the results. I thought we would share a little bit about the process with you, and a little bit about the company. They are a local Chicagoland company, and we love not only being able to collaborate with local businesses, but to reuse or repurpose something as well, such as reclaimed lumber.

One of the design elements I knew I wanted in our retail space and makery, was wood on the back wall.

I had this idea that the bright, light grey color, and dark gray color would be off-set by this really warm, rich wall. That’s the thing about using wood in décor. It really makes a space feel naturally beautiful, adds a rustic warmth, and the amazing character of the aged wood. I love that our wood pallet wall is something that was old, but is given a new life, and a perfectly good resource is saved from landfills.

Mypalletwall showed up bright and early, and was ready for work. The team started by covering the wall first with a brown paper, so any color from underneath wouldn’t show through. After the paper was tacked up, they started adding boards and nailing them to the wall. They were really great about asking me if there was a direction I wanted to go in with the wall, and if there were any boards that I thought were too rustic, or if there were some I liked better than others. You know me, I love to micro-manage design that way. I love that they use wood from lots of different sources to give character to their walls, as well as un-treated pallet wood, they also use old crates, and barn wood.

It was really exciting to watch it go up and slowly transform the space.

The guys really put in a full days work. Every piece had to be custom cut the the wall. They finally finished after about 9 hours, and when they were done, they cleaned up, and it was like they weren’t even there, except know we had this amazing wall.

Everyone who has come in so far has remarked on how beautiful it is!

It really is a show piece, and makes everything look amazing! I love being in the Makery, with the wood pallet wall.

When I spoke with the owner, Tom, I was really interested in his story. I love how businesses can be born out of a passionate love to create. He told me after a childhood of working along side his dad in his woodshop; his first project from reclaimed wood was making a headboard for a close friend. After that, it took off, and has evolved into a business that has expanded throughout Illinois. To me, those are the best kind of success stories.

Mypalletwall also made our sign! It makes me so happy to see it in front every day,and I am so happy it will greet you from the street as well!

Mypalletwall is offering a wide range and variety in colors and finishes for custom wall transformations for home and businesses alike.

You can follow them on these social media channels…. Mypalletwall Facebook page, on the web at www.mypalletwall.com, Instagram at @mypalletwall , or email them at mypalletwall@gmail.com

This is a sponsored post, opinions are entirely my own.

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New house updates!

Hello all! Thanks for your the support during our move and the excitement about the new house! It's been a whirlwind for the past couple of months.

When I shared the new house with you a month ago, I shared early photos from when we first walked in and fell in love with it. Since then a LOT has happened! We took over the build right after windows went in so we were able to specify where we wanted plumbing, lighting and outlets.

We added some custom touches like a rough in for a sink in the garage (it's going to be SO NICE), a water line and plumbing down to the basement for a future kitchen, a few new lights and sconces, and most importantly for me -- extra outlets in places I have always dreamed of having them. ;) I added one to the floor of my office so I can have a lamp and plug in my computer without cords running all over (cause you know how much I hate cords!), two to our mud room/laundry for a future charging station and a lamp, one in the pantry so I can keep small appliances plugged in (going to be awesome!) and...my favorite, a plug in the mud room closet so I can keep a dust buster and cordless vacuum charged up. I also was able to move outlets to where they would be hidden by furniture or to better locations. I love being able to make those little changes to a house!

So over the past couple of months they've done electrical, plumbing and drywall. I forgot how long drywall takes! It was a good two weeks of little (noticeable) progress because of the mudding and sanding on repeat.

But there's been some exciting updates over the past week that give us hope that we won't be in a hotel forever! They've started all of the trim work, which includes what feels like most of the finishes. All of the cabinets and trim (like crown), baseboards, window trim, door trim and doors, mantel/fireplace surround, mud room built ins and even the stair railings and posts will go up during this process.

They won't be done till next week but I couldn't resist taking some photos. I'd say they're about 3/4 of the way through the list -- still have some windows and base to get in, some fishing touches on the cabinets, and then the mantel and stairs. They also have a couple sinks/counters to install (the granite will come later). By the way, you can see the finishes I picked out for the house in this post.

So here's a look at the kitchen and eat in area as it was a couple months ago:

And here it is now: 

I can't wait for mornings at the breakfast table in this sunny spot! It gets the best morning light in the house! 

I was standing in the doorway below for the before shot, and this is looking back at it into the kitchen:

So many things I'm excited about in here! Cabinet lighting (like I did at our house) will be installed, we'll have a double oven that I'm SO thrilled about, and we added things we have at the old house that we love, like a trash compactor. (See more about that and why I love it so much at the link.) 

I had the upper cabinets removed from by the fridge and I'll be adding some shelves there, like I had in my kitchen. They'll be much wider though, so I'm really excited about that. I also had a sconce run above as well. 

Can we talk about the pantry for a second? That door there?:

Yeah, it's huge. I mean, not HUGE. But big. Big compared to what we've both had our whole lives. I mean, I want to just lay down and sleep in there, I'm so excited about it. I'll be able to store SO many things in that room. I am looking forward to dressing that room up someday. 

Here's a look at our master: 

The room has five windows, which I'll LOVE during the day. But at night I'm going to need big time light blocking. I need total darkness to sleep well. It drives my husband a little crazy 😂 -- one little tiny light from a charger will illuminate the entire room (at least to me). This room is the exact same square feet as our last one, but skinnier and longer. We may have to nix our chairs that were in our master before. I'm looking forward to figuring the layout in here!

I'm excited because I found a bunch of stuff to return to Lowe's while packing up and had enough to purchase this light I've been eyeing for the master: 

It's the Kichler Merlot light and I first saw it there a few months ago but didn't have a spot for it at our house. It will be lovely in our room -- I loathe installing lights but this one I'm excited about getting up. ;) 

The great room has some of my favorite views -- I've said it before but I can't wait to decorate this house for Christmas!:

The stair railings and fireplace surround aren't in yet...I'm waiting with bated breath! But it's come a long way: 

That window on the staircase is one of our favorite parts of the house -- it lets in SO much natural light. This house faces a different direction from our other one so this window is a total game changer for what would have been a dark space. 

And my other favorite view -- the big windows in this room that overlook our covered patio: 

Trim isn't on the windows here yet but I can still imagine how our big tree will look in front of these windows! 😍

I forgot to get a shot of our master bath and the mud room -- the latter is nearly done other than the floors and paint! Of course the build can't move fast enough for us, but from now on the changes will be pretty exciting to watch. Before it was literally watching drywall and paint dry. ;) 

Can you see why I fell in love with this house from the start? It has been an exercise in patience and for the most part I've been pretty good about the delayed gratification of it all. It's really been so fun to see it all come together. We've got a busy weekend and early week, but I will be back next week with more! Have a great weekend all! 

This content is property of Thrifty Decor Chick LLC. If you are reading this on any other site other than www.thriftydecorchick.com or one of her social media platforms, please contact her immediately (thriftydecorchick at gmail dot com). Any other use of this content is strictly forbidden.

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Sunflowers in the yard

I know it’s still August, but we’ve started to dip into cooler temperatures here at night already. It makes me a little sad. Summer is one of my favorite seasons. Actually, I’ll take any season but the dead of winter, it’s just too cold… oh and construction. That gets it’s own season here in Chicago. I crazy love this time of year in the yard and garden. It’s filled in and blooming like mad. The garden is churning out a ton of tomatoes, and I’ve found a few garden surprises like  pop-up sunflowers in the yard, and this monster zucchini.

It’s funny how fast they grow to be ginormous. It might be time to make zucchini bread.

The sunflowers were planted by squirrels,they have been popping up all over the place. Which is funny, because when I plant them, they never come up that way. I happened to have some sunflower seeds in my birdseed mix this spring. Next year, I think I need to do a birdseed planter with just sunflower seeds in it, and see if I can get them planted all over my yard.

We have a ton of squirrels where we live. I know some people hate them, but they don’t bother me. Seeing the babies in the spring run between the trees is pretty cute. My sister-in-law hates them. The one thing you should never do in my family is admit to any kind of weakness. It pretty much seals the deal that you are going to get something related to it on every birthday or holiday. She has gotten a constant stream of crap with squirrels on it for about 20 years now.

These sunflowers in the yard were a really nice surprise this summer. They made for a nice addition of color. Do you have any surprise plants in your yard this year?

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Join us for a blogger event get together!!

It’s been a whole bunch of years since I’ve hosted a blogger get together. I co-hosted my first blogging event way back in 2012, and then a few after that. It is such a great way to get together without having to  go to a huge conference. I am excited to announce that we are going to be hosting a blogger event! All are welcome to attend! Seasoned bloggers, new bloggers, and even if you are thinking about starting a blog! While,I enjoy going to and speaking at larger conferences, but I really enjoy the more intimate hang outs of getting together on a smaller scale.

It’s a great way to be social, and to join us in our new shop and makery! If you are interested in attending, just drop us an email so we can give you payment details.

 We’ll have Susan from Kindred Vintage as a guest speaker, talking about growing your Instagram account,we’ll also talk about branding beyond blogging, and have some goody bags,  a few giveaways, and of course yummy eats and sips!

I hope you can join us for this fun blogger event!

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Moving update and our empty house

Hi. 

My name is Sarah...I blog at this site called Thrifty Decor Chick. Remember that blog?  😂

I'm coming up for air -- selling and moving has absolutely kicked my butt. It's been emotionally and physically exhausting. But so far...I would do this process over again (I'd just start packing much sooner) for the end result -- and it isn't even done yet. ;) That's saying a LOT and if you've seen me over the past few weeks, shows you how excited I am for our new house. 

But. I'm going out on a limb here and doing what I hardly ever do...I'm going to say the "never" word. Barring unexpected life events, we are NEVER moving ever again. Mark my words. I'm putting them in writing on this day so it will be known. This shouldn't be a problem, as I've never had the urge to move until I walked through our forever dream house a few months back. So I don't see ever getting the bug again. 

But. Nevahhh. 

The last I talked with you we had just moved all of our furniture out of our house, and then two hours later got word that a house sale down the line fell through. Turns out we were staying put for awhile...just with no things. Ha! 

Many of you were confused by why a house four down the line would affect us. It's simple really -- each buyer had to sell to buy the next seller's house. If one falls through we're all affected. It left four families in limbo...but it did not last long! 

We have a very close friend who was getting married in Mexico last week and we've had it on our calendar for almost a year. Hence our early move out last week. So we moved out and the next day headed out of the country for a couple days of the beach and margaritas. It did not suck. We paused all of the prep to close on our house, including finalizing details with the lender, insurance rep and utilities. 

We got word on Thursday that the sales were back ON!! Wonderful news!! But the last day of our trip we were scrambling to get things finished. I was totally happy with that because I really needed the security of knowing our house was going to sell soon to get us in to our new one. 

So that's the update -- we closed on our house today (and close on the new one in a few days) and are now in a short term hotel for at least six weeks. Our friends moved into our house yesterday and we were in and out all day grabbing last minute stuff. We had SO many random things laying around! Two things I've learned -- Lego sets are nearly impossible to move without total destruction and Nerf bullets breed like rabbits. Or at least it seems like it. 

Here's the thing. I haven't been that sad! I realized this morning it's because of the simple fact that we will still be able to go see our house all the time...and get to see it loved. How lucky are we? Most people have to walk away from their home forever and never see it again. Ours is not goodbye but a see you soon. Even though all the stress and exhaustion that is not lost on me. We are so very fortunate and I still can't believe it worked out like this. 

I went through the house taking photos of the rooms as I finished emptying them out. I did this to have them for myself, but many of you asked to see them as well. I have never been prouder of our home than when it was empty. Isn't that funny? The character I have added to this home makes it shine without one lick of furniture or decor. It is a true, special beauty and I love it more now than I ever have. 

Here are the photos -- enjoy! I link to each room reveal above the photos and below each photo I linked to ALL of my posts on each of these rooms so you can see the projects through the years. (These were all taken with my cell so the quality isn't the best, sorry about that!)

Dining room turned library

See all of the posts about this room here!

Living room

See all of my posts on the living room here!

(My friend is babysitting the plants while we're in between.)

My beloved kitchen :)

You can see how I transformed this space and all of the projects here.

Our family room 

This one is partly kitchen too. ;) 

See more about this room (and how we took down a wall years ago) here.

My favorite closet -- the book nook!

Our loft -- office/craft room

See how I transformed that room (top to bottom!) here.

Basement with built in cubbies and DIY fireplace

Basement kitchenette

You can see all of the posts about this space (including how we used it before it was finished!) here.

That's just a few of my favorite spaces in the house, and the ones I'm most proud of after everything was out. I forgot to grab one of our bedroom but it was so beautiful as well!

OK, I swear I'll be back to a normal posting schedule very shortly! I'm hoping this week but I've learned not to promise. ;) We still have another closing to finish up and I have to get our hotel space somewhat organized so we can stop tripping over each other (and the cats). I have some wonderful updates to share on the new house and will also be blogging about each room in our "old" (that's weird to say!) home because I didn't even share some of the final finished spaces.

But I WILL be blogging in a more normal fashion again and I'm really looking forward to it. :) Thanks for your patience with me! This is going to be a fun new journey!

This content is property of Thrifty Decor Chick LLC. If you are reading this on any other site other than www.thriftydecorchick.com or one of her social media platforms, please contact her immediately (thriftydecorchick at gmail dot com). Any other use of this content is strictly forbidden.

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