From Messy Kid's Desk, to Vanity for Mom

I have wanted a vanity for forever!  I really want one of those beautiful antique wooden vanity's with all the details and the three sided mirror, but who can afford that?  With that in mind and the saying "Fake it till you make it", I figured I would slap me together something at least resembling a vanity.  So I brainstormed a little and realized we had an extra kid's desk in the younger boys' room.  Hmmmm, I came up with a plan.  Apparently, I was really desperate at the time because it looked like this...

I told you it was fresh from the kid's room!  Anyway, I came up with a plan!  I took it into my room and lifted up the glass and laid sheer fabric table clothes over the frame of the desk. I had the table clothes left over from my wedding (so what the hell was I going to do with them?).

 

  Then I put some of my vintage treasures on top after I replaced the glass.  This is what I came up with...

The mirrored tray and the vanity set were actually my grandmother's. She gave them to me last year when I helped her clean out her shed.  I already had the perfume bottles (also given to me).  The jewelry box was a wedding gift and the flowers were the ones I carried when I got married.  We had a Halloween themed wedding.  My entire little vanity area was free.  All put together from things I already had.  

Upcycled Lego Decor

My step-sons really wanted a Lego themed room.  We have a million of them around and I was trying to figure out some inexpensive ways to create something for their walls with Legos.  So I went out to the shed in the yard and looked around at the heaps of lovely stuff (junk) everywhere to try to find inspiration.  My eyes fell upon some old bed slats against the wall.  Having boys, we have had plenty of beds that didn't live up to expectations.  Furniture just isn't made to stand up to rowdy boys anymore.  I always keep the bed slats though because the kids always seem to break them.  So I brought them in and painted them a high gloss white (which we already had because it is also the trim color in their room).  I figured up a nice amount of spacing and started gluing Legos to them in varying colors.

I used Loctite to glue the Legos on.  The drilled holes you see are inset screw holes that were already in the slats.  Once I had all my Minifig platforms glued on, I decided to see how they would look.

 

After I figured out where I wanted the Minifigs on each platform, I hung the slats on the wall using the pre-drilled screw holes.  I chose to hang one over the closet door and one over each of the windows because I didn't want the boys taking them down or messing with them.  Many of these Minifigs had been my older son's and he didn't really want them in his room (he is 17) but he didn't want them messed up either.  This turned out to be the perfect storage solution for something we wanted to keep!