Like a Kid in a Candy Store

That's how I felt on Saturday. We had a busy work weekend planned of getting stuff done around the house so I wanted to be sure to "schedule" in some time to do something I would enjoy to celebrate my b'day. We woke up Saturday, had some breakfast then headed out to 3 very different home stores to check out.

The first was the Boston Materials Resource Center. I like to think of it as a "used" Home Depot. Since I'm looking for some solutions to a few home decor\organization challenges, I'd figured I'd go check out what they had and see if anything would work for me. I didn't but it was still fun to look around and see what they had. I also got some good ideas from the set up of the store to re purpose some of my doors and trim that was removed during the renovation.

Next stop was a place I just found out about. They're moving into a larger space and, therefore, are having a sale. It's called Restoration Resources and they collect goods from historical Boston homes, churches and public buildings and sell them. It was really awesome to peruse through their store and see all the beautiful doors, mantles, light fixtures, ginormous mirrors, pedestals...you name it, they had it. I kept trying to figure out how to re purpose these things in my house. Again, I left with nothing but definitely got a lot of ideas for future projects and will definitely go back to visit when they move into their larger store in January.

Restoration Resources

The next and final stop was the Boston Design Center. I have been wanting to check this place out for years. Given that it's not open to the public, it hasn't happened. However, they had a floor sample sale this weekend that they did open to the public (for a small fee and some security hoops to jump through to get into the building). BDC is mostly "high end" furniture pieces which means "more expensive pieces than I'll ever buy." However, in the spirit of Trading Spaces and Design on a Dime, I knew I'd get some inspiration to use on a smaller budget. Mike and I spent quite a while shopping through the many floors of stores. It was great fun but we were both tired of shopping after that (well, Mike actually was tired of it long before I was but he was a trooper and didn't peep any complaints).

So many floors of fun!

On the way back home from our shopping extravaganza, we drove through a neighborhood that we used to pass through a lot back in the JP days. There's a really awesome building, in a not so great area of town, that has been boarded up even since I first laid eyes on it. I've always admired the building and wished it a second life someday. I was thrilled to see that it looks like someone is doing that for it...construction is happening there. Below is the picture I quickly snapped with my iphone of it. Since we were driving and it's a camera on a phone, it's obviously not a high quality shot. I think the bend you get from the movement's pretty cool though! That circular window always make me think of The Crow.

After eating and resting a little, we extended the fun portion of the day with some tennis. Then the work portion of the weekend started. We cleaned out the garage and stacked the firewood that had been dumped... I mean delivered... on the driveway that morning. That was all for Saturday. Sunday was spent unpacking, cleaning and organizing the basement. It's still a bit of a disaster but less of a disaster than it was last week!