New Lamp and Spraying Inspiration

WARNING- this a very wordy post....

I had hoped to post not only my new lamp- but also a dinner recipe and a butter cream frosting recipe today- BUT- I am still sick- and feeling worse than yesterday- so there will be no fritatta making or butter cream frosting making today unfortunately:(
Although- yesterday- Z and I did muster up the strength to ty out the homemade peppermint patties that I talked about yesterday- INSANE is an understatement.  If you like peppermint patties- you must try these!!!  Check out the link to the blog post above- which also has a link to the direct recipe- and my 2 cents of advice when making them is this:


Both in Darby's experience and many people who commented on the original recipe said that they had to freeze their patties before dipping, otherwise they would fall apart- I luckily did not have that problem.  Mine were ready to be dipped in the chocolate within 1 hr.  Why is this case?  I think it may be one of two reasons (or a combination of both)- either it's that our house is chilly (like- 62 degrees all winter during the day time) or the fact that I used no-fat sweetened condensed milk (it just happens to be what I had in my pantry).  But, regardless- I had no "firming" issues- or falling apart issues (thankfully)! If you are looking for a satisfying sweet goodie give this a try and let me know what you think!


Onto the lamp- I have fairly recently started reading  a blog called Centsational Girl- I highly recommend it!  Kate (in my humble opinion) is the ultimate DIY'r.  She has a highly successful blog (with tons of readers) and posts some pretty awesome projects.  I dabble in the art of DIY- but she seriously inspires me to do more of it!  Not to mention that she seems like one of the most humble and real bloggers I've come across (in my admittedly very short journey through blogland). I have lately been struggling with  feeling like blogging is sort of cliquish? Like I don't fit in- I know it's very high school right?  Well- she is the one blogger that I have emailed and actually heard back from.  Now-I realize that people are busy and many bloggers probably get tons of emails a day- but for her to respond to me (a totally unknown person in blogland)- well it means a lot- and it also says a lot about what type of a business woman she is!  Back on task:
Her recent spray painting project gave me a heap of useful information, and gave me inspiration to use more of the stuff! (while donning my face mask of course!)


Here is the before/after of my little lamp: (6$ at Good Will)

Here's what I did: I went to HD and found some metal-specific sand paper type stuff, and I lightly buffed the surface of the lamp- then wiped off all of the dust.

Then- I decided to prime it (something I read about on Centsational Girl as not being completely necessary)- but I thought I would give myself the advantage of having a good base coat.

Then- I added 2 coats of my final color lagoon.  I really love this color- in fact, when I was still in the process of choosing the living room wall color I brought a small sample of this home and proposed  painting the ceiling this color (to which my husband quickly vetoed:( my thought was that it would be a great way to bring the color into the room- in the end, the chance that it would turn the room into a cave was too big of a risk to take- especially since I despise painting ceilings, and since it's such a saturated color. So I opted for the spraying the lamp this color instead.

I had one small mishap- the shade I bought (at Homegoods for $15) was too short for the lamp- until I remembered a pair of lamps that we don't use in the basement- so I switched out the small black piece below for the large gold one that came with the lamp- and- problem solved!

Here it is in it's new home!

What do you think?