Dirt Cheap, but not cheap and dirty

Hello friends....I do consider you a friend if you are reading this! I would like to share the latest incarnation of two rooms in my home: the living room and bathroom. My last several posts have been about these two rooms. Today I went to Dirt Cheap and spent a lot of money ($33 whole dollars). If you don't know what Dirt Cheap is, it is a store that carries overstocked, damaged or returned items from Target, Walgreens, Walmart, Kohls, and many other stores. And their prices are, well, dirt cheap. Hence the name of the store. 13 of my dollars were spent on apparel (a dress for $3 and some sandals for $10). So, I spent 20 whole other dollars on home decor. Yay!

Let's begin with this find: I have no idea what it actually is.


This is my hallway light. It's pretty 90's. What would they look like together?


Like this! Pretty interesting huh? I think my husband will hate it (he hasn't seen it yet) or he may not even notice it until he reads the blog. Let's see what happens.


You'll remember my earlier searching for a rug post. Well, of course, I picked out one that is nothing like the ones I mentioned. But it was on sale! Actually, they were :) This beauty is another Lowes find. It is approximately 8' X 11' and is very accurately named the Pressed Leaves Rug. It retails for....drumroll please.....$385! I am too cheap for that! However, I noticed this week upon my usual browsing that they had the 5 X 8 version for a whopping $59 dollars. Originally I thought this rug would look great in the master bedroom. I bought two of them, brought them home and laid them out on the living room floor just to see what they would look like together (creating my own 8 x 10 ish rug).
Now, you either think I'm a crazy loser/lunatic or a genius, but this is what happened when I put them together: the patterns matched up....sort of. What I'm left with in the middle is sort of an ink blot effect. But for someone as crazy eclectic as me, I thought it looked pretty cool! But how do I keep them from separating?

The answer was easy. I simply flipped them over and consulted with the old redneck standby: my trusty duct tape! However, I quickly realized that we had purchased the cheap Walmart version of duct tape, which is gray and shiny, but does not have the rug melding stickiness needed. So I will have to get some gen-u-ine duct tape and redo this project. Until then the rugs are just smushed together awaiting their "permanent" union until a Walmart run takes place.




I also did a little shopping elsewhere today: my mom's house. I snagged the lamp base on the branch table and the cool damask lamp shades that I bought at Walmart when I still lived with Mom, like, 3 years ago. Dirt cheap finds pictured are....the pictures on the shelf. All of those frames were originally from Target for who knows how much. Together they all cost me....another drumroll please....$8. Whoop- deee- doo! And look, you can't even tell my rugs are smushed! As promised, with the new rug, here is the latest incarnation of our living room:



I also covered a couple of the couch pillows with some cream pillow covers I bought at Ikea last year and nixed all other pillows except the orange herringbone (Ross Dress for Less) and sunburst (Pier 1). You may even notice, I found my "C" and stuck in the frame (uh-oh it's a little crooked, but I will fix it). Now the wall is proudly monogrammed representing Brandon and Candi Rodgers. Hooray. In case you forgot what it looked like before, here's a few before shots for you:



Don't worry. The lovely rug is finding a new home somewhere else in the house.


Definitely not bad befores, but I'm more pleased with the afters.

And now, one last reveal: the bathroom. For this room, only one dirt cheap find was imposed: a new shower curtain that was $4.

Before:

After:

And there you go! That's not even all I got! You'll have to wait until later to see the rest.