I Transformed Thrift Finds into High-End Christmas Decor!

Today we're kicking off our Christmas decorating season by creating high-end decor from thrift store junk. I'll show you how to turn secondhand finds into stunning high-end holiday pieces, all on a budget that would make Santa proud. Hi, I'm Natalie, and these kinds of transformations have become some of my most loved projects on my channel, and it's easy to see why. And today I've got a few surprises along the way. In the meantime, let's head to the thrift store and see what we can find. A big thank you to Suvi for partnering with me to make this episode possible. I've got my friend Lisa here you all know, and then you may remember Susan from another thrifting episode. And instead of doing the three-minute challenge today, I'm going to have them each select something for me to make over. And we might be doing the same, right? I think it's payback. I think I'm losing. I'm like, I gotta pick out something else that I'm losing all the time. But anyways, we're gonna go hit up a couple thrift stores and take you along with us. Yes. Let's go shopping. Let's take a look around and see what we can find. That headboard is so cute. I love it. It's $45. That would be so fun. This store actually has quite a bit of furniture. Look at that piece right back there. That would be fun to make over. But I'm not doing any furniture pieces today, but that would be a fun piece to make over. Over here, there is some really cool stuff as well. I see that. Like that's fun. This dresser would be fun to make over. So they've got a lot of fun furniture pieces. And then they haul up a whole bunch of furniture pieces over here as well. Susan, did you find something for Natalie? I found something that's perfect. Okay, we're gonna flip this around and show you guys. Let's see what you think. I think that's perfect. That's a big piece of garland. So she'll be able to do something great with that. I found something for Natalie. And it's gonna be these fabulous placemats. A little lemon for Christmas. Yes, I think so. And you know what? Fun fact, I'm actually allergic to lemons. So I think these are gonna be perfect. Let's see what she can do with these. I can't. I can't. These dolls are so creepy. I'm kind of like should I get Lisa one of those creepy dolls? Oh my word. And the way they're in like these plastic boxes, it's just so disturbing. You guys, I can't. You know I can't be mean to my friends. I saw this and you guys, this has Lisa's name all over it. I think it's our winner. Guys, I know I'm done with like Halloween and fall content, but look at this pumpkin. Doesn't this like belong to me? This is really cute. I think I might have to get it even though I'm done with fall content. It's cheetah print pumpkin. I love it. Guys, there's more creepy dolls. More creepy dolls, you guys. Look at those eyes. They're like reddit and beady. Are you serious? That is so creepy. I can't, you guys. Look at those eyes. Wrong. What do you have there? Oh, I'm going to refurbish this for my shoe closet. It's so cute. There's some bags that I need to hang there and get them out of the way. It's so cute. Thanks. Guys, I have an idea for a DIY and I need a whole bunch of like crystal stuff for it. So definitely going to get this one. Lisa, I saw something that has your name written all over it. I love that. How did you know? It kind of matches those plates that you did too. It's got gold on it. It's eight bucks. Eight dollars. That's a great deal. Yeah. I think I'm going to have to take this one home. Yeah. No, honestly. And we're not going to do anything. Those plates that you made. Yes. Doesn't it match those? I love it. Isn't that fun? Oh, I love it. It's a great thrift store. It is a good thrift store. I love finding new ones, huh? Susan has been wanting to bring us to this next thrift store for a while. So we're excited to go in. It's called, what is it called? Forever Vintage. Forever Vintage in Winter Haven. So we're going to go in and see. Okay. So this is like a, they have a gift shop and a, some thrifted stuff from Disney. You guys are getting a little sneak peek of my thing. Okay. Susan, where's this all from? Okay. It's from the Port Orleans Hotel. So fun. Disney stuff. You guys, look how cute. Yeah. Oh, I love that mirror. So they have new old stock. So in other words, it's never been used in the hotel rooms and they'll bring it out here. Some of it has been, but for the most part, it's new old stock. So fun. This is a really fun area. So I got to show you, this is so fun. What'd you find Lisa? Look at these amazing light fixtures. Dude, they're huge. That is incredible. They're ginormous. That is incredible. That would be cool in an entryway. Those are amazing. Look how big they are. They're gigantic. They're ginormous. They are kind of expensive, but they're really cool. Okay. This was fun. Now we're done. Lisa, did you find some good stuff? I found some great stuff. I'm really excited. Me too. As per usual, I bought way too much stuff, Susan. Always. Did you get some stuff? In trouble. Anyways, we're going to head home and flip these thrifts. Let's do it. So we're going to do a quick little haul of all the items that I got. Let's just grab a bag and start opening stuff up. So I saw this and this totally looks like a Pottery Barn vase. So, so cute. However, I did get a whole bunch of crystals and I'll show it to you because I have a really special idea. So here's crystal piece number one or number two, I guess. There's more crystal pieces. Any guesses on what I'm going to be doing with all these crystal pieces? Just like a little cup. And I also have some upstairs. There's some. Also, this is not Christmas related, but I felt like I would regret it if I didn't get this. It's so cute. This cheetah pumpkin. Have you ever seen something so perfect for me or what? Then I found this and I actually think this might be a really cool gift idea if we could like fix it up. It was not very much money. I can't remember. I think they gave it to me for a couple bucks and this was kind of a cool piece. It's a navy blue center, but the back is like a really pretty gold. This is like a solid piece you could use anywhere and it was only four dollars. So I figured we could make that look a lot better. Well, before I do the challenge items, there's a couple other things. These are books and I think they're from the Disney Resort. And so I just thought that they would look really good, like maybe as not Christmas decor, but like everyday decor. So I had to get those. Now for the challenge items. This is what Lisa got me. These are, I think they're like chargers, like table chargers. And there's a set of four and they're lemons. Not very Christmassy. So we'll have to see if we can make them Christmas approved. And the piece that Susan got for me is this grapevine and it's gold. You can see I have the perfect thing for this. And maybe I'll give you a sneak peek of what I've got planned for this. We probably won't do the full thing in this episode just because it's going to be perfect for a future episode on my, I'll just give you a little hint on my front porch. So before we get flipping our items, I have something I have to show you. You're going to die. Okay, you guys, I have got to show you something. This McFlurry has been sitting on my fridge for five months. No mold, no bugs. It looks like a dehydrated version of the day that I bought it. Now, this is why I am so excited to be partnering with Suvi. As much as I love creating beautiful DIYs and decor on a budget, I also want my family to eat food that's actually a whole food. And with how busy my days are, especially when I'm filming or doing a big project, I need dinner to be just as easy as grabbing fast food, but way better for us. Suvi is a smart countertop oven right here. It doesn't look like an oven, but it is. And meal service. Let me tell you, the food is amazing. And today we're going to be making this sweet and tangy barbecue glazed chicken. How good does that look? This will take us just a few minutes to prepare and pop in the oven. So I'm going to just show you how quick it is, and then I'll tell you a little bit more about them. The first thing we're going to do is pull out the pans from the oven. And by the way, setting this up was so easy. It kind of just walks you right through it. Super easy to do. So this is how easy it is. So it comes with all the instructions. It has top zone, bottom zone, and we are going to just go ahead and prep this. The only thing extra you really need are like a little olive oil and salt and pepper. Usually everything else that comes with it. So this pan has the little tray and we're going to use that for our chicken. Each one of these bags comes with like enough for two people. So we'll just, it looks like we've got some cornbread. We'll pull that out and set that aside for later. Okay. So I think this one will be fine. Okay. So for the chicken, you just put it in there and you put the barbecue sauce on top, slide it right in here. Then for our bottom zone, we're going to just take our fresh green beans and then I'm just going to spritz on some olive oil. It says like just a little bit of olive oil and then just salt and pepper it. Okay. Okay. So for the beans, all we do is throw them in there, a little olive oil, salt and pepper, and that's it. You can take your phone, scan the QR code and it will upload it there because you will have already connected it to your internet or on the card it has a code. You can even just tap your recipe card like so, and it pulls up all of the cooking info and we know it's correct because it says what we're cooking. And you can have the option of cook now, schedule cook. What I'm going to do, I'm going to schedule cook because we're going to go do some thrifting and we won't need this till later. So, and here's another thing that you're going to absolutely love. Their cool to cook technology actually refrigerates the food until it's time to cook automatically. I don't even have to be home. I could be out running errand and that's it. Dinner is ready when I am. And honestly, the cost of a sous vide meal is less than most takeout orders, but instead of mystery meat and a side of guilt, you get a real chef created dinner. That's actually good for you. So if you're looking to make life a little easier and tastier, click on this QR code or head to the link in my description box to try sous vide for yourself. They are offering a 100 day risk-free trial and you can get 16 free meals when you order using my link. Sous vide makes it so easy to eat well without the stress. I love it. And I think you will love it too. That's why I partnered with them. So while sous vide takes care of dinner for me and my family tonight, I'm going to get started transforming these thrift vines into gorgeous high-end Christmas decor. Okay. So for our first thrift flip, we are going to be tackling Lisa's challenge item, those lemon chargers. I was like, those are very summery. I don't know how we're going to turn those into Christmas, but very quickly, I came up with an idea. And if you've been watching my channel for a very long time, this idea may feel reminiscent of a previous project. So the very first thing that I set out to do was get rid of the yellow and the lemon. So I took it out into my workshop. We need to give these a clean slate. This is not going to work for Christmas decor. We are going to start by spraying these in a matte or a flat white. And in order to do that, we need to put on our shea bater mask. So here we go. Let's put on some of my nitrile gloves to protect the money. So I did two or three coats on each side and letting it dry in between. But even then, it was not as stark white as I wanted. So I was like, do I keep up with this? Which I could have. And honestly, I was also not using the bear spray paint. I think that one works better, but I'm using a flat white. I decided to just take it upstairs and finish it out with some white chalk paint, which I've used in the past. And that really gave me the stark white and covered any bleed through that was still remaining. Once I was dry, I created some vinyl pieces. So on the canvas on cricket, I made sure that I had a circle that was about 15 and a half inches, which is the size of the charger. And then I just did some text that I had previously uploaded because I wanted a specific type of text. And I had joy, holy, Noel, and peace, I believe. I will upload those on my website. So if you want to recreate these projects, you can use the images as well. Then I just made sure that they would fit within the parameters that we could for vinyl as big as possible. And I cut them out in a gold vinyl. Then I weeded away all of the excess. Put some transfer tape on it and just put them on the front of the chargers. And that was it. And we end up with something like this, which I absolutely love. Now I ran out of vinyl, but I thought it would be a really fun idea to make these double-sided. So on one side be Christmas, on the other side, maybe Thanksgiving and have something like gratitude or thankful or something like that on the backside. You could use them for Thanksgiving, then flip them over for Christmas. So just keep that in your back pocket. So I love how this turned out. I think they're beautiful and you could just put a clear plate over it. But before we get too far, I also wanted to just stage this whole table. So I took the base that I wasn't sure we were going to do anything with this time around. I love the base. It looked like something from Pottery Barn. And I just went about doing a very simple Christmas centerpiece. And I just got a little bit of Christmas greenery, put a couple of picks and a couple of berries in there and a couple of like the velvet poinsettias. And that was it. It took me less than five minutes. And it just goes to show you that you don't have to spend a whole lot of time or have a whole lot of experience to get a beautiful, simple arrangement. And I think it looks amazing on my table here. And it does look like something that you could pick up from Pottery Barn and spend a fortune on it. Pottery Barn, their floral arrangements are so expensive there. Well, Lisa, I hope you liked what I did with the chargers and kind of how I styled it on my table. And if you want to see what I picked out as Lisa's challenge item, you'll have to head on over to her episode right after this one. And I will remind you at the end of this episode. But before we move on to our next thrift flip, I have a little announcement. And I just want to know if you would like to DIY with me live. Join me on October 28th at 7pm. Just bring a Christmas craft and let's make something magical together. And I will be soft launching a very limited edition Christmas product. Not part of the Aaliyah line, but something very special. And it will sell out fast because I have very limited quantities. Plus, everyone who joins me and shows up on that live stream will get something for free. So mark your calendars and join me then. But that's not the only announcement. And if you want to know what the other announcement is, stay tuned. I will share that with you in just a bit. So this next project I have had in mind for a while. I've kind of seen some things like this on Pinterest and I knew I just had to give it a try. Because I really love my cut glass. I love cut crystal. And I have been seeing these little cut crystal Christmas trees and I had to put my hand in that game. And it looks so simple. So here's what we're going to do. First, you're going to want to start with some sort of candlestick. Whether it's glass, crystal, or wood. I decided to go with a glass cut crystal one. But there was one that I really wanted to use. It was really ornate, but the edge was scalloped and it didn't hold our base bowl very well. And then what I did is I just stacked them up. And sometimes if they were too like, like down on top of the next layer, I needed to put something else glass to kind of lift it up. So I had a couple of tea light cups that I used to separate them. One of them ended up being a little bit too tall, but it doesn't bother me that much. But I think if I would have done it again, I would have used something shorter. So in my case, I just used hot glue. I used it at a high temperature and I glued it into place. And the reason being is because in the future, I may want to use these as just bowls. And so I could see myself disassembling this and just reusing them. But if you want to make it permanent, you could definitely use an epoxy resin kit that you can get from the Dollar Tree and just use some resin to attach that into a more permanent fashion. But for my case, I just used hot glue. What I noticed on most of the trees, they didn't have this one very special thing, and that is a star on top. Most of them ended with a tip or like a bell or something, but I really wanted to have a star. So I found a set of two on Amazon and I'll link them. I just thought they were so cute and I figured I could reuse these elsewhere as well. So I just took some hot glue and glued that on top of ours. And it was nice that it had kind of a flat top so I could do two touch points with the hot glue and it did hold up. And so I just styled it up with kind of a frame around it and some candles and some greenery to kind of give you a Christmas feel since I don't have my Christmas set up yet at all. It's a little too early still for that. I just love how this crystal tree turned out. And who knew thrifted cut glass could sparkle like this? It's so pretty and I hope you enjoyed that project. So for this next piece, I found this very large gold and navy blue tray and I loved it and I knew I had to have it. But navy blue doesn't really fit in my decor at all and I knew that that part needed to change, but I knew it would be a very simple fix. So what I did is I just taped off and protected the outside rim of the gold. I didn't need to be super precise about how I taped it off because on the original it kind of had a little bleed over on the edge. It wasn't like a very precise line. And then I got a high gloss white spray paint and just did two coats and that was great coverage. Now I let it sit for a few days while I went on a work trip. It would probably be fine letting it sit and cure overnight or so before styling it up. But then I peeled off the tape and I had this beautiful white tray and I was so excited about it. There's so many possibilities. Now if you wanted it to be a little bit more Christmassy, you could definitely go with a red or a green. Probably a red would look really, really good, but I wanted to use mine year round. And so the way I'm styling this up for Christmas is I took some Christmas garland and I wrapped it in kind of the shape of a wreath. You could also use a wreath. And then I added some magnolia leaves and some gold berries and I put a gold charger. I tried out a bunch of different things in the center but ultimately I landed on a gold charger because that would fit the nativity set that I set on top of it. I just love how this looked. It was so beautiful, so simple, understated elegance that's just amazing. You could also swap this out and do like a hurricane with a candle. I want to use year round so for kicks and giggles I went ahead and styled it up with those books that we got at the thrift store and some other things. And I love this look as well. It's so pretty and I just know that I'm going to be using this tray. I can just swap out the accents and boom it's seasonally ready. I love this very simple, very simple thrift flip and I hope you did too. So this next thrift flip is kind of a bonus one. It's not Christmas themed directly but it could be like a perfect gift idea. So what I did is I took this wood piece. I thought the shape of it was great. When I initially saw it I thought this is a really good item that I could turn into something nicer and give it as a gift. However, it might end up being a gift for myself. When I got it home it was in a slightly rougher shape than I realized when I got it but I think I didn't pay very much for this piece. So the first thing I did is I taped off the center and the inside of the wood to kind of protect the wood from the rub and buff which I use next. So I used gold leaf rub and buff and I rubbed that all over the trim really, really well. Let it sit and kind of buffed it out. And then when I peeled back to reveal our rub and buff, as I peeled I watched it peel off the finish of our wood item and I was like dang! Wasn't expecting that to happen but it did and so I rolled with the punches. Now normally when I'm redoing any wood item I'll use a boiled linseed oil or a Danish oil or something but I couldn't find it. I looked everywhere and what I could find was old English so I went with that. I would probably go with like a boiled linseed oil or Danish oil because they have a better finish. It will last a little longer. I rubbed the old English all over. It was a little greasy. I even put it over the trim which aged that rub and buff a little bit which I was fine with. That's okay. And then I let it sit overnight. Then you know because that bottom part was a little bit more damaged I wanted to cover that up with some kind of peel and stick wallpaper or something like that. Now this is where you could choose literally anything you want that suits your fancy. Now I happen to have this cheetah print because I love cheetah print and it matched the gold tones and the wood tones so perfectly. I just had to do it. But you could really pick any wallpaper you want. This I just styled up so you can see. It's not very Christmasy but again what I'm trying to do is have you open your eyes and your mind as you go into thrift stores. Maybe you can find the most amazing pieces that just need a little bit of fine-tuning that can turn into affordable Christmas gift ideas. And so that's why I threw it in this episode. This one's not just pretty. It's practical too and it would make a lovely handmade gift. Handmade gift for someone special in your life. Now you might be wondering what happened to Susan's challenge item. The gold vine that she picked out for me. Well I have a really fun plan for that in an upcoming episode so make sure you're subscribed and so you don't miss on the reveal on that. I think you're gonna really like it. It's gonna be super super fun. It just didn't make sense to throw it in this episode because it's gonna make a whole lot more sense in that episode. And also I promised you one more little announcement and that is Lisa and I are cooking up something special for the end of the month. A little meet up here in the Orlando area. We'd love to hang out with you in person. So watch for more details very very soon. Okay thrift flips done. Christmas magic hopefully done. And thanks to Suvi dinner is done as well. It seriously looks so good. Not soggy like microwave food. Not fake like five month old McFlurries. Just real fresh perfectly cooked food. So if you're looking to make life a little easier and tastier head to the link in my description box. Try Suvi yourself. And remember they're offering a 100 day risk free trial and you can get 16 free meals when you order using my link. I love Suvi and I think you will too. And if you enjoyed this episode here's another one that I think you'll like as well. And to all of you I just want to remind you you are powerful. We'll see you next time. Bye. Okay now I'm gonna try this. It's so good. Cooked to perfection.