Hello, folks! I do sincerely, from the depths of my retail-loving heart, apologize for my absence over the last couple of months! So much has gone on and I literally had no idea where my laptop even was most of the time because . . . we moved!

Yep. Needless to say when my husband and I discussed on New Years what we thought the year 2016 might hold for us, we did not expect a new home to be in the books. A prime example that God has plans for each one of His children and those plans don’t always include what we have in mind.

We finally closed on our new home two weeks ago and we had sold our first home to a lovely little family the week before. Prior to closing though, I had been busy furiously packing our belongings to move as well as working on projects at our new house. Here is a before and after, but not completely finished picture of the kitchen progress: new floors and DIY painted cabinets!
Needless to say, I was terrified out of my mind with doing this kitchen DIY project, but I think it turned out well! Such a great learning process! And I could not have finished as soon as I did without help from friends and family, but mostly my sweet mom! Thanks, Mom!

I digress. Not only does moving mean house projects, but it also means a clean, new canvas for this Maxxinista to design and decorate! At first my mind was flooding with so many options and ideas, it was rather overwhelming at times. Pinterest would distract me often and flood my creative thoughts with even more options or doubt what I originally like. Oddly enough, the color I couldn’t stand at my previous house turned out to be a color I love for this house: yellow. Yes, folks, I said yellow. I don’t know why I hated it before and love it now. It is an interesting mystery.

In all honesty, for the most part the decor and color scheme I used with our previous relaxed, ranch home unfortunately didn’t complement our new home. So a new design plan ensues!

Our house is a mess; however, there are areas that are livable in which I can play with my TJ Maxx finds as shown here:
There is so much I could discuss here! I do believe there are at least 5 items in this photo that I purchased from a TJX store; however, for today, I want to talk about this lamp. Y’all, this LAMP! Many of you may think it is hideous and I’m fine with that. I fell in love with this lamp the minute I saw it in TJ Maxx a couple of weeks ago. I just love the lattice moroccan design as well as the color.

These lamps are hard to come by at my local TJX branches, so needless to say I snatched this baby up real quick and convinced myself it was worth the price: $34.99 + tax.

Now I’m very surprised that as I’ve searched for this lamp online for a comparable price I have been unsuccessful in finding it. So I hope my second approach would be satisfactory. I researched similar lamp styles and characteristics as follows: yellow lattice moroccan ceramic table lamp. This is what I found.
Savings no including tax as compared to BHG lamp: around 73%; Ebay lamp: around 74%; Walmart lamp: around 54%. In my opinion, any savings greater than 50% is awesome!

That’s all for today, my friends, but I will post soon about some of the other decor items I utilized in this part of our living room set up.