Kitchens are the heart of the home, and now they can be the center of repurposing!  With a few free shipping pallets that grocers always throw away, fruit crates, and even tea crates, you can turn your kitchen into a repurposed haven.  With a little bit of wood stain and a rag, you can transform nearly any wooden pallet or crate to have vintage-esq patina and glow.

Katrin Arens ingeniously repurposed a shipping pallet into a beautiful dish display.  The aged wood patina in this rustic kitchen is calling me to make a few good stews!

As seen on HGTV, an old wooden crate is repurposed into a lovely, weathered spice rack.

If you really want a kitchen that is repurposed swoon-worthy, then it’s time to take shipping tea crates, complete with their original shipping imagery and type, and turn them into cabinets like Rupert Blanchard did.  Aren’t these incredible?!

If your cabinet doors leave something to be desired, why not take off the doors and use vintage apple crates in their place, as seen in House to Home?

Vintage fruit crates make another appearance as open shelving for your jars of dried goods, as seen in Country Living.

For one week, Simon Hoegsberg gave out free advice and coffee in Copenhagen to people walking by.  The project itself is quite intriguing, but what really caught my eye was the advice station he created out of shipping pallets.  This would make for a great repurposed kitchen island or kitchen table!

Crate appetit!

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For 2010, I am excited to introduce an “Affordable Anthropologie” series, wherein we explore more budget-friendly and DIY alternatives for Anthropologie inspired rooms. My goal is to recreate the Anthropologie look at 1/10th of the cost (after all, elbow grease is free).

To welcome the series, I thought we could start with one of the nooks from the January catalog.For the mirror, chair, and dresser pictured above, the tab would run you $2,294 – before shipping and taxes.  Let’s see how we can recreate this entire look for less than 1/10th of the price.  In fact, we can create the entire $2,294 look for $180!

Affordable Anthropologie version for the conservatory chair: $150. I often see beautiful vintage armchairs on Craigslist that simply need a little reupholstery love to be revitalized into a gorgeous sitting piece.  While some cost as little as $40, on average, the chairs with good bones can cost you $100.  There is not much yardage involved, and I would budget $50 towards upholstery linen fabric.  I personally think a vintage-inspired fabric with type would look dashing sitting next to the numbered dresser in the Anthropologie-inspired room.I have written up a simple chair reupholstery tutorial, and for how to stencil your own vintage-inspired fabric, visit the DIY tutorial via design*sponge. 

Affordable Anthropologie version for the reassembled mirror: $15. Make your own driftwood mirror in any shape and style you please, and spend only $15 when you follow this DIY tutorial via Create Studio.

Affordable Anthropologie version for the Ordinal Dresser: $15 (if you already own a dresser). The dresser in this Anthropologie room does not have any particularly special lines or design elements, save for the aged wood patina and stenciled and painted numbers.  Download free number stencils, buy a package of Peel Away for $7,99, and a small jar of black paint or finish for $5 to create your own version.  To strip paint or finish from a dresser you already own, follow Brooklyn Limestone in her adventures in taking white paint off to reveal a beautiful wood door using Peel Away.

The final cost for our Affordable Anthropologie inspired room is $180.  Even if you have the chair professionally reupholstered, the price tag would jump to $380 – $450, a far cry from the $2294 Anthropologie price tag!

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One look at the final result has me searching high and low for a vintage Vespa beyond repair.  A very chic grandpa turned his old Vespa into a custom rocking scooter for his very lucky grandson Diego, as seen via Greenwala.  How happy does that little boy look?!

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I hope that your holiday season has been filled with happiness, cheer, and festivities!  As we prepare to ring in 2010, I thought it would be fitting to reflect upon 2009 and share the nine most popular posts of this year.  Enjoy a very happy New Year my friends!

Can love be considered the most popular blogging topic?  Yes, if you count the fact that the Catalog of Love I made for my husband for our second wedding anniversary was the most popular post of 2009.

If you are like me and tempted by all of the antique and vintage suitcases that you spot in your treasure hunting journeys, consider these seven ways to repurpose antique and vintage suitcases.

Who says ladders are made for climbing?  Revisit some of the best ways to repurpose ladders into useful pieces of furniture in Edition 1 and Edition 2 of Upcycled Ladders.

Be shocked by the ugly upholstery covering this beautiful antique horse carriage before I repurposed it into an entryway bench.

It’s acceptable to write – or type – on the wall, as long as you are inspired by these decor ideas on how you can display your typewriter collection on your walls.

Take a peek into my favorite vintage things, ranging from theater seats to my obsession with antique library card catalog cabinets.

Repurposed bookends come in all shapes and sizes, ranging from brass architectural salvage pieces I found to even vintage LPs and antique cameras.

And last but not least, start of 2010 with a pop with ideas from last New Year’s repurposed champagne cork series!

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