Home Goods Goodies

I have to start this post by confessing that I'm a little sad and ashamed. Somehow I have lived 25 years of my life without experiencing the beauty and magic that is Home Goods. I went for the first time just last week and almost started crying only three aisles in. This might sound a little exaggerated but if you've never been (and you clearly live under a rock like I'd been living) I promise you, it is AWESOME. 

Basically, this trip finally came about because James and I move into our first apartment together in 3 days! Only 3 more days! While I'm incredibly excited (!!!), I'm also incredibly aware of how much my bank account is suffering due to all this apartment shopping. It's very hard to shop on a limited budget for all the necessities we'll need as well as all the fun decor items too. We've done well so far by getting cheaper items from The Dollar Tree and Big Lots and also checking for coupons in the sale ads every week. Now that we have most of our apartment necessities, Home Goods has become a dream come true (I've been 4 times this week, I might actually have a serious problem) because they have the best decor pieces at decent prices! Here's some of our recent purchases:

Wooden white and yellow tray (for our coffee table): $20

Teal framed map (for our gallery wall): $9

White wall shelf with clips and burlap pin board (to hang near the front door): $17

Wall mirror (for our gallery wall): $13

Glass jars (for cotton balls and qtips in the bathroom) $8 & $7

Wooden framed chalkboard (for the kitchen): $20

Originally, I bought this hoping to repaint over the chalkboard with magnetic paint and add another coat of chalkboard paint over that so we could have an awesome magnetic chalkboard. However, after doing some research online it seems like the magnetic paint is a huge pain! Most people say it's very tricky to work with and can take up to 8 coats or more for magnets to stick by themselves, let alone hold anything. I'm pretty sad because I loved the idea of a magnetic chalkboard but I'm not sure James & I feel up to that challenge! Let me know if you've worked with magnetic paint or completed any sort of similar craft :)