Monday, March 26, 2012

Pillows from napkins and the color yellow.

When I was younger, my favorite color was yellow.  This was not an "emotional" color choice, if there even is such a thing.  My great, great grandmother made me a beautiful yellow quilt when I was born.  Here is a picture of it alongside a quilt my mom made around the time of my wedding:



Being the practical girl of the family, I decided on yellow as my favorite color so that everything could match.  Now that I think about it...how sad is that???  It wasn't until my teen years that I gave up the inherited yellow color theme and broke out on my own.  And left yellow in the dust.

Now fast forward 20 years.  I think I like yellow.  I find myself drawn to yellow in pictures, in the store, on Pinterest.  I am welcoming yellow back into my house.  And last week as I shopped the clearance racks at Target, I spied these beautiful bright yellow cloth napkins.


I think cloth napkins are the greatest things...and not just for the dinner table.  They are great for making pillow cases.  And I love throw pillows.  Take the cloth napkins and wash them.  Iron them if you feel so inclined (I usually don't feel so inclined.)  There are different ways you can design your pillow case. One option is to use 2 napkins back to back like this:










You can sew a zipper on the bottom or sew it shut.  Here is another pillow case from a Pottery Barn napkin that I did a few years ago.














I took white fabric and made a "pocket" opening.










So back to my yellow napkins.  I decided to try to be "fancy."  I sewed 2 napkins together, pattern side out, following the hem line.  I want a fun little border to my pillow case.



Now that I have done 3 sides, I have to add a zipper.  I am not an expert on zippers.  Here are some links to zipper tutorials.  here and here  If you look at these tutorials, they are great.  I looked at them, and did not follow them like I should have.  She said I would break a needle if I didn't follow the tutorial.  I broke a needle.  Go figure.









Don't be like me and try to take short cuts. The tutorials are great...really.  Regardless of my zipper mishap, I still came out with a working pillowcase.  If the zipper actually moves I call it a success.







And since I was opening the door to yellow, I decided to welcome it in to my home with a grand entrance.  I found this fun yellow table runner, also on Target clearance.




And I couldn't resist this lamp shade.  Remember my post about the laundry room light?  It has been bothering me.  It wasn't quite right.  So this yellow beauty is replacing my attic bound shade.  Don't be alarmed by these bold patterns.  I will post pics once everything is in place.  I use to shy away from bold patterns and fabrics.  I regret it every time.




So yellow is here to stay.  Here it is on the guest bed.  Bright and cheery.  I think I like yellow again...just because.  No rhyme or reason.  That is good enough for me!









And I had a few helpers...Abby made her first bag with her new sewing machine and Nate watched us both.















I love my helpers.










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Thursday, March 22, 2012

The Ikea cabinet with 9 lives...

8 years ago, my loving husband bought me a tall (8 ft) cabinet from Ikea.  I tried to find a picture for you, but they don't sell it anymore.  It was unfinished pine, with a lighted glass cabinet on the top, and cabinets with doors on the bottom.  We took it home assembled it like the store display, put a coat of polyurthane on it, and loved it...for about 6 months.  Then I started to change it.  I sanded all of the polyurathane off, and painted the cabinet the ugliest beige you could imagine.  I painted the whole darn thing.  That lasted 1 week.  I resanded the whole cabinet and put the polyurathane back on it.  Luckily for my husband, I let the cabinet be for a few years.

Then, about 4 years ago, I got tired of the rattling glass when the toddlers were running through our house.  Mark had just gotten a circular saw for Christmas, and I thought...sure, let's give this baby a try.  I took apart the cabinet, stained it, put new legs on half of it, and sawed down the supports for the upper cabinet and made a new, 3 ft glass cabinet.






This is what I made with the cabinet's with wood doors.  I love it.  It is great for all of my extra bowls and serving ware.  And it has cute bun feet, just for fun.








The remaining glass cabinet wasn't my favorite, but I needed somewhere to put my china.  So it remained my "china cabinet" for the past few years until my hubby bought me the sweetest gift this past October.  I have been wanting this cabinet for a looooong time.  I will never take a circular saw to this beauty.







Once I moved my china out of the rickety old Ikea cabinet, I realized that I could have some fun.  I have never liked the support legs of the cabinet with all of the pegholes.  I think it was supposed to be used in a pantry or something.  And I have been thinking about stenciling or wallpapering the back of our huge wall unit in the den.  So I decided my Ikea cabinet would be the perfect place to practice.






First, I took off the leg supports and took a look at my years of "re-doing" this cabinet.  In hindsight, I should have taken the supports off when I stained the unit 4 years ago.  So I had to sand both sides of the cabinet before I got started.













I honestly don't remember the exact stain I used the first time I stained this cabinet.  I found this in the never ending supply of old stains and paints.  Since I am not overly worried about this cabinet, I didn't re-sand the entire thing.  I think it might be on it's last life anyways.  I did add another coat of polyurethane on top of my staining.  I think this is my 4th time putting polyurethane on this cabinet.  Yikes.














I went to the big orange box store, and picked out these legs for the cabinet.  They have a bunch of choices.  I didn't want to spend too much on the nicer turned legs.  You can find many options right by the lumber section.  I had to stain and put polyurethane on the legs.












In order to attach the legs to the base of the cabinet, you need these brackets.  You can get mounting brackets that even make your table legs attach at an angle.








First step was to put the mounting brackets on the BOTTOM of the shelf in order to secure the legs.  Did you catch that?  BOTTOM.  Guess what I did?


This is the TOP of my cabinet.  Yep, big mistake.  I have plenty of excuses...baby was waking up from nap, I needed to rush upstairs and get him, etc.  Not only did I make the mistake of drilling the bracket into the TOP of my shelf, I drilled all 6 screws before noticing.  Who does this?  Me.  Don't be like me.

Sooo, now I get to fill the holes, sand, stain and poly that section.  Argh.  Quite honestly, I haven't fixed it yet.  I was so frustrated, and I really wanted to get to the stenciling, which was the whole point of this cabinet re-do.  So I still need to go back and do it.  I hate fixing my projects.  I just want to run with it and have them work perfectly.  Can I have a little helper who comes behind me and fixes everything?  And I never know about it?  Yes please.

Here is what the legs should look like.  4 of them.  On the bottom.



Okay, back to the stenciling.  I found this stencil at Michaels and loved it.  If I were to do this again on a nicer, bigger surface, I would definitely pay more money for a larger stencil.  This was tedious work.  I tested my pattern with a crayon and paper first, just to make sure I liked the look before I began with paint.  I used a small sponge brush and a little bit of masking tape.




Also, if this was a treasured cabinet, I would have centered the design in the middle of the cabinet, working from the inside out.  I knew that my design would be off center, but frankly had a really hard time doing the stencil by the edge.  I decided to take the easy way out since I wasn't too worried about the cabinet.









This took a lot of time and patience, but I really like how it turned out.  The areas where the paint leaked beyond the stencil were easy to clean off.  And it mainly leaked because I had such a small stencil.  Here is a website with some AWESOME stencils.  They are huge and beautiful.  If I end up doing an entire wall or wall unit, I am going to order from this shop.  They even have a stencil for birch trees.  I just might do that in the kid's bathroom...



















So now this cabinet lives in the craft room.  This was good practice for me before I attack something big.  If you try this, please don't be like me.  Spend more money on a big stencil...and don't be an idiot when you attach legs to your project.  I still can't believe I did that...




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Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Cupcakes for all...

Happy Birthday to my baby girl!!!!  Wow, 5 years.  I can't believe it.


Look how purrrrty she is.


And cheerful.















She is my sunshine.







We had a cupcake party, per Abby's request.  I made the invites and ordered the party favors.  I didn't have the energy to make crayon cupcakes.  And that is what my baby girl wanted.  I used ScribblerCrayons.  Julie (shop owner) does a GREAT job.








A couple years ago Caleb wanted a Star Wars party for his 5th party and we ordered Star War character crayons from ScribblerCrayons.  They were a big hit.  If you ever need crayon party favors...this is the place to go.  I personally love her owl crayons and suggested to Abby that we have an Owl party...Abby said "next year Mom."












We let the kids run around and play games at the pre-school gym.  It was great.







Caleb liked it too.  Games in the gym...what kid wouldn't like that?



It also helped that we had help from the grandparents.  (thanks Tim and Jeannie!!!)  And an easy baby.






It was a busy weekend...I have been working on a project, but it had to be on hold for the birthday festivities.  Did you know today is the official first day of spring?  Perfect day to celebrate one sweet girl.  Happy Birthday Abby!


Wednesday, March 14, 2012

Organizing artwork

Lately, I have been in an organizing whirlwind.  A bystander might mistake it for nesting...but there are no more babies coming to this house.  I think I am liking order and structure in the midst of life with 3 children.  If I had an Ikea near me, I would have bought a million cute little boxes, file holders and baskets to finish this spring cleaning.  I will have to wait for my road trip through Atlanta this summer.  My shopping list is already getting pretty big - I can't wait!

Last week I got busy on the kid's art work.  Last time I was at Ikea, I picked up a few of these tension rod curtain hangers and have been using them to display artwork.



I have to brag a little on the kids...they are so creative!  Here is one my favorites from 4 year old Abby:



I think it is our family going into space.  I love how she designed the rocket.  If you ask her about the picture, the amazing thing is the story that would go with it.  She has a great imagination!



And here are 2 of my favorites from Caleb.  He does a lot of art at kindergarten.


The picture on the left is a self portrait.  Isn't it great?  My favorite is the picture on the right.  It is the inside of his brain.  How did he think of that????  Love it.






One of the things that is hard to keep organized is all of these lovely pieces of art.  We use to have drawings all over the house.  And of course, the kids don't want to throw away any of it.  So there are a few systems that I have created that have worked wonders.







The oldest system in place is this pegboard.  I got the idea from Pottery Barn many years ago, but I didn't want to pay an arm and a leg for it.



My Dad helped me build this pegboard from left-over scraps from the workroom at our house.  The back is framed out with 1x2 boards.  The one in this picture is done beautifully with mitered corners (thanks to my Dad's carpentry skills).  The one hanging in the kitchen is done with squared edges (thanks to my fear of measuring and cutting angles).  I did buy the hooks and pencil holders at Pottery Barn but I don't think they would be too hard to make.







The next system I started was creating binders for the kids with their favorite artwork.  I have dividers within each binder, and clear page holders with their artwork.  I can't keep everything, but I am trying to keep some of my favorites.  Abby loves to get the binders down and flip through them.







With all of these methods of organizing art around the house, I still found lots of little pieces of paper EVERYWHERE!  I can't control the artwork that comes home from school, but I decided that I could control what we have around the house.  I purchased a sketch book for both of them (each with about 100 pages).  I made sure there wasn't any way to tear out the pages.  And I took away 95% of loose paper from around their craft area.  They both love it!  They like to go back and look at their drawings and even add to them.  When they fill up the book, I will label the date and purchase another one.




So that is what I have been doing in between laundry, dinner and diapers.  Having things organized keeps me sane.  You can usually tell when I am feeling more stressed by how much organizing I am doing.  The more busy I am, the more things get re-organized around the house.  Kind of ironic, I know.  And one day, this cute face is going to add to the art clutter.  I can't wait to see what he comes up with...






Thursday, March 8, 2012

Rainy day fun times 2.

Abby and I spent most of today in our pajamas.  We loved it.  It was a rainy day and we had no where that we had to be.  Since we didn't have anything planned, we worked on a fun project for her room.  I actually did a 2 for 1, since we were painting anyways.  The house still smells like spray paint.





#1.  For Abby's room, we created a fun way to display her initials.  Last year Abby painted some paper mache letters a bright pink.  I have been thinking about displaying them more predominantly.  Since she sleeps in my childhood bed, my parents had recently given me an antique frame and picture that use to hang with the bed.  Sadly, the picture was ripped and torn after years of storage.  It has been ripped too far to be used with the antique frame.  So I decided to salvage the frame and keeps it's heritage alongside my antique brass bed.




I sprayed primer all over the frame before we got started.  I probably could have gone straight to the top coat but I didn't want to risk it.  For the top coat, I used a semi-gloss white spray paint.  Lately I have been using spray paint for projects and I really like it.  It is a lot faster!  And I don't see all of my mistakes from brush painting.





After it dried, we brought the frame inside and laid out the letters to make sure they fit.  And they just barely fit.  I gave Abby a choice of 3 ribbons - she quickly picked the pink polka-dot pattern.









We took a hot glue gun and attached the letters to the back of the frame.  We also undid the old wire from the back and attached a small hook for hanging the frame.  (what are those things called?  I have no idea...)








Abby was my big helper!  She even helped drill the screws into the back of the frame.  I want her to know how to use power tools at an early age.



Here is the frame hanging in Abby's room.  Abby couldn't wait to show Mark when he got home.






#2.  The side project was a little update to our weekly activity board.  I had hung an old white board in the kitchen a while ago and it just wasn't quite right.  It has been bothering me for a while.  It has functioned just fine but aesthetically it wasn't quite what I was going for.




So today, I took it down.  And, ummm, let me show you what is behind my activity board....

This house was wired with a 1960's intercom system that never worked.  So one day, I decided to take it out.  But I didn't really want to waste my time dry-walling because one day I want to re-do the kitchen.  So, I just covered it up.  I know...shame, shame.








I took the same spray paint primer and covered the white board.  Then I took my handy chalk-board paint, and gave it two coats.










Now I have a magnetic chalkboard that I love!  I have seen a lot of ideas around Pinterest on how to create a magnetic board.  Cookie sheets, plywood and scrap metal, etc.  I just wanted to use what I had on hand.


All in all...a very productive day!  And I didn't spend any money.  My one pint of chalkboard paint from 5 years ago is getting a lot of use lately!  Granted, the spray paint was a recent purchase.  But even for $8, these were low budget projects.  I love rainy days.