Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

On Saturday, while the kids were napping and the husband was dutifully in his role of daddy-daycare, I popped out to check out our local Habitat ReStore. There was a clinic there and I had missed the last few I had heard about.  I wish the clinic had hands-on exercises - but overall the ReStore was great! I usually shop for furniture at another local shop that has decent prices, but I could see how much more reasonable the prices here were! And they had a very similar mix of quality pieces that the other thrift store does. They also had a huge number of old window panes, used doors, lighting fixtures and the typical books / decor / pictures. Needless to say I was very excited. 

My husband would hate if I brought home another project I didn't finish or have a purpose for.  On our third floor, we have two large totes next to our guest bed that are filled with my husband's sports jerseys and other clothes. Those ugly totes are covered with another ugly sheet. I started looking for something that could replace them. 

While I was there, I ran into an antique sewing machine desk which was calling my name for $40 (can't believe I forgot to take a photo!).  It had five skinny drawers on the right, and what looked like two large doors on the left.  Those two large cabinet style drawers were actually a disguised pull out chair! If I were in a bigger house or knew someone else who would love it as a gift I would have walked away with it in an instant.  However, I knew I already had a craft table and a regular desk upstairs that don't get enough use, so I sadly walked away.  And then I came up to the piece I ended up buying: a metal dresser. Its metal - as in filing cabinet metal (so very heavy) - with a few paint drips on it and a two-inch diameter circle where the paint had been worn off to the original metal finish. It was different enough and fit the space I wanted.  Refinishing this was not only easy, but also would help me get rid of the totes!!

The dresser was originally $40, and they had a 25% off sale for the St. Paddy's day holiday - coming down to $30. Before I got home I stopped at Lowes and bought three cans of spray paint - two of Valspar's Luscious Green and 1 of Cobalt Cannon. The total project cost came back up to $40.  My husband sanded it down and my daughter helped me with the clean up and taking off the handles.

(the handles before)

I had previously pinned a photo of a green cabinet I liked on Pinterest from Apartment Therapy (http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/carly-chips-home-house-tour-165184#gallery/35554/24) and thought this would be the perfect opportunity to do something similar.  It was also a fun way to celebrate St. Patrick's Day!  I spray painted (on a very windy day, I wouldn't recommend that!) the dresser green and the handles grey.  I'm really, really terrible at spray painting, though I love the way it turned out. 

This is a photo of it in our kitchen - not in its new permanent home upstairs.  I can see using this nearly anywhere in our house if I designed around it- a kids room, a future man cave, even in a dining room or study; but for now it will house those jerseys and rid me of the terrible totes. 

 

I'm still considering some things for a future iteration of this dresser: the first is clear coating the top to protect it from scratches... it chipped really easily when I was scratched it putting on one of the handles.  The second is putting some of those vinyl wall decals on it for a sports room or something funky like an octopus or maybe a giant anchor. I just went to one of those house parties for the vinyl decals and have so many ideas of projects to do running through my head now. One thing at a time I suppose! 

Photos and Quotes from C.S. Lewis

I made this today. The photo was something I took in 2010 from the sunroof of my car while my husband was driving. I came across it from my day-of-the-year calendar my mom had given me years ago.

Didn't it turn out lovely?  I loved this quote; it's so important to remember. 

"God can't give us happiness and peace apart from Himself because there is no such thing." - C.S. Lewis

DIY Frog Pin

 

I picked up this insanely large and sparkely frog ring at JCP yesterday. (I was really there for a pair of earrings to match my dress for a wedding we're going to this weekend and the Sephora counter.) It was a completely unnessary spend, but it was marked down to $4.99... and I'm kind of crazy for frogs. Seriously - I've got two statues in my bedroom and the kids know its "mommy's favorite". I nearly did the kid's room in a frog-and-toad theme. Last week my sister surprised me by putting one in my garden that she found at a thrift store. It absolutely made my day.



 

Anyway, the ring was pretty bad. It not only is about 3" long, but it was also made from that elastic material that just feels silly. And with the I put on rings - I can really only wear gold and silver.

So I cut it apart.

Then since I'm also obsessed with pins - I took apart one of those "Kiss Me I'm Irish" pins I had sitting in my jewlery box.

I hot-glued the pin vertically inside the frog and ta-da! A new much more awesome and wearable piece. I'm so excited about it I may wear it every day for a year (which admittedly is probably the next time I'm going to update this blog! I'm trying - I swear. My only excuse is that with a husband, two toddlers, a full time job, pets, friends, family, house repairs, etc.) I have lots of life to live outside of the digital world right now).

Repurposing A Jar

I try to do my nails once a week. so i go through a lot of polish remover and cotton balls. I realized I could find a better way to store them so they were easily accessible than in the beat-up crappy bulk-bag I've been using for years. With some inspiration from Pinterest and some existing off-white spray paint I had, I gave new life to this old salsa jar.

Playing Dress-up: a Christmas craft

For our 2012 Christmas, I had a lot of crafts I wanted to do. By far the biggest was to create a dress-up closet for my kids. As mcNugget got a bit more into dress up this year, and I saw all the potential hand-me-downs from my sister, I wanted to get a head of it all. It was also a project for my own excitement, really - getting back to my love of reinventing furniture and doing house projects that make me so happy. Plus, at the end of the day, I like to show my love through crafts and hard work... those are the gifts that have always meant the most to me: the gift of time means more than buying things.
So I went shopping. There was a fun wine rack at Homegoods that I was considering at first; it was $75+ though and I don't have any experience with working in metal. Plus the cabinet wasn't closed at the top, so it would need to go in the playroom and out of view until we re-re-purposed it into something else.

The next day I found this at my favorite thrift store, which was marked at $35, but I had a 25% off coupon. They said someone came in earlier looking at it, but they had trouble opening it since the top closures were stuck. Bonus? It closes and helps with hiding all the wonderful mess kids bring with them. I always tell them, it's alright to make a mess as long as you clean it up! Plus I LOVED the book door pull, and it was the perfect size - about 4' X 2' X 2'. SOLD.


The staff hoisted it in my car (it JUST fit) and the husband put it in basement for me. I pried off the closures with a flathead screwdriver - they just popped right off. The doors had swollen over time, and didn't need the latch to keep shut.

The style fit with our dining room furniture but really was not attention grabbing for a kid. You can also see all the scratches it had from years of use, so I picked up three Valspar brand paint samples ($3 each at Lowes) to refinish the doors and outside. Sanding was the worst part, but fortunately I just had to rough up the finish - not remove it. The first night took me about 2 hours. I primed the whole outside (1 hour) the following evening, then sanded lightly and painted my two coats of paint the second night (2 hours).

I decided to put a clear coat of polyurethane on it to protect it from the kids scratches, banging, drawings, and whatever else they did to it. That took another hour or so on a fourth night, and was something I had never done before. I was worried because our basement was pretty cold that night, and the poly seemed to have little tiny bubbles in it -but when I checked on it two days later, it looked great! I'm sure another coat would do it some good, but with lots of other crafts left to do I wanted to finish it up.
The last thing was to hang a clothes bar ($15), contact paper the inside ($2.50) and re-attach the front hinge. Since they would much more likely scratch up the inside where they can reach I didn't bother painting it; and contact paper can be redone cheaply and quickly if they ruin it somehow. I was also lucky the walls were really thick so the screws holding the clothes bar didn't go through the other side. The only thing I would change is I wish the middle shelf was movable to give more height to the long dresses. And maybe it is for someone a little more keen on cutting and drilling and all that - but I worked within the confines of the existing structure.

For Christmas morning, we loaded it with some of their existing play clothes and hats, ten cent hangers from a thrift store, an existing bin for things that didn't get hung up, and all the purses and costume jewelry they played with (which was previously all over the house). The other family members gave some new costumes, masks, and a doctor's bag as Christmas gifts since they knew what we were planning.

When they get older, maybe one of them will use it to hold their books or other stuff in their home. Or maybe they'll let me keep it :) I really didn't want to banish this awesome new piece of furniture to somewhere only they would see it. It's currently the first thing you see when you walk in our house.

Last day of 2012

Here's what I did the last day of 2012: turned $4 CK (from the local thrift store) boot cut jeans into skinny jeans, which I needed to fit in my new riding boots i got for Christmas. Thanks to my sister for the help!

We laid the pants flat and inside-out, flattening and aligning along the inside seam. We put one leg of my other existing skinny jeans that I wanted to match on the outside seam, and pinned the interior of the leg to match.

We ended up seam ripping the crotch since there was so much fabric. Depending on your pants, you may be able to skip this part. The pins were then tapered gently from the leg out on a curve to as close to the existing bottom of the crotch center point as possible to ensure I didn't lose any height in the waist of the pants.

We sewed the first leg from the crotch down to the leg so the fabric wouldn't bunch at the top. I then tried them on (right-side-out), liked them, and then turned them back inside-out to cut the excess fabric off the newly sewn leg. We left a 1/4 inch excess from the new seam.

We repeated the process on the other leg, the whole process taking about an hour.

They looked spectacular, especially for $4.

Twelve Years

It has been 12 years since my maternal grandmother passed away. I remember how incredibly happy I had been earlier that day; I was away at school and had left my IM "away" status to something like "what an absolutely wonderful day it is". It is strange to think how blindsided we all were; I miss her often.

Even though she had been sick for a very long time, she was still always there. This grandmom was my "crafty" grandmom; the one who taught me how to sew and crochet. The one who made all our Halloween costumes (and who's sewing machine I now use to make my own kids costumes). I miss her on all the holidays and when I see something incredible on Pinterest that I just know she'd know how to make. She was so fun for us kids during the time we had her, and I'm grateful for all the things she taught me.

The photo above is the wreath my mom made for her this year. It's clear to see where we all got it from. Love you Tida!

It's Already 2.2012

Like I said in last week's post, I've been on an unscheduled hiatus from my blog the past two months. From the time I get up in the morning to the time I go to bed I feel like I don't stop moving. Between getting both kids and ourselves ready for school / work, the time it takes to drop off / pickup, regular house stuff (like cleaning, making dinners, and paying bills) added to the increased work load at work and managing to pump / breastfeed on top of all that, I've had little time to blog.

Happily now things have "sort of" slowed down at work and I can get a few posts in here and there. I'm going to start back slowly; no promises or commitments for thrice a week postings; and I'll also be spreading out the content so that I have more time to write them on a more manageable schedule.


So what else have I been up to in 2012? Well, trying to get my work-life balance in order mostly. So I started 2012 like so many others do: with a resolution. That resolution was to make a list of resolutions really; one for each month. But I knew for me these resolutions had to be realistic, doable, and still make me feel accomplished at the end of the year. Important to note that this was the list. Laminated and finalized; no adding other resolutions (like "blog regularly" or "host a game night once a month") and over-stretching myself. Now of course I can do those other things, but my commitment is to do these things by the end of the year, without setting myself up to fail with other 'distractions'.

In January I decided to re-add flossing to my daily routine. Its one of those on-again, off-again things I got lazy with, and (TMI) during my pregnancies I had some pregnancy gingivitis. But from what I've been told, dental health can pay huge dividends in other areas of your health (and later on save you money!).

We also bought tickets for two different concerts (one coming up in March and the other in May). Concerts just didn't seem like all that much fun while I was pregnant so we haven't been to one in a few years!

Here's the others:

• Run a 5K (another thing I missed while pregnant)
• Learn to cook (to save money and get healthy!)
• Clean the attic (get organized... this is our #1 junk spot in our house)
• Get my cleaning plan together (eventually leading to less stress, live in a healthier environment, feel organized and let us have people over anytime!)
• Backup all my photos on DVD & create at least two albums (get organized)
• Learn to use my camera (have fun)
• Figure out how to "give back" more (have fun)
• Take a real vacation (have fun)
• Write a will (this one will stress me out until we do it)
• Rid myself of all the clothes that don't fit or make me feel good (enough said)

For me the over-arching goals of "have more fun", "get healthier", "stress less", "get organized", "save money" aren't realistic. However, I feel I can work towards them by setting smaller goals that "roll into" those bigger visions. I also wanted something to remind me of my goals throughout the year. And because it was fun to me, I made a mixed-font word-map with my resolutions in mind. This is on my refrigerator now. I love it.

October catchup- The Last

Halloween being October 31st, it's the last of my October catchup series. I hope to not have to do another series like that now that we're on a bit of a schedule (as I'm writing this, I'm pumping while rocking mcMuffin in a bouncy at my feet. He's 7 weeks old today, though you won't see this post for another week).

Anyhow, this is the project that took up most of my (very limited) free time in October. Halloween costumes!! I believe I only ever had one store bought costume - and how silly of me to have wasted money on that!! I'm bound and determined that my kids will have a homemade costume every year that they want one - hopefully as long as they trick-or-treat! I really love making them (here's mcNugget's from 2010).

The hardest part was deciding what they should be. Obviously they had to go as a set - I only have a couple of years for them to let me do that! So this year we decided (after considering Pebbles & BamBam) on Eric Carle's The Very Hungry Caterpillar and the beautiful butterfly at the end of the book.

Truth be told, I got the idea from the Pottery Barn kid's magazine, but like I said - I wanted them to only have homemade costumes. And I think I saw only one other kid at their school who had a homemade costume (he was a John Deere tractor). Now they certainly have adorable store bought costumes - there was a set of twins in her class who went as garden gnomes (FREAKING AWESOME). But like the prom, no one wants to show up in the same outfit someone else has.

So here are the 2011 costumes for the babes. The caterpillar was easy - it's just a sack that i stuffed the front of and stitched two lines across. There is a lining to hold in the stuffing, and to make things easy, remember to stuff it and stitch the front before sewing the back on. I used leftover fabric I had and sized it to one of his sleep-sacks - at that age they are tiny enough to use almost any fabric - you could even use a pillow case. The hats are the same for each kid - just some stretchy red fabric, white fleece for the eyes painted with yellow and green fabric paint and stitched on. The hat absolutely was the key to these costumes.

The butterfly was the more time consuming costume - but certainly easy - and no sewing! The basis was a yellow sweatshirt and brown leggings. I made the tutu with 2 yards of tulle and a leftover ribbon we had. To make a no-sew tutu, just take a length of ribbon to tie comfortably around the child's waist and any color tulle you want. Cut the tulle into strips about 1" wide. The length of your strips folded in half will determine how long your skirt will be (the shorter ones will stick out more). Then fold each strip in half so the ends are even- lay the ribbon on top, and pull the two loose ends around the ribbon and back through the tulle strip to make a knot. It takes about 30 minutes to make the skirt.

The wings are 1" foam that cut to shape for the four sections of the wing.  I then covered them in leftover white fabric (using spray adhesive) and then painted with the fabric paint since I wanted the wings to be as close to Eric Carle's original so you could tell what they were. Lastly I safety pinned the wings together and then safety pinned two elastic bands to the wings and the shoulders of her shirt to keep them on (an older kid would definitely keep them on if they were just sewn on there... and you could of course paint on top of those pre-formed wings they sell everywhere (or even make them out of wire hangers and nylon stockings) - I just had leftover foam from an upholstery project.

The best part is that for anyone who'se seen Eric Carle's illustrations - the costumes don't have to be perfect, and that's the beauty of his drawings. Even in his butterfly drawing, the wings weren't the same, so you have a lot of room for artistic interpretation. Both costumes together cost under $15 and was done in 3 of mcMuffin's naps  over 3 days. The fabric paint was on sale in a 20 pack from Joanne's for $9.90 - and the tulle and elastic came to about $5 with a coupon. I also loved that these costumes were so warm for the kids. It gets cold here and with the sweatshirt, winter hats, and basically a sleep sack, my kids were snuggly-buggly warm this year.

October Catchup- the fifth

This year was a lot of fun with our pumpkin preparations; McNugget painted her very own pumpkin. We taped over the eyes and mouth - but the tape pulled away, so we had to do a little clean up and "artistic additions" to her pumpkin. It was a real team effort between her and Daddy. :)

In honor of Halloween, she thought it would be good to dress as Charlie Chaplin...

All done!!

October Catchup- the fourth

One of the other things that kept me busy during October was my future sister-in-law's bridal shower. I can't begin to tell you how lucky I am to have such an amazing brother-in-law and future SIL. They're mcNugget's godparents, and definitely some of our best friends. They just moved home - after years of us all living states apart, and I cannot wait to hang out with them every week!!

My key responsibility for the party was the invites. They're getting married New Years Eve - and we're all in the wedding. We decided to have a Winter themed shower - so here's the invite I designed. I did the trees by hand - all using a program called "GIMP" (I am trying it out - since its free- until I can save up the money for Adobe Photoshop; its working really well!). I kept it close to her wedding colors (Red, Black & Silver) - trendy, and not too "Christmasy". What do you think? Obviously I removed all their information :)

I had them printed at FedEx Kinko's on cardstock - and they cut them all for me (YAY!). Here's a tip - 5X7 envelopes are really expensive, so go with a smaller photo size if you don't need the 5X7. We did though, so I spent the extra money on the envelopes from Staples.

Also, we asked everyone to bring a Christmas ornament for their future tree. I found this fabulous idea on Pinterest.com - and made them one out of this invite (original photo found here). I'll do the same out of their wedding invite after the wedding. (Sorry I didn't capture my actual ornament yet, I'll have to get that sometime soon). A box of 4 glass ornaments cost $4 at JoAnn fabric - and I still have two more leftover to make us an ornament from our extra wedding invites.

Crafting for Kate

There are some friends that you get in life that you always feel you can't do enough for. They are always there supporting you - being excited for you - and end up going way beyond your expectations for you... rain or shine.

My friend Kate - who I've known for about 13 or 14 years now - is one of those people; and happens also to be the most creative, artistic girl I know. From handmade blankets and a handmade purse for mcNugget's first birthday - to the invites for mcNugget's baby shower - she can pretty much do it all flawlessly. I like to think I'm crafty - but my stuff always ends up with wiggly lines and extra threads. I'm quite in awe of her creativity, and want to return the favor - but knowing that many of the things I can do, she can do better!

So after buying some key baby gifts for her shower this weekend and sourcing the adorable cake from our friends, I looked high and low for a creative idea to make for her - with the expected wonkiness of a handmade item coming from me.  After the search, I decided that I'd make her a mobile. Her colors were grey and yellow - with a hint of pink (she's expecting a baby girl just two months after we're expecting our boy... hello arranged marriage!).  Kate's also in love with elephants, so here's the result:

The six elephants are made of felt and hand stuffed and hand sewn, each with a different color set between their body, ears and embroidery thread. We used the inside of an embroidery hoop at the top, padded with extra felt and then covered in a satin ribbon. I tied the elephants on so that she could change their height if she needed to. I hope her impending bundle likes it! I really had fun making it. I'll try to get a better shot of it up close when its hung.

And below is the cake we had made for her shower. I think it speaks to her craftiness (see the cute buttons on the top tier?) and of course ties in the elephant and color scheme. It was delicious.

To her ever-unbelievable character, in the middle of her opening up her presents at her baby shower, she handed me one. A baby blanket she made for my mcMuffin. Seriously, this girl is awesome and I hope everyone gets a friend like her someday.

McNuggets 1st Birthday: the Prep

It finally happened, our little McNugget turned 1. It took me more than a month to plan and prep for, but the event was a huge success in my eyes. The first thing we did was pick a theme - and I wanted it to be something special to her.

Several months ago, we realized she has a special place in her heart for the color yellow. How did we know this (since she can't talk yet)? Well, anytime we'd wear clothes with yellow lettering, prints, etc. she'd  trace her little finger on the yellow spots; when she saw the yellow craft bumble bees at school that was hanging on the ceiling, she'd reach for them every day. And then if you give her two of the same toy, one yellow and one not, she'd always pick the yellow one. Cool, right? So when I saw this Macy's department store advertisement, I knew I had my theme.

Invites were next - I pulled a photo from each of her months to show her age progression over the past year. Obviously I've removed all the sensitive data (like our home address), but otherwise this was the invite. We only had about 25 invites to send, so we printed 10 (using 1 hour 4X6 photos at Target) and emailed the rest. We asked everyone to dress in yellow - which is apparently not a color most have in their wardrobe because while half everyone showed up in yellow, the other half said "this was as close as they could get".  

Then it was time to arrange for the cake. My husband's coworker has a side business for cakes and we loved the one she put together for McNugget's christening, so this one was a no-brainer. I just sent her the Macy's add, asked her to do something using the couch and flowers, and the below is the BEAUTIFUL cake that they came up with. It seriously made me cry when I saw it, and I have to say that it was everything I could have ever wanted.

I also sewed two lemon table runners that I know will be useful for the next few parties or summer get-togethers.



The next part was party decorations. I bought 21 yellow and white paper lanterns from "5 and Below" (they were $5 for 3). I figured I could use them for future parties or as decorations in the new nursery.

We bought some faux lemons on clearance ($4) at target for filler - which I've wanted since our wedding (where we used real lemons as vase filler). They always remind us of where we spent our honeymoon in Italy.

And my sister brought us wildflowers from the place where she was interning (free).

A few lemon scented candles from Homegoods (9 in a pack for $4). You can see the gift table and flags captured in the photo as well.

The kids favors were yellow bubbles tied with either a tie or bow (for the boys and girls). The idea was to keep them entertained at the party and afterwards, but we forgot to have everyone take them when the came in. I've been passing them out as we saw the kids in the weeks since. ($12) We used some of the leftover yellow ribbon from our wedding- kids don't care, right?

For the adults, I had lemon and vanilla salt water taffy and yellow-white striped swirled candy sticks (which in the chaos we also forgot to give out) that we bought down the shore (McNugget's first trip to the beach) two weeks prior.  

I spent a few hours sewing a yellow and orange flag streamer (apparently called bunting), and found the most fabulous Cinderella-inspired card cage which I will be keeping out on our porch and use for future parties. We (the husband) had to spray paint it yellow (original color in the second photo below). This was the most expensive item - at $30 - but I knew we could get years of use out of it in the garden or just as decoration for future parties. Heck, she may even be able to use it as the card cage at her wedding!! You can see it painted in the middle of her gift pile below. I was originally going to get a regular old bird cage to spray paint yellow, but couldn't muster the $30 for something so "normal". When I saw this though, they had me.

(before)

So that was our successful first adventure into birthday decorating. There were details we overlooked (like a special birthday candle - fortunately I had some leftovers from other events in the cabinet), but overall it was exactly what I had envisioned to help our little girl celebrate her birthday.