Resolutions

Yeah yeah, I know. It's been a couple months since I posted anything and I'm way late on my resolutions. I'll be honest, I've never been a big fan of making resolutions for the New Year but I'm going to try it this year and see how it goes.

The past couple months have been crazy and this next month is only going to get crazier still. It's finally hitting me exactly what we are doing. Tim and I are currently in the process of moving out of our house by ourselves while simultaneously taking care of our three toddlers. We don't have movers coming, which is the norm for military families doing cross-country moves, because we are not moving with orders. Tim leaves for another deployment very soon and I'm moving with the kids to my parents house for six months.

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Deployments are not easy, and I don't say this to garner sympathy, it's just a fact of military life. But thankfully, I have a great family and great in-laws who do not hesitate to help me when I need it. It's how families should be and I am certainly blessed to have such a good one. So with that being said, here are my 2012 New Year's Resolutions (four days late):

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1.)Be more positive. I have a tendency to get grumpy and negative when I get overwhelmed and I need to stop. Like now. It's not setting a very good example for my kids if they see me like that. I want to teach them how to deal with struggles in a healthy way. Now this doesn't mean I'm going to turn into this giddy, over-medicated, laughing-all-the-time mommy, but I will try to smile more.

2.)Put myself out there more. I've already taken the first step to doing this. I'm going to the Haven Conference this year and I am so excited and terrified. I don't know anyone going and the thought of walking into a huge room of total strangers (except for interacting online) gives me heart palpitations! But I am so excited thinking about all the new friends I'm going to make, not to mention all the awesome stuff I'm going to learn. There are some incredibly inspirational people leading the conference and I can't wait for June to get here!!

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3.)Start an Etsy business. This is the biggie. This is something I've been thinking about doing for awhile but haven't gotten the courage to accomplish. I love sewing and making things and I love being able to stay home with my kids so why not put the two together and try to make a business out of it? I finally told Tim about this dream last night and he was very supportive of the idea (Love him!) so now all I have to do is make it happen. I've already started writing up a business plan even though I know NOTHING about starting a business. My degree is in Exercise Physiology, and I never took any business classes in college so this is WAY out of my comfort zone.

4.)Be a better blogger. I did improve last year but I still have a long way to go. The big issue for me is time. With three toddlers at home and none of them in school yet (next year!) it's hard to put enough time into my blog to get more readers, post more projects, interact more with people, etc. I appreciate all 28 of my followers (I'm ecstatic that that many of you follow me!! Thank you so much!) and I want to be able to build relationships with people in a way that I didn't get to do last year. My kids still will always be my priority, but now that they are older and more independent, I hope to put a little more time towards this blog.

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5.)Be a better military wife. Be stronger than I think I can be. Have more faith that God will keep my Marine safe. Just have more faith in general. Pray more. Encourage more. Think of myself less. Read my Bible more. I truly have better days when I do this.


That pretty much sums it up for this year. I'm going to be working hard to make all of these things happen and I have a supportive bunch of readers so I know you all will help me!! I hope you all are having a wonderful January and a fresh start to this year.

Here's to a great 2012!!

Driftwood Lamp

Sooo here's the story...

I've had this lamp done for a few weeks now but iphoto was being weird and not recognizing the images that I had downloaded. Long story short...it's cooperating and now I can show you the final product.

In case you don't remember what the lamp looked like before here ya go...
Fugly? Yes. Potential? Yes.

While perusing ebay I came across a white driftwood lamp with a linen shade for...gulp...$329!!! Now, I have no clue what kind of person could justify spending that much money on a lamp. Here's the link so go take a peek:http://cgi.ebay.com/WHITE-DRIFTWOOD-LAMP-Natural-ORGANIC-Coastal-BEACH-/180612958335?pt=Lamps_US&hash=item2a0d5f087f#ht_1686wt_933


Price aside, I thought it was a beautiful lamp and so I decided to try to copy it for hubby's nightstand. I found my lamp on ebay for $40 (totally worth it since once again, I bought the shade from Pottery Barn with a gift card) and when it finally came in the mail I was a little worried because, well, it was super ugly!

But it's amazing what a little paint will do...

Love it love it love it!

I applied a coat of primer first and then Rustoleum's Heirloom White, but decided I liked how the white primer looked better than the creamy Heirloom White so I then put another coat of primer on top. A bit more work than planned but the white looks so much better with the linen shade. And the lamp looks great in the master bedroom.

Now all I need to do is fix those pictures on either side of the bed. We just had new pictures done so it can wait until we replace the old with the new.

That's it for now. One of my favorite people, Audrey, is coming over for dinner any second so it's time for me to go and enjoy some wine!

A Re-upholstering Virgin No More!

That's right. I re-upholstered my first piece of furniture.

I've been wanting to cover a chair I've had for a couple years with different fabric and because of its construction, it didn't require that I remove the previous fabric. It only needed a slip-cover, which I knew I could handle.

This mis-matched pair is currently residing in the corner of the random room off the family room. My craft desk is in here right now, but someday when we buy a house, I'll have a room all to myself, with a door to lock the kiddos out and everything! Come on, you know you dream of the same thing hee hee!

The rocker is nice and neutral, although a bit boring. But you can't beat it for rocking babies to sleep!

The purple chair is the one I wanted to change. Now, don't get me wrong, I still like this fabric and I love the tufting. It'll be great in the girls' room someday but for now purple flowers don't exactly go with anything in my house.

I was originally going to cover it with canvas drop cloth as Miss Mustard Seed does so beautifully but I ended up using the one I had for other projects. Then I remembered I had a couple remnant pieces of blue stripe ticking that I thought would look good. So I started draping and sewing and loved it.

Here's how it turned out:

While sewing, the fabric had to be taken off and put back on the chair quite a bit so it helped that the ticking had a bit of stretch in it. And while it's certainly not perfect, for my first time re-upholstering anything, I'm pretty happy with the results.

The hardest parts were the corners of the chair back and where the back and the seat meet.

See? A bit messy but I couldn't figure out any other way of doing it although I'm sure it exists.

With the remaining pieces of ticking left I made two pillows with coordinating blue floral fabric that I've had for awhile and needed to use.

When it was time to secure the cover to the bottom I simply folded the fabric under and stapled around the legs. Not very well, but who cares? When was the last time a house guest turned your chairs over to inspect the bottom? Exactly.

I wanted to do as little damage to the chair as possible so this method worked for me. Again, probably not the right way but I'm still learning.

The stretchiness made it hard to get the stripes perfectly straight when stapling but I don't mind imperfections. You can see a little wave in the seat and back.

Maybe if I had picked a different pattern or a solid I wouldn't have encountered this problem but I have a serious thing for stripes. They are all over my house.

I'm excited to finally have this project under my belt. Within the next few weeks I'm going to be painting a friends' bedroom set she bought off craigslist. Hopefully I have read enough blogs and tutorials on painting furniture not to screw it up! I'll let you know whether I'm a success or an epic fail at painting. Wish me luck!

Linking to:
Furniture Feature Friday with Miss Mustard Seed
Perfectly Imperfect

I Heart Yard Sales

I was in yard sale heaven this weekend. Last minute, Friday night, me and two of my lovely neighbors decided to go to a huge rummage sale a local church was hosting. I've been wanting to go yard-saling for forever but in between taking care of small children and wanting to spend time with my husband, it never seems to happen. So when the topic was brought up I eagerly joined in and the plan was made.

And man, did I score big time!

The very first thing I saw when we arrived was this chair:

I've been waiting patiently to find a desk chair on the cheap for my craft desk that needs painting. I don't think you can beat $2!!! It was perfect and will be lovely when it's been re-upholstered and painted.

I spied two tables full of random linens next and found a near perfect lace tablecloth also for $2!

It has a few yellow spots which can easily be removed and is slightly too small for my table but I don't care...I love it!

These two pillowcases I thought would be cute for the girls' room someday:

I hit the motherload at one of the tables and got some bundles of super cute fabric:

Like I need more fabric, but I couldn't resist such a good deal.

The last three things I found cost me all of 85 cents:

I've been wanting a cloche since they are everywhere in blog-land and I found 2! The one with the marble cheese plate is super heavy and gorgeous. The one with the flower design is wood and plastic and will get painted and used for display. I grabbed the goblet because I loved the color and it was only ten cents!

The grand total for everything I bought was $15.25!! I'd say I got my money's worth!

How about you? Did you find any treasures this weekend?

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Fabric Rosette Lampshade

My latest project almost had it in for me. And my kitchen table.

When I started this project I naively thought that I'd simply whip up a few flowers, glue them to the shade and ta-da!!! a gorgeous and effortless new lampshade.
Gorgeous...Yes.
Effortless?...Not so much.
But we'll save the drama for later.

Sooooo, a while back I refurbished a couple of ebay lamps.
I ended up in love with one of them and it's now on my nightstand, but the other one needed some improvements.

For starters, it was boring. And the white shade clashing with the creamy spray paint bugged me. It's like when my hubby wears black dress shoes with navy or brown socks. I start twitching.

So I decided to change everything.

I bought three yards of white muslin and a new box of 24 glue sticks for my glue gun and got to work.

This is how my table looked for days...

And days...

And days...
My table became a barren wasteland of ripped muslin and dried glue strings everywhere.

You see, genius that I am decided to cover the entire shade with the rosettes. Not just a small part of it. So after many days of twirling and blistered fingers I had this:

Not very promising. But I stuck it out. For two weeks.

The problem was, after twirling a dozen or so rosettes, my fingers would cramp and start to look like the hands of an 85-year old, so I could only do so many a day.

But I had seen a shade covered in white fabric rosettes at Homegoods and I was determined to copy it, no matter how blistered and distorted my hands became. So I hung in there for another week (yes, it took me THREE WEEKS to finish what should have been an easy project) and FINALLY finished what will now be known as 'the devil's lampshade.'

I decided to spray paint the lamp a pretty aqua. I think it will be darling in the girls' room someday when they have their own room.

I ended up using all three yards of muslin and almost the entire box of glue sticks for this one project. But I actually think it was worth it. I love the end result!

I'm still not completely happy with this combination of lamp and shade. I just won a few beautiful milk glass lamps off of ebay so I'm sure I'll find a good match among them. Once my fingers heal, of course.

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