Porch Chairs Refresher

One day I thought..."Hey, these chairs are kind of blah." We have had them since we got married 9 years ago. I have always thought that they were indestructible.

But on closer inspection...I noticed that they were getting rusty. So...even more reason to clean them up and give them a fresh coat of paint.

I have spray painted a lot of things in my time...but these were tough! All the holes! All the angles! The clean up from the over-spray took as long as the spray painting did! (I used Krylon Cherry Red and I loved the ease of the nozzle, but the over-spray seemed ridiculous! I sprayed in my garage with a large tarp under and behind the project, and there was red dust from corner to corner of my garage. It didn't stick, so I just had to sweep it up...but it was messy!)

I love the results! The red chairs look fresh and summery! To entice neighbors to come over and stay awhile, I whipped up some outdoor pillows. I used one yard of Waverly's Sun and Shade fabric and at 40% off of $17.00 per yard, I wanted to use ever inch of it, and I did, selvage and all!

I used the little leftovers of the fabric for some rosettes. I added some burlap alongside the blue fabric to stretch my leftovers and to incorporate the burlap ties (I didn't have enough of the blue fabric to make ties...and in the windy city of Herriman, you need to tie your pillows to your chairs). I hot glued to rosettes and some red buttons to tie the whole look together. So cute!




I thought while I was at it, I would add a rug. I couldn't find anything that I liked that went with my color scheme, so I decided to make my own after being inspired by Jen's runner. I bought 4 cheapo rugs from Target and laid them out on the floor and taped them together with duct tape. Then I carefully flipped it over and hot glued ribbon on the seams. It is pretty sturdy... I have picked it up and shook it out a few times and it has been blown back into a crumpled heap by the aforementioned winds.
My porch definitely needed a makeover when competing with the stairs that have these beauties growing on them! (my first successful containers!)

Linking up my Red, White, and blue porch to:

School House Rocks!

Several weeks ago I was browsing the 'yard' area of my local thrift shop when I spotted this beauty (the school house desk...not that uber-fabulous buffet behind it). I instantly put my hand on it and wouldn't leave it's side for a moment... not even to track a worker down. I probably waited about 5 minutes before I was able to get someone's attention to help me get a sold sign on this baby. $10.00 later... this baby was mine!

Besides being really dirty, I liked the whipped butter color of the desk top and shelves, but wasn't loving the copper? color of the legs.



I didn't love the Q99 FM sticker or it's friends either!


Or this ultra deep scratch that some punk etched while they were being bored to death in math class.
Anywho...while I was cleaning the desk up, I noticed that I wasn't the first one to refinish this piece. Someone sprayed the gold color over red. Here is a closer look at the cool legs.
It turns out that the desk is adjustable for height. Whoever refinished it last, just left the legs at the shortest setting...so above that the legs are just red.
And here is the really gross gob of gum that the last refinisher didn't bother removing. "Scrape that off...nah, I'll just spray paint it gold. I'm sure it will just blend right in. Spray paint kills creepy desk scratching kid germs, right!?!" So I scraped that off and cleaned the desk with TSP. I was really torn about how to refinish this. I new that for the present, I was going to put it in my daughter's room, which is pink and brown. But I really wasn't liking the idea of baby pink on the desk. I kind of wanted to spray it aqua...but then I would have to redecorate her room entirely... and I still love her Paris room. So I went with hot pink and cream. It doesn't really 'go' but it is so cute that I love it there anyway!

The desk is definitely a she now! I taped and papered the desktop and shelves and spray painted the metal parts of the desk. Then I painted the wood parts. I only had ultra white paint on hand, so I added some almond color to a portion of it to cream it up. I kind of hate hand mixing paint, because I'm terrified of running out and having to try to make a match.

I barely had enough paint to finish. To make clean-up easier, I kind of scraped out the remaining paint with my foam brush and put the brush in a plastic bag and threw it away in my garbage can. Several hours later I thought, what am I doing!! That desk isn't done! I really wanted to try to stencil on a design and then cover it and sand down to the stencil. So I dug through my garbage to retrieve my loaded paintbrush and hoped that it wasn't dried out and that it was enough paint.

I grabbed my stencil (from Hobby Lobby) and taped paper to all sides of it. After I measured my desk top to find the center and figure out my stencil plan, I stuck the stencil down with stencil adhesive and blasted it with spray paint. Some of the designs turned out crisper than others. But that was a-o-k! After the stencil part was dried I painted over it with my remaining white paint and waited for that to dry. Then I sanded lightly in places and harder in other places to achieve the worn down look.

I super love the way it turned out! I will definitely use this technique again. And maybe one day she will fit into her surroundings a little more... we'll just have to see what happens.

Teddy takes a trip down the OR lane

A few weeks ago, I pulled Teddy out of the tub and discovered a bulge down there...and not in a good way. Teddy had a hernia and it had to be fixed. Luckily, the new Primary Children's Hospital is just a 4 minute drive from our house. Especially since we had to be there at 6:15 in the morning. Here Teddy is in his "hospital pajamas".


Teddy loved the waiting room. It was well stocked with a bunch of awesome toys and bubbles.

A few minutes later the sedative had kicked in and Teddy was still having a great time...he was just loopy and not in full control off his body. They wheeled him down to the OR in a wagon and a few minutes later I was holding him again. He was all fixed!

We were home by 9:00 am and I don't think he was aware that he had gone through anything out of the ordinary. He wanted to run around the house and there was nothing we could do to stop him. Since he still had a bevy of drugs on board, we were chasing after him with our arms outstretched to catch him if/when he fell. But before we could stop him, he ran smack into the glass porch door (I'm guessing that through his rose colored glasses, it looked like it was open. It surely wasn't because it was so clean he couldn't see it!). Anyway, a few hours later it seemed like all the drugs had worn off and he was acting like himself again; which is to say he was still running around like crazy, just with a steadier gate! Hopefully he will heal quickly and painlessly and we'll see no more scary bulges in his nether-regions!

Felt Toddler Watches

I saw the cutest little watch project at a linkie party the other week. Kimberly came up with a toddler watch made out of felt and buttons and included a great tutorial. I ran right out and bought the supplies the very day I saw her cute watches. I made 4. Two for my son, one for my daughter's best friend, and one for my nephew.



The only thing I would change about Kimberly's watch would be to cut two wristbands and glue (I used hot glue) them together. Felt can be stretched out and it doesn't get unstretched. My son is only 1 1/2 and he started pulling at his to pull it off and it got stretched. so...I just glued a strip to reinforce to them. But I think it would look more professional to have the whole wristband shape.

So cute...and you don't see too many cute things for boys. So I jumped on this one!

Linking to these parties:

Taloolah the Tooth Fairy

I'm sure many of you have seen the super cute tooth fairy pillow on mmmcraft's blog. I had seen it quite a while ago, but came across it again recently and it was serendipity! My daughter had just discovered that she has two loose teeth. I decided to whip this cutie up before her teeth came out and here is the result!



Here she is in all her glory...looking a little demented! I had all the supplies on hand so it was simple and free to make. Funny enough, the only thing I didn't have in my supplies was the silver pipe cleaner; but that very day I went to a local fabric store and it just happened to be the shop hop (all the quilting stores in the area have an event) and they were giving out these really cute crowns made out of silver pipe cleaner. So I just disassembled mine and used it for the wings!

I had to laugh because Larissa from mmmcrafts mentioned that the idea of a tooth with teeth cracks her up. Well, when my daughter saw the little tooth fairy pillow she started laughing and saying the same thing.

Larissa's fairy is made with more care than mine. Instead of hand stitching the back closed and the cheeks on, I machine stitched the cheeks and hot glued the back closed and then covered it with some more felt. I used an antique button that was in bad shape as the little jewel on the crown. I just hot glued it on. It came from my grandma's stash (her whole stash recently came under my care!!). It belonged to her grandma before her. I love that I was able to use something sentimental on what is sure to become a treasured object for my daughter.

Or maybe the next one I make will become the family treasure...this one looks a little crazy and may or may not be the final product!

Linking to these parties:

Oh Sweet Sadie Academy!!

I recently was the lucky lucky winner of one tuition to the Oh Sweet Sadie Academy. For those of you that aren't Utah natives, Oh Sweet Sadie is just the most amazing boutique ever! Go ahead and check out their blog... Dani and Heidi are so smart and funny and in the weeks leading up to each boutique, they have the best give-aways!! Now, I won the tuition not from Oh Sweet Sadie, but from the uber-awesome photographer Becky Earl! Go on ahead and take some time to peruse her website and be inspired by her fun perspective on photography. Did you see the fashion shoot? Did you see the sock girls?? Oh My...this girl has some wicked talent!!



Here you can see all my crafting goodies that I completed! That was the best part of the academy for me; I got to hang out with cool women, not shop for any supplies, and leave with 7 completed projects!! I learned some cupcake tips straight from the Sweet Tooth Fairy herself, and made a hula-hoop, fabric flowers, mama bird pendant, tissue pom-poms, a to die for fan-fold flower, and my most favorite thing of all...my own Black Apple doll. (btw...her site is just amazing too!! I can't wait to own some of her work!)

Here is a close up of the Mama Bird necklace! Awww...two little eggs for my two little chickies! My daughter just loves for me to wear this necklace. She is the egg that stands up a little, just so you know!

And here is a look at my sweet little Black Apple doll. Kind of hard to see in the photo, but she is wearing little polka dot stockings. I haven't show this to my daughter yet, cause it is going to be a preschool graduation present! (much to my chagrin, she will probably like it for a day, cause she isn't into anything that isn't from a video game)

And here is a close-up of my fan-fold flower. The cute gal that taught this called it something different, but I can't for the life of me think of what she called it! If you know another name for it, let me know in your comment! She was so amazing...she decorated a whole wedding with these and tissue poms...I'm sure it was the cutest wedding in the world!

Thanks again Becky, Dani and Heidi for treating me to such a great weekend!