The Nursery Lamp

So, I said in my last post that I was going to get this lamp to transform for the nursery. I like to change my mind, though, so I ended up bringing home this white lovely on Friday.

Last night, I got the urge and just ran with it. I scuff sanded the ceramic base so the spray paint would stick better and taped off the cord and light socket.

In between coats of paint, I ironed my fabric and cut it in the shape of my shade. At that point, you're supposed to use spray adhesive to stick the fabric to the shade, but I was feeling lazy and didn't want to deal with the mess that spray adhesive creates. So, I used elmer's stick glue, the kind that goes on purple and dries clear. I figured, if it didn't work, no harm done and I'd get out my spray adhesive. It worked! Saved me a bunch of time, too! Then, I cut the top and bottom edges of the fabric to about a 1/2 inch from the shade and hot glued the edges down.

Here it is in all it's girly glory with our green nursery walls behind it:


And lit...
The base is actually a bright yellow (the same color as the yellow flower in the fabric), but the green wall makes it look greenish. I love how it turned out! I can hardly wait to get our white dresser/buffet moved into the nursery so the lamp has a place to sit up off the floor.

I've also worked on a couple of other things, too, but nothing else is finished. I did make some tissue paper balls, but they turned out a bit small, so I'm going to do them over again. Tonight is my husband's weekly Cub Scout meeting, so I'm hoping to get a bunch done while he's gone.

Two Week Deadline and Progress Report

I decided towards the beginning of this month, that I have until April 9th to get my nursery done. I work better with deadlines and I figure the last month of my pregnancy should be organizing and getting clothes - not decor - for my little girl. I realized yesterday that I only have 2 weeks until my deadline! Here's my ambitious to-do list and what I've gotten done so far:

I wanted the nursery painted a different color and painted the whole thing on Wednesday. I was over the lemon sherbet color it was (way too bright, I thought) and wanted something darker. My husband went for it because I already had the paint leftover from the kitchen. The green in my kitchen matches my green paisley nursery fabric (long story) and we over bought by almost 2 gallons when we were painting it.

Here's the before:

Here's the almost after:

We need to go over the edges one more time and my husband should be doing that today. (I'm done going up and down a step-ladder.) We're also going to be adding a window sill around the window and painting that out before putting anything back into the nursery. Hubby volunteered to do that too. We're hoping it gets done this weekend. Then we'll be installing the new white faux-wood blinds and hanging the nursery curtains back up.

I've been working on the pendant light and I'm getting faster. Still quite a ways to go though. Here's what it looked like as of last night:

This is 650 coffee filters. Any guesses as to how many it'll eventually need? I'm almost out of filters and will be picking up more later today. Hubby again volunteered to do the lighting aspect of this project, so that'll be done after I get all the furniture in the nursery and I know for sure where I want to hang it.

I'm also going to do some tissue paper balls (in black, yellow and dark pink) to hang from the ceiling in another part of the room. We just have to get a few more things done before I can make them.

Here's my fabric for my crib set. I'm not the fastest (or best) sewer, so I need to get started on this soon. I'm planning on making a bumper, crib skirt and 2 crib sheets from this fabric. I have all the supplies, I just need to DO it.


Here's my girly fabrics for the nursery. What looks like pink in the picture below is actually a dark coral color. LOVE it! Everything I make/do with these fabrics will eventually get moved to the "girls" room when #5 comes along. I'm going to be picking up this lamp today. It'll get painted yellow and the shade will be recovered in the floral print below. I got some chicken wire from a friend and I'm planning on making a hairbow organizer like this one with it and the large polka-dot print fabric below. I hope it turns out like in my head! I'll be making curtains for the girls room out of the floral print and the small green polka-dot fabric below. That's not by my deadline, just soon (I hope!).


I also still need to repaint the rocking chair and find a new cushion for it, along with a few other finishing touches. And we need to put everything in the nursery. Hopefully, it'll all get done by my deadline (or at least close to it).

The Buffet is DONE!

I finally put the finishing touches on my "ugly" buffet. Here it is all finished up and in my bedroom. It was actually moved up to our room during our great furniture move to get the boys in the same room. It's just been sitting in our room empty for the last couple of weeks waiting for me to put in drawer liners.

Here's my lovely drawers. After a lot of thought, I decided that I wasn't up for refinishing another dresser before this baby comes (I'm feeling my 7+ months pregnant). Since this dresser is the same white I'm painting everything else in the nursery (and it fits on the right wall), it's getting moved to the nursery. So, I used the same wrapping paper in the drawers as I did on the side table I finished last week.

And, just as a reminder, here's what this beauty looked like when I first brought her home:

She's come a long way and gone through many transformations (in my head, anyway) before becoming the perfect dresser for my nursery.
In case you're curious, I posted here, here, here and here the different stages I went through to arrive at the lovely piece of furniture above.

Nursery Side Table

I've been looking for a couple of months for a nice curvy little side table for the nursery. I wanted it to sit next to the rocking chair and have some storage for diapers and wipes. After searching Craigslist for something nice (and not finding "it"), I finally headed to Home Goods and found this little cutie. I was able to get an extra 10% off because of a few dings in the finish, so I was super excited about that.

The inserts in the cabinet door and the drawer front were a different shade of white than the rest of it and once I started painting everything else Heirloom White, I realized it was the wrong shade of white. So, I painted it out to match. I first primed the black/white parts and then sprayed it Heirloom White, but it needed a bit more.

I bought this green damask wrapping paper on clearance at Hobby Lobby last summer to use in my nursery, so I measured and cut it to fit the inset part of the cabinet and drawer. I used double stick tape to secure it on the corners and in the middle.

I also took all the hardware (originally antique brass colored) and spray painted it oil-rubbed bronze. This entire remake probably only took me 1 1/2 to 2 hours tops. It was great!

Before (I'd already taken all the hardware off)

After

All I have left to paint now is the rocking chair. I'm almost done with the furniture for the nursery. I can hardly wait to see everything come together!

Coffee Filter Pendant Light

A few months ago, I saw a really cool pendant light made from a paper lantern and coffee filters. I recently saw it again linked to on another blog and decided a smaller version would look great in the nursery. I bought this 8" paper lantern on Amazon.com and a bunch of "mini" coffee filters at the grocery store. About 4 hours of Pride and Prejudice and 250 coffee filters later, I'm about halfway done, I think. It's looking really cute. I'm just hoping there's enough room at the top to stick a light bulb when I'm done.

Nursery Bench

I bought this bench a year and a half ago while my husband was on a business trip. You can see that post here. It's the first piece of furniture I'd completely refinished.

I originally painted the bench an ivory color (I had an aversion to white at the time). However, once we moved it to our lemon yellow nursery, it looked awful. I've been planning on repainting it Heirloom White ever since. I finally did a couple of a days ago. It only took about an hour.

Before

After

I know, you can't really tell a difference in the photos, but it looks much better in the nursery now. I'm much happier with it and that's what matters.

Dinosaur curtains finished and hung and boys bedroom so far...

Last week, I finished up making my boys' new bedroom curtains. My husband and I didn't get around to hanging them until the day before our great furniture move last week. Both panels have 6 inches of stripes at the top and 12 inches of stripes at the bottom. I made the curtains floor to ceiling in length and clipped them to curtain rings. The top of the curtains wouldn't stay up straight so my husband folded the top over and we decided that looked really nice. Here they are hanging in my boys' bedroom along with my 5 yr old who thought I was taking pictures of him.

A few things I've learned with making various lined curtains for my house.

• If I don't plan on moving the curtains back and forth, I really like the hidden tabs like on my loft curtains.
• I prefer the grommits I put in my nursery curtains over the rings on these curtains. They slide easier on the cafe rod. So, for the rest of our bedroom curtains, I'll be adding grommits to the top.

On Tuesday last week, we had our home teachers* over to help my husband rearrange furniture. Between the 3 of them, they moved 14 pieces of furniture in an hour! Boy, were they fast! The biggest change was combining all 3 of our boys into the biggest bedroom upstairs. Here's what their bedroom looks like so far.

This is the view from the door, looking left. The closet is around the left side, but full of food storage so they don't use it.

This is looking straight in their room on the right side.

So far, it's a little crowded, but we've got some ideas to help with that. I haven't really started decorating yet. I've got plans for some fun dinosaur vinyl stickers on the wall, among other things.

Where things came from: The bunkbeds came from the older boys' bedroom down the hall. The toddler bed came out of the nursery. The tall dresser in the corner has been sitting in the garage since I finished it over a month ago and the double dresser came from the master bedroom. We put the white buffet (I'm almost done with it!) in our bedroom.

*Home teachers are congregational ministers assigned to meet the needs of church members in their own homes.

Kitchen Lighting

There's a corner in my kitchen that gets no light whatsoever. It happens to be the corner that makes the most sense to put my kitchenaid. So, for Christmas last year, my husband got me an under the cabinet light fixture. We decided that we'd really like 2 of them, so I finally picked up the second one on Monday and he finished installing the lights last night. It makes a HUGE difference!

I took these pictures without a flash so you could get the full effect of a before and after.

Before After

(We will be hiding that cord soon. I was just too excited to get that done before pictures.)

My boys and I are totally making cookies today just to celebrate that we can actually see what we're doing!

Goodwill finds

Yesterday while running errands I decided to stop in really quick at Goodwill. It'd been a while since I'd gone thrifting but it was on the way to my next errand. I got a parking spot right by the door, which reminded me of what one of my good friend's MIL once told me ("if you get a great parking spot, that means there's a killer deal inside that you are now responsible to find"). I was hoping to find a nightstand or 2 for our master bedroom. Instead I found a couple of new globes for our sconces for $2 each (they're $8 each at HD). I thought that was a pretty good deal. But, then I remembered that I'm looking for a small plate for a project I want to do (didn't find one) and went to the plate section. I did a double take when I saw this:

It's china, 8 place settings of MY china. My jaw may have dropped. It's expired, they don't make it anymore and I've been wanting a few more place settings to use with formal dinners. I asked an employee the price and for $50, it was mine! (One place setting on Replacements.com is $27.99 plus shipping!) It's missing 1 bread plate and 4 tea cups, but otherwise it's a complete 8 place settings. Score!

Some history on my china: My mom started buying this pattern when I was a teenager to compliment her expired china pattern when her sister gave my mom her china (my mom and aunt had the same pattern). Suddenly, she didn't need this half-bought set anymore, so I asked if I could have it and she bought a full 8 place settings and all the serving platters/bowls and things for me.

A year or so ago, I started figuring out how to get more of my pattern so I could get 12 place settings total and I learned some things about my pattern. Originally, it was made in the 70s by a German company called Johann Haviland. The pattern was so popular that in the 90s they had it mass-produced in Thailand and it was sold in grocery stores around the country. My pattern is the knock-off - not worth as much as the original, but still as pretty.

Well, I got my new china home and started cleaning it when I realized that I didn't actually buy my china pattern - I bought the original, German made china! Here's a picture of 2 dessert bowls. The one on the left is my old china (the knock-off) and the right is the new stuff I got yesterday. It's faded from use and washing, but otherwise you can't tell a difference just looking at them. (There's a different stamp on the bottom of each piece and there is a slight difference in weight between the two.)

After washing my new china, I put it all in my china cabinet and prettied things up a bit. Oh, I also now have 2 creamers and 2 sugar bowls.


We'll be eating dinner on my "new" china soon, just because! (And yes, I let my 5, 4 and 2 year olds eat off my china, they're just not allowed to pick up the plates. :)

Another Dresser

When I decided to use the buffet in our bedroom as a dresser, I knew I'd need another dresser. So, I started looking for one on Craigslist. I had certain criteria: I needed a dresser no bigger than 3 ft tall, 3 ft wide and 18 inches deep, with more than 2 drawers. I wanted a solid wood dresser and I didn't want to pay more than $50 for it. It took about 2 months to find what I wanted, but I did! Isn't it cute?

We picked up this dresser a few weeks ago. It was $45, the exact dimensions mentioned above and a heavy solid pine dresser! The only problem? It's missing the hardware on the bottom drawer. I found a couple of knobs (that originally came on the orange nightstand) to make the drawer usable for now. This dresser is going in my closet, so I don't care about matching hardware right now. I may change my mind about that later on, but for now I need to focus on my nursery projects.

My Productive Weekend

Thursday, my good friend, Emily came over to help me clean up my house a little in preparation for our busy weekend together.

Friday afternoon, she came back. This time armed with a LOT of fabric to make curtains for her living/dining areas in her home. I have the bigger house, the know-how and the sewing machine, so she came to me. Since we were sewing, I finally got out my boys' bedroom curtain fabric and crib bumper/skirt fabric to work on. Friday, we got everything cut out while my husband watched all 6 of our kids (all age 5 and under!) by himself. He's such a sweetheart! Oh, and I also had Emily and my husband move the buffet/dresser into the dining area on a drop cloth so I could actually paint where it's warm.

This morning, Emily came back again to finish things up. She was able to completely finish 2 of her 4 curtain panels and get the rest pretty much prepped for sewing. (We're hoping to get together again next week to really finish up). I finished up 1 curtain panel and got 3 coats of paint on the buffet and the cabinet doors.

Here's how things look (with my stuff, since Emily took hers home with her tonight). I'll get a better picture of the curtains when I've finished the second panel and gotten them hung. I did 6 inches of stripes at the top and 12 inches at the bottom with the dinosaur fabric in between. I love how it turned out and all of my boys really like it.

Here's my buffet in it's current form. I still need to do one more coat on the front corners and across the front bottom. I was also able to get the cabinet doors mostly painted. The grooves on the doors need another coat or 2 to make things nice and white. I finished up the last 2 drawers earlier this week.

On top of the buffet, you can see the green fabric (freshly ironed!) that will be part crib bumper and crib sheets and a dark green trim cup that has all the missing hinges and screws for the cabinet doors on the buffet. I'd put the hinges in that cup for "safe keeping" a year ago and finally found them! I was not looking forward to trying to find new hinges that matched the current screw holes.

Even the hinges had been painted with latex black and white paint, so my husband will be stripping that off this week so I can spray paint the hinges Oil Rubbed Bronze to match the new hardware. Once my last few touch-ups are done on the buffet, we'll get some help to move all the furniture around and get the boys in their new room! I'm so excited, because then I can start on the nursery!

Chocolate Roses

My friend, Cassie is doing these super cute chocolate roses for a craft night soon. I won't be able to go, but they just looked so fun, I had to make them! I got 3 dozen made in about an hour and a half. (One bag of Hershey Kisses=36 roses) They were super easy and fun to make. Son #2 already ate one, so I'm down to 35, now. My boys are going to be giving these to their teachers for Valentine's day.

I discovered after making them that I don't have a wide-mouthed vase, so I'm using a pitcher to store them until we get around to giving them out. You can also see all the crafting supplies I picked up this morning with my boys. I've got to do something since I can't be in the garage painting right now. We've been having record lows in Tucson lately and it's driving me nuts! My dressers were supposed to be finished by now, and instead I'm forced to do other things.

China Cabinet

This isn't much of a before and after, but I'm pleased with how it turned out. We got this china cabinet last summer on Craigslist, along with a matching buffet.
The hutch part of the china cabinet had gold painted diamonds on the glass (you can kinda see that in the picture above). I tried getting it off (I discovered that nail polish remover would get it off, but it was taking forever) when I finally decided to just get new glass for it. I didn't feel like nailing the trim holding the original glass back into the cabinet, so I hot glued the pieces in. Worked like a charm. My 2 year old came over and started hitting the glass while I was finishing up one of the sides. My head was in the hutch and he thought it was a fun game. The glass didn't budge, so I think hot glue was a wonderful, quick solution - and so does my husband. He'd been a little skeptical.

Here it is with the new glass and my china out of their boxes for the first time in 15 years! I haven't gotten around to making it look cute yet. That'll come after I know my boys aren't likely to want to touch/hold anything in the cabinet. I already told my hubby that now that we have the storage space, I'll be on the look out for some nice crystal goblets at the thrift store, too.

Dresser Update

This past weekend, I was hard at work on the buffet/dresser for my bedroom. I got 3 of the 5 drawers done, 2 coats (1 to go!) on the other 2 drawers and I got the first coat on the body of the dresser (I think it'll take 4 since the coat went on thinner for some reason). I still haven't started painting the cabinet doors. I'm not sure why I'm at different points for everything. You'd think I would have put one coat on everything every time (but then I'd be done, and that's just too easy...).

I haven't worked on it at all today. It's cold outside and it's just one of those days. But here it is, ready for coat #2. You can also see the untouched cabinet doors on the right.

Here you can kind of see how gorgeous the top turned out after 3 coats of poly.

And here's the drawers in their finished/semi finished states.

Once I get everything painted, I'm going to be putting a liner in all the drawer bottoms. I picked up some super cute wrapping paper for that this weekend. I'll be doing the same thing that I did in the Lego table drawer.

I also had my hubby move the nursery dresser into the garage so I can start on that. It's been living in our foyer since we moved in over a year ago. Please ignore all the stuff piled on and around it. Our foyer has been quite the dumping ground lately...

Here it is taken apart in my garage. First things first, it needs some work. At least one drawer needs a new bottom. One side of one drawer needs to be fixed. I need to replace a drawer slide and the top has some serious water damage and needs to be sanded down/fixed. After that, I can clean it, paint it and put in drawer liners.

If the weather improves soon (it's been cold and cloudy today, boo!), I'm hoping to at least finish the buffet and get started on the nursery dresser by the end of the week. Next week, I'm sewing! (or at least that's the plan right now...)

Staining the top

I woke up this morning having had the strangest dream. I was invited to go to this crafting-type conference and decided to take my buffet to show off. The only problem - it wasn't finished. I was scrambling around at the conference trying to find the right tools/materials to get it finished in time. So, I decided to spend the day working on that buffet when I woke up. I'm not finished, but I'm getting closer and I'm LOVING it!

Here's the before. The summer of 2009, I discovered Craigslist and scored a nice couch for $50. I was hooked. Soon after, I found this ugly piece and for $60 it was mine. My husband thought I was crazy for getting it and told me so several times. It doesn't look as bad in the picture as it was in real life. Lets just say the paint job was horrible and leave it at that.

Last year, I finally started stripping it down and that's as far as it got. I changed my mind (totally normal and expected according to my husband) about where I wanted to put/use it and so it just sat in the garage collecting dust.

Last weekend, my husband decided he'd help me out and finish stripping the top down so we could re-stain the top. This morning, after getting #1 to school, I busted out the power sander and sanded off the rest. After hand sanding the scalloped edge, it looked pretty good and I started getting excited.

At this point, I'd pretty much used up my energy, so I didn't get back to it until this afternoon. I put on my lovely mask that makes it possible for me to keep doing these fun things while pregnant and added a dark walnut stain to the top.


Here it is soaking it up:
And this is after I got the stain all rubbed in. Doesn't it look great?!?! It has to dry for 4 hours, then I get to start putting the poly on. After that, I'll be painting the rest. It's going in my bedroom and I can't wait to see what it looks like!

Organizing Toys

Our boys got a lot of Trios and Duplos for Christmas this year. I had hoped that the buckets that came with the sets would be enough to contain everything, old and new, but I was overly optimistic. So, Monday, I headed to Walmart and picked up a couple of clear plastic bins for the toys. When we got home, I cut TRIO and DUPLO labels out for each bin and #2 helped me stick them on. He ran off with his new Trio bucket before I could get a picture.

The best thing? These two bins stacked fit perfectly inside our expedit bookcase in the loft! Walmart also carries a bin twice this size. I bought one a few weeks ago to store all my craft night excess supplies and it fits perfectly too. I'm starting to think I should maybe get a few more...

Cherry Pie Filling and Syrup, YUM!

Last week a friend of mine came over to help me can my last 30lb bucket of cherries from my freezer. The first one became bottled cherries back in November. These cherries became pie filling, yum! We got 24 pints and 2 quarts of pie filling out of the cherries. Most canning recipes say to can your pie filling in quarts because it takes 1 quart to fill an 8 or 9 inch pie plate. I don't usually make pies with my pie filling though. I use it to make fruit crisps and one 8x8 pan takes 1 pint, so I can my pie fillings in pints. I did 2 quarts this time around for pies this Thanksgiving.

This time around, we also saved all the cherry juice from the cherries thawing out and made pancake syrup with it. We got 5 batches of syrup, 12 pints and 5 quarts (I ran out of regular mouth lids). My husband makes pancakes for breakfast every Saturday morning (a family tradition his sister told me about and I insisted my husband do it too), so we go through a LOT of syrup at our house. We tried our new, pink syrup this past weekend and it was a hit! Good thing, too, since we've got so much of it.

Here's everything cooling on my toweled counter.

Wonderful Wednesday Craft Night

We are *finally* getting to another craft night! So...

You're invited to Wonderful Wednesday Craft Night!

Who: Anyone local. If we don't know you personally, you'll have to prove you're a real person before we'll give you my address. :)
Where: My house
When: Wednesday, February 16th
from 7pm 'til whenever

*Please bring a snack food to share.*

We will be doing the following crafts:
Growth Chart
Chalkboard Menu Board
"I am a Child of God" Board
Birthday Cards and Card Organizer
and
Flower Pot Pens

Just click on the names to see more information about and prices for each of the projects. Click here to download/print the order form. All orders and money need to be in by Saturday, February 5th so Morgan and I can get everything ready for craft night. If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us and we'll do our best to help you out. We hope to see you there!

*If you would like to request a craft for us to do at a future craft night, contact me or Morgan and we'll see what we can do. We're really excited about this craft night and are already brainstorming crafts/ideas for future ones later this year. With my baby coming in April/May, we're shooting for our next craft night to be in July sometime.

Growth Chart

We will be doing the much anticipated growth charts. They will be 6 feet in length. There are several options for these charts, making the price determined by the options you pick. Because the boards are so long, they will be pre-painted or polyurethaned depending on your choice of wood or MDF. The basic kit will include the inch markings and the numbers 0-6 in vinyl. You can choose the basic kit in high quality pine wood with a polyurethane protective coat or the MDF board basic kit which includes your choice of paint color: white, light blue, light pink, or light green. We also have a "Watch Me Grow!" embellishment for your board, if you want. You can choose your flower color separate from the words.

Pictured here are two samples that we made. The right one is the wood option with the basic kit. It is made to be flush with the floor. The left one has the "Watch Me Grow!" embellishment and is meant to be hung 1 foot off the floor. We will be selling these samples at craft night, if you like one and don't want to make it yourself. The wood yardstick version is $50.00 and the white MDF with pink lettering is $42.50. Please let us know in an email (allthingscreativeaz@gmail.com) if you are interested in purchasing one of these sample. First come, first serve.


The following are the various font options for numbers and any embellishments you would like on your growth chart.