jump up and down

more furniture finds

This couch has really started something.  Since we previously just had room for our current couch and chair in our fairly small living room and most of our other rooms are small or full of furniture already, I've resisted the urge to buy too many pieces of furniture while thrifting.  Now that we will have a little more room and I'm trying to create something fabulous in that house, apparently I am resisting no longer.  I've picked up a lot of pieces recently.  Most of them need some work - painting, a little reupholstering.  I have a mountain of projects here.  I'm so excited to get started on them...next Wednesday afternoon when I am a free women...well, free except that I still have to pack up the entire house. 

This desk was a steal at $20.  I think I'm even going to leave it the same color.  It will need a bit of touching up though - there's a big scratch in the paint on the other side.  I'm having a hard time deciding if I should use this one in my sewing room or use it for the computer.  I might have to keep it for my own.

These two chairs were both under $8 a piece.  They are definitely getting painted...red, maybe?  And they'll get new upholstery too.  Currently I'm thinking about some version of Beki's Anthropologie knock off (aren't they fabulous?) pillows.  I'm excited to have an excuse to buy my first staple gun!

 And this thing - I'm not even exactly sure what it is (does anyone else know?), but it was $5 and it looked like it could be useful and pretty.  They'll be some paint on this too.  I'm actually planning a whole lot of painting - all of this stuff and some of our current furniture that is dark wood.  I will probably just hide out in the garage for a week and paint after we move in - let the kids ride their bikes and run in the sprinklers and paint.  It's going to be a good summer.

 And the super cool $5 side table.  I've been holding off on getting another one of these (they are all over the place here) for two reasons - I'm not sure if another is going to fit and I think I'm going to spend all of my time telling my children that it is not a set of stairs!  And yes, it will be getting some paint too.

There's a whole lot of planning going on here and not a whole lot of finished projects...hopefully that will all change very, very soon.  But for now, I better get back to the wonderful world of Anatomy...

inspiration board: vintage couch

I successfully cleaned the couch and it's sitting in the garage now, waiting for its new home.  I just open the garage door and it's my favorite place to sit while I watch the boys ride bikes in front of our row of garages.  We are the only ones in our building who actually park in the garage (or we did until the couch took residence there), so it's a fairly good spot for the boys to turn circles. 

I decided to drape some of the fabrics  over the couch that I'm thinking about using for other projects - my new inspiration board, I guess.  I'm super excited about keeping my favorite pillow from that last set that I made.  I think I'll move the other two to my bed, but the big red vintage print has to stay out in the living room and I think I'll make it work.

I've got so many plans here...just need to get school (only a week left) and the move over so I can get to them!!  My mom is coming next weekend for Ned's birthday and to help do some sewing. The Kaufman pears print is going to be the bottom panel of the curtains, with the white on top.  I thrifted the white fabric (which is actually a subtle white on white stripe) for less than $1 a yard.

Actually, the great thing is that most of these fabrics are thrifted - things that I already had, or things that I've found since we decided to move - really, everything is from the thrift store except for the Amy Butler there and the Kaufman pears.  The light teal is a wool fabric that I will use for some pillows or maybe some sort of rug.  The houndstooth in the back right there is also a wool that I picked up over a year ago and just happens to be the exact same colors as the couch.

I'm thinking about adding a splash of yellow to the mix too, what do you think?

favorite sandwich

one of my favorite sandwiches lately...

toast whole wheat pita bread, spread hummus on each side, sprinkle on feta cheese on each side, cut open kalamata olives and place on one side.  Put the two sides together and enjoy! 

friday road trip

On Friday, after I had taken my last exam before finals, I picked up the boys from the babysitter and we headed off for a multi-tasking adventure.  Twenty miles down the road, at our first stop, we dropped off an item I had sold on Craigslist - the purging has begun in full force around here.  Hooray for Craigslist to help me make some money from all of that purging!  At our next stop, about thirty miles later, we stuffed our trunk full of free moving boxes that I found on Freecycle.  And another 30 or 40 miles later we stopped to visit a friend who was a missionary in Argentina with me that I hadn't seen since we flew home together.  I reconnected with her on Facebook a couple of months ago and found out that she is remodeling this great old home (which I forgot to take pictures of because we were having such a great time chatting - next time, next time) in a town not too far away from me.  The boys loved the house and her kids and we had such a fun time - thanks Heather!  We can't wait to come visit again.

And here's what you will see on a road trip in Idaho:

Potato Fields...

Potato Trucks...

and the one picture I did get at Heather's house - the most awesome vintage couch (Heather is a thrifter) that I just could not stop staring at.  I'm thinking my staring at the couch may be a large part of the reason why I didn't take pictures of anything else at the house...

more finds

Thifting is in full force here...yard sale season has commenced and it seems the thrift stores are brimming with spring cleaning castoffs.  Combine that with the fact that I can justify every purchase by telling myself how great it will look in our new place and I am raking in the finds.  I've got furniture, decor, fabrics - all sorts of things that I haven't shared yet.  Today I'm showing some of the smaller items.

A set of Pyrex - not my favorite of my very small collection, but I haven't seen Pyrex bowls in a long time, so I had to have them.  I love them for their functionality as well as their vintage charm.

And underneath those bowls, a tablecloth (that actually fits my table) that I am going to love looking at when the weather turns crisp and the leaves turn colors.

A great plate that I may use as a wall hanging since it's in the same color scheme as the couch and a new vase.  I love blue glass - the light blue stuff, not the dark blue.

And I had to fill that vase with daffodils to celebrate that spring is finally here!  It's been sunny and warm here for the past couple of days and the rain is supposed to be back tomorrow, but hopefully the snow is gone.

pretending

Does anyone else have children who love pretending to go to bed in the middle of the day as much as mine do?  At least once daily (often more) they are summoning each other to get under the blanket and go to sleep.  Unfortunately, this does not mean that they love going to bed at night.

wip and some tips: braided circle rag rug

Thank you so much for your encouragement with my rug last week.  It was one of those projects that when I thought to do it, I knew I had to - I keep imagining myself lying on this rug with a pillow and a book, soaking in the sun from that big window.  So, all the trouble I was having with it was really getting me down.  Taking a little trip away last weekend was the perfect thing - a little rest from it and I came back with a renewed determination to conquer it and make it into a circle, just as I had pictured.  I knew that I had just been winding those outer rows too tight - so how to get them a little looser without creating puckers and ruffles? 

I did start with this tutorial from Moda, but there wasn't much instruction here on how to make sure your rug would lay flat.  I found a couple of tips online at various sites, but most of them were for hand sewing.  At first, I had hand sewn the rug, laying flat on the floor, and had more problems than when I tried machine sewing.  I was also much happier with the stability and strength of the rug with the machine stitching.  So, I set my machine on the widest zig zag and lengthened the stitch a bit and off I went.  

What I ended up doing was force feeding the free braid a bit with my right hand while my left hand held the already wound rug.  I would just make sure there was a little more free braid going through the feed dogs than the wound braid it was attaching too.  At first it wasn't too hard to tell if the rug was laying flat - if was flat on my sewing table (my machine sits flush with the level of my table that is a hand-me-down from my aunt that was then rigged by my grandpa to fit my machine) then I knew the rug was laying flat.  When it got a little bigger is when I ran into trouble the first time. 

So, after I'd ripped it apart again (for the third time), I just used my force feeding technique and checked every few rows to make sure that it was still OK.  And voila - a flat circle!  I am so pleased.  The rug is about 47" in diameter right now - it's getting a bit cumbersome to work with, but I want to make it at least 60", so I'll keep going.  

I should probably mention that my machine does have a built in walking foot that I almost always have on.  If you have one, I think it would probably be beneficial to use it.  If you don't have one, it would probably be a little more work to feed the layers through, but I'm hoping that it would still work - let me know if you try it.

busy

The to do list just gets longer and longer here these days.  I'm just trying to keep my eye on the prize - a lazy summer.  But between the end of school tests and assignments, thinking about moving, stressing about getting everything packed, and everything else that is part of our everyday life, I have to admit that I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed.  Part of it might be that I am absolutely obsessed with this rug.  I think I have figured out a decent technique to get it to lay fairly flat (more on that later).  Another part of it is that I haven't hardly packed anything - moving day is still more than a month away, but the last two times we have moved, I started packing two months ahead of time - just a few boxes everyday, but it really helps ease the stress of looking at all of your stuff and thinking about getting it to another place.  And another part is the literally dozens, possibly hundreds, of decorating and improvement ideas floating around in my head and not really having the time to get to them right now.   It's all going to be OK, right? 

And it might seem that I've been obsessively acquiring thrifted sheets (this is not even close to being all of the ones I've purchased in the last few weeks) - I can't seem to say no to them now that we are moving to a town without a thrift store.  We'll still be going into town at least weekly for Peter's speech therapy, but we'll have other errands to run then and I can't guarantee that I'll want to take the boys with me to the thrift store.  I also scored a few more embroidered pillowcases to add to the collection.  One of those ideas floating around in my head is a banner from them to hang in my sewing room.  I think this time I will actually get to it since I have a place to put it. 

Anyway...we are off to get Peter registered for Kindergarten today...something else that is totally stressing me out because I'm not sure how my little babe got old enough to go to kindergarten!

celebrating

We took a trip to see our family this weekend and do a little birthday celebrating for our boys.  Ned's birthday is in a couple of weeks and since we probably won't make it down again until after our move, we took advantage of the holiday weekend and packed in a lot of fun!

We ate ice cream.


We played in the fountain.

We had a party and were happy that everyone was willing to be outside with us in the slightly chilly weather and all those who helped out.  We were also grateful that the rain held off until after our party. 


At the party, we flew kites.


We blew bubbles.


And ate cupcakes.

I was so happy to see Missy (more pictures here) and Cayenne and have their cute kids join us.  We got to see our new niece and visit with family.  We all had so much fun (except for Ned who was a little tired and grumpy)!  Thanks for coming to join in the fun everyone and a special thanks to my Mom who really did most of the work! 

wip and a call for help: rag rug

I thought it would be a great idea to make my own area rugs out of my abundant supply of thrifted sheets and fabric for our new house.  I'm not so sure now...this is how my braided rag rug looks after three attempts of coiling it.  The first attempt was done by hand and was even wonkier than this and then I decided to switch to machine because it would hold better and go a lot faster.  Now I am tempted to rip it apart again and start over with a different shape - maybe an oval would be easier?  I know what I am doing wrong - making the outer rows too tight and then it makes the middle bubble up and not lay flat...I'm just not sure how to fix it.  Has anyone made a circle rag rug before?  A very large one (I was hoping to have this one fill half of the living room area)?  Any tips for getting myself to wind it evenly?  I just can't seem to get it!