jump up and down

small town summer day

A free pancake breakfast,

A row of classic cars for your viewing pleasure,

A parade consisting of everyone driving their cool car or truck down main street and throwing candy,

and a 5K in which I place dead last because their are only about 20 participants and let's face it, I'm a slow runner (and sorry, no pictures of my somewhat humiliating defeat), can only mean one thing...it was our small town's annual summer celebration.  We had a great time...I think I'll like this place.

before and after: the entry

 The curtains are finished and the maps are up - yes, I used vintage road maps to cover up what one commenter aptly referred to as "puke on walls."  If the house were mine, I probably would've done something more permanent, but I think this really works for a rental. 

The idea came after I saw a vintage map tablecloth on a wall.  It made me think of the cupboard full of road maps that my grandparents had in a cupboard in the house I grew up in.  My grandparents have driven their car to a lot of places.  My grandpa worked for IBM and was sent to school in New York once.  The whole family drove the car across the nation and spent a few months there. My mother always talks about how much that experience opened the eyes of a born and raised in Utah girl. Unfortunately, I encouraged my Grandma to get rid of most of those maps a couple of years ago when I was helping her purge, so I bought a couple of lots of maps from eBay.

There are a few other walls in the house that have been or will be covered with these maps.  We all enjoy looking at them, especially Ryan.  And Peter brought one of the leftover maps to the table today and said, "Where do you want to go, Mommy?" so we're all getting from these maps what I hoped they would accomplish - a sense of adventure and a feeling of wanting to hit the road.  At some point in my life, I want to take a cross-country road trip, so I'm fueling the desire in those who will hopefully join me on that journey.

I think the entry is going to look even better after I re-do the two pieces of furniture I picked up a couple of weeks ago at the thrift store.  Along with this chair, I've got three other wood chairs with upholstered seats now that will all be painted white and have various homes throughout the house, but I haven't decided how to do the re-upholstering.  And I'm thinking about a nice golden yellow for the side table - it is actually painted in some sort of faux wood finish right now and I'm trying to decide if I need to strip it or not. 

happy father's day

to the best dad I know.  Maybe I'm a little biased, but if my boys' devotion is any indication, Ryan really is the World's Greatest Dad!

Ned would be in here too, but he was too squirmy and all the shots with him were blurry.  And yes, there is a little sneak preview of what I did with the splattered yuck walls in the background there.  Maybe I will get the curtains sewn up soon so I can show you the whole thing!

before and after: the play area

I finally have one area of the house ready to show - our little play area.  The living room is short and wide and naturally separated into two spaces by the front door (which you can't see from the road because of all of the pine trees so everyone comes in the back door anyway, but that's another chapter in the book of this quirky house), so we decided to make half of it into a play area for the kids. 

This is the best before picture I have of the area, taken when we looked at the place the second time.

And the afters....

The Entire Area - the rug was a clearance deal from Target.  I almost paid as much to ship it as I paid for the rug, but still a great deal and covering up as much of the nasty carpet as possible is a must! 

The bookshelves - both were pieces we had before.  The white one is actually one from Ryan's childhood and I painted it white.  It was a dark blue, about the same color as the corner chair in the overview pic above.  I considered keeping it the same color, but after we put up our white bookcase in the living room, we liked the white so much that we decided everything that could possibly be turned white should be painted.

My one splurge for the room was a set of Trofast toy storage units from Ikea.  I knew that if I were going to have most of the toys that close to the living room and dining area that I would need them to be easy to put away and then not seen when they are put away.  My favorite drawer is full of a set of vintage wood blocks I found a couple of months ago.

My wonderful Mom came two weeks before we moved and helped make the curtains.  I was lucky enough to have that ribbon in my stash - a roll I bough when our local Hancock's went out of business.  The top is just white muslin and the bottom is Alexander Henry's Traffic Jam.  The chair is another great thrift find, bought for a whopping $2.25.  I had planned to put it in the bathroom to sit on when bathing the boys, but it didn't fit, so I thought it added a little something here.  I will probably make a cushion for it, but there are so many sewing projects right now that it's on the backburner.

The top shelf of the bookcase is a mini-office space - a vintage aluminum pan I picked up a while back and filled with envelopes, staples, tape, and all those things that the boys love to play with but we can never find if we let them.  The two bread pans are for mail and bills. 

And a bit of decor...the top print is from Candace at Sparkle Power and the bottom is from John W. Golden and both were hanging in other areas of our previous place.  The globe is thrifted - does it count as vintage becuase it still has the USSR on it?  We bought it as a family a week or two before we moved.  You'll see as I show you more of the house that there is a bit of a geography/map theme.

I'm quite pleased with it.  I'll probably add a few more things - maybe some pennant banners over the windows and possibly more artwork, but overall I'm liking the looks and it seems to be functioning well for the boys and for me.

 

getting there: a little sewing

Getting things together in our new place seems to be going very slowly, but maybe that is just because I want everything finished now so I can sit back and relax.  There's still seems to be a lot to do, but I think most of the cleaning is finished (or as good as it's going to get, a lot of things are just damaged and I'm thinking about ways to cover them) and I am focusing more on my improvement projects, so that is good.  The boys are starting to calm down and accept this as home.  Peter is pretty much there, but Ned still struggles sometimes.  On Sunday, Ryan had to chase him down the street right after he yelled, "I want to go home!"  Today he said the same thing to me when we were outside, but when I explained that this was our new home, he decided it would be OK to just go inside. 

 

I did get my sewing machine out, finally - mostly because I was forced to after I opened my shop last Friday, thinking that it would take a while to get things going again and then sold a banner on the first day it opened.  It was good though, I'd been meaning  for several days to get my room to the point where I could sew.  Last night I braved the creepy basement and stayed up to put these pillows together.  The Etsuko Furuya scooter fabric was an impulse buy that I had to have when I was buying fabric for the curtains in the play area.  I knew the colors and funky feel were just what I was going for and had to make a pillow out of it.  The other pillow is that piece of thrifted embroidery that I blogged about  in February (before we knew we were moving) and that I'm so glad I hadn't done anything with yet.  I think you can see just from these two pillows alone that I'm going for an incredibly eclectic look and so far I'm really liking it.  I don't expect to have the living room "finished" for a week or two (or three), but I'm happy that minus a few pieces of furniture that I bought (all thrifted, so not a big loss) that just won't fit, this room is turning out almost exactly like I thought it would.  

Next on my list though is to tackle this...the sponge painted entryway that many of you have requested to see.  Our lease specifically forbids painting (probably only because I brought it up when we looked at the place) and our landlords live across the street and do all of our maintenance and repairs, but I've got another idea to cover up this hideousness.