highchair makeover

it's fun that trudy has a jenny lind crib as well as a highchair. craigslist has really been great for me here. i love the jenny lind style and it reminds me of my childhood. i didn't want to keep her highchair brown but wasn't happy with any color for it either. everything just felt too plain and solid. i had been in love with this picture for a long time and it made me want to try some kind of a pattern. then when jenny from lgn did her tutorial for inlay on a dresser, i was ready to just go for it and paint something. 

i didn't ever take a before shot of the whole highchair but here are some older pics of it and you get the idea.

when i first started, i was VERY discouraged. it's not the type of project for anyone that is a perfectionist, that's for sure. i don't think i'm a perfectionist at all but i found it pretty difficult to let little mistakes not bother me. i remembered jenny saying that once she really just let go and relaxed, the painting just started becoming a lot easier and i found that to be the same for me. it's taken me awhile to get used to little smudges here or there but it grows on me still and i think i love that it's one of a kind and more homemade looking.

now if only i could keep this little stinker from always trying to get out!

she was a hoarder just like on the show

i saw an ad on craigslist a few weeks ago for a warehouse sale full of goodies. when trudy and i arrived i was completely overwhelmed. everything there belonged to one woman; a woman who liked to shop. she was/is a hoarder and was evicted from her home. her neighbors decided to help out and have apparently been selling her things for weeks. when i talked to the woman in charge she told me that there used to be 5 times as much as what i was seeing. i would say 80% of everything was untouched. meaning still in the wrapper. it was just insane. so i bought this little stand brand new. i unscrewed the legs, painted them green and now it looks way better. yay.

details add personality

i bought this lamp for trudy's room before i got pregnant, i purchased it at "Family Dollar" for like $3 or something. i recently added some fun trim and i like the femininity it gives to the little setup. i love looking at all the ribbons and trims at the fabric store, don't you? i just need more projects to use up the little collection i have.... any ideas?

first upholstery job

upholstery jobs just seem intimidating. i mean right? BUT, i've always wanted to try one because let's be honest.... they are always the best transformations. it's very satisfying to see a before and after that look completely different. so i figured that if i started small... there'd be less of a chance that i'd mess it up. 

p.s. i've tried to take good pictures of our living room and dining room at different times of the day and because i don't know anything about photography or editing... i just can't seem to get the lighting quite right. the light that comes through the windows washes everything out. but oh well, i'm no professional and you get the idea. i hope my attempt to upholster something small will inspire someone! this one was super easy. in fact, it was easy enough to make me want to try it out on the seat of a dining room chair... hopefully a post on that is coming soon. but knowing me, you can't count on anything (meh... must. get. better). linked up here.

behold... the ugly little bench stand thingy,

here it is in it's old, yucky scuffed up state.

before:

so we painted it white and stapled it right up.

(fabric is a thrifted pillowcase)

after:

the lamp of my dreams

so one night when trudy and i were roaming a local goodwill, i spotted this lamp on a shelf. if i was in a cartoon my eyes would have done that googly eyes thing. ya know? the base is a malachite green which happens to be one of my favorite minerals. to make it even better, brass campaign corners add the perfect touch. the white lampshade was not cutting it and wal-mart and target weren't giving me better options. so... i found a local lamp and shade shop. i learned SO much about lamps and shades from the owner. it was a lot of fun. she taught me about scale and proportion. we played around with shade shapes that repeated the base shape but i ended up with a shape that was opposite the base shape (i feel like i'm writing "shape" a lot). it happened to have an extremely reflective gold inside which was awesome because i was planning to line it with gold anyway. i attached some ribbon with fabric glue and voila! i'm very happy with it. i turn it on every night and i love the light that the gold inside puts off. it gives kind of romantic ambiance and it's very relaxing. oh and a few days later i received a card from the shop thanking me for coming in. now THAT's good customer service! these photos are from my iphone (the only camera i'm using these days!) on my instagram. linked up here.

but i don't wanna put it all away

i'm having a hard time wanting to put away all the christmas stuff. that may or may not be because i am being lazy. grant has been sick this week, lots of throwing up and yuckyness. then trudy got sick. she has actually had a cold for a week or so but the last two days have just been so miserable for her. last night she had a fever and i could barely handle it. i have never felt so helpless. i am very excited for it to go away.

i've kept my thoughts and feelings to a very minimum on this blog. i have many reasons behind that but i think it's mostly because of things that were said about me on another blog. reading what was said unfortunately added to my deep deep insecurity of feeling like all people hate me. i'm feeling uncomfortable being this revealing about my thoughts but something is making my fingers keep going. i don't say that to search for comments like "what? nobody hates you", it just really is something that i can convince myself of about pretty much everyone. and since i consider myself to be pretty introspective, i feel frustrated that i don't know why or where that insecurity came from. when i think about some difficult things that i have been through the last few years and then this "everybody hates me... i'm just gonna go eat worms" complex i have, it puts me in a sad place. i don't feel too ashamed about admitting that because i feel like it's very human and mostly people do the same thing with their own insecurities. i have found myself thinking way too much about what people will think of this or that. i don't have a big warm and fuzzy solution to all this. in fact i don't even know why i'm typing it. prayer helps though. prayer helps with everything.

i can't leave the house because of trudy and so i've been watching 3 shows every day. the nate show (which i usually try and watch every day anyway), anderson cooper and dr. oz. here are some random things that have bugged me this week... yesterday on anderson cooper he had on the man behind "thedirty.com". i had never heard of this website before but it's basically a place where you can go post crap about anyone. it's so stupid. nik, the creator, spent the whole episode trying to explain to anderson (and the entire audience) how he is god's gift because when people are exploited like they are on his site... they end up becoming better people. i really couldn't believe what i was watching. you'd think the concept of the site is ridiculous enough but to make it even more lame... if someone writes crap about you and you want it removed, you then have to pay a monthly fee of 12.99 AND that doesn't even guarantee removal of your posts! all it does is put you at the top of his priority list so he can review what has been said and then decide himself if you are really what other people say you are. what a freaking tool. you can watch clips from the episode here.

i love watching dr.oz. i always have. i find his passion for health and explaining things to be very refreshing. i always love when people are passionate about something. however it's annoying to me the way he goes about drawing people in to watch his show. whether it's him or the way they advertise for it, it's stupid. it seems like the main goal is instilling fear in america. i can hear the announcer guy in my head right now "don't miss the HUGE bad habit YOU are DOING RIGHT NOW that may kill you tomorrow!" i mean really? like i said, i think dr. oz is great and i don't need titles like "how you are giving yourself cancer"to make me want to watch it. there are things that we need to know but putting fear in me just makes me feel stressed out and uncomfortable. like i'm not buying all the vitamins we need and the coke i am currently addicted to is going to kill me. so anywayyyyyyyyyyyyy onto happier things.

we made this little banner from this tutorial. i wish i would have done mine bigger
like hers but then sometimes i like the size of ours.

i found rifle paper's holiday card collection at anthropologie on sale and snatched it right up. who doesn't love rifle paper co? i'm really looking forward to framing them and putting them up next year. i found the tin at a thrift shop and loved it. it reminds me of the cards.

i got this a few years ago at a flea market. it's our advent calendar.
it's really fun to turn to the next day. i hope our kids love it!

and here is a little anthro inspired diy snow globe project.
 i'm sure you can find a tutorial just about anywhere online. kinda fun.

and finally trudy's first ornament. it's rudolph from the classic rudolph 

that plays on tv every year. it reminds me of my childhood. and it's way cuter in real life.

bye bye christmas!

linked up here.

4 diy projects and 3 thrifty finds

so i told myself i wasn't going to buy any new christmas decor this year. it can be hard right? i mean with all the new cute stuff they come out with every year... i've been very good, we are still using the ornaments and decor that we bought our first christmas four years ago. not that it's a huge accomplishment or anything... anyway i've added a few things here and there, i thought i'd post up some of our recent diy's and thrifty finds.

we recently made this reindeer head mount. i saw the idea somewhere around the web and i feel bad i didn't save the link because it is a sweet idea and deserves some credit. so to start out, we bought this paper mache reindeer at michael's. it was 50% off so that was cool. we were dumb and didn't take a picture of the whole thing but you get the idea. first step was to chop off the head.

we knew that we were going to be attaching the head to a plaque and 

so we hot glued some picture hanging wire inside the head in three different spots.

then i painted the plaque gold to match the reindeer. since just gluing the head to the wood would be too hard, we drilled a three holes in the center to pull the three wires through and tie in the back. that was obviously grant's idea and it was genius. 

here he is!

i really like the woodland feel he gives to my collection of trees
and the "merry christmas" art that i painted below.

here is our christmas shelf! i think i'd like to add a tree to my collection every year. this year i added a diy tree and it's the one all the way to the right. just a simple styrofoam cone that i wrapped with some cool ribbon-y stuff (a martha stewart product). 

speaking of martha stewart, i tried her diy glitter deer project. 
it was so fun, except that now there is glitter everywhere!

my last project was this christmas ikat painting, i really love the ikat pattern.

moving on to some thrifty finds...last summer i found these three gold balls at goodwill for $2. they help break up all my silver stuff (along with the deer mount) to create a mixed silver and gold christmas. i like to keep them out year round.

$3 at goodwill = my favorite little elves! aren't they just ADOOORRAABBLLEE???

and a good old flea market find.

linked up here.

wall collages take forever

we spent thanksgiving in vegas. the day we got back, albuquerque turned winter on. the winds are so frigid here. and i think cold wind is the worst. i finally organized my google reader so i'm excited to get back on that. trudy girl is cute as can be and deserves five thousand blog posts. today she is six months old. i'd be bragging about her but there are too many cute pictures of her and not enough time to choose which ones to post. besides.... we are still decorating for christmas!!!

p.s. here's my attempt at some paint swatch wall art. fun!

my free window treatment

wanna know what i hate buying? curtain rods. especially when you have to get one for every window in your house. they just seem like such a complete waste of money to me. curtains are fun to buy but usually way overpriced (in my opinion). for the kitchen window i planned to use some mustard colored burlap i had. i asked grant to find me a big stick. a cool one. he was more than happy to and found the perfect stick (of course). so we drilled some holes, put some hooks in and hung it up. then i tied strips of the burlap to it. so there ya go. a free window treatment! linked up here.

linked up here.

the magic of paint

this is really nothing you haven't seen. i just wanted to jump on the bandwagon of the white ceramic trend. seems like every store is carrying something like this. i've said this before, as long as it's easy and cheap it's my kind of project! anyone can do this. here is my before an after... take that zgallerie.

click here to see where i've linked up.