Now you see me...

Hi! I got my laptop back. (Don’t ask me why the tops of my posts are always down so far anymore. I can’t seem to fix it. It doesn’t look that way until it’s published? Anyway ---) Hurray for an all better computer. (Thank you Apple for being amazing about it all!) 

But I’ve been super busy trying to get tons of stuff done for Christmas. So that’s been the lack of blogging. Well that and sickness with the kids. But we are better now.

Anyway, I wanted to show you a small thing I did over the last few weeks.

Invisible stuff seems to be a going trend over here lately….You can’t really tell. But this picture is of our very special family china inside my china cabinet.

Really? Yeah, it’s in there.

Ah there it is! Once you open the glass doors you can see it. But it’s still blending in pretty bad.

These dishes were my mom’s moms. They are amber colored cut glass. 

(A little Googling tells me they are a “Sandwich Pattern” by Indiana Glass, sold through Tiara. Apparently Indiana Glass created their version of the Sandwich pattern in 1925, and reissued it in 1970.) 

My mom lost her mom in a car accident, when my mom was twelve years old. (My mom also lost her sister, and broke both of her legs in that accident.) So these dishes are a very special connection back to her. My mom says she remembers her mom was really happy when she bought these. My mom said it seemed like she got them at something similar to a tupperwear party, for dishes, and she was really excited about it. My mom said she doesn’t remember her mom getting that excited about buying things, so she must have really liked these. They would only use these for fancy meals with guests.

In my life we always used these for holidays and birthday meals. I always knew they were my grandmas and very special. I always liked seeing them set out on the table in the afternoon of a special day, awaiting that evening’s meal. 

It’s funny, I remember as a kids being uncertain about the color. If I thought about it as gold, then I was sold. Because then it was kind of like gold diamonds, if that could be such a thing, with the cut designs in it.  But If I thought about it as brown, well…brown is like the opposite of pink or glitter or girlygirl stuff, so that wasn’t good. I didn’t know about “amber” back then. So I never knew what color they were.

But even when I thought they were brown, I always loved them because they are very, very sentimental. 

When my mom offered to let me have them I was so touched and excited. I love remembering our special dinners on these plates. (It usually came with sparkling grape juice in fancy goblets. Which was just the best icing on the cake.) And I’m so excited to get to use these plates for our fancy special meals with our kids.

So when she brought them down to my house a few weeks ago, I was really excited to put them in my china cabinet.

But then they “turned brown” and disappeared in there. It was heart breaking that I couldn’t see the dishes once I closed the doors.

Someday I want to paint this china cabinet. But that’s like way, way on the back burner. And I didn’t want to not see the dishes until I get around to it.

So after some thought I came up with a great solution for the time being. Fabric and fabric starch.

You use it like wallpaper, but it’s easily removed. (You can even wash the fabric once it’s down and use it for anything you can think of.) And you just wash the surface with water till the starch is gone, and it’s like it never happened. (This can be used as wallpaper in a rental house, or anywhere.)

I had lots of left over fabric from when I recovered my ottomen (I have no idea why I thought I needed so much) and I hadn’t come up with anywhere else to use it. 

This was perfect!

And I grabbed the starch at Walmart for like $3 by all the laundry stuff.

I found it easiest to totally saturate the fabric in it, by dipping it into a bowl with the starch. It helped to brush a bit of the starch on the cabinet with a paint brush as well -- especially in the corners at the top for extra grip.

Then I just had to smooth out the bubbles. I didn’t get all the bubbles out on the first row I did -- and they do show once dry. (But I can go back later and get it wet again, and smooth it out.)

Yay-- now the dishes are showing up!

I did this on a couple different days as I had time.

I got better at it, and it got faster.

The first row took me maybe like an hour and a half (but I was measuring and cutting fabric too.)

The last row was maybe like 20 mins (or less -- I never looked at the clock.)

But this touch is so, so great. It’s been making my day, every day since I did it.

Ta da! I’m really in love with it. I think it’s adorable. I think it looks kind of historically accurate. (But I have no idea.) And the best part is I can see our special dishes.

The glass doors still kind of give a glare, and hide things somewhat.

So you can see things better, here’s with the door open.

The maroon and white tea cups are Blake’s Grandmothers.

And the tea pot and white dishes are from our wedding.

 I bought some cute readers digest books at the thrift store to give them some height inside the case.

It’s a fun touch that really makes sense --before they looked really silly in there and hidden by much of the door frame.

Most of the glass wear at the bottom is stuff I’ve thrifted all the the purpose of placing flowers from our yard in the spring.

A fun fact of this china cabinet (handed down to me by my uncle) is there is a light in it! I just figured out a place to plug it it. And I can’t get enough of lighting the display. It makes everything show up so pretty. (The iphone isn’t very good at capturing it right.)

It feels like a museum!

^Before
After

So there you have it.

And in 4 days we will be using these, very special, no longer invisible plates, for our Christmas dinner.

:)

Hanging Decorative Plates For Less

Hi! I'm still laptop-less (phone typing) so forgive any typos or briefness.

After I bought my thrift store plates for $7, I had to figure out how to hang them.  The standard options run about $2.50 to $3.50 per plate and I have twelve plates. Which takes my thrifty shopping into less thirfty territory. 

So a look around the internet lead me to this.

Some permanent adhesive in the form of E6000 and some D-ring hangers. (Those are made to hang picture frames.) they can both be found at hardware stores. I got my D-rings at Lowes. They came in a pack of 4 and cost about $2.50. The glue cost about $3. That's not precise but after tax I paid about $12 to be able to hang my plates. (Not bad when previously I thought I was looking at like $35ish.)

The glue had fumes so I wore my paint mask. (Since I have the thing I wear it all the time. It feels wise.) And left them to dry in our sunroom (it sealed off from the rest of our house.)

I just put glue centered on the plate where the hanger would go and pressed the hanger down. To be extra sure I put a coat over the hanger and on to the rest of the glue. (Look at bottom right plate)

For my saucers, and more bowl like plates, I had the ring come out above the back rim. To give sufficient space.

The glue says dries in 24 hours but can take up to 72 hours for full bond streangth. So because the plates are heavy I waited the three (long) days.

I planned my layout and measured it all to get it very even. (Not fun but better than messy unevenness.)

Next I photo copied one of each type of plates' back to know just where the hook was at.

And nailed the nail there. (I made a tiny hole, then moved the photo copy before nailing, so I wouldn't  have to rip it - to save for find the other matching plates nail spots.) (I just ripped through the brown paper once I was done.)

And ta da!! It worked! I love it!

That's how you can hang plates for less-- but only if you are ok with permanently having a hook on the back. (Might not be an option for heirlooms.)

Ok now let's talk about my "eating area" space a bit.

I want to paint my side table and the mirror frame.

Reader Sadie mentioned the idea of painting the table a shade darker of that green on the plates. And I love that idea.

So here I go, over thinking. I still hope to use oil based paint on the table. (Doesn't matter for the mirror since it doesn't have things placed on it.) And Sherwin Williams had an oil based paint that you can tint (but apparently you can't do yellows because they don't work in oil based.) 

I couldn't find a green I could love inside my options. So right now I'm leaning towards "threshold taupe" a kind of light brown that's marginally grey, and vaguely purple hued. (Peek through the chair back at the swatch.)

And a soft kind of creamy,vaguely pink hued beige called "bungalow beige" on the mirror.

By the way, if this mirror was nice real wood I would probably leave it alone. But it's like a printed veneer that's chipping in some places.

Here  are the paint colors next to a few different parts  of the room. Its phone photos so it's not perfect, but they do color shift in person sort of as much as these photos.

So I'm feeling good about it, but will probably give it some time to make sure.

Here's some pics of how the room's coming together. I only have two chairs fully painted so far.

This is the fabric I bought for the seat covers. (Indoor outdoor again for durability. Bought with a 60% off coupon.)

The plan is to do piping the way the old seat cover was. (Hard to see under that plastic, but it's around the upper edge.)

 I'm liking these chairs a lot more than my old ones. I'm sure opinions will vary on that. But Blake and I really like these. And to my surprise my "all things pretty princess" lover Jasmine really likes them, and even more surprising she's started asking me to paint more chairs black because she likes that better. (So surprised on that one.) 

 I really like the more streamlined look and shorter back height of the new chairs --It makes the room feel bigger. Plus I like having sort of a boundary pushing conversation piece. These chairs are kind of a love it or hate it kind of thing. And as much as in normal conversations I cannot stand controversy, in design I get a kick out of hearing people's strong opions (or general questions) about something quirky in my space. It's kind of a fun get-to-know-you game built into my house.

I think in the end I'm really going to love this space. And even with paint and fabric these chairs are still coming to about $10 a chair. So I like that a lot too!

Our Christmas Decorations

With me talking about Christmas and looking forward to it, I figured I could show you my decorations.

I got a cleaning bug last night, so I figured nows the time for pictures! (my family room's normally a wreck... Feel no pressure to "keep up" with me here.) (although I will be making an effort to keep the room cleaner for baby Bronson, who has the crazy idea he's old enough to crawl! Or at least give it his all! I'm not ready!!)

Anyway  I'm still typing on a phone, so forgive my more briefness.

Here's my entryway. My mom gave me this garland last year. It's so fun having stairs to decorate. I love having this up there. (And still so glad I painted the stairs again!)

My entryway dresser. (The bottom of my tiny prelit tree has given out.)

Blake's parents brought this beautiful nativity back from Isreal for us! It's olive wood. And so lovely.

The stair garland was so long, I had enough to cut off and use for this mantle.

(More current and messy below)

This sweet little nativity, nested in the middle, was sent to me by my sweet grandma. 

Off in my kitchen, I have this Christmas church on the side table. Jasmine pretends to tuck her pretend fairies into bed there every night. I hear 1,000 of them live in the steeple. (So cute.)

I added one silver sparkly ornament to my wreath, across the room.

Over on my wood countertop I added this winter scene to out cake dome. (I saw something similar on Pinterest, but inside something more official. But I figured I have a cake dome, lets use it.)

Off in the family room is our tree.

I gotta be honest, decorating with kids is not my forte. I kinda wanted to run away from home that day....so much noise and confusion. So hard to accomplish anything. Too many hands on one simple task. Too many questions (where does this go?) that I haven't had time to figure out yet. (Technically this is my first Christmas decorating here. Year one was crazy as we JUST bought the 'needs so much work' house. Year two I was rendered un-alive by that pregnancy. So Other than the tree I put nothing up.  I didn't  know where I want anything yet this year .) By the end of the day I was literally shakey from all the overload. 

When we were on the tree I was hating how messy it was turning out.

But in true mom fashion, I've now gotten endeared to how cute it is that the red ornaments can't find their way to the top.

I'm not sure I can bring myself to fix them.

Why is being a mom such a strong polarity of feelings? 

Anyway:

The mantle in here has our stockings.

I set oversized ornaments between my jars.

And our kid Nativity.

 You may see that Cinderella in her carriage (and at other times numerous other lovely ladies and a spars few gentlemen) make like wise men and shepherds and drop by.

And that's out Christmas cheer this year. (I might make a couple more things, but we will see.)

I plan to leave our stuff up until at least the new year.

And after that I still want to leave up some lights or somethings in a less Christmas and more just winter coziness kind of way. I'm not up for zero winter prettiness just because we flip our calendar.