Some New Furniture and Halloween

Guys, I feel totally stuck for blogging.

My sense of time is so strange right now. I keep envisioning the way I’m moving through life currently as just my arms flailing around trying to catch it. I don’t feel like I can see time as it comes at me, just as it’s touching me or past me.
It’s a compilation of everything. Life with a baby. Life with three kids. Life learning to homeschool. Life trying to finally finish our house. Life learning to be in charge of some stuff at church. Life trying to make sense of things I don’t understand (food, for one. Deep things for others.)

I go to think of what to blog and it’s like I either hear hum of white noise nothing. Or I hear too many words that need to sit with me for now.

For today, I’ll press through my fog and show you a couple things around the house.

I just was scrolling through some photos that I forgot about, of our house two years ago, and wow -- yeah. It was gross. I can totally see why some people were asking stuff along the lines of “How could you tell it would be good?” I was seeing it with imagination then, somehow I was able to look past the gross. But with this fog I have lately, just looking at the pictures I can’t really figure out how I was able to do that then. 

Anyway -- now we are to an almost done spot and I get to do the furniture aspect -- the good stuff.

I’d been so so so stuck on kitchen chairs. I showed you some I was pondering. But I wasn’t sold and….chairs are so expensive! I was gonna be spending like $250 on 6 chairs in that case. And I was justifying it with the fact that I’ve sold a bunch of stuff we don’t need. But it still felt like a lot of money to me. So I hit craigslist again.
I kept looking and looking and nothing was working for me. It was usually just 4 chairs, and I wanted 6 and I couldn’t envision the right chairs to go with them. Bla bla bla.
Then I remembered I had seen this add forever ago and thought “no those are just too weird.” But after making over my coffee tables, I’ve gotten a bit of an Asian decor bug -- like I understand how it can be totally classic and timeless -- not super crazy and out of place. So I searched to see if it was still around.
YEP! I texted and they still had them!

$3 a chair! Yeah at that price I can afford a major design fail if I don’t like them once they come home. I decided to get 8 -- 6 at the table and two off in the corners for company needs. And that would cost me a grand total of $24. (The price of many a single thrift store chair.) Woohoo! 

(If anyone local is onboard this train -- here’s the add. They have a lot left.)

I was pretty nervous these would look plane insane in our house. But once they got here I was in LOVE. (A makeover with paint and new fabric is of course in order. And most of them need a bit of shoring up with some glue so they are super solid again…. so yeah that’s a major time investment. But I’m excited about it. And for $24? I mean come on...)

The symbol on there is a “double happiness” a symbol used for weddings.

And in China the dragon is a symbol of basically anything good you can think of.

So these are happy chairs.

  

They have cool lines don’t they? And comfortable too, even if that looks questionable.

Now I just have to officially figure out how to make over both the chairs and the table in a way that they can be married with double happiness and get along just right. (I’ve changed my mind like 75 times so far about JUST how to do that.)

I’m nearly 100% sure (unless I’m not) that the chairs are going to be black with greige fabric (I’ll end up putting that on the counter chairs as well.) But it’s the table I keep wavering on just how to breath new life into.

But I like the sight-lines of these new chairs so much!! So sleek and unique.

Oh and there’s my new wreath on the left.

Here it is:

I bought a grapevine wreath and added greenery with floral wire. Not the easiest on my skin --- my hands got a little cut up by the wreath and wire in the process --- but I love it, so worth it.
And I did it while we watched ourselves enter “The Future”

 by watching “Back to The Future” all night on Oct 21st. So lots of fun.

Moving onto the girls room.
Here it is, a hot mess of kleenex and disorder.

That ’s the free table I made over a while ago --but this room is dying for a long dresser here instead.

Ta da!

Started with this:

About 4(ish) coats of semi-gloss oil paint later….

(That sounds like a lot but this went SO much faster than my coffee tables did -- no intricate ins and outs.)

I’m constantly praising the oil paint these days. But on furniture that sees a lot of use, I’m going to default to it from now on.

But isn’t amazing what just plain old white paint can do for a piece?

I’d like to switch the top pulls out, I think -- waiting for a sale.

I asked Blake to add drawer dividers to all the drawers. He basically nail gunned in some scrap wood and it’s wonderful.

So the girls each get three drawers (the ones closest to their beds.)

Top for undies and socks.

Middle for jammies and jewelry & hair accessories.

Bottom for clothes.

I think it’s just the right amount of space -- it should help me stick to kid capsule wardrobes. (And we do still have a closet if we need more room as they grow.) And now the girls can reach all their own stuff to get dressed on their own. 

Now I need to finish decorating. I’m still figuring it out. But I’m thinking of hanging that mirror next to the window and embracing it’s off center-ness. And then kinda making that whole wall a gallery wall.  I’m thinking of using some of the girls art. I haven’t quite settled on it all.
For the window treatments -- since furniture is in front of both windows I’m thinking of doing the thing where you just cover the roll down shade in fabric. And I have a surprise for the girls in mind for the corner where the old dresser used to be.

In other news: Bronson has started to go in the exersaucer a little bit already. I can tell he loves it AND is totally overwhelmed by it. After the first time in here he was kinda cranky for a couple hours without napping. Overstimulated. (To be fair though, his sisters were so pumped to see him in there they were laughing and screaming and playing every single song the machine has to offer at once while dancing around him -- so ya know -- just a little much to take in. ;) )

This is what I had him wear on Halloween. He didn’t go trick or treating, it was raining at our house. But I was happy I thought of something to throw on him for the day. (I’m not good at baby halloweens.) He was stinking cute.

Jasmine was very conflicted about who to be for Halloween. We had much debate for a long time. But she finally chose a water fairy named Silvermist from the Tinkerbell movies.

 

I made this for her. And she was thrilled.

 
I made these wings by looking at this tutorial and then using silver glitter puff paint to draw Tinkerbell-esque designs on there.

 
I actually made the same wings for Ruby because for at least a month she was telling me she was going to be Tinkerbell. But then on Halloween she wanted to wear one of our dress up dresses instead. 

And she told me she was “Rosey” which I figured made since because the dress is covered in roses. But then later she told me Rosey was a cat.

She made no indication she felt she was lacking on the cat-look-front, she seemed very pleased with her look. And I’m sure no one knew who she was. But she loved it. And I think it’s hilariously cute.

The girls were troopers and went in the rain with Blake (also a trooper.) And when they got home we went through their candy and traded them safe candy for the kinds they can’t eat. We traded them some money for some as well (so they aren’t swimming in sugar.) They are so good about all that stuff -- as much as I wish they weren’t allergic to anything, they are developing some great character qualities through it.