New House - Sneak Peak

We were over at the new house today... and I took a few photos... which I am sharing now, because it may be awhile before we are settled enough to show pics on the blog.

Living room... Love the built ins!!!!

Laundry and sewing room..... yes the fabric will fill every shelf!

Dining room built ins.

The house has lots of natural light which I am very happy about and is in an actual neighborhood.... did I mention it is darling and vintage.

The Cause of My Blog Neglect...

If I had to describe in one word why I have been such a bad blogger the last month or so...it would be ...Over Committed.  I guess that is two words... ha ha. Maybe overwhelmed is a better word.   I think about blogging every day, I have so many photos and things to blog about...the photos all need editing which takes a bit of time, so then I put it off another day. Not to mention that my shoppe is neglected again and when I neglect it and don't advertise it sales get slow:(

Kids have all been sick for about a month... the never ending cough.. Chad has had it too and I have had a touch of it a couple of times.. I have taken my Mega doses of Vitamin C and echinacea and kept it to two smallish colds.Echinacea is the BEST... you have to do the nasty liquid though...as much as the kids hate the taste they now ask for it as soon as they start to feel sick.  

Graham is in a co-op preschool.. which means lots of time on my part.  Since he started school in Sept, I have worked in his class twice.... which requires me to find a baby sitter who can watch Scarlette from 11:45-4pm and people to pick up the big girls at school. I have been to two parent meetings which go from 7-9pm.  I have volunteered to face paint at the fall frolic this Sunday.  I am on the fundraiser committee...haven't had to do much for that yet, but I see it coming as the auction gets closer.  His school is amazing and all the work is worth it.

I decided to make a sewing room.....  Our dining table was always covered with sewing stuff so we could never eat at it, which was fine during the summer because we sat outside. Now that we are heading into the winter months that will not be an option.  So.. with the help of my friend Tiffanie... we moved the dining table into the middle of the living room and curtained off the dinning room...et voila... a sewing room was born.  It was a bit more complicated than that... We moved 2 china hutches, a computer hutch, a buffet, a small cabinet, a large TV armoire, a vintage sofa and a few chairs, a small book shelf, a small desk and some other small random pieces of furniture.  Here are some after pictures... didn't take befores.   I kept waiting to take the pictures until it all looked perfect.... well... let's be real... my house is Never perfect.  

The old dining room is behind the curtain.  No pictures of that room yet... to to to messy at the moment.

I went to ikea and purchased one of their wire curtain thingies and found the muslin fabric for 2.99 a yard which was perfect since I needed 12 yards.The buffet with all the Halloween goodies on it was in the dining room on the right wall, and the table and chairs were turned the other way in the middle of the old room. 

Try to ignore the dinner place mats and random silverware on the table and the chair askew.. see not perfect.

The china cabinet to the left of the fireplace was on the back wall of the dining room parallel to where the buffet is now.  In its place was the huge tv armoire, which is now in the buffet's old place in the dining room being used for storage. The china hutch to the right of the fire place was in the family room.

Ignore piles of crap next to buffet. Projects.

All decorated for Halloween:) See the room to the right of the hutch... that is my family room.. it got rearranged too.  

I have a part time job... Working Fri and Sat at Alice's Consignment shop.. there are a ton of vintage items...and Alice tells me to do what I want.... rearrange the shop to my liking.. soo fun.

I pulled my hamstring muscle in dance class 2 weeks ago and it still is killing me. The first two days I could hardly walk.. One word ....OLD... Yikes.

I met a lovely girl at the last flea market I did.. she is a local photographer / interior designer.  I told her  "someday when I grow up that I want to be an interior designer."  She thought that was funny.  Why I said that was because she was talking to another lady about a  project she started called Clean Start... She is making over a home for a local needy family.  As if I needed one more thing to do..... I said oooh I would love to help... and I sew.  She got in touch with me and said I have a great eye and would I like to be involved in the whole project and learn more about interior design.... Ummm YESSSS!  We went to the family's house and took measurements and made plans.  So exciting.  Here is a link to the fundraiser for the project and her blog/site. 

I also am helping with art in Gwen's class on Friday's before I go to work.  It is her last year of elementary school, so I want to do as much as possible.I am co-room mom and going to chair the sees candy fundraiser so the kids can pay for their own out door ed.

Between me and the girls we are at the dance studio tue, wed, and thurs nights. I am also there on Sunday teaching Yoga.  

Gabby has rainbow girls twice a month and Gwen is in the pledge group for Rainbow as she is not old enough  yet.  On Monday she is getting installed into the leader position.  Which I had to make invites for..... making 25 felt lollipop pin ons for the guests to go with her theme which is "Sweet Dreams Under the Big top" 

I am in 3 online quilting bee's and am soooo behind, I owe about 5 people a quilt block.  I just haven't had time to sew much.  Which is always on the back of my mind because I think about sewing daily as well.

It is now 12:30 at night and I need to go to bed....  need to wade through the laundry on my bedroom floor (as there is no room in the crazy small laundry room to put sorter baskets with laundry) to get to my bed.

If I owe you something... I am sorry it is late, I am working on it.  

The end....

Chair Makeover

More chairs for my patio table, see this post for table make over.  I picked up this chair at an estate sale awhile back for 2$.

 Before.....

 After...pretty green.. 

 Got this chair at a garage sale last weekend. My friend Tiffane actually saw it when she was driving by and said I needed it for my outside table. It was 1 dollar!

After...Hot pink...Yummy

 Here is my chair collection all in a row! 

Blue chair- free on side or road.. Red chair 2$ years ago at the Petaluma flea market, Hot Pink 1$ garage sale, Light pink free from Chad's Grandmas basement, Green 2$ estate sale.

Spray Paint for all 20$ish. ha

 Got this Jar at an Estate Sale Last weekend and decided the lid needed a make over with my favorite...spray paint.

After:)

I want to spray paint everything.....

Something I Have ALWAYS Wanted........

A doll house, I have wanted one for ever. I have always wanted to decorate and collect furniture for one.  At the last Napa Flea market my booth neighbor Laura had this one out for sale.  By the end of the day it had not sold and she did not want to lug it back to the East Bay... so she very sweetly gave it to me!  So exciting!

It needs some TLC and some PINK paint maybe:)

I will be removing all the flooring and wall paper and starting over. 

 Thinking.....  vintage wall paper and hard wood type  flooring. Chandeliers... shabby chic!

Gabby wants to help, not sure when we will start, maybe it will be a winter project.

A quick Before and After

Back in March you may remember we made a trip to Oregon to help Chad's grandma move and here are a couple more items we ended up with.  Two gold tone mirrors.

 before.....

After.......

I sprayed them black and we are going to hang them in the girls room above their nightstands.  Should be cute with their black and white comforters. Someday you may actually get to see them in their room:)

A makeover ...Part 2

 We did a bit more to our back yard eating area, see part one here.

This is how chair number two started out.

This chair was one of my very first flea market pieces over 10 years ago... it only cost me 2$

 And this is how it looks now, the color is more red and less orange in person.

 Here is the table covered in oil cloth to protect it from my children.

When I bought the cherry oil cloth I intended for it to cover the whole table..... well I some how did not order the correct amount of fabric.  Thank goodness I had the green checked oil cloth hanging around and I sewed some on each end and kinds like how it turned out. This is our old dinning room table.

You can see how cute chair one and two look at the table. The chair on the back right is from Chad's Grandmas house and it is going GREEN.  The front right chair I just picked up at an estate sale for 3$!! The table is super long so I want to have about eight chairs since there are 6 of us and usually an extra kid or two. I do have about four other chairs in my garage which have fabric seats, so I need to recover them with oil cloth too if I am going to use them around the table.  Not sure yet.

Start of Something Fun....

Just have to say I love the new photo uploader.... so much easier!  woo hoo

We have a pretty great back yard at this house, big patio, pool and wooden play structure for kids, raised bed for garden-which we planted over the weekend. .... that being said it is not very pretty at the moment.

Chad has been working really hard pruning all the trees and bushes removing weeds etc.  We have a super ugly metal storage shed that need to be painted or hidden some how.

So I made a back yard wish list and decided to get started with some of the things I could do myself.

We have a ton of vintage wooden mix and match chairs and I decided to paint them each a different color to put around our table outside.

Was so excited to get painting I almost forgot to take a before picture!  Better take some of the yard too!

We got this chair for free, Chad spotted it on the side of the road!

I got a can of aqua rustoleum and a can of clear varnish type stuff ..

And voila it is soooo perfect!  

Can't wait to paint the next one, Chad is bringing one home from OR from Grandmas house......  Maybe Candy apple RED!!!!  

My Christmas Decorations- A bit Late

I did not fall off the face of the earth... I was however without internet for FIVE days!!!!!!!!!!

UGGG... they finally got the DSL working properly today.

So better late than never... here are this years Christmas decorations.

Gabby helped me arrange this, she had fun doing it.

The very bottom shelf is all the santa photos I have from everyone in my family.

My vintage ceramic tree colection with a couple of other trees thrown in.

Our Christmas tree. Of course I chose a sunny day to take the photo, it looked so pretty at night.

This is one of my very favorite decorations. It is made out of vintage costume jewelry.

LOVE it!

Close up!

Our stockings hung on our mantle.

Chads, Gwens, Mine, Scarlettes, Gabbys and Grahams.

I got the stocking holders after xmas last year for 2$ each. Nice to have 6 matching ones!

Need to work on the stockings, I made the girls when they were little and now I need to make some new matching ones because this is quite the hodge podge. Chads I knitted and mine is a vintage one made out of a quilt, I love it and scarlettes is one I had used in years past and Grahams I got at a garage sale a few years ago and decided it matched better than the red one I made for him. A project for next year.

My vintage printers box.

My cute little pink tree.


a fun close up.

Hope you enjoyed a peek at our decorations. I had a very hard time decorating for Christmas when we are so not unpacked. I just put up the xmas decor and left the rest in the garage. Operation christmas removal starts tomorrow and then I can continue to unpack and decorate.
And decorate and host Graham's 3rd bday party. Yikes it is in less than two weeks.

Help.