chair recovered

Real quick I wanted to post this picture of the chair I recovered. It's been done in the same fabric that I "wallpapered" a wall of the nursery in. Any day now the baby could fingerpaint on it with kool-aid or markers and it just won't look the same.
                 But that's one of the best things about recovering your own furniture.  This didn't take long and the fabric was wildly cheap, and chair from Room and Board was free, so when that technicolor stain happens, C'est la vie.

And did I say that this was not difficult to recover.  Minimal sewing skill needed-- drape fabric inside out and pin in place. Sew. Recheck to make sure it fits and pin together some more pieces.  finish it off by stapling undersides.  I do a very basic tutorial on chair recovering here.

Turning 9

Birthday Party time at our house. K is wearing the traditional garb of a 21st century Shepard celebrating the festivities that accompany aging.

 She had a cookie-themed party with a few of her closest pals, yep, that crazy brother was included.

the above picture is just to show K's favorite part of the party-- the paper cookie attached to the straws.  I could have saved myslef a lot of work and just had those and she would've been utterly pleased.

One of the take home favors was this little basket (made from a paper plate-- tutorial here) which held an ENORMOUS oreo stuffed chocolate chip cookie.

happy birthday!

cookie party

K decided to have a cookie themed birthday party this year-- now that she's 9 she decided she'd had enough cakes.  Here are the invites she helped design:

Beyond cookies, she also wanted to give her little friends some of the mini monsters I wrote about last week. 

Super fun!

Valentine's is coming up...

linked from here.

Could my baby be this cool?

Or maybe she already is this cool, but I'm holding her back with ho-hum nursery decor.

I've got to step it up.

Can't commit to wallpaper

Scarlett's room needed some updating.

  The two of us girlies went shopping at the fabric store and bought a bunch of graphic patterned- stuff. (Scarlett was really pushing for some Disney print mondo huge and even more mondo-ly ugly Elmo themed canvas, but Mommy had the credit card today.)

Instead of wallpaper, I stapled a few panels up nice and taut.  I love the look.

Home Depot Apron No More

Have you been to the building classes for kids that Home Depot offers on the first Saturday of every month?  If you're like me, you don't exactly plan on going, BUT you somehow end up there every day of the week and one out of 30 of those is the building day.

  Anyway, it's great-- the kids get to use hammers and nails and build something really cool like a birdhouse or a race car or a really splintery jewelry box.  Every kid gets a bright orange apron to wear while they're building and since I never plan ahead and bring our old one, we've gotten quite a few.
 
Katherine has a birthday party this week and we'll be baking, so I repurposed seven construction aprons to look like this:

 Nothing Earth-shatteringly cute, but I get a little lazy when I'm making mass quantities.  You can do it, too.  Together we can save the planet one ugly apron at a time.