My Restoration Hardware Inspired Chair

I have a love hate thing going on with RH these days.

 Right now I'm mostly experiencing the love part.

They have some way cool stuff. Like this bedding that I may have coveted once or twice.

Yum.

I also drooled over their very neat line of french grain sack inspired pillows.

So, that brings me to my Craigslist chair. My 3 month old likes to be rocked, so Derek kindly picked up this chair for me.(he actually does most the evening rocking so this was a win-win for him)

Please excuse the fact that I had already put the slipcover on and was too lazy to take it off for this photo.

The slipcover was....easy to do. But mine is faaaar from perfect!! I decided to leave all the mistakes and quirks and just live with it.

One big mistake though...My faux grain sack was painted around 3am and that was bad idea. I am sadly off center and short of sewing and painting another one, this little flaw is un-fixable. Oh well.

I'm still happy with it and it rocks just fine with all the mistakes.

Lee likes it too, most of the time:-)

Sweet Caroline... New Sign

I'm a painting machine these days. My fingers are stuck in this strange little cramped position. No finger nail polish for me, just splatters of random paint and stain adorn these tattered nails.

Yuck.

I love the painting though, and luckily I have a self cleaning house and my kids are self sufficient at the ripe ages of 4, 2 and 3 months, so I can just paint around the clock.

Heh-heh.

I normally do most of my painting around 12-2 am. Luckily I don't require too much sleep. At least not till my body rebels against me and shuts down with no warning;-)

One of my many sweet little nieces has the middle name of Caroline. Poor thing has all brothers so I decided to paint a sign in honor of her. It helps that I happen to love her name and the song too.

 

I hope I didn't dig a huge hole for myself cause I have like 7 or 28 nieces. I can't paint that many signs. She's the only one with all brothers though:-)

 

I would be remiss if I didn't say a big ol' thank you to my little sister. She is the one I text my finished projects to at 3 AM. (she lives on the East coast) She is always honest with me (I think) and my biggest little sister cheerleader. (because I have older sisters who are great cheerleaders too)

 

See that beautiful Willow Cloche in the pics? Yup, that's the one I got from The Foundary. I've gotten a few things there lately that I'll share with you soon. I love that place though! (Click on their name or over on the side to sign up. It's free!)

By the way, I am trying something totally new for me. Sewing a slipcover. Yeah. Wish me luck. I'll let you know how much hair I lose it goes.

Got more signs coming. Here's a sneak peak.

Happy Wednesday!

Revisiting A Popular Post-The Pool House

I was looking for an old post today and came across The Pool House post. This has been one of my most popular and most featured posts (even made it on The Lettered Cottage! Whoop whoop!).

Anyway, for those that may be interested, read on...
(by the way, this one of those rare rooms/places that I haven't changed anything in)

Are you all ready for this? I know I am! So, to look forward in this project, we must first look back just a little.

Remember these pictures?

Yuck right! Not only was it u-gly, it smelled like a dog. (very badly I might add) It was actually used as a dog house by the previous owners, so decor wasn't high on the list.

So buckle up and brace yourself for a loooot of pictures!

See more on how I did the walls here.

My goal was to keep the whole project under $200 and to try and do all the work myself.

I did keep it under budget and I did about 80% of the work. Thank you to my father-in-law and most of all to my husband for lending a hand!

I also wanted this to be a place where our kids could play, so I changed the dog door into a small swinging door for them.

Look back on my faux stained brick floor tutorial here.

The window seat was the first building project I had ever taken on. My husband and oldest son left for the weekend so my 1 year old and I got to work.

The seat opens up and all our pool supplies and chemicals are stored in there.

Three sets of curtains, one window seat cover and two pillow covers were made out of a package of 2 drop clothes from Home Depot. Only $9.99 for 2! Can't beat that with a baseball bat!

The metal shelf is from Ikea. I love the industrial touch it brings to the room.

I really did have so much fun doing this project, even if it did go on and on... It is such a fun challenge to try and think of creative ways to do things as cheaply as possible. You never know what may happen!

I'm sure many of you wonder why there aren't pictures of the other wall. You see a bit of it in the very first picture with the hooks and stool, but otherwise it has a window with an a/c unit in it, sooo, not very pretty.

Hope your eyeballs didn't fall out with the overload of pictures. I got a little snap happy.

Let me know what ya think of the pool house!

 

Light My World You Little Used To Be Basket!

Some have suggested that we shed a little light on our kitchen sink.

Good idea.

Bad thing is, running electrical is a pain in the proverbial backside and the nearest and bestest place to run it happens to be an exterior wall.
A brick exterior wall.

The next best thing to do would be a lot of things that I didn't feel like doing, so as normal, I did the easiest thing.

One Ikea plug-in pendant light + one former black little basket from Hobby Lobby
= One new light above my kitchen sink.

I picked this basket up for $4.99 and used the spray paint below to change it to silver.

Of course I didn't want it so bright and shiny so I alternated with black and white spray paint. Standing back so that it barely misted over the basket.

Ahhh, nicely aged.

I like that it makes little chicken wire shadows dance on my walls in the evening.

I spent about 72 hours wrapping twine around and around the cord to hide the ugly blackness.

Now I can see exactly how dirty my dishes and sink are.

Yeaaahhh...

The Rooster Painting

I'm going to say something I've said before....

Ready?

I've been really busy lately.

Custom orders, cleaning house, cleaning more house, feeding hungry kids and husband, and a little bit of my own stuff.

= Busy

That has nothing to do with this post though.

Except to say that I am literally BURSTING with ideas of signs and art to paint.

Bursting.

I just ordered a weeks worth of 36 hour days. I'm not sure when they will get here though.

Until then, here's the newest addition to my collection. As much as I love this one and as much as I would love to keep it... it will be sold. I have to remind myself that it don't make no money hanging on my wall.

At night then I dream of chippy paint, roosters, cows and horses.

During the day those dreams sometimes materialize into something like this.

To tell you the truth, painting on canvas scares me. I have such high respect for the canvas and I am afraid that I will ruin it. This is the first time I have felt like I honored the canvas at all.

Call me crazy.

Lots of people do.