my little stool.

Recently I decided to try and make myself a (very) simple vanity for the bedroom. It had to be pretty narrow, medium wide, and most of all, simple. The vanity remains a work in progress (built, but not painted yet). When I saw the scraps, I decided that I should make myself a litte upholstered stool.

How I made it:
1. two scrap pieces of 1x12 pine, cut to square (top and bottom, two rectangles of even length for sides (I think they were like fifteen inches long?).
2. Screwed them all together with wood screws.
3.I used an old cut up towel across the top (although if I were being proper and not cheap I could have used batting), and stapled three sides down. then I stuffed some batting under the towel to make it cushiony, and stapled the fourth side down
4. Arranged fabric across the top and around the sides, held in place with thumb tacks while working, and whip-stitched all the seams using strong embroidery thread.

The fabric was some that my friend Aaron brought back from Africa as a souvenir, and has been sitting unused in my fabric pile for quite some time. I think it looks pretty cute.

Total cost for this project: $0.00.

Imagine my surprise then, the other day, when I was perusing the offerings of Anthropologie and stumbled upon this:



not exactly the same, but pretty darned close. total cost for this ottoman: $200.00.

not bad for an afternoon project!

peach blossoms!!!

Look what our peach tree started to do this week!


Dallas has terrible summers and bipolar winters, but her springs are pretty unbeatable.

Office reveal... for now.

Up until the past month or so, my office/ guest area has been a big old hot mess. I used the room occasionally to do some sewing, and we kept the laptop in there about half the time. The furniture was all "make-do" furniture, but really nothing that I would have chosen for myself. For example, we were using the center part of a giant 1980's wall unit (with VHS storage) as a laptop desk. it was huge and incredibly non-functional and messy.

As I've recently mentioned, about a month ago I found out that we're staying in Dallas until at least July of 2014. Since we love this little house, and we hate moving, I decided that we would no longer just make do with furniture that didn't make any sense... we needed to make the space ours and make it useful.

Here's the sorry excuse for a work area I had before:

That semi-nice looking desk was actually a crappy piece from Bombay outlet about 10 years ago that was way past its prime. I had already frankensteined some giant bolts into one of the legs to keep it from falling over, and it still had to lean in a corner in order to really be at all sturdy. We were also seriously lacking in storage, as evidenced by the piles and bags that are evident underneath our old desk. not pretty.

And our new work area:

we can spread out. we can work side by side! we have room for all our books, my yarn, Ethan's leather samples, and the occasional Lego motorcycle. The desks and bookcases are from the Expedit line from Ikea. We were originally going to get one large 5x5 unit behemoth, but they have been out of stock all over the country for about a month. So we decided on 2 2x4's stacked with 2 2x2's. I think I like this better in the long run, and it will be more versatile whenever we DO move out of this house, and as our family grows.
The chairs are probably my favorite part of the room. They're the Pollock Executive Chairs that I got for $19.19 a piece from Garland Thrift.


Isn't my little sterling silver toast-rack-turned-mail-holder cute? This was from Salvation army one fateful morning when I got a TON of awesome stuff, and then wondered if I was maybe becoming a hoarder.

I have already shown this picture before, but why not show it again? this is the thrifted bench and mirror that I made over. This wall is where the behemoth wall unit used to sit and do absolutely nothing.


on to the bed area, which is still a work in progress.

this was the daybed before. It was okay-looking in this picture, but in reality, it only looked acceptable as long as no one sat on it. The cover would constantly shift forward, and it was too short, so there were about 6 inches of ugly exposed trundle bed at the bottom of it. Also, I was sick and tired of all the beige.


This is my for-now solution. I took a Fjellse bed and sawed off the headboard to make it into a platform daybed.

I need to figure out what type of fabric I want to use to upholster the frame and make a matching mattress cover and pillow covers, but in the mean time I'm using just plain old cheapo sheets.

In my mind, it's going to end up looking something like this:

but with back pillows. Am I crazy? possibly. So crazy it just might work.

This room makeover has completely changed where we spend our time in this house. The room used to be a combination of storage area and wasted space, and now we use the room almost as much as we use our living room. Great for a morning cup of coffee, a nap (I hate napping in my actual bed for some reason), or working.

Weekend

This weekend, something amazing happened. I was on home call and my pager did not go off one single time. It was almost a normal weekend, except that I had to stay fairly close to the hospital. Saturday I went to work early, Was back home less than 2 hours after I left, and went back to sleep until 11:00. Then we did some garden planning at a local nursery--we're planting starting this week! We are trying cherry tomatoes this year. And planting a few months earlier than we did last year.


Sunday we spontaneously re-created our first date. First we went to the Dallas Museum of Art (fun and most of it is f-r-e-e.)

then we decided to go to our favorite Salvadorian restaurant, Gloria's for some ceviche and margaritas (allowed to have ONE).

It wasn't until we were halfway through dinner that I realized we were unintentionally going to all the same places as our first date. We are creatures of habit I guess. To make it complete, we went to get coffee after our meal at the same starbucks we went to on the first date. It was really, really sweet. And even better than that first date because there was no pressure to be extra entertaining. I was able to just be my regular level of entertaining.

silver arrangements

One of the things that I see ALL The time when I go thrifting is old silver-plated serving pieces. Of course, when I get them they look pretty horrible...


but If I see something that's nearly black and fairly heavy, I have a hard time not buying it. As a result, I now have a pretty impressive silver collection.
(same piece after some elbow grease)


One day when we have a real dining room, I'm planning to use my collection of silver-plated platters and serving dishes to make a gigantic disco-classical-fabulous arrangement on a wall



Imagine this, but less big, and SHINY. It would reflect light around like a mirror, but without making me stare at myself throughout an entire dinner. Sure, it would require some elbow grease a few times a year to take everything down and clean, but it would look awesome. Which is a justification for many, many things.

I'm thinking I could make a decent sized arrangement for about $100 if I trolled the thrifts for a few more pieces (plus the cost of silver polish).

Another pretty option would be hammered aluminum. Hammered aluminum serving pieces were popular in the 1940s and 1950s, and although less popular, they are still made today Ethan and I started a collection when we got a large platter for a wedding present. I have bought two more pieces since, and I love them.

They are readily available on Ebay and I've seen a few in the thrift stores. If you buy a piece new, it's super shiny, but over time they get a dull patina. I think these would also be beautiful hung on a wall. Or anywhere, really.

Mirror makeover

The last few times I went to Garland Thift, I looked at a certain mirror. I don't know why, but I kept going back to it. I loved the shape of it but wasn't sure about the old-looking glass (I don't do shabby chic, and I had no idea how much it would cost to replace).
Eventually, though, the mirror went to half price ($12) and I decided that it was a sign. So I brought it home to the losefast house. Here is its kind of sad-looking before.


I went to Home Depot and bought some of the sample sizes of paints for $2.50 a pop. The colors I got were white and Distant Thunder. I painted the whole frame gray, then did a TON of taping off, and painted the middle of the frame white. I was thinking about putting some poly on to make it shiny, but I got impatient and just hung it up, and I like how it looks.


The little bench is from the thrift store, re-covered in a black and white stripe. The pink pillow was a silk sweater that I wasn't wearing, but thought my bench should have an opportunity to. The neon colored pillow was made of fabric remnants from Crate and Barrel Outlet (it's 99 cents per pound) and used some stuffing I cannibalized from a different pillow.


I haven't replaced the glass, but I may in the future. For now, I'm leaving it in its slightly cloudy state. We have a few pieces of Ikea in here and I thought something needed to be not completely shiny and new.
Here's a close-up:


Ethan said that the combination of the gray and white mirror and the striped bench looks a little Mad-Hatter-Alice-in-Wonderlandy. I agree. and it makes me happy.

We're still waiting on the Expedit 5x5 bookshelf to come in at Ikea so that our books can sit on something besides the floor, and the office can be officially finished. But in the meantime, we are already using the room SO much more now that we both have a large and clean work surface.

Unloading

you know how I said that I was going to have Salvation army take some of our old stuff away? well a week ago they came and took our gigantic oak-finish bookshelves.

We then spent the next day reveling in how much BIGGER every room in our house felt. And I realized that I didn't want to make the mistake of over-crowding the rooms with furniture again.

So after a few days looking at the empty space in our living room, we (actually Ethan) realized that the two dressers we bought for the guest room would actually be great in there for storage and to act as a console. Especially because, whenever we have more than 2-3 people over at a time, we break out a 6.5 foot long folding table with a pretty tablecloth and set it in the middle of our living room to eat there (because you gotta be creative in a little-ish house!) Want to see?


I love that the white just recedes like it's not even there, and doesn't make the room feel smaller. Because we have two gallery walls in this room ( one of paintings and one of pictures) I wanted something to go above that wouldn't compete with everything else in there. I got this mirror REALLY cheaply at Home Goods (seriously, it's gigantic and I paid $25.00 for it). For decoration I used our pewter coffee service (that was my Grandmother's) and a thrifted wooden tray with our decanter and some crystal on it.

I am loving the amount of storage this thing has. It holds all our guest room linens and pillows, my fabric stash, all our CDs, our inside-the-house tools, and we still have empty drawers.

We chose two 4 drawer chests rather than one 6-drawer chest for a few reasons: one is that it's more versatile to have two smaller pieces, and the other was that since E and I are both tall, we tend to get furniture on the taller side, because it's just much more comfortable. We dream of one day having an entire kitchen constructed to be at bar height.

Here's a sneak peek at what's going on in the office/ guest room: