Celebrations

The son of one of my dearest friends turned one this past weekend. Baby Z (who's not such a baby anymore) celebrated in style with a fantastic circus-themed party that his clever mom planned up.

The stage was set early on when these fantastic custom hand-drawn invitations arrived. My friend commissioned Shortcake Signs for the invites (ok, I may have sung the praises of Shortcake Signs since she happens to be my sister), and they turned out so cute!

My friend thrifted a great old, slightly rickety cherry high chair that she envisioned in antique white for Z's first birthday party. After a lot of sanding old cherry stain away and tightening old screws and adding new ones, here's the chair ready for the center ring! 

I used a soft ecru white with a dark espresso glaze over some pretty heavy distressing. It's a piece that won't mind seeing a lot of wear and tear!

This was a project that was so special and meaningful to work on. Happy birthday and much love, dear Z!

Living

We are turning vaguely crunchy around here. Not much, mind you--just whiffs of it here and there. We got chickens, but they aren't exactly organic. They end up with plenty of stray graham cracker crumbs and leftover cheerios along with their kitchen scraps...

Though Brian fought getting chickens for two years, he went chicken-crazy within a few days and we soon ended up with a pile of these:

 

Which have now grown into gangly teens:

Hurrican Hazel holding a Rhode Island Red

We adopted a rescue kitten, which is slightly crunchy, and we named her Molly, which could maybe be somehow construed as crunchy, if you wanted to try hard enough. She's a darling, except when she poops on the dining room rug. If I were super crunchy I would probably find a way of turning it into all-natural leather moisturizer or something, but like I said, we are only borderline...

Here's our second baby. We fondly call her the Amazon. We are not very crunchy when it comes to parenting. We use disposable diapers and regular mosquito sprays (have you seen the mosquitoes at our house?), and we eat peanut butter and jelly for lunch almost every day...

We are still constantly messing with our house. This is the pantry Brian built in to the kitchen a couple months back. Now we have a place to put all our (non-organic) food. Again, vaguely crunchy.

Our garden is coming along with lots of heirloom tomatoes, squash, peppers, lettuce, kale, spinach, bok choy, onions, herbs, brussels, beans, and cucumbers. That's plenty crunchy for me, but Brian wants an excuse to buy a tractor with attachments so he can dig up a huge garden for next year. Someone stop him...

I've been doing furniture for our house, which I'll show soon, and I've been working on each room little by little. We are loving giving each room a feel of its own with the art and accessories that we fit there. This fabulous beetle pillow reminds me of my childhood pets in Cambodia and was hand-drawn by my friend Rachel from over at the Hippie Homestead. She does all sorts of creatures from the insect kingdom...

So you see, I'm still alive--just busy living, with my little girls, and my hubby, and the dog, and the cats, and our sweet little house, and all the things that fill life up and don't leave a lot of time for updating blogs. But still, thanks for stopping by=)

At Home

This cute bedside table and its match are in their lovely new home. I always love seeing projects inhabiting spaces that fit them so perfectly!

"Samantha"

This is an adorable antique vanity upcycled in a marshmallow white with seafoam accents and moderate distressing. It has a light coat of burnt umber glaze to age it back a bit--not that it needed any help on the aging front.

It's an ancient piece with the original wooden castors. That's old. It was in pretty bad shape with the veneer coming off in strips and the wood layers rippling and bubbling along every seam and corner. So after weeks of mudding, wood filler, and sanding, I got it mostly smoothed out.

I said mostly. Don't look too close...

The drawers stick. But cute paper lining the drawers makes the stickiness inconsequential. Kind of.

To add a little more color, this piece also got the stencil treatment.

Isn't it fun? I have another antique vanity similar to this piece but in better condition if you are interested in having one for your home.

Thanks for stopping by!

Bring On The Color!

                           

Fall is my favorite time of year. BY FAR. My husband doesn't let me start decorating for fall until midnight on August 31st, which is very generous of him, since (as he points out multiple times a day for weeks on end) fall doesn't really start until mostly through September.

This year, as I was pulling scarecrows out of storage in early September, he quietly suggested that I put sunscreen on them. Ok, so maybe it was 90 degrees out in early September.

This deep jewel blue on these nightstands is the perfect color for fall. Nothing highlights it better than warm golds, oranges, and browns. Though it also works well with cinnamony colors in winter and bright, light shades in spring and summer. Let's face it--peacock blue is always a winning color.

I used my usual bold turquoise blue base and highlighted it with a black glaze. Aren't those knobs fun? I have the same ones on my buffet, and my client loved them as much as I did and requested them for these pieces. A good hardware match is always the icing on the cake.

Thanks for stopping by!

Summer Turquoise

Turquoise is a perfect color for any time of year (and very trendy this fall), but summer turquoises are especially fun. This cute little farmhouse table that started out as tired maple is much more dramatic and exciting in its new hue!

Any-Fruit Bread

I know this is a mercenary furniture blog, but I’m including this recipe post because I need it online so I can pin it to my tastebuds board, and because it’s so good that it needs to be shared.

It’s a recipe from an old friend and it merges great taste, creativity, and practicality. Too many pears? Make some Any-Fruit bread. Mushy bananas? Throw them in, too. Try some berries, or some nuts. It turns out lovely every time. At least, so far=)