If You Give a Girl Some New Chairs

Last week I had two new chairs delivered. It was sort of a big deal, and I like to stare at them.

I can't show you anything else in the front room because it's still a wreck but it's my next project! The entire point of this post is to illustrate how something as simple as a delivery of two chairs can set off a chain of events similar to what was described in the classic children's book, "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie."

If you give a girl some new chairs, she'll probably realize that none of the other furniture in the front room works with them. So she'll probably drag her big chair and a half to the living room.

Once the chair and a half is in the living room, she'll quickly find that the entire room needs to be rearranged, and that the white sofa table doesn't fit anymore. So she'll probably ask for help to carry it to the basement play room.

After the table is in the basement, she will decide that the black dresser in the dining room needs to find a new home, too. So she'll move it to her bedroom (where it technically belongs) and marvel at the idea of filling it with clothes. 

Before:

Once the dresser is in the bedroom, there will be a big empty spot in the dining room! So she'll probably relocate some more furniture and go on an impromptu shopping trip for a mirror.

 Now:

And after a day of rearranging, her husband will come home and wonder what on earth happened to his house... and he'll probably question why he gave a girl some new chairs to begin with.

To Build a Table

While I wait on some things that will allow me to finish my kitchen makeover, I decided to tackle a little project for my front room, which is next on my list of rooms that need love. And trust me, that room needs a lot of love.

First up, I needed an entry table. The space has a pretty challenging layout -- both my narrow hallway-style entry and the front room itself. I started looking for narrow console tables but nothing worked; they were either too expensive, too short, or too deep. Most of the time, all three!

Obviously, it was time to build one.

We grabbed some really inexpensive 2x2s and threw this simple table together with wood glue, clamps and screws (placed on undersides of the boards in pocket holes so I don't have to fill anything with wood putty!). It's important to select as straight of 2x2s as possible since it's not high quality lumber.

The finished table, with tabletop, will be 36" tall by 33" wide and 9.5" deep.  That's about 6" taller than usual for console tables and much shallower, since the wall it will sit against runs right into a doorway and it can't block traffic. Check it out in its new home:

(On a side note, how classy is that unfinished wooden cube in front of the wall without baseboard? Maybe I should have some guests over and really impress 'em with my decorating skills!)

Speaking of tabletops though, maybe you're wondering where it is? I'm glad you asked.

I took a little trip to a local steel yard...

... and saw rows and rows of shiny metal sheets. Not exactly what I was looking for... so they showed me their rusty remnants outside.

Bingo! Today they are bending a piece of steel to fit over a wooden tabletop like a slipcover.

I'm not going to lie, I'm pretty excited to see this come together. Stay tuned!

Four Notes

Four things to start this weekend off right:

1. Clearance sales can still be expensive when you buy 25 plants:

As you can see though, my backyard gardens really need some love. At least there's something there now.

I don't want to talk about the pathway. I swear, it'll get done. Wah.


2. In April, when I made the decision to get a teeny dog from the shelter, it was part of a master plan. See, my giant slobbery dog stresses me out and sheds constantly even though she loves me unconditionally, and my neurotic cat sits and plots my demise while grinding her teeth and licking plastic grocery bags at 1:30 am. So the obvious solution to my pet woes would be to find a catdog that could magically merge the best qualities of both animals into one furry creature. People laughed, people said I was crazy...

...but I was right. Violet is pretty much the best catdog in the world. Just saying.


3. Here's a little peek at my living room, which is going through some changes right now.

My husband just loves it when I start moving things around! It always ends with me saying things like, "I think we need a new coffee table. And a bigger rug."

4. I'm going camping this weekend... that should be fun, right? Think good bear-repelling thoughts for me!

Ooh also, 4.5.  Follow my blog with Bloglovin

A Quick Storage Upgrade

My boys are pretty hard on their belongings. Heck, they're pretty hard on my belongings.

Really, my boys are like two child-sized furniture staining/breaking/scuffing/dirtying tornadoes.

Maybe you have some kids like that? If so, you understand the need to surround them with sturdy things. I made a quick, easy upgrade to the storage bins in my boys' closet which get a lot of daily wear and tear.

When I first put the closet together I filled the shelves with some clearanced fabric bins -- they had metal frames inside them which probably would have held up okay against mere mortals, but we're dealing with my boys here, so several of the frames had snapped where they had been soldered together.

Recently, I found some cute metal locker-style bins at Walmart and snapped up six.

To help my kids tell their bins apart I wrote their initials on some chalkboard tags which I tied to the bins with twine.

Five minutes later and the closet has a fresh new look. I'll add felt slides to the bottom of all the bins to help protect the closet's paint job, but I didn't have enough on hand when I threw these together.

I love them! I'm also pretty optimistic that the solid metal bin will hold up better against my children and their destructive tendencies.

If only new bins could restore the harmony to the space! My older son officially asked for his own room this week. I giggled, because I'm a bad mom.

It's In The Details: Rustic Industrial Tables

Oh, y'all. I'm climbing the walls with an overwhelming urge -- no, a need -- to make one of these for my house. They're rustic! They're trendy! They're industrial! I'm crushing on these hard.

I see a lot of DIY farmhouse tables with planked tabletops that are stained or treated to look like reclaimed wood, which I love... but today I stumbled across one with $10 metal legs (ten dollars each, y'all!) and I quickly fell down the rabbit hole. Come join me!

DIY Table with Trestle Legs via Stylizimo

Custom Bar Table via Urban Wood Goods

DIY Table with Hairpin Legs via A Beautiful Mess

DIY Pipe Table (with plans!) via Cafe Cartolina

Oy, that last one with the crossbars. I die.

Even Restoration Hardware is getting in on the trend (they must have heard me talking about it) with their gorgeous Flatiron Table, which is just a teensy bit out of my price range...

What do you think? Am I nuts or is this a delightful marriage of rustic and industrial? Who wants to help me convince my husband that we need one?

June Recap Part 2

The last week of June gets its own post because it was hectic.

Like I said in yesterday's part 1, the day we got home from Jackson I packed myself back up and took off for Salt Lake. Monday morning, I caught a flight to Indianapolis for a blogger event hosted by Delta Faucet.

I had an amazing time with the other ladies and Delta Faucet took such great care of us. They made us install faucets and what my team lacked in plumbing prowess we made up for in panache and a couple extra parts (my bad... apparently there shouldn't be parts left over.)

The team: our Delta engineer "helper" Ben, Kim from Newly Woodwards, me, Julia from Chris Loves Julia, and Hillary from The Friendly Home (hard at work, saving our behinds)

Seriously though, learning about the design process, touring their department and getting some exciting sneak peeks of upcoming designs (excited about faucets? Yeah, I just said that and totally meant it) was enough to make me want to be a designer when I grow up.

 (Judd Lord, Director of Industrial Design)

I shared my flights home with Monica from Hammer Like A Girl and Michelle from 4 Men 1 Lady. Monica helped keep both Michelle and I calm during the flight because she is all sorts of knowledgeable about planes and Michelle and I are big scaredy cats. Really though, some of the sounds planes make midflight aren't okay. Oh, and I spilled my entire Diet Coke on my lap... yeah, I'm sort of the coolest thing ever.

We got back to Salt Lake Wednesday evening and I hustled my behind over to Park City to spend the next several days immersed in wedding plans and celebrations!

 

It was wonderful. I met my friend Menaka in first grade and she's still very dear to me, so it was a special weekend. I didn't get to take many photos though!

 

Some highlights:

• I got to see some old friends!

• I bossed people around (coordinator) while carrying around glasses of champagne (guest).

• I finally learned to Dougie. (probably not, though.)

Some lows:

• I ate my first oyster and all the champagne in the world couldn't wash the taste out of my mouth... trust me, I tried.

• I scuffed up my new shoes. I'm still upset.

• I had to spend several hours cleaning up my hotel room so housekeeping wouldn't permanently bar me from visiting again.

My July plans: 

• Avoid all July plans.

June Recap Part 1

I don't know about you, but in my world the month of June just flew by, and I am so grateful to be staring at July on my calendar now! I'm breaking this recap post into two parts because I have too much to share and too many photos.

 School let out at the end of the first week...

We celebrated by visiting Grandma & Grandpa and spending some time at the local pool, then stuffing ourselves full of ice cream.

I filled all the free time I had with wedding preparations and cabinet painting for the facial room I'm decorating. My days were consumed with excessive caffeine consumption while hopping back and forth between projects. ("the cabinets need time to dry, I'll work on table numbers!")

I took our new shelter dog Violet to get her first haircut. They shaved her body, which was sort of traumatic for me... but when I look at her "before" face I can't help but laugh because she looked so, so bad!

Then I got my first tattoo. I'll be sharing the story behind why I chose it soon.

My family was lucky enough to spend a weekend in Grand Teton National Park at the Jackson Lake Lodge with my husband's company for their annual family meeting. This was the first year we took our kids, and although there are babysitting services set up for the "grown up" times and lots of family activities, it wasn't quite as relaxing as years past! I had a great time but they might go back to Grandma's next year... no judging!

The park was goooorgeous, we saw a mama Grizzly with three cubs, rode on covered wagons to dinner and a western show, and caught up with lots of fabulous people. Oh, and my husband accidentally drank my contact when he forgot that I had stored them in cups overnight because I had misplaced my case.

(See the bears at the bottom?? Click the photo to make it a little bigger.)

The day we drove home from Wyoming, I spent a few hours unpacking and repacking my clothes and the 700 pounds of wedding paraphernalia I had accumulated before taking off for the busiest week of. my. life. No exaggerations, people... and that's where I'll pick up tomorrow!