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Reorganizing After The Haven Conference

Reorganizing After The Haven Conference

As you know, Wade and I got home from the Haven Conference a week ago Sunday night. On Monday morning we got some news from our sister-in-law Mara. She called to say that Rian was nearing the end of his journey here on Earth. Wade took off right away hoping and praying that he would get there to say goodbye one last time.

He arrived at a house filled with friends, relatives and co-workers telling stories and sharing the wonderful memories they had with Rian. Sharing this time with his brother and those that were there was good for Wade. Rian passed away late Tuesday afternoon. He was only 54 years old and will be remembered as a loving father, brother, son and friend.

The kids and I drove to Chicago on Friday to be with family and attend Rian’s memorial service on Saturday. It was a very touching service with a comforting sermon detailing Rian’s life.

RIP Rian. You are loved and will be missed.

Adjusting back to a routine has been difficult, but I’ve learned that whenever a transition occurs in my life it helps me to get organized.

Because there was so little time between the Haven Conference and the memorial service, I hadn’t had time to put away all of the freebies I collected. Cue reorganization.

There was obviously a lot to do, but where to put it? I’ve needed to clean up space in the garage for awhile now, and today was the day.

This included more work than I had initially planned. I unpacked boxes that had been sitting in the garage since move in day (mind you that was two years ago), I cut the remaining birch branches into candle holders and then vacuumed up the pounds of sawdust I had created. The final step was adding a shelf next to the workbench, where the branches had been, to make room for the Haven freebies.

You know how much I love a good before and after:

 

Even after a successful reorganization session, I needed a little DIY therapy. I started the deconstruction process on the settee and found a pleasant surprise. Underneath the arms of this piece I removed fabric to find a knotted bamboo. My plan had been to reupholster every piece of fabric on the settee, but now I’m thinking I might leave that bamboo for a bit of texture.

Stay tuned.

~Wendy

Home Tour 2015: The Sewing Room/Studio

Home Tour 2015: The Sewing Room/Studio

As the Home Tour continues, we travel upstairs. These stairs, all 17 of them.

At the top of the stairs to the left of the dresser, you can see light shining thru from my son’s bedroom. Jack is 17 and I believe that any parent with a teenage son can agree that no one wants to see that room. 🙂 But if you really want to all you have to do is take every piece of clothing you own and throw it on the floor. Walk on these clothes for several days, add some bowls with dried up cereal in them and add some tossed about wet towels to complete the picture.

That picture will not make an appearance on this blog. 🙂

Moving past Jack’s room and on your immediate left is the guest bedroom. I will share that part of the tour later in the month. Continuing down the short hallway is a bathroom on the right and then straight ahead and up two little steps, we enter my sewing room/studio.

I love this room. The previous owners originally used this area for storage and then updated it to be a media and exercise room. Now it has found its third purpose.

The window in the front faces West and the afternoon sunshine is glorious.

I have a large table in front of the window that holds my sewing machine and serger machine. The area behind that is my cutting table.

I debated cleaning and organizing every inch of the studio prior to taking pictures. But the thing is is that it never looks like that. There are always 2 or 3 projects going at the same time so in reality the studio is one big area of organized chaos.  🙂

Lining the wall are industrial racks and barrels of fabric. My Dad made me the black horizontal racks. Makes the room look so professional. Love it.

And finally, between the industrial racks, I have rows of finished pillow covers. These are covers that were made and then photographed to be listed in the shop. I offer several different sizes of covers so typically orders are filled when they are placed. These covers are just waiting for someone to order their size. 🙂

That is the sewing room/studio. I hope you enjoyed the tour!

This weekend in Minnesota is going to be unseasonably warm. Yahoo!!

I will share with you tomorrow on the SideNote Saturday post the outside item that won me over when we were considering buying this house.

Have a great weekend!

 

The Gold Standard

The Gold Standard

Have you ever done something that you instantly regret?

Me too.

Years ago I had a to have a root canal, followed by a crown. I let the dentist talk me into a gold crown.  He said that it was a stronger material and would last forever. Seemed logical to me. Well, when I find something funny, I have a big loud head throwing back mouth wide open laugh that comes deep from the belly. When this happens some one always comments about my big ole gold tooth.  Honestly, this use to bug me, but looking on the bright side… gold is hot and trendy this year!

It seems like metallic gold is everywhere. And Old Lake George is no exception.

A little something for everyone.

Are you on the gold band wagon?

Inspiration

Inspiration

Did I mention that we have a 21 closer to 22 year-old daughter? I know, shocking. I sound so young on this blog.  🙂

Well that 21 year-old, Samantha is in the process of applying to graduate schools to work towards her masters in Occupational Therapy. Side note: it just took me four attempts to spell “therapy” correctly.  She gets her brains from her father. 🙂

So anyway, the past few weeks, Sam and I have been visiting the campuses of her top three choices of graduates schools.

After every tour, we have fallen into the pattern of grabbing lunch and then some shopping. On a recent shopping adventure, we wandered into a children’s toy store and **BAM** inspiration struck! I saw this table top checker board made from fabric.

And I thought, I can make that!  So I did!

I cut the checkers out from the branches and hand painted them myself! Humble brag: Sometimes I am so amazing.  🙂

I love how this checker board turned out. Very rustic feeling and old school. No plug in or docking station required.

What was the last thing that inspired you?

 

Miscalculating my skill set

Miscalculating my skill set

Incase you have forgotten, I love estate sales.  And for some reason I am always drawn to the chairs.

When I first started going to estate sales I would buy all wood chairs, no fabric on them.  I would clean them up and usually paint them.  But I wanted to branch out. I wanted to try re-upholstering a chair.  This is the chair I branched out with. Go Big or Go Home Wendy!

How hard could it be to take off each piece lay it out on some new fabric and tack it back on?  Seriously, how hard? So I started and I removed all of the fabric and then painted the wood.

So far so good and only a couple of hours of work. Then I put the old fabric on top of the new fabric and started cutting. BUT, I didn’t mark anything down as to where the new pieces were suppose to go!  I had so many different size pieces and no idea how to put it back together.  Ugh.

Instead of trashing the whole thing and losing the $40 I had into it,  I cut off the arms of the chair so I didn’t have to re-upholster them!  Bra-ill-ient!

Now it was just a matter of sewing a couple of square corners and, done.

 

(I will share more about this chair on another day. It is now part of my daughters first apartment. )

Since biting off more than I could chew in the re-upholstering department, I have reverted to buying chairs that aren’t so difficult to re-upholster.

Exhibit A:  This chair that I painted and re-upholstered the seat.

Exhibit B: This rocking chair. It needed a little  TLC and an update of fabric. And here is how I did it.  The right way.

After removing the fabric, I washed the wood with water, dried it and polished it up with Hemp Oil from the Miss Mustard Seed line of products.  Instant beauty.

I knew I wanted to go with the French Farmhouse fabrics to replace the not-so-desirable fabric that was on the chair.  Here is the line of pillows made from French Farmhouse style fabrics in my shop that I chose from.

The winner for me was the beige/khaki line fabric.

So, I removed the old fabric pieces and laid them out on top of the new fabric to cut them out. With only two pieces I figured I would know where to replace them.

Self explanatory right? The same process was used when the head rest part of the chair needed a little padding. To hold the padding and fabric in place I used some basting adhesive.

Incase you were wondering, this was the brand of basting adhesive I used to hold everything in place. Incase you were wondering. 🙂

And now for the big reveal…..always my favorite part.

 

And one more beautiful collage.

I haven’t attempted another large re-upholstering project.  Going Big or Going Home! wasn’t the best choice.  🙂 Have any of you miscalculated your skill set when trying a project?

And as a side note, Spencer my product photographer didn’t take some of these pictures.  I think it’s pretty evident, but in full disclosure, wanted to point it out.  🙂