A room for the boy

This past spring we fixed up a new room for Tigerlily's 9th birthday surprise; before that she and Lyric shared a tiny, sad little room with a loft.  When she moved into her new space Lyric was left with the sad little room, and I was determined to fix it up just for him someday soon.  Well, the little guy's sixth birthday is coming up this weekend and that time is now! 

Mini door banner--I'll be selling these in the shop soon!

The big picture.  I wish I had more time to make/purchase some things for the walls.  And a cozy beanbag chair for that corner!

The all-important lego space.  We found a vintage tv cart at the junk shop for $5 and spruced it up with some spray paint.  Perfect!

Child-sized chairs are pretty hard to come by at a reasonable price so we made our own!  Skye used some pieces of plywood to slap together fitted tops for two milk crates and I stretched them with batting and pieces of old t-shirts (one of my favorite materials!).  Voila! Seating AND storage.

The loft.  I made the "Love you more" pillow for him because whenever I say, "I love you, kiddo," he says, "I love you more!" and I reply with "No, I love you more!" and it goes on from there.  He's my favorite boy in the whole world ♥

And here he is, the boy in his very own room!!

Man, I love that kid :)

Tune in next week for details of Lyric's amazing science birthday party!!  I had thought I had lost my party planning mojo but this one is shaping up to be my best kid birthday party yet!

Moving on

No need to dwell on the several months this blog has been neglected, right?  It's just a testament to how busy I've been!


I have tons and tons and TONS of work to share, but also tons and tons of photo editing before that happens.  For now I'll share a little home improvement we finished recently: a new room for my newly-turned-nine-year-old girl!

 I had such a great time creating this room for my girl and fulfilling my preteen dream of being an interior decorator! Almost everything in the room is handmade or secondhand.  I only bought the duvet cover and the lamp on the dresser retail, plus a few prints from Etsy--the bike and two others yet to come.  The chandelier was bought at our local Habitat Re-Store and painted green, the bed was free from a neighbor, the dresser was found on Craigslist, the little red doll dresser and the record player were thrifted, and I bought the rug at a church rummage sale for $1.50 (!).  The desk was mine at Tigerlily's age and my Father's before me.  I made all of the pillows, the curtain and the name banner on the door. 

 

Success ;) 

 We also had a nature themed birthday party for Tigerlily at a favorite local park, complete with a short hike and lots of stream exploring.  I was far too caught up in the festivities to really get any good shots but I can show you the invitations!

Add party planning to my list of missed callings!

The Annual Birthday Mix

Can't believe my girl is NINE!

Get off your ath let's do some math!

Today was Tigerlily's official first day of homeschooling! We're starting with a half day per week (with T.L. at the Free School for the remainder of the week) but may add another afternoon because it's so much fun. Today we did some math, geography, art, writing, and played UNO.

We're having a ridiculous amount of fun playing school ;)

Tomorrow is the first day of "real" school, so it's a big week. I can't wait to learn and do lots more with my best girl this year, it's going to be amazing!

Lapse in Pictures

I haven't been great about keeping up with my Picture a Day project but I'm going to be as faithful as I can be in the midst of some very hectic times. The boy has been sick and I've satisfied a bit of my itch to gussy up the place, moving things around a bit. Plus I'm super busy with work! One of these days I will find time to post about the tons of work I've been doing, promise.

My little guy, feverish and goo-eyed

work in progress :)

Can't wait to find the time to paint some walls and trim!

Picture a Day: New Couch!

The perfect couch, already at home amidst our mess

I've got a bit of the old Spring fever these days. I've been dreaming of sprucing up the place and have big plans for re-imagining the lay out of our amazing space. Top on my list of priorities has been to find the perfect couch for our main living area. I've been checking Craigslist twice a day for a couple weeks now to no avail. It's really shocking what people are asking for their gross giant sofas on Craigslist! I was even prepared to pay a similar price if the perfect vintage modern sofa appeared, but to no avail.

And then this morning, on a whim, I asked Skye if he wanted to go to our local Salvation Army store just to take a peek and, lo and behold, there it was! I literally walked in the door, spotted it across the room (kinda hard to miss that bright orange velour) and knew right away it would be mine. Upon closer inspection we found that it's in excellent shape, not gross or smelly or stained at all, and only $50! It was obviously meant to be.

Now if I can just find the perfect rug to go with it...any suggestions? I'm shocked at the lack of rug options out there!

85 Days of Summer

Goofing around with Trixie on Monday

Though this heat is making me consider relocating to Northern Canada our near daily trips to the lake have helped us cope.

Rainwater + paint roller + lawn furniture = hours of fun on Wednesday

Nothing like a cleaned up sewing space to inspire me.

Friday night sleepover!

After considering this piece on our last several visits to our local junk shop I finally fell in love and brought it home on Saturday.

Just errands on Sunday, but who says you can't dress up for the grocery store?

sew and staple

I upholstered something!!

We got these really cool vintage chairs for free from a friend and we use them as our kitchen chairs. They were already a bit grungy but after several spills of yogurt and milk I decided it was finally time to reupholster. I considered making removable covers and then I thought of the perfect upholstered kitchen chair solution--VINYL!

These were super easy to upholster, though pulling all of those staples from the seats took some time and elbow grease. After I removed the fabric from the seat (and discarded the crumbling, gross foam, eeeew) I ripped the seams and used the two component pieces as patterns to cut the vinyl. Just one seam to sew per chair and the rest is stapled. So simple! And just the thing for our kitchen.

Though it pained me a bit to buy new foam to replace the old it really had to be done. All told we spent $75 on the materials for this project. Not too shabby for 4 totally awesome newly upholstered kitchen chairs!

Thursday Thrifting

The mister and I have caught the thrifting bug big time--so much so that I do believe a weekly thrifting post is in order, et voilà: Thursday Thrifting!

Here are some of our sweet finds over the past few weeks...

vintage metal globe, sans base

the perfect mid-century dining table! (chairs thrifted too, in desperate need of reupholstering)

sweet vintage flat cards and really cool *empty* notebook

5 more vintage American Tourister suitcases, doubling my collection!

a lovely vintage enameled pitcher

I almost peed my pants when I saw these babies!!

the pièce de résistance: a Bernina 830!

...and I haven't even shown you any of the bikes Skye picked up, including a pretty little pair of vintage Raleigh Sports. What treasures will we find next?

p.s. Another Giveaway Day has been announced and I'll be participating again! Hmmm, what shall I give away this time...?

big news: part one

Big news around these parts: Tigerlily's got a sweet new room! It's really just the old room with some awesome paint that she picked out and a couple of improvements.
It's difficult to see in this light but there are two pretty awesome shades of orange there. The ladder was found and works so perfectly, like steep stairs. Skye repurposed a piece of old futon fram for the front railing. She sleeps up there now and though it is pretty high it's definitely safe and I think it's going to be fine. We picked up a few cheetah accents thrifting this weekend and I'm making a cheetah curtain for her window and door. The room could use a few more special Tigerlily touches but all in all it's a pretty fantastic transformation.

work in progress

on location

It's been a very busy week but somehow, amidst all of the chaos, a couple of movie scenes were filmed in our house!Grand Street Community Arts runs a filmaking summer camp for teens called Youth FX out of the Free School next door. The kids write, direct, act in, and edit a movie every summer, and they asked us if they could film here. We do have a pretty awesome apartment!

I can't wait to see the finished product!!

ongoing renovations

Our new house was amazing but still a work in progress when we moved in. It will be a while before it's completely done, we've got bedrooms to build soon and a potential downstairs fiber studio in the (hopefully not too) distant future.

Our kitchen counters were raw wood when we moved in. We were really unhappy with all of the options out there (except concrete, but that doesn't really fit in with the retro feel of the kitchen) and were thinking we would try stretching canvas on the wood and sealing it with shellac. My only concern with that is discoloration (or actual melting) if something hot were to be placed directly on it, which of course is inevitable. But Skye happened to have some 2-inch bone colored tiles kicking around so we decided to put that by the sink and the stove with the plan to do canvas on the remaining countertop.

Skye laid the tile and Tigerlily grouted!

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Some scenes from our evening stroll yesterday:

the community garden down the street

goofing around

thumbs up...all the way down the street

house preview

I was hoping to wait for the big reveal on our new house until I had everything unpacked, art on the walls and everything tidy, but I'm coming to realize that that is going to take some time. So here is a preview of our awesome new place.

this is only about half!

light from the skylight on our beautiful floors (with newly thrifted stool)

More beautiful natural light from above, making my expansive new work area so happy

:Many more pictures to come, I promise. So much sewing to do! Curtains, shower curtain, tablecloths, cushions, pillows....

And some more pictures of the kiddos:

bagels in the park

my little cheetah

Queen Cheetah showing off the book we're reading, The Spotted Sphinx by Joy Adamson

enjoying some nori, the new favorite snack around here