Fall Projects

This happens to me every year. I catch a fall time project bug. And I'm six weeks away from the arrival of baby girl, so I think the nesting urge has also kicked in. So I'm kind of going crazy with crafting, painting, and sewing right now. I've got Rob refinishing a dining room table, chairs, and high chair too :)

So here's what I've been working on-

1. I found this two sided, green storage bookshelf for free on craigslist ( I forgot to take a before picture). It was half painted and the shelves were unsanded and unstained. So I painted it yellow and sanded and stained the shelves. Then, I hit DI and bought a bunch of tins, painted and modge podged and organized all our craft supplies. We now have a "craft corner"! We will move our old table next to it once Rob is done refinishing our "new" table ( new to us- it's over 50 years old and a great craiglist find). The kids are super excited about the craft corner. I've been dreaming of a crafting/coloring/painting area for the kids for a long time. The boys like to work on crafts that are week or two week long projects (for instance- Jasper has been working on a "playground" with recycled materials of thread spools, cd's, bottle caps, broken electronics, etc. for almost a month!) so having a craft table beyond our dining room table is going to be wonderful.

2. I found a black, Ikea TV unit with a "free" sign taped to it on the side of the road about a month ago. It wasn't exactly what I had in mind for an entryway bench, but it was free and a good height for a bench so I jumped at the chance to do something with it. Since then, it has grown on me. Our shoes all fit nicely into the shelves and I can easily put shoes on in my 7 1/2 month pregnant state. Anyway, the next step was to make a cushion that fit the dimensions. I used this blogger's tutorial- http://thecsiproject.com/2011/07/27/piped-bench-cushionpretty-handy-girl/

I found some very lovely fabric at JoAnn's with a cats cradle pattern and went to work. I'm really excited about the way the cushion turned out!

3. I used some of the left-over fabric from the cushion and sewed a little pillow! 

4. Rob has been working every night for the past week on refinishing the dining room table, which I am super excited about. I will post picture of that soon. I've been working on re-upholstering the chairs. We decided not to refinish all six chairs right away. Rob is going to refinish the two with arm rests since they are the most worn. The other four, I've been working on the past couple of days. I removed the old cushions, cleaned and polished the wood, measured the old fabric and cut the new pieces to the right size. Here is a before and after of the cushions-