The Hateful Chair, Turned Thankful

Remember this chair from my last post? Well, let me tell you something about this chair. It HATED me. HATED me. A lot. It should have been an easy, super cute transformation. It did turn out super cute. But it was not easy. It threw a tantrum about every single little thing. It made me fit to me tied. I swore some. At one point I just needed to step away. So I took a little trial separation from this hateful chair. After a few days and a few deep breaths, I came back. And then I changed this chair's mind.

Today it looks like this. In all the skirted, pleated, Houndstooth-ed glory it has decided that I probably knew best all along. Yes, I do own an iron. The skirt is a little wrinkled. I'll get that taken care of. Promise. As I mentioned before, it's now got killer little black and white Houndstooth print, with glossy black trim, double piping and a new skirt. It is super solid and totally comfy. I was going to list the Hateful-Turned-Thankful chair for sale, but instead it now lives at my mom's, happily married to her favorite desk. Maybe someday soon I'll get some pictures of the cute couple to post.

Now on to this:

I'm pretty sure this bad boy is somebody's old wood shop project. But I love it anyway. It's actually two pieces and it's really sturdy. I'm pretty positive that when the inspiration comes to fruition it will totally ring. your. bell.


Thanks for stopping by!

So I may or may not be obsessed with rugs right now. I think it has something to do with looking at every single one on the internet while trying to decide what do with my kitchen rug. In the throws of my search I came across this:

Camila from Effortless Style created this awesome DIY rug for her house using regular old fabric, a canvas dropcloth, and a rug gripper. When I saw it for the first time, I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it! Well, ok, I actually can believe it never occured to me. It is pure genious, after all. Granted, it might not stand up too well to kids or super high traffic, but I happen to have one, seriously-just one, low traffic area where this idea would be perfect! I already have some fabric I think would work well and the spot where I envision it actually already has a rug, I'm just sort of over it. I wish I could think of a way to just cover what's already there, the trouble is that the current rug is shag. So now I've got to put on my thinking cap and see if I can figure something out. I know. That sounds dangerous. Sort of like, "Hey, there's smoke coming from your thinking cap!" Wish me luck and stay tuned!

Also coming up, this ugly duckling ugly no more!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great day!

A Silly Little Project

So see this basket of crap? Its my attempt at keeping the gazillion school papers, phone lists, and that kind of often-used random stuff under control in an easy-to-access place. It doesn't work very well. It just collects more and more and more CRAP and always looks junky. The sad thing about the picture is I had just cleaned it out. A long time ago at Walmart I spied some cute magazine files for just $6 each. I thought to myself, "Self, those would be cute and work really well in place of my crap basket." Never did get them. I don't know why. Last week I decided I really needed some. Around 5 of them. $30 is still really good. But at the time I was feeling crafty and I decided that I wanted to spend more like $0 on them.I rounded up these.



"Modge Podge," I thought. But I was all out. And the thought of going all the way to Walmart for one thing made me crazy. So I went to the Family Dollar, which is closer and a much faster in and out.

Did you know white school glue mixed with a little water does the same thing as Modge Podge practically?


I used some scrap fabric leftover from my laundry room window shade because that's what I had. And its super cute. I glued the spines on first, overlapping onto the sides a bit.


Then I cut a piece for the side a little larger than the box. I folded the edges under next to the spine for a finished look.

And this is what happens when you use way too much glue and the poor cereal box can't handle the stress. It dried all wonky like that. Whoops. So after that I got out the good old glue gun and just sort of 'upholstered' the boxes instead, using just a little bit of the white glue to help hold things in place as I situated fabric. That actually worked really well.

Way too much glue vs. the glue gun. I could have made the insides prettier, but I didn't.

I used plain manila folders in each file to organize the papers, plus that way it looks clean and neat. Its very deceiving. I used leftover folders to make tags for each file. They may change. Not so sure I love them.

Sorry about the yucky night time pictures.

This is where they live.

The cute flower pots hold pencils and pens for now. I just need to keep my eyes peeled for a good cereal sale so I can make a couple more. (The biggest size box worked the best with the manila folders.) I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. I'm sure they'll collect their fair share of crap, but at least it will be easier to ignore :)

In the end I didn't spend $0. I spent about $2.75 for the manila folders, glue and paintbrush.

Not too shabby.