A little change, please...

I always thought I should have pursued interior design as a vocation.  I've dabbled with staging homes for sale, hung wall paper for friends, and given decorating ideas to those who asked.  I will say my hat's off to the real designers out there - putting yourself between an opinionated husband who thinks he's a contemporary modernist and a whiny wife who just wants "shabby-chic" is nothing short of heroic.

When I was younger (do all old bloggers say that?) I hoisted my own furniture around regularly, re-upholstered chairs, and repainted walls at the drop of a hat. I loved changing my environment along with the seasons or my mood. We've been in the hacienda for 12 years and I hadn't done much of anything to the decor, short of changing a few pillows, rugs and artwork. I have some "Big" decorating challenges which make it a tad difficult to just switch things up...

Like this...

And this...

And my personal favorite decorating nightmare...the "You can never move this, Laurel!" statement piece...

You just can't move these pieces around much in a 2,400 sq foot home...so you move everything around them, you re-cover the sofa pillows, rotate the art, repaint the walls.

After twelve years, suffice it to say that the paint on the walls in the hacienda are looking a little shop-worn. Not that my color palette is dated (aubergine never goes out of style!) but like many of us who are creative, we just get tired of seeing the same thing. Unfortunately, I'm not a fan of painting.  It's not the actual exercise of throwing it up on the walls like an HDTV star...it's more about the bending down, ladder climbing, paint in your hair, manicure demolition and horrid clean-up that I hate.

But over the years Behr paint and I have become tolerant of each other, and it was time. And since the notion of redoing the whole house is daunting for this old blogger, I thought I'd start with the dining room, one of the smallest. And while we're at it, why not do something with that 30-something Macy's dining room table?

While some of you might be cringing now, I should mention that none of my children care anything about "inheriting" this Asian-style table.  Maybe after my make-over, they'll be fighting over it? Who knows. Oh...can you make a Chinese table look Southwest??

 

My daughter and her kids were all to eager to help me paint and redecorate. I stuck the kids outside to tackle the two arm chairs in the heat. (The pool was just a step away, so I'm not the mean Grandma you might think) I only wanted to change the two arm chairs, leaving the side chairs in their original wood. Too much  turquoise can be a "crafty" thing...too matchy-matchy for me.

Meanwhile, Amy and I made our way around the table, adding a Mexican tile motif to the corners. I was not very familiar with chalk paint, but Amy had the recipe to make our own.

We covered the purple walls with Behr's Premium Plus Ultra in "Dolphin Fin" gray and painted the opposite wall in "Suntan Glow", the same terra cotta peachy color that I've used on the fireplace...very Southwest". Michael and Kaitlyn were just dying to paint walls. (I promise that Amy and I were there painting too...just no pictures of two sweaty ladies...you can thank me later)

 

Gray is a very hard color to decorate around...just the subtlest hint of blue or yellow changes the whole room, as does the ambient light.  So my walls turned out a little bluer than I wanted, but the addition of the peach, coral and yellow accents warmed it up a little.

I touched up the shades on the chandelier over the table with some paint.

By the end of the two day job, my back was killing me and I was exhausted...so I drove all over town the next day looking for drapes to replace the green silk swag that had hung over the giant picture windows for 12 years.  I thought about making them but our two local fabric chain stores didn't have *!@#%#% and my Stonemountain was too far away for this tired chick. So I bought the drapes instead of sewing them. Not a fan of Bed Bath and Beyond, but they came through for me this time. They made the room pop.

 

 

 

I need to find some fabric to cover the other chairs, but for now, I'm done with this room. On to the next...maybe I'll wait a few weeks to recover.

Laurel. Pooped.

Last Minute Gift...

I am a procrastinator.  I think that I've mentioned that personality defect once or twice on my blog.  I think about doing things and for some reason, those thoughts slip back into my brain storage where I keep all the things that I intend to do...someday.

I think I am most famous (at least among my family and friends) for procrastination involving birthday presents. Our grandchildren might get their gift a month later than they should, all because Grandma put that task on her to-do list and it got stuck in that brain storage drawer. I'm also equally bad at picking up little hostess gifts beforehand when we have a soiree to attend.  Put those two together: event + gift, and my brain finally shifts into gear the day of the party.

"Gee, I shoulda got a _______ for her." Or "Oh no, I forgot to get them something!" Whatever the reason, my brain suddenly engages and I think about all the things I could have made for that person beforehand. However, when you are creative, 6 or 7 hours is enough time to make most anything. I'm not tooting my own horn here, I'm just saying that I will try anything...once...and Laurel works really good under pressure!

So, fast forward to yesterday and a friend was having a birthday dinner that evening.  No presents were expected but I got the brilliant idea of giving him a work of "art" for his mantle...at 6:00 a.m that morning.  He is a gifted contractor whom I had the privilege of working with a few years ago on a building project. So what contractor would not want a set of custom nails? (Probably none, but hey, it's going to be art!!) I needed to make 60 of them, one for each year of his life.

8:00 a.m - off to Lowe's and Michael's early to get the supplies...wasn't sure yet how I was going to make this little artwork, but just walking around Lowe's gave me a good start, then I finished up at Michael's.

The Raw Material: Paint, 16 Penny Nails, wood blocks, etc.

After making the wood base, I made a grid for the nail holes...

(still using those Excel skills from work)

I have to say that my skills with Dave's drill were rather lacking...what a pain!!

On to the fun part! Spray paint for the initial base of the hand-painted nails...

Took a seat at the kitchen table with my acrylic paints, brushes and voila! 

(well, not exactly that quickly...)

60 Custom Nails - Check!

Gives new meaning to the word "Nail Art", doesn't it Gayleen? (my manicurist friend)

One of a kind.

Laurel. 

No, I'm not going to make you one...

Some good...some not so much...

I am trying to figure out how I get so busy.  When I was working, I used to wait longingly for the weekends to do all my crafty stuff, never getting to half of it and waking up Monday morning trying to figure out why I never got anything done.  Five years later the dilemma is still there. This morning I woke up sorting through my endless list of to-dos, have-tos, ought-tos and want-to-dos.

Among the list of neglected projects is blogging. I get so busy with other stuff, I postpone writing until I actually finish something. I have totally lost that "multi-tasking" mojo in the midst of all my half-finished projects, not-started projects, and the "%@# - canned" projects that went by the wayside.

When you take on too many things, some of them go well, some don't. This little dress went well.

 Little girls love lady bugs....

"Tinking" is the opposite of knitting.  It means that you basically screwed up your pattern somewhere and you have to rip it out...one stitch at a time. I didn't like the way this sweater pattern was headed, so I put it on Colette and she agreed.  She hated it ("It makes me look fat, Laurel").  I'm not much of a "tink-er", so I just yanked the stitches off the needle...about 10 rows. I'd say this one didn't go so well.

After hand painting my two stools last month, I decided that this 30 year old end table with two little round nesting tables needed a face lift too.  I'm thinking this project get's a 9 on the 10 point scale.

Besides being guilty about neglecting my blog, I've also been carrying on a running argument with myself about my poor lonely art quilt hanging on the project wall.  I was going to try to finish it before the Super Bowl party, so I did clock some hours in January stitching away on several areas of the landscape.  The thing about an art quilt that you are thread painting, you can not rush the process.  It is painstakingly slow...stitching, changing threads, winding bobbins, breaking needles, designing as you go...etc. This project is a procrastinator's dream.

Like I need another project, I am having fabric withdrawal and need to get down to Stone Mountain and Daughters in Berkeley for some spring knits.  Colette needs some new tops.  But she will have to wait until I get back from Stitches West in Santa Clara....the Knitter's Mecca, I understand.  I can't wait to add more yummy yarn to my stash!!

Meanwhile, I brought back a little gift for Colette from my Mom's yesterday.  I knitted this cute little sweater for her last year, and yesterday she gave it back to me. According to my very wise mother, little wrinkled 88 year old arms should never see the light of day.  Sorry Mom...Ill have to make you something with long sleeves. Another project to start.

Yippee for me... if I can get it off Colette!

Laurel. Think I'll go shopping.

Ready, Set, GO!!!

Every year about this time, we start preparing for our annual SuperBowl Party.  We've been having people over for a number of years to watch the game and enjoy some great appetizers, followed up with Dave's Texas BBQ Brisket sandwiches at half time. It's a fun time of laughter, shouting and just being with friends and family.  We do watch the game, some with more rapt attention than others, but all are tuned in for the new commercials.

Our hacienda is not huge, so seating is at a premium around game time, so this year I thought I'd go ahead and get that counter level dining table for the kitchen that we have been wanting for quite some time. Why now? Because it comes with 6 bar stool type chairs...I can line them up behind the pool table to form what I'd like to refer to as the "Grand Tier" seats!

To coordinate with my new look, I made a new cover for the pool table...which for Superbowl Sunday becomes the "Buffet".  Everyone brings appetizers and side dishes to serve with the brisket sandwiches. I used this great Waverly print from Jo-ann's -- got it at 60% off!! I used a suede like fabric for the sides, to make it look like I had a table runner over a table cloth.

Now that I had the whole Southwest thing rockin', I decided to refinish the two bar stools that we use in the pool table area.  I checked out Mexican tiles on Google Images and got a general idea of what elements were prevalent on these tiles, then went to work.  I used plain old latex paints from the garage that I had hanging around and picked up a couple of missing colors from Lowe's.

 

Dave sanded the tops of these Cherry stained stools for me.  I used a soft off white for the base coat. As it dried, I noticed that the cherry stain seeped through the white paint. But that was okay with me - it would lend itself to a more rustic look.

 

 

Using the colors in the table runner and the pool table cover, I started to add my pattern - I just made up the design as I went along.

 

 

More pattern, more color...

 

 

I finished them off with two coats of Minwax Polycrylic Protective Finish.

 

 

Voila! Two more seats! I stopped by Sport's Authority to get my team tee shirt (decided that $100 was a bit much for an actual team jersey), and after moving the furniture around a bit, I'll be ready.

 

Laurel. Go Niners

 

 

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