Dining Table Upcycle

Craigslist is amazing. Can I get an amen? Amen.

Alex and I have moved to a much bigger apartment and we (mostly I) have lots of projects and ideas on how to make it more homey. One of my desires was to have a large dining room table. There was only one problem, dining sets are stinking expensive! $350 for a table from Walmart?? No thank you. So what's a girl to do? All I had was our dinky little kitchen table (see here) which fits four, and nothing else and that fits perfect in our new kitchen. Well, when you're poor you can't be too picky, so we have a lovely large folding table and chairs borrowed from my Mom and Dad. Classy, I know. Hey, I put a tablecloth on it...

So craigslist to the rescue. I scoured craigslist day and night for about a week (literally day and night...). Finally(!) a dining set came up that I could afford. Long story short we got the table and 4 chairs for $25. Woo!

Good news, it's solid maple and seems to be a good builder (Cushman Carpentry). Bad news...it was in rough shape. Just how I like things :)

Here's pictures of the table and chairs when we bought them -

We decided to sand down the top of the table and the seats of the chairs and stain it while painting everything else black (I am really fond of black furniture if you haven't already figured that out yet). This is how far we've gotten so far. I'm loving it!

Still have two chairs to sand and paint and then the bazillion coats of polyurethane to put on everything but with a 3 month old it's a little difficult to find time to do everything.

Little E's Monthly Pictures

So I have to play catch-up on these, since Little E is almost 3 months old already. 

I've been doing monthly pictures for E. Pinterest is a wealth of ideas for monthly pictures. A wealth, I tell you. If you can think of it, it's been done and is pinned on Pinterest. Originally I had thought that I was going to do the onesie sticker idea where you get a giant sticker for each month that you stick on the front of a onesie and then you take a picture with it. I went on the hunt for onesie stickers and decided that I didn't like any of them. Nothing against them, I just couldn't find the one that I wanted for the price that I was willing to pay. 

I still hadn't found something that I really liked even after E was born, and the 1 month mark was approaching fast. I really liked the idea of using a chalkboard, but didn't have a chalkboard and wasn't sure where you could buy one for a decent price. I was talking to my Mom about my predicament and all the different options I was thinking of and explaining to her how I was going to have to search for a cheap chalkboard when she remembered that she had a chalkboard in the attic. The thing that made the chalkboard absolutely perfect was that it was made by my uncle that E is named after. Uncle Tadd died in a diving accident when he was young, and I was never able to meet him, so Alex and I thought we would let his memory live on through E since he was the first boy on my Mom's side since Uncle Tadd. It only made sense that we use his chalkboard. 

Mom and I got a white sheet from Walmart, dug out the chalkboard and voila! 

Monthly pictures = done. 

Eventually I'll make a book out of the pictures with things that stand out in E's development for that month next to the pictures. 

Love it!

Newborn

1 Month

2 Months

(Flint the cat wanted to help point out that E was 2 months old...)

Baby Burp Cloths

This post has probably done about billion times in a billion different ways...but, hey!, why not another one??

This is probably the easiest, fastest and (could be) cheapest baby projects ever. You can make them all fancy if you really want to with ribbons and trims. But I mean...the kid is puking on them...I think functional is more important since you're going to be washing them every two seconds.

My supplies were a 1/8 yard of two different sale fabrics at walmart (a whopping $0.50 cents worth...) and a package of tri-fold diaper inserts. I'm pretty sure I could have found those cheaper, but at my Walmart selection is limited and they only sold packs of 10. Oh well...10 is a good amount. 

All I did was cut each of my strips of fabric into three pieces (I think it was probably 42 inches wide and 1/8 of a yard wide) for the bottom of each towel. I had to straighten out my prints...they were cut a little crooked. I ironed the edges over and just did a top stitch across the edges to apply them to the diaper inserts. Aaand done! Yay! It took me about 2 hours to make all 10...I was distracted by other things during that time, so it probably wouldn't take that long. 

My diaper bag has a Polka dot theme going on and I had made some little quilted pouches for the inside because the bag itself is lacking in pockets. I took the same fabrics I'd used for the pouches and used them for 3 of the towels that will go into the diaper bag. At least I'll look organized...I didn't want the cloths to come unfolded and go all over the diaper bag so I made a little 'belt' for them to keep them together. 

(The Diaper Bag Pouches)

I may add some 'E's or a little animal silhouette later to my burp cloths, but for now I'm satisfied with the outcome. 

New (Old) Pillows

My latest project has been updating my living room couch pillows. Lately I've gotten on this peacock/teal accent kick...Hopefully it's more than a kick since I painted the front door peacock teal...

I have been slowly adding teal accents around the main floor and I decided it was time for a pillow update. I've looked everywhere for pillows that are cheap reasonably priced, but alas...poor college students cannot afford $20 pillows. 

I made the last set of pillows using some Goodwill pillow forms (a.k.a. matching pillows from Goodwill). I really liked the size of them so I decided just to recover them.

Old Pillows (and old picture...)

I had done a previous project for our canary and had a significant amount of fabric leftover from it that I was quite fond of. I used it for my main cover fabric. Because the print on the original pillows was so bright I had to have a lining fabric. I bought some tan clearance fabric from Walmart that was a thick cotton. I figured for $2.50 a yard I couldn't go wrong. 

I measured and cut and made an envelope cover for both pillows. I think they turned out great (if I do say so myself..). I now have two new (old) pillows to freshen up the living room that only cost me about $2.50 a piece. Not too shabby!

Kitchen Table Re-do

When Alex and I got married we were going to be moving up to Wisconsin into our own apartment (obviously...) so I had to collect some furniture. Our parents were kind enough to donate some of their old furniture, including a kitchen table set.

My mom's kitchen was white and red and all that good stuff, so the table had been painted white originally. I had nothing white in my decor (I'm rather fond of black furniture...). The table worked fine in our first apartment because the kitchen cabinets were white and the trim was white. But in our current apartment it just didn't fit in. surrounded by black and natural wood it stuck out like a sore thumb. 

I decided to do something about it.

I knew that I wanted to keep the natural wood (it seems to be a theme in my decor), but I was nervous to paint the table black. Afraid it would be too dark. But one week before school started and I didn't have to work I got brave and got to work. 

I used a foam brush and some black medium gloss paint that my dad had given me for a wreath post project. It took FOREVER to paint everything...all the little spindles and legs and stuff. But the end result was totally worth it!

Before

After

Big improvement in my eyes!

A New (Old) Cage for Flint

My latest project was an upcycle of Flint's (the cat) travel carrier. No telling how old it is. We used it for my childhood cat, Fluffy (don't judge - I was four), for as long as I can remember. It was kind of a grungy, boring blue before so I decided it was time for an upgrade. 

I freshened it up with a few coats of spray paint (ONLY on the outside - make sure if you spray paint a cage that you cover all the holes and openings that paint could get in!) and a decal I got from Amazon. I think it turned out great! And Flint seems to like it too, especially after i added a 'cushion' (a.k.a. a hand towel with some quilt batting sewn in). 

Here it is!