The living room

More house progress!  Removing the living room wallpaper was a serious pain in the ass. My mother, father, grandmother, grandfather, daughter and husband all worked with me (and in the case of my mother, much more than me) to get the wallpaper off this wall.  There was a thin liner underneath the regular wallpaper that had to be steamed and scraped away shreds at a time.  Ouch.  But now it's off!  Mom and I primed the newly-bare walls, which had never been painted in their 71 years, then painted them a perky green called spring cactus. I made the curtains from fabric I found online and posted about previously, from Heather Bailey's Pop Garden collection. This is a room we needed some furniture for when we moved into this house.  I fell in love with the Eames-inspired tulip chair from an online discount store, and we bought the light fixture and white sofa (below) from IKEA. This room is meant to house my collection of hobnail milk glass, and the bumpy white lamp and chair are really just accessories to my beloved dishes.  I have a less-is-more attitude toward some things, but dishes are just not one of them. I love dishes.  I have way too many.  But hey, better dishes than drugs and booze, right?

After I hung the new curtains this weekend  Dorothy came into the room.  She immediately noticed the curtains and rushed over to the windows to admire.  "Wow!  These new curtains are so pretty!  They are going to look beautiful at my birthday party."  My husband came home an hour or so later and his reaction was not as satisfying.  I had to drag him into the room to see the curtains, which I doubt he'd have noticed on his own.  He glanced and said, "oh, those look nice."  He might have said the same thing if I'd hung paper bags in the window.  If I hadn't prompted him he might never have noticed they were there. This is why I'm so grateful to have a daughter.  :)

My over-the-sofa art is going to be supplied by my children.  I purchased artists canvases at a craft store and covered them with more of the Pop Garden fabric using a staple gun. I have a can of low-tack spray adhesive that I'm going to use to adhere a rotating collection of the kids' art to the screens.  This felt like a formal but fun way to honor their artwork. I have admired framed child art in other people's homes, but I'm thinking this will be easier to peel off or stick up art as their talents and interests change.

Now all I have to do to finish this room is patch and paint the ceiling, paint all the trim, mop off the bits of wallpaper that seem to have stuck to the floor, buy a coffee table, sew throw-pillows, buy a coordinating shade for the milk glass lamp (not shown), sew a Pop Garden scarf for the piano, find or make an entry-way rug, paint or replace the plant stand that doesn't seem to match, and find the rest of my milk glass in a box downstairs.  It's a good thing my baby sleeps through the night and I have nothing else to do all day, right?  Oh wait...

And today is my daughter's actual birthday.  She gets to bring a treat to school to share with her classmates, so we made cupcakes with lavender icing at her request. I love this recipe for vanilla cupcakes and have made it several times, even though the method of adding the butter to the batter seems rather unorthodox. The cupcakes don't turn golden-brown until they are over baked--you have to do the toothpick test to get them out in time--but they come out really moist and they hold their shape nicely so you can eat them without having most of your cupcake dissolve into crumbs all over your lap.  According to Dorothy's birthday wish the cupcakes needed to have her classmates names on them, so we did that too.  I printed the names onto a sheet of card stock and we just cut, glued and folded the little tags onto toothpicks. Hopefully the birthday girl will feel like she got all her birthday wishes granted today. She woke up pretty excited!

Fifth Birthday

Another birthday!  We joke in my family that we have birthday season in February and March.  Both nieces, my father, father-in-law and two children all have birthdays in those months.  We eat cake.  Lots of cake.  Here is Dorothy's birthday dress, which features a yellow Volkswagen Beetle patch.  She wanted a pinch buggy birthday so that is what she got. She declared that her dress should not be constructed of pinch buggy fabric (although I did find that, see below), but should be a pretty dress with just one pinch buggy on the front.  I found the patch on eBay, the fabric and Joann, and the pattern is Simplicity 5695, which I think I've made a zillion times now but she asked for that style specifically.  (She wanted it to be like this dress of the same basic pattern.)

I don't often make hair bows for Dorothy because she won't keep them on, but I did make one for this event and she did keep it on just for the duration of the party. Hair bows are so easy--I have no idea why they cost so much.  Yet there is something about just dragging out the glue gun that has made me an Etsy hair bow purchaser myself, back before my kid started refusing to wear them. This one is made from ribbon left over from another project with flowers cut out of the dress fabric (raw edges and all) and one purple button that came as an extra with a store-bought sweater.  Now she'll probably never wear it again but who knows, I might.

I found this Volkswagen fabric on Etsy.  (Or was it eBay?  I find novelty fabric in both places.) This is the third time I've made an accent tablecloth for her birthday table.  It's just one yard of fabric, squared off and hemmed all around on the serger. In the past I think I layered them over other tablecloths, but since Worth likes to yank at tablecloths I skipped the layered look this time.  The small homemade tablecloths set off the theme for her parties by decorating the table, then they find a more permanent home in our playroom housekeeping area where they perfectly fit the small play table.  As usual, we have Nana to thank for the beautiful cake, and the theme was inspired by Rob, who drives a pinch buggy convertible.

Some wearables

Happy birthday to my sweet niece!  I can't believe it was two years ago that I videotaped her amazing and beautiful birth at the home of my brother and sister-in-law.  I crocheted the flutter sweater as a gift for Maggie, and it looks completely adorable on her.  The bottom and front edges curl up on purpose in a really cute way. The pattern was easy, but it was such a start-and-stop project for me that it took forever.  I'd intended to give it to her for Christmas but couldn't find my hooks in the move, so it became a birthday gift instead.  I did it in a lightweight organic cotton yarn so hopefully she can wear it on in to warm weather.

I mentioned in my last post that I got some new tees to craft up for summer.  A friend pointed out that they are also very nice plain--which they totally are. These two shirts remained plain (and nice) all winter while I meant to do something to them but never got around to it.  These came from Target months ago. I finally took some time to embellish them this week, and here are the results.  On this green one I appliqued some owls on a branch by using fusible web and the zig-zag stitch. 

This one I was especially pleased with.  I used acrylic yarn left over from another project and machine stitched it to my shirt using a wide zig-zag, three bands around the neck, bottom edge, and each arm hole. Then I washed it, just to make sure nothing terrible would happen to it before I blogged about it.  :)

And while I was doing that--just so no one thinks I have more hours in my day than any one else--my house descended into utter chaos.  The kitchen came to look like it had never been cleaned, the girl fed yogurt to the boy in a messy and indiscriminate manner, and the boy "painted" my sofa with his yogurty hands.  There is, um, no place like homemade!

First birthday

The big first birthday!  And this is supposed to be the post in which I wax nostalgic and say something sweet about one year ago today, right?  I think one year ago today I was using *very bad words* in a loud manner at Baptist Hospital East.  Ha ha.

Here is a collage I made of the big boy.  I used Photoshop to create a layout similar to one we purchased from Sears when Dorothy had her first birthday.  (Before I purchased the good camera!)  I hung a sheet over the stair railing and snapped away while Dorothy and Nana repeatedly handed Worth the ball, caught it, and returned it to him, guaranteeing happy faces.

I made ball-themed gift packs for the small guests at his party.  I sewed little drawstring bags out of ball-reminiscent polka dot fabric and included ball-shaped candies, a swimming pool splash ball, and a little coloring sheet of Worth with a ball (more Photoshop).  Worth has recently become obsessed with balls and sees them everywhere, always with an accompanying chant of "baw-ul, baw-ul, baw-ul."

Here's the table all decked out for his party, with a ball-themed cake courtesy of Nana.  I made chili and we had a casual supper.  It was fun to entertain in the new house, even though much of it is still a work in progress.

And the birthday boy himself, enjoying his birthday cake and all the general merriment.  Sweet boy!

Some clothes for the boy

I picked these overalls up at a yard sale last fall.  For weeks they sat in my sewing basket, ready to be camper-ized, then then got abruptly packed away in a box, only to surface recently.  I was worried Worth would have outgrown them already but fortunately he had not.   These overalls had a baseball patch sewn on the bib, but were otherwise cute.  (No offense to baseball.)  I picked off the ball with a seam ripper and made my own camper patch out of a scrap of fabric left over from my camper sewing extravaganza.  The patch is just a wee bit big for the size of the bib, but that was the only intact camper I could find to cut out from my scraps.  Not a bad use of scraps and $.25 overalls, really.

Unbelievably, my baby will celebrate a birthday in just over a week.  Mind-blowing.  I thought Dorothy's infancy went quickly, but at the same time I felt like she (as a little person) was half-grown at a year.  Worth, by contrast, still seems like a tiny baby to me.  I think it's partly their personalities and partly a first-child/second-child thing.  Dorothy was always so independent and concentrated on fighting her way, tooth and nail if necessary, to her next developmental milestone.  She would see bigger kids do things and not rest until she had figured out how to do it herself. Worth is more content to by the baby.  He's reasonably motivated and enthusiastic about the world, but he doesn't have Dorothy's ceaseless drive.  Dorothy was also the first grandchild in the family, whereas Worth is now the baby of four cousins.  So when you combine these factors you get a first birthday that seems like some sort of trick the calendar is playing.

I was not sure how to dress a boy child for his birthday. Boy clothes seem to be overdressy or very casual--there is no "business casual" equivalent for boys--but I came up with this.  I made a little pair of cuffed pants out of some nice, soft thrift-store sheets.  I just traced around one of his store-bought pants for a pattern.  Then I put his initial on a blank t-shirt with the same fabric.  I thought about doing the number 1 instead, but then he'd only really be able to wear it once.  It's an outfit that I think it going to be both cute and comfy, and I feel good to have taken the time away from house stuff to make something special for the birthday boy.

Chair pads again

 

I recovered the seats of our dining room chairs last spring, and it was basically an exercise in uselessness.  The medium-weight upholstery fabric I'd used bunched over the decrepit old foam (I'd not bothered to replace it), and something about the nap of that particular fabric just seemed to attract cat hair even worse than what had been on there before.  The new dining room is headed for a different set of colors, too, so the orange hue wasn't going to work.  This time I went out and bought brand new foam and I'm using a laminated cotton fabric, which is similar to oilcloth but lighter weight and more stretchy.  I don't think cat hair will stay on it at all, and most spills should wipe up easily (here's hoping), but I am a little concerned about the durability, given children with forks and cats with claws.  We'll see.  In the meantime, I really love the Amy Butler fabric and I can't wait to see it with the blue we're going to paint the walls in this room.  (Note on that:  you can see the wallpaper in here. There is a certain vintage appeal to this paper, I guess, but I'm way too fickle about prints to have them pasted on the wall.  I need a clean, solid backdrop on the walls so I can choose other prints at will!  Besides, you can't have flocked wallpaper and cats who rub up against walls.  Ick.)

Yesterday was a special day here.  We celebrated Rob's birthday in the dining room, in full view of the kitchen through the new pass-through!  I still need to paint it (along with all the other surfaces in the rooms it joins--oy), but I already love it.  It's amazing how much it changed our house!  Now I can see the sunlight from windows in every room of the first floor while I have breakfast at my kitchen table.  Dorothy made a paper chain for our birthday celebration and I hung it in the opening.  I can tell I'm going to need a couple nails, or maybe a tension rod, to hold this sort of temporary (yet eternal, ha ha) decoration.