Playroom

A little bit of decorating has been done to Corals play room.

I got some money for my birthday, and I knew I wanted to spend a little of that money in the play room. I want it to be a fun space for Coral, but also want it to be appealing to the eye since its right at the top of our stairs. 

I knew I wanted a desk, and some floating shelves. First came the desk (not by choice...Ikea was sold out of the shelves I wanted). I found this desk at Salvation Army. 

I fell in love with it immediately. Mostly because of the shiny white top with the map on it 

drool...if I had a little boy this would have gone in his room

....But I left it at the store....only to go back for it two days later. And of course, I painted it.

This has become Corals little craft station. Doing her coloring, stamps and stickers, and playdough here.

As I mentioned before, Andrew and I made the treck out to Ikea, only to find that the shelves I wanted were not in stock. Were talking about the simple, cheap Lack shelves. I was stunned that they had none in stock. So I waited...waited some more...then waited some more. Finally I decided to check online at Home Depot to see if they have any floating shelves. Turns out they have the exact same shelves as Ikea, for the same price...and I just so happen to live two minutes from Home Depot :) Perfect!

The hubby was not to thrilled to have to put these up for me...buut I asked him on a day that he won $500 to his favourite camera store...he couldn't say no :)

And that is our play room. Painting on the wall is done by my very talented mother-in-law.

Road-side chair make-over

Remember the chair I picked up for free on the side of the road?

Yah, that one.

Well it got a make-over this week.

I have always wanted to learn how to reupholster a chair....a big chair. And then I had this chair sitting in my room, that was FREE. There was no better opportunity for an experiment, because I couldn't go wrong. If it turned out, awesome. If it didn't...oh well, it was free!

So of course I did a lot of research online before starting this project. I found lots of different tutorials, thanks to Pinterest. The only problem was, I didn't want to do any sewing. My sewing machine is broken, and Im not buying another one any time soon. And it would have taken me so much longer if I had chosen to sew. Now the chair I have, was put together with LOTS of sewing. unfortunately I didn't find many sites that could help me with that, but I got creative on my own. I think it turned out pretty good for my first attempt.

Heres the process I went through to get to the end result.

Start by taking all the fabric layers off the chair. This is a very long and hard process. There are literally hundreds of staples you will be pulling out. This took me about 4 hours to peel apart the chair (I use the word peel because a chair is put together like an onion. Many, many layers).

I labeled EVERYTHING as I was taking it apart so I would remember how to put it back together. I labeled the fabric, as well as the wood where the fabric was stapled too.

I kept whatever I could from the chair. You would be surprised how a chair is put together. But I kept everything, the cardboard and all.  

There may be surprises waiting for you inside the chair. On my last layer, I spotted a sealed plastic bag. Inside of it was a brand new jersey. Super weird.

When I was finished taking the layers off the chair, it looked like this.

I used the old fabric to trace out my new fabric. Since this was my first chair and it was more of an experiment, I decided to get some cheap fabric from Ikea. I used 7 meters for the whole chair at $5.99/meter. 

One mistake I made was not leaving extra room when tracing around the new fabric. Lesson learned for next time.

Then it was time to staple the new fabric on. This part was really fun. Its a lot of tucking, and pulling, and again hundreds of staples. Since my fabric was stripes, I decided it would be easiest to do horizontal lines on the back and seat of the chair, and vertical lines on the arms. Other wise it would have been nearly impossible to line up the fabric perfectly..a task I was not willing to take on during my first big upholstery project.

So this is the back of the chair. All the fabric gets put over the front of the chair, and then gets tucked and pulled to the back where it is stapled. 

Everything gets stapled to the back of the chair, which is then covered up using fabric and metal tack strips. 

back of chair

The arms were the hardest part to do without sewing. Again, I couldn't find any help on the internet, so I had to wing it.

I stapled the fabric around the front of the arm. Then I cut out a piece of cardboard that would cover up the staples. I put nails through the cardboard first, then covered up the other side of the cardboard. Then I hammered the cardboard piece in right over top of the other fabric. Like this:

Are you ready for the end result?

Ta-daaaa! Isn't she a beauty? It was about six hours of hard work, but the end result was worth it. I did learn a lot throughout the whole process. I made a few mistakes, and the chair is far from perfect, but it was a good learning experience. Im excited to try this again with other chairs I find....I can only get better each time I do it. And the total cost of the chair...$42. Not bad eh!

Decorating update

As I looked around the house this morning, I realized there have been lots of little changes that I haven't shared with you. So let me give you the latest decor update.

An old barn door hung on the wall, which will also be used to pin things up such as reminders, or Corals church crafts.

Fall/winter look with new pictures hung and new pillows

New hooks in the entry way. Now you can hang up your coat when you visit!

Chalk board paint on the closet doors in Corals big girl room.

Freshly painted dresser for Corals big girl room

New things hung on the wall in Corals big girl room...its beginning to look girlie in there!

More of Corals paintings hung up

Master bedroom is starting to look more cozy

The bench from outside is now safely inside for the winter and is resting at the end of our bed...which it just might stay there :)

And there you have it! Stay tuned though...things are always changing around here. AND Im excited to share with you soon the changes I have made in Corals play room. Happy winter decorating everyone.

Its beginning to look a lot like CHRISTMAS!

My birthday has come and gone...and you know what that means don't you?

Christmas decorating!

Usually Andrew doesn't like decorating for Christmas, and he always pokes fun about how early I decorate (why go through all that work to only have it up for a few weeks?) This year I discovered a little trick. Ask for help setting up the tree on my birthday, and he can't say no!

So this past Saturday, the tree went up.

We have a big tree (that momma decorates) and we have a little tree (that Coral decorates).

Coral was thrilled when we brought up her little tree.

Ta-da! The finished product:

Andrew set up the tree for me on Saturday, but I really wasn't feeling well. So it sat there with no decorations for a few days until I finally had the energy to do it.

I really only decorate the one room in our house. It makes it easy for putting up, and taking down once the Christmas season is over. And that way the house doesn't look over cluttered and crowded with things.

This is our Christmas room.

Coral broke one ornament off the tree when it was first decorated. It scared her, and she hasn't touched the tree since.

Were getting excited for Christmas in the Hodgson house. 

My Latest Find

Its no secret that Im a garbage picker.

No you don't have to worry about me going through your garbage bags, but if I do see something in your pile of trash that I fancy, I wont hesitate to pick it up.

Meet my latest side of the road find.

While driving home from my in-laws a couple of weeks ago, I spotted this beauty on the side of the road in our subdivision. Andrew had just picked up the Timbren van, and we got home at the same time. He hadn't even gotten out of the van yet when I yelled "Hey there is a chair I want right by the park." A few minutes later, it was sitting in our house.

Now its not perfect. Thankfully it wasn't dirty at all, or smelly (eesh), however it did have some rips in it and is missing a back leg. It was to good of a chair to give up, and I knew I could sew the rips, and find a replacement leg at Home Depot. After a bit of sewing, a little bit of fabric glue, and lots of disinfecting (I said it wasn't dirty but that doesn't mean I wasn't going to clean it), it is ready to be used once again.

You can still see the places where I had to sew, but I don't mind. I love the chair. I love the fabric, and the shape. I love that it tells a story. I love that I saved it from going to the dump. And I love that it was free.

Happy Early Birthday to me!

Hi all!

Well, all the Hodgsons made it home safely yesterday. Coral was sad to say goodbye to nana and papa, but was very happy to see daddy and all her favorite toys at home. When I pulled off the hwy Coral screamed "were hoooome" and started kicking her legs with excitement. It's so nice that we are able to spend time with our family while the hubby is away. We had a lot of fun despite my being sick the whole time.

In other news, does the layout of my blog look different to any of you? Or at least the way I'm typing it? That is because I am writing it from my new iPad! Say what? It's true y'all. There are two things you need to know about my hubby. One is that he loves technology, two is that he can't keep a surprise and is easily persuaded to give presents early. Hence the early iPad birthday gift.

My bithday isn't for another week, but when Andrew kept asking me if I have been snooping every time he left the room, I knew he had gotten my present already. I made hints about him giving it to me early, and when I came home from getting groceries, there is was, in all it's glory. She's a beauty. Now I'm not really into technology. I don't feel like I need to have all the latest gadgets, but our computer situation at home was driving me nuts. Andrew either needed the computer for work, or would be doing his photo editing on it...both left me computerless, and one left the computer running so slow I could hardly check my Facebook. So, not much into technology, but I admit I was estatic about my own little computer.

Andrew knew the iPad could do everything I needed it to do. Plus he thought it would be handy to be able to take photos and load them right away from the iPad to my blog (notice the lack of photos on my blog..my camera and I are not on speaking terms right now).

So now I fiddle. I have to get used to typing on a touch screen, and get used to the different lay out of facebook on it. And I have much to learn about blogging from my iPad. We still have to find an app that allows me to upload photos from the iPad.

Here I go...time to post this and see how it turns out. Hopefully by Tomorrow I will be able to share some photos with you!

Trick or Treat!

This year was totally different trick or treating with Coral. First of all, Andrew wasn't with us. He is at a trade show in Vegas all week long, so no candy for him. Secondly, Coral actually understood what was going on this year (after the first couple of houses) and LOVED it. Sorry ya'll, I don't have any pictures of Coral trick or treating since I left my camera at home. However Andrew took some of her in her costume a few weeks ago so i'll try to get them up on the blog soonish.

Since Andrew wasn't going to be around for Halloween, I decided I would make the treck down to my parents house. Both of my parents were thrilled that they got to take one of their little grand-babies out to get some candy. Coral woke up yesterday morning and the first thing she did was grab her costume and ask to put it on. What did she dress up as you ask? She was a monkey again! I thought before going out and buying her a new costume, I would bust out her costume from last year to see if it fit. Sure enough it fit her better this year then it did last year. Awesome.

We got Coral ready at about 5:00pm and headed out to get some candy. As most of you know, my parents recently moved, so the first place we went was our old house. The people that bought their house really wanted to meet Coral, so dad promised we would bring her by. Well, when we got there, they had gotten Coral a bucket FULL of candy. You should have seen her eyes. Of course she wanted to eat it right away so I told her to pick one thing. She looked in the bucket and picked a crunchie bar. Not the typical bite size chocoate bar that you usually get when you go trick or treating. Oh no, this was a full adult size crunchie bar. 

Now that she was full of chocolate (who needs face paint? The brown chocolate matched perfectly with her costume) we decided to hit up some houses of people that we know/are related to. Coral is usually shy around new people, but she had no problem going right in to peoples houses for some candy. And when I say go right in, I mean go right in. There was no waiting outside the door. As soon as the door opened she ran into the house and looked for the candy. Now since the first house we went to gave her a whole bucket full of candy, she assumed that at EVERY house she would get the entire bowl full of candy. So instead of taking one piece of candy, she would grab the whole bowl and try to walk away.

We tried to get her to say thank-you at every house, but while we were there she was so quiet, focusing only on the candy. However as soon as we left, she had some comment to make...after each house. Sometimes she would say "BYE OMA" (Oma is what she calls my grandma, but she usually just assumes that every old lady is a Oma), or would say "scary" if they had spooky decorations.

Once it started to rain we headed to my grandparents house to hang out with the rest of the family and help hand out candy. Coral had to see who was at the door every time someone was there, and checked out all the different costumes.

We really missed Andrew and was sad he couldn't be there wish us. It was such a fun night and I can only imagine how much more fun it will be next year when Coral is a little older (although maybe not as fun for me...I get to eat most of Corals candy this year...next year she might not be so generous). And yes, it took the little monkey a looong time to fall asleep last night after all that sugar.

Enjoy your candy everyone!