Refinished High Chair

Good morning and happy Thursday friends! As most of you know, we had our third child last September. The nice thing about it being our third girl, is that we didn't really have to buy all that much. Except, you know I had to buy some new clothes for her because it was too exciting and I thought she deserved to have SOME new things! Anyway, we had a high chair that had survived both Princess and Peanut, but when I was pregnant with (we'll call her...) Shortcake I decided that I really wanted to get her a wooden high chair. When you have three children, there gets to be so much plastic that its really nice to have REAL things. Like a wood high chair. So of course I got on Pinterest and found hundreds of cute ways to refinish high chairs and then I was sold. All I had to do was find the right high chair at the right price. Which, let me tell you is not easy. They have vintage high chairs selling on ebay for hundreds! No joke! But in the end after a few months of searching, I found one locally on craigslist. It took me a week or two to get it all finished, but its done! And just in time for miss Shortcake to start eating solids! Here are the before and afters and how I refinished it.

BEFORE:

It was actually in really great condition and very pretty to begin with, but I had to make it my own.







































AFTER:

How I refinished it: First I tried to use this spray-on paint stripper to kind of loosen up all of the finish on the chair before sanding it down. It did not work at all and I don't recommend it! It just ended up being a huge mess and didn't really take off any of the finish. I have never used the kind that you pour/wipe on, so that may have worked better. But I was trying to have the least mess possible, while also doing a good job and the spray just ended up being a hassle. 

Step 1. So after cleaning off all of that, I sanded it down with a hand sander. It took a while and I had to hand sand the legs and crevices. 

Step 2. Then I stained it with Varathane Wood Stain in Weathered Gray. 

Step 3.Then I sanded that down slightly to give it an antiqued look and let the wood show through in places.

Step 4. Then I sealed the chair with Martha Stewart Crafts Vintage Decor Clear Wax and the top/tray I sealed with Watco Butcher Block Oil and Finish. I did the tray with the butcher block finish because it is food safe. The butcher block finish also made the tray wipable. The clear wax (I have noticed on my kitchen hutch that I refinished a while back) can wipe off pretty easily when it gets wet. Both finishes are very different and you may notice in the pictures that the butcher block oil made the tray shinier than the rest of the chair. This step took the longest because they both needed several coats and you have to let the coats dry for several hours. Then that was it! A brand new wooden high chair for Shortcake!  

She is still a little bit too small for it and isn't quite sitting up on her own yet, but I think she likes it!
Hope you enjoyed and as always, let me know if you have any questions about the project.

Have a great weekend! I'm off to LA for the weekend to do some wedding dress shopping with my sister!!! I'm so excited for her! And guess who gets to come with me? Little Shortcake for her first ever plan ride. Wish me luck!

Spring At Our House

Can you believe its already March!? I can't believe how fast time is flying. My littlest one just turned 6 months old today and I can't believe that half a year has already passed. We have loved every second; she is such a happy, sweet baby and her big sisters adore her. Its so much fun to watch your family grow. Since Spring is sneaking up on us, I thought I would share some Spring photos of our house this morning. Its a pretty gloomy day out there, so sorry if the pictures are a bit dark.











I set up this art station for the girls recently and I have been loving it. They used to have a drawer that is right in my desk/work area and so they were always getting stuff in and out and driving me crazy while I would try and get stuff done. So this has been awesome. It's easily accessible for them to pull things in and out and it's right next to the kitchen table where they do all of their art projects.






I got some new Spring pillows from SoVintageChic (Etsy.com) and I have to say, I am obsessed with her pillows lately! The pillow styles just keep getting cuter and cuter.




It's so refreshing to have a little green in the house now.






Here is another SoVintageChic pillow. Gorgeous right? I love.








As you can see there are bits of St. Patrick's Day things scattered about. The girl's are really into holidays lately. As soon as one happens, they are already asking what the next holiday is. Princess actually just came to the realization the other day that holidays keep repeating themselves. She said, "What's after 4th of July?" and I said, "Halloween I guess." to which she said, "Again? Over and over?".










Our new chalkboard saying for the month. I just love this old Irish blessing; it is so charming. I had to cut it down a bit to fit, but it still works.


That's all for now. Hope this gave you a but of sunshine on this gloomy day! Have a great week!

Valentine Ideas

Good Afternoon friends! I'm betting that a lot of you have already made or bought your valentines by now, (Valentines is this weekend for goodness sake!) but if you haven't and you need some ideas for teacher's gifts and friends I thought I would show you what we did last year and this year to give you a little inspiration.

Last year for Princess's school friends, we dressed her up in her Valentine's finest, took a picture of her with her hand out and then printed the picture off. Then we glued it to some pretty cardstock and I stamped the words, "I'm a sucker for you!" Then we cut holes around her hand and stuck a sucker through. The end result was better than I expected and everyone loved them. Here are some pics of how they turned out.









Super cute, easy and cheap! Nothing's better than that!

We also made some salt dough heart necklaces for all of her girlfriends, but I didn't take any good pictures of those. But if you want to do something like that here is the recipe we used from Amazing Mae.

Then for her teachers, I stamped the words "Will you Bee mine?" onto plain cardstock, with a bee stamp replacing the words "Bee". Then attached Burt's Bee's goodies, such as lotion and lip balm. If I were a teacher I would much rather have that then candy. Ok, fine love candy, but I prefer to buy my own. Here is what those looked like.


Then this year, for the boys in Princess's class, I taped army men to cardstock using cute washi tape with the saying, "Love is a battlefield". Thank you Pat Benetar for your words of wisdom.

Boys love their army guys and guns.

Or if you want to give multiple army men...


For the girls in her class, we painted wooden beads in various colors of pink and then threaded some ribbon through them to make an easy customizable bracelet. Then we stamped the words, "Wood you be mine?" onto cardstock and secured the bracelets on with washi tape. I love the way the bracelets turned out. Kinda like little girl Anthropologie.




I forgot to take pictures of her teacher's gifts, (I know, bad blogger) but for them, we bought cute pink coffee mugs and then popped some fancy tea and honey sticks inside, then wrote on cardstock, "You're my cup of tea." Then we wrapped each in pretty ribbon. If you want to do this I highly recommend HomeGoods, as they have lots of options for mugs and nice tea. One of her teachers is male, so we made one for him too with a blue mug and manly Earl Gray tea.

Hope you found something to inspire your Valentine's making for this year or next. Have a wonderful Valentine's Day! And 3 day weekend!

Girl's New Bedroom Tour

Good morning! Anyone who was waiting on pins and needles waiting for the big reveal of my daughters' new room, here it is! It took about 7 months from start to finish. Although I still have a few little things I want to add before I am happy with it. Really just a few finishing touches like baskets and bins. When we found out I was pregnant with our 3rd girl last year, we decided that we wanted to put them all in the same room together, because we didn't want to lose our guest bedroom or a playroom for the girls. But the room Princess (my oldest) and Peanut (my now middle child) were in was too small to fit all three of them. So we decided to turn the open upstairs area, which was being used as the girl's playroom, into a bedroom to fit all three of them. As my mom said, "Girls are like kittens, they just snuggle up together." Plus, I think its good for kids to share a room at least for a part of their lives. :)
You won't even recognize it from what it was before; it is so different. It took some getting used to having a wall there all of the sudden. But we couldn't be happier with how it turned out. Anyway, here is what it looked like BEFORE:












I'll admit, I was a little sad about getting rid of the chalk wall. It was really fun. But since I was going to put the baby's crib right under these windows, I knew it had to go. There are always opportunities for chalk to go somewhere, so I'm not too worried. Maybe it will reincarnate and show up somewhere else in the house. ;) I am thrilled to have lost that horrid ceiling fan though. RIP (or at the Goodwill) ugly fan!

Here is what the room looks like now. Scroll to the bottom for a full source list.
AFTER:

I ended up doing golds, grays and rosey pinks for the room colors. I know some of you are probably thinking, "OMG, she did pink!" And you're right. I hate pink. I originally wanted to do a mauve-y/dusty rose color but could not find bedding or accessories in the exact color I wanted, so I settled on this soft rosey/coral color instead. The bedding from Land of Nod was so pretty; it really sold me on it. And you know what? I really like it. I think that its a sweet color for when the girls are this young and with the pops of gold, it is a color combo that can grow with them. And if they really want to get sassy later on we can easily add pops of black and white.  

I plan on adding a picture of Miss Everly (our newest baby! I've got to think of a blog name for her) to this wall right next to the picture of me pregnant with her. All the photography in the room was done by Everly's godmother and our good friend, Elizabeth Renea Photography. Her work is amazing. I only wished she lived closer!   

The armoire has worked out better than I could have imagined. I just added a tension rod inside and was able to put all of the girl's hanging clothes in there. There are also a few shelves inside too that can be adjusted if need be. We are still working on finding (or making if we have to) some bins to go under the bunk bed for more storage in the room. I was able to get all the big girl's clothes into the room and all the bedding and blankets, but I couldn't quite squeeze in Everly's clothes. So right now her clothes are in limbo in the hallway outside their bedroom. I am hoping that once I get something I like for under the bed I can shift things around and get her clothes into the dresser.

There were so many projects that went into this room, that it is hard to believe it's finally done. From actually getting the wall built, to finding the perfect armoire, to making the chandelier.... It's really cool to now be able to see it completed after all the dreaming and planning.

I stole this little bin from our pantry just for this photo shoot, but I like the animals in there so much, that now I think I need to find a permanent basket for holding the girl's "toys of the day". 

Here are some before and afters close together so you can really see the change that happened. The chalk wall BEFORE:

AFTER:

I realized that I hadn't gotten this angle of the room, so I went in there and took this quick shot (you may notice the changing pad cover is different).....Shh! The baby is sleeping behind that quilt. Or trying to. Kinda hard when her mama comes in and opens all the shades and turns on all the lights. Poor baby. 

BEFORE:

AFTER:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Hope you enjoyed seeing the full transformation of our upstairs open playroom into the girl's new bedroom. Happy Friday!

See below for full source list and leave a comment if I missed anything you were wondering about. 

Crib: Gracco "Victoria" (bought at Target)

Dresser: IKEA

Changing pad cover: Amazon (the one with gold polka dots was Land of Nod)

Basket for diapers: Home Goods

Bunny nightlight: Anthropologie

Roman Shades: I made them! Maybe I'll do a post one day on those.

Growth Chart: Made by me (inspired by Dear Lillie)

Little giraffe: Jelly Cat

White and gold shoes: TOMS

Quilt: My mother made to match the colors in the room

Coral blankets: Little Giraffe

Gold wings: Etsy

Fabric letters: Made by me

Curtains: My mother made for Princess in our old rental home and I just held onto them. They work perfectly in here!

Curtain rod: Joann Fabrics (Then painted gold)

Pom Pom tiebacks: I just made them using some trim and Velcro from Joann Fabrics.

Fox and Owl animals: Jelly Cat

Rocking chair: Local store "Go To Your Room" (bought for Princess when she was a baby. I am so glad we have gotten so much use out of it)

Lumbar pillow: Target (found this recently and couldn't believe how perfectly it goes!) 

Armoire: Craigslist (The color came like this and I am absolutely in love!)

Dreamcatcher: Made by me

Sleeping bags: (top of the armoire, Pottery Barn Kids. They were a present from Nonnie for Christmas)

Nightstand: Old hand me down from my brother-in-law. We painted it white and gave it an antiqued look.

Lamp and shade: Target (I moved the rose covered one out, because it just didn't work with the colors in here anymore)

Shoes: Joyfolie (We are obsessed)

Bunk bed: "Catalina Bunk Bed" Pottery Barn Kids

Bookshelf: Land of Nod

Wall Color: BEHR "Planetary Silver" 

Phew, I think that's it, but if I missed anything else you want to know about let me know.