Some Crafty Parents

My dad is an awesome woodworker.  He has built so many many pieces of furniture and they are all beautiful!  But this one is super special.  It was a wedding gift from my parents and is an exact replica of the antique pie safe in their dining room that belonged to my

Great Grandma.

How beautiful is this?

It's so sturdy (uh, heavy).  Made of solid oak.

My mom punched each hole on the tin tiles! Then she got a little creative and put our names on the tiles too... people usually notice after they've been sitting in our living room for an hour or more.


'Hey, your names are in there!'

We don't have a fireplace, so we use this as a mantel of sorts. 

As you can tell by the name, it's really a dining room piece, but we already have a table and chairs and a hutch in our small dining room.  So we use it in the living room.

I LOVE it.

Coffee Table Love

So, you might be aware of my LOVE for paint and using it to turn our ugly furniture into something I can live with and dare I say, like! 

Well, we have a C.H.E.A.P coffee table that, yes, serves it's purpose, blah blah blah... boring.  I decided to do a little perk me up on the ugly thing that involved 1 yard of fabric, 1 foam cushion and some leftover black paint and primer from this table and chairs project. 

The fabric was on clearance at fabric.com, so that was only $6.  The foam is ridiculously expensive, but of course I never buy anything from JoAnne's unless it's on sale or I have a coupon, so with my 50% off coupon I think it was around $15. 

So for just over $20, we have a new-ish coffee table that I actually like!  Yippie! 

BEFORE PICS (you must admit, UGLY!)

AFTER PICS... better?

Wait, wanna see the before again?

And the whole room...

I love it!  I do wish the stripes were lengthwise, but that would have required buying more than 1 yard and I was on a budget.  Otherwise, why not just buy a whole new table? 

I found a tray at Goodwill for 2$ that I will be using for drinks as soon as I...

wait for it...

wait for it...

paint it.

Haha, not kidding.

Dining Room Redo!

What you are looking at are pictures of our dining room furniture.  We inherited this a few years ago from my Grandma and Grandpa...  I love the furniture, but as you can tell, it shows it's age for sure. 

 I found a recipt in the drawer saying they purchased it from Sears in 1980... can you tell?

 The table has two leaves and six chairs... so it's a great size for a small crowd. And without the leaves, it's perfect for our dining room on a daily basis.

 If only it wasn't so ugly...

 Should we paint it?

Oh yes we should!  Here is the final result (it only took us three months to finish this!)... ack!  But now that it's done.... woah... I couldn't love it more. 

 All the difference in the world, right?

 We have some Christmas decorations on it right now, but the minute the last thing was done (chairs) I had to take pictures, immediately!!

 We replaced the hardware on the hutch and took out the door dividers... here's another before...

 The table and chairs are just paint, that's all! 

 Here's a few with the placemats I'm making... I only have two done so far... but they add so much color and FUN!

 Love the black chairs... the kitchen has black cabinets so it matches perfectly with those.

 Ahhh, a million times better!  Worth all the work.... first we sanded, then primed two coats, then did three coats of white, then two coats of clear coat. 

What do you think??

Freezer Paper Stencil Love

Gather at our table for this is where we eat, listen, teach, share, laugh, play, work, pray, love,

and make memories.

My mom likes to have the whole family over for dinner on Sundays... 

so for her birthday, my sisters and I made this tablecloth for their dining room table. It's the same table we grew up using and orginally belonged to my Great Grandma.

We found the idea through

 this post at Be Different Act Normal,

 which came from

 this post at My Dear Trash.

We decided to use fabric paint over freezer stencils and paint directly on her favorite tablecloth- not directly on the antique table like the table in the other post. :) It was supposed to be word for word, but trust me, that was a lot of tracing and cutting on the freezer paper and once we realized we forgot a word (or two) we didn't really care. 

It still looks awesome anyway, right?!?!?!

The table is HUGE, so it was kinda tough to get the whole thing in one picture.

I love the saying and might make something for my dining room wall with that on it.

Happy Wednesday!  Thanks for looking!

Grandma's Bench Re-do

Last fall I inherited a bench from my Grandma... I had been wanting one for our entry way so I was really excited to score this for free! Unfortunately, it screamed 'Grandma recovered this in 1984'. So, I went to work... little bit of black paint... new fabric for the cushion (and DO NOT look closely at this- I've never recovered a pillow or any such thing before this!) and LOOK, beautiful new bench! I LOVE it. Here are the before and afters:


Aw, yea, not my style.


Ah, that's more like it.